18. Juni 2021

Lenzburg (CH) - Lenzburgiade Festival

LENZBURGIADE - Klassik und Folk International

Almost two years ago amazing violinist, teacher, multi-tasking wonder woman Fränzi Frick connected me with Trio Colores for this night at Festival Lenzburgiade and I had the opportunity to play with Fabian Ziegler, Luca Staffelbach und Matthias Kessler. Coming from different musical worlds we circled around different repertoire via WhatsApp and skypetalks throughout the year : ), til we landed on two songs from Händel, one Broadway-song by Harry O.Sutton sung by Judy Garland and one Impro-piece by mathias rüegg and me called „Gurnemanz & die Improtiere“ based on modal impro riffs inspired by the 70s : ). Luca took time and arranged all the songs for marimba, vibraphone and drums - and he based the arrangements of the two Händel Songs on the rüegg-arrangements of our Händel-album Sing My Soul, which made our first rehearsal the day before the concert as smooth as it gets : ). Thank you so much Luca for the great preparations and arrangements! I brought all I could find from eggshaker, to caxixis, bass flute, flute, tap shoes , melodica and I used it all : ) I was nervous, I’m always nervous but the unknown makes me especially nervous and to play a concert with someone I had never played with before was something that was completely new to me. Usually I work, practice, prepare, rehearse with mathias and our quintett intensely before we set out to play our repertoire. So to join, jump in and play the next day was something very exciting to me! Thank youuu amazing Trio Colores for this groooovyyy adventure!!! Check out their website and/or Instagram @triocoloresofficial - they are stunning! And thank you once more to Fränzi Frick and Oliver Schnyder for inviting me to this wonderful town and festival to sing, play and tap! Lenzburg is beautiful town with an amazing castle up, up on a hill. And the whole town is vibrating from the wonderful festival atmosphere! And though the past years I’ve been traveling regularly through Switzerland, it never stops to amaze with views, fresh air, woods, hills, mountains and incredible landscape all around. On the evening I arrived, after our first rehearsal I had the chance to catch the last encore of Insingizi, an amazing voice trio originally from Simbabwe and also from Vienna - the whole „Metzgplatz“ was vibrating with their musical energy! What a night! The next day we had soundcheck on a hot, hot afternoon but thanks to the amazing crew around the festival there was no rush and we were only sweating because of the heat and nothing else : ).

Trio Colores played an amazing first half til I joined with Händel’s Quand on Suit, followed by The Dream with a tap, drum solo - it took me forever to get into my tap shoes : ) but it was so much fun when I finally did! And then it was time for Improtiere - which was an absolute premiere for me and I was really nervous but when I started to let go, I couldn’t stop anymore - not even at Fabian’s solo - over which I kept on singing, shouting, playing…Fabian, Luca, Matthias thank youuuu! After our Impro we closed our set with I don’t care sung originally by Judy Garland from the movie „In the good old Summertime“. When mountains of percussion instruments are behind you, the energy boost coming from them is hard to describe : ) especially when Polka is involved too : )! Thank you to the wonderful audience at Metzgplatz - what a pleasure to be a part of this festival! Trio Colores played „Losa“ as an encore (here’s the link to this piece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pTcQRXjKrk ) and I snuck in a little flute and singing here and there and kept on going with an a cappella version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow…🌈 where when not there - underneath the sky on a warm summer’s night, when the thunderstorm that would cool the night was only minutes away.