KOENIG – SOLO – MESSING (AUT) – Live at Sajeta Art&Music Festival – Saturday 10/7/2021

Lukas Koenig is an Austrian drummer, percussionist and composer, born in 1988 in St. Pölten. He currently lives and works in Vienna. He attended the Gustav Mahler conservatory of music, the Anton-Bruckner Univerz and the LinzSwiss Jazz School. Even as a young artist he was often commended end received numerous awards. He has collaborated with Klangforum Wien, Audrey Chen, Julien Desprez, Sensational, Elvin Brandhi, Peter. Kutin, Chris Pitsiokos, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Briggan Krauss, Shahzad Isamaily, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Elliott Sharp, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Franz Hautzinger, David Murray, Reggie Washington, Malcolm Braff, Steven Bernstein, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Koenigleopold, Kompost3, Bilderbuch, Ensemble für Neue Musik Zürich and many more.
»MESSING« (2020,released at Ventil Records) by Lukas Kœnig is a courageous statement that rejects straightforward pop and instead shines with artistic freedom and the will for change. The metal, the brass, always reverberates, at times mercilessly pounding on us, driving us forward, resonating. An artistically valuable and independent work by one of the most remarkable drummers of these times.
»MESSING« is the German noun for brass, a metal that is a component of percussion cymbals. Messing/brass is the cheapest metal alloy for cymbals. Therefore it is easily deformable and bendable.
»MESSING« as an English verb which describes a chaotic handling. Not chaotic at all is Lukas König’s impressive sound study presented here.
The internationally acclaimed drummer concentrated only on a single cymbal (brass plate) as a sound source, messed around with it and therefore discovered new possibilities for sound developments. According to Kœnig, this reduction in means can be attributed to the loss of his rehearsal room and additionally to an acute lack of space, which is also connected to his constant commuting between New York and Vienna. The warehouse was converted into a quiet rehearsal room, where he explored his dexterity on the cymbal and its tonal characteristics using contact microphones and headphones, and perfected his technique to this end. And this reduction of means bore fruit.

Sajeta was formed as a group of workshops in the late 90s. In 2002 we realised that there are not enough interesting music festivals in Slovenia which could transgress genre limitations and present inovators from the field of electronic, jazz, rock, ethno, experimental and other styles on one stage. That is why we changed the concept of Sajeta into a music festival which is supposed to promote modern approaches in music and show some forgotten names of some historical musical alternative. It is a festival of creativity, where music comes first and is not limited by any genre specifications. In past editions we hosted important musicians, mostly from the mentioned fields of creative electronics, nu-jazz, rock……Sajeta is basically a boutique festival attended by a smaller number of listeners which would make the atmosphere, and performances even more prominent. Besides that the venue itself (a confluence of two Alpine rivers) is truly magical and had a profound effect on all the musicians which appeared at the festival so far.
www.sajeta.org