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ZILLNER

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ZILLNER --- 2018-07-06

Global Jazz Infusion for a New Generation: Seb Zillner Hates the Rules More than You Do, Throws Them Out the Window to Create Eclectic, Collaborative Jazz Brew on “ZILLNER” It’s not that Seb Zillner turned his back on a dozen years of formal music study – he simply combined them with his own musical philosophies to open a new jazz portal. Step through the first track on ZILLNER and discover the infectious rhythms and blended melodies that spotlight the artist’s focus on collaboration and inclusion. Who says you can’t enhance hip-hop, soul and ethnic folk beats with a soothing jazz lead? ZILLNER does just that to deliver a unique, cohesive collection that effortlessly sweeps away life’s noise. “There are so many ways to approach jazz music,” Zillner says of his work. “I believe that when composers, musicians and producers come together from diverse genres, the art form is able to evolve and live on for generations to come.” An impressive list of guest artists produced the tracks on ZILLNER, but every song is written by Zillner and features his delicate instrumental arrangements on saxophone, flute and/or duduk (a diatonic double reed instrument made out of apricot wood that he says he recently “fell in love with.”). His compositions reveal the observations and experiences of a young man raised in Austria who followed his heart to Los Angeles four years ago and still gets lost in the beauty beneath the chaos. Take ZILLNER’s first track, “91202,” a sax-driven homage to both the Glendale, California zip code Zillner lives in and his fascination with the dizzying array of music he hears in traffic on a daily basis. His flute dances with a hard-knocking beat on “Waltzing Out of Here” to reference his exciting yet heart-pounding decision to leave the safety of his schooling at Austria’s prestigious Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität for America. “BUR” uses saxophone and flute to evoke how slower-paced Burbank Airport reminds him of Salzburg, “Un.Tamed” references his passion for the wild child tenor of the Armenian duduk, and the saxophone-laden “That’s Love” is the song he used to charm his now-wife when they first met in London. With life presenting a myriad of challenges that seem to mount daily, the desire to be transported to a soothing space is very real, but too often, modern jazz leads to predictable and isolated destinations. ZILLNER busts that construct wide open to offer up a fresh musical take with a decidedly international imagination. You probably haven’t heard jazz presented quite like this before, but that’s okay – in fact, Seb Zillner wouldn’t have it any other way.