CD review  „Passauer Neue Presse“, Passau Germany, Oct. 29th, 2007
Translated into English by Paul Stowe from the original German by Bea Lederer.

Somewhere between pleasant dreams and nightmares

Peter Wiegand & Die Konferenz (“The Conference”) presented their new CD
“Catch Me If You Dream“

With songs telling tales of desire, death and hell and falling stars Peter Wiegand and “Die Konferenz” created an unique atmosphere at their CD presentation concert on Friday evening in the Scharfrichterhaus Club (Passau, Germany). It was a mixture of passion and perversity, theatre and music creating a dream world around the theme “Catch Me if You Dream”.
That’s the title of the new CD from this jazz sextet that was born out of Leo Gmelch’s improvisational group “GmElch-Test”. With completely original songs, the personalities of each musician are represented and unified in a colourful conglomeration of “Vienna songs” and American entertainment.
In the center of it all is Peter Wiegand in all of his diversity. With his raspy, smoky voice and his sickly demeanour, he personifies all that is failure in this world of which he has had many of his own. Yet he and his band are able to defy this morbidity with musical counterpoint from Wolfgang Roth’s dreamlike saxophone solos, Dim Schlichter’s wild percussion rhythms, invasive guitar solos and bass lines by Georg Karger and Tobi Weber respectively, and the expressive tuba parts and animal imitations of Leo Gmelch.  
The stories carry you into a world of prostitutes and vice squads, perverse and hoaxing in the style of Vienna cabaretist and author Helmut Qualtinger. Wiegand is left to do the hard work of telling the stories, sometimes in the figure of a staggering drunkard, his gestures creating a stage setting all of their own. Especially his original pieces with English lyrics are an exciting mixture of rock, jazz, improvisation and Latin sounds.
One feels the fervour and passion of Mr. Wiegand and his musicians who despite the irony in their lyrics, retain their credibility. “Catch Me if You Dream” is an ingenious limbo somewhere between pleasant dreams and nightmares.