BACH UND JAZZ

When the incomparable Oscar Peterson was asked what an aspiring jazz musician should study, he replied: The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, and The Art of Fugue. Jacques Loussier, the inventor of Play Bach, even suggested that the Thomaskantor was the very first jazz musician — a claim he went on to prove over 50 concert years and with eight million records sold.

Friedrich Gulda, Eugen Cicero, and now Emil C. Rinstad in the band Bach Jazz: again and again, it has been pianists who discover the swing in Bach’s sinfonias, celebrate the groove in his preludes, and move seamlessly into improvisation — just as Bach himself showed us.

Arrangements of works by Johann Sebastian Bach for piano, double bass, and drums.