MATS-UP feat. Mbuso Khoza

MATS-UP feat. Mbuso Khoza “IVOVO”

“Ivovo” is the brand-new album of the Swiss band MATS-UP in which Matthias Spillmann and his fellow musicians explore the sounds of South Africa together with the singer Mbuso Khoza.

«South Africa’s music has always fascinated me. Little else influenced me as deeply, in a musical and a spiritual way, as the projects I had with South African artists as well as the concerts I played there. Jazz in South Africa has a significant value because it’s one of the very few fields in which people of different colours, ethnics and backgrounds cooperated on an equal basis, even during the apartheid system.

Mbuso’s voice is totally unique and extremely versatile.

His melodic ingenuity and his story-telling abilities are endless, his virtuosity not being a purpose on itself. Anything he sings sounds completely natural and fresh. In same time, he knows KwaZulu Natal music, that of his origins, like nobody else.»

Mbuso Khoza: vocals

Matthias Spillmann: trumpet, flugelhorn, arranger & composer
Reto Suhner: reeds
Marc Méan: piano
Raffaele Bossard: bass
Dominic Egli: drums

The Nature Of The Blues

The Nature Of The Blues

«The Nature Of The Blues» combines archaic and contemporary material in a unique way. Starting point for all the compositions is the natural scale, which we know from the worlds oldest musical traditions such as overtone singing or the alpine horn. In a long process during which the musicians learned their instruments from scratch, the group created a new musical language. It’s not by accident that they meet the deepest roots of this music called «jazz»:

Rhythm and groove as an expression of collective energy, the blues as an expression of individual emotion.

Matthias Spillmann: trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion
Reto Suhner: alto saxophone, alto clarinet, alto flute
Marc Méan: virtual piano
Raffaele Bossard: bass
Dominic Egli: drums

PSALMEN

MATS-UP spielt «Psalmen von SAID»

The radically different cadence of the texts by SAID, the Iranian poet and writer* living in exile in Germany, which marries spirituality, pleasure, protest, and doubt, has profoundly moved and shaken the trumpet player and composer Matthias Spillmann. The Lied cycle into which he translates the “psalms“ to music, together with the singer Tobias Christl and his MATS-UP band, is in itself quite daring.

By the free spirit of jazz, the texts are catapulted into the here and now. The musicians copiously celebrate the magic of the tunes never once shirking musical experiments or unbridled energy. The resulting music challenges by its themes, exceeding many of the listener’s expectations, but aim directly at the core of our hearts by its very own beauty of sound.

Tobias Christl: vocals
Matthias Spillmann: trumpet, flugelhorn, composition
Reto Suhner: alto saxophone, alto clarinet, alto flute
Marc Méan: piano
Raffaele Bossard: bass
Dominic Egli: drums

The poet and writer SAID, born in Teheran in 1947, has been living in Munich since 1968.

MATS-UP «5»

In 1999 «MATS-UP» was founded with the idea of a group that combines both the broad sonic landscape of a chamber ensemble with the vitality and interaction of a jazz combo.

Shortly after «Le Temps» in Geneva predicted that «MATS-UP will be the most important event in Swiss Jazz» and only a few years later, MATS-UP was counted among the «outstanding working bands in jazz today».

The instrumentation with two horns and rhythm section still offers a large palette of unexplored musical possibilities discovered by bandleader and composer Matthias Spillmann. The band combines a rare sense for larger musical forms with a vivid spontaneity. Rhythms inspired by the heritage of african music and the romantic, sometimes abstract melodies out of Spillmanns imagination melt into a unique and fascinating musical language.

MUSORGSKY

«same pictures – new exhibition» an adaption of Modest Musorgskys “Pictures of an Exhibiton“ for seven Jazz musicians

“Pictures of an Exhibition“ is probably the best known composition of russian composer Modes Musorgsky. The piano piece which was composed in remembrance of Musorgskys friend, painter Viktor Hartmann, is frequently performed in concert halls around the world. No wonder Matthias Spillmann came in touch with the piece already in his childhood. He immediatly fell in love with the ludicrous Gnomus or the melancoly Old Castle. He even played some of the melodies by ear, listening to the record over and over, same as most aspiring jazz musicians do with solos of their idols in the jazz history.

The expressive and non-formal quality of Mousorgskys music is an invitation to the open minded jazz musician. But Spillmann hasn’t just produced another instrumentation. At times he leaves the original score behind and follows his own ideas. You’ll hear the piece in a new suit and with a very personal fingerprint.

We still don’t know if the arrangement of „The Old Castle“ will, through „MATS-UP“, make it into the Real Book, but we’re shure that every music lover wants to hear how the children in the „Tuileries“ dance Samba or how the „Old Witch Baba Yaga“ eats our bones with a hardcore rockbeat.

Matthias Spillmann: tp, flgh, arr; Bernhard Bamert: tb, perc; Domenic Landolf: ts, bcl, ss; Thomas Lüthi: ts, ss, cl; Leo Tardin: piano, moog synth; Patrice Moret: bass; Dominic Egli: drums