Swiss drummer alone on stage because of Covid

The return of the town hall to indoor events was not a lucky star.

Corona-related, of course.

Germering

- The Swiss drummer Florian Arbenz should have appeared with the New York saxophonist Greg Osby as part of the jazz series.

It was clear weeks ago that nothing would come of this: Osby could not leave his home.

Arbenz looked around for a replacement and, on the recommendation of Greg Osby, found what he was looking for in Amsterdam: Tineke Postma, a student at Osby and one of the leading saxophonists in Europe, should step in.

Everything was ready in Germering.

The Orlandosaal had seats for around 150 subscribers to the jazz series.

The rows were sufficiently spaced, and there were always two places available to the respective neighbors.

What Arbenz and the Stadthalle had not expected, however, was the surprising classification of two Dutch regions as risk areas.

Tineke Postma was already on the plane from Amsterdam to Munich when the new rules were announced, according to Medea Schmitt, head of the Stadthallen.

Result: You had to be tested after landing and then quarantined for corona.

When Medea Schmitt told this, Postma was sitting a few hundred meters away in the Germeringer Hotel.

Drummer plays alone

Florian Arbenz said that he hadn't experienced this in his 25-year stage career.

He wasn't impressed by it and just played the show on his own.

If you want to go, you are welcome to do so, you will get your entrance fee reimbursed proportionately, explained Medea Schmitt before the first drum roll.

In fact, only one elderly man was seen getting up and leaving the room.

The rest stayed seated and, despite all the circumstances, had a great concert.

Arbenz is a classically trained percussionist who has even played in an orchestra under Pierre Boulez.

That he eventually decided on the drum set and got stuck with jazz, he explained quite simply like this: "In classical music I missed the groove." That he can groove, that is, play extremely impulsively and the audience prefers with his fingers would snap along, he showed, among other things, with the composition "Groove Conductor".

Like almost all numbers of the concert, it comes from the current album "Reflections of Eternal Line" by Arbenz and Osby.

Filigree art

The fact that this and the other pieces came across so wonderfully even without the saxophone was of course due to the delicate art of Florian Arbenz.

He treated his drum set, expanded by various instruments such as kalimbas or a huge Balinese gong, like a multi-layered melody instrument.

And when there was no other way, he would whistle the melody normally blown by the sax.

With that Arbenz created an almost magical atmosphere.

The audience followed every volte of the enormously resourceful percussionist and at the end gave the long applause they deserved.

After the encore, the last one in the hall felt a sense of relief that he was finally able to experience a real concert again.