Monika Roscher Bigband - Failure in Wonderland (2012)

“At the very beginning this band wanted to be called “Big Band” or “Orchestra”. Sounded a bit too shiny and at the same time too clean – somehow not crazy enough. In my book the name of “Band of Transfiguration” expresses a certain fool’s license, it lives, it is wild!
And that is exactly what is important to me: that each member of the band can fully live up to his emotions. It does not matter when sometimes a wrong note is slipped in, it does not matter “when it really crashes”, like in the piece “Die Parade” when the whole funeral band falls off a cliff. It is not important that the band falls down, it is important how they do it! Fervently and with deep conviction – opposing life and death at the same time. It is a concept of freedom that I try to transpose into my music.
You can’t expect from every musician to commit collective suicide in his imagination. I am grateful to play and work with these wonderful musicians you can listen to on this recording and in our concerts. They have the gift to become involved with my images and they take the time to understand and simultaneously to transform them – sometimes to the extreme.
During the recording and during our short tours the band really grew together and developed its identity. In the meantime I have each musician’s sound in my head when writing so that I know whom to trust with which piece. On the other hand the band has to confide in me when it should make music out of my transfigured imagination, for example of a desert knowing that I have never set foot into one.
We are not dealing here with faithful reproduction but rather how to avoid perfection. It is the rough edges and the ruptures that surprise and move me: the blemished beauty of Alice in “Failure in Wonderland”, the tension between harmony and disharmony that I can only vaguely approach with my lyrics. To me words can-not nail it the way music does. And so it does not matter what the band is actually called, Orchestra or Big Band. May “Band of Transfigura-tion” remain as a second name anyhow.”
(Monika Roscher)

Tracklist:

1. Failure in Wonderland [07:24]
2. Future 3 [05:26]
3. Irrlicht [08:19]
4. Wuste [10:28]
5. Parade [06:37]
6. Human Machines [03:21]
7. Schnee aus Venedig [08:56]
8. When I Fall in Love [09:14]
9. Nacht [03:37]

Personnel:

Monika Roscher - guitars, vocals, compositions
Julian Schunter - alto sax, flute
Jan Kiesewetter - alto & soprano saxes
Jasmin Gundermann - tenor sax, flute
Michael Schreiber - tenor sax, flute
Heiko Giering - baritone sax, flute, bass-clarinet
Felix Jechlinger - trumpet, flugelhorn
Andreas Unterreiner - trumpet
Matthias Lindermayr - trumpet
Johannes Schneider - trumpet
Andreas Schnell - trumpet
Peter Palmer - trombone
Roman Sladek - trombone
Max Weber - trombone
Ralf Bauer - trombone
Jakob Grimm - bass-trombone
Josef Ressle - piano
Ferdinand Roscher - double bass
Silvan Strauss - drums
Leonard Kuhn - electronics