Simon Kanzler - Nodía Es (2020)

Unique perspectives and new sounds find common ground with a wide variety of musical styles. With its unbounded stream of energy, this spellbinding chamber opera weaves together hardcore, jazz and opera with elements of improvisation as it provokes, surprises and finally convinces. A game of musical legerdemain without borders and endless listening enjoyment. The composer Simon Kanzler amazes as he playfully says no to musical limits.

Opera, heavy metal, punk, jazz and new music are brought together in a tour de force the likes of which you've never heard. The tradition of the aria, recitative and choir is roughed up with primitive, brutish grooves performed in an intense rondel of scenes. There is a seriousness to the storyline seasoned with irony. Instrumental attacks and outbreaks back up the vocalizing as the music explores and crosses over the boundaries of the familiar. Word acrobat Konrad Bayer (b.1932 – d.1964), member of the provocative Wiener Gruppe, wrote the original texts. On other texts, Kanzler uses a generator to spin the words around in order to emphasize the musical and rhythmic aspects of language. As in a film by David Lynch, scenes with elements from different genres are cut together using surrealistic means to form a cohesive whole. In this way deep emotions – jealousy, physicality, the desire for love – all the necessary ingredients are arranged into sound collages. These sharp contrasts lead to a perfectly logical musical synthesis in an art that makes use of the musician’s experience and knowledge and creates extreme worlds of emotion; it’s all palpable drama in this musical house of mirrors. The disparate segments and sections of this sophisticated music travel far beyond some academic endeavor; in a joyful polychromatic appeal to the pleasure of limitless receptivity, the music expands our horizons and plays with our musical preconceptions. This may seem strange at first, but these sound sensations become more familiar, more intimate the more one listens. “Nodía Es” is an invitation to leave the beaten path; it challenges body and mind, awakens our imagination and inspires us to connect all those fantastic musical dots.