Wu Wei and Lucas Niggli are two highly energetic musicians, who do not care about stylistic boundaries, but draw inspiration from various styles of world music. Their preference for contemporary music, improvisation and extension of common styles of playing, allows them to develop a very unique style.
In a second project, Niggli meets Xu Fengxia. Similar to the drums, the Guzheng (an old, versatile Chinese stringed instrument) is an acoustic world of its own. Xu Fengxia plays the Guzheng with devotion, temperament and vehemence and checks out her boundaries. In a fast-paced improvisation both musicians present moments of their lives, ranging from Asian throat-singing to rock sounds. The duo produces a continuum that is created out of sequences, sounds, words and quotations. Pipa virtuoso Yang Jing, an internationally vaunted master of her instrument, who lives in Switzerland, meets with three Swiss jazz players, each of them present their own musical universe: piano player and composer Michael Wintsch, percussionist Norbert Pfammatter and bass player Bänz Oester. Together they add new meaning to the word quartette. The music that is created in this musical encounter of the four totally differing personalities reflects their curiosity and open-heartedness for creating appealing contrasts. Perfection and imperfection are unified to subtle sound finesses. The story that is told is about an intimate encounter between cultures, between the masculine and the feminine, the written and the improvised. The composition will be played by Yang Jing and Michael Wintsch.
