ANDREAS SCHAERER / HILDEGARD LERNT FLIEGEN & THE LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY ORCHESTRA – The Big Wig
ACT Records – ACT 9824-2 CD and DVD two disc set.
Andreas Schaerer (voice, beatboxing & human trumpet) Andreas Tschopp (trombone) Matthias Wenger (alto, soprano sax and flute) Benedikt Reising (baritone sax and bass clarinet) Marco Müller (bass) Christoph Steiner (drums and marimba) with the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy conducted by Mariano Chiacchiarini.
Recorded and filmed live in concert at the Lucerne Festival, 5th September 2015.
The remarkable music contained in these discs is the brainchild of Andreas Schaerer, a Swiss composer, vocalist and leader of the quintet Hildegard Learns to Fly, who perform his suite of ambitious pieces in a sort of concerto Grosso setting with the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy, an educational establishment founded by Pierre Boulez to promote the study and performance of new music. The six pieces which comprise the `Big Wig` were commissioned by the Academy Orchestra, an institution of youthful musicians well versed in the replication of avant-garde scores and varied stylistic idioms. Of the influences at play in Schaefer’s music, Boulez looms large, specifically his Frank Zappa project of a few years back which formed the bulk of `The Perfect Stranger` album. Given that the festival’s theme was humour in music this was most appropriate, though it has to be said that Schaefer’s quirky musical wit avoids Zappa’s often scabrous vulgarity.
Of the symphonic writing there are echoes of fin de siècle Vienna mingled with the opulence of French Impressionism, the scary atonalism of Gyorgy Ligeti and the extravagances of cinematic scores all stitched together with the shifting ostinati we associate with American minimalism. Within this melange of sounds which range from the soaring and powerful to the meditative and other worldly, space is made available for The Hildegard’s to make jazz noises and Schaerer to demonstrate his vocalisations which include falsetto leaps and guttural effects in the emulation of instrumental and percussive sounds. His `straight` singing is delivered in a light tenor alternating with bravura operatic episodes by way of which he conveys rather obscure lyrics of a symbolist nature. In one piece, `Wig Alert` he performs a mouth percussion dialogue with the Hildegard drummer and six of the orchestra’s percussionists to great effect whilst as a member of the core jazz group he uses his range of sounds to expand the tonal range which with the powerful presence of Reising’s stentorian baritone tends towards the darker registers.
The audio CD comes bundled with a DVD of the concert which is worth having given the physicality of Schaerer’s performance and the theatrical nature of the event and I would recommend viewing this before listening to the CD to gain a clearer impression of what is going on. For the adventurous and open minded listener there is certainly much to enjoy here and along with the whimsy there are passages of powerful, thought provoking music that will inspire further interest in this fascinating artist’s work.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
ACT Records – ACT 9824-2 CD and DVD two disc set.
Andreas Schaerer (voice, beatboxing & human trumpet) Andreas Tschopp (trombone) Matthias Wenger (alto, soprano sax and flute) Benedikt Reising (baritone sax and bass clarinet) Marco Müller (bass) Christoph Steiner (drums and marimba) with the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy conducted by Mariano Chiacchiarini.
Recorded and filmed live in concert at the Lucerne Festival, 5th September 2015.
The remarkable music contained in these discs is the brainchild of Andreas Schaerer, a Swiss composer, vocalist and leader of the quintet Hildegard Learns to Fly, who perform his suite of ambitious pieces in a sort of concerto Grosso setting with the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy, an educational establishment founded by Pierre Boulez to promote the study and performance of new music. The six pieces which comprise the `Big Wig` were commissioned by the Academy Orchestra, an institution of youthful musicians well versed in the replication of avant-garde scores and varied stylistic idioms. Of the influences at play in Schaefer’s music, Boulez looms large, specifically his Frank Zappa project of a few years back which formed the bulk of `The Perfect Stranger` album. Given that the festival’s theme was humour in music this was most appropriate, though it has to be said that Schaefer’s quirky musical wit avoids Zappa’s often scabrous vulgarity.
Of the symphonic writing there are echoes of fin de siècle Vienna mingled with the opulence of French Impressionism, the scary atonalism of Gyorgy Ligeti and the extravagances of cinematic scores all stitched together with the shifting ostinati we associate with American minimalism. Within this melange of sounds which range from the soaring and powerful to the meditative and other worldly, space is made available for The Hildegard’s to make jazz noises and Schaerer to demonstrate his vocalisations which include falsetto leaps and guttural effects in the emulation of instrumental and percussive sounds. His `straight` singing is delivered in a light tenor alternating with bravura operatic episodes by way of which he conveys rather obscure lyrics of a symbolist nature. In one piece, `Wig Alert` he performs a mouth percussion dialogue with the Hildegard drummer and six of the orchestra’s percussionists to great effect whilst as a member of the core jazz group he uses his range of sounds to expand the tonal range which with the powerful presence of Reising’s stentorian baritone tends towards the darker registers.
The audio CD comes bundled with a DVD of the concert which is worth having given the physicality of Schaerer’s performance and the theatrical nature of the event and I would recommend viewing this before listening to the CD to gain a clearer impression of what is going on. For the adventurous and open minded listener there is certainly much to enjoy here and along with the whimsy there are passages of powerful, thought provoking music that will inspire further interest in this fascinating artist’s work.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
