About the album

The Gustav Klimt String Quartet (Klimt!) is well-known among Dutch jazz musicians, pop singers and cabaret artists, and has contributed to countless cd productions. A primary goal of the quartet is to stimulate new music, and almost all the compo-sitions on the present album were written exclusively for this project.

The common cd formula of ensemble- with-soloist seemed too predictable. Instead, Klimt! asked no fewer than seven prominent guitar players working in the Netherlands to write a quintet, in order to portray a kaleidoscopic view of the Dutch guitar scene.

The rules were as follows: the new composition would be entirely in the idiom of the soloist. The only condition was that the strings not be used as background music; there must be a true dialogue between guitar and quartet.