Canto Migrando: The Middle Eastern rhythm malfouf provides the foundation for the first sixteen measures. Both tonally and rhythmically, the passage which follows tends toward Central European and “classical”. After the recapitulation of the first part, a number of breaks constitute the final passage, broken down into two sections and uniting Arabic instrumentalization with the wide range of percussion comprised by the traditional Western symphony orchestra. The Arabic drum figures Ayoub, Beledi, Wehda and Romba (with its origins in Afro-Cuban “rumba”) provide further rhythmic impulses throughout the work.

Balkan Gipsy : The music of the Sinti and Roma gypsies of the Balkan region furnished the inspiration for this composition. With regard to tone, the music shares its partial quarter-tone phrasing with blues. The rhythm is one of those pulsating Balkan 8/8 figures.

Herbst (Autumn) : This title is a concert Tango, and quite a danceable one at that. Its phrasing is unrestrained, its timing, however, rigorously defined. Even if it isn¹t known as such, Tango is a very typical symbiosis of European, African and Latin American musical elements. With “Tango Nuevo”, jazz made its way into this music form, as did ­ in almost Renaissance-like manner ­ so-called “art music”.

Slavia : In the 1990s, during the period of the unspeakable wars in ex-Yugoslavia, countless demonstrations and public concerts were held in Belgrade, and I took part in a number of these events. On the request and invitation of students, I visited the formerly so vibrant metropolis again during the Nato bombardment. On the splendid central square “Terazije”, the music dealers with their ghetto blasters outdid one another with presentations of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian music. Here the 8/8 rhythm mentioned above ­ which, incidentally, all Balkan peoples have in common ­ is present everywhere.

Oriental Swing : I found maghreb, a rhythm Karem Mahmoudh introduced me to, especially captivating. On the one hand, in its triplet-oriented feeling, it places the emphasis on the odd-numbered beats of the 6/8 structure, i.e. 1 and 3, but also assigns the “backbeat” to the “light” time of the triplet syncopations already known to Baroque music. This, by the way, is also the theoretical explanation for the “swing” phenomenon in jazz. In this piece again, Oriental and Western music currents meet and intertwine.

Migration Hymn : After its premiere and the large open-air concerts which followed, this composition underwent major revisions. The original text didn¹t seem quite right in certain parts, and I therefore asked the rapper Cajus from the well-known German group
“Blumentopf” to think about an alternative. I actually never expected him to deliver a rap song. My friend and assistant Niki Kampa then took over the job of rearranging my composition, and I liked his version so much that this is the way we perform the title now on stage. From the “clusters” at the beginning, the piece changes into a 100-bpm groove (100 beats per minute, since rappers prefer 90 to 100 bpm), and ends with my original finale, written in orchestral style.

Bluehoven : I was inspired by the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven¹s “Moonlight Sonata” to merge these initial motifs with a blues structure. I originally wrote it as an example of blues for my students. The Beethoven quotation is clearly discernible in the intro by pianist Edgar Wilson.