Venue: Štihova dvorana, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana
Concert date: 12.04.2007
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 14 or 11* euros (* for high school and university students)
Friday the 13th, around nine in the evening, was when Ljubljana had the honor of hearing the album Odsev spomina / The Reflection Of Memory performed live for the first time, in the Štihova dvorana at Cankarjev Dom. The two “culprits” were a pair of virtuosos, each on their own instrument: accordionist Jure Tori, who’s probably still best known for his work in the band Orlek, and the legendary double bassist Ewald Oberleitner, a familiar name to students at the University of Arts in Graz and, of course, to jazz fans.
They released Odsev spomina at the end of last year, and it’s mostly Jure’s own writing. Only the song “Ob oknu” was penned by Andrej Guček, frontman of the band Hiša, whom Jure has worked with before. And what they pulled off so successfully on the record, they’ve now shown live as well. There was never any doubt that these two make a great tandem who complement each other in every possible way, so there’s hardly any need to point out that both musicians, and with them their instruments, stayed perfectly in sync the whole time, on equal footing, masterfully intertwined, in short.
They kicked off the evening with the title track, “Odsev spomina”. The performance was clean, precise, flawless and charged with an energy that never let up until the end of the show, some 80 minutes later. In fact, the energy just kept building, whether the song was sad, like “Sad Story”, which isn’t actually sad at all, only the title is, as Jure pointed out, or “Življenja pot”, which really is melancholic, all the way to the rowdy “Full House” and “Pujsov let”, which Jure introduced as, “this one’s about a pig that flies, and if I hit a wrong note, well, he slipped!”
The tension and intensity the two of them coax out of the songs with such ease is incredible. In “Ples dreves”, played almost entirely in pianissimo and full of pauses, on top of the dreamy melody you could clearly hear the air being squeezed out of the accordion’s bellows and the sound of the keys, and a pin dropping at that moment could surely have set off a small earthquake, or at least the noise of a tree falling in a sleeping forest under a blanket of stars. Generating energy in the livelier songs was no problem either. “Čebelji pik” toyed with a kind of distant variation on “Čmrljev let”, and Orlek could easily have used “Full house” in one of their punk-polka romps.
Extra intimacy came courtesy of the (Štih) hall itself, whose round shape wipes out the line between the audience and the performers, and even though it was only half full, the atmosphere was wonderfully warm. Even when the last song was announced, nobody in the crowd seemed to be in a hurry to leave, at least not for the most part. So the two musicians came back twice, and the second time they called Ms. Bogdana Herman up from the audience to join them on stage, but sadly in vain, since she obviously wasn’t among those present. “Change of plan,” said Jure, and the two immediately launched into an outstanding version of “The House Of The Rising Sun”. Towards the end of the song, Ewald even played the double bass with a stick, hitting the strings with it and conjuring up a mix of slap technique and the thud of some percussion instrument.
The arrangements proved to be extremely polished live too, masterfully written and just as masterfully performed. The musical genres they weave into these compositions also feel perfectly in tune and inseparable, even when it’s a combination of classical, jazz, rock & roll and, at moments, honestly something close to Slovenian polka-style folk-pop. Both instruments (and both musicians) shone in full splendor from start to finish, making sure Odsev spomina will keep reflecting its velvety image for a long time to come.
Setlist
01. Odsev spomina (Reflection Of A Memory)
02. Ples dreves (Dance Of The Trees)
03. Polet (Glide)
04. Življenja pot (Voyage Of Life)
05. Špicpob (Spitzbub)
06. *Nemirna
07. Sad Story
08. Sijaj v temi (A Light In The Darkness)
09. Full House
10. Pujsov let (Flying Pig)
11. Le zaspi (Just Go To Sleep)
12. Ob oknu (At The Window)
13. Čebelji pik (Bee Sting)
Encore #1
14. Memphis Slim
Encore #2
15. The House Of The Rising Sun
Lineup:
Jure Tori: Accordion
Ewald Oberleitner: Double bass
