You Are The Universe

It begins with a flickering and twinkling like the firmament on a starry night. As starry as you will ever experience in densely populated areas under any circumstances. Structures emerge from this twinkling. Creatures haunt the night and light like chimeras. The fascination of the audible lumen gives rise to the sound material for a new legend. The great, which is reflected in the small, and the small, which is reflected in the great - the perpetual interplay between macrocosm and microcosm, that indescribable perpetuum mobile which is the driving force behind all existence ... The saxophonist, clarinettist and composer Stefan Karl Schmid has been making a name for himself in German jazz for several years. The fact that he is half Icelandic has shaped his music in different ways from the very beginning. The album "Hringferð", recorded as a duo with Lars Duppler, was based on traditional Icelandic music, and earlier albums such as "Muse" and "Anima" also contained compositions by Icelandic musicians. The year before last saw a production with the Reykjavik Big Band, but never before has the experience of Iceland been so directly etched into the Cologne native's music in terms of sound and atmosphere as on his new big band production "You Are The Universe". The whole album sounds like wide open skies, unlimited vistas and unobstructed nature. In the run-up to the album production, Stefan Karl Schmid traveled to Siglufjörður, one of the northernmost towns in Iceland, for several weeks to withdraw into himself in an artist's residence. There he had the necessary freedom to compose. But as solitary as the ideas for the album were, he transferred his musical creations to a large formation. The result is not a big band sound in the true sense of the word. Even though the Subway Jazz Orchestra is an established ensemble for alternative large-scale jazz, Schmid almost gives it the appearance of a classical orchestra. He uses the term suite quite deliberately. "I used various classical composition techniques," summarizes the composer. "In the run-up to the artist residency, I concretized my ideas about the music and the overall concept. It helped me to define certain rules and framework conditions. One principle, for example, was to avoid the classic jazz form of theme-solo-theme and not to use any direct repetitions. Everything develops out of a single small cell. In total, five main orchestral sections are interwoven in the suite through various interludes in reduced instrumentation and framed by a prologue and epilogue." Schmid relies on atmosphere and tonal shadings to always carry the listener along or to accommodate them. He builds up comprehensible mood curves that run through the entire suite. The translation of impressions of nature into sound, which the composer passes on to the listener unfiltered, takes place in a very direct way. The house in which Schmid composed in Iceland has many windows. Siglufjörður is a fjord enclosed by two mountains. You can only get to the city from both sides through a tunnel, which magically enhances the isolation and the special atmosphere. Even when he was inside, he was surrounded by nature in a panoramic way. When he took a break, he only had to set foot outside the door and was absorbed by his archaic surroundings. He would have had to be blind and deaf not to be affected by the peace and tranquillity that prevailed there. "Even before the immediate composition process, I had the conceptual and spiritual idea that everything comes from one core and is connected. The whole universe is contained in every little cell. These thoughts are nothing new, and I have been thinking about them for years. But during these weeks in Iceland, this realization overwhelmed me more than ever before." The title of the album "You Are The Universe" is a direct address to the listener. Before you have even heard a single note, you become part of the music. Schmid thus makes a metaphorical promise, which is then fulfilled by the music. Even the cover looks like a cosmic lock between the individual self and interstellar infinity. An iris sucks us in like a black hole, turning us into particles of a galaxy on the one hand and leading us back to our boundless selves on the other. Music and artwork result in a universally variable self-portrait that combines to form individual impressions, experiences and insights in every ear and eye. Writing music for 19 participants is no easy undertaking, despite all the inspiration, especially as Schmid wants to give each individual voice in the SJO weight and a hearing. The Subway Jazz Orchestra has existed for ten years now, and Stefan Karl Schmid has been its artistic director for several years. He knows the band like the back of his hand, and yet he has taken a big risk with the realization of this composition. "We have gained a lot of experience over the last ten years and have realized a wide variety of projects of different sizes and scope. In addition to our core line-up, we have access to a large pool of people from the local scene who support us in all areas. Being able to use this existing structure was of course a great advantage for the realization of my composition." That's how it should be. After all, it's about nothing less than the universe. The universe within us and the universe around us. A piece of music that, based on a single person and their perception, captures the whole world and seems to be specially prepared for each individual projection surface. A piece of music has to achieve that!