Tobias Meinhart Quartet

Tobias Meinhart is an award-winning saxophonist and composer based in Brooklyn, New <br>York. Born in a small town in rural Bavaria, Germany, Tobias Meinhart has spent the last <br>15 years carving out a career in the international jazz scene. A regular performer at iconic venues like the Blue Note, Smalls, and Birdland, Tobias <br>has headlined sold-out shows at Jazz at Lincoln Center and appeared at prestigious <br>festivals, including Winter Jazzfest in NYC and the Jarasum Jazz Festival in Korea. He is an ECHO (German Grammy) nominee, winner of <br>the Getxo Jazz Competition, and his album “Berlin People” made it to first round of the <br>Grammys. JazzThing calls Tobias: “Germany’s biggest talent on the saxophone”. <br>Downbeat Magazine just listed his latest album “The Painter” as one of the BEST <br>ALBUMS of 2022. <br /><br />Since his arrival on the New York scene in 2008, Eden Ladin has become a quiet force of harmonic complexity and lyricism. Playing with a sensitivity that only comes from embracing self-reflection and collective exploration, the pianist, keyboard player and composer has earned recognition from some of the music’s most prestigious publications and institutions, and collaborated with a range of artists, including Avishai Cohen (bass), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Terence Blanchard, Kimberly Thompson, Ben Street, Joel Frahm, Nir Felder, Eli Degibri, Mark Guiliana, Donny McCaslin, Joe Martin, Justin Brown, Marcus Gilmore and Charles Altura. Eden also has recorded with a number of distinctive voices, including Wallace Roney, Eric Harland, Ben Wendel, Myron Walden, Darren Barrett, Gilad Hekselman, Ari Hoenig, Omer Avital, Philip Dizack, Joe Sanders, Dayna Stephens, Orlando le Fleming, Harish Raghavan, Marcos Varela, John Ellis and Camila Meza. <br>
 <br>Growing up in Tel Aviv as the son of prominent Israeli drummer Gil Ladin, Eden began playing drums at age 4, but had gravitated toward the piano by age 8. He continued to cultivate a rhythmic fascination through grade school and, by age 14, had switched to piano as his principal instrument, studying privately with Alec Katz and Amit Golan, and with Yafim Yoffe for ear training and harmony. Having received the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship for jazz performance studies abroad, as well as a scholarship to study as an undergrad at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Eden began seeking out the instruction of such visionaries as, among others, George Cables, Reggie Workman, Billy Harper, Kirk Nurock, William Parker, Robert Sadin, Charles Tolliver, Gerard D’angelo, Jane Ira Bloom, Kevin Hays, Sam Yahel, Joanne Brackeen, Vijay Iyer, Doug Weiss, Ari Hoenig, Ben Monder and Lee Konitz—the latter of whom awakened Eden to an enduring concept: “Play what you sing; don’t sing what you play.” <br>
 <br>Honesty of expression and virtuosic style has allowed Eden to play many of New York’s famed clubs and venues, including The Village Vanguard, The Blue Note, Joe's Pub, Webster Hall, Sullivan Hall, Dizzy's Coca Cola, Iridium, BB King Blues Club, Smoke Jazz and Supper Club, The Stone, Smalls Jazz Club, Mezzrow, The Jazz Gallery, Le Poisson Rouge, 92Y, Symphony Space, National Sawdust and Highline Ballroom. Eden also has toured internationally, and played such world-renowned festivals and performance halls as Auditorium Parco della Musica (Italy), Auditorium de Lyon (France), Wiener Konzerthaus (Austria), Opera Garnier de Monte Carlo (Monaco), Bozar Center For Fine Arts (Belgium), Vilnius Congress Concert Hall (Lithuania), Cotton Club (Japan), Ronnie Scott's (England), Duc des Lombards (France), Marian's Jazz Room (Switzerland) Centro Cultural Roberto Cantoral (Mexico), Sesc Pompéia (Brazil), Marciac Jazz Festival Main Stage (France), Gent Jazz Festival (Belgium), Pontevedra Jazz Festival (Spain), Red Sea Jazz Festival (Israel) and Festival Jazz International Rotterdam (Holland). <br>
Sitting in silence, listening to the music resonating in his mind, Eden has uncovered a personal narrative of original compositions. Each reflects years of musical exploration, traveling back and forth between New York and Tel Aviv. His debut recording YEQUM (Contagious Music, 2017) presents 11 of these compositions, their unique artistries co-interpreted by Dayna Stephens, John Ellis, Gilad Hekselman, Harish Raghavan and Daniel Dor, alongside special guests Camila Meza and Yonatan Albalak. In Hebrew, “yequm” represents “universe.” Through his compositions, Eden has recreated his own personal universe, a glimpse at which he seeks to offer the listener with every track. <br>The record received very positive reviews from various magazines. <br><br>In early 2020, coronavirus brought him back home to Tel Aviv after thirteen long years in New York, back to old friends and family, <br>Soon, Ladin found himself with over a hundred small tunes, snippets heavy on nostalgia, recalling TV themes, computer games, and lullabies from his youth in Israel. <br>Out of this confluence of events came Mirage, Ladin’s playful, introspective sophomore LP that was released in November 2022. Incorporating an array of analog synthesizers and a healthy dose of progressive rock instrumentation, Ladin expands upon his 2017 debut Yequm, departing further from conventional, straight-ahead jazz wisdom. He’s still the pianist with New York bonafides and club dates at the Vanguard, now making music more on his terms than ever before. <br><br>Mirage plays like a trickster — unpredictable, dancing between moments of childlike wonder and darkness. “So Long, Comrade” would fit right into the soundtrack of an Israeli Western, the background music to a cowboy tipping his hat and riding off into the Negev sunset. “What if all’s just a dream,” the pianist muses, singing through a vocoder on “At the Mall,” a song which he describes as being about “everything and nothing.” “The Mischievous Artium” was inspired in part by the squeaks of the G train in Brooklyn. “Underwater Journey” and “Low Gravity” sound as otherworldly as their names suggest. <br><br>Just like his compositions, Ladin’s instrumentation is delightfully idiosyncratic. The pianist rolls out a dozen analog synthesizers for Mirage; they sit alongside a one-octave, battery powered toy Casio, and a repaired, coffee-damaged keyboard from the 80s, gifted from his father. Moving from one voice to the next, Ladin gives shape to his compositions, guiding us, tickling us, surprising us. <br><br>If Mirage attempts to bring you a smile, it also aims to make you feel a pang of sadness. “The record leaves you with this unanswered question,” says Ladin. It’s music, after all, that grew out of healing, more process than solution. Ladin takes on thorny problems, admits vulnerability, and has the courage to say, at the end, that he’s in a better place, still seeking, ever on the path of discovery. <br /><br />Originally from New Zealand, Matt Penman moved to the States in 1994 to attend Berklee College of Music, and to New York in 1995 where he maintains an international performing, recording and teaching schedule as one of jazz musics most in-demand musicians.He is an established member of the SFJazz Collective, an 8-piece composers collective devoted to presenting the original works of its members as well as arrangements by the band of a different jazz greats work every year. The Collective is in its sixth year and currently features Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas and Stefon Harris. He also performs regularly with John Scofield; in his trio-plus-horns formation, and in a quartet with Joe Lovano. He is also a member of Nils Wograms Root 70, a drummerless trio with Hayden Chisholm and John Taylor, and a new collaborative quartet featuring Joshua Redman. Other past collaborators include Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kenny Werner, Chris Cheek, Seamus Blake, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Guillermo Klein, Rebecca Martin, Nicholas Payton, Fred Hersch and Madeleine Peyroux.He has mentored in many workshops throughout Europe and in 2007 was an Artist in Residence at the Brubeck Institute in Stockton, California, and was on the faculty of the 2009 Banff Workshop for Creative and Improvised Music.His own projects include the 1998 co-led album Flipside on Naxos, then in 2001 The Unquiet, and 2008 Catch of the Day both on the Barcelona label Fresh Sound. He also features on about 85 CDs on various labels. <br /><br />Jochen Rueckert is a jazz drummer, composer, band leader, and Oxford Comma-enthusiast born in Germany in 1975, currently residing in New York City. <br>Besides a dozen years of touring with his own quartet with Mark Turner, Lage Lund, Mike Moreno, and Matt Penman, Jochen is known for his recent work in Melissa Aldana's as well as Fred Hersch's trios, the mid-2000 Kurt Rosenwinkel New Quartet, Seamus Blake/Chris Cheek's "Reeds Ramble", Nils Wogram's Root 70, a decade of the Marc Copland trio, his electronic music programmed under the alias "Wolff Parkinson White", as well as his series of ebooks aptly titled "Read the Rueckert - travel observations and pictures of hotel rooms". <br>Jochen's deliberate avoidance of formal music education, albeit initially for budgetary reasons, combined with 30+ years working with some of the greatest musicians all over the world provides a great lack of erudite nonsense in his playing and writing. <br>He's celebrating his 6th album as a leader, titled "With Best Intentions"