Arriving in good time
During the festive season in December, traffic tends to get heavily congested in Ljubljana. Visitors are advised to leave home earlier than usual to avoid arriving late.
Christoph Irniger, tenor sax; Stefan Aeby, piano; Raffaele Bossard, bas; Michael Stulz, drums
Christoph Irniger, tenor saxophone / Stefan Aeby, piano / Dave Gisler, guitar / Raffaele Bossard, bass / Michi Stulz, drums
The airborne view of the Swiss Alps and the magical plateaux reflected on the surface of the vast lakes fascinates us over and over again, but the familiarity of the landscape is sure to touch a chord with us too. And that is probably also true of the music that comes from there. In recent days, the world has witnessed not only an emergence of notable Swiss pop artists, winning laurels at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, but the blossoming of other genres in this country of 8 million people. Jazz is one of them. The eminent teachers at Switzerland's many renowned conservatoires and universities are attracting scores of young prospective students, including Slovenian musicians. An alumnus of these prestigious seats of learning, the Zürich -based tenor saxophonist Christoph Irniger has been hailed by critics as one of the most promising musicians in contemporary Swiss jazz, and his Pilgrim quintet as one of the most exciting ensembles in young European jazz.
Before he entered the world of jazz Christoph Irniger worked in rock music, as leader of the prog-rock band Cowboys from Hell. He was a member of the Lucerne Jazz Orchestra for seven years, and took lessons from mentors such as Dave Liebman, Mark Turner and Ari Hoenig. He formed two bands, Pilgrim and the Christoph Irniger Trio, so far releasing seven albums (three on Intakt Records). A multi-award winning artist, he has played his original music on European, Asian and US stages. The Pilgrim members play in various other bands and have had the opportunity to work with jazz greats such as Dave Douglas, Christian Weber, Nasheet Waits and Joey Barone. Now passing on this knowledge and experience, Irniger teaches at University of the Arts and the Musikschule Konservatorium in Zürich. He initiated the concert series Jazz im Seefeld, co-founded the Jazzwerkstatt Zürich festival and is a member of the programming team of the Unerhört! festival.
“I do not see jazz as representing a particular sound or content, but as a way of making music. To me jazz is that music which always processes its time,” says Christoph Irniger who gets ideas for his original compositions from every style of music, and from life itself. His main inspirations are Lake Zürich, the mountains, his family, friends, a range of other art-forms and travelling – above all Berlin and New York, places where he further developed his musical potential and gained inspiration. Irniger places melody above everything else, even in dense, complex notated compositions, or within free jazz passages.
To mark their tenth anniversary last year, Pilgrim released their fifth album Ghost Cat on Intakt Records, proving once again that they use written compositions and themes merely as a gateway to other, free musical expanses.
»Jazz bolj kot določen zvok ali pa vsebino razumem kot način muziciranja. Bolj gre za to, kako igraš, kot za to, kaj igraš. Jazz je zame glasba, ki procesira svoj čas,« pravi Christoph Irniger, ki ideje za avtorske skladbe črpa iz drugih glasbenih slogov in življenja nasploh. Njegov glavni navdih so tako züriško jezero, gore, družina, prijatelji, vsa umetnost in potovanja – predvsem v Berlin in New York, kjer se je glasbeno izpopolnjeval in navdihoval. Melodija je vselej na prvem mestu, tudi v gostih, kompleksnih notiranih skladbah ali prosto improviziranih pasažah.
Ob desetletnici delovanja je zasedba Pilgrim lani pri založbi Intakt Records izdala svoj peti album Ghost Cat, v katerem znova dokazuje, da so spisane kompozicije in teme zanjo le vrata, ki vodijo v drug, svoboden glasbeni prostor.
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