Carte Blanche

Töbi Tobler, a veteran of the alternative Swiss folk music scene, has been collaborating with bassist Patrick Sommer for quite some time. Reto Suhner has just recently joined the duo, although he is otherwise based in jazz and improvisatory music. While Töbi Tobler sets the tone on his hammered dulcimer with waltzes, schottisches and polkas, unconventional instrumentation adds new colour filters to the overall sound. Patrick Sommer, for example, not only plays bass, but also the Moroccan guembri, and Reto Suhner adds saxophone, as well as clarinets and flutes of all kinds, including the xiao (Chinese flute), bansuri (bamboo flute) and duduk (Armenian flute made of apricot wood). With these many excursions, the pieces sparkle anew again and again, like crystals in a clear mountain lake.