Drifting Clouds

DRIFTING CLOUDS - when music passes by

If you look up at the sky during the day, you will notice that clouds are constantly changing. A cloud is not a constant tropospheric phenomenon that drifts by, carried by currents. Rather, it is the product of a multitude of complex physical, feedback processes. It forms when the cloud-forming processes predominate. It begins to dissolve when the regressive processes gain the upper hand. In between, it changes constantly, always remains in motion, is distorted, condensed, shaped and deformed, it becomes threatening, sometimes obscures the sun, shortly afterwards lets the glistening light shine through again, becomes lovely, supposedly quotes a familiar image, then immediately disintegrates into the abstract again. And perhaps we ask ourselves: What was before? Where was the cloud when the sky was steel blue? What remains afterwards? Where does it retreat to when it has dissolved?

The piece DRIFTING CLOUDS is an invitation to devote our attention to the fleeting, the passing, the changes. We immerse ourselves in a musical stream, surrender to the pull, knowing that this music must come from somewhere and go somewhere. Without pause, without interruption, in the beauty of transience. Is it a meditation, a spiritual experience? In any case, it does not seem to be a question of courage that Mich Gerber anachronistically dispenses with the division into easily consumable short pieces. Rather, it is his only possible way of anticipating the constant flow in all its nuanced changes, recording it as such and leaving it unchanged for the audience to contemplate.

We sense that the music was already there before we begin to hear it. Like the cloud, whose basic prerequisites were there before it formed in the sky and became visible. And we have the certainty that the music remains, even when it fades away, when it recedes and dissolves.

With DRIFTING CLOUDS, Mich Gerber gives us music that is rooted in the before, accompanies us for a while in the present and echoes in the after. For as long as we want.

Text: Lukas Frey