Road Signs
Passage to Vienna
Route 33
Windows
Impressions
- Carnival in Venice
- Dream
- Country Road
From Vienna With Love

If you're like me and enjoy listening to different genres of music, especially jazz and classical, this recording of various pieces by Austrian born American composer Gernot Wolfgang (b. 1957) which fuses the two elements together seamlessly, could very well be your cup of tea. Now I'm not sure if this is classical music with an underlying jazz groove, or jazz music swaddled inside a chamber ensemble cocoon, but since Gernot Wolfgang started life as a jazz guitarist I would assume the latter.

In the booklet notes the composer quotes: "My interests have expanded into fusing the harmonic and gestural worlds of the Second Viennese School musical masters with aspects of contemporary jazz, either overtly or in subtle ways." And since the harmonic structure of jazz chords sometimes intimates the 12-tone sound of 20th century composers, this coupling should not be hard to imagine. Some cuts, like Passage to Vienna start off with what sounds like the rhythmically altered opening measures of a Schubert Piano Sonata, whilst Dream sounds more like a slow, decadent, shadow of its former self, bluesy waltz.

The musicians on this recording, Edgar David Lopez (clarinet), Judith Farmer (bassoon), Amy Jo Rhine (horn), Gloria Cheng (piano), Nic Gerpe (piano), Joanne Pearce Martin (piano), Nadia Shpachenko (piano), Robert Thies (piano), Tereza Stanislav (violin), Maia Jasper White (violin), Robert Brophy (viola), Ben Hong (cello), Andrew Shulman (cello), Charles Tyler (cello), and Steve Dress (double bass), playing as different groupings from piece to piece, all seem to instinctively combine the decorum of chamber music with the spontaneity of jazz naturely, and produce a sound that consolidates the two disciplines seamlessly.