"So, what better act to christen the space than a trio of boundary-pushing, improvisational masters – internationally-renowned, improvisational poet and musician, Moor Mother, together with experimental powerhouse drummer Lukas König, and distinctively compelling bassist/percussionist, Shahzad Ismaily? This opening performance of the Otto-Gruber-Hall turned out to be one of the most unexpected highlights of the festival – not because anyone doubted their abilities, but just because no one knew what to expect. They literally had never played together before. Not a rehearsal, nor even a sound check was possible for this newborn trio, as Ismaily, enduring countless travel complications due to the pandemic, jumped straight out of his airport shuttle onto the stage, exactly two minutes to show time.Regardless of the challenging circumstances, what resulted was nothing less than astounding. The trio tore up the stage and mind-wiped the audience. With intense musical connection, driven by experimental prodigies, three became one, in an explosive performance of heavy industrial beats mixed with complex rhythms, dynamic changes, powerful poetry, soul-burrowing bass elements and playful percussion, prancing upon it all like fairy dust. The three drove, pushed, challenged and completed one another. The joy of it all was palpable on stage, and bled generously out into the audience, which, by the end, was raised to their feet and seduced to the foot of the stage (a genuine feat at a jazz festival).

Shahzad Ismaily was born in the States to Pakistani parents who emigrated here just before his birth. He grew in a bicultural household, always following a multitude of paths and perusals. He is mostly self-taught as a musician, composer, recording engineer, and producer. He primarily plays electric bass, drums, percussion, guitar, synthesizers, and all manner of sound-makers procured in life’s travels. He has recorded and performed with a diverse crew of artMakers, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Beth Orton, Colin Stetson, Ben Frost, Bonnie Prince Billy, Damien Rice, Jolie Holland, JFDR, Secret Chiefs 3, Sam Amidon, further and further. He has been an integral member of festival/residency/collective experiences such as the People Festival (the brainchild of Bon Iver, The National, and the Michelberger), the Eau Claires festival, the Moers Festival. He has done work for dance and theater pieces, such as the film Frozen River (Oscar-nominated and Sundance award-winning), Inkboat (a butoh crew from California/Switzerland), and visual artist Laleh Khorramian. This year alone, he’ll teach in residence at BANFF, the Oklahoma Center for Contemporary Arts, the Monheim Triennale, and very happily, the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Currently based in Brooklyn and working out of the recording studio collective he founded and created, Figure 8 Recording, he has studied music extensively in Pakistan, India, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, Japan, Indonesia, Morocco, and Iceland.

Franz Hautzinger
Detours often lead to more thrilling goals because they open up new perspectives. Franz Hautzinger has taken long and bendy detours and turned to many dead ends, he has spent years without instrumental activity and has made a hopeful new start. All this, those victories and defeats, this “History from the Total Crash to ‘Emergency Individualism’”, as he himself described it, made Franz Hautzinger the highly profiled musical personality that he is today.

Born on March 11, 1963 in Seewinkel, Burgenland, a Hannibal Marvin Peterson concert at Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf was the young trumpeter’s “awakening experience”. He studied at the Jazz department of today’s Art University in Graz from 1981 to 1983 until lip palsy forced him to take a six year total break from trumpeting. After moving to Vienna in 1986 he started in 1989 to explore the trumpet in his very own and un-academic way. He became attached to the circles around Christoph Cech and Christian Mühlbacher, played in the Big Band “Nouvelle Cuisine” and the octet “Striped Roses”; the CD “Zong of se Boboolink”, which he recorded with saxophonist Helge Hinteregger and which was influenced by sampler collages was the first personal CD statement. His 10 month stay in London provided new ideas and contacts, amongst others Kenny Wheeler, Henry Lowther, John Russel, and Steve Noble. Hautzinger assimilated the stimuli in very different ways: in „Regenorchester“ („Rain Orchestra“) with its changing instrumentation, in the quartet with Helge Hinteregger, Oren Marshall and Steve Noble as well as in the trio “Speakers’ Corner” with guitarist Martin Siewert and drummer Wolfgang Reisinger.

Lukas König (*1988) studied at Gustav Mahler Konservatorium in Vienna, Anton-Bruckner University in Linz and HKB in Bern. He was given the “Hans Koller Price- New York Scolarship” in 2009, the Bremen Jazzpreis and Bawag P.S.K. Next Generation Award in 2014 (with Kompost3). Klangforum Wien premiered his composition Stereogram1 at Konzerthaus Vienna in 2018 and in 2021 he was chosen to be artist of the Shape Network. In addition to performances at festivals worldwide he collaborated with Reggie Washington, Malcolm Braff, Steven Bernstein, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Audrey Chen, Julien Desprez, Chris Pitsiokos, Moormother, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Briggan Krauss, Dorian Concept, Leo Riegler, Freya Edmondes, Peter Kutin, Nik Hummer, Michael Fischer, Shahzad Isamaily, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Elliott Sharp, Almog Sharvit, Brandon Seabrock, Adam O’Farrell, David Leon, MC Sensational, Elvin Brandhi, Petter Eldh, Otis Sandsjö, Klangforum Wien, Bilderbuch, Hoover Le, Martin Siewert, Franz Hautzinger, Maja Osojnik, Wolfgang Puschnig, Thomas Gansch, Andy Manndorff, David Murray, Die Strottern, Wolfgang Mitterer, Jon Sass, Otto Lechner, Patrice Heral, Guem , Raphael Preuschl, Paul Urbanek, Phil Yaeger, Wolfgang Schiftner, Martin Eberle, Sixtus Preiss, Manu Mayr, Clemens Salesny, Clemens Wenger, Jazzwerkstatt Wien, Greenwoman, Ensemble für neue Musik Zürich, Koenigleopold, Bilderbuch, 5KHD, Klangforum Wien and many more.

Austrian musician Lukas Koening is primarily a drummer. But there’s a lot more than percussion happening on his latest solo album, Buffering Synapsis (opal tapes), from sputtering noise to fractured circuit breaking to creepy horror-soundtrack ambience. Using electronics and pedals along with his cymbal, Koening lets his imagination fly, leading to fascinating juxtapositions between tracks and sometimes even inside them. Despite the stylistic whiplash, Koening manages to instill his music with a sense of purpose, never blasting forward blindingly or tripping over himself to find a new sound. As a result, static churn, whirring spasms and terrifying echoes are like branches of the same highly-engaging musical tree.In recent years Koenig’s solo work has repositioned itself toward a stuttering, data moshed version of the solo drummer. The imagery of brain tissues micro and macro being loaded, reloaded and exploded with data, time stamping and pure kinesis as conjured by the title of this album could not be more apt. With this recording an almost cartoon like level of intensity is sometimes reached through movement and movement alone. This is a music re-animating the "solo" drummers album while re-collecting it's history of new-complexity, lowercase, Bertoia-esque metal manipulations and all out free jazz fire music. Never drab or stuffy its cybernetic, hyper technical but above all; only accomplishable at the speed of thought. It's intrinsically human music. Deploying double kick drum played in stroboscopic clusters, hyper-tactile cymbal work, table top electronics and FX pedals to mute, melt and mutilate his flailing limbs and ocean like tam tam bathing. Buffering Synapsis is a tiny view into the creative world of an incredibly exciting and unique musician. (Texts by Opal Tapes + Marc Masters)