Zurich Jazz Orchestra featuring Karolina Strassmayer (as)
Gil Evans’ «New Bottle Old Wine»
The Zurich Jazz Orchestra will present the complete program of the original arrangements of Gil Evans’ classic album “New Bottle Old Wine” from 1958, with alto saxophone soloist Karolina Strassmayer interpreting the parts originally played by Cannonball Adderley. Compositions such as “King Porter Stomp”, “St. Louis Blues” and “Round Midnight” will be heard. Before Strassmayer became the first woman to join the WDR Big Band in 2004, she was part of the New York jazz scene for over 15 years and played with Chico Hamilton and the Diva Jazz Orchestra. Today she is a professor of jazz saxophone at the Folkwang University in Essen, where she founded and still heads an empowerment program for women in jazz.
The second set of the concert will feature jazz standards arranged by Ed Partyka for the ZJO’s outstanding soloists and scored for the same unique instrumentation as Gil Evans: Trumpets and trombones are reduced from four to three each, with horn and tuba used instead. There is no piano at all and the saxophones are largely replaced by flutes and clarinets.
Karolina Strassmayer was born in 1971 in Bad Mitterndorf in the Austrian Alps and grew up in a musical family. She initially studied piano and flute until she discovered jazz at the age of 17 through Cannonball Adderley’s improvisations on “Kind of Blue”. She went on to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and, after graduating, moved to New York on a scholarship to the New York School for Research, where she stayed for 15 years. Today, back in Europe, she is active as a renowned alto saxophonist and leads her own quartet KLARO! together with her husband, drummer Drori Mondlak, in which she builds a bridge between the lyricism of European classical music and folklore which mixes with the rhythmic power of American jazz. Jazz critics have called her “one of the most interesting saxophonists of her generation” (Doug Ramsey), “a supreme balladeer” (Arnaldo DeSouteiro), and the readers of Downbeat magazine have voted her among the best on her instrument in the Readers Polls several years in a row. She has recorded 10 CDs as a bandleader and her discography includes over 80 recordings as well as numerous Grammy nominations and Grammys.
