Improvising is Composing!
Original historic solos are the new themes!
A selection of unique jazz solo improvisations from the history of jazz since the 40’s are transformed by Underkarl into new compositions. The unique, irreproducible moments of the original spontaneous solos, whether by Miles Davis, T. Monk or Stan Getz, serve on ‘Timetunnel 25’ as the basis for completely new textures and sound colors.
For example, Underkarl takes the transcription of the incredible sax solo by John Handy in ‘Goodbye pork pie hat’ out of its original composition (Charles Mingus, album ‘Ah Um’, 1959) and develops a whole new piece around it, moving the focus to the artistry and brilliance of the improviser as an instant composer.
In this way, Underkarl transports the energy of the historical moment into the present and brings it back to life. The improvisations of the great masters become the core of novel musical events and inspire these five musicians to outstanding, fresh and vital interpretation.
The foundation of ‘Timetunnel 25’ are solo transcriptions of Thelonius Monk, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Steve Lacy, Clifford Brown, Sonny Stitt, Jimmy Hamilton, John Handy and Coleman Hawkins.
H a y d e n C h i s h o l m - s a x
P h i l i p Z o u b e k - p i a n o
S e b a s t i a n G r a m s s - d o u b l e b a s s
NEW ALBUM
GENTLE GIANTS
CD release May 2017: TRAUMTON Records Berlin
Concerts:
Oct 19 Munich - Unterfahrt
Oct 20 Freiburg - SWR
Oct 22 Cologne - Loft
"MELODIC AVANTGARDE"
In STATES OF PLAY, the "crème de la crème" of contemporary European music comes together into a unique ensemble:
2 congenial rhythm sections and a well-balanced horn trio in an equally appealing and demanding synthesis of melodic / rhythmic structures and sonic avant-garde.
REALTIME MORPHING
The focus of STATES OF PLAY is the radical manipulation of the essential architecture of music and the organic metamorphosis of output sounds. The anatomy of music, the melodies, rhythms and grooves, is decomposed in real-time in its basis and reassembled again and again.
In the course of these mutations, an unheard-of polyrhythmic / macro-polyphonic music emerges, which develops itself from familiar structures more and more constantly and is always composed into new constellations.
LINEUP
The STATES OF PLAY lineup reads like the "Who is Who" of younger European jazz scene. The ensemble unites contemporary musicians from "Ensemble Modern", "Kläeng Collective", "Impakt Köln", "Umlaut Berlin".
A special feature: The live-operated player piano is a machine with precision, a counterpart to the variations of the ensemble and the virtuoso spontaneity of the award-winning soloists (ECHO / SWR Jazz Award, Hessian Jazz Prize ...)
LIGHT
The light concept is to be understood as an unobtrusive visual counterpart to the music.
The room-filling projection (from above to the floor and back of the stage), slowly changing structure and color traces, follows and contrasts the course of the music ...
John Dennis Renken – trumpet
Angelika Niescier – alt saxophone
Sebastian Gramss – double bass
Christian Thome – percussion / electronics
One of the greatest mysteries of humanity is the inexplicability of death. The big question: „Where do we go…?“ also preoccupied artists and musicians through all epochs. And at the same time the antithesis is always present as well: „What does man counter pose to this mystery?“ And which form of artistic expression, inspiration and actual works find their artistic power / source here?
The two ECHO awarded musicians and composers Angelika Niescier and Sebastian Gramss investigate the paradox of these questions with their latest collaboration „THE GREAT DIVIDE, Streben and Sterben“.
Upcoming events:
Jan 29 - Cologne, Stadtgarten (Premiere)
Jan 31 - Düsseldorf, Palais Wittgenstein
Feb 12 - Dortmung, Domicil
Sep 02 - Alsdorf, Energetikon
Sep 03 - Duisburg, Platzhirsch Festival
Wiikipedia: "Atopie (griechisch ατοπία atopía „Ortlosigkeit“, „nicht zuzuordnen“, „von hoher Originalität“) bezeichnet die „Unbeschreiblichkeit“ des überaus selten zu Erlebenden, des Herausgehobenen, des Originals im besten Sinne. Es handelt sich um eine − an sich oder anderen − beobachtbare (Erlebnis-)Qualität, nicht um ein Ideal...".
“Two aces on the bass” (Bremer Nachrichten):
“The highly energetic Barre Phillips, at the age of 78, has found an ideal dialog partner in Sebastian Gramss: both unify the same preferences for playing between experimental passages and extremely melodious singing parts…. In addition, both musicians hook up in their willingness to advance into the area of New Music, which Gramss accentuates in an equally penetrating as well as impressive solo with two bows. And in the top-class duo there was a good dash of humor, again and again. A fabulous performance!”
Wolfram Knauer - Jazz Institute Darmstadt:
"“Both double bassists, Sebastian Gramss and Tetsu Saitoh, in a phenomenal concert in the vaulted cellar of the Jazz Institute:
purely acoustic, highly virtuosic and still unbelievably grounded!”
PRESS: “Woofers”
NRZ 08 “Sebastian Gramss and Stefano Scodanibbio form a sound orchestra in aesthetic completion….”
“Acting and reacting: both master bassists exploit the possibilities of their instruments with virtuosity….”
BASSMASSE 50 is an orchestra consisting of up to 50 double basses. It was founded in 2012 by Sebastian Gramss.
ARTE.TV: link to the complete BASSMASSE performance (June 6, 2014) at MOERS Festival:
http://concert.arte.tv/de/moers-festival-2014-sebastian-gramss
I met Stefano for the first time in 2008. We spent some days at my place in Cologne sharing Italian pasta recipes and walking in the woods talking about the bass and life, in our evenings off playing the bass, sharing compositions, listening to music and hanging out at the rehearsal room in my garden. On other occasions, we had some duo concerts in the area, and collaborations and recordings with players like percussionist Stephan Froleyks and flutist Dorothee Oberlinger.
It was back in 2005 when I first discovered Stefano’s work. At that time he wasn’t that well-known in the German bass community. I remember well playing his Voyage That Never Ends to bass friends and colleagues, sharing it with them.
This record is a very special part of his works. Apart from the visionary contemporary explorative side, it is also connected to Stefano’s early musical roots as an electric rock bass player. Roots that include the great Jimi Hendrix, which was turned into one of his later works & Roll, as he pointed out in our conversations.
Later on I met Stefano several times on various occasions. Unfortunately, all plans for further cooperation were interrupted by his sabbatical due to health issues. On 8 January 2012, he passed away much too early at the age of 55, after a battle with ALS.
In 2013, inspired by John Cage’s Time Length Pieces (Martin Schmidt/Gligg Records) I started thinking about a memorial project – both a tribute to Stefano’s work as a bass player and composer, and a personal continuum of the bass explorations he stood for. The question was finding the proper setup – appropriate for the mastery of Scodanibbio.
Finally, I found an answer in Stefano’s work Oltracuidansa – a multitrack recording with dozens of layers of double bass tracks – and decided to use the same approach but with 11 players. The incredible international team gathered for this project is connected either because they knew Stefano and/or they knew his work very well. Each player has a unique and outstanding voice in the wide field of contemporary and improvised music and very different personal musical backgrounds. Apart from what they could contribute to the written work, I also wanted to include their individual solo contributions.
The first meeting about the project and how it could be done was with Dieter Manderscheid and Barre Phillips in April 2013 in Cologne. It was Barre who came up with the perfect title for the project. As he pointed out, THINKING OF … is a very open title – it is clearly connected to Stefano, and it leaves space for thinking of … what? Thinking of … music? … the bass? … the inspirational sources? … developing traditions? … emancipation of the double bass? … of a bass continuum?
The music I wrote for this recording in winter 2013/14 was, first of all, a sum of the many musical encounters and my personal biographic roots in jazz, improvised and contemporary music. But obviously it is truly influenced and refers to many of Stefano’s bass explorations and is inspired by some of the composer friends of Stefano’s generation like György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Iannis Xenakis.
Each of the 11 bass players contributed for free. Respecting the wish of Stefano’s widow, Maresa Scodanibbio, all the proceedings from the album will be transferred to Rassegna di Nuova Musica (founded by Stefano). Apart from their annual festival in Macerata, Italy, one of the goals of the association is to edit and release Stefano’s complete work as a composer.
Sebastian Gramss
Macerata, Italy, June 18, 1956 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, January 8, 2012
Stefano Scodanibbio occupies a central place in the overall history of the double bass and the most prominent place in the history of modern double bass by contributing, as a performer, and especially as a composer, to the revival of the instrument for more than three decades. His work, unprecedented and exemplary, consists of charismatic interpretation of a varied repertoire for the double bass in contemporary music festivals; the release of dozens of works written for him by Bussotti, Donatoni, Ferneyhough, Frith, Globokar, Sciarrino or Xenakis; creation of original bands for improvisation and interpretation – duo with the cello player and improviser Rohan de Saram, duo with the trumpet player and composer Markus Stockhausen, duo performances with Terry Riley, and recitals of music and poetry with Edoardo Sanguineti; and an ability to give the double bass an unerring basis for a truly new music.
Working as both a performer and composer, Scodanibbio managed to combine in his work both technical innovation and aesthetic invention. Always an artist and always an artisan, he amplified the timbre and the range of the double bass to the extreme, contributions whose previously unheard articulations have influenced the development of a new Italian school for strings. Note, among many others, the harmonic pizzicato, simultaneous finger and bowglissandi, or arco mobile à la Stefano Scodanibbio – recognized by Luigi Nono in thePrometeo score, all of which lead in return to Giacinto Scelsi asking for his cooperation as an interpreter, or him asking Luciano Berio to create the original transcription for double bass of his Sequenza for violoncello.
The issue of interpreting - composing was central to Scodanibbio, who thirty years ago founded Rassegna di Nuova Musica, an annual festival held in Macerata, Italy, that emphasizes the indispensable dialogue between the contemporary composer and performer. The performer-composer binomial was essential at the beginning of Scodanibbio’s career as an emblem in front of the audience, but in his years of greatest artistic evolution this represented an obstacle to giving more visibility to his creative output and became a good reason to reduce repertoire from other composers and increase the interpretation of his own work in concerts. That Scodanibbio’s living artistic conflict between the performer and the composer can be seen through the outside perspective of other authors, such as John Cage, who said:
Stefano Scodanibbio is amazing. I haven't heard better double bass playing than Scodanibbio's. I was just amazed. And I think everyone who heard him was amazed. He is really extraordinary. His performance was absolutely magic.
While Cage distinguishes the performer, Conlon Nancarrow, a regular member of the audience at Scodanibbio’s concerts in Mexico, appreciates even more the composer and expresses it with characteristic frankness:
When I heard Scodanibbio’s concert, I was impressed by his music, constantly discovering unpublished sounds of the bass and that is much more interesting than the repertoire addressed, because it surpasses anything known.
Stefano Scodanibbio also occupies a crucial place as a creator of a large catalog that day by day gains more meaning and importance: although his work was ultimately dominated by sting instruments, during his last 20 years he enriched it with reeds, percussions or keyboards, he explored electronic or radiophonic creation, he added the singing or narrating voice to move closer to opera, to dance and to video. Because of its indelible quality, the music history has years ahead to continue to nurture the artistic essence of his full body of work.
Julio Estrada
18.02.2017 Goethe-Institut Auditorium, Mexico City
19.02.2017 Pop Up Tour, Plaza de los Fundadores, San Luis Potosi
28.02.2017 Pop Up Tour, BUAP, Puebla
02.03.2017 Doublebass trio with David Sanchez & Lelio Giannetto
03.03.2017 Eurojazz, Mexico City
Lineup:
Rodrigo López Klingenfuss - conductor
Sebastian Gramss
Lelio Gianetto
David Sánchez García
Rubén Fernández Meléndez
Itzam Antonio Cano Espinoza
Víctor Diaz Carillo
Arturo Baez Velázquez
Juan Jose García Jiménez
Ulises Castillo Cano
Alejandro Martinez
TRANS|LOCAL is an intermedial and transdisciplinary network cooperation of various partners in Mexico and Germany:
Mexican and german musicians/artists from 5 art genres,the Goethe Institute,
various institutions, venues and local cultural associations in both countries and miscellaneous universities and academies in both countries
January/February ´14 in Germany
29. januar: Hofheim (Stadthalle via Jazz:yl Freiklang Freunde e.V. )Feb, 24th - 10th of March 2014: Cooperations + Concerts in Mexico
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