Michael Schiefel & Wood&Steel Trio: Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook

“Songs out of Exile” is the title of this selection of pieces from Hanns Eisler’s “Hollywood Songbook”, written in Los Angeles between 1938 and 1943, using the words of Brecht, Goethe, Pascal and others, and now specially rearranged for voice and trio. Eisler’s life in the United States turned sour when he was accused of being a Soviet agent and blacklisted by the movie business. He returned to Europe in 1948, his experience lending additional poignancy to his song-cycle. Michael Schiefel, born in Münster, studied at Berlin’s University of Arts and is a professor of jazz vocal at the Liszt Conservatory in Weimar. The tuned percussion player Roland Neffe was born in Graz and moved to Berlin in 1995. The dobro-player Christian Kögel, born in Southern Bavaria, moved to Berlin to study in 1990. The bassist Marc Muellbauer was born in London but moved to Germany at the age of three and studied in Duisburg and Berlin. In a time of mass migration, the expression of emotional displacement within these songs carries an extra resonance.
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