Jam, Jazz & Beethoven

Would Beethoven have become a jazz musician if he had had the choice back then? Matthias Schriefl explores this question intensively and imaginatively with his multi-orchestra, consisting of a cast of seven to nine multi-instrumentalists.

The way in which Beethoven, in his enormous creative power, allowed ideas to flow freely and wove moments of surprise into his compositions with humorous ease is very much like the work of today's jazz composers. In his original arrangements, Schriefl refers above all to the youthful-genial exuberant revolutionary Beethoven, who loved to float away in piano improvisations. He also addresses another characteristic of Beethoven's music: the frequent repetition of motifs, sometimes as if in loops. Schriefl develops accompanying rhythms for this, in order to make Beethoven fragments groove again in a contemporary manner - in a similar mode to how they were probably interpreted by musicians trained in dance music at the time. Just as Beethoven loved free improvisation and fantasizing on the instrument, the band's superb soloists today use his motifs as the basis for daring improvisations. In this way, Beethoven's compositions are given back what they have been deprived of by frequent performance: the element of surprise, a revolutionary listening experience in the here and now.

"The art? What would I be without it? I don't know. But I dread - see what without it are hundreds' and thousands!" (Source: Beethoven, To the Muse)