Musicians Sarah Buechi and Christoph Haberer look animated on stage as they do a quick rehearsal before their contemporary jazz concert in the city, organised by the Goethe Zentrum. That certainly drums up excitement and has the small audience tapping their feet in sync with the beats. Sarah, the young vocalist of German musical duo Animata, croons ambiguous lines in German in her melodious voice, with a few strings of Carnatic swaras artfully blended into the songs, while Christoph, a well-known percussionist and composer from Dortmund, Germany, meets her notes with equally lively rhythms.
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“We are attempting to carefully and playfully connect the conventional with the unconventional,” says 33-year-old Sarah, who hails from Lucerne in Switzerland. “We both love experimentation with different genres, enjoy pulsating rhythms and share a deep rhythmical understanding thanks to our exposure to Indian music,” adds the 64-year-old Christoph.
He brings to the act a quirky combination of computer-aided/live-triggered electronics and percussion, of which he has been an exponent of since the 1980s when he started the band Drümmele Maa (literally, drumming man). This is his fifth musical tour of India, his first being in 1991 when he toured the country as part of musical trio with modern jazz vibraphonist Stefan Bauer and Germany-based Indian percussionist Ramesh Shotham. Sarah, meanwhile, lived in India for 18 months, studying and performing Carnatic music. “I was looking for a way to do something different and stand out among the jazz crowd when I happened to listen to a CD of Hindustani music. I was intrigued by Indian music’s emphasis on rhythmical patterns and scope for improvisation. I use my voice like an instrument,” she explains.
The duo met when Christoph was looking for a vocalist to partner him for a composition commissioned by Kloster Gravenhorst, a modern art museum in Hörstel, a town in the North Rhine-Westphalia region in Germany, for its 10th anniversary, in summer last year. “Our mutual friend Ramesh introduced us. The museum functions out of an old building. Sarah with her propensity for mixing Eastern traditions of music with modern jazz, essentially, the old with the new, was the prefect partner,” says Christoph.
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Their collaboration, say the duo, produces “organic” music; a melange of contemporary European jazz and funky electronics with a bit of classical South Indian ragas and other genres like pop thrown in for good measure. “Our music is organic because there is much scope for improvisation. In Indian classical music the vocalist and instrumental player have equal prominence on the stage and have equal scope, while in Western music, often the vocalist is much more dominant. We are trying to bridge this gap,” explains Sarah.
Both musicians are thrilled about Animata’s first and eponymously titled album that was released three weeks ago. “It’s 60 minutes of contemporary European jazz with a lot of electronica, in 12 tracks. It was not easy to make and not easy to listen to but we’ve been getting a lot of positive reviews,” gushes the duo.