Critical Acclaim for Kenny

“Perfection. 360 degrees of soul and science in one human being. My kind of musician.”
– Quincy Jones

“Kenny Werner is a total musician. He feeds my heart and my brain and pushes me into fresh territories.
I am grateful that our agendas can coincide that often.
P.S. He also wrote a book on how to “liberate” one’s own creativity!”
– Toots Thielemans

“… an ebullient stylist … his solos start evenhandedly and become wooly rides into the darkness.”
– The Village Voice

“a pianist who tempers fearsome technique with a questing spiritualism”
–Nate Chinen, The New York Times

“Mr. Werner and his trio took apart two pieces, a swinging original of his
own called ‘Jackson Five’ along with ‘You and the Night and the Music’,
and reconfigured them with all sorts of nearly miraculous rhythm and
tempo changes….a type of rhythm section fluidity that’s rarely heard….
Mr. Werner is a clear virtuoso, and when he solos there’s wit
everywhere, with clichés dragged out of the closet to poke fun at or
rhythmic bumps added for humor.”
– Peter Watrous, New York Times

“When one hears pianist Kenny Werner, that feeling of elation is clearly front and center.”
– Zan Stewart, The Newark Star Ledger

“Whether soloing or interpreting, Werner takes you outside, but not by any route you’ve followed before.
You never know where he’s going, but every place he takes you is a delight.”
– Keyboard Magazine

“Werner has become one of our most literate and visceral pianists.”
– JAZZTIMES

“Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes”
– Harvey Pekar

“Werner owns more chops and brains than most pianists do….Werner hardly raises his voice
to make subtle points, couching his logic in neat vamps, sinewy angular lines, dizzying rhythmic double entendres.”
– Down Beat

“Werner, patient as a spider, spins a web of lyric calm and dancing beauty and fills in the corners,
not budging far from his center….Werner’s set – one of the very best in a series [Live At Maybeck Hall] that has
quietly become a bellwether for pianists of our era – merely shows one gentler aspect of an extraordinary gifted artist.”
– The Boston Pheonix

“Pianist Kenny Werner . . . He’s a bold, brave player and composer,
unafraid to tackle spiritual and political matters through the medium of instrumental music,
and he presents his ideas with uncommon clarity. Werner is a consummate sideman and leader,
and he’s also a deep thinker about this music — his book Effortless Mastery is widely read
by those who want to make jazz.”
–Joe Klopus, The Kansas City Star

A Few Sample Reviews

Lawn Chair Society Strikes Again

8/31/2007 10:42:59 AM – Music Review: Kenny Werner – Lawn Chair Society

“Berble Berble Splerk’, with Douglas carrying on a conversation with a synthesizer gone mad.

When I think of the the overlap of jazz and funk, ensembles that come to mind are Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, On The Corner-era Miles, and even some of the smoother offerings out of the CTI label. In more recent times, Medeski,Martin & Wood have really been laying it down.

If I was to reorganize my record collection by genre, Kenny Werner’s Lawn Chair Society would proudly sit beside the other titles on the jazz/funk shelf. The lineup a stellar one — Werner’s piano is joined by Scott Colley on bass, Chris Potter (tenor/bass clarinet), Dave Douglas (trumpet), and Brian Blade at the kit. Taking it over the top is Lenny Picket (Tower Of Power, speakin’ of a jazz & funk collision!) playing the producer role.

http://www.topix.net/music/jazz-funk/2007/04/music-review-kenny-werner-lawn-chair-society

Kenny Burns at Dizzy’s

8/31/2007 10:45:28 AM – Occasionally you hear jazz performed that’s so detailed, chiseled and compressed with energy that it’s hard to imagine the musicians doing it twice a night, six nights in a row. Such is the case with the pianist Kenny Werner’s quintet at Dizzy’s Club this week.

Ben Ratlcliff for The New York Times

The pianist Kenny Werner at Dizzy’s.

Mr. Werner’s career has been all over the place for 25 years: a long-running trio that never quite rose above the hedges, long-standing gigs with the harmonica player Toots Thielemans and the singer Betty Buckley. He is a radical melodic improviser and a strong, logical organizer of rhythm and harmony. He processes a lot, all the time, and often produces music that’s pleasant and easy on the outside, but rippling with incident: shifts in meter, tempo and tonality.

His quintet at Dizzy’s includes Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Hans Glawischnig on bass and Brian Blade on drums. The gig is a consequence of Mr. Werner’s very good new album, “Lawn Chair Society,” released this week on Blue Note. It isn’t a working band; after this week it has no more dates on the calendar. Yet it was crazy how much it behaved like one, in the old-fashioned sense of steady comportment spread across consecutive solos, and the front line’s strong connection to the rhythm section.

In the many recent eulogies for the saxophonist Michael Brecker, much was said about how hard it was to follow him after one of his solos, almanacs of jazz knockout gestures from the late 1950s to the present. Mr. Potter’s solos were much like this: narrow and dense with passing tones and long, athletic strings of notes all over the horn, then suddenly wide open with meditative, smoky long tones.

Some of the brilliant moments of the set were contrasts of energy, either within a single solo, or between Mr. Potter’s solos and Mr. Payton’s, which were cool, supple, focused and inventive. In “New Amsterdam” everyone’s strengths came together. It began with a broken funk pattern from the piano, and the horns ran harmonized chromatic lines through it. Suddenly it changed over to swing time, and Mr. Payton played through the switch without breaking stride. By the time Mr. Blade crashed his cymbal to signal the change in rhythm — in the middle of the measure, one of the ingenious delayed-gratification strategies he used throughout the set — Mr. Payton was off and running. The crash forced a gasp from audience members, but they were probably already silently gasping a few beats before.

Continuing on, Mr. Payton used pointed, abrupt blues lines; he played rising and falling patterns, the phrases balancing precariously on the rhythm; then he handsomely wrapped up his solo, with melodic improvising. When his turn came, Mr. Werner played with great force and velocity, pushing out abstract gushers with a steely touch, then sequences of easy swing.

Given some time a band like this could transform into something extraordinary; it could achieve the more modern working-band feeling of freedom within mere suggestions of external structure. And it wouldn’t be short on original material, since Mr. Werner’s tunes range from Wayne Shorter-like deep-harmony miniatures to meditative, tolling pieces anchored by open left-hand chords to post-bop mazes. Keep your fingers crossed.