New CD Il Gondoliere Veneziano with Holger Falk 

We are delighted about the newly released CD Il Gondoliere Veneziano with baritone Holger Falk, ensemble nuovo aspetto and the sound art duo Merzouga. The programme combines gondolier songs from the 18th century with the Venetian soundscape of the present. The Canzoni da Battello are interspersed by the contrasting electro-acoustic Venice pieces by the duo Merzouga, who use baroque fragments as motifs, transposing melodic elements into the contemporary sound language, while preserving the integrity of the baroque music. The combination of these two approaches creates a Venice soundtrack as an overall, through-composed work. The production was recorded by WDR in 2018 and now appears on the newly founded Prospero label. After the programme’s première at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg in April 2019, Marcus Stäbler for the Hamburger Abendblatt raved: Holger Falk finds exactly the right tone for this music: with a light sound that unites simplicity and sweetness in his almost tenor-like timbre. (…) Holger Falk changes colour in harmony with the musical surroundings like a vocal chameleon.

(published on 15 April 2020)

Sarah Maria Sun releases outstanding new CD KILLER INSTINCTS

The soprano breaks new ground and crosses all genre boundaries on her new album KILLER INSTINCTS, which was recorded at the Bayerischer Rundfunk München 2019 and will be released on Mode Records New York in April 2020. Following Sarah Maria Sun the result is “a politically incorrect perpetrators’ study. And it is satirizing the new generation of fascist politicians, who swagger about clear enemy images and simple solutions and became a horrible new fashion. For this purpose, I assembled cynical, black-humorous monologues. The narrators of these monologues are stupid, selfish, spineless, lazy, greedy, corrupt, cold blooded, clever, charismatic, shrewd and charming narcissists, who twist us – just like in real life – around their little fingers.” KILLER INSTINCTS is a collection of stylistically different songs, from classics, contemporary music, musicals, pop and rock, including songs such as Tom Waits’ Just the right bullets, John Kander’s When you’re good to Mama, Stefan Wolpe’s Hitler, Alan Price’s Justice, Leonard Bernstein’s There’s a law about men. The singer is harmoniously accompanied by Jan Philip Schulze (piano, electric organ), Hubert Steiner (guitar, banjo, electric bass) and Bernd Oezsevim (drums). When her first solo CD Modern Lied was released on Mode Records in 2017, the Süddeutsche Zeitung lauded: Sun is a phenomenon of musical intelligence, agility and joyful leaps to the high notes, the elegance in complex speech and sound structures.

(published on 18 March 2020)