The form of the requiem is an ideal breeding ground for musical adventures, as music history has shown. It knows all facets of sorrow and death: gentle death, mourned death, unrelenting death, transfigured death. This recording adds another piece to the mosaic. Here, the age-old tradition of the requiem mass and the vibrant joie de vivre of jazz elements meet combining liturgy, pirituality and sensuality.
Hansjörg Fink and Elmar Lehnen add their own, liberal figures to the existing foundations. They prove to be successful border-crossers [!].
Hansjörg Fink performs as ensemble player and soloist in the most diverse music styles and feels equally at home in big bands, theatre and musical productions, pop bands and the great jazz festivals as he does in symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles and solo projects. He is first trombone of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, touring regularly. As a freelance musician he frequently appears in concerts and on CD, radio and television recordings with renowned European big bands, including the WDR Big Band and the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
Following studies in Aachen and Paris, where he graduated with distinction, Elmar Lehnen was organist and choirmaster in Mönchengladbach for ten years. He was appointed to succeed Wolfgang Seifen as organist of the papal basilica of St. Marien in Kevelaer in 2000. In addition, Elmar Lehnen devotes himself to a busy international concert schedule.
