By Tod Machover
Visited Sedel last evening, a former “men’s prison”, converted in the early 1980’s into a rehearsal and performance complex for wild and experimental music. Musicians rent 1, 2 or 3-block former prison cells as practice space, and hang out in small communal spaces and a crazy basement club area which also hosts frequent indie music events. The place felt like a super-compressed, pre-gentrified Manhattan East Village, and was full of mystery and life, with both booming and barely-audible music seeping through the doors of old prison cells. I was hosted by the amazing Fredy Studer, a legendary drummer, as radical and sonically inspiring as ever. Sedel is an incredible contrast to the picture perfect nature and civilization of the rest of Lucerne, and all the more essential for that.
Opera of the Future 