Jazz at the Kaisersteg – outdoors & free / Willi Kellers – The Circle + Witold – Orchestral Music for Trio

• Hans Peter Hiby – reeds
• Rieko Okuda – piano
• Meinrad Kneer – bass
• Willi Kellers – drums

The idea: to bring together colleagues with whom he has collaborated over the past years on stages from Moers to Peitz and throughout North Rhine-Westphalia, all the way to international festivals and clubs, into a circle—a “Circle.”

At the heart of it all is a shared passion for contemporary jazz: music that emerges in the moment, driven by live composition and radical improvisation. This is precisely where its power lies—for improvisation is and remains the soul of jazz, fundamentally distinguishing it from other musical forms.

All members of the WK Circle are internationally renowned artists. Each musician contributes their own distinctive voice—at the highest artistic level.

What unites them is a shared understanding of jazz as a free art form: far removed from the mere reproduction of great role models, toward a vibrant, open, and always surprising musical language.

Audiences and the press alike are equally fascinated and often amazed: it’s hard to believe that these dense, complex musical structures emerge without set compositions—arising solely from the moment, from passion, trust, and the joy of playing together.

The musician Luten Petrowski once summed it up: Many have forgotten that jazz is an art form. In the WK Circle, this very idea becomes a striking reality.

• Kalle Kalima – guitar
• Uli Kempendorff – reeds
• Moritz Baumgärtner – drums

The Witold Trio, featuring guitarist Kalle Kalima, saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, and drummer Moritz Baumgärtner, has dedicated its latest album, “Witold Plays Lutosławski,” to the Polish conductor and composer Witold Lutosławski—or rather, to his folk songs, the “Melodie Ludowe,” composed in the postwar period.

It was in 2019 when Kalle Kalima brought an arrangement for guitar of Witold Lutosławski’s “Folk Melodies” to a joint session with Moritz Baumgärtner and Uli Kempendorff.

The three live in Berlin and meet regularly to jam. Why Kalle Kalima happened to choose Lutosławski was more a matter of chance: “I suddenly became aware of this fascinating composer and searched the internet for sheet music we could use for jamming.”

He found what he was looking for: an entire collection of folk songs from the 1940s, arranged for classical guitar. The trio was immediately impressed “by Lutosławski’s exciting harmonic ideas,” says Moritz Baumgärtner: “As jazz musicians, we took these pieces, improvised over them, and supplemented the compositions with chord symbols.”

They didn’t just play along, says Uli Kempendorff, “rather, we added whatever came to mind. That’s how we laid the foundation for our own arrangements.”

The trio then tested these arrangements at various concerts. In the process, they soon realized that works by composers who speak a similar musical language and come from a similar musical period might also be suitable.

In other words, composers spanning the period from the end of World War I to the late 1940s.

Kalle Kalima: “We came across pieces by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. In particular, string concertos, which we subsequently rearranged.”

Kalima admits that this adaptation was by no means easy and took quite some time. An example: “Adapting Shostakovich’s String Quartets for guitar, saxophone, and guitar was super difficult. Since everything is in C minor, I had to tune the lowest E string of my guitar down to C.”

The pandemic, however, gave them the chance to immerse themselves in this labor-intensive work. They rewrote the pieces in such a way that both the underlying musical material and the trio’s artistic vision became apparent. “In the end, we were surprised ourselves by how the original pieces would sound after our reworking—it was a journey of discovery,” says Uli Kempendorff.

“In principle, we did the same work as our composers: they took folk songs and rearranged them. And now we’re taking their arrangements, rewriting them, and improvising.”

And because the ensemble focuses on improvisation, the album “Witold Plays Lutosławski” should be viewed as a snapshot; “after all, something new can always emerge from the basics during concerts,” emphasizes Moritz Baumgärtner.

That is the intention and concept of this ensemble, which has no bandleader.

Kalle Kalima: “Even though I was the one who brought Lutosławski’s music into the mix back then, we all work together as equals and discuss the execution. Everyone contributes to the improvisations as well. In whatever way works for each person.”