Search - Kenny Werner :: Animal Crackers

Kenny Werner has long been a major force on the New York scene. The Village Voice hailed him "... an ebullient stylist" whose solos "...become wooly rides into the darkness", The New York Times described him as "a pianist who tempers fearsome technique with a questing spiritualism", and Quincy Jones called him "360 degrees of soul and science in one human being". Werner and saxophonist Joe Lovano have been trading chairs as leader and sideman since the early 1980s, and in the 90s, Kenny began a long-term musical relationship with Toots Thielemans. He has garnered four National Endowment for the Arts grants, received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship award, and has been commissioned to compose for orchestras throughout Europe and the USA. Ari Hoenig is a musician who conjures a fascinatingly melodic sound on the drums. Hoenig won the prestigious 2013 BMW World Jazz Award with his own band, and has played with jazz giants Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, and Wynton Marsalis. In 1991 bassist Johannes Weidenmüller left Cologne, Germany to make the move to New York. Since then he has worked with a number of world-renowned players, including Randy Brecker, George Benson, and Joshua Redman. Werner reflects that Ari and Johannes have been in his trio since 1999: "They were just kids and they would come around my home in New Jersey to play whenever I wasn't on tour. They could play my music with such ease that they were creating on the tune while I was still trying to read it! That's what I like in a band - players that compose spontaneously rather than just solo all the time."