"In art everything that talent and fantasy can do is allowed. The work alone decides, in objectively determining its value the direction is not so important. If, along the way, an original personality is revealed, then so much the better!"

Joseph Marx

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Nothing could better describe my motivation in carrying out this musical project than this quotation from Joseph Marx. The idea was to interpret impressionistic songs anew, to embark upon an experiment with the voice and the instrumentation. For this project I very deliberately chose, in part, less well-known works in order to more clearly showcase the connection between jazz, late Romanticism and Impressionism and in this way to express my personal conviction that good music is good music, no matter what category and epoch it belongs to. It is not my wish to historically document a connection between the categories mentioned, even though in terms of date the beginnings of jazz music correlate to musical Impressionism. The choice of works made here is based far more on the experience of listening, a certain musical instinct and an artistic vision.

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In jazz the relationship between composer and the song writer is often very close. It is not unusual for songwriter and composer to work together, the piece of music then develops as a product of this synergy. Lied composers, on the other hand, pay tribute to the best known poets by setting their texts to music. With this project my aim is to try to build a bridge: to allow jazz arrangements to develop which, in the tradition of the art song, set romantic poems to music. Consequently this recording bears the name "Sound of a Poem".

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Esther Kretzinger