Tobias Meissl Trio

Valentin Duit and Tobias Meissl have been making music together for over 20 years in various contexts, and they have also been working with Ivar Roban Križić for 5 years. This results in a deep musical trust and communication that leads to moments of mutual understanding that are sometimes uncanny.

After sporadic trio appearances in this constellation, Duit and Križić have played together in a variety of musical situations as one of the most sought-after rhythm groups on the Viennese jazz scene.

Within the Tobias Meissl Trio, a common sound and an individual way of playing together have developed through intensive rehearsal phases since autumn 2021, collaboration in various sidemen contexts, continuous work with the Valentin Quartet - in the same line-up, supplemented by Robert Unterköfler on tenor saxophone - since the end of 2022, and regular performances such as a monthly concert at Café Frame in Vienna.

The compositions for this trio have therefore been written specifically for this common ensemble sound and playing culture for some time. This type of relaxed interpretation has also consciously been incorporated into the conception and partly into the notation of the pieces.

Meissl sees his role as a composer for this ensemble primarily as providing musical topics of conversation and setting certain frameworks that are discussed, explored or sometimes left behind together, and not as building musical sculptures that should be reproduced as accurately as possible.

The composed material, which is sometimes complex and notated in great detail, serves primarily as a starting point or introduction to a network of relationships and is by no means "the piece" in itself. This piece is created in the process of developing variations of the material, which can be understood, approached and read differently from performance to performance.

Stylistically, the music is inspired and influenced by various traditions, but clearly stems from a jazzy approach to collective music-making, whereby it is not about an obvious (at least not intentional) allusion to or imitation of specific role models, but about the synthesis of an independent sound.

The music allows a high degree of individual freedom of expression and design, and the diverse musical interests of the band members, which range from jazz (related) to contemporary classical, experimental, improvised, European classical and various folk music, etc., are encouraged to find their way into the collective music-making. In most cases, however, the pieces remain more or less obvious to the outside listener as a reference, which varies from performance to performance.

That is, we are dealing with a predominantly structure-based improvisation, which does not, however, aim to mark and highlight these structures in the foreground or to emphasize their repetition. The result often has a quasi "through-composed" character, perhaps that of an improvisationally developing musical prose whose structure is not always obvious. The basic idea remains to understand a piece of music, regardless of the degree of fixation in the notation, as not finished or closed - (completed) - and to recognize, acknowledge and explore its changeable diversity in terms of its (im)possibilities.

For those who already know, this is nothing new, and it is also clear that this has been around for a long time. For some, however, these ideas might be new and perhaps even interesting.

To get a better idea of what has been written about in such detail here, attend as many of the trio's concerts as possible.

Free entry - an appropriate cultural contribution is requested.

The Peppi Guggenheim is a smoking bar

Entry from 18 years of age

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