Newspaper Review: NEXUS & Fritz Hauser at the Music Gallery

NEXUS & Fritz Hauser
The Music Gallery
February 27, 2007
8:00 PM

Matching Music to the Drum, Not the Drum to the Music

This collaborative concert between the Toronto-based percussion ensemble NEXUS, and renowned Swiss drum-set artist Fritz Hauser was a rare spectacle of musical achievement. On the program in this intermissionless concert was Away without Leave, a Bob Becker composition based on grooves from artists such as Steve Gadd, time flies a Fritz Hauser improvisation, and out of the blue which was a joint improvisation with NEXUS and Hauser. This concert program parallels the CD that was released, titled out of the blue. This title seems especially fitting for this rare treat in musical collaboration since the phrase out of the blue expresses the sentiment of improvisation perfectly: it is something that is formed spontaneously drawing on musical intuition as a guide.

Both NEXUS and Fritz Hauser are full of this musical intuition that centres their improvisation. When they play together, there is a sense of natural flow in their conversation, much like two good friends who converse so easily. Musically, they finish each other's sentences, predict one another's thoughts, and lead from one thought to the next without interruption, disrespect, or ego. This type of intuition and insight is obviously developed from the years of listening all of these musicians have partaken in.

Both NEXUS and Hauser have a reputation of pushing boundaries in their respective genres. NEXUS has broadened the possibilities of the percussion ensemble to embrace world music and improvisation which is informed by classical music traditions. Likewise, Hauser is a modern drum-set innovator. For Hauser, anything is possible and allowable as long as it is in service to the sound. Playing with hands? No problem. Replacing the conventional 14" hi hats with 8" reductions? Why not! Simply pushing on the drum head to get the sound of air escaping through the vent holes? Hauser takes everything anyone ever learned about playing the drums and throws it out the window. What the audience is left with is suspense at every turn, and the desire to see what else this dreamer can imagine.

On February 28, one day after the concert, Fritz Hauser presented a masterclass at the Faculty of Music and fielded a range of questions from the audience. When asked what attracted him to improvisation, he responded, "I was tired of matching the drum to the music, so I decided to try and find what music I could match to the drum." I'm sure this is a central problem for anyone musician locked into a more classical paradigm. The traditional, at least orchestral, approach to percussion is one where one strives to find the drum that matches the part perfectly. Instead, Hauser reverses this paradigm and asks the drum what music it would like to create informed by the very moment of its present existence.