A fantastic evening with a double meaning of the word ... Thomas Zoller and Kurt Weinzierl as the narrator adapted the opera for a fascinating subject. Zoller, unique saxophone player and arranger, listens and feels deeply into Orff’s music full of rhythm, ostinati, minimum elements and orchestrative colours and changes them without rewriting the score into the splendid, thrilling “zollsound”. An experience like Thomas Zoller himself … Kurt Weinzierl describes, wispers, tells the story, insists, rapps and makes rhythmic. He takes you to a fairy tale land, into the absurd and fantastic – into the little world theatre. ZOLLSOUND 5 AND KURT WEINZIERL PLAY CARL ORFF'S "DER MOND" (The moon) . (Tiroler Tageszeitung 21.8.06)
 
Magical music and a voice’s magic. The last evening of Jazztime became an extraordinary experience. OLLSOUND 5 AND KURT WEINZIERL PLAY CARL ORFF'S "DER MOND". (Böblinger Nachrichten, 5.5.06)
 
Jazz in complete balance.
JAZZ AND THE PHILHARMONICS (Augsburger Zeitung 16.08.04)
 
excellent arrangement … magical moments
JAZZ AND THE PHILHARMONICS (Friedberger Allgemeine 16.08.04)
 
 
He presents himself as a gifted melodician, who knows how to embody his melodic creations in clever compositions … and he is a sound aesthete, who can handle the difficult balance between tonal beauty and jazz-like intonation … complete silence of course leads to the absurd but one can try to compress the statements, to avoid the supurfluous, to find a musical language which makes a maximum of things as regards content. And Zoller achieved that. What else can you say about an outstanding CD?
ZOLLSOUND CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (Jazzpodium 9/2002)
 
 
The composer and arranger has already proved the fact with the beginning piece “Der Klang” (The sound), which floats from the choir room into today’s world, that he heads for world music has nothing to do with the old-fashioned play-Bach-affairs. (Abendzeitung ["evening newspaper"] Nürnberg, 18. Juli 2002)
 
Zoller is not only an exeendingly competent Jazz-arranger but also a highly imaginative (although devoted to classical modern age) musica-nova-composer. He created a few rather exceptional assignments for several combination of Jazz-combos and boy choirs requesting unusual musical material. (Nürnberger Nachrichten, 18th Juli 2002)
 
The compositions are highly interesting and meditative, they remind you of a mixture of Darius Milhaud and the kind of music that is now produced in Brazil.
(Claus Ogerman, composert, arranger about Zollsound Chamber Orchestra fall 2001)
 
Critics tipp from the SZ Dez ’99:
“Gleichgewicht” (balance), music for the theatre play with the same name, written by Botho Strauß (SZ 1999)
 
Thomas Zoller’s architecture of sound that connects silence and tension, the homogene – dynamic collective and the sentitive – imaginative improvisation - .. world class (Jazz-Zeitung 11/99, MSF)
 
… Thomas Zoller … counts as the most important of music makers of our time in the whole of Europe (Applaus 10/98)
 
… which belongs to the finest that you can experience these days and justifies the name under whiche they assemble, a family. (Frankfurter Rundschau 1997, Munich Saxophone Family)
 
… the sensation of the festival (Würzburger Zeitung 1997, Zoll Meets The Masterfranks)
 
… the MSF, a Saxophone quartet that belongs to the most extraordinary music the European Jazz has to offer (SZ 1997)
 
… a feast for the ears of sound aesthetes … an exeptional musician (Der Neue Tag 1996, Zoller plays Mulligan)
 
… on unwalked paths between New Music and Pop where drollery and deepness lie close to each other … Someone who sees sax quartets as a fashion of the last ten years or thinks that everything has already been said in that area will be proved wrong: a future classic, 5 stars (Ssrius W. Pazkad 1995, Zoll Meets The Masterfranks)
 
Just like there are different kinds of reading methods for poetic texts, there are different ways of listening for poetic music. The pieces on this CDs are complex and lucid so that you can spare them the paraphrising. Hearing it more than once is rewarded by the joy of the “explorers”. I would like to point out one very nice impression: the music seems rich and confident. It survives without persuasive gestures, it doesn’t woo for recognition. It makes me stop. (Werner Klausnitzer 1995, Munich Saxophone Family)
 
… the one you can count as Germany’s most interesting and most important composer without blushing: Thomas Zoller celebrates a world premiere with his new band “Zoll meets the Masterfranks”. He’s a specialist for bravely shimmering surfaces of tones, one who understands it to drape artistic farrago around precise melodies and always marks out enough improvisation to make exposition of his pieces possible. (Ssrius W. Pazkad 1995, Zoll Meets The Masterfranks)
 
 … because sympathetic composition and impressive sound medleys of this kind exist very rarely today. (SZ 1994, Die Konferenz)
 
Thomas Zoller’s saxomarxium who is an architect of music and an example fpr how true progressivity draws strength out of tradition. (Joe Kienemann 1992, Munich Saxophone Family)
 
… the man in front of the conductor’s stand, a fully-blooded musician and someone who covers Jazz in a brilliant way, who didn’t only crown his career with this project but has also created a fascinating, if not pathbreaking, monument of contemprorary art of sound … Thomas Zoller (Bayr. Rundfunk 1992, European Broadcasting Union Big Band)

Printable Version