Leading a Big Band on its journey to "A Quantum Leap in Big Band Jazz" My guest today is Horst Michael Schaffer, in 2003 together with Heinrich von Kalnein took over the artistic leadership of Jazz Big band Graz. He is said to be "A brilliant musician and composer with a sensitive sense for storytelling, beauty and emotion … " - The Guardian (UK) who composes and leads "Music for the heart and the feet …" - Colin Towns, Composer (UK) “… one of the most forward-thinking enterprises in recent jazz.” This is the appraisal that the well-known British composer and musician Colin Towns strikingly made in All About Jazz, about the new sound of the JBBG, with the postscript: “…music for the heart and for the feet”. Our priority was not to simply lay a claim, at any price, to having produced something new. It has been about catching the moment, the here and now, in the 21st century and to live it out. Without cutting ourselves off from current trends, to allow the ideas they engender to have free run and to build on established traditions in a self-evident, natural way. The present moment can serve as a collecting pool in which the increasingly rapid developments in musical trends and artistic impulses can effectively mix, free from restraint and blinkered vision. »A QUANTUM LEAP IN BIG BAND JAZZ” This is what jazz expert Klaus Schulz wrote in the German magazine Jazzpodium about the 2001 Salzburg Autumn Jazz Festival (Salzburger Jazzherbst 2001) appearance of the Jazz Bigband Graz, together with composer-master trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. »… UNCOMPROMISED DEPARTURE FROM BIG BAND STALE AIR.