Marc Johnson

Wolfgang Muthspiel, Marc Johnson, Brian Blade – Real Book Stories (2001/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 43:45 minutes | 1,55 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Galileo Music Communication

On the cover of this album you can see a picture of New York taken in Hoboken, New Jersey where we recorded these tracks. To me it represents the beauty of a familiar place seen from a different perspective. I come from a small town in Austria called Judenburg. If my family when I moved to the next bigger city, Graz, it felt like the navel of the world. Graz is considered provincial for the Viennese. Playing in Vienna for the first time seemed the ultimate proof of success until I moved to Boston to study. From Boston, New York seemed like a separate planet, unreachable and frightening. When I finally moved to New York City, I settled in the “village,” considered by many to be the center of jazz. So over the years I’ve moved from the outside to the center and, among other things, I’ve noticed that the center looks very different when you’re in it. It loses all the qualities commonly attributed to it and takes on others. While New York City used to stand for things like speed, pulse, metropolis, today it stands for friends, football in the park, our apartment and the early bird special at a Japanese restaurant. In a way, that’s how I approach the music on this album. I look at standards from an outsider’s perspective. I grew up listening to Mozart, not Ellington, and I was making music long before I discovered jazz. I like being a foreigner, I speak a language other than my mother tongue. I like accents. This is my first Jazz Standards album. I’ve always played them, but rarely in my concerts or on my albums. This recording feels to me like a conversation about standards. A conversation with two of my favorite musicians about music I love.

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