CLASSICAL MUSIC - NOT MOZART: N-T M-ZART

Composer:  Mathias Ruegg

Director:  Ernst Grandits

Ensemble:  Vienna Art Orchestra Special

The production is centred musically as well as visually on performances by six female and six male international jazz musicians from the Vienna Art Orchestra. The twelve musicians meet and develop closer relationships through the flow of seven musical numbers which reflect social encounter. The musicians are seen as if in a recording session, except that the setting is the beautiful, faded, turn-of-the-century Ronacher Theatre in Vienna.  Interspersed between the ‘live’ musical numbers are short satirical explorations of the fundamental role of the well-known Austrian confection, the Mozartkugel, and its interference in billiards, golf and Greek mythology.

The music provides an astonishing modern jazz homage to Mozart, drawing on many of his themes, particularly from the string quartets, with improvisations by the female vocalist linking the satires and musical numbers.

Mathias Ruegg was born in Zurich in 1950, but studied both jazz and classical music in Austria, where he now lives.  He founded the Vienna Art Orchestra in 1977, an unusually cohesive group of highly skilled musicians from both classical and jazz backgrounds, which achieved considerable international acclaim. Ruegg’s sophisticated compositions and arrangements have drawn on Monk, Mozart, Satie and Swiss folk music, without ever falling into the pitfall of ‘swinging Beethoven’.