A bestseller in the Spanish-speaking world, multi-instrumentalist and soft jazz musician Leo Sidran otherwise is not on the front line of the jazz fans' perception scale, with the exception of the US. The name Sidran in this region is connected rather with the American jazz musician musicologist, journalist and producer Ben Sidran, the father of Ben. Perhaps the situation changes with Leo Sidran's sixth album, dedicated to the music of today's 73-year-old American jazz singer-songwriter Michael Franks, who published his first jazz album after a rock and folk period during his 1973 high school years, will be followed by many more. Franks cooperated inter alia together with blues legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, with Flora Purim, Kenny Rankin, Ron Carter, The Crusaders, David Sanborn, Toots Thielemans and Eric Gale, and he wrote songs for The Manhattan Transfer, Patti LaBelle, Carmen McRae and The Carpenters (Wikipedia). Leo Sidran also was a musical early starter as a songwriter and the funk jazz drummer Clyde Stubblefield took care of the youthful Ben, who has taken from this contact his lasting preference for the drums. As a teenager, Leo Sidran joined rock veteran Steve Miller as a drummer. His father evidently had every sympathy as a musician for this early career, but he made sure that Ben graduated in history. In addition to his enthusiasm for drums, Leo Sidran grew more and more enthusiastic about the Spanish language and Spain itself, an excitement that has led to successful performances in Spain and Spanish-speaking South America during his ongoing time as a professional musician.

With his 43 years of life and almost 30 years of experience as a musician, Leo Sidran is now in full swing as a jazz musician. That's what you hear in every song of his sixth album Cool School each of which is a marvel of melody and technical skill and contains exactly what is characteristic of the dedicatee of the new album jazz musician Michael Franks. As befits a full-fledged professional, the Frank songs on Cool School, despite their atmospheric relationships, are not mere copies of the originals, but skillful individual modifications in slimmed-down arrangements, in a form that is essential for a masterpiece not only of jazz. The big-band cast of exquisite accompanying musicians is well suited to the occasion of a jazz-size glory and it's easy to imagine that the highly acclaimed Cool School album will be the breakthrough for Leo Sidran in the non-Spanish speaking jazz world. Good luck for him.