Season Bright
ACCLAIMED PIANIST AND COMPOSER OMER KLEIN UNWRAPS “SEASON BRIGHT”
Acclaimed pianist and composer Omer Klein is marking the Yuletide with his new holiday EP,
Season Bright, arriving via Warner Music at all DSPs and streaming services on Friday,
December 1.
Season Bright sees the award-winning Klein celebrating the arrival of Christmas by bringing his
formidable solo approach to classic carols, a trio of Bach chorales, and such original new
compositions as the hauntingly evocative “Trembling,” premiering everywhere today.
“The way the world is right now, I thought the time was not right for a happy-go-lucky
Christmas album,” says Klein. “But I also thought, maybe we can do something nice and warm
even as the world is coming to pieces. Perhaps this was an opportunity to capture richer
emotions than your average Christmas album.
“I wanted to contrast the material, contrast the moods, so I decided to play a couple of romantic
Christmas standards inspired by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, and then, to come in from
another angle, the Bach chorales which are so cool and crystalline and beautiful. I also had an
original piece called ‘Trembling’ that I wanted to record as a kind of the opposite pole, as the
darker side of things.
“I originally wrote ‘Trembling’ for a theater production in Frankfurt. It’s a very dark, very strong
piece, kind of neo-Baroque. There is a lot of waiting in that piece. I play a phrase and I wait for it
to vibrate. And then I play another one, and another one. It's kind of excruciating, taking its
time. But I thought that it would be an important anchor, an emotional center to this Christmas
album.”
Klein is currently scheduled for a series of upcoming live performances, highlighted by very
special solo Christmas Concert at Ulrichshusen, Germany’s prestigious Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on December 3. Highlights include shows alongside his frequent collaborator,
mandolinist Avi Avital, with performances slated through April 2024.
Hailed by the New York Times for his “borderless” approach to widely diverse sources of
inspiration, Omer Klein has earned critical applause around the world for such exploratory
works as his recently released 10 th studio album, Life & Fire, featuring the Omer Klein Trio. The
album continued Klein’s ongoing work with Warner Music, including the ECHO Music Prize-
winning Sleepwalkers (2017), Radio Mediteran (2019), and Personal Belongings (2021)
Born in Israel in 1982, Klein grew up in Netanya as the son of Israeli-born parents and the
grandchild of immigrants from Tunisia, Libya, and Hungary. He began composing and
improvising from a young age, first began playing keyboard instruments at 5 and then turning
his focus to the piano at 13. Klein studied at the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts in
Givatayim before moving to the US as the recipient of a scholarship from Boson, MA’s New
England Conservatory where he studied jazz piano with Danilo Perez and Ran Blake, as well as
classical piano with Alexander Korsantia. Klein moved to New York in 2005 and continued his
studies privately under Fred Hersch.
Based in Germany since 2009, Klein formed the Omer Klein Trio with bassist Haggai Cohen Milo
and drummer Amir Bresler in 2013. The trio – which exclusively performs Klein’s own
compositions – made a landmark debut with 2015’s Fearless Friday, named by All About Jazz as
“one of the most rewarding piano trio releases of recent years.”
Klein has earned acclaimed around the world for his live performances as both as soloist and
band leader, including such esteemed venues and events as the North Sea Jazz Festival, Nice
Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Swing Hall Tokyo, the Red
Sea Jazz Festival, the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival, Elbphilharmonie, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Bremen
Musikfest, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and many more.
An indefatigable collaborator, Klein has also enjoyed creative alliances with a span of equally
distinct artists, including mandolinist Avi Avital, the NDR Big Band, classical percussionist Alexej
Gerassimez, and such iconic Israeli singers as Arik Einstein, Gidi Gov, Yehudit Ravitz and Rona
Kenan. He currently resides in Frankfurt with his girlfriend, the actress Viola Pobitschka, and
their three children.
