Schumann

Schumann built many of his best-known works from small, sharply characterised pieces arranged into cycles, whether for solo piano or voice. That gives jazz musicians a compact theme to reshape and a larger emotional sequence to play against. Loussier finds a bossa nova in the opening of Kinderszenen, while Uri Caine interleaves all 16 Dichterliebe songs with Schumann’s Piano Quartet and moves through soul, scat and freer jazz.