With the Sound Of Serendipity Tentet, Lucas Niggli, who has been at the forefront of Swiss-European jazz for many years, brings together some of the most exciting musicians from the local jazz and improvisation scene. Stirring music is created in a highly original playing instruction via 40 composed playing cards, implemented by this ten-member ensemble of strong personalities and the factor of chance. And so, Play! is a vehicle to negotiate a spectrum of composed and improvised behaviour in the form of a card game played over three rounds. “On the one hand, we hear a composition which sounds like an expansion of Lucas Niggli’s musical character: mercurial, highly detailed, uncannily responsive to others, unafraid of groove. And yet on the other, I suspect that the listener familiar with the individual performers on the recording will smile to themselves at how vibrantly those performers’ own individual characteristics are set into relief by Niggli’s game”, writes Alexander Hawkins in the liner notes.

Cover art: Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger
Graphic design: Fiona Ryan
Liner notes: Alexander Hawkins
Photos: @vnv__stage

All compositions by Lucas Niggli. Recorded January 5 and 6, 2023 at Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich, by Jonas Häni. Mixed and mastered in March 2023 at Hardstudios, Winterthur by Michael Brändli and Lucas Niggli.