MUSIC WORLD

Walther K. Lang's current compositions are characterized by a wide variety of styles. He draws inspiration from listening to a wide variety of music. Always striving to bring the full potential of the orchestra into play, he creates impressive big band sounds, lets moving blues passages resound or brings the rousing effect of Latin grooves to the stage.

​

Again and again he succeeds in creating sophisticated harmonic sequences and drawing lovely melodies. And it can happen that passages with symphonic textures or tightly-knit canons suddenly appear in his compositions.

​

He picks up the listeners from their comfortable listening sofas and subtly takes them into new listening realms. In doing so, he creates gripping grooves and is not afraid to write well-groomed, elegant melodies, and then stages a wild rollercoaster ride of sounds as a contrast.

​

Lang says that the message of the quote by Thomas More (1478 - 1535) is very close to him: "Tradition is not about holding on to the ashes, but about passing on the flame."

He proves with every note that he is serious about this: he is passionate about music!
 

​​​

​​​

AT THE CUTTING EDGE

"At The Cutting Edge" is the first full-length concert program for a jazz orchestra (12 compositions). Lang sees himself as a modern traditionalist and takes up a wide variety of impulses from current jazz events. In doing so, he can rely on his solid classical training and his enormous listening experience.

​

Lang moves boldly across the wide playing field between uptime swing numbers, touching ballads and trendy funk numbers. With "Confiado", a neo tango, for example, he shows where tango music could go. Or he takes the oldest melody known today from around 1400 BC, the Hurrian Hymn No. 6, and gives it a jazzy groove.

​

​​

​​

HOMO LUDENS

The second concert program, "Homo ludens," is dedicated to playing itself. The famous quote from Friedrich Schiller should not be missing here: "Man only plays where he is a human being in the full sense of the word, and he is only fully human where he plays." 

​​

Whether a 5/8 toccata, a jazz reggae, a Renaissance court music or a rhumba has been transformed into his musical language for jazz orchestra, concertizing is ultimately always about (pre-)ludere. And Lang always stays true to his concept: the mainstay in tradition, the free leg in modernity.
 

​​

​

BEYOND THE SKYLINE

This is about the composer's confrontation with musical phenomena that he has encountered so far, that he knows, has worked on and internalized. From this musical "toolbox" he takes what is useful to him at the time in order to implement his ideas in the ongoing creative process.

And while composing, there is always the effort to rise above theories, above rules, and to guess what new things could flow into the design, new things that may already be present "behind the skyline" but have not yet been noticed or achieved. - And then questions can arise such as: "Where do the ideas actually come from?" "What ideas - and why these in particular? - come to me?"  - Beyond the skyline?
​​

​

​

MORPHIC RESONANCE

The fourth concert program is entitled "Morphic resonance." This term comes from the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. It is a hypothesis that higher-level "energies" could be responsible for the formation or development of structures in our world. A stimulating thought!

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​