On September 28th, Playscape Recordings will officially welcome back New York-based pianist/composer Ted Rosenthal to its roster with Impromptu (PSR#122109), his first recording for the label since 2002. This release finds Rosenthal’s two year-old trio, featuring bassist Noriko Ueda and drummer Quincy Davis, reinventing music by Brahms, Chopin, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, Schumann and Tchaikovsky for the classic jazz piano trio format. The group has performed this music live from New York to Japan, where it will return for its latest tour in July. A series of New York concerts in support of Impromptu is planned for October.
“For the past few years, I have regularly performed my jazz arrangements and improvisations on themes from the classical repertoire, both with my trio and as a soloist,” Rosenthal explains in the liner notes. “My goal is for the music to sound like a natural, unforced jazz presentation. It feels very natural to craft these pieces into forms like that of the Great American Songbook. I like to play them with the ease and familiarity of a favorite standard, and the harmonic progressions lend themselves to similar harmonic re-workings that I do with the American standards. For me, playing jazz on these classical themes is an exciting coming together of traditions.”
“There aren’t many modern jazz pianists more dexterous than Mr. Rosenthal,” writes the New York Times‘ Nate Chinen. Critics have called him “a skilled, imaginative artist” (David R. Adler, AllMusic.com) and “an inventive pianist with super chops, mercurial wit and abundant imagination” (Owen McNally, Hartford Courant). JazzTimes‘ Harvey Siders notes, his “writing and playing exude a confidence that guarantees he can execute any lick he writes or hears—and it will swing.” AllAboutJazz-New York‘s Elliott Simon adds, “Rosenthal continues to impress as a pianist who, while ostensibly working in the mainstream, consistently infuses his projects with a fresh creative aesthetic.”
Born and raised on Long Island, Rosenthal has been an active member of New York’s jazz scene since winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition in 1988. He soon built on that recognition by touring and recording as a sideman with Jon Faddis, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, James Moody, Gerry Mulligan and Phil Woods among others. A life-long student of both jazz and classical music, he has released 11 diverse recordings under his own name over the past two decades and earned widespread acclaim for his ability to perform a wide variety of material with collaborators ranging from singers to big bands to major symphony orchestras. Also active in jazz education, Rosenthal serves on the faculty of both The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music and regularly presents clinics all around the world. Learn more at http://www.tedrosenthal.com