A Jon Rose / Paolo Angeli duet at Moers Festival 2010

That was breathtaking! The concert conditions were not ideal for us - only because we were too stupid to go up to the gallery and watch down on the musicians, but sat down on a normal bench in the main nave of the church. So we didn't see much of what Angeli and Rose were doing. (Just like you wouldn't see much from our as usual very blurred photos.) But what we heard them doing was terrific. The one-hour set was containing two duo improvisations and one solo of Jon Rose - rightly called a teufelsgeiger by Lutz Eitel. He also described the instrument better than I could because he obviously has seen more - I wasn't even aware of the foot pedals which couldn't be seen from my point of view. However, I certainly recognized the mechanical appliance for plucking the strings, that way doubling the hands of Mr. Angeli. This guitar/cello was becoming a kind of modern orchestrion, mostly used by Angeli for creating dense soundscapes and unusual noises. I've heard a few Jon Rose recordings that left me relatively unimpressed. I was very much looking forward to hearing him live, because I knew he's a great musician and a live contect can open up ways of musical understanding that a record can't. And it really worked as expected. The concert has opened my eyes concerning how he creates sounds but that wouldn't be enough. It also gave me an idea about why he creates sounds - though I couldn't put this idea into words yet. The improvisational interplay between the two (who had announced that they hadn't played together for 17 years) was great and in his solo piece Jon Rose proved to be a wonderful story-teller. This concert was another highlight of the whole festival - it is quite interesting that many of my favorite concerts were taking place in smaller settings, not on the main stage.