GERMANY: JAZZ PIANIST JENS THOMAS PERFORMS IN MAINZ

Record ID: 391103

  • Title: GERMANY: JAZZ PIANIST JENS THOMAS PERFORMS IN MAINZ
  • Date: 31st January 2001
  • Summary: SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) JENS THOMAS "He wrote something that he liked the fantasy and the art of playing with his material. He was, he liked it that someone improvised with his compositions and don't do an arrangement or something like this."
  • Embargoed: 15th February 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MAINZ, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA9TOHO6BKOVULSYLR95DT61G65
  • Story Text: They call him 'The Jimmy Hendrix of piano' in Germany. Jazz pianist Jens Thomas from the German city of Hannover is fast gaining a name for himself. His first album 'You Can't Keep a Good Cowboy Down', a re-working of classic Ennio Morricone music, has received raving reviews from the German music press, and also from Morricone himself.
    Jens Thomas is one of several emerging stars on the German Jazz scene. A classically trained musician, the thirty year old began playing the piano at the age of six.
    And although his early influences were the Police and AC/DC, he became hooked on jazz at the age of twenty-one.
    Not long after he set up the piano trio 'Triocolor' with bassist Stefan Weeke and drummer Björn Lücker, they received the EEC's European Jazz Prize. Thomas himself picked up best soloist at the awards ceremony.
    For his first solo album, Thomas re-worked the spaghetti western themes of Italian composer Ennio Morricone. After recording was over, he sent Morricone a copy of the album and the composer wrote back immediately.
    " He wrote to me saying that he liked the fantasy; the fantastical rearrangement, the technique of piano playing and so on. And he was happy that I had done it .I met him in Rome last year in June. I played at the German embassy where he was and that was very moving how he, so to say, appreciated how his music could be interpreted in a different way. I was happy that it wasn't something that was trivial for him or that it annoyed him, because I undertook the work with a great deal of respect."
    " He wrote something that he liked the fantasy and the art of playing with his material. He was, he liked it that someone improvised with his compositions and don't do an arrangement or something like this."
    Besides his 'Triocolor' and solo work, Thomas is performing and recording with German saxophonist Christof Lauer, who has a solid reputation in the German jazz world. And like many young jazz musicians of his age, Thomas is aware of the need to get young people interested in contemporary jazz music.
    "Yes, I think what we are also doing with Triocolor, with Stefan Weeke and Björn Lücker, we are playing together tonight, is for the last nine or so years, to try and, how should I say, to try and basically get the energy of rock music and a bit of trash or punk and also melodies that are like pop songs and basically blend them, because that is the music that we listened to. When we sit in the bus, we hear Guano Apes and not usually Miles Davis; that means there are many links, of which I have the feeling it is possible to reach younger people."
    But just as the music of Morricone had such an effect on the young pianist many years before, the music of Thomas, and his at times often manic style of playing, may yet reach a wider and younger audience.
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