The last work of Rolf Kühn

So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen

Touching and dignified

Fearless is certainly touching and rewarding from the jazz clarinettist icon in a number of ways.

To highlight a few things: the version of the Michel Legrand Summer of 42 classic ‘The Summer Knows’ from the 1970s with its marvellous piano introduction is one; the spiky interplay between clarinet and piano on ‘Simply Red Plus’ is another.

Grace in abundance

And the more you listen the more delights you will find on Fearless. At its core the album is a quartet recording that was made in Berlin’s Hansa Studios. Hansa, close to where the Wall was located, was where David Bowie recorded Low in the 1970s. Kühn is heard on the recording with pianist Frank Chastenier (a long time member of Cologne’s WDR Big Band), bassist Lisa Wulff, whose 2020 album Beneath the Surface Chastenier featured on, and Bogotá born percussionist Túpac Mantilla who was on Kühn’s 2018 MPS album Yellow + Blue. Strings were added later. The album includes 7 originals of Kühn’s plus Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Somewhere’, Eric Clapton’s ‘Somewhere’ and the aforementioned – scrumptious – ‘Summer Knows.’

Final work of the master

Completed just before the German died aged 92 in 2022 it is Kühn’s final work. But more than that it is a reminder of an artist whose legend spread beyond Germany, caught in exemplary sonic conditions and released by one of Europe’s finest audiophile labels MPS that does the sensitivity and wisdom of the playing justice. For the feeling, the timing above all and a fragile snapshot of a lifetime in music it is all spread liberally around & walks and talks with the spirits somehow.