Album Notes

Gerald Gradwohl Trio – CD “Sally Beth Roe”

With this recent, rock orientated, instrumental CD “Sally Beth Roe”, “guitar-slinger extraordinair” Gerald Gradwohl and his two fellow musicians are challenging and teasing the listener at the same time, serving well-sounding surprises piece by piece – footing on the peculiarity of the compositions, the improvisations and the harmony of the trio.

“As much composition as necessary, as much improvisation as possible” – well, this might have been the dogma of the creator and interpreter Gerald Gradwohl when defining his instrumental pieces, either when sketching the themes and harmonies or while instant-composing, when basic material is extended by his own improvisation. Gradwohl always keeps his compositions fresh – common rows of themes and bridges on one hand and then adding additional pieces, such as band-unisonos, riffs and the like. This provides a solid, fine background for sweeping solo excursions. In this challenging trio-line-up, it is guitarist Gradwohl whose abilities and his wealth of invention are the key to success in this musical voyage of discovery. It is his enormous knowledge of “vocabularies” and obviously his “no-limit-skills” playing his guitar that makes it possible for Gradwohl to create the realization of his improvisation ideas – ideas full of facettes with no boundaries - straight to the point. Gradwohl shows quite frequently how to compress a tiny motive into a wall of sound just by using some choruses, lots of virtuosity and not forgetting tasteful musical structures.