Philipp Schaufelberger - Decameron (2022)

Philipp Schaufelberger · guitar
Pierre Favre · drums

Decameron is the third release of Favre/Schaufelberger as a duo and their first live album. Recorded in Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zürich in December 2019 and at a private concert in Uster in the following Summer, it spans the first phase of the pandemic.

However, the reference to Boccaccios tales from the time of the plague, where ten young people find refuge on an estate outside the city and tell each other stories every evening, goes further than that.

Favre and Schaufelberger have been playing as a duo for more than twenty years, but only a small part of this dialogue surfaces into the public. As often as possible the two musicians meet in Favres rehearsal space and tell each other stories, musically. Over the time, they have developed ways of listening that provide a fine sensorium for potentials of energy, allowing long trajectories of musical development to form.

There are no pieces, as such, to be heard. The music emerges from listening to the moment, to sound and pulse. Both musicians are deeply rooted in jazz, the long history of which always resonates accordingly, as a cantus firmus detached from the grid of the 32-bar song form.

Occasionally, a musical decision’s push gives what is happening a new direction, but most of the time, simultaneities of accents and temperature changes arise from the two musicians’ attention to energy flows, making this interplay unique.

The music to be heard here does not impose itself. On first hearing, it may even seem enigmatic in places. But the warmth of the sound and the rhythmic malleability make it pleasant to linger in. And through repeated listening, the pieces take shape and become legible, perhaps like traces of the wind in the sand or like stalactites growing down from a cave ceiling.