Sun. 1.December
19.00 Christian Muthspiel bilder-scheiben - fenster-bilden (picture-panes-window-form)
Not only is Muthspiel an excellent performer and a highly-regarded composer, he also has a gift for creating the
unusual in the field of the fine arts. We are pleased to put our fearsome, bare corridor walls at his disposal for a
display of his colorfully-painted glassware. CH
21:00 Roof GB/USA/NL
Phil Minton: vocals
Tom Cora: cello
Luc Ex: bass
Michael Vatcher: drums
Granted: Superlatives always have somewhat of a rancid aftertaste (i.e. the most raunchy fuckin' trumpet-cleaner,
the lamest jumping jackdaw trainer, the most mega-rancid fart&tassle concept paper) but here I must admit... I
can't do anything but.... Roof (could be the Roof of the World!) plays the most contemporary music conceivable
now on the eve of this age with its epidemically-spreading "geriatrization" of young working artists. Rather than
a little window permitting passage of a few lightbeams, this Roof is a veritable barn door opened wide to a light-
drenched future (or at least to a radiant December). Free Jazz (Accord in Discord!), New Music (Let's hear it, if
you think you can handle it!), Punk (can anyone live from this anymore?), Ethno (altogether overtoned &
Didgeridoo-crazed), Art-Rock (a case for the incompatibility panel), Noise (Oil your door handles!) - all vacant
ruins in which the master improvisers roam around, never really finding a place where they want to settle down
because, in their estimation, all of the available spots quickly take on a grimy or shabby air. Here, it's not as in
the case of housing for poor people, where the furniture is simply painted on the wall; here the wall is the
furniture and they're tearing it down. If the beams in a tumbled-down shack start creaking & cracking overhead,
that's when Roof really comes alive. Inexorably and virtuosically Grimm or startlingly entrancing and delicate:
They have internalized an unbelievably wide palette of expressive options as a type of survival/revival strategy
which has been certified countless times in their plundering missions among other like-minded musicians (John
Zorn, Lol Coxhill, Eugene Chadbourne, Mike Westbrook, Maarten Altena, The Ex, Third Person). Post-
Avantgarde for (hardcore) lovers. KP
Admission: AS 150.-
Larry Lofquist, an American pianist who lives in Vienna, is briefly putting aside his compositorial work on an
opera to appear here in this unusual trio (bassist Ernst Weißensteiner is otherwise employed by the Vienna
Symphonic). Together the threesome will venture a midnight walk on the thin wire between classical music and
jazz. CH
PORGY & BESS, SPIEGELGASSE 2, 1010 WIEN, TEL: 512 84 38 