Tuesday, May 19, 8:00 pm, doors open at 7:30 pm
Kesselhaus der Weberei,
Bogenstr. 1-8, 33330 Gütersloh, Germany
Admission: 8 Euro
What is it like to play along with a nightingale? It becomes a direct window into the unknown, a touch of communication with a being with whom we cannot speak. The play of pure tones jarring against click and buzz, it all becomes not a code but a groove, an amphitheater of rhythms in which we strive to find a place.
Rothenberg’s new album Berlin Bülbül consists of live and studio recordings made live with these amazing birds and inspired by their electronic-sounding virtuosity. Here in Gütersloh we expand the project to include the stellar musicians Bernhard Wöstheinrich on keyboards and electronics, and Markus Strohmann on drums. The music will be based on Rothenberg’s compositions involving bird, whale, and insect sounds along with live improvisation.
ECM recording artist David Rothenberg has performed and recorded on clarinet with Jan Bang, Scanner, Glen Velez, Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, and the Karnataka College of Percussion. He has fifteen CDs out under his own name, including “On the Cliffs of the Heart,” named one of the top ten releases of 1995 by Jazziz magazine and “One Dark Night I Left My Silent House,” a duet album with pianist Marilyn Crispell, called “une petite miracle” by Le Monde and named by The Village Voice one of the ten best CDs of 2010. Rothenberg is the author of Why Birds Sing, book and CD, published in seven languages and the subject of a BBC television documentary. He is also the author of numerous other books on music, art, and nature, including Thousand Mile Song, about making music with whales, and Survival of the Beautiful, about aesthetics in evolution. His book and CD Bug Music, featuring the sounds of the entomological world, has been featured on Radiolab and in the New Yorker. His latest recordings are Cicada Dream Band and Berlin Bülbül. Rothenberg is professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Markus Strothmann is a jazz drummer at heart. His project “Transitions Organ Duo”, a Hammond/Drum duo with Dutch organist John Hondorp, does not only continue work with renown guest soloists. It displays Markus’s vision of a contemporary jazz music that combines communicational and dynamic aspects of jazz music with the rawness of rock sounds, always in respect of the heritage of jazz music. He likes to refer to this music as “Razz”. “Transitions Organ Duo” has already impressed audiences on high profiled jazz music events across Europe such as the “WDR Jazznacht” (Jazz event of west German radio) or being headliner of the “International Jazzfestival Enschede”. Strothmann teaches at the Artez Conservatory of Music in Enschede the Netherlands, as well as two German music schools.
Bernhard Wöstheinrich 