Pascal Schumacher - SOL (The Mudam Session) (2020)

The phrase "loneliness is a kind of freedom" comes from the Italian writer Umberto Eco. A statement that also fits to the album SOL by Pascal Schumacher. This is a live version of the album "SOL (The MUDAM Session)". The vibraphone player and composer had made a name for himself through a variety of collaborative projects with such diverse ensembles as quartets and symphony orchestras. Rather, he recently discovered how liberating and meaningful a solo project can be: "When I was alone, I learned so much about myself - more than I could have imagined", he says.

Schumacher's relationship to his instrument, the vibraphone, was love at first sight. "When I was a drummer in my childhood, there was this golden glittering instrument. I couldn't help but play on it as soon as my teacher left the room", he remembers. Everyone familiar with the vibraphone probably knows this fascination. Its radiantly shiny plates and stepped tubes, which sound metallic and at the same time soft and almost ethereal when touched with the baton. This comes into its own in Amarcord, SOL's first track - a one-minute tingling and tinkling as an introduction to the rest of the album, so soft and intimate that it almost feels like a seduction." This sound - for me it has always had a magical effect", Schumacher notes.

Building intimacy, however, is not easy. As with most instruments, where swings or sticks mediate between musician and instrument, there is a distance. "It’s quite a process to become one with the vibraphone. I’ve always been jealous of the cellists who hold their instrument in their arms, feel it and embrace it", says Schumacher. "In the vibraphone, the ratio is at first a very distanced one. The challenge is to become one with its instrument."

A challenge that Schumacher has taken on in the following decades. His relationship with the vibraphone has evolved, transformed and consolidated – from album to album and from band to band, on festival stages between Copenhagen and Tokyo. Schumacher has wrestled with his instrument in the improvisations of moving jazz riffs and has reconciled with him in the caresses of classical chamber music. And in all the tumult there was always this moment of delight, this moment of loneliness, when there was only him and his vibraphone. ” In these moments, you can be completely creative, everything is allowed, you don’t have to stick to anything you planned or tried. . . These moments were always my favourite There was no going back when Schumacher was invited to perform solo for the first time at a festival in Salzburg in 2018. "During these concerts, I felt more free than ever before, and I had so much fun. Something very special happened with the audience, the people dived even deeper into the music and were even more absorbed by it. I had never seen such a thing before", he says.

It was not easy for Schumacher to leave his old band, but there was no alternative. " When I returned home from Salzburg, I was in love. It felt like cheating, because I still had my old project and there were plans to record a new album", he confesses. The feeling was too strong to hide. He just had to be a solo artist.

On the one hand, "SOL (The MUDAM Session)" is shaped by Schumacher’s newfound passion for loneliness with all its appeal, and on the other hand by that most important characteristic of relationships at all: intimacy. The piece Melancolia, for example, conveys a unique isolation, which is as sad as it is beautiful. Twinkle expresses a deeply personal sense of enlightenment. Even Tearjerker, a cover version of the famous song by Sakamoto, becomes so intimate in Schumacher’s interpretation that one might imagine that he wrote the song himself. ” When you play solo, you are really confronted with yourself. With your strong moments as well as your weak ones, which don’t necessarily have to be your worst moments. It is precisely this fragility that sometimes has something very beautiful. It is not uncommon for her to create magical things”, he says and notes: "Playing solo is already an intense thing."

Pascal Schumacher, vibraphone