Am Weihnachtsabend

Who still composes new Christmas songs these days? The Jazzrausch Bigband has never been content to parade around well-groomed old traditions - the appetite for the new is what drives this energetic band.

 The starting point for Leonhard Kuhn’s new compositions is the great big band sound of the traditional Christmas album. Kuhn draws on Christmas poems by Christian Morgenstern, Joseph von Eichendorff, Kurt Tucholsky and Theodor Fontane and combines them with new, swing-inspired melodies - and what fascinates is the transformation the texts undergo in the process.

This interplay of words and music, and everything in between, is one of the album’s attractions. The other lies in the sound culture of the Jazzrausch Bigband: the powerful drive, the rich brass writing, the finely graded shadings in the woodwinds, the delicately sparkling improvised garlands of the piano. The eternal force of swing hits you head-on and carries you along.

An album that bridges old and new to perfection - just as Christmas does.