Fuchsthone Orchestra

The Fuchsthone Orchestra is anything but a conventional big band - with violin, vocals and electronics added to the line-up, the 20 often award-winning musicians represent the state of the art of contemporary large jazz ensembles. In the works of band leaders Christina Fuchs and Caroline Thon, brute tutti passages and brass voicings à la Maria Schneider are followed by moments of silence, interspersed with collective improvisations by smaller sub-units of the band. An impressive musical experience that makes full use of the diverse sound colours and combination possibilities of the instruments involved. In 2021, the ensemble was nominated for the German Jazz Award, and the orchestra's music was released for the first time on its debut album STRUCTURES & BEAUTY, released by Enja Records, just in time for Jazzfest Bonn 2023.

As part of the ‘RELOADED’ concert series, the ensemble presents its current programme with new compositions. Here, the ideas and endeavours for constant renewal and the search for contemporary sounds come together. The ensemble's repertoire is thus constantly changing and remains full of surprises.

The Fuchsthone Orchestra is currently also offering optional performances with video artist Claudia Schmitz, who adds a further - visual - dimension to the music LIVE, improvising on stage like another band member. The new compositions will be orientated towards this with more open forms.

Fuchsthone Orchestra

In November 2019, the time had come: after intensive preparation, musicians, composers and arrangers Christina Fuchs and Caroline Thon brought their new large ensemble to the stage. The furious premiere in Cologne's Stadtgarten was followed by no less enthusiastically received concerts in Wuppertal, Dortmund and Aachen - the starting signal for a unique, large-scale orchestral project. Since then, Fuchsthone has constantly evolved, rediscovered itself time and again and tweaked its sound. The orchestra's regular concert series in Cologne's Stadtgarten is accordingly called ‘Reloaded’, creative assessments of the current situation, live in front of an audience.

About the unbreakable beauty of the world

Now, after a good five years of intensive work, the Fuchsthone Orchestra is taking stock and the result, there is no other way to put it, is sensational: the debut album ‘Structures & Beauty’ is a work of sound art that will find its place in jazz history. Recorded in June 2022 in the DLF Cologne broadcasting hall, the material was easily enough for a powerful-sounding double CD - not a note, not a composition, not a single solo could have been less.

The music tells hauntingly sound-dramatic stories as a great world theatre, sometimes powerfully dynamic, sometimes lyrically subtle, always rich in finesse and subtlety. With their complex arrangements, Christina Fuchs and Caroline Thon skilfully combine jazz, classical music, rock and avant-garde with a pointed use of electronics - and at the same time offer much more:

"Structures & Beauty" is not "just" a sound event, it is a socio-political statement. Christina Fuchs and Caroline Thon react thoughtfully, worried, even concerned, to current catastrophic experiences, social sensitivities and frictions. In rich sound extremes, they explore the meaningfulness of the world, seeking and finding musical forms of expression for their scepticism and helplessness, sadness and anger. And yet ‘Structures & Beauty’ stands for resistant strength and unwavering hope: as a hymn to the beauty of the world and the joy of existence.

Lineup
fuchsthone.com/ensemble