Pasborg & Mockunas ”Megaphone” is a new variant of the unique band project leaded by the Danish drummer Stefan Pasborg and the Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockunas. Two French aces join forces to the Danish-Lituanian pair to create a dynamite quartet launched in the Autumn 2006. This brand new line up is:
Liudas Mockunas > saxophone
Stephan Pasborg > drums
Marc Ducret > guitar
Paul Brousseau > keyboards
The music is a highly unorthodox mixture, that’s blending expressive instrumental burnouts, beautiful ballads, filmic horror, rock back-grounds, Baltic apocalypse-hymns and transcendent bell-songs!
The repertoire is written by Stefan Pasborg and Liudas Mockunas, and arranged by the group members. A music that gives a pointing finger towards what the future jazz-music is all about!! Their first concerts under the name of Toxikum_special in October 2006 took them to Bergen , Oslo , Helsinki , Turku , Tallinn and Vilnius . This happened to be a very successful launching as can be read in the Lituanian reports about the concert at the Vilnius Jazz Festival.
Since their highly-acclaimed debut-CD in 2001 (Pasborg & Mockunas
project) Stefan Pasborg and Liudas Mockunas have experimented co-leading skills with different band constellations. Their second album “Toxikum” issued in 2004 on ILK-records was voted “Jazz discovery of the year” and the band itself won two prizes at Danish Jazz Music Awards 2004.
”..Toxikum goes in all directions with pure vitality and a lust for exploration, which I simply just love!” – Politiken.
“Stefan Pasborgs playing is very daring…through it all he demonstrates a strong command of his instrument” – All About Jazz , USA . ”Pure tour de force..Toxikum is wonderful to listen to…MORE!” – Soundvenue. “There is far between Danish bands which satisfies the listener as well as this orchestra…If Pasborg and Mockunas lives up to their promising future, they will be able to create masterpieces.” – Jazz Special.
STEFAN PASBORG –
Pasborg graduated from the soloist line at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in 2002. He has become known on the European jazz scene as a highly personal drummer as well as a composer and bandleader, and has become especially well known for his work within the more experimental jazz music. He has performed and recorded with a number of internationally renowned musicians, including guitarist Marc Ducret, trumpetplayer Tomasz Stanko, trombonist Ray Anderson, and saxophonists John Tchicai, Jesper Zeuthen and Lotte Anker. At the present time, he plays regularly with Ibrahim Electric, Delirium, Ictus, Rød Planet, Pasborg & Mockunas Toxikum (co-led with saxophonist Liudas Mockunas), and a number of other bands. In addition to Denmark , Pasborg has performed in a large number of other European countries as well as Asia and the United States . He has been awarded several prizes, including the soloist prize at the 16th European Jazz Contest in Germany ; the Rhythmic Music Conservatory Talent Prize; the first prize at the 5th European Tournament for Improvised Music in France ; and the Danish Arts Foundation´s grant for artistic work in 2003, 2004 and 2005. At Danish Music Awards Jazz 2004, he received 2 grammys, including being voted ‘New Jazz Name of the Year’.
LIUDAS MOCKUNAS –
Vilnius and Copenhagen based reed player (born in 1976) is part of an up-and-coming new generation performers, is a representative of a young Lithuanian jazz generation, he is a mature and experienced musician who has played in many parts of Europe , USA and China . Mockunas graduated from Lithuanian Musical academy in 2002 where he made his Masters Degree. Since 1999 he studies at Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen , Denmark . He has won several classical competitions in Lithuania and Latvia . In 2004 he was awarded Lithuanian the most popular cultural news paper “Muzu Malunas” prize for musical activities in Lithuania and abroad. Together with trio M.A.P: Jacob Anderskov (piano) and Stefan Pasborg(drums), Mockunas won the first prize at the 2001 European Tournament for Improvised music in Poirtiers, France.He has released 3 albums as a leader and co-leader and 7 as a sideman including Andrew Hill’s Jazz Par Octet “THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL” (Stunt Records). Mockunas and his long year music partner Stefan Pasborg’s last album “Toxikum” featuring Marc Ducret and John Tchicai (“ILK” lable) has won the Danish grammy award “Jazz Discovery of the Year 2004”.
MARC DUCRET –
Marc Ducret was born in Paris , France in 1957, and began his professional career as a self-taught musician in 1975, playing with dance bands, folklore groups and singers and doing a lot of studio work. Interested in a very wide range of styles and instruments (acoustic and electric 12-string guitars, oud, fretless and baritone guitars), Ducret was a member of the first National Jazz Orchestra in France in 1986, and also led his own trio which gave many concerts and performed in numerous festivals in France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Africa, India, and Japan. Ducret also performed with Larry Schneider, David Friedmann, Michel Portal, Joachim Kuhn, Franco Ambrosetti, Didier Lockwood, Eric Barret, Miroslav Vitous, Enrico Rava, Adam Nussbaum, Django Bates, David Sanborn, Joey Baron, Michel Godard and others.
Since 1991, his collaboration with saxophonist Tim Berne has made Ducret one of the few European musicians regularly playing overseas. Frequently invited to be a guest soloist by groups, composers and radio programs in Germany , he created his own tentet “Seven Songs,” exploring the music of the ’60s with a very personal touch, and plays regularly with Louis Sclavis and Dominique Pifarely’s Acoustic Quartet. He has also recently collaborated with the band AKA Moon and with percussionist Bobby Previte in duet and the quartet Latin for Travelers.
PAUL BROUSSEAU –
Keyboards, sampling, guitar. He is, at times, a Cartésian pianist with a pure sense of compositional construction (in the vein of Debussy, Satie, Steve Reich). He is, at other times, an explorer of sounds using keyboards and analogue synth as well as real time sampling techniques. Paul Brousseau is a young musician multi- instrumentalist: piano (occasionally arranged), synthesizers, various keyboards, guitars, basses, percussion… Hes a self- taught artist and an interpreter of a wide array of musical styles. He likes to improvise around an idea, create a mood, dress up a melody, grind up a sound, make a noise, break a string, caress a piano, and all the rest too. In the age of Broadband internet and the electronic market, with cars that still run on petrol although we could very well use GM crops, Paul is an artist of his time. On the one hand, he fascinates us with wonderful shiny machines and yet, on the other hand he is never far from the rude, the ugly and gross. He has one finger convincingly in many musical styles whilst pushing to the very limits of their established codes and protocols. Paul is searching for a secret formula, which perhaps doesnt exist: an amalgam of innovation, tradition, and good sense of humour that shows us his personal perspective on the world today.
Booking:
Vapaat äänet – Charles Gil