ppIANISSIMO JAZZ
CONCERT OF
(Switzerland)
Jazz PORTRAIT OF
MAURICE RAVEL
(France)
Michael Arbenz – piano
Thomas Lähns – double bass
Florian Arbenz – drums
Prélude,
Forlan and Toccata
from the suite Le tombeau de Couperin (1914–17)
Blues from
the Violin Sonata No. 2
(1923–27)
Boarding the Beat (2016)
[original
composition by Florian Arbenz]
Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899)
Perpetuum
mobile from the Violin Sonata
No. 2 (1923–27)
Mouvement de menuet
from the Sonatine for Piano (1903–05)
5 O’Clock Foxtrot
from the opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (1917–25)
This concert has been made
possible
thanks to the generous
support of:
*
* *
The
Performers
“One of Europe’s most exciting ensembles”,
according to John Fordham (The Guardian),
VEIN Trio has established a brilliant reputation among jazz audiences for both
the stylistic diversity and technical accomplishment of its music. A vein is
both a vessel through which blood runs and a style of play: in a classical
vein, we say… in a humorous vein. And this embodies perfectly the attitude of
the Swiss trio VEIN – Michael Arbenz
(piano), Thomas Lähns (double bass) and Florian Arbenz (drums). VEIN carries the lifeblood of the jazz
tradition; it is also one of the most stylistically diverse and adaptable
ensembles.
Formed
in Basel more than a decade ago, VEIN
has released an album nearly every year since then, including two albums of
collaboration with superstar saxophonist Dave Liebman and a version of Porgy and Bess. Most recently, VEIN has begun to explore the musicians’
classical training more explicitly with such project as The Chamber Music Effect and VEIN
Plays Ravel.
VEIN’s music blends the
traditions of European classical chamber music with a dedication to jazz improvisation
at its most sophisticated. All three players have an extensive classical
education. The trio was born when the Arbenz brothers met bass player Thomas
Lähns, who also studied at the conservatory in Basel. With orchestral-standard
sight-reading and ability to play with the bow, Thomas gives VEIN an unusual degree of balance and
musical equality, in which all three players play a full musical part. “As a player with a full orchestral
technique, Thomas has a more important role than some bassists. He’s crucial in
holding me and Michael together,” says Florian Arbenz.
All
three members of VEIN used to perform
regularly with notable European classical ensembles, while their commitment to
the jazz tradition finds expression in the collaborations they have made over
the years with star veteran soloists. In addition to seriousness and
originality, VEIN is also known for
its humour, irony and flair. The 2013 album VOTE for VEIN was illustrated with a mock election poster and the
compositions included playful allusions to swing jazz, as well as passages of
superb straight-ahead improve which exhibit the band’s flawless technique
across all jazz traditions.
VEIN’s music is mostly
written by the Arbenz brothers, with contributions from Thomas Lähns. Michael’s
music is generally more composed and Florian’s pieces are freer and more
experimental. VEIN explores the
intriguing spaces between composition and improvisation, just as they do with
jazz history and tradition. Although nearly everything they play is composed or
adapted by a member of the band, sometimes working with familiar original music
can highlight the complexity of the adaptation and performance. “It’s helpful that audiences already know
Ravel’s melodies, because it makes it easier to appreciate the subtleties of
the composition,” suggests Thomas.
VEIN performs from 50 to 70
gigs a year, touring worldwide, yet still records regularly and is currently engaged
in several new projects with well-known European orchestras and big bands. For
many ensembles, the concept of a band that’s also a family is just an elaborate
metaphor, yet for VEIN it’s
biographical reality. All three members of the trio have musical parents or
grandparents and grew up in a house full of instruments. Drummer Florian Arbenz
and pianist Michael are twins. So the brothers have been engaged in improvised
music-making their whole lives. The band’s international audience continues to
increase, but the charm and privilege of being in an intimate musical space
remains.
(©
Daniel Infanger)
*
* *
Michael Arbenz (b. 1975) is a
classically-trained pianist and self-taught jazz performer. He brings the
passionate curiosity of his self-directed investigations in jazz to the rigour
of his classical performance practice. After studying classical piano in Basel,
his international classical career has included collaborations with Pierre
Boulez, Heinz Holliger, Jürg Wyttenbach and the Swiss new music ensemble Contrechamps.
Discovering a
love of jazz as a child, his self-guided exploration of both the techniques of
improvisation and the history of jazz was fresh and personal and his approach
to improvisation is multi-layered rather than linear, using the piano as an
orchestra. His jazz influences are very eclectic and include major jazz
pianists across the history of the music, as well as colours and ideas from
classical music.
Michael Arbenz has performed widely with the
acclaimed VEIN Trio and has collaborated with international stars including Greg
Osby, Glenn Ferris, Dave Liebman, Marc Johnson, Wolfgang Puschnig and Andy
Sheppard. He also works as a composer and arranger. In addition, he teaches in
the Jazz Department at the University of Lucerne.
(©
Daniel Infanger)
*
* *
Double bass
player Thomas Lähns (b. 1981) is a
highly distinguished performer of both classical music and jazz. He combines
the sophisticated bowing technique of the classical orchestra with the
spontaneity of the jazz ensemble. His classical performances include
appearances with Heinz Holliger and Peter Eötvös at the Salzburg Festival and
Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, as well as regular classical solo
performances across Europe and South America. He is one of the few players to
perform Hans Werner Henze’s Concerto for Double Bass.
As a teenager
his first musical ambition was to play electric bass, inspired by a love of Iron Maiden, until he fell in love with
jazz and learnt the double bass. He studied classical music in Basel with
Wolfgang Güttler and Botond Kostyak and took masterclasses with Marc Dresser.
Thomas Lähns is much in demand on the jazz
scene, playing in over 100 jazz gigs a year. As co-leader of VEIN Trio, he makes guest appearances
with artists including Christoph Stiefel, Johannes Mössinger and the Swiss klezmer quintet Kolsimcha.
His approach is in the tradition of Scott LaFaro, Richard Davis, Miroslav Vitouš
and especially the great exponents of jazz bowing such as Slam Stewart and
Major Holley.
(©
Daniel Infanger)
*
* *
Florian Arbenz (b. 1975) is one of
Europe’s most versatile and accomplished drummers. He has an unsurpassed jazz
pedigree with the acclaimed Swiss ensemble VEIN
Trio.
He got to know
jazz through acquaintances such as Kirk Lightsey and Famadou Don Moye. He
studied with Ed Thigpen and Steve Smith. He is also a classically trained
percussionist, with extensive international orchestral experience and has
performed with Peter Eötvös, György Kurtag and Christoph von Dohnanyi, among
others. As a student, he spent six months at Cuba’s University of the Arts and
has maintained an active interest in the international scene ever since,
incorporating elements from Asian technique, as well as Afro-Cuban, in his own
playing.
Florian Arbenz
follows the careers of cutting-edge practitioners such as Chris Dave and Eric
Harland very closely and hones his own technique with a similarly innovative
focus.
(©
Marin Wolf)
*
* *
The Composer
Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937) is a French composer of
Swiss-Basque descent. His family background was an artistic and cultivated one
and the young Maurice received every encouragement from his father when his
talent for music became apparent at an early age. In 1889, at 14, he entered
the Paris Conservatoire, where he remained until 1905. During this period, he
composed some of his best-known works, including the Pavane pour une infante défunte,
the Sonatine for piano and the String Quartet.
All these works, especially the two latter, show the astonishing early
perfection of style and craftsmanship that are the hallmarks of Ravel’s entire
oeuvre. He is one of the rare composers whose early works seem scarcely less
mature than those of his maturity. Indeed, his failure at the Conservatoire,
after three attempts, to win the coveted Prix
de Rome for composition (the works he submitted were judged too “advanced”
by ultraconservative members of the jury) caused something of a scandal. Indignant
protests were published and liberal-minded musicians and writers, including the
musicologist and novelist Romain Rolland, supported Ravel. As a result, the
director of the Conservatoire, Théodore Dubois, was forced to resign and his
place was taken by the composer Gabriel Fauré, with whom Ravel had studied
composition.
Ravel
enriched the literature of the piano by a series of masterworks, ranging from
the early Jeux d’eau
(1901) and the Miroirs
(1905) to the formidable Gaspard
de la nuit (1908), Le
Tombeau de Couperin (1917) and the two piano concerti (1931). Of
his purely orchestral works, the Rapsodie
espagnole and Boléro are the best known and reveal his consummate
mastery of the art of instrumentation. But perhaps the highlight of his career was
his collaboration with the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev, for whose Ballets Russes he composed the
masterpiece Daphnis et Chloé.
His best-known opera is L’enfant
et les sortilèges and his only other operatic
venture had been his brilliantly satirical L’heure
espagnole. As a songwriter Ravel achieved great distinction with
his imaginative Histoires
naturelles, Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé and Chansons madécasses.
In
1928, Ravel embarked on a four months’ tour of Canada and the United States and
in the same year visited England to receive an honorary degree of doctor of
music from Oxford. That year also saw the creation of Boléro in its original form
as a ballet, with Ida Rubinstein in the principal role.
The
last five years of Ravel’s life were clouded by aphasia, which not only
prevented him from writing another note of music but also deprived him of the
power of speech and made it impossible for him even to sign his name. An
operation to relieve the obstruction of a blood vessel that supplies the brain
was unsuccessful.
Maurice
Ravel was among the most significant and influential composers of the early
20th century. Although he is frequently linked with Claude Debussy as an
exemplar of musical impressionism and some of their works have a surface
resemblance, Ravel possessed an independent voice that grew out of his love of
a broad variety of styles, including the French Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Chopin,
Spanish folk traditions and American jazz and blues. His body of work was not
large in comparison with that of some of his contemporaries, but his
compositions are notable for being meticulously and exquisitely crafted. He was
especially gifted as an orchestrator, an area in which one can argue he remains
unsurpassed.
The Programme
After exploring ideas
from classical music on their last album The
Chamber Music Effect, the innovative VEIN
Trio continues to resolutely pursue this path with their latest production VEIN plays RAVEL – a collection of
compositions by French composer Maurice Ravel.
Maurice Ravel was an
obvious choice for VEIN Trio.
Although the composer, who was arguably one of the most enigmatic figures of
classical music, lived over 100 years ago, his compositions share a lot of
common ground with VEIN’s soundscape. Ravel lived in an era
during which representational tradition transitioned into abstract modernity.
The Swiss trio finds itself in a similar situation: breaking new ground with
its music without rejecting the traditional values of jazz. Likewise,
Ravel helped himself to many styles of music for his compositions, including Baroque,
Spanish music and jazz. VEIN’s
influences are similarly multifaceted. The underlying idea of VEIN plays RAVEL was to use select
pieces by Maurice Ravel as a template, translate them into VEIN-esque musical language and thereby repeat Ravel’s approach
some 100 years later.
VEIN chose very diverse compositions for which Maurice Ravel used various stylistic
models. For example, three pieces from the suite Le tombeau de Couperin, in which Ravel refers to Baroque music, or
the Blues taken from Violin Sonata No. 2, and the 5 O’Clock Foxtrot from the opera L’enfant et les sortilèges, for which Ravel used sounds from jazz
and the salon music of the time.
Just as Maurice Ravel
helped himself with different styles of music and translated them into his
musical world, VEIN Trio draws its
inspiration from Ravel and has added new elements like grooves and
improvisations, thus creating a sound that is unmistakably VEIN yet constantly resonates Ravel’s spirit.
VEIN Trio
(© Ksenya Lim)