Stefan Keller - Bach Today (2019)

"Bach today" offers a colourful, versatile and multifaceted program. Well-known works for the flute by J.S. Bach and his son C.P.E. Bach form the basis for the CD. Through the filigree groovy background of the highly virtuosic baroque pieces by the experienced percussionist and enriched with astonishing improvisations, these «baroque classics» appear in a completely new light and are very contemporary.

Stefan Keller (*1961) is an internationally active flutist. He plays a broad spectrum of music styles on different instruments, as is apparent from his wide-ranging projects and invitations to flute festivals. Boundary-crossing offerings like "Under Water", "Carpenter", "Factory" and others attest to his rich variety of concert music and performance activities, from a yodel choir in a carpentry workshop, to computer animations in the church, to a welder in a factory, or an indoor swimming pool in "unter Wasser". Unusual combinations such as flute and contrabass, flute and percussion or flute and live electronics also appear. Keller's artistic work has been generously supported by the Aargauer Kuratorium multiple times. He has had residencies in Aargau's ateliers in Paris and Berlin. As a flutist, he specializes in low and extremely low flutes like the alto, bass, contrabass and subcontrabass.

At the tender age of five, Beda Ehrensperger (*1980) was already honing his drumming skills on his mother's pots and pans. He began his first lessons after his uncle gave him a percussion set as a present. At eight he had his first band. During his studies at the Zurich University of the Arts, Ehrensperger dedicated himself to Jazz, which provided him with a link to African rhythms. He felt compelled to move to Ghana, where he worked with master drummer Kofi Missiso and the "Ghana Cultural Ballet" and assimilated African music. Once he was back in Europe, he became firmly established in the European reggae scene with "The Dubby Conquerors" and proved his versatility as a rhythmic jack-of-all-trades in jazz and African music projects, choirs, classical ensembles, improvisation and solo works. These days, he lives in Ghana and presents his own compositions under the name "Beda Massive Tribe".