NICA live: SHIFT feat. Blume/ Gratkowski/ Lehn/ Manderscheid/ Zoubek

Shift, transform and move! With these four improvisers, the band name SHIFT is inherent in playing and exploring together.

Saxophonist and clarinetist Frank Gratkowski has been one of the internationally active networkers of a European-influenced free music scene since the nineties. Pianist Philip Zoubek knows how to captivate with a radical and exquisitely sensual approach to his instrument, which transforms into a timbre generator under his hands. Double bassist Dieter Manderscheid sees himself as an improviser in the sense of U.S. pianist Duke Ellington, who died in 1974: composition and improvisation flow naturally into one another. The playing of drummer Martin Blume is filigree. Driving impulses and rhythmic energy strive towards the desire for harmony with his fellow musicians. In the border area of classical, contemporary and improvised music, Thomas Lehn designs his own language on the analog synthesizer.

Since the band was founded for a benefit concert for the Austrian festival KONFRONTATIONEN in Nickelsdorf, ideas for delightfully stirring music with electronic-acoustic sound aesthetics have continued to be spun and are now freshly brought to the stage as part of the concert series 'NICA live'.