Tobias Meinhart – „Sonic River“ | Releasekonzert in München

In the organizer's words:

About the album "Sonic River"
(Release date: April 18, 2025)

Rivers have always played an important role in Tobias Meinhart's life. While it was the Danube that the saxophonist, who grew up in a small town near Regensburg, had to cross every day when he was at school, today it is the East River in New York. Meinhart has been living there, in the world capital of jazz, for over 15 years now.
He has achieved something that very few musicians from Germany have managed to do: He is an integral part of New York's jazz scene, performing regularly as a bandleader in the city's most important clubs and festival formats such as the Blue Note, Birdland, Smalls, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Winter Jazzfest.

With "Sonic River" (album release: April 18, 2025), his tenth album under his own name, Meinhart underlines how confidently he knows how to navigate the tides and rapids of modern jazz. At the same time, the recording also proves to be a leap in the dark. It is not only the first release on Meinhart's newly founded own label "Sonic River Records", but also marks a turning point for the saxophonist, born in 1983, in terms of his musical self-image.

For the first time, he feels he has nothing to prove, explains Meinhart, who can regularly be heard in his projects with stars such as trumpeter Ingrid Jensen or guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.

"The album is about the spirit of jazz. I dare to express what's going on inside me at that moment," says the New Yorker by choice. And so, on "Sonic River", we witness how the musician once described by Jazz thing magazine as "one of the greatest German talents on the tenor saxophone" has blossomed into a master of top international caliber.

The key to this is: don't worry, let it flow. Meinhart and his top-class fellow musicians glide like casual surfers on the waves of the melodically finely meandering pieces. Under the leadership of their Bavarian bandleader, Eden Ladin on piano, Charles Altura on guitar, Matt Penman on bass and Obed Calvaire on drums with their Israeli, New Zealand and Haitian roots embody the melting pot character of New York in an exemplary manner. You can hear that these five also get on well beyond the studio and stage.

Another innovation in Meinhart's oeuvre: for the first time, he worked with a producer. The producer in question is Matt Pierson, who has already worked for Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman, among others.
"I looked at my favorite records and realized: His name always pops up there," laughs Meinhart. The Grammy award-winner's presence and authority during the recording session at Sear Sound Studios proved to be enormously helpful. "He knew immediately when a take was perfect and also helped with the track selection. He encouraged me to let go," says the saxophonist, describing the beneficial influence of the great producer on the recording.

While the previous album "The Painter", listed by the renowned US trade journal Downbeat as one of the best jazz recordings of 2022, dealt with the interplay between music and painting, the palette on "Sonic River" is now even broader. In addition to the water theme, the recording is dominated by literary references that served as inspiration for Meinhart's compositions and arrangements. The combination of sound painting and words is most evident in the poem settings sung by the Portuguese Sara Serpa. These include the haunting "Silencio" by Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik and one of Rainer Maria Rilke's best-known works. It is fascinating how Meinhart ships the famous "Panther" to Brazil, the land of Saudade, and how the lurking longing in his version almost seems to burst out of his chest. "This Is Water" and "Mr. Vertigo", on the other hand, are heartfelt, wordless nods to David Foster Wallace and Paul Auster, while "Korean Chant" is based on a transcription of the prayer chants of monks that Meinhart once heard on a tour of South Korea. Finally, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", the only external composition on "Sonic River", is a lively, gospel-like update of an old moritat by blues and folk singer Leadbelly in 5/4 time.

As if something of them were still floating in the air above the East River, many great predecessors with New York connections such as Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane have left their mark on Meinhart's agile playing on tenor and soprano sax and alto flute. But he takes to heart what jazz legend Wayne Shorter once advised him to do in such a clear and poetically enigmatic way: "Keep doing your thing. Thunder and lightning."

Meinhart now lets his own voice resound in full: In solos full of sophistication, warmth and honesty. In compositions that, despite their rhythmic complexity, sound like poems that echo in the mind for a long time. And not least in the courage to let himself drift - in the certainty that the water will carry him. With "Sonic River", Tobias Meinhart has created an album that will endure in the flow of jazz.