Music
Nik Bärtschs Ritual Groove

Nik Bärtsch is an unsung wunderkind of European new music. I first heard him in Graz, Austria, with his trio Ronin; they played tightly arranged jazz and funk riffs with Loten Namling, who surely must be the world’s first Tibetan rapper, and Nawang Kechog, a Grammy-nominated Tibetan flute player, guest-starring. Saturated with global influences, the music was arranged with a fresh and original sensibility. Not since the late Quwali maestro Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook released Night Song, their breakthrough 1995 collaboration, have I listened to such a complex effort presented so innovatively.
But Nik is not only a doyen of world collaborations. His range is much wider than that, as is apparent from his three fiercely original CDs. The first, “Mobile,” is an excerpt from the 36-hour “Mu Blue”, an uninterrupted acoustical event staged in specially constructed rooms using light, art, and nature sounds. The second, “Hishiryo,” showcases Nik’s solo piano efforts and shows the influence of Morton Feldman and a minimal Zen monastic aesthetic. “Randori,” Nik’s third release, features Ronin (with Björn Meyer on bass and Kaspar Rast on drums) and explores the experimental and “attack-style” pieces of the trio’s work.
“Mu Blue” derives its name from Mu, for emptiness, as in a Zen koan, and Blue because the event took place inside an old beer factory with blue-tinted windows (an old trick to keep beer from warming up). Inside the factory, the blue hue and light constantly changed throughout the day. Mu Blue was the final part of the three-year Mobile, an urban trilogy collaboration between musicians, dancers, and sound, light, and video artists in Zurich, Switzerland. Mobile was always staged over the course of 36 hours on the day of the September full moon.
In what was billed as a “ritualized groove,” the musicians set their instruments up inside a mandala-circle of sand. Every hour a figure moved 10 degrees within the 360º circle. At 6 p.m. on Friday, as “Mu Blue” began, the figure stood at zero degrees north. It returned to the same position by Sunday at 9 p.m., when the 36 hours ended. On Saturday, as the early-evening full moon rose, a martial arts swordsman appeared to enact a Zen poem: “though the moon reflects upon water, when the water moves, the moon remains still.”
At 9 p.m. on Saturday the circle lay at the westernmost apex, celebrated with a standard 90-minute concert. The whole room was programmed in illusory walls of synthesized light and space. After the concert, people were invited to stay and lie down on transparent blue rubber rafts to “groove” to the improvised music, which continued throughout the night and late into the next day.
“Hishiryo,” Nik’s solo recording, brings the grand piano into the 21st century by combining percussive and ethereal aspects in an experimental, modernist style. Jazz is a myriad of ideas expressed through a wide range of notes; Nik’s piano recording is based on a history of those ideas linked with classical styles via improvised "modular compositions." A modular approach is different from the modern fusion movement in that it aims for a new type of music distilling the vast scope of available forms in the 21st century. "Randori," Ronin’s CD, has an aggressive guerrilla style that builds up the instrumentals and supports them with a strong backbeat. Ronin rhythmically complements a native Tibetan singer like Loten to create a unique "sound room" where indigenous strands are given free reign but embroidered by a strictly arranged jazz syncopation.
Meditative music, which is usually associated with the nomenclature "spiritual," often suffers from lack of ground or earth principle. It can be weak and sappy. Nik’s music incorporates the "deep dark sounds" of Japanese Zen percussionists, based on temple bells and wood-block sounds that portray the ancient yet act in the present. The group’s name, Ronin, conjures an image of free-agent Samurai who embody the strength and vigor associated with the martial arts. Ronin favors a minimal approach, taking only what it needs from an array of musical styles and traditions, while emphasizing underlying funk and jazz arrangements. This combination is something that I’d never heard before and hope will one day make it across the ocean to New York.
To find out more about Mu Blue and order Nik Bärtsch’s incredible CDs, go to http://www.oosystem.com/subsides/404/e404.html
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards’s Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music
By George GrellaJUNE 2023 | Music
It is absolutely a measure of his importance and achievement as a musician that a major publisher has brought out this book, Henry Threadgill’s autobiography (written with Brent Hayes Edwards in a fluid and engrossing style close to that of an oral history). Jazz in general is not a subject the big publishers are interested in, much less for someone like Threadgill who has been a leader in the avant-garde for decades.

Oluzayo: African Music Futures
By Martin LongleyJULY/AUG 2023 | Music
In the Zulu language, Oluzayo means what lies ahead," and this five-day festival aimed to present new African music that circumvented familiar patterns of reception and presentation. The organization behind this festival is the Cologne-based African Futures, regularly presenting a program of panels, lectures, workshops and discussions. Innovation wasnt always compulsory, as some of the acts involved maintained deep traditional roots. Whatever might be new usually possessed familiar traits and elements at the core of its style.
Turning Lead To Air: Music for Cello From Primo Levi
By Alessandro CassinMARCH 2023 | Music
Can narrative prose occasion instrumental music? Though countless compositions have been based on literary texts, the process from words to music can be elusive. A case in point was the world premiere of Luciano Chessas Piombo (Italian for lead)from Primo Levis story of the same titlefor solo cello, performed by the exceptional Frances-Marie Uitti on January 21 at Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, New York, and the following week, at the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco.
Moondog Music in Coventry Cathedral
By Martin LongleyAPRIL 2022 | Music
Coventry Cathedral invited Down Is Up from London, an ensemble dedicated almost solely to the music of Moondog, that old inhabitant of New York City. The cathedral is famed for both being bombed into destruction (1940) and optimistic rebirth (1962), providing a suitably majestic setting for the works of composer, performer, and Viking-robed street musician Louis Hardin.