Jazz at JAKI: Simón Willson Quartett

New York-based Chilean bassist and composer Simón Willson is a versatile and sought-after musician who regularly collaborates with a wide range of established artists such as Dave Douglas, Ethan Iverson, Jason Palmer, Nasheet Waits, Frank Carlberg, Roxana Amed, the Mark Morris Dance Group and many others. At the forefront of his music is the relationship between the recognized and the new, a relationship in which the new defines itself in relation to what has already been established, while at the same time the established reconfigures itself in response to the new.

Simón Willson lives for these blurred and approximate boundaries that seem impossible to define. The old and the new, looseness and tightness, intuition and intellect, freedom and order and chaos dance together in Willson's music. Sometimes the musical conception seems like a flickering light, almost extinguished and close to emptiness, then again a concrete and meticulously polished plan that works from beginning to end in the interplay with the musicians Benedikt Jäckle on saxophone, Paul Janoschka on piano and Jonas Esser on drums.

His debut album "Good Company" was recently released on the FreshSoundNewTalent label.