Nik Bärtsch

Keyboardist Nik Bärtsch (sometimes spelled “Baertsch”) is a new player, composer, and improviser quite definitely in the Western classical-oriented design of jazz, but has generated a vocabulary that transcends these fundamental categories. A indigenous and citizen of Zurich, Switzerland given birth to in 1971, he started his nine-year-long piano research at age group nine, and in addition briefly used clarinet. Hearing blues, jazz, and string quartets, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and cultural musics from Japan, Greece, Romania, and Sweden, possess all formed his customized music. Initially affected by Chick Corea, Bärtsch went to the Zurich Musikhochschule, after that studied viewpoint, linguistics, and musicology in the University or college of Zurich. While going to school, he started hearing 20th hundred years modernist, avant-garde composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Steve Reich, therefore fusing the multiplicity of disciplines. In 1980, he 1st fulfilled drummer Kaspar Rast, who became a rhythmic fixture in his ensembles and in Mobile phone and Ronin. He performed and toured using the Western guitarist Harald Haerter before carrying out and recording single and trio attempts, resulting in his initial little ensembles for the Swiss-based Tonus label. When Mobile phone developed into Ronin in 2001, Bärtsch founded his unique and exclusive ritual groove music, playing every Mon night at the night time golf club Montags in Zurich, and bringing in interest for his religious, minimalist, ethnic, tempo & blues raised music, which includes generally been known as “zen funk.” Bärtsch referred to his sound within an interview stating, “if you ask me, music can be an artwork of motion, and therefore akin to dance, an ecstatic groove and an ascetic knowing of type and audio in constructed music aren’t mutually exclusive. They are able to type combinations that consider our senses by shock.” Over time, he provides maintained that regular early week gig while touring better Europe, achieving Canada as well as the U.S. ECM Information owner Manfred Eicher acknowledged not merely Bärtsch’s original strategy, but its similarity towards the music the label offers championed because the early ’70s. He authorized them, you start with the recording Stoa in 2006 (2007 in america). Ronin extended to some quintet with stalwart Rast, percussionist Andi Pupato, bassist Björn Meyer, and saxophonist/bass clarinetist/guitarist Sha. Holon adopted in 2008 to wider acclaim. In ’09 2009, Bärtsch along with a business partner opened up the golf club Exil in Zurich, and he became among three co-artistic directors from the city’s Apples and Olives Event. Bärtsch, ever assured in his band’s musical potential, extended his composing palette. Shifting further afield from your “zen funk” that typified both Mobile phone and Ronin up compared to that stage, he began utilizing elements of contemporary classical composition within their repertoire. This fresh direction was recorded on 2010’s Llyrìa. Ronin Live, released in 2012, recorded concert recordings from 2009 through 2011. After Ronin’s extreme touring and documenting activity of the prior couple of years, Bärtsch resolved into operating his golf club and focusing on Apples and Olives, hanging out with his family members, and teaching. Bärtsch officially resurrected Mobile phone in past due 2014. The quartet included Sha, Rast, and fresh drummer Nicolas Stocker (Bells for Pony, Marylane). The bandleader prolonged the ensemble for his following recording having a string quintet that included violinist Etienne Abelin (his co-artistic movie director of Apples and Olives). This group documented Continuum in Lugano in March of 2015, with Eicher as maker. It had been a released a 12 months later before a global tour.