One of the jazz world's true unsung heroes, composer/trumpeter Kenny Wheeler has cultivated a highly personal, poetic voice over the past three decades-plus, simultaneously tapping and transcending tradition. His masterful series of albums for ECM typifies his art of abstract romanticism, the playing possessing an uncommon purity and the writing a timeless appeal.

Blessed by deep, lyrical compositions and searching, apposite improvisations, Wheeler's 1976 ECM debut, Gnu High, has come to be a touchstone in modern jazz -- a testimony to the artistic efficacy of thoroughness in conception and spontaneity in execution.

read more