Ruedi Häusermann was born in Lenzburg in 1948. He studied economics and music and now works as a composer and director. Over the years, this leading light of modern musical theatre has developed a distinct language for his genre that has brought him numerous accolades, including the City of Zurich Art Prize in 2011. Ruedi Häusermann (clarinet) created the evening entertainment “Kapelle eidg. Moos” along with musicians and actors Jan Ratschko (accordion) and Herwig Ursin (bass clarinet). In it, the trio indulge their secret passion for Swiss folk music. Eidg. Moos is not a conventional folk choir but rather an anarchic, freewheeling and experimental ensemble that shakes up time-honoured local traditions.
Ruedi Häusermann’s works – the fruit of lengthy periods spent composing and selecting themes – explore the ways in which theatre and music can open up new spaces for each other. With loving attention to detail he creates musical theatre evenings replete with multiple meanings in which his almost obsessive dedication to art and his craft always comes through. He has brought the worlds of his compositions to all the leading theatres in Switzerland, as well as the Burgtheater Vienna, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Staatstheater Hannover, the Staatsoper Stuttgart and the Schauspielhaus Zürich, where “Robert Walser” premièred in 2014. The musical theatre performance “Kapelle eidg. Moos” was performed at dozens of venues between 2011 and 2015, making its way into the repertoire of the Schauspielhaus Zürich and onto almost all the smaller stages in German-speaking Switzerland. The trio created a follow-up to their inventive musical theatre in 2016, with “Radio Moos”.
“I want to create a world where you don’t immediately feel at home’, says Ruedi Häusermann, the inventor of worlds from Lenzburg. His productions blend sound, image, gesture, word and light into finely honed works of art that are just as rich, multi-layered and baffling as the world itself. The musician, director and composer has sleep-walked through the theatre along the narrow path of poetry for almost thirty years. Along with Herwig Ursin and Jan Ratschko, he has re-acquainted folk music with the sense of wonderment. Their Kapelle Eidgenössisch Moos has enriched Swiss musical theatre with its unique repertoire of outlandish sounds and instruments.”
