Sebastian Sternal - Thelonia (2022) [Hi-Res]

Thelonia, his most intimate work to date. "I had already made the decision for a solo album quite a while before the pandemic," Sebastian Sternal immediately clears up a possible misunderstanding. The fact that the multi-award-winning (WDR Jazz Prize, New German Jazz Prize, etc.) pianist and composer is now presenting his first solo work after almost 20 years of professional career may come as a surprise to some

After all, with his large-format Symphonic Society on two albums (both received Jazz Echos, Vol. 2 also the annual prize of the German Record Critics), he has extremely successfully dissolved genre boundaries, among other things, through the combination of jazz octet and string quartet. Sternal then shone in a dynamic trio with the American star bassist Larry Grenadier and Jonas Burgwinkel - for the album Home he received his third Echo in 2018

A solo recording, with the grand piano as the singular center of gravity, was a logical development for Sebastian Sternal, after all his various earlier projects. Among them are also different duos, for example with Frederik Köster. In implementing the plan, the special circumstances of the year 2020 were not entirely inconvenient

"The initial excitement about Corona in March was followed by the phase when everyone stayed quietly at home," he recalls. "That's how I felt, of course. Without concerts and outside appointments, my life changed profoundly. So for a few weeks, I sat alone at the piano a lot and worked intensively." Further spurred on by an already arranged recording date in the chamber music hall of Deutschlandfunk, he began profound "artistic research." The result is Thelonia, his most intimate work to date.