Cornelius Claudio Kreusch - Transformer (CD)

Release Date: 09/17/21

With 'Transformer,' Kreusch follows up on earlier albums.

For the pianist, who was first trained by his mother, concert pianist and music educator Dorothée Kreusch-Jacob, and then at the legendary Berklee College of Music in Boston and the Manhattan School of Music, is one of the most creative jazzmen on the planet, thanks to his extroverted nature, always bursting with energetic ideas.
With 'Transformer,' Kreusch follows up on earlier albums such as the hit album 'Live! At Steinway Hall/New York', to 'Dolomites' and 'Heart & Soul' and thus to his strengths as a soloist with a solitary signature. This time it is not a single improvisation marathon, a single underlying theme or a specific developmental step that he documents here. Rather, it is the sum of his experiences as a transmitter of his musical ideas. Many different sources of inspiration feed this album, from long-matured ideas that have just never been recorded to dewy-eyed songs that show him at the zenith of his pianistic development process.
The opener, 'Paco,' for example, is a tribute to the unforgotten grandmaster of flamenco guitar Paco de Lucia, which Kreusch wrote the day he moved on Feb. 25, 2014. 'I was interested in expressing the feeling of his spirit, his contribution and example to the world of music through my sound.' Kreusch's incomparable force and dynamism, his stupendous technique, his inexhaustible creativity and, last but not least, his gift for inventing catchy melodies from which everything flows, make the album a special experience. These are, in the final analysis, songs that Kreusch creates, as is evident from the album's recording technique, which maps every nuance, and from the fact that you can hear him singing along in the background - like an Oscar Peterson or an Erroll Garner once did.