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Pierre Favre - percussion
Lucas Niggli
- percussion
A
research lab for forms of team play and the possibilities of percussion.
The two drum poets condense complex rhythms into an orchestral whole and
create many- layered sounds and rhythms from their instruments. A forest
of drums with a lot of inspiration and verve.
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The duo Favre-Niggli combines two delicate percussion poets who have been
playing together for more than four years now. In Pierre Favre’s
quintet "Singing Drums” (with Michel Godard (tuba), Roberto
Ottaviano (sax), and Philipp Schaufelberger (guit)), the two of them form
the epicentre. Almost like two magicians they sit in the midst of their
drums and create from their instruments multi-layered sounds and rhythms,
seemingly without effort. They make their instruments sing like others
sing with language. Their music is as rich as poetry is full of meanings.
It settles on the listener’s ears like morning dew, it breathes slowly
and calm, and in the next instant it hyperventilates! It is filled with
inspiration and verve. Favre and Niggli test forms of interplay and modes
of effect of percussion. They condense complex rhythms to form an orchestral
whole. Through their work in "Singing Drums” Favre and Niggli
have become a duo which works well when playing composed pieces as well
as when improvising freely.
About Pierre Favre
Pierre
Favre is renowned as one of the world’s best drummers and praised
as a "sound colour poet”: a musician equipped with great sensibility
and a sense for variation – in short, a percussion-lyricist. He was
born in Lelocle in the Swiss Jura and taught himself the drums when he
was fifteen years old. He has worked for longer and shorter periods of
time with Chet Baker, Booker Ervin, Bud Powell, Ted Curson, Carmell Jones,
Fritz Pauer and Dexter Gordon. Free Jazz gave him the opportunity to experience
the European conception of playing. Henceforth, Pierre Favre founded his
own groups with Irene Schweizer, Peter Kowald and Evan Parker. He played
with John Tchicai, Barre Philips, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Charlie
Mariano, Peter Warren and Albert Mangelsdorff. His interest in a melodic
conception of the drums began to grow in the context of these projects.
In 1969 he started to play solo-concerts and recorded his first solo-record
("Drum Conversation”, Calig). Together with Chick Corea, Ornette
Coleman, Gary Burton and Eubie Black he appeared at the "Solo Now
Night” at the Berlin Jazz Tagen. His musical interest then shifted
to ethnic music, especially African, Indian, Brazilian, as well as European
classical music. In 1971 he began to study the piano. Since then he has
also worked as a composer. He has interpreted the drum part in works by
composers such as Ernst Krenek, John Cage, Hans Ulrich Lehmann. Most recently,
he did so in "Miserere” by Arvo Pärt. Since 1972 Favre
has also worked regularly with dancers, actors, sculptors, painters and
architects. Step by step his instrument changed: around the conventional
drum set he now uses metals, furs and woods. In this way, Favre developed
his own instrument into an independent and self-sufficient sound-body,
from which he can create orchestral dimensions in solo concerts.
The essence of his lyrical percussion playing opened up an interesting
dialogue with the singer Tamia. Numerous tours led Favre through Europe,
North and South America, Asia and Japan. He has recorded a great number
of CDs and LPs, a dozen of which for ECM:
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