ROGER CICERO & Big Band

12.04.2012 20:00

'In diesem Moment [In this Moment]' - The 2012 Tour
 

More than 300 concerts and three platinum albums in only three years. In order to work on his fourth album 'In diesem Moment', Roger Cicero took time out from his hectic surroundings and retreated for a while from his exciting but busy life. He wrote songs and fine-tuned a number of things. After a long time in the studio, the new album finally comes out on 28 October. In the spring of 2012, Roger Cicero & Big Band can be experienced live in Austria with his tour 'In diesem Moment'.

It was simply time for a turning point, to fulfil some of his dreams, to play during a full evening's show at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival or to take part a concert in London together with Jools Holland; to use the opportunity to dabble in moderating and films and to write a book; to take time to look back and then look ahead again.

"When I look back on my life, success did not come quickly", comments Roger Cicero, reflecting on his career, "but when it came, it came suddenly, and it was massive. For three years, I had neither the time nor the head for digesting things." The first album, 'Männersachen [Male Things]' came out in 2006, followed by two award-winning albums, over 300 concerts, and countless other commitments until 2009. “I had to sort things out for me. Success brought security, which I had never had in my life before and which now, as a father with a family, I would never again want to miss. In return, it increased people's expectations of me and my music - and certainly my own expectations of me too. However, the most important insight was that success allowed me to do things which I could only dream of before 'Männersachen' came out, namely to realise my musical ideas without any compromises."

From this analysis, the inevitable conclusion follows that the 'swing corset' which had meanwhile become far too restricting, had to be broken, step-by-step. A process that had already started with the latest album 'Artgerecht [Appropriate to the Species]'. Even though Roger Cicero owes much to this musical genre, the elegant sound of the 50s offered little room for his vocal abilities. In addition, the attitude related to it distracted the focus of a man who, aged only 41, already had a life full of experience and sacrifices behind him.

This meant: back to zero. Back to releasing new energies, to thinking and working in entirely new constellations. "At the beginning, there were these quite amusing situations that always come into being when new musicians get together: a number of people sit around a table, talk about music and are in total agreement, until, during the first recording, it becomes patently clear that each of them had something completely different in mind." Roger Cicero laughs: "But that was exactly what we intended. One has to approach one another with an entirely new mind-set," and that is what he did extensively. For over a year, he wrote and composed, amongst others, with the Tinseltown Collective from Cologne but also with colleagues such as Rea Garvey or musicians from Jamiroquai, Juli and Stanfour. In order to produce the record, Roger Cicero also called in some new names, such as Kiko Masbaum as well as Roland Spremberg, who was responsible for three titles, and whose love of details harmonised totally with his own method of working Together, they fine-tuned the recordings at the Studios on Cologne's Maarweg, adjusted many screws and brought the sound of the 50s into the world of today. Two and a half years after 'Artgerecht', Roger Cicero now presents his fourth album. He does so full of anticipation but also with a quickened pulse and, maybe, with slightly sweaty palms: “There were no points of reference for our work, no recognisable paths, nothing that would allow me to imagine what the result would be. I simply had no choice other than to think of the actual moment, and from these 'moments', the album 'IN DIESEM MOMENT' came into being.

Performance: 12/04/2012
Start: 8 p.m.
Location: stadthalle|graz