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LP
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TROST 260LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/14/2025
In the new work Shlimazl by Swiss composer Michael Wertmüller, symphony orchestra and big band merge into a virtuoso, polymetric organism that not only transcends styles, but also a perceived linearity of time. In doing so, he explicitly takes up the rich tradition of the big band, and revitalizes it within the symphonic context under new auspices and allows it to take off. All the soloists act like a picture within a picture within the big band, which oscillates between musical nucleus, place of concentration and utopian space of freedom. Wertmüller illuminates the ambiguity of the Yiddish title "Shlimazl" ("mess") with the structuring phrases "Mazely Shlimazl" ("happiness and mess"). The stylistic carombole and the chaos of polyphony without uniformity harbor not only the overwhelming effect of apparent incompatibility but also the happiness of new possibilities for cooperation: from the power of contradiction and friction towards something that can neither be planned nor imagined. A model that creates the vision of a constructive way out in times of increasing incompatibility and hardening in the world. Shlimazl by Michael Wertmüller was a commissioned composition by Basel Sinfonietta and Ruhrtriennale.
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CD
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NEOS 41602CD
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Drummer and composer Michael Wertmüller has fulfilled a personal wish, namely to write a suite for an ensemble with an almost classic big band line-up. And the Bern University of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland, has provided the students, former students, time, and space, not to mention Lucas Niggli, the dazzling soloist on drums. Wertmüller is an in-demand composer of contemporary music and opera. He writes for large orchestras, small chamber music formations, various venues -- and now, at last, for a big band, too. Wertmüller: "I grew up with big band music, with swing, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and later Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. It's what we would often listen to at home, along with Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Bruckner; in other words, the whole classical-romantic apparatus. The idea of now finally writing a big band piece came with Lucas Niggli when I was fortunate enough to invite a number of musicians to a 'special' at Porgy & Bess in Vienna. . . . Why should swing in a well formed context played fantastically well be any less contemporary than a violin in so-called New Music? In fact, I see big band music as a terrific challenge to 'New Music', especially after the experiences we've had with our project. Given globalisation and the blending of styles that goes with it, it's not clear to me why there aren't more 'serious music' composers looking at big band settings; after all, there are plenty of jazz musicians working on string quartets."
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