Jazz-center-of-the-universe-based, exiled German-born drummer Jochen Rueckert presents his working quartet with guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Matt Penman and legendary saxophonist Mark Turner.

The band from New York City plays Jochen’s compositions containing surprisingly more optimistically swinging sections rich with chords than one would expect from a teutonic drummer, sprinkled with the occasional 3/8 bar for good measure.

Jochen’s deliberate avoidance of formal music education, albeit initially for budgetary reasons, provides a great lack of erudite nonsense in his writing. Jochen is celebrating his fifth album, titled Stars and Garters.

The band has been touring since 2011, reaching greater depths of musical interaction as it continues to do so, proudly devoid of the mounting gimmickry and desperate festival-pandering observed in many of its peers.

Jochen is mostly known for his work in 12 years of the Marc Copland trio, the mid-2000 Kurt Rosenwinkel New Quartet, all of Nils Wogram’s Root 70, recent work with the Melissa Aldana trio and the Fred Hersch Trio, his electronic music programmed under the alias Wolff Parkinson White, as well as his series of ebooks aptly titled Read the Rueckert – travel observations and pictures of hotel rooms.