Florian Arbenz feat. Bill Frisell and Greg Osby | QUIET LIGHTS | May 29, 2026
Swiss drummer and percussionist Florian Arbenz returns with one of the most significant collaborations of his career – a new trio recording featuring jazz legends Greg Osby and Bill Frisell. “Quiet Lights” is set for release on May 29th, 2026 via Hammer Recordings.
Tracked entirely live in just four hours, the album captures three master improvisers meeting in a spirit of openness, trust, and instant creative chemistry. For Arbenz, who has long admired both musicians, the project represents “a dream coming true.”
Rather than write toward the vast legacies of his collaborators, Arbenz approached the session by creating simple but sonically distinctive frameworks designed to highlight Frisell’s unmistakable guitar sound and Osby’s visionary, risk-taking saxophone voice. The resulting pieces unfold like distinct rooms, each one shaped around texture, space, and mood rather than complexity for its own sake.
Across the records’ seven pieces, the trio sounds far larger than its size. Arbenz employs a palette of custom-made percussion instruments to extend his role from conventional drumming to bass lines, counter-rhythms, and atmospheric soundscapes. Frisell’s full-bodied guitar tone and Osby’s bold, ensemble-minded phrasing complete a sound world that shifts effortlessly from subtlety to fire.
Each tune emerged differently in the studio: the jazz-rooted “Jammin’ in the Children’s Corner” (originally written for Dave Liebman), the almost pop-like luminosity of “Quiet Light,” and the two Rumba-inspired pieces “Homenaje” and “Rhumba,” each with its own narrative and emotional contour. Almost all of the takes used on the album are first takes, preserving the spontaneity, freshness, and live-in-the-room immediacy that defined the session.
For Arbenz, the experience was not only musically profound but personally meaningful: “Greg and Bill were so supportive and had such a great and positive spirit that it almost felt like a meeting of old friends.” The music reflects that sense of shared purpose; exploratory yet grounded, adventurous yet warm, and deeply connected to the collective history each musician brings.
Line up
Florian Arbenz | Drums, Percussion Bill Frisell | Guitar
Greg Osby | Saxophone
Track Listing
Homenaje
Chant
Jammin’ in the Children’s Corner
Lueget vo Berg und Tal
The Barradas Opening
Quiet Lights
Rhumba
PR Quotes
Jazz Journal (UK)
“Across all the tracks, the trio often sounds larger than the just the product of three musicians, largely because the different timbres of the echoing Frisell, the insistent Osby, and the ever-busy Arbenz add contrasting textures to the overall sound. What a fine and individual set!”
Paris-move (FR)
“In an era where so much contemporary music feels designed for immediacy and distraction, Quiet Lights asks for something increasingly rare: attention, contemplation, and emotional openness”
Downbeat (USA)
“Arbenz’s light touch highlights the solemnity that Frisell confers upon the Swiss folk song, “Lueget vo Berg und Tal.”
Jazzthetik (DE)
“three immensely experienced musicians who approach one another with openness and generosity, embracing the deliberately restrained themes provided by host Florian Arbenz”
Esensja (PL)
“he intersection of two jazz traditions—European and American—produces excellent results in this case”
SK Jazz (SK)
“beautiful, spontaneous and sincere music!.”
La Habitacion del Jazz (ES)
“A deep, atmospheric, and honest album.“
Jazz Views (UK)
“Four hours. Almost no second takes. A dream meeting that sounds exactly like one.”
Jazzthing (DE)
“The three are sparring partners, companions and fellow travelers. Their open-ended explorations are easy to follow, yet remain continuously surprisind”
JazzTrail (USA)
“Quiet Lights unfolds gracefully without ever needing to force its impact, offering a charming and often introspective listening experience”
Donos (USA)
“There’s a good chance that after the last track fades, you’ll automatically turn this album on again, because it’s hard to shake the feeling that you only heard part of the story the first time”
OffTopic Magazine (IT)
“Quiet Lights belongs in that rare category of albums that slowly insinuate themselves into the listener’s consciousness”
JazzForum (PL)
“It is an album built on attentive listening, mutual trust and the musical maturity of three artists who fully understand that the greatest strength of improvisation lies not in the number of notes played, but in the relationships between them”
JazzPodium (DE)
“likeable, unpretentious recording whose character is captured very well by the album title“
Cuttings
