The wonderful and amazingly gifted jazz-singer and actress Tina May, who contributed with her voice and her lyrics to the Album ‚cafe paranoia‘ passed away quite unexpected in April 2022.
Timing is everything –in history, in life, in music and even more in a jazzmusicians life. I met this great singer Tina through lucky timing in the 90′ and played for a week in a club in Munich. She kept a melody of mine in her head for many years until she came up with lyrics and a recording of this („Bop ‚til you drop“). Good timing!
After that, I wished to make an album with her lyrics and my music for many years – but there were her two little kids and her busy life.
But I kept being in touch with her until we finally started working on the material and finally recorded the album Cafe Paranoia, which also contains lyrics of our mutual friend Mark Murphy, the famous „bebop infected“ singer and lyricist who collaborated with us. The recording captures many of those moments of the right timing and the right understanding within music that we shared. It has been such a long way to get to that point and now that she left so soon is real bad timing. How much I would love to perform those Haikus with Tina:
„Age only matters if one is a cheese.
And if this you find confusing, buy a cheese –
unwrap it, and give it a good talking to.“
„The colour of the tundra is not on my mind
my eye is saved from death because alone tundraness is
sky, endless sky. So am I endless. I am saved.“
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