If music genre was described like geography, German/Swiss band Esche would be located on a stormy island between jazz trio and chamber music ensemble. The collective – consisting of Laura Schuler (violin), Luzius Schuler (piano) and Lisa Hoppe (double bass) – navigates through a variety of musical associations and artifacts, and yet assembles their very own world within them.
This trio is an ambitious longstanding project of the three members – through the past five years they have been composing, experimenting, reshaping and triumphing. Together Esche developed a mutual sound aesthetics and vision, which they thoughtfully encapsulated on their debut album Leiser Protest (Quiet Protest) in 2016. For their sophomore (released March 2018) Der Dichter Spricht (The Poet Speaks) Esche received wide recognition throughout the jazz world in Switzerland and Germany, with features in Jazzthing (GER), Jazz’n’More (CH), All About Jazz (USA) and on SRF (Swiss national radio).
The new, second album has become a gigantic labyrinth full of musical affirmations, in which they frame avant-garde and perfection, intimacy and melancholy. Esche´s songs are not simply crafted – their compositions are neither freely improvised nor designed on the drawing board. The elementary of their music is the challenge of finding the freedom in interplay, in any situation and circumstance. The aspects of improvisation, communication and collective story-telling are the foundation on which this vivid, breathing and personal music is based.
Esche is playing on average two European tours a year alongside local performances, on big and small stages as well as at very special locations such as chapels, bunkers, living rooms, squatted houses and cellar vaults, and such as: Aarhus Jazz Festival, Cully Jazz Festival, BeJazz Bern, KlangBasel Festival, Golem Hamburg, Gambrinus St. Gallen.