Shadow Garden

It’s grey here and rain keeps falling. But it sure is the perfect weather for listening. 

Sarah Buechi’s brand new release Shadow Garden just got in, and when I read today’s NZZ, there was Manfred Papst’s review of Shadow Garden titling “Complex, free, spontaneous.” This captures the essence of this music so well, as do the fantastic liner notes by Bert Noglik. 

And where do I start? I’ve known Sarah for many years now, as she studied with me (and with my colleague Lauren Newton) at Lucerne music university where she completed her performance degree in 2007. She always had more questions than could be answered during class, she was so into it right from the start. My introducing a record of a collaboration between South Indian singer R. A. Ramamani and saxophone player Charlie Mariano to her during a lesson resulted in her studying with Ramamani for one year, and she not only transcribed one of Steve Coleman’s most complex solos for her exam but ended up studying with him in New York City later on. She wants to get to the bottom of things, and as you can imagine, this made teaching her such a joy. She’s a musician, a singing musician, one that uses her voice as a voice amongst the voices of her band members. And she’s a perfectionist, willing to go that extra mile if needed be, never opting for easy solutions to save effort or time, while keeping a sense of when to let go to be completely immersed in what she does. 

The trust Sarah expressed when asking me to be part of this recording was a precious gift to receive. Working in the studio with these wonderful musicians and searching for the perfect positioning of it all during the mixing process was a great privilege and made me realize once again just how much I love listening.

Try to catch one of the group’s concerts this fall. 

just released

just released

listening season

the perfect weather for listening

musicians!

musicians!

nice finding in today's NZZ

nice finding in today’s NZZ