Carte Blanche
Roberto Domeniconi
Hans Koch Solo
Experimental
Carte Blanche: Roberto Domeniconi
Roberto Domeniconi is one of the nine artists who have received a Carte Blanche from Moods for the 24/25 season. The Carte Blanche is awarded to outstanding musicians on the Swiss jazz scene and gives them the opportunity to develop their current musical work and try out new things. Roberto Domeniconi tells us what you can hear on his evenings and how they reflect his work as a pianist and musician.
«Es geht darum, den Nerv der Musik zu erwischen. »
"All these groups operate in completely different worlds. They all play freely, but the music they create is always completely different." Roberto Domeniconi explains that each line-up gathers its own experiences and thus acquires its own identity and aesthetic. "I always try to play without imitating anyone, to find my own way of solving musical problems... Yes, sometimes it happens that you repeat yourself, but I try to avoid that. It's not as simple as playing Lego, where you have 50 bricks or ideas in your head and you can put them together at will. It's about capturing a mood or a moment, keeping it or developing it.""Music is free only up to the first note. After that it is no longer free. Because that note already has a mood, a length and a pitch. It is already set. The possibilities are already limited." Roberto Domeniconi warns that you can't just play a piece or a solo that you like, otherwise the music will fall apart. "Then, the music is not created in the moment. It's about finding the nerve of the music. That's the challenge. The essence."
"You need a collective understanding of the form, the sound, what the music needs - and what it doesn't need," explains Roberto Domeniconi. This demands an enormous amount of attention from the musicians.Does all this still sound too abstract? The effect of such approaches on different combinations of musicians and different degrees of composition can, of course, be experienced live at the Carte Blanche concerts!22.04.2025: Hans Koch Solo
Roberto Domeniconi and Hans Koch have known each other for 30 years, having met in Schaffhausen. Originally they played as a duo, Roberto on synthesiser and electronics, Hans Koch on reeds. For him, Roberto is a "role model for musical consistency, i.e. for seeking independent musical paths and consistently insisting on one's own ideas – and yet remaining open". Koch is an orchestral musician, clarinettist and saxophonist, "and an extremely creative improviser", says Domeniconi. He is then referring to the month that the legendary Koch-Schütz-Studer trio (with Martin Schütz on cello and Fredy Studer on drums) spent in the metalworking shop in Nenningen, where they played an improvised concert every evening. Not repeating themselves for thirty days was a huge challenge, says Domeniconi. The result was Peter Liechti's documentary '30 Days in Zurich'.
Hans Koch was also the conductor of Der Grosse Bär for a short time. The combination on this evening is all the more fitting!
22.04.2025: Der Grosse Bär
The Great Bear is much bigger than you think! Thanks to the band's long history, there's also a lot to tell about it...Der Grosse Bär (at first it was still called 'Big Bear') is actually a big band made up of improv musicians. "We're actually a group made up of different people, some who don't play much freely, some who only play freely. Something in between. So quite different musical worlds came together and it was a challenge to bring them together."It all began in 2011 at Bazillus with pieces composed by Peter Landis, Flo Götte and Roberto Domeniconi, which contained many open improvisation parts. Composition and improvisation were intended to function independently alongside and with each other. Gradually, they began to improvise more and more and gain experience as a collective. At first there were still plans, but later the processes became completely free. "What interests me most is when you create something together in a collective that has a form and that you could have written out [as a score]. That would be the ideal case, that it just works out. In that sense, we always want to play pieces without knowing which piece it is. You could call it 'instant composing'."After the Bazillus closed, the bear moved on to the Klubi and now lives in Pablo Assandri's institute. During the pandemic, Der Grosse Bär visited Moods for a three-day residency followed by a stream, which you can watch here:
27.04.2025: Le String Blö
Bandleaders and composers Sebastian Strinning and Lino Blöchlinger met at the Lucerne School of Music and began their musical collaboration as a duo in 2015. This led to the vision of creating their own compositions with plenty of room for improvisation. When the duo became a quintet, Roberto Domeniconi was part of it from the beginning, originally together with Christian Weber and Emanuel Künzi, and now with Urban Lienert and Reto Eisenring. It is a dense, heavy sound, peppered with introspective, quiet moments.
28.04.2025: Jan Schlegel Solo
Jan Schlegel and Roberto Domeniconi have also known each other for a long time, but only recently started playing together. I think he's a luminary in improvised music! From jazz to rock to noise - Schlegel is known from the Legfek Trio with Peter Landis and Urs Blöchlinger, for example, or from Gabriela Friedli's 'Objets trouvés' with Co Streiff and Dieter Ulrich. A few years ago, the bassist also turned to the oud, the Arabic lute, but has rarely played it in public. This solo set is therefore a small premiere.
28.04.2025: Weber–Künzi–Domeniconi
In improvised music you listen a lot and listen carefully. It may be easy to play, but good, deep trust should not be underestimated. You can hear and feel this in this trio. Piano, bass and drums – acoustic, fresh and full of energy.
Roberto Domeniconis Carte Blanche
Carte Blanche
Roberto Domeniconi
Der Grosse Bär
ExperimentalJazzExperimental Jazz
Carte Blanche
Roberto Domeniconi
Le String Blö
JazzExperimental JazzContemporary Jazz
Carte Blanche
Roberto Domeniconi
Jan Schlegel Solo
JazzExperimental
Carte Blanche
Roberto Domeniconi
Weber–Künzi–Domeniconi
JazzContemporary Jazz
