Karl Wilhelm Krbavac and Friends

A living legend, a rolling composer's cornerstone and one of Austria's first and most important free jazz musicians: Karl Wilhelm Krbavac. Blueste from the 1970s with the US originals as Small Blues Charlie and earned respect until he realised in 1978 that he no longer wanted to earn money with black music. He had a solid conservatory education, as it were, and learnt a lot from old music, in which, according to Krbavac, you can't cheat. Then the "Sunrise" by Webern and Josef Matthias Hauer. "Reduction to the essentials, no frippery." Krbavac founded and led the Zwölfton Ensemble Vienna with the realisation: "If I can mess around in other cultures, I can probably do it in my own." He drew his residual energy from the liberation of jazz: as co-founder of the Vienna Art Orchestra and, since 1991, with the Reform Art Unit, one of the longest-serving free jazz orchestras in the world alongside the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Only there does he still play collective music, otherwise Krbavac consistently makes music solo as the founder and sole member of his solo orchestra, as a "composer, sound engineer, arranger, felon. Life-threatening - and with enormous quality!" laughs the man who finds the lack of humour in avant-garde music frightening. (vnm.mur.at)

Program and cast

Karl Wilhelm Krbavac: viola da gamba
Clemens Salesny: reeds
Woody Schabata: mallets
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: violin
Lena Fankhauser: viola
Maiken Beer: cello
Raphael Preuschl: bass
Niki Dolp: drums