Paradise Jazz: Tom's Wild Years (DK/GB/US) | Copenhagen Jazz Festival

Tom's Wild Years is a very special project. As the title suggests, it is a program of songs written by Tom Waits as well as some lyrics about this unique singer/songwriter.

Tom Waits is a great inspiration for me – and for an incredible number of other people. As a musician, I have listened to his music almost all my life. The raw sound, his crunchy voice, the strong stories and the musicians' ingenuity create a universe that continues to inspire me.
I have chosen pieces from almost all of his records, songs that are suitable for being arranged in ways that make the music ours and make room for the individual musicians in the septet. It is pointless to try to imitate Tom Waits' own versions, so I have cut and rearranged. But no matter what you do, Tom Waits' music always sounds like something only he could have come up with.

Bassist Henrik Simonsen and drummer Timothy Lutte are my first choices when it comes to putting together a competent and swinging rhythm group. We have played my own songs in the trio NOT MARRIED ANYMORE and they really know how to create calm and life at the same time when music has to groove.
Together with them you can hear Marie Louise Nitschky Schmidt on piano and organ. She has a lot of experience with singing and with the borderland between jazz and everything else.

The vibraphone was originally played by Bent Clausen, but this year it is my old friend Morten Grønvad who gives his all. The wind instruments are the English saxophone phenomenon Peter Corser and the Danish trumpet star Thomas Fryland.