Hubert Zemler
About the artist
Drummer, composer, music producer and improviser who freely moves between musical categories. A valued interpreter of new music, jazz drummer, author of solo albums on the border of avant-garde, electronics and ethnic music, and creator of soundtracks for films, animations, theater plays and sound installations.
26.07.2025, 17.30 – 18.15 – LAGOM/UMIAR, Concert for a snare drum
Art Nouveau Patio, 8 Tumska Street
It’s time to redefine the word “progress”. Once it meant continuous technological development, engineering achievements, industry and optimization of production and sale of goods. Traveling into space was a romantic outburst of humanity into the unknown. Now, in the era of climate change, caused in large part by overconsumption, absurdly extended supply lines of goods and overproduction, space travel seems to be at most a whim of billionaires looking for new methods of increasing their wealth. While realizing my projects for solo drums, for some time I also followed a linear path of development. I gradually expanded my instrumentarium, used various types of electronic devices that broadened the sound spectrum. One evening, after a concert with Felix Kubin at the Brussels Atelier Claus, a young man approached me and said that he had access to various types of exotic wood and constructed drums from it. We exchanged contact details and after a short conversation I ordered a snare drum from the Mafketel Drums factory (that was the name of the company the man represented). Hand-made, using the stave method, from exotic afzelia wood, obtained from old window frames in tenement houses in the city of Ypres in north-western Belgium. The whole is complemented by oak hoops – also obtained from recycling. The instrument sounds so wonderful and inspiring that I decided to realize the idea that had been on my mind for some time, to play concerts on just one instrument – the snare drum (…). Hubert Zemler