Drops & Points

Drops & Points sets his experiences and influences to music in a very personal way. Using volumetric effects, narrative images, video mapping and lighting he created an immersive show, producing visual animations that accompany the live music in real time. It's a unique visual universe mapped onto the live music that is breezy, floating, impactful, rhythmic and dynamic.

Pascal Schumacher, the respected, multi-award-winning composer, jazz vibraphonist and bandleader had his fill of contemporary jazz. He was looking for something new, something unexpected, unknown. He performed with Francesco Tristano and Bachar Mar-Khalifé (on the album Afrodiziak) and featured on Munich-based composer Arash Safaian’s album ÜberBach. Having become increasingly interested in electronic music, he disbanded his quartet.

The New York City Jazz Record described the Show ”The music was ethereal and dreamy, a pastel soundscape achieving a lovely anthemic quality towards the end as the aural sky widened. Vibraphone floated like dense fog and the guitarist avoided any Bill Frisell-ian cliché. Steve Reich would have found this mesmerizing.”

Pascal collaborated with French guitarist Maxime Delpierre. Maxime is an audio esthete, who has a love of detail and is keen on experimentation. His guitar bridges jazz (founding member of Collectif Slang and Limousine), rock and electro-pop (band member and producer of DJ Joakim). Delpierre makes Schumacher’s arrangements flow as smoothly as though they were riding a wave.

The music was produced by the multi-talented Joachim Olaya, a sound and video designer who has worked with Christine and the Queens, Francesco Tristano and Agoria among others. Following on from Afrodiziak and Left Tokyo Right, this is the third time Olaya has collaborated with Schumacher. It is, no doubt, also thanks to him that this innovative blend of vibraphone, piano, strings, electric guitar and synths sometimes soars airily, sometimes sizzles with suspense.

To create the scenography for Drops & Points, Pascal Schumacher has been working with Collectif Scale from Paris, France. Drawing on their individual experiences and expertise Collectif Scale combines their know-how to design and develop visual and stage design projects. With its experimental approach that consistently sets different ideas against each other, Collectif Scale creates visual and sound universes based on influences anchored in contemporary and digital art. It achieves this by exploiting cutting-edge technical and digital tools.