June 12, 2010

Schneeweiß und Rosenrot live at Moers Festival 2010

(again I cannot provide a good photo - but the festival site can)

Another talented young group presented in Moers, Schneeweiss und Rosenrot, expressedly not referring to the Grimm brothers fairy tale. The line-up looks like a piano trio plus vocals, but they're not sailing in these waters. They're rather a pop group that knows about jazz than a jazz group that knows about pop. They're a broken pop group, though. They dare to lean out of the window, go atonal - or at least dissonant - for short moments. In these moments I imagine Irène Schweizer might have played like that if she had become a pop musician. But as I said, that's the short moments. For the longer moments they're somewhere in the realm of the latest Bad Plus album with singer Wendy Lewis, plus some very dreamy chamber-like moments, plus some occasional Brian Viglione-like rockout from the drummer. A nice mixture, indeed. And I agree with Josef Woodard of the Santa Barbara Chronicle: the pianist Johanna Borchert was the element that made the whole group something special. Quote: "nimble, new-sounding pianist Johanna Borchert (with the tart, fresh and alluring art-pop-jazz band Schneeweiss und Rosenrot)". Another positive point was the fact that Schneeweiss & Rosenrot had the most interesting picture projections on the curtains at the back-wall of the stage. They went very well with the mood of the music.

1 comment:

ayu1234 said...

hmm, I remember that you have asked me if this group reminded me of Six Pence Non the Richer, which I liked for a period. Somehow, I still think that Six Pence is better, in the sense of expressing the spoiled mind of the metropolitan pretty bourgeois.

But sure, comparing with the female singer in one of the morning session, this group is so much better and only demonstrated a little bit of their shallow/hollow mind.