In April 2018, Maria Schmitt, Jan Kliminski, Jean Philippe Lacour and Stewart Lawrence met in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The had been playing jazz standards in various groups for many years, but over time each had developed their own musical ideas. Most of the time, these were put away as there was never time to arrange them for a band. Now all four musicians recognized that in this newly found constellation it was time for these compositions to see the light of day.

The line-up (bass, guitar, drums and trumpet) was ideal for a jazz quartet, but beyond that there was the tangible enthusiasm and motivation of the band to transform ideas into music for performance. The international nature of the group – the musicians are from Germany, Poland, France and England – added an original flavour to the project and provided the unifying element for the arrangements: the creation of a “European sound”.

After three years of intense collaboration, a selection of those creations was released on 1.11.2022 on the CD “PART ONE”. The CD is available on: Spotify, iTunes and Amazon.