Tim Collins - For Good People (2023) [Official Digital Download]

It is a stroke of luck for the German jazz scene that New Yorker Tim Collins came to Munich twelve years ago. The 45-year-old belongs to the small group of the world’s best vibraphone players. American critics already attested to this when he was still playing in his home country with musicians like Ingrid Jensen or Aaron Parks: Collins “is nothing less than exemplary,” wrote Downbeat Magazine, for example. Across the pond, he has proven it in collaborations with a wide variety of greats from John Hollenbeck to Danny Grissett to Henning Sieverts or Shinya Fukumori to the world musicians Quadro Nuevo or the young whiz kid Shuteen Erdenebataar. Now he underlines it with his fifth album “For Good People”..

Collins composed the title track in the fall of 2021 after learning about the death of an old friend. “In the past few years, I’ve lost more than a few good people in my life,” he says. “I wanted to pay tribute to them, but also to the good people who are still here.” The piece therefore became the album’s eponymous motto – but without any gloom at all. “After the darkness of 2020 and 2021, I wanted to look to the future with a more positive approach,” Collins says. As a result, the music is upbeat and joyful throughout. “The goal was to write music for my friends while having as much fun as possible. If we’re having fun, we know the audience is, too.”

One of his friends, who has been playing with him for many years but for the first time in this trio lineup, is 48-year-old Austrian drummer Christian Lettner, who learned his instrument from the age of eleven and studied at the music academies in Graz and Linz. Since the late nineties he has been one of the most sought-after European drummers, playing with Karl Ratzer, Nils Landgren, Jocelyn B. Smith, Adrian Mears, Joo Kraus, Johannes Enders or the WDR Big Band, among others, and has been a permanent member of Klaus Doldinger’s “Passport” since 2000. He is also a professor at the Salzburg Mozarteum and, more recently, at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.

TRACKLIST

01. Tim Collins - Mainline Rush
02. Tim Collins - Trapped
03. Tim Collins - For Good People
04. Tim Collins - Don't Get Caught
05. Tim Collins - Jak's Joint
06. Tim Collins - Sweet and Lovely
07. Tim Collins - Biboul Youssef
08. Tim Collins - Situli Shuffle
09. Tim Collins - Down the Old Road
10. Tim Collins - Schorfheide



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