Plushmusic3 Festival - 6-9 October, Cologne

For the third year running Hayden Chisholm will curate a festival at the Loft in Cologne with a program featuring an eclectic mix of some of the world’s finest improvisers. This year the Austrian pianist Philip Zoubek will be featured in radically different settings and the spirit of the Plushmusic series will continue with unusual formations and music cutting across genres.

Featuring some of the finest improvisers and musicians from Cologne and further afield, this promises to be as an incredible tour of the new musical landscape as we have come to expect from Hayden and the Loft.

6th October 2011 - 8pm
Michael Moore – clarinet & alto saxophone, Paul Lovens – drums
Michael Moore and Paul Lovens are without doubt two of Europe’s most important improvisors. Both of them are profoundly uncompromising in their music and have been featured in numerous now legendary formations (think Schlippenbach Trio or Trio Clusone). Moore’s own label Ramboy has continued to release the finest of improvised music. This is a highly anticipated meeting of two veritable lions who  play for the first time tonight as a duo.

Philip Zoubek – piano, Michael Moore – clarinet & alto saxophone, Franz Hautzinger – trumpet
Franz Hautzinger has over the years developed an extremely personal language for the trumpet with his use of air sounds, microtones, and a fine attention to form. Zoubek’s music also contains an extreme attention to timbre and so we can expect a work of austere elegance tonight. The two Austrians will be joined by none other than Michael Moore in this premiere. All of these musicians have succeeded in marrying the spirit of jazz and improvisation with the subtile sound worlds of new and ethnic musics.

7th October 2011 - 8pm
Zoran Dukic - guitar
In the strange and secluded world of Classical guitar, Zoran Dukic is considered one of the living greats. After winning virtually every possible competition on planet earth he has continued to champion new works for the instrument and will tonight perform new works from the Balkans, his place of origin. It will be his first concert in Cologne in over a decade.

Philip Zoubek – piano, Marcus Schmickler – electronics, Hayden Chisholm – alto saxophone.
Hayden Chisholm and Marcus Schmickler have been pivotal in the Cologne music scene for some time now and have worked together in numerous formations. Their debut duo recording on Haepna “Amazing Daze” was met with critical acclaim and they continue to push the boundaries of acoustic-electric forms. Both of them share a fascination with mathematics in music and using numbers to forge new forms. Both of them enjoy martial arts, Schmickler Karate, and Chisholm Taiji. Tonight their respective hard and soft art forms meet up with Zoubek for the first time and we can expect a soundcloud full of austere beauty and surprises.

8th October 2011 - 8pm
Franz Hautzinger’s “Third Eye”
Franz Hautzinger – trumpet, Hayden Chisholm – alto saxophone, Hilary Jefferey – trombone, Christian Weber – bass, Achim Krämer - drums
Tonightʼs formation is a variation on the one which was the highlight of the Saalfelden festival 2010 and since been broadcast worldwide to critical acclaim. The finely interwoven brass lines utilizing the microtonal skills of the winds which sail over the rhythmic fireworks from behind. The three wind players became familiar as the wind section of acclaimed ensemble “Zeitkratzer” and in this project Hautzinger has united the horns in a more jazz-based group- a kind of homecoming to his roots after many years of concentration on solo trumpet and pure improvisation.

Philip Zoubek – prepared piano
The Solo piano music of Philip Zoubek reveals the artist at his purest. With nothing but a piano and a host of objects Zoubek creates fascinating sound worlds and complex structures. He brings to his solo work a deep aura of composed concentration and the music is given ample time to unfold on it’s own. Every performance is different; this is not a musician to fall back on licks he has practised and he possesses an astounding ability to retain the larger form in his head whilst delving into the minutest of details inside the piano, forging new structures with every performance.