ereignisfeld

Cologne's prominent figures lined up for "Ereignisfeld"

In his composition Ereignisfeld Thomas Witzmann, a champion of jazz and avantgarde with an inclination to dry humour, unfolds a series of juicy scenes, including the acoustic colourfulness of squeaking balloons, birds' twitterings, Rommelpötten, percussion, and wind instruments, the performance of which is playful and masterly, whereas the assertion of its subject remains interchangeable, indeed.

Commissioned by the festival "Aktive Musik" for the rotunda of Dortmund's Museum of Art and Cultural History, the composition speads during 70 minutes across the stairs and galleries, the niches and small salons of the formerly manorial hall. Improvisations as well as stringent patterns, meditative rituals as well as the collective exemption of inhibitions set up a schedule for minute scenes, from bubbling brass at the beginning to an acoustic panorama of the jungle.

The names of the twelve musicians, by the way, read like the "who's who" of the Cologne set of the musical avantgarde. The percussionist Frank Köllges showing the mien of a spoil-sport was allowed to toy with a wireless and to beat his drum in a single line with his colleague Manos Tsangaris.

The flute player Camilla Hoitenga and the saxophone player Frank Gratkowski supplied brilliant intermezzos, the jazz musician Rainer Winterschladen furnished a trumpet-solo reminiscent of a will-o'-the-wisp, and at the end a joint blues shook the scene.