Hybrid Gaits is a portrait of the Swiss composer Stefan Keller by Ensemble Ascolta. Its four very different works range from a highly virtuosic piece for solo piano to the title work, written for Ascolta's unusual line-up of drums, keyboard, electric guitar and brass. What links them is less a style than an idea of performative presence: music as intensive communication that engages all the senses and the listener's body.
Keller was born in Zurich in 1974. He studied oboe and then composition at the Zurich University of the Arts, continued his studies in Utrecht and Berlin, and took up the tabla after his first journey to India in 2005. The performers include violinist Moritz Ter-Nedden, cellist Niklas Seidl, pianist Florian Hoelscher, guitarist Hubert Steiner and accordionist Anne-Maria Hoelscher, with Keller himself on live electronics in Breathe and Yalda Zamani conducting. Three works are productions of Südwestrundfunk, licensed by SWR Media Services, and Breathe is Ascolta's own production.
Rhythm is the most direct sign of the physical side of Keller's music, and there is hardly a piece of his in which percussion does not play a large part. His complexly structured sound processes mix elements of pop, electronic and non-European music, and he treats borrowed material not as an ironic game of quotation but as energy to be carried further. Schaukel (Swing) is for piano trio. Breathe brings together piano, electric guitar, accordion and live electronics. Stück für Klavier (Piece for Piano) is the virtuoso solo. hybrid gaits (2017), about 18 minutes long, is written for drum set, keyboard, electric guitar, alto saxophone, trumpet and trombone. Here it is played by Daniel Eichholz, Felix Nagl, Steiner, Ruth Velten, Markus Schwind and Andrew Digby.
Keller once described his aim as "making the impact of the newly contextualized music one's own", and the four works on this disc show that approach from four different angles. The album gives a compact view of a composer whose music the label calls extremely varied.
CD, Wergo WER 7410 2, released in 2023, total time 51'43".
