Justin Zitt

There is certainly no shortage of piano trios in the contemporary jazz scene, and yet there are always musicians who manage to reveal new facets within this seemingly familiar format and surprise listeners with original ideas. Justin Zitt is one such artist, and with his trio Frigo he presents a multilayered and richly colored debut. As a pianist and composer, Zitt is closely attuned to the pulse of modern creative jazz, weaving influences from new music and jazz together with remarkable confidence, creating large arcs without ever losing sight of the audience. His pieces shine with polyrhythmic structures and the multidimensionality of extended harmonies; despite all their detailed refinement, they always remain alive and convey an intensity that is both intellectual and emotional.

“I want my music to reflect both approaches — on the one hand, a deep engagement with composition, and on the other, my intuitive way of working,” explains Justin Zitt. His goal is to make a statement through carefully thought-out concepts while at the same time making them tangible through emotional expressiveness. Accordingly, the sources from which the young musician draws inspiration are highly diverse. Penuel, for example, emerged under the impression of an intensive week of work with New York star pianist Kris Davis. Toleranzangst, on the other hand, is the result of a deep engagement with polyrhythms. “Basically, the piece is in 7/4, but 5/4, 9/8, and 11/8 are also combined. In the solos, we choose the meter freely, because the superimposition of different time signatures makes sense. We practiced for quite a long time until it worked,” the bandleader laughs.

Justin Zitt describes three groups of influences that particularly shape his imagination as a composer and musician. On the one hand, there are the complex rhythms and textures of Robert Landfermann’s Neon Dilemma with Elias Stemeseder, the trio Punkt.Vrt.Plastik, and Felix Hauptmann’s band Percussion. Then there is European art music of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Messiaen’s harmonic ideas, the tonal colors of Debussy, Alban Berg, and others. The basis for Divided Into One, for example, arose from an engagement with Boulez’s Notations. “The piece begins with twelve tones; the row remains intact, but is translated into harmony,” explains Zitt. The third pillar for him is the tradition of American jazz, especially the ways of improvising over forms that developed there — from Bud Powell and Monk to Sullivan Fortner and Craig Taborn.

Justin Zitt met and came to appreciate his two bandmates at the Mannheim University of Music. “Both of them are extremely sensitive and listen very closely. Our interplay is based on a great deal of trust, which gives me a lot of security,” says the pianist with pleasure. The trio has been playing Zitt’s compositions for around four years, and since 2023 they have also been performing them on stages across Germany. “When we went into the studio in February 2024, we had already played almost all of the pieces live. Some had matured over several years, and we kept refining them in detail,” Zitt recalls. “That allowed us to work with variations in rhythm and harmony during the recordings.” The results are consistently impressive, and at times truly fascinating — whether through their varied meters including quintuplets, their shifting moods, their play of colors, or the overarching creative impulse of the band.

Justin Zitt (*June 2002) first sat down at the piano at the age of five, and from the age of ten he had a “very good teacher who did not teach in a strictly classical way.” This led Zitt from gospel to jazz without losing sight of classical music. He played in his high school big band, and when he was not at the piano, he went skateboarding. Not an unimportant influence, as Zitt says with a grin: “Riding through a skatepark is a bit like moving through compositions — you go through the course and come up with things.” The possibilities of the piano, its harmonic and tonal potential, fascinate him just as much today as they did then. “The grand piano offers a huge fantasy world in which you can imagine the most absurd things and create your own universe. It’s a bit like creator mode in video games: you can fly.”

In 2022, Zitt was a member of the Gutenberg Jazz Collective at Jazz Campus Mainz. There he performed concerts with Ingrid Jensen, Kris Davis, Becca Stevens, Billy Hart, and others. The rising pianist has also appeared on stage with Nils Landgren, Menzel Mutzke, Stefan Karl Schmid, Peter Gall, Wanja Slavin, and other artists in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. He is currently a scholarship holder of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg and is completing his master’s degree in Amsterdam, which also includes an exchange partnership with The New School in New York. “I wanted to be in a city where a lot is happening,” he says, “here there are about 5–6 concerts a day, which is very inspiring.”

Justin Zitt’s fine sense of humor may reveal itself more between the notes of his music. But it certainly shows in the name of the band. “Frigo came up during a poker night,” says Zitt. “The word sounds a bit like trio, so it felt fitting to me. In Spanish it also means refrigerator. I think it conveys a cool charm, a kind of veiled coolness, and that fits our music well.”

Whether Justin Zitt’s music actually develops a kind of coolness is something everyone may decide for themselves. What is clear is that it possesses an enormous amount of character. Zitt’s rhythmic and melodic imagination, his stylistic vision, and the sonic language he creates together with his fellow musicians make Frigo a surprising and impressive experience that clearly lifts the trio’s debut album above the broad field of jazz piano.

— Norbert Krampf