Listening to – an with – each other
My musical work with Luk Perceval by Jens Thomas
von Jens Thomas
Erschienen in: Arbeitsbuch 2019: Luk Perceval (07/2019)
For his 2003 production of “Othello” at the Münchner Kammerspiele, Luk Perceval was looking for an improvisational pianist. We came into contact through a recommendation from Laurent Simonetti. Once Luk had heard my CDs, we met for the first time in the spring of 2002. I was doing a concert with saxophonist Christof Lauer in a town whose name I forget. But I can certainly remember the bald man without a hat (!) who approached me in the auditorium of the club shortly before the start of the concert. “Just have fun,” he said, and we did. And that essentially became the mantra of our collaboration. During rehearsals it transformed into “do your thing”.
And from our first encounter I realised – the guy really means it. With everything. But above all – and this was the key for me – with my freedom to improvise the music. Not improvising as an “invention” of something, instead making audible something that seems invisible. The central element was always the assertion that everything arises in the moment, and differently every night. Not played, but actually physically called forth. I was so absorbed by the emotional acting of the actors that at one...
