Frankfurt Radio Big Band & Sebastian Sternal – Turning Point

It may come as a surprise that Sebastian Sternal, who has been playing his equally lyrical, quiet and grippingly expressive modern jazz as a pianist and composer from solo to trio to orchestral symphonic society since his debut album ‘Eins’, has never worked for big band before. The fact that he came together with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band for the album ‘Turning Point’ also has to do with the fact that he lived in Frankfurt for a while before moving to Mainz, where he is Professor of Jazz Piano at the University of Music and heads the jazz department. He knows almost all the musicians in the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, which puts him in a position to lead this band from the piano. He has written pieces in which he looks back as well as into the future, while he himself is right in the middle of the here and now. ‘Lament’, for example, goes back to the ‘Klag-Lied’ by baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude, ‘Red Beat’ is deeply rooted in the present with its funk groove and ‘Tomorrowland’ points to the future with its very title.