Fuchsthone Orchestra feat. Evi Filippou

CD Releasetour PEAKS & PLOTS

Virtuoso and compelling. That’s how one might describe the music of the outstanding 22-piece “Fuchsthone Orchestra” led by Christina Fuchs and Caroline Thon —both experienced big band and ensemble conductors who joined forces in 2019 to found a joint orchestra in Cologne, for which they write and conduct their respective compositions.

Their album Peaks & Plots, featuring Greek vibraphonist and percussionist Evi Fillipou as the orchestra’s guest soloist, tells the story of the events of the year 2025. Thematically, the pieces look back on various highlights and events. For example, Thon’s Savita is dedicated to Savita Diana Wagner, a German aid worker in Ukraine who wrote about the war in her moving frontline blog diary and was killed during her aid mission. Fuchs’ Taksim uses field recordings from Istanbul; the calls of the muezzin and city sounds form the overall soundscape of the metropolis.

Fuchs and Thon work with dense rhythmic and melodic textures of intricate sound structures, electronics, and live sampling by computer musician and sound artist Eva Pöpplein, which they combine with big-band brass sections, violin, and vocals to create a total work of art.

Transcending genre boundaries, layers of noise emerge into which virtuoso brass sections dive; from these, solos and improvisational inner layers break free, slowing down to a whisper before coalescing once more into a large-scale soundscape. A dynamic interplay of silence and the energy of erupting, forceful tutti passages. Masterfully guided by the two conductors, this serves as a sonic narrative and an exploration of form and material, of peaks and plots.