Pago Libre

The Russian horn and Alpine horn world champion Arkady Shilkloper, the creative Viennese violinist Tscho Theissing, the equally technically brilliant and funny double bassist Tom Götze from Dresden, and the Irish-Swiss pianist John Wolf Brennan, come together to make Pago Libre, one of the most virtuoso, but surely also the most original chamber music quartet in European jazz.

John Wolf Brennan
The “piano poet” (NZZ on Sunday) was born in 1954 in Dublin, Ireland. His studies guided him through the University of Music in Lucerne, to Dub-lin, Berlin and New York. Today he lives in Central Switzerland and from there he works internationally as a pianist and composer. Brennan is renowned for his precision, creativity and speed in switching between genres and formation, but in particular for his literary inspired, poetical, pianist excursions. For his complete works up to now Brennan was acknowledged in 2008 with the UBS Recognition prize. In 2009 his newest solo piano work THE SPEED OF DARK was released. In spring 2010 the Museum of Art in Lucerne in the Culture and Congress Centre Lucerne displayed the video and sound installation INNER & OUTER SPACES, which he created together with Susanne Hofer.

Arkady Shilkloper
was born in 1956 in Moscow. At the age of six years he took his first wind instrument lesson. He studied Flugelhorn at the Moscow Military Academy of Music and was a member of the orchestra at the Bolshoi theatre and the Bolshoi brass quintet from 1978 to 1985. He acted as a member of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1989. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he has worked as a solo artist and since 1991 appeared on stage together with Mikhail Alperin and Sergey Starostin in the Moscow Art Trio. Worldwide involvement as a solo artists and as a teacher for wind instrument workshops and symposiums. Working together with various well-known musicians and orchestras – the Vienna Art Orchestra, Pierre Fauvre's singing dreams and Luis Sclavis amongst others.

Tscho Theissing
Born in Salzburg /Austria. Studied violin at Mozar-teum Salzburg and the Musikhochschule Graz (University of Music, Graz), alongside jazz and musicology studies. Lives in Vienna, where he plays first violin in the Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper. Since 1977, continually works in the area of improvisation, jazz and contemporary music. Co-founder of “Vögel Europas” (Birds of Europe) and the “Motus Quartet” (Jazz string quartet). Composes and arranges for the gala evenings and CD/DVD productions by Michael Heltau.

Tom Götze
Tom Götze, born in 1968 in Dresden, studied bass guitar and double bass at the University of Music in Dresden from 1984 to 1990. Since his study trip to the USA (New York / Los Angeles) in 1992 / 93, he has worked as a freelance musician in the styles jazz, rock, pop and classical, as well as a theatre musician. Furthermore, as a founding member of the Dresden Symphony Orchestra, he is regularly also involved in their projects, also as a soloist. Guest performances and tours have taken him to Canada, Scandinavia, England, Spain, Italy, Austria, Russia, China, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

Priska Walss, Nick Gutersohn and Robert Morgen-thaler have been sounding out new directions and forms of expression with alphorn playing in their trio “Zürihorn” for more than a decade. They incorporate their many years of different experiences in African music, classical music, free improvisation and jazz into new pieces that have emerged from playing music together. Their new CD “Wanderlust” came out in 2011.

Priska Walss
Born in Zurich, Priska Walss studied at the Music Conservatory in her home town and was a member of the Graubünden Chamber Philharmonic for more than ten years. Besides this, she has impro-vised as a trombonist and alphorn soloist and in established ensembles. Alongside jazz festivals in major European cities and Switzerland she has also performed with different theatre, musical and ballet productions and developed her own projects, in which she combines her music with visual forms of expression and text. As part of her diverse range of jobs, Priska Walss has been significantly involved in the discovery and establishment of the alphorn in experimental music over the last two decades.

Nick Gutersohn
He grew up in the Zurich Oberland, studied the trombone at Zurich Music Conservatory and the Swiss Jazz School in Bern. Nick Gutersohn is at home with improvised chamber music. He has been constantly working with the same groups for several years and composes and arranges his own music and other pieces. In addition, he performs as a guest with other groups time and again and tours with performances in Germany, France, Italy and the USA.

Robert Morgenthaler
Robert Morgenthaler studied at Zurich Music Conservatory and the Swiss Jazz School. He has been a lecturer at the Bern University of the Arts HKB and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 1979. His international work as a trombonist and composer has taken him on tours in Europe, Africa, the USA, Asia and Russia. Besides collaborating on different radio, TV and CD produc-tions, Robert Morgenthaler also performed at the World Exhibition 2000 in Hannover as a soloist in the Swiss Pavilion and received a composition commis-sion in 2002 for the opening of Expo 02 in Murten with “Roots of Communication” and Erika Stucky.

Alchemy of sounds

Silence. Then, from the stage, a quiet rubbing, soft stroking, gentle scraping. Noise becomes tone, becomes rhythm and finally vibration and sonority. Full, organ-like base tones accompany the melodious play of the lithophone and flutes. Stone bowls sound in rock-grey harmony. The hands of the musicians glide sensitively and consciously over the smooth ground stone surfaces, let the drumsticks fly swiftly over the lithophone or guide sticks, listening and murmuring, along rough edges of the stone plate. The room is full of circu-lating sounds and flowing rhythms, full of beats and vibrations that you can almost reach out and touch.

Beat Weyeneth makes music with stones: by touching, moving and tapping them. He found the serpentine in a Valtelline quarry, the basalt comes from Mauretania, he found the phonolite somewhere in the Massif Central, rolled it into the valley, transported it to Emmental with the trailer, one of them was just lightly hewn, the other cut to shape, the third ground and polished – until they became an instrument: a lithophone or a singing bowl, or a stone bell. He also builds the wooden gong drum, the claves, the tongue xylophone and the bowed harp, the Fujara and the Douss’m-Gouri himself. And from all of them, the stones and flutes, harps and gongs, drums and cymbals, he elicits tones that come from far away – and go straight to the heart.

Beat Weyeneth
(*1959) completed vocational training to become a joiner, and at the same time learnt how to build guitars. Up until he built up his own workshop, he honed his skills in instrument building workshops and a school for sculptors. In various further edu-cation courses in singing, drums, guitar and other instruments, he refined his musical abilities. Since 1986, Beat Weyeneth has run his own instrument building workshop. At the beginning, he developed various wooden sound instruments, bowed psalteries and harps, and a first lithophone. Since 2011, he has concentrated his research and creation on the development of instruments made of sound stones. At the moment, he is experi-menting with Vals quartzite from the Truffer quarry in Vals.

Invitation to the stone sound studio of Beat Weyeneth

Beat Weyeneth gives an insight into his work with stone instruments. He explains his development path, from the initial search for sounding stones, building the first lithophone to the chromatically tuned “steinwey”. The explanations are vividly accompanied by examples of sounds. The artist provides some stone instruments for interested individuals to try. Stone instruments: orgalitho (organ stone fan), large sounding stone, stone bowl, two-post instrument on a soundboard, double-rowed litho-phone.

Beat Weyeneth makes music with stones: by touching, moving and tapping them. He found the serpentine in a Valtelline quarry, the basalt comes from Mauretania, he found the phonolite somewhere in the Massif Central, rolled it into the valley, transported it to Emmental with the trailer, one of them was just lightly hewn, the other cut to shape, the third ground and polished – until they became an instrument: a lithophone or a singing bowl, or a stone bell. He also builds the wooden gong drum, the claves, the tongue xylophone and the bowed harp, the Fujara and the Douss’m-Gouri himself. And from all of them, the stones and flutes, harps and gongs, drums and cymbals, he elicits tones that come from far away – and go straight to the heart.

Beat Weyeneth (*1959) completed vocational training to become a joiner, and at the same time learnt how to build guitars. Up until he built up his own workshop, he honed his skills in instrument building workshops and a school for sculptors. In various further edu-cation courses in singing, drums, guitar and other instruments, he refined his musical abilities. Since 1986, Beat Weyeneth has run his own instrument building workshop. At the beginning, he developed various wooden sound instruments, bowed psalteries and harps, and a first lithophone. Since 2011, he has concentrated his research and creation on the development of instruments made of sound stones. At the moment, he is experi-menting with Vals quartzite from the Truffer quarry in Vals.

Felix Krull, the son of a bankrupt sparkling wine producer from the Rhine valley is a dreamer, fantasist and upper class good for nothing, who profoundly senses the illusory nature of the world and life and aims to style himself into a kind of illusion of life right from the start. He feels that he is favoured and advantaged by nature but he is not according to his class. He corrects this unjust accident using deceit which comes very easy to him with his charm. In love with the world but without being able to serve it in a bourgeoisie way, he strives to make the world fall in love with him. Volker Ranisch traces Thomas Mann‘s exalted art of language with this solo evening. By slipping into the role of the first person narrator Felix Krull, he brings to life the illustrious soc-iety in the novel with its numerous characters by speaking freely in front of his audience and at the same time gives a vivid impression of the author‘s excellent wit.

Volker Ranisch
enters the production as the protagonist in free speech before his audience, and lets the cha-racters of the story and, above all, their manifold deceitful relationships emerge for the enjoyment of the spectators in a sort of mind movie. In this way, he opens up a rich world which is fascinating in its topicality and timelessness because it plays with human desire for small and large crimes. Volker Ranisch was born in 1966 and completed his theatre studies at the “Hans Otto” Drama School in Leipzig between 1986– 90. He has been continuously working on different theatre pro-ductions, feature films and television films since 1988, including jobs at the Schauspielhaus Leip-zig, Deutsche Theater Berlin and Schauspielhaus Zürich. He regularly performed as an ensemble member and guest actor at the Theater im Palais in Berlin for eight years. He has been working independently on texts and compositions for the stage and directing musical theatre and plays since 1999.

The two young, virtuoso musicians present pieces from Erwin Schulhoff's duo for violin and cello, Bohuslav Martinus Duo No. 1, Arthur Honegger's Sonatine, studded with classics and bohemian pieces.

Daniela Oswald
Was born in 1979 in Zurich. Even at a young age, she won various prizes at the Schweizer Jugend-musikwettbewerb (Swiss Youth Music Competition), including a first prize with distinction with her piano trio at the time. Chamber music remained her central passion even in the following years of studies. From 1996–2000, she studied at the Musik-hochschule Zürich and also in Lucerne with Marek Jerie until 2005. Daniela Oswald plays in numerous orchestras in Switzerland and abroad as a substitute, and is a member of several chamber music formations.

Malwina Sosnowski
This young violinist comes from Basel and studied at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music Phila-delphia, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in 2009. At the Bern School of Arts, she was then a student of the Austrian star violinist Benjamin Schmid for 2 years. In July 2011, at the age of just 25,she was awarded the soloist degree with dis-tinction and the advancement award of the “Eduard Tschumi Stiftung”. Malwina Sosnowski has already appeared as a soloist with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, as well as on Swiss radio and television. She has mastered a large repertoire of well-known violin pieces with symphony and chamber orchestras. Her great interest and dedication, however, is for new discoveries from the romantic, classical and modern era.

There are some magical pieces of chamber music from Schumann, some of them completely unk-nown by the audience; but the two sister pieces piano quintet and quartet were very popular, both composed in 1842. The quartet as a darker, more secretive, most struck a chord with the composer; the piano removes itself from its dominant position and embeds itself in the string sound, and so this poetic, subtle character emerges. In 1785, the century before, Mozart wrote this piano quartet in G minor, once again the sibling of the many layered E-flat major quartet. Mozart's in-genuity created a work full of heaviness, depth and passion, with opera-like ideas, so that it became a favourite of the listeners.

Riccardo Bovino
Born in Turin (Italy), studied piano initially in his hometown and completed his studies in Basel. His preference for chamber music and singing, at the same time as an intensive soloist role, brought him together with numerous renowned. He gave concerts in important concert halls, including the Tonhalle Zürich and the Wigmore Hall London, and guested at numerous renowned festivals. From 2004–2007, Riccardo Bovino studied as a conductor with Dennis Russel Davies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Apart from his intensive role as a soloist and chamber music partner, he is particularly inte-rested in leading various ensembles and orchestras, and spreading contemporary music.

Daniela Oswald
Was born in 1979 in Zurich. Even at a young age, she won various prizes at the Schweizer Jugend-musikwettbewerb (Swiss Youth Music Competition), including a first prize with distinction with her piano trio at the time. Chamber music remained her central passion even in the following years of studies. From 1996–2000, she studied at the Musik-hochschule Zürich and also in Lucerne with Marek Jerie until 2005. Daniela Oswald plays in numerous orchestras in Switzerland and abroad as a substitute, and is a member of several chamber music formations.

Malwina Sosnowski
This young violinist comes from Basel and studied at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music Phila-delphia, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in 2009. At the Bern School of Arts, she was then a student of the Austrian star violinist Benjamin Schmid for 2 years. In July 2011, at the age of just 25,she was awarded the soloist degree with dis-tinction and the advancement award of the “Eduard Tschumi Stiftung”. Malwina Sosnowski has already appeared as a soloist with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, as well as on Swiss radio and television. She has mastered a large repertoire of well-known violin pieces with symphony and chamber orchestras. Her great interest and dedication, however, is for new discoveries from the romantic, classical and modern era.

Veit Hertenstein
The viola player Veit Hertenstein is a winner of the first prize of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions 2011. He was born in 1985 in Augsburg and started to play the violin and the piano at the age of five, and changed to viola at 15. When he was 19, he studied with Nicolas Corti at the Zurich Uni-versity of the Arts. In 2009, he acquired the soloist degree at the Haute École de Musique in Geneva where he worked with the viola player Nobuko Imai and Miguel da Silva. Apart from his extensive work as a soloist, Veit Hertenstein also won numerous important competitions. In 2009, for example, he was the first viola player ever to win the New Talent Competition of the European Broadcasting Union, founded by Sir Yehudi Menuhin in 1969. Since August 2011, Veit Hertenstein has been solo viola player for the Basel Symphony Orchestra. He plays a viola made by David Tecchler, Rome 1701.