As for so many people, the two pandemic years were a challenging time in many respects for creatives like Cologne trumpeter, composer and arranger Christian Winninghoff, a member of the Jazzkantine and the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. Because jazz from the ivory tower was never his thing. His music has always sounded energetic and groovy, more suitable for the atmosphere of a densely packed, heated club than for a ventilated concert hall with a masked audience, possibly even arranged in a checkerboard pattern. In the prescribed retreat - after what felt like half a life with concerts, shows and theatrical performances almost every weekend - so now a lot of time to concentrate on the essentials: Sound and expression! The goal: soul music. His compositions have always had fragile and lyrical moments and Christian's fourth album CLOUD SOUNDS almost became a pure song or ballad album. The focus of the new CD is for him in this project to go in search of traces in terms of song-writing, to fathom the essence of great songs and to reinterpret them for himself. The es-sence is always the expression, the feeling that a song conveys. And his interpretation possi-bilities are manifold, both on the trumpet, the flugelhorn and in his arrangements and com-positions. In the opening song, a relaxed version of the Beatles classic 'Two of us' in ¾-measure, Sam Leigh Brown interprets with warm vocal timbre. Dreamy floating pieces follow on easily therefore swinging jazz and multi-layered songs. A lot of hypnotic power is used in these compositions and arrangements (including Brian Wilson's 'Surf's Up') pieces related wind colors, which sometimes come as a polyphonic chorale, sometimes in an evocative unison. The calm, breathing timing in finely tuned interaction then prepares the foundation for the both powerful and soulful improvisations often on flugelhorn and plugged trumpet, sometimes reduced, sometimes lively and playful.