“Olle schaun, olle zaahn, olle drahn” – a line of the first track of their CD “Wo fangts an” that is symptomatic for the current dialect hype in Austrian music that the Strottern & JazzWerkstatt Wien might be partly responsible for. The starting point is mostly Viennese dialect lyrics that set aside sentimentality and instead serve up poetic virtue and elaborate reflexions of current social affairs. Peter Ahorner, Karl Stirner, and Christian Tesak have made their contributions as authors, as well as Klemens Lendl himself. For their current album “Sieben Zwetschken” (Seven Plums), they teamed up with award-winning writer Theresa Präauer.

Die Strottern & JazzWerkstatt Wien
For many years, the Strottern have been searching for new subjects and contemporary means of expression for the Wienerlied (Viennese song). In 2009, they started expanding their repertoire in collaboration with the JazzWerkstatt Wien and released their CD “Elegant”. The duo, now joined by a rhythm section, brass-section, electric guitar, and piano suddenly feels more like a big band. Musical boundaries are being crossed, and everyone involved is straying away a little from their familiar territory, without ever losing their own signature style. Now, eight years later, they are going to present their third album, “Sieben Zwetschken” (Seven Plums). This album accomplishes to capture a wide range of things at once: the joyful play and the spark of spontaneity of true jazz musicians, the intimacy of the soulful storyteller, but also the defiance of the individual amidst a murky global landscape –the zeitgeist – without pandering to it.