NDR Bigband
Video on demand from 5 Dec 2022
available until 5 Dec 2040

NDR Bigband / Geir Lysne

Sharpening the focus, blurring it, mixing: In »Chromatic Aberration« the NDR Bigband transfers phenomena from the world of optics to music. An adventurous musical experiment.

Photographers use the term »chromatic aberration« to describe the phenomenon that optical lenses refract the light in different wavelengths in differing intensity; this can produce colour fringes that in turn make the contours of the image foggy and blurred. With his new work for the NDR Bigband, Geir Lysne sets out in search of comparable acoustic phenomena that open up new perspectives on the Bigband’s sound.

Performers

NDR Bigband

Percy Pursglove trumpet

Florian Weber piano

direction Geir Lysne

Programme

»Chromatic Aberration«
A double concerto for piano, trumpet and big band

Geir Lysne Geir Lysne © Michael Zapf / NDR
Florian Weber Florian Weber © Christoph Bombart
NDR Bigband NDR Bigband © Michael Zapf

Playing with focus and blur

If it is possible to control the kind of blur caused by chromatic aberration by using different lenses, it must also be possible to deliberately reduce blur in a picture. This is the task that the NDR Bigband tackles in its programme »Chromatic Aberration«.

It can deliberately place the focus on certain areas of its sound, creating blur in one place and tightening up the focus in another. It can also play with the mixing, thus producing several different versions of the sound.

Percy Pursglove and Florian Weber in the spotlight

In addition to the overall sound of the Bigband, this programme focuses on two musicians who are still among the newcomers in the band: pianist Florian Weber and trumpeter Percy Pursglove. These are both musicians with a lot of class, in all areas of jazz and beyond, and they are also very open to all manner of issues in different scientific disciplines.

Pursglove and Weber are used to letting their gaze wander, focussing on different levels of reality, or deliberately blurring the picture.

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