Jochen Rueckert Quintet

Looking back it was the right decision for Jochen Rueckert to abandon his drum studies at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and move to New York in 1998. As a jazz musician he neither wanted to conform to a norm nor fulfil expectations. In any case word quickly spread in New York about the talent in the city – pianist Marc Copland brought the German into his trio, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel hired him, as did saxophonist Mark Turner. Rueckert kept in touch with Europe through a quartet with former fellow students from Cologne: Root 70 around trombonist Nils Wogram. He doesn’t actually like orchestras. Perhaps that’s why he put together a quintet for his concert at the Cologne Jazzweek, with which he makes some of his songs sound like they were played by a big band. Seamus Blake is there on tenor, and together with bassist Doug Weiss he represents the American side of this quintet. Europe is responsible for the low wind frequencies: with Wogram, of course, and the Dutchman Joris Roelofs on bass clarinet. And Rueckert is the primus inter pares on drums – what more could you want?