Philipp Rüttgers – Piano / Compositions
Omer Govreen – Doublebass
Sun-Mi Hong – Drums
2026
If you think of Erik Satie — keep the characteristic melancholy, enrich it with serenity and a subtle touch of humor, and place it in the context of a contemporary jazz piano trio, you begin to sense what this album is about: a quest to picture the invisible in Satie’s music.
For his second trio album, German-born pianist and composer Philipp Rüttgers dives deep into the world of this most eccentric of French composers. Working through the complete volume of Satie’s works (Éditions Salabert), he gathered fragments and motifs. He carefully reordered and reshaped them, the way you might build a new story from existing words. The abstract and enigmatic qualities of Satie remain present, yet the music breathes naturally within a modern piano trio language. Subtle traces of today’s jazz vocabulary may surface, yet the voice is unmistakably Philipp’s own.
His exploration led beyond the well-known Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes to lesser-known works such as Les Fils des étoiles (The Son of the Stars) and Uspud, written during Satie’s Rosicrucian period — before he fell out with the order and founded his own religion, the Église Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur, of which he was famously the sole member.
Satie’s preference for restraint and reduction echoes clearly in Philipp’s playing: more expression through fewer notes when the music calls for it, and layered complexity when it unfolds. In that dynamic space, the interplay with drummer Sun-Mi Hong and bassist Omer Govreen gains remarkable depth. The trio listens closely, shapes balance organically, and allows transparency to become expressive strength.
Every note, pause, and interplay is charged with the music’s obscure architecture: the quiet tensions, the hidden harmonies, the spaces between motifs. The Trio uses that space to picture the invisible that makes the mysteriousness of Satie feel original and thrilling.
Thanks to Sena for their support
Philipp Rüttgers – Piano / Compositions
Thomas Pol – Doublebass
Sun-Mi Hong – Drums
2024
Pianist and composer Philipp Rüttgers, of German descent, has been active in the Dutch jazz scene for 15 years. On his new album ‘Etudes of Shapes and Forms’ he can be heard, for the first time, in an acoustic piano trio with two leading instrumentalists: Sun-Mi Hong on drums and Thomas Pol on double bass. Their debut concerts 2024 were held at the Bimhuis and the North Sea Jazz Festival.
Philipp has previously collaborated with Thomas and Sun-Mi in her project “Dance in Four Colors”. “I was pleasantly surprised by their amazing musicality in playing jazz and their enormous freedom in approaching music. I had wanted to make a piano trio album for some time, which I had not done before, and when I heard Sun and Thomas, the decision was quickly made.”
For this record, Philipp was inspired by pianists/composers such as Craig Taborn, Kris Davis and Sylvie Courvoisier, where he mainly focused on ‘shapes and forms’. He explains: “Shapes as in harmonic and rhythmic structures, and forms as in arranging with bass and drums and the structure of improvisation and composition.”
Philipp also shares a great love for contemporary music. The composition assignment he received from North Sea Jazz in 2018 and the album Twists of the same name also bear witness to this.
This time Philipp studied the music of György Ligeti’s Etudes “No4 Fanfares”, Arnold Schönberg’s Piano Piece “Sehr Langsam” and Claude Debussy’s Etudes “Pour les cinq doigts d’après Monsieur Czerny”.
“I found studying the compositional concepts behind these masterpieces about the use of harmony, counterpoint and form, the aesthetics, enormously inspiring. It is a challenge to broaden my range of technical, harmonic, and rhythmic possibilities as a pianist and composer.” Philipp says he has focused on density and dynamics in his pieces to portray different emotions, such as joy, excitement, or relaxation. “Not only in my piano playing but also in my interaction with drums and bass.”
For example, in his composition “Rounds”, Philipp partly uses the same compositional technique that Ligeti uses in his “Fanfare”, to create this atonal but structured sound. “Craigs Dance” references Craig Taborn’s strong left hand of syncopated bass lines to create an unpredictable forward movement, while “Escher” references Maurits Cornelis Escher’s work “Relativity”, translating the dimensional illusion into different rhythms that move up and down.
Although the four improvisations on the album are completely improvised at that moment, they still stick strongly to one idea, a specific form, to fit the compositional work. In these improvisations, Philipp also experimented with preparations in the piano (for example magnets on the strings to get a gamelan-like sound or paper for more resonance). The title of the album is derived from combining all these small details into a whole.
Thanks to Buma Stemra, Fonds Podiumkunsten, and Sena for their support