Jazz-Quadrat (Russia and baltic states), February 2010 issue.

Leonid Auskern. “The New York jazz expert Howard Mandel, president of The Jazz Journalists Association, who wrote the liner notes to this album, is likely the best-known project participant. The pianists Mathias Claus, Bob Albanese and Ayako Shirasaki participated at the 1st International Jazz Solo Piano Festival, which was organized by the agency Jan Matthies Music Management in March 2009 in Germany. These artists do not belong to the highest class of jazz piano, but this in no way diminishes neither their qualities, nor the importance of the project. Would this have been different, Mandel hadn’t shown interest in this album.

The festival consists of 3 concerts, which took place in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin. All 3 artists played in each of these cities on beautiful Steinway concert grands. The Berlin concert of 28 March was the centerpiece of this CD which represents each artist with 3 tracks. Such “mini-set” gives us the opportunity to judge the artistic achievement of the pianists and their uniqueness. The musicians from 3 different countries and 3 continents confess their love for jazz, which was created in America. In addition, the German artist Claus attended the famous Berklee School and the Japanese Shirasaki performs in America today. Every musician has its uniqueness.

Mathias Claus sees himself both as a successor to the jazz tradition, as well as a supporter of the european classical school. This is particularly evident in the piece -Hymn for the Lost Souls-. The set of American Bob Albanese consists of a Rogers-Hart standard -Manhattan-, an intellectual etude by Bill Evans -Time Remembered- and his own composition. He showed himself as a very powerful talent for improvisation with a rich imagination. The pianist Ayako Shirasaki, who started her program with works of completely different kinds of jazz giants as Dizzy Gillespie and Lennie Tristano, had with her feminine intuition, the right approach to the music of these jazz genius. The album generally gave a very pleasant impression, and we hope that we will be introduced to many interesting jazz artists with future concerts of this series.”