With this fifth recording as a leader, Markus Rutz invites listeners to a seat for a live performance from “A Home for Jazz” in the Midwest, Merrimans’ Playhouse in South Bend, Indiana.

Many performances are stellar nights of good feeling and shared experience that exist only in that time and space where others do not have the opportunity to hear the magic. Well You Needn’t fret because the fire and Serenity of the evening was documented on these tracks recorded One Saturday in September at this “Sonic Art Gallery”.

The audience listening to the two sets from the band that night heard a program with tunes penned by Rutz along with standards from the idiom and original arrangements of themes from "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin. The themes are an extension of Gershwin’s thematic music which have been commissioned by The Rose Theatre with Markus as composer-in-residence.

recorded live September 18, 2021, in South Bend, Indiana