Potage du Jour

  Franziska Baumann voice
  Jürg Solothurnmann soprano and alto sax
  Christoph Baumann piano

A good cook knows as many soup recipes as the year has days

Romanian saying

A spontaneously composed dish has now gained a fixed position on the menu card. In late 1999, informal sessions were so exciting that a new band was founded on the spot, the Swiss improvisational trio Potage du Jour with Franziska Baumann and Jürg Solothurnmann from Bern and the pianist Christoph Baumann from Wettingen. Nobody can predict exactly what will go into the next soup when they go to work. What seasonings will flavor it and how much? Will it be hot or a gazpacho? That will depend from what the members have cooked up in other realms in the previous days and weeks - dealing with their various other "kitchens" such as modern classical music, jazz, salsa, film & theatre music, live-electronics and music performance etc.

The three have found modes which focus on interactivity. Shapes and attitudes that upsurge within the musical process are registered, read and developed accordingly. It's a game featuring attentive listening, quick reaction and a broad pallette of sound. The ways the sounds are fused, strung together, are juxtaposed or opposed surprise the musicians again and again and stimute them to widen the limits of playing and interacting. The inventions breathe with vocal actions, chants, rhythm pulses, sound cascades, reverberations, melody clips and unothodox sounds.

However, having been educated in an extensive variety of musical forms, the member strive for coherent statements as often as possible - as in a spontaneous speech. Call it instant composition.

So far, Potage du Jour has appeared in Switzerland, Germany and Romania and collaborated with the French dancer Valérie Métivier from Toulouse.