Albin Brun & Kristina Brunner

To conclude the 2024/25 «Heimatklänge» (Sounds of home) season, we are once again heading out onto MS Rigi. Kristina Brunner will again be out on the lake, this time with Albin Brun, and these two kindred spirits of contemporary folk music have formed an already much-admired duo. Brunner grew up surrounding by folk music and studied cello and Schwyzerörgeli (diatonic accordion) at the Musikhochschule in Lucerne, and despite her tender years, she is already regarding as one of the foremost exponents of the new renaissance of Swiss folk music. She formed a duo with Albin Brun in 2017 in a continuous testing process of her individual, atmospheric and rich sound poetry. Brun meanwhile, a Swiss «Musikpreis» award-winner, is part of the folk movement of the 1970s and has drifted from jazz to folk music. Having undergone constant renewals over the course of his long career, he is now unquestionably one of the country’s most interesting musicians, whose musical journey has taken him halfway around the world, all the time developing his own unmistakeable musical stamp.

With their own sophisticated compositions, which nevertheless allow for improvisational tangents, Brunner and Brun create chamber music that is frugal yet magical. It leads to an intimate dialogue full of commitment, an all-encompassing love of music and huge sense freedom, all based on a solid foundation of folk music. Their skilled and incredibly virtuoso interplay explore melodic, playful, surprising and moving soundscapes.