Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Tolmin / MINK / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.04.2016
Attendance: 50
Ticket price: €0.00 (free admission!!!)
Bratko Bibič is an internationally acclaimed and established music composer, known above all as a tireless accordionist. In the eighties, the long-haired “accordion oddball” thoroughly shook up the music scene with his band Begnagrad, who put out their only album in 1982. A few years later he founded the international group Nimal, which released two studio albums. Later he composed film music, and he was never one to turn down all sorts of avant-garde-leaning music projects, where his accordion naturally played either the central role or the least important one. Although his Madleys haven’t been active for a while now, the man is not sitting idle. Since 2009 he’s been playing with Die Wiener Ziehharmoniker, with whom he tours all over Europe, has also performed in the USA, Canada and India, and has put out a whole 13 albums with them. That very group includes another exceptional accordionist: the young Austrian musician Paul Schuberth. With him, Bratko formed the lineup Bratko Bibič & Dedley Woodleybears, which also features saxophonist Vicy Pfeil and Czech violinist Tomáš Novák
At a late hour (the clock hands pointed to twenty past ten in the evening), Tomáš Novák and Paul Schuberth took the stage. After a deliberately chaotic intro, where they warmed up their fingers and calibrated their chemistry to a comfortable working temperature, they spent the first half hour playing pieces created by Paul. An eclectic mix of neoclassicism infused with world-music elements, a touch of the avant-garde language of teasing musical experimentation steeped in jazz, and even detours into Renaissance melos that pushed Tomáš into a vocal role, it wrapped up after half an hour with Bratko Bibič’s arrival on stage. For the next half hour he shared the stage with the two sturdy lads, and from there on he was the one linking the musical program together. It offered a mixed medley of Bratko’s own creations.
And so they followed one after another in the “medley of mix-ups” (Madleys): Poklon klišeju, Neresnančna, Encore Deux W (Še enkrat en W), Labis Carniolus (in three parts), Ableitung (Odvod) and the song Dis Tanz, which Bratko created back for the Nimal lineup. The band kept up the eclectic mix of genre promiscuity described in the previous paragraph, and despite the brutally demanding playing and the complexity of the content, they constantly maintained an exceptional focus on performance cohesion and tightness. Bratko has played these songs in the past in differently formatted lineups, so their arrangements have evolved over the years too. In the versions Bratko performs together with the duo Dedley Woodlybears at MINK, they deliver a completely new, reworked musical story. The trio strolled through a tangle of ultrasonic improvisational interludes that seemed to have no end, and in which the seasoned Bratko left the “mentor” initiative to his younger partners in crime, who literally stunned with their speed and precision of execution. Bratko, more or less, held the frame of the songs together with his instrument and left open space for Tomáš and Paul to cut loose in their solo spots. The second half hour, when Bratko was stretching his bellows on stage too, flew by lightning fast. The man, who has a communicative approach to the audience with a dose of black humor where you can never quite tell whether he’s being serious or joking, announced the end of the show pretty quickly from the moment he sat down on stage with the “extras” (as he called the songs), and that’s exactly what happened. After an hour of concert in total, Bratko introduced the performers a second time, and gave himself a new pseudonym, burying Bridko Bebič and enthroning Brutko Bombič in his place.
While Bratko (surprisingly quickly) also physically bid farewell to the stage and slipped backstage, Tomáš and Paul came back and played an insert from the opera Rusalka, written by Antonín Dvořák. What to say in closing? Short and sweet. The eclecticism Bratko Bibič brings to every musical sphere he enters with his instrument knows no limits. This time he’s teamed up with an exceptional pairing of another accordion and a violin. Unique, provocative, cheeky and endlessly fun. This is music with character, and it only knows one direction: constant evolutionary growth and the uncovering of undiscovered horizons. In the light of self-provoking avant-garde musical prose that never stops thrilling and always satisfies even the most demanding, spoiled music gourmet.
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