Ars Vitalis (Germany)
And now for something completely different! The surrealistic world of Ars Vitalis is not an easy one to describe, but it's one that's always full of humor and a bit of chaos.
Line Up:
Peter Wilmanns - saxophone, clarinet
Baddy Sacher - guitar
Klaus Huber - drums
On Stage: 3
Travel party: 3
Biography:
With performances that routinely cross the boundaries between music and theater, it's often difficult to tell which side of the fence Ars Vitalis is on at any given moment. The title of 'Ars Vitalis' current program, "Eher Musik als Theater" (More Music than Theater), would seem to settle the matter, but translations of the group's Latin name offer other clues. "There are several explanations," guitarist Buddy Sacher told the Mainichi Daily News in a telephone interview prior to the group's Tokyo shows. "One is 'the art of living', and the other is 'living art'." Needless to say, this is art that is very much alive. Sacher and his colleagues, clarinetist/saxophonist Peter Wilmanns and drummer Klaus D. Huber, draw on the traditions of jazz, folk and classical music, then fuse them with elements of European cabaret to create an atmosphere in which sound has to be seen as well as heard and a place where language is more melodious than intelligible. Against a backdrop of sheets that wrap the stage in a Christo-like fashion, the Leverkusen-based trio move from musical genre to genre while bathed in what Sacher describes as some deliberately unflattering lighting. Although all three are proficient musicians in the traditional sense, some of their instruments are decidely untraditional. Toy pianos and organs, garden hoses, balloons, bits of paper, and even a tablet dissolving in a glass of water all contribute to the songs and stories of Ars Vitalis. "We tell stories with musical characters. We try to play them with our instruments", Sacher explained. The liberties that Sacher and company take with the language might be lost on the non-German-speaking public. "Even in Germany, not all people understand our kind of language", he said. "We play with language like we play with music." Their visual presentation, on the other hand, crosses borders more easily. They've done their cultural homework, too. On their first tour of Japan, Ars Vitalis had their Kansai audiences in hysterics with a physical haiku that defies the abilities of most humans.
Discography:
Meret Becker & Ars Vitalis 1993-1995
Eher Muzik
Kleine schöne japanische Platte