MUSICIAN AND PRESS QUOTES

“Kenny Werner has a rare combination of qualities, playing from deep in the mainstream, but doing so with the genuinely traditional values of group communication and emotional commitment to the creative act …. Werner is deeply engaged in the idea of melody as he moves between well-known, if highly divergent works and his own compositions, shifting moods and densities but always maintaining concentration and interest”
– Stuart Broomer, New York City Jazz Record, 2015, about the release “The Melody”

“The marvelously titled Voncify The Emulyans (Werner doesn’t just make up music) is another prime example of a band mixing the rhythms up with the same innovation they bring to bear on melody and harmony, and somehow still keeping it coherent. Ultimately of course, as the album title states, all three musicians are skilful melodists, and this is the key to making their music so welcoming.”
– Peter Bacon, the Jazz Breakfast, 2015, about the release ‘The Melody’

“One of the album’s most striking and surprising moments is a florid, intense Werner solo that articulates a deeper undercurrent of inner conflict that Ms. Moreno is keeping in check ….. and in doing so effects a wonderful expressive balance in its intimate soundscape …. Kenny Werner’s sense of both the texts and the shading of his partner’s readings gives the enterprise emotional heft to match the beauty and meaning of its deceptively simple cover drawing depicting budding and blooming flowers in repose.”
– David McGee, Deep Roots Magazine, 2015, about the release ‘Poesia’ w/ Joyce Moreno

“One of the greatest joys of my professional life is to present work that is provocative, unusual, and moving. The recent installation by John Cira of STRETCH / HOOK transformed our gallery. The culminating performance by the remarkable DeAnna Pellecchia, whose intense choreography was paired with the exquisite improvisation of Kenny Werner, was one of those events where multiple art forms were joined and presented at their highest caliber. The sold out, cheering audience will be talking about this very special night for years to come.” – David Kuehn, Executive Director, Cotuit Center for the Arts, 2016

“Werner’s touch on the piano is as soft as a ripe banana, just ready for the squeezing. A real delicate delight here.”
– Jazz weekly, 2015, about the release ‘Poesia’ w/ Joyce Moreno

“Across this album, Werner and Moreno demonstrate that beauty comes in many forms….To say that this music is affecting and enthralling would be a gross understatement.”
– Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz, 2015, about the release ‘Poesia’ w/ Joyce Moreno

“More than an outlet for Werner’s artistic exploration, the performance served another purpose: It gave the public a look at what some of jazz’s brightest stars can do in collaboration…. Werner the educator knows only too well the value of leading by being excellent.”
– Michael Barris, DownBeat, August 2015

“The declaration of love for the city where he was born creates an intimate portrait, far from any cliché. As described by Alain Gerber in the sleevenotes, “the master of the pure, the immensely subtle, in its most direct expression.” Brad Mehldau’s teacher brings the art of  poise and lucidity to a very high level. Rarely have ballads of the night sounded as sincere.”
– So Jazz (About the release “New York Love Songs”)

“Let us say it out straight: this work, which would be served by a long analysis, represents the esthetic culmination of the great pianist Kenny Werner’s carreer and a white stone (marking stone) in the history of jazz arrangement and – composition; nothing quite as forceful and as profound has appeared since the work left by Gil Evans and George Russell”
– Classica (About “No Beginning No End”)

“This CD is much more than music. It is pure sentiment, feeling, love – and the miracle is, that it transmits so flawlessly to the listener. If your goal, which I believe, was to bridge gaps between people, you have certainly succeeded. Here I sit, across an ocean, fully amazed at the closeness of this music, full of joy, sorrow, and the tranquility of this music. This CD is one deep breath and is crafted by a musical mastermind, whom I bow to. Everything falls into place.”
– Anders Koppel (About “No Beginning No End”)

“The process (No Beginning No End) was hardly effortless.  It is, however, by any measure masterful.”
– Jazz Inside

“Perfection. 360 degrees of soul and science in one human being. My kind of musician.”
– Quincy Jones

“Kenny Werner is a total musician. He feeds my heart and my brain and pushes me into fresh territories. I am grateful that our agendas can coincide that often.
P.S. He also wrote a book on how to “liberate” one’s own creativity!”
– Toots Thielemans

“… an ebullient stylist … his solos start evenhandedly and become wooly rides into the darkness.”
– The Village Voice

“a pianist who tempers fearsome technique with a questing spiritualism”
– Nate Chinen, The New York Times

“Mr. Werner and his trio took apart two pieces, a swinging original of his own called ‘Jackson Five’ along with ‘You and the Night and the Music’, and reconfigured them with all sorts of nearly miraculous rhythm and tempo changes….a type of rhythm section fluidity that’s rarely heard….Mr. Werner is a clear virtuoso, and when he solos there’s wit everywhere, with clichés dragged out of the closet to poke fun at or
rhythmic bumps added for humor.”
– Peter Watrous, New York Times

“When one hears pianist Kenny Werner, that feeling of elation is clearly front and center.”
– Zan Stewart, The Newark Star Ledger

“Whether soloing or interpreting, Werner takes you outside, but not by any route you’ve followed before. You never know where he’s going, but every place he takes you is a delight.”
– Keyboard Magazine

“Werner has become one of our most literate and visceral pianists.”
– JAZZTIMES

“Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes”
– Harvey Pekar

“Werner owns more chops and brains than most pianists do….Werner hardly raises his voice to make subtle points, couching his logic in neat vamps, sinewy angular lines, dizzying rhythmic double entendres.”
– Down Beat

“Werner, patient as a spider, spins a web of lyric calm and dancing beauty and fills in the corners, not budging far from his center….Werner’s set – one of the very best in a series [Live At Maybeck Hall] that has quietly become a bellwether for pianists of our era – merely shows one gentler aspect of an extraordinary gifted artist.”
– The Boston Pheonix

“Pianist Kenny Werner . . . He’s a bold, brave player and composer, unafraid to tackle spiritual and political matters through the medium of instrumental music, and he presents his ideas with uncommon clarity. Werner is a consummate sideman and leader, and he’s also a deep thinker about this music — his book Effortless Mastery is widely read by those who want to make jazz.”
–Joe Klopus, The Kansas City Star