MetaLogue - The Music Of Mani Planzer

The newly formed 10-member ensemble “MetaLogue” with singer Nina Reiter revives the music of Lucerne composer Mani Planzer (1939-1997), who died in the 1990s and was unjustly forgotten. Planzer left his mark on the cultural landscape of central Switzerland as a musician, composer, organist, teacher, choir director and big band leader. In 1981 he was awarded the Art and Culture Prize of the city of Lucerne, and in 1998 he was posthumously awarded the Lucerne Living Space Prize.

The band name “MetaLogue” refers to Planzer’s penchant for wordplay and symbolizes the symbiosis of the different elements that come together in this project. On the one hand the young top-class musicians put Planzer’s music in the spot light and let the audience participate in a musical dialogue that is far from the mainstream, defies musical genres, questions the self-evident, but at the same time unites what is supposedly separate. On the other hand, the lyrics penned by singer Nina Reiter take up Planzer’s pioneering spirit in the synthesis of jazz and lyricism and, through the sensitive use of language, form a meta-level to the previously instrumental compositions.

The program includes works by the Mani Planzer Big Band, as well as the MorschAchBlasorCHester, newly rearranged for the ensemble’s unusual instrumentation by Nina Reiter. To celebrate the upcoming anniversary (Planzer would have celebrated his 85th birthday in 2024), the program is a tribute to the musical bridge builder, trailblazer and pioneer, who in his work has always “pursued the mysterious dialectic of individual and collective creativity” (Christina Rentsch, Tages-Anzeiger).