A musical journey with the Ensemble ORIENT-EXPRESS (E.O.E.)!

(official press information / translation by Bjoern):

Musicians from Germany and Bangladesh take you on a musical trip where no man has gone before. Since its birth in 1999 the EOE is exploring musical possibilites.

The musicians play on traditional instruments from all over the world as tabla, tampura, sitar, harmonium, didgeridoo & santour, as well as modern instruments as e-piano, electric guitar and bass and sound-effects.

„An ancient gregorianic church song develops with sitar sounds and ostinato piano-bass into trance-spheres. On the other hand the Indian “Saleka Maleka” with its wahwah-guitar and rhythmic vocals gets kind of soulfunk appearance.“

(Heilbronner Stimme, 09.12.2003)

The Ensemble Orient Express plays mainly their own compositions and adaptions of traditional folksongs from Bengal, Rajasthan, Persia, Pakistan etc. (sometimes even from Germany, Finland and Ireland), arrangements of classical works, musicals, film music, bluesy and jazzy with elements of rock and trance. Song length ranges from 4 up to 20 minutes and leaves the musicians enough time to develop spontaneously and improvise as much as they want and to create new sounds according to place, time and mood. „ The artists (…) create thythm which flows into the very soul of the listeners. (…) The meditative character of some of the tunes makes the visitor fly into other spheres while relaxing totally.“

(Heilbronner Stimme, 27.01.2003)

A „… virtuous, and almost three hours – likewise eternal – ride …“ (Haller Tagblatt, 08.04.2003).

But the E O E can do totally different: you can find elements of progressive rock and sound experiments in their music, too – „experimental music inbetween two musical worlds.“

(Hohenloher Zeitung, 31.01.2001)

The different musical influences come from the fact that the musicians have been playing in several formations for over 30 years now. And sometimes a slides-show and optical effects support the music.

The band is always open for guest musicians. Just to name a few, they played together with percussionist Martin Mueller (Phineas, Percussion-Duo, Mamawori), singer Florence Sharkar, drummer Matthias Peter (Aoxomoxoa, Traven, Bildetbanden), bass player Focus Kindermann (Phineas, Die Achtlosen), tabla players Ilyas Khan (India) and Bipul Sharkar (Bangla Desh), body-percussionist Thomas Scheurer (Percussion-Duo), the brass-section of the Haller Freilichtspiele (Wolfgang Roth / sax., Peter Tuscher / tr., Leo Gmelch / posaune), Anamul Mohammed (bollywood-vocals), Leo James Costa (tabla) and jazz clarinettist Hans Kumpf (AK Musick). In 2004 they also played together with the fathers of world-music EMBRYO.

In January 2007 the EOE toured Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and jammed with local musicians in Jaipur and the nomads (Bopa Jatis) in Pushkar and Jaisalmer (excerpts of this session are on our myspace-site). They played three times alone in Ajmer. Both big daily newspapers there called their music “going straight into your heart” and as smooth as “Honey for the ears”. In 2011 an even more extended tour of India and Bangladesh followed, crowned by an open air concert in front of 8 – 10.000 people in a village in the middle of rice fields!

You see: with the EOE anything is possible! Variation is the programme.

(end of press information)