Luxembourg vibraphonist and composer Pascal Schumacher has spent a career sculpting sound, as a composer and performer. A deep admirer of Philip Glass, Pascal has become more interested in the concept of time and how our perception of time can be shifted with music.
We open the show with Schumacher’s shimmering Re: Amarcord, which is a reworked piece from his Sol album. This album was created from a residency at Op der Schmelz in Dudelange.
We then discuss the metronome experiment: when people listen to a perfectly repeating click their perception of time slows or even seems to stop. Schumacher explains that our first reaction to repetition is that it can be boring.
However, minimalist composers play with this concept.
Schumacher’s admiration for Philip Glass starts with structure as sound. Philip Glass stars with the form, the shape, the arc; before disappearing into detail. Pascal tries to pass on this lesson to students: musicians can become obsessed with tiny technical questions before they’ve even agreed what the piece is.
Glass’s comfort with exceptionally long forms, he notes, was shaped by theatre thinking: the patient building of scenes for example, and that patience shows up in works like Einstein on the Beach, designed from the start as a multi-hour world the audience can enter and exit.
One of Schumacher’s most striking ideas is that clock time only moves forward, but musical time has more freedom.
He describes music as a place like a city you visit.
If you love it, you go back. That’s why a song can instantly return you to an old memory: a first kiss, a summer drive, a chapter of life you thought was gone. Music is emotional time travel.
We also talk about the concert moments audiences feel in their bones: the stillness before the first note, and the suspended beat after the last note when nobody dares clap first.
Schumacher calls this a breath and reminds us that what we call silence is never empty; it’s a change in listening. The room is part of the piece, the lighting, the people around you at that moment in time, the season you play in. Notably American composer John Cage played with this concept with his 4’33 piece where every orchestral instrument has 4’33 bars of rest
Schumacher is also the musical curator behind RESET, now in its 9th edition, and it’s built around one core idea: residency changes everything. Eight musicians from eight different countries and ages come together to build music.
RESET runs 25–31 January 2026, with eight artists in a creative residency at Neimënster.
The three-night public programme
RESET is the live jazz laboratory of music where Luxembourg can experience it.
The artists are:
Pascal and the team are offering three sets of two tickets for the final performance on Saturday night at Neimënster Abbey.
To enter: send a message to Today Radio’s Whatsapp at +352 621 52 5000. Mention RESET Festival 2026, include your name and email address and you’ll be in the running.
MUSIC / TRACK REFERENCES
Amarcord (Fejká’s Daydream Version) (SoundCloud stream):
Glass Two (YouTube album playlist – includes Mishima Closing):
Mishima Closing on Spotify (Pascal Schumacher & Danae Dörken / Philip Glass):
