During the last seven years, "mats-up" has found his unique group sound, playing original music composed by the members of the band. For once, it seemed to be time for something else, but still: the choice is rather unconventional for a Jazzband. Modest Musorgskys "Pictures of an Exhibiton" is, in Maurice Ravels arrangement for symphony orchestra, the best known piece of the Russian composer and is frequently performed in concert halls around the world. No wonder Matthias Spillmann, now one of the protagonists of the Swiss Jazz Scene, came in touch with the piece already in his childhood. He immediatly fell in love with the ludicrous Gnomus or the melancoly Old Castle. He even played some of the melodies by ear, listening to the record over and over, same as most aspiring Jazz Musicians do with solos of their idols in the Jazz history. But to arrange this work is of course more than a childish dream.Mousorgskys music is, maybe because he was self taught, less formal then much of his collegues. It survived because of its pure expression. Often Rimsky-Korsakoff orchestrated or even finished many of his pieces. Sometimes he would even change the compositions, since he thought some notes were not "correct". Only the piano work, that Musorgsky dedicated to his deseased friend, the painter Viktor Hartmann, was not touched. So it's inviting Jazz musicians who have no fear of different idioms to improvise and to develop something new. No wonder there are many diverse recorded version. Next to the bombastic Rockversion by "Emerson, Lake and Palmer", there is one for Synthezier or even traditional Chinese instruments.But Spillmann hasn't just produced another instrumentation. At times he leaves the original score behind and follows his own ideas. You'll hear the piece in a new suit and with a very personal fingerprint. We still don't know if the arrangement of "The Old Castle" will, through MATS-UP, make it into the Real Book, but we're shure that every music lover wants to hear how the children in the "Tuileries" dance Samba or how the "Old Witch Baba Yaga" eats our bones with a hardcore rockbeat.