| Jazz |
Jochen Rueckert’s New Quartet: How to Survive a Beheading swings with youthful fire
With a title like How to Survive a Beheading, you might expect something macabre. What drummer Jochen Rueckert delivers instead is a joyful, sharply written and thoroughly swinging jazz record, played by a young quartet that sounds delighted to be there. Out on 27 November 2026 on Endectomorph Music, it is Rueckert’s seventh album as a leader and the first by a brand-new band, and it makes a very strong case for the fresh start.
Rueckert is a German-born, New York-based drummer who has spent more than twenty years at the heart of modern jazz’s best working groups: the trios of Fred Hersch, Marc Copland and Sam Yahel, the Kurt Rosenwinkel New Quartet, Nils Wogram’s Root 70 and the Melissa Aldana trio. For years he also led a quartet of peers, including Mark Turner, Lage Lund, Mike Moreno and Matt Penman, which toured the world for more than a decade and a half. This time he deliberately chose a different path and formed a band with musicians roughly half his age, which he cheekily named the New Quartet.
The change is audible. Rueckert says that writing for younger players changed what he dared to put on the page, including rhythmic puzzles that, as he jokes, his old bandmates would still have been stumbling over at their twenty-fifth gig. This band handles them with ease. Trumpeter Alexandra Ridout, originally from London, has already won the Next Jazz Legacy award from New Music USA and the best soloist prize at the 2023 Keep an Eye International Jazz Award in Amsterdam, and she plays with Blue Note’s all-star ensemble Artemis. Tenor saxophonist Kevin Sun is a prolific bandleader with more than eight albums of his own and the founder of the Endectomorph label. New Zealand-born bassist Hamish Smith, newly arrived in Paquito D’Rivera’s quintet, anchors the group with strong, rhythmically assured playing.
As on his earlier records, Rueckert wrote all the music well before entering the studio, and this time the quartet also took it on a European tour in March 2026 before recording. The sessions took place at Jaybird Studio in Brooklyn on 16 and 17 April 2026, and they were refreshingly simple: barely any fixes or overdubs. The result sounds like a band that already knows where the music’s edges are, and it plays with the relaxed confidence of a group that has been on the road together far longer than a few weeks.
What stands out most is the willingness to swing. Rueckert argues that swinging tunes are the hardest to write without sounding corny or dated, and also the most rewarding, and it is exactly what he does best. It is, frankly, what sets him apart from many drummers of European background.
The writing draws from a wonderfully varied set of sources. The lead single “Gator Tails” is an E-flat blues with a nod to Kenny Garrett’s “Computer G” and a quirky rhythmic twist held back until the very last moment. “What’s You” splices two standards, “What’s New” and “You’ve Changed”, into a contrafact recast as a 5/4 bolero, which Rueckert himself calls a Frankenstein creation. “Vasopressin”, one of the knottier rhythmic pieces, picks up the unison-melody-and-motion language of Wayne Shorter’s writing for the Miles Davis Quintet. The closer, “Bitter Old Unc”, is a medium-tempo swinger with a warm, almost conciliatory glow and a touch of underlying rhythmic irregularity, reminiscent of a 1990s Branford Marsalis record. Rueckert admits it flirts with cheesiness, but at 51 he says he no longer cares, and the music is all the better for the lack of self-consciousness. The programme is completed by “How to Survive a Beheading”, “Big Suze”, “Stars and Garters” and “Walk of Shame”, all written by Rueckert, plus a reading of Tony Williams’ “Hand Jive”.
At just under fifty-one minutes, the album is well paced from start to finish: a youthful ensemble with an experienced leader at the helm, sometimes wild and dazzling, but always getting straight to the point. It is also a reminder that Rueckert is an unusually honest and funny musician, one who left Germany to play the music he wanted to play and has long since earned his place on the New York scene. By giving younger players a platform, and writing music that challenges them, Jochen Rueckert has made one of the most enjoyable straight-ahead records of the year.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, October 22nd, 2026
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
:::::::::::::::::::::
The band plays shows in New York and is due back in Europe from 3 to 13 November 2027
Tracklisting:
- Vasopressin 4:35
- What’s You 5:45
- Gator Tails 5:59
- How to Survive a Beheading 5:03
- Big Suze 7:07
- Stars and Garters 6:38
- Walk of Shame 5:33
- Hand Jive 4:45
- Bitter Old Unc 5:16
Total playing time: 50:48
All compositions by Jochen Rueckert (Colonel Beats Music Publishing, ASCAP) except ” Hand Jive” by Tony Williams.
Musicians:
Alexandra Ridout – trumpet
Kevin Sun – tenor saxophone
Hamish Smith – acoustic bass
Jochen Rueckert – drums
Credits:
Recorded by Andres Abenante at Jaybird Studio in Brooklyn on 04/16 & 17/2026
Mixed by Dave Darlington and Jochen Rueckert at Bass Hit Studios
Mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Studios
Produced by Jochen Rueckert
Cover by Sovona Ghatak
Design by Jochen Rueckert