Georg Graewe

Dry Thrust: The Less You Sleep

by Mark Corroto
February 20, 2023

Legend has it that if Blue Note founder Alfred Lion was seen dancing in the engineer's booth during a recording session, the forthcoming release would be a hit. Listening to The Less You Sleep by the trio Dry Thrust makes one wonder what kind of dance label boss Konstantin Drobil was performing while the tracks for this disc were being laid down. The Less You Sleep is the first document by this thoroughly unconventional trio of Georg Graewe ...

Frisque Concordance: Distinct Machinery

by John Eyles
April 27, 2021

The group Frisque Concordance began back in October 1992 when the quartet—comprising UK saxophonist John Butcher and the Germans pianist Georg Graewe, double bassist Hans Schneider and drummer Martin Blume—was recorded live at the Ruhr Jazz Festival in Bochum, Germany. The results were released in 1993 as Spellings, the first album on Graewe's Random Acoustics label. Although Butcher and Graewe recorded one album as a duo, Light's View (Nuscope, 1999), Spellings represented the entire Frisque Concordance ...

Georg Graewe/Ernst Reijseger/Gerry Hemingway: Sonic Fiction

by Marc Medwin
March 6, 2008

This long-standing and prolific international trio's debut finally gets the reissue treatment. Still quite active and stylistically amorphous, the group's first statement remains a bold one, establishing a collective aesthetic that defied boundary and categorization while making its place in history clear. The second part of “Alien Corn" is as fine a point of departure as any--drummer Gerry Hemingway ushering the track in with brushwork that stands quietly on pins and needles. His explosion into cymbals invokes a fairly standard ...

Georg Graewe: Jazz Improv Chameleon

by Martin Longley
January 1, 2008

Could Georg Graewe be a chameleonic figure in the world of jazz improvisation? Listening to a selection of recordings from over the last decade or two, it soon becomes clear that this German pianist is frequently found in completely different settings, with his music consequently traversing the distance from intensely thoughtful sparseness through to throttling, high-density hyperactivity. He's always identifiably himself, but deeply affected by the colleagues that he chooses for any given session. Graewe has played piano duets with ...

Georg Graewe - Barre Phillips - Peter Van Bergen: Other Songs

by Glenn Astarita
October 1, 2000

Modern jazz/improvising pianist Georg Graewe is rapidly becoming a prominent recording artist for Dallas, Texas based “nuscope recordings” and on Other Songs the pianist performs alongside world class bassist, Barre Phillips and the lesser known but highly regarded saxophonist/clarinetist, Peter Van Bergen. The title, Other Songs intimates choice tidbits of loosely based motifs, quaint three-way dialogue and jagged statements, evident from the onset of the first track, “Verbunden”. Here, Van Bergen executes raspy lower register lines performed on contrabass clarinet ...

Georg Graewe - Marcio Mattos - Michael Vatcher: Impressions Of Monk

by Glenn Astarita
March 1, 2000

Not often will you hear Thelonius Monk's music performed in the manner that is represented on Impressions Of Monk by the Trio consisting of pianist Georg Graewe, bassist Marcio Mattos and drummer Michael Vatcher. Following up their extraordinary and largely improvised freshman release for “nuscope recordings titled, “Subsymbolism , the group take on Monk's work in ambitious fashion although these translations may seem a tad unconventional to Monk purists.

Throughout, the musicians deconstruct and reinvent several well-known Monk compositions primarily ...

Georg Graewe & Jon Butcher: Light's View

by Glenn Astarita
June 1, 1999

Light’s View is free-jazz pianist Georg Graewe and saxophone virtuoso John Butcher collaborating on a series of improvised pieces. The results prove to be fascinating and altogether enduring. On “Second Curiosity” we find Butcher supplying tremolo and quaint melodic undercurrents, which nicely contrasts Graewe’s, inquisitive style phrasing through brief chord progressions and quick, darting right hand leads. “Chromatic Aberrations” features a series of spurious call and response activities enacted mainly within the lower to mid-registers. On “Egratignures” Butcher utilizing his ...

Pianist Georg Graewe Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
January 1, 2008

Could Georg Graewe be a chameleonic figure in the world of jazz improvisation? Listening to a selection of recordings from over the last decade or two, it soon becomes clear that this German pianist is frequently found in completely different settings, with his music consequently traversing the distance from intensely thoughtful sparseness through to throttling, high-density hyperactivity. He's always identifiably himself, but deeply affected by the colleagues that he chooses for any given session. Graewe has played piano duets with ...
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Georg Graewe, Ernst Reijseger & Gerry Hemingway: Sonic Fiction on Hatology 638

Source: All About Jazz
April 10, 2007

Georg Graewe -piano, Ernst Reijseger -cello & Gerry Hemingway -percussion This trio's music is easier characterized than described, since the wealth of colors, moods, textures, and melodies is fluid enough to shift not only from piece to piece, but moment to moment. There is, for me, a European aesthetic at work here, a blend of modern and historic sources with the added bittersweet spice of folk elements from the soil. It's a delicate, demanding juggling act, drawing on past experiences ...
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