A trio sounding much larger than its three contributors--Oliver Schwerdt on grand piano, percussion & little instruments, Baby Sommer on drums, cymbals & percussion and Barry Guy on double bass--captured in concert at naTo, in Leipzig, Germany in 2019 for a joyful and assertive album of collective free improv that merges contemporary, free and jazz idioms seamlessly.
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Sample The Album:
Oliver Schwerdt-grand piano, percussion, little instruments
Gunter Baby Sommer-drums, cymbals, percussion
Barry Guy-bass
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Label: Euphorium
Catalog ID: EUPH 077
Squidco Product Code: 30662
Format: 2 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: Germany
Packaging: Digipack - 3 panel w/ booklet
Recorded at naTo, in Leipzig, Germany, on December 9th, 2019, by Robert Amarell.
"After finishing my contribution to the late work of Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky by organizing some trios and the three great quartets called Tumult! Karwall! Rabatz! (2013-15) I was thinking of formulating a new chapter of my adventurous vast ensemble E U P H O R I U M _ f r e a k e s t r a. Considering the forthcoming cast soon I began to feel very happy. I just had discoverd that although sharing all main production spaces of the international improvised music scene for over forty years my ancient buddy Baby did never before share a concrete bandstand with Barry Guy! Familiar with the specific personal performances of both men it was obvious that we had missed indeed a dream team of that sort of drum'n'bass combined forces in Free Jazz music spheres so far. On a splendid 16th december iin 2016 my task became fullfilled. Besides their very first meeting at the edge of the electric organist Daniel Beilschmidt (listen to the opener of the 3-CD-Opus Grande Casino!) they also played a very nice piece within a trio featuring myself on the extended grand piano (Interflug/Intershop). Hence scheduled a whole concert set for the piano trio setting in the next year we had to deal with an adjournment. The original date had to be canceled because of health problems of Maya Homburger, Barry's well-esteemed wife. One year late everything was fine - listen!
On my own accout I additionally want to note some facts why I am sounding like that: besides the experience of the full decade of interplay with Petrowsky and Christian Lillinger as well as the two duos I did with Baby in 2011 and 2017 (the latter instead of the planned trio with Barry) the grand piano parts presented here summarize three other turbo blowing ingredients of increased possibilities: 1st my intense solo studies in 2015 (Prestige/No Smoking and Storming Bauhaus), 2nd the preparation for and the performance of the trio/quintet concert with Peter Broetzmann in 2017 (Biturbo!, Karacho!) and, 3rd, the preparation for the trio/quintet concert with Akira Sakata in 2018 (once to be released as Siren, Sticks & Circus and Tornado!) which was scheduled directly the day after the music documented with the album you're holding in your hands now! So on that evening Sakata had just arrived form Japan and had already taken seat in the auditorium as Maya was becoming very enthusiastic about the set growing. And directly in front of us Hans-Juergen Noack one of the main figures of the second generation of GDR jazz artists was sitting in the legendary first row of the naTo keen on experiencing our music for musicians. But take a chance by yourself to let it in. This fine documentation of our interplay will always be a pleasure."-Oliver Schwerdt, Euphorium Records
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Oliver Schwerdt "Oliver Schwerdt (born 13 November 1979) is a German musicologist and musician (piano, percussion) in the field of free improvisation. Born in Eisenach, Schwerdt attended school in Eisenach until his university entrance qualification and received classical piano lessons at the municipal music school there. He did his military service as a piano accompanist in the training music corps of the German armed forces. He began his studies of music and cultural sciences as well as art history at the Leipzig University in 1999 and completed them in 2006 with a master's thesis on Georg Simmel and Dadaism submitted to Klaus Christian Köhnke [de]. In 2012 he received his doctorate from Sebastian Klotz at the Institute for Musicology at the University of Leipzig [de], for which he also worked as a lecturer. His dissertation focuses on the musical strategies of central actors in the scene of free improvised music in the wake of Free Jazz and their spatial theoretical interpretation. He has taught at the Museum of Musical Instruments of Leipzig University and with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. From his musicological work, Schwerdt identified the challenge facing contemporary museum practice in relation to the "reinvention of the drum set combination" as they are "in European improvised music" of the 20th century became reality. He is committed to securing the "acutely endangered, historically so delicate, aesthetically highly fascinating and epistemologically valuable object complexes". the first generation of European free jazz or contemporary improvised music. As an author of music-critical articles, Schwerdt wrote for the Neue Musikzeitung, the Jazzthetik [de] and the Jazzzeitung [de], among others. He also wrote accompanying texts for albums by Günter Sommer/Wadada Leo Smith and Alexander von Schlippenbach/Evan Parker/Paul Lovens and Urs Leimgruber. In 2003 he founded the publishing house Euphorium Productions. Since 1999 Schwerdt has been artistic director of the EUPHORIUM_freakestra, a project ensemble between contemporary improvisation, jazz, Neue Musik and theatre with Günter Sommer, Friedrich Schenker, Rudi Mahall, Paul Rutherford, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Frank Möbus, Wadada Leo Smith, Axel Dörner, Barre Phillips, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker, Paul Lovens, Sven-Åke Johansson, Ulrich Gumpert, Manfred Hering, Dietmar Diesner, Roger Turner, Barry Guy, Akira Sakata and others worked together. At the 2009 33. Leipziger Jazztage, he performed with the project Transatlantic Freedom Suite Tentets at the Leipzig Opera. From the project ensemble the quartet ember with Urs Leimgruber developed, Alexander Schubert and Christian Lillinger. From 2006 to 2016 Schwerdt worked with Lillinger and Petrowsky in the New Old Luten Trio. The recording of Petrowsky's late works, documented from 2013 to 2015 with the albums Tumult!, Krawall!, Rabatz! in a quintet formation expanded by the double bassists John Edwards and Robert Landfermann received great attention. With Schubert and Friedrich Kettlitz, Schwerdt operates the electrified Noise-Ensemble trnn. In 2006, Schwerdt received the Leipzig Jazz Young Talent Scholarship of the Marion-Ermer-Foundation for his performance as pianist and ensemble leader. The critics Ken Waxman (Jazzword) and Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy) hear reminiscences of Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Cecil Taylor and Alexander von Schlippenbach in Schwerdt's piano playing. Schwerdt uses the following pseudonyms: Edithrakneff Weinermond, Frautastem!, Ingrid Ingulfwieher, Rita Deixis, Solveig Reberp-Klamt and Elan Pauer." ^ Hide Bio for Oliver Schwerdt • Show Bio for Gunter Baby Sommer "Günter "Baby" Sommer (born 25 August 1943 in Dresden) is a German jazz drummer. He studied music in Dresden. He rose to fame in the GDR. He is part of the European free jazz avantgarde. He was part of the trio with Conny Bauer and Peter Kowald. He is now professor for drums and percussion in Dresden. The drummer and composer Christian Lillinger was one of his former students. The album Three Seasons "(HGBS 2014 with Michel Godard and Patrick Bebelaar) was awarded " Album of the Year 2014 " by The New York City Jazz Record." ^ Hide Bio for Gunter Baby Sommer • Show Bio for Barry Guy "Barry John Guy (born 22 April 1947, in London) is a British composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He also taught at Guildhall School of Music. Born in London, Guy came to the fore as an improvising bassist as a member of a trio with pianist Howard Riley and drummer Tony Oxley (Witherden, 1969). He also became an occasional member of John Stevens' ensembles in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. In the early 1970s, he was a member of the influential free improvisation group Iskra 1903 with Derek Bailey and trombonist Paul Rutherford (a project revived in the late 1970s, with violinist Philipp Wachsmann replacing Bailey). He also formed a long-standing partnership with saxophonist Evan Parker, which led to a trio with drummer Paul Lytton which became one of the best-known and most widely travelled free-improvising groups of the 1980s and 1990s. He was briefly a member of the Michael Nyman Band in the 1980s, performing on the soundtrack of The Draughtsman's Contract. Guy's interests in improvisation and formal composition received their grandest form in the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Originally formed to perform Guy's composition Ode in 1972 (released as a 2-LP set on Incus and later, in expanded form, as a 2-CD set on Intakt), it became one of the great large-scale European improvising ensembles. Early documentation is spotty - the only other recording from its early years is Stringer (FMP, now available on Intakt paired with the later "Study II") - but beginning in the late 1980s the Swiss label Intakt set out to document the band more thoroughly. The result was a series of ambitious, album-length compositions designed to give all the players in the band maximum opportunity for expression while still preserving a rigorous sense of form: Zurich Concerts, Harmos, Double Trouble (originally written for an encounter with Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra, though the eventual CD was just for the LJCO), Theoria (a concerto for guest pianist Irène Schweizer), Three Pieces, and Double Trouble Two. The group's activities subsided in the mid-1990s, but it was never formally disbanded, and reconvened in 2008 for a one-off concert in Switzerland. In the mid-1990s Guy also created a second, smaller ensemble, the Barry Guy New Orchestra. Guy has also written for other large improvising ensembles, such as the NOW Orchestra and ROVA (the piece Witch Gong Game inspired by images by the visual artist Alan Davie). His current improvising activities include piano trios with Marilyn Crispell and Agusti Fernandez. He has also recorded several albums for ECM, which often focus on the interface between improvisers and electronics, including his work in Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and his own Ceremony. Guy's session work in the pop field includes playing double bass on the song "Nightporter", from the Japan album Gentlemen Take Polaroids. He is married to the early music violinist Maya Homburger. After spending some years in Ireland, they now live in Switzerland. They run the small label Maya, which releases a variety of records in the genres of free improvisation, baroque music and contemporary composition. Guy's jazz work is characterised by free improvisation, using a range of unusual playing methods: bowed and pizzicato sounds beneath the bass's bridge; plucking the strings above the left hand; beating the strings with percussion instrument mallets; and "preparing" the instrument with sticks and other implements inserted between the strings and fingerboard. His improvisations are often percussive and unpredictable, inhabiting no discernible harmonic territory and pushing into unknown regions. However, they can also be melodious and tender with due regard for harmonic integration with other players, and at times he will even play with a straight jazz swing feel. Similarly, in his concert works, Guy manages to alternate harmonic and rhythmic complexity worthy of 1960s experimentalists such as Penderecki and Stockhausen with joyous, often ecstatic, melody. Works such as "Flagwalk" for string orchestra and "Fallingwater - Concerto for Orchestra" display Guy's compositional skill in handling extended forms and writing for large instrumental groups. Some of his compositions, such as "Witch Gong Game" for ensemble, use graphic notation in conjunction with cue cards to lead performers into playing and improvising material from numbered sections of the score. He is also an architect." ^ Hide Bio for Barry Guy
12/3/2024
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12/3/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
12/3/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
CD1
1. One For My Baby And One More For The Bass 24:54
2. On The Road Again (Ausfluge Zum Interhotel) 17:30
3. The Last Song (Air) 5:19
CD2
1. One For My Baby And One More For The Bass 24:54
2. On The Road Again (Ausfluge Zum Interhotel) 17:30
3. The Last Song (Air) 5:19
Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Collective Free Improvsation
Piano & Keyboards
Percussion & Drums
Trio Recordings
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