LE POT
Genres: Jazz Related Improv, Composition • Switzerland

The church of St. Roman dominates the village of Raron like a hilltop castle. In defiance of the times it offers an intimate, peaceful and focused space. Le Pot with Manuel Mengis on the Trumpet, Hans‐Peter Pfammatter on the piano and keyboard, Lionel Friedli on the drums, and Manuel Troller on the guitar spent four days in this village church recording their latest album ‘Hera’. The choice of setting wasn’t random. Fragments from the music of Benjamin Britten serve as a starting point for Le Pot’s acoustic expedition: a melody from ‘Requiem aeternam’, themes from ‘The Beggar’s Opera’, a song from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The sound is mystical, timeless and dreamlike, yet never esoteric or innocent. Rather, there’s a dark and sinister quality to Britten’s work. The gears crunch, they grind against each other and don’t quite mesh together. The tonal centre becomes more and more indistinct, gliding subtly from major to minor. “Music has the beauty of loneliness and pain”, the composer once read more...