Vera Kappeler & Peter Conradin Zumthor - Babylon-Suite (2014)

The ECM debut of the duo of Vera Kappeler and Peter Conradin Zumthor presents music commissioned for the Origen Cultural Festival. It is music dominated by low registers, dark hues. The Babylon referenced in the title is the Babylon of the Book of Daniel, the lion’s den, the young men singing in the fiery furnace, a place of perdition, a labyrinth... The inspirational starting point launches creative composing and improvising and the shaping of strange and poetic material which is much more than ‘programme music’ The “Babylon-Suite” is self-contained, autonomous. The piano and drums duo leaves spaces and ellipses for the imagination to fill. Kappeler’s pianistic touch and phrasing, most subtly detailed and underpinned by Zumthor’s melody-and-texture conscious drumming, draw the listener in, deeper into the dream.