Midnight Story Orchestra
| Midnight Story Orchestra | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Music theater , jazz rock |
| founding | 2008 |
| Current occupation | |
| Jasper Paulus | |
| Andreas Wiersich | |
| Florian Bührich | |
| Toni Hinterholzinger | |
Double bass and electric bass |
Alexander Bayer or Tobias Kalisch |
| Stephan Ebn | |
The Nuremberg Ensemble Midnight Story Orchestra (MSO) was founded in 2008 by the guitarist and composer Andreas Wiersich and established a new performance format with its “radio play concerts”.
The plot of the "radio play concerts" is presented in a scenic manner by a narrator and accompanied by five to six musicians. At appropriate points in the plot, the narrator leaves the stage and the ensemble takes up what has just been told in concert passages. The characters, places and moods are mapped in the compositions according to the type of "program music". The resulting equivalence of narrative and concert music is expressed in the term “radio play concert”. The performances are supported by specially designed scene lighting and the occasional playback of sounds and noises.
The stylistic direction of the Midnight Story Orchestra depends on the respective plot. The influences range from classical music to rock and jazz to church music, medieval music, folklore as well as electronic and new music. The main features of the line-up can be assigned to rock jazz, which is also a focus. The instrumentation with three harmony instruments gives the ensemble the ability to sound orchestral.
Since its foundation, the MSO has been active with numerous guest performances in German-speaking countries. The ensemble has three full-length productions, three short programs and special productions for special performance locations (e.g. the rock passages in Nuremberg). To date, the MSO has released two double CD albums.
occupation
- Narrator (Jasper Paulus)
- Electric guitar (Andreas Wiersich)
- Vibraphone / marimbaphone (Florian Bührich)
- Synthesizer / Keyboard (Toni Hinterholzinger)
- Double bass / electric bass (Alexander Bayer or Tobias Kalisch)
- Drums (Stephan Ebn)
In some program versions, a violin or a woodwind player is added, as well as guest artists such as the Fürth drummer Stephan Seegel, the Munich violinist Joerg Widmoser, the Weiden saxophonist Johannes Geiss, the Canadian saxophonist Peter van Huffel , the Hanoverian saxophonist David Milzow, the Nuremberg bassist Markus Schieferdecker and Alexander Spengler and the Nuremberg actor Frank Strobelt.
history
The meeting between Andreas Wiersich and the artists who still make up the permanent cast of the MSO was decisive for the development of the ensemble. The Hanoverian percussionist, vibra and marimba player Florian Bührich as well as the drummer Stephan Ebn from Abensberg in Bavaria played together in various projects long before.
Ebn and Wiersich already knew each other from joint sessions as part of the regional music scene in the greater Munich and Regensburg area. They met Florian Bührich while studying together at the University of Music in Nuremberg in 1997. Many common and stylistically different musical projects and performances followed.
Another step in the history of the MSO was the encounter and frequent making music of the three musicians with the pianist, sound designer and music producer Toni Hinterholzinger. He was also studying at the Nuremberg University of Music. To this day he gives all MSO recordings their characteristic sound, and since 2009 he has also been a member of the permanent cast on stage performances.
In 1999, Andreas Wiersich met the actor, polymath and studied materials engineer Jasper Paulus in the course of various improvised theater appearances, during which he accompanied him as a stage musician. When Wiersich designed his first musical readings in 2000, he asked Paul to be the narrator.
2000 to 2005 (Andreas Wiersich and band)
In 2000 and 2001, Wiersich conceived the theme cycles “Der Graf” (inspired by Bram Stoker's novel Dracula ) and “Berge und Alpines” (a musical mixture of Bavarian folklore influences, modern jazz and rock). The ensemble at that time was called "Andreas Wiersich & Band". Both cycles were combined in the 90-minute concert program "Mountains and Vampires". In the first part ("The Count") Jasper Paulus already recited a few short passages of the Dracula novel before the individual pieces of music, while "Mountains and Alpines" was laid out without text. A few years later, the approximately 45-minute long musical reading “Der Graf” was to result in the radio play concert of the same name with a performance of over 2 hours.
In addition to the performers mentioned above, the bassist Andre Schulz and the drummer Stefan Seegel, who played for Stephan Ebn for two years, were also part of this ensemble. These two musicians also studied at the University of Music in Nuremberg. Stephan Ebn left the ensemble at this time because of numerous international engagements.
“Andreas Wiersich & Band” played “Berge und Vampire” for almost two years within Germany, including at the “Jazz and Joy” festival in Worms, in the Rosenkeller Jena, for the Kulturzuschlag e. V. Görlitz, at the Nuremberg Summer Night Film Festival, in the Nuremberg dungeons and at a number of other venues. The ensemble also made an international tour to Biella (Italy). With the “Mountains and Vampires” program, the ensemble received a grant from Yehudi Menuhin's “ Live Music Now ” foundation .
The project paused for the time being. During this time Wiersich composed various pieces in the field of jazz rock and ethnic jazz, among other things he conceived and composed a musical reading based on EA Poe's short story The Downfall of the House of Usher . This program brought him back together with Stephan Ebn and Jasper Paulus for a short time. They performed this program twice with the Berlin bassist Daniela Petry, who contributed a second part of the program with her own compositions, and the American vibraphonist Bill Molenhof .
In 2005 Wiersich returned from Berlin to Nuremberg, where he played in various formations and projects and with his own jazz rock formation. This group (Wiersich, Bührich, Ebn, the Munich violinist Jörg Widmoser and the Herzogenaurach bassist Alexander Bayer) repeatedly played pieces from the old repertoire of "Andreas Wiersich & Band".
Since 2006: From "Gothic Jazz Orchestra" to "Midnight Story Orchestra"
Radio play concert "Der Graf"
In 2006, Andreas Wiersich decided to expand the musical readings from previous years into full-length radio play concerts. At the end there was a two-hour radio play concert entitled “The Count”. The program was recorded by Toni Hinterholzinger in the Orm Studios (Prague) within a week. After that, Hinterholzinger gave the recording an elaborate sound design.
In 2008 the world premiere of the radio play concert “Der Graf” took place at the finissage of the special exhibition “Dracula - Voivode and Vampire” at Ambras Castle in Innsbruck. Contributors were: Jasper Paulus (narrator), Joerg Widmoser (violin), Andreas Wiersich (guitar), Florian Bührich (vibraphone, marimbaphone), Toni Hinterholzinger (synthesizer, special effects), Alexander Bayer (electric bass and double bass) and Stephan Ebn ( Drums).
The ensemble first appeared in public under the name “The Gothic Jazz Orchestra” (GJO), which Andreas Wiersich had chosen because of its musical proximity to jazz at the time and the content of the “Gothic Novel” source. Again and again this name was misunderstood, as the project was assigned to the Gothic scene on the one hand and jazz music on the other, whose determining influence gave way more and more to a much broader stylistic system. In addition, the name did not convey the meaning of an underlying plot for the GJO's radio play concerts. In 2011 Andreas Wiersich renamed the ensemble the “Midnight Story Orchestra”.
The Midnight Story Orchestra (MSO) has been making guest appearances in the German-speaking area since 2008 and aroused interest in the culture departments of publishing houses with its innovative radio play concerts. Around fifty follow-up reports have been published on the MSO's performances.
The MSO played in the following venues and festivals, among others: Dachauer Theatertage, Ambras Castle, Concert Theater Coesfeld, Literature Days Albstadt, Kulturnacht Gotha, Lessing Theater Wolfenbüttel, Parktheater Göggingen, Theater im Fischereihafen Bremerhaven, Hörkunstfestival Erlangen, Leipziger Hörspielsommer, Theater Kleines Haus in Delmenhorst, Stadtkulturnacht Potsdam, Theater Hameln, Literary Autumn Hamm, Tübingen Jazz and Classical Days, historic rock corridors in Nuremberg, Landestrost Castle in Hanover, Pfaffenhofen ad Ilm winter stage, Achberg Castle, Lichtenstein City Palace, Itzehoe City Theater, Amberg City Theater, BM Cultura Bergheim, Red Hall Braunschweig, University Concerts Wuppertal, November Fog Abensberg, Culture Night Neumarkt id Opf., Kulturforum Fürth, Hubertussaal Nürnberg, Kulturhaus Schömberg, Ranis Castle, Culture Night Göppingen, Greiz City Library, Neumünster City Theater.
Radio play concert "Das Haus Usher"
From 2009 to 2010, Andreas Wiersich expanded the second musical reading from his time in Berlin into a two-hour radio play concert, which was premiered on January 23, 2010 in the Kulturforum Fürth. The production was named "Das Haus Usher" (a radio play concert based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Downfall of the House of Usher and Ray Bradbury's Usher II - April 2036 ). Most of the musical themes were composed by Andreas Wiersich, but Toni Hinterholzinger and Alexander Bayer also contributed musical parts in the second part.
Radio play concert "The Elixirs of the Devil"
Andreas Wiersich studied almost fifty fairy tales, short stories and novels in 2012, before finally starting work on ETA Hoffmann's novel The Devil's Elixirs in 2013 . In 2013 and 2014 Wiersich worked on the text and also on the story of the new program. The music for the radio play concert was composed by Andreas Wiersich in autumn 2014. The world premiere took place on November 8, 2014.