Mpenzi Wangu is the title of the debut album by young trumpet player and composer, Matthias Beckmann. The title is Swahili, but anyone expecting a pure world music album will be left amazed right after they’ve hit the play button… Mpenzi Wangu means “my darling” in English, and yes, it radiates the temperament, energy and African vitality which we associate with Tanzania. It’s also dedicated to a lady who means a great deal to the creator of this work. In other words, it is a very personal album. Yet even with the intimate subject matter, musically it pulls out all the stops, especially in its African stylings. It’s an album which moves nimbly and light-footed, almost dancer-like between a club sound and traditional jazz. Elements of funk, latin, rock, blues, soul, R&B, disco and pop fall naturally into place. They combine to form an amazing blend that makes you sit up and listen. It’s a complex mix which also provides for lasting vitality and thrills in inter-personal relationships as well. Matthias Beckmann provided the compositional framework, ideas for the arrangement, and the mood for each of the individual pieces. The seven fantastic musicians then polished them together and made them dazzle. All of these musicians have known each other since they studied together in the Netherlands at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and at the ArtEZ Conservatorium in Enschede.

With his project 'plays greatest hits', Gero Koerner forges a link between the traditional playing of swing era master pianists and the contemporary stylings of a "classic" jazz line-up. In doing so, he uses his own arrangements of pop hits from the last 40 years. By using such an unusual repertoire for this style o fmusic, he has managed to present the pieces in a much clearer light. The pianist has never been one for compartmentalized musical thinking, and he feels at home in all popular musical styles. He is inspired by the technically masterful yet understated and thoroughly witty attitude found in this form of music. For the album Gero Koerner Trio ‘plays greatest hits,’ he managed to get two musicians from the WDR Big Band on board: John Goldsby on double bass, and Hans Dekker on drums. This excellently rehearsed and totally adaptable rhythm section forms the perfect complement to the pianist’s communicative playing style. With their free-thinking but stylistically impeccable playing, the trio are constantly showing the pieces in a different light, and revealing new aspects which the listener would not expect at all.

Harmonica and jazz? It would be hard to come up with more than a few names that have brilliantly combined these concepts together. The Belgian Toots Thielemans, a living legend on the chromatic harmonica would be leading the way, together with Stevie Wonder, with whom the instrument has gained access into the world of soul and pop. Then all of a sudden, Konstantin Renfeld appears; very young and a genuine talent on the diatonic harmonica, which he plays fully chromatically. He sets standards here which are otherwise only met by the US virtuoso Howard Levy. Even as a child, Konstantin Reinfeld was irresistibly attracted to music. His enthusiasm for the freedom of jazz grew equally alongside his autodidactic study of the instrument. Learning the increasingly demanding playing techniques which that kind of music requires was a unique incentive for Reinfeld, and brought him an increasing sense of self-fulfillment. ''After the release of my debut album, the common musical understanding within the band has grown stronger because of our live performances at festivals and concerts. A consequence of this was an effort by everyone in the band to carry this energy which we had developed on the stage into the studio.'' (Konstantin Reinfeld)

BEAM!- the name of this nine-piece band is a statement in itself, because they really do light things up. And that’s exactly what renowned composer and saxophonist Stephan Mattner’s concept is all about. Based in Cologne, he has gathered eight of the Rhine-Ruhr jazz scene’s most prominent musicians around himself. Together, they create their own new music, borrowing from jazz, pop, heavy, minimal, modern and film music, which they present here for the first time on Pure. Founded by Stephan Mattner in July 2014, the BEAM! Ensemble follows a color-synasthetic approach. Synesthesia basically means a connection between two or more physically separate areas of perception. In this case, music and color. Mattner is referring here to none other than Aristotle, who had already put forward the claim that harmony between colors is similar to that between sounds. Over the following centuries, scholars have taken up this thesis again and again in order to support it with their own studies. Isaac Newton was first able to establish a relationship between the colors within a spectrum and the notes of a scale, based on mathematical calculations. It was in accordance with this assumption that the Russian pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin orientated himself for his symphonic poem “Prometheus” for choir, orchestra, and color organ. For example, it is documented that he assigned the color red to the note C, that G represented the color orange-pink, and D yellow. In the score for his “Prometheus,” Scriabin added two-part lighting to be used in parallel with the music. Each piece of the complete compositional cycle written by Mattner for Pure is assigned a color. BEAM! Represents the theme of light in its varying degrees, because the wavelength or spectral composition of a light beam has a significant impact on our perception of its color.

Sometimes even a musician’s life can turn out to be a dream concert. The Cologne saxophonist Paul Heller is one of those who has so far fulfilled all of his wishes regarding fellow musicians, and this remains the case with his latest recording. But first, let’s take a step back to 2011. The first album in his series “Special Edition Vol 1” was played with the Dutch drummer John Engels. When recording the second album in the series, Heller managed to get the American drumming legend Al Foster on board (fulfilling a childhood dream in the process). His latest guest list also includes prominent and exciting names from the world of jazz. For the new album, Heller won over the pianist Simon Nabatov, whose expressive playing enjoys an international reputation far beyond the boundaries of jazz. Paul’s brother Ingmar Heller plays the bass; while a permanent member of the NDR Big Band, Ingmar’s musical abilities are also regularly demonstrated within smaller lineups. Heller’s current quartet is completed by the American veteran Adam Nussbaum on drums, a man who has kept the beat for greats such as Stan Getz, Michael Brecker and John Scofield.

The trumpet and flugehorn player Rudiger Baldauf is probably one of hte most versatile musicians in his field. As a lead trumpet player, he toured with George Duke, Ray Charles, Bob Brookmeyer, John Scofield, James Brown, Liza Minnelli, Dionne Warwick and more. With his roots firmly anchored in jazz, though always tending towards a flirt with other genres, the charismatic musician is for many a household name from his time with the ''RTL Allstars'' and the United Jazz & Rock Ensemble. That this flirtation developed into a permanent affair as a member of the ''Heavy Tones'' does not detract from his love for jazz and classical music. With his first solo album ''Own Style'' he invited the creme de la creme of brass players along, and together with stars like Ack van Rooyen, Til Bronner, Nils Landgren and Andy Haderer lit his very own musical firework. Quite incidentally, he also proved that ''jazz'' is as diverse and far-reaching as the people who play it.