Jermaine Landsberger - Gypsy Today (2020)

Calling his new album Gypsy Today, is an expression of a programmatic opening that is connected with the ten-year-old partnership with the pianist and organist Jermaine Landsberger, which is the key to this recording: Jermaine has supported and driven me to play much more modern than I did before. He took me where I always wanted to go. For me he will always be the best gypsy jazz pianist and composer, Stochelo says about his friend. Indeed, the sprout of a Sinti family, who was born in 1973 in Vilsbiburg in Lower Bavaria and has long lived in Nuremberg, is an exceptional figure in the scene. Because he chose not the guitar or violin typical of Gypsy Swing as an instrument, but the piano. Already at 18 he was interested in modern jazz piano from Oscar Peterson to Keith Jarrett or Herbie Hancock, which scared the Gypsy traditionalists a little, he says. On the other hand, the Sinti elements always remained part of his game, which still gives him a unique selling point. His bands sounded and sounded unmistakable: the early trios from the mid-1990s with the Scottish jazz guitarist Martin Taylor; the collaborations with Biréli Lagréne, probably the most modern and the most open to fusion and jazz influences of all Sinti guitarists, with whom Stochelo Rosenberg has often played; or also his organ projects like Hammond Eggs, in which jazz stars like Pat Martino, Randy Brecker, Bob Mintzer or Larry Coryell participated. His current, new piano trio with drummer Donald Edwards and bassist Darryl Hall is a complete New York affair.