Trapeze is a Swiss-German-French quartet that came to life in December 2022 during a residency at Malterie in Lille, and features French sax player Sakina Abdou, German trombonist Matthias Müller (both Abdou and Müller played before in the pianist Eve Risser’s Red Desert Orchestra. Müller also plays in Berlin’s Splitter Orchestra), Swiss turntablist Joke Lanz (of Sudden Infant) and drummer Peter Orins (of the French-Japanese quartet KAZE. Orins and Müller played together before in the Satoko Fujii Berlin Orchestra. He also collaborates with Abdou in the trio Abdou/Dang/Orins and shared the stage in 2019 with Joke Lanz in the ephemeral ensemble Butcher’s Cleaver led by Czech trumpeter Petr Vrba).

Trapeze performed a series of concerts and encounters as part of the Lille-based Muzzix musicians cooperative and Associés festival before recording its debut album Level Crossing in December 2022. Abdou, Müller, Lanz and Orins share a common heritage of European free improvised music and free jazz. They have a passion for eccentric sound manipulations and like to push genre and sonic boundaries with their personal extended techniques. Trapeze allows these four improvisers to transform musical listening experiences and disrupt musical and sonic paradigms, and suggest a set of six pieces that play with elusive and loose forms and cultivate ambiguities.

Trapeze is not shy of experimenting with weird sounds and unsettling noises and harnessing these sounds and noises to their rhythmic patterns and slow-burning, chaotic dynamics. The restless energy of this quartet is infectious and Trapeze performs with a joyful sense of invention and subversive, dadaist playfulness that guarantees to stick a smile on the listeners’ faces. The last, 15-minute «A new bike by parcel» captures best the rebellious spirit of this unique quartet.

Eyal Hareuveni

Sakina Abdou (saxophones), Matthias Müller (trombone), Joke Lanz (turntables), Peter Orins (drums)