How the impromo musicians of the FLAMMeS drive away the winter with Purcell

The sextet around fllehornist Franz Koglmann spiced up his January gig at Porgy & Bess with a pinch of action art

No one has set the painful awakening from the depths of emotional ice cold more convincingly than Henry Purcell in the Cold Song. A hit from the baroque opera King Arthur, faltering rejection of any thaw. It takes a proven expert of the "Cool" to banish the horrors of ice and darkness particularly effectively.

Franz Koglmann, local flugelhornist and administrator of jazz modernism, approaches the Viennese Porgy & Bess Purcells Wintergeist in English custom shoes, with a steamed instrument. The improvisation collective FLAMMeS invited to the ritual in Vienna's Riemergasse. Thought was given to the professional expulsion of the frost with the brush broom of the action art. Whereby a few new chords were added to the cold aria for careful heating.

The now raising chirping and string strokes forewed any glaciation. The noise art of the FLAMMeS sextet has long given way to give and take at the highest level of interaction. Under the guidance of impulse generator Michael Mautner (keyboards), no contradiction, planned random patterns of the interaction arise. Acoustic hidden objects, in which bassist/guitarist Andreas Donhauser drives the others to continue "attacca" with trumpet trestrks. If the particles of noise excitation sink, Koglmann stoically plays his lines sparkling with clarity and coldness of mind.
Brass and paint

The Wintergeist ("Cold Genius") itself was embodied by the action artist Josef Ka. Sliver-naked she sliver-sclembed step by step, to the lying Stockhausen chord of the Purcell disciples, the Porgy stage, with nothing but the gold chains of love. And while Max Bühlmann's bass clarinet was still playing hard, Schlaf's sister poured herself with the color contents of a brass bowl. Then Kafka's returnee lay down in front of everyone's eyes to rest. Winter does not keep the last word, the wonderful FLAMMeS continue to play. (Ronald Pohl, 20.1.2026)