Ensemble Phœnix Basel

Tandem III – “BEST of” random card game – new material combined with classics from “Ms. B.” (a fictional character with some compositional talent).

The call for proposals “work-in-progress” of Pro Helvetia 2021 generated the idea for our new series “Tandem – Musician vs. Composer – ”on a glass with the Ensemble Phoenix Basel”.

A challenge  in the midst of a worldwide pandemic was to find the smallest artistic and musical unity. Playing or improvising alone was out of question for us. The musician on his/her own was not an image we wanted to favor. Our aim was to provide a counterpart with whom one could enter into an exchange, be stimulated and initiate a process of reflection and creation. On our Tandem bike we also wanted to place a composer. These duos were first selected and then informed about the open process by Christoph Bösch and Lucas Rößner. Before the performance in Basel, the musicians* and composers* were meant to meet 3 to 4 times within a month to discuss and plan what was to be done in the two sets of the respective presentation evening.

The task of showing a process or even an unfinished piece presented the respective tandems with a challenge of special kind. To show an open process publicly, maybe even to present a failure in public, is and remains probably unusual. Each tandem pair solved this task in their own way.