Chortrommel

Chortrommel – the title (lit., “Choirdrum”) evokes the idea of a hybrid creature: half-human and half-instrument. And this hybrid creature has been brought to life by the Swiss percussionist and composer Fritz Hauser. For the first concert of his Lucerne retrospective as composer-in-residence, he combines 12 vocal soloists from the Basler Madrigalisten with the large-scale contrapunkt chor from Muttenz and a percussion trio. Out of this archaic combination of voice and percussion, there emerges a nearly 100-member ensemble, a giant mobile instrument. Hauser has selected eight composers to write works for this unusual scoring, each lasting four to seven minutes. He will join them together with some musical transitions of his own and with choreographic elements, a spatial concept, and lighting design to create an organically unified work.