Зорецвіт

Performers

INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra

Luca Sisera, Switzerland, and the jazz quintet ROOFER

Tamara Lukasheva, Germany

Program

CLAZZ & ANIMA between jazz and classical music

There is always a trace of jazz in the spring air, in its unpredictability, in the gentle displacement of accents, in the light that suddenly grows deeper and more prolonged. Spring does not arrive abruptly. It improvises, reshapes the rhythm of the city, and teaches us to listen to silence. Within this atmosphere, the INSO-Lviv Orchestra presents CLAZZ & ANIMA, a double concert in which jazz and classical music are not separated by boundaries but interwoven into a single living form.

CLAZZ is a large scale symphonic project by Swiss double bassist and composer Luca Sisera, conceived during the pandemic, a time of global stillness that called for a new sonic language. The work is written for an orchestra of forty two musicians and the jazz quintet ROOFER. At its core lies a precisely notated score combined with space for improvisation. Contemporary jazz and classical modernism coexist here not as experiment but as a carefully constructed musical architecture. The very title, uniting Classical and Jazz, articulates an aesthetic position. This is music at the threshold of genres, sustained by mutual trust and attentive listening. Since its premiere in 2022 in Schaan, Liechtenstein, CLAZZ has been documented in a concert film and a live album produced in collaboration with SRF2 Kultur and RTR, and released in 2023 on the label nWog Records. Subsequent performances, including those with the Lüneburger Symphoniker under the direction of Gaudens Bieri, have confirmed its vitality and its capacity to renew itself in each interpretation. The renewed line up of the ROOFER quintet allows the composer to focus on artistic direction, shaping a multilayered sonic пространство in which improvisation becomes an integral part of symphonic breath.

Another dimension of the spring jazz sensibility is revealed in ANIMA, an orchestral crossover cycle by composer and vocalist Tamara Lukasheva. Created in 2023, the work brings together musical interpretations of nineteenth century German poetry and texts by young Ukrainian women poets, offering an artistic response to the experience of war and inner transformation. Each movement unfolds as an individual sonic miniature, ranging from near lullaby intimacy to heightened emotional climaxes. Classical orchestral texture interacts with jazz freedom, contemporary rhythm, and inflections drawn from rock and popular music.

The INSO-Lviv Orchestra, recognized as Orchestra of the Year by the independent media outlet Ukrinform, shapes its trajectory as a consistent movement toward broader sound and broader thought. Openness to experiment becomes a natural means of developing the symphonic tradition, not preserving it within fixed forms but allowing it to engage with the rhythms and intonations of the present.

Jazz was born as the music of free people, as a declaration of dignity, improvisation, and an individual sense of time. Today, having travelled from the streets of New Orleans to major symphonic stages, it retains this inner energy of freedom that resists pressure and does not lose its voice. In dialogue with classical form, this energy does not diminish but deepens. Freedom enters structure, and structure begins to breathe. At a moment when freedom is a daily choice, this rhythm resonates with particular closeness. To sustain one’s own tempo and to sound despite circumstances is to transform the experience of struggle into a unifying and forward moving force.