The Music of Pilgrim Christoph Irniger & Swiss Jazz Orchestra

• 1Where Is Walter10:15
• 2Endangered09:02
• 3Crosswinds09:56
• 4Italian Circus Story - Intro03:04
• 5Italian Circus Story12:12
• 6Back in the Game09:01
• 7Point of View08:46
• Total Runtime01:02:16

Info for The Music of Pilgrim

Actually, one tends to associate the saxophonist Christoph Irniger with handy formats. In bands like Pilgrim, Cowboys from Hell, Noir, Counterpoints or the Christoph Irniger Trio, he prefers smaller ensembles from trio to quintet, in which he brings out every voice, intention and interaction in full balance. All the more surprising now is the compactness and density he achieves on his orchestral debut "The Music Of Pilgrim". The title may be confusing at first, because although it is music by and for Pilgrim, it is not a Pilgrim album. But more about that later.

The topic of big bands is not entirely new for the Swiss, because he was a member of the Lucerne Jazz Orchestra from 2007 to 2014. So he knows what he is doing and yet, together with the Swiss Jazz Orchestra, he is entering new territory. This freshness and impartiality, with which he lets himself fall from the ten-metre board into the big band bass, is good for the album. As with so many contemporary productions, the pandemic was the trigger for something new. But unlike all the artists who tackled solo projects in the seclusion of the living room studio, Irniger plunged headlong into the very big spectacle. Saddle-fast in melodic and rhythmic questions, he used the time of the gig lull to deal extensively with harmonic questions and to develop compositionally. He began writing harmony sequences and arrangements and came across the philosophy of the legendary Power Big Band of Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. From this he began to reinvent compositions that had actually been written for Pilgrim for a large formation. He thought big from the beginning and basked in the brilliant spectrum of possibilities of a big band. He freely admits that he indulged in the pleasure principle. What he wanted to hear himself, he put into notes.

This pleasure in playing inevitably translates into a pleasure in listening. One feels the power of a colossus whose cauldron is heated to bursting point with great melodies. The pressure of the unconditional desire to tell a story keeps the engine constantly running. You can't listen as fast as the ideas flow. Irniger has certainly brought this lust for fabulating and painting variable sound pictures with him from his small bands and translated it into an unpredictable game with tension and relaxation. "It's important to me to be original," he postulates confidently. "I want to hear in my music that it is from me. When I find myself playing something I've heard several times before, I'm immediately seized by the need to break through it. That's not to say it doesn't exist yet at all, but in my world at least it has to be new. I write things to challenge myself with it."

Irniger does not seek a willful break with his previous projects in his collaboration with the Swiss Jazz Orchestra. On the contrary, suddenly the time was there to try out something that he might not otherwise have been able to realise in this way, although it had been fermenting inside him for a long time. The poetry of the incalculable therefore leaps out of every single note of this album. The impulse for this project did not come from Irniger himself, but from the Swiss Jazz Orchestra, which invited the saxophonist as a soloist in November 2020. The programme was already in place, but could not be realised due to the lockdown. So he took heart and asked whether the concert could be made up for with his own music. The orchestra already existed, Pilgrim's material was also there. So all that was needed was a way to synchronise one with the other. "I didn't have to do anything more than open up the completed pieces again and add something," sums up the newly minted big band leader. "What was new for me was the whole harmony of the instruments. How does a flute sound with a trumpet? You have to know that, because you don't hear the flute when there is a trumpet ..."

Irniger has already worked with many of the musicians involved in other contexts. They know and appreciate each other. The Swiss Jazz Orchestra is a well-organised ensemble that performs a new programme every Monday. For Christoph Irniger, this joint project was a stroke of luck, because all the musicians gave their all to the cooperation. Egotisms and airs and graces were left at the door. "I am rather used to the small ensemble," recapitulates Irniger. "Working with 20 musicians is definitely a much bigger challenge. I have to be able to talk about what I think. Working with people I don't know what they think is difficult for me. The SJO made this challenge easy because of the positive nature, the spirit, the commitment and the fact that I already know many musicians from other contexts. Therefore, the work was similarly relaxed as in the smaller bands I'm used to."

In the end, Irniger treats the big band like a large instrument. The recording was made live in a relatively small room. This physical compactness is palpable. The individual voices create a sound plasma in which the separate instrument hardly plays a role. In the live mix, almost every instrument could be heard through every other microphone. It was like an avalanche that, once it had started rolling, could no longer be stopped. A release of the recording was therefore not originally planned, but when Irniger listened to the result, he felt like a magician. The energy once ignited left him no choice but to share this sound with the rest of the world.

Christoph Irniger and a big band? Sure, what else! With subtle full power, the master of small formations reinvents large-scale jazz.

Christoph Irniger, tenor saxophone, direction
Swiss Jazz Orchestra

Christoph Irniger
born 1979, is a Swiss saxophonist, composer and bandleader. According to the Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung he is “undoubtedly one of the greatest talents of his generation.” In recent years, Irniger has made a name for himself in a range of line-ups, playing jazz, rock and related musical styles. Irniger is leader of the band and the Christoph Irniger Trio which between them have released four albums (three on Intakt Records) so far. From 2000 to 2006 Irniger studied music education at the Zurich Jazz School, and performance at the Lucerne School of Music with Christoph Grab and Nat Su. In the following years he took lessons from Dave Liebman, Mark Turner and Ari Hoenig. He won the Friedel Wald Foundation development award in 2004, received the Borsa di Studio for Siena Jazz University in 2006 and achieved third place in the 2010 ZKB Jazz Prize with the Cowboys from Hell. Between 2015 and 2017 his band Pilgrim were awarded high priority act from Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council. His work has been documented on twenty albums to date. He has played concerts and tours throughout Europe, Asia and the USA. His regular visits to Berlin and New York have led to a number of diverse collaborations, including: Nasheet Waits (No Reduce Jaywalkin’ (nWog, 2013)), Michael Bates, Don Philippe, and the band Counterpoints with Ohad Talmor. He has also played with Dave Douglas, Dan Weiss, Nils Wogram, Claudio Puntin, Max Frankl, Stefan Rusconi, Mats Spillmann, Christian Weber, Chris Wiesendanger and Vera Kappeler. He was a member of the Lucerne Jazz Orchestra for seven years and can be heard on four of their recordings. He is also co-leader of the prog-rock band Cowboys from Hell. Irniger teaches at Zurich University of the Arts and the Musikschule Konservatorium in Zurich.

This album contains no booklet.