Klaus Koenig

Music for the Gentle Man Klaus Koenig

Klaus Koenig about The Jazz Live Trio: "The Jazz Live Trio has a commission by the Swiss radio station to put together an in-house trio for a jazz concert series to thank for its very existence. Between 1964 and 1982, we were able to take on this demanding task a total of 111 times, with many different people making up the trio. The fellow musicians who played with me for the longest were the bassist Isla Eckinger, then Peter Frei and the drummers Pierre Favre and Peter Schmidlin, who went on to found the jazz label TCB.

"We were enormously lucky that at the time there were a large number of world-class American musicians living in Europe, who were always available for radio gigs. We were also able to play with some of them later outside of the radio environment, such as Slide Hampton, Dexter Gordon, Booker Ervin or Sal Nistico. More often still we were able to play with Lee Konitz, and for some time as a regular fixed quartet with Johnny Griffin. Thirteen CDs are available from TCB and bring this radio concert series back to life.

"Our many years working with Franco Ambrosetti, which were primarily in Italy, and the young Roman Schwaller, were unforgettable."