Franz Koglmann: Viewing Jazz through Other Arts

Eyal Hareuveni

Contributor since 2004

Eyal Hareuveni is an Israeli journalist who lives in Jerusalem.

Recent articles (456 total)

Published: March 21, 2006

FK: Very good. Extremely professional. The bassist, Peter Herbert, is an Austrian guy, and he lives in New York, and he organized the studio, everything. I just came with Steinhardt money. I worked before with Mat Maneri, a really great player. The American players are extremely professionals. They wanted to do all in a short time, but good. We had two takes but we took the first. They took no intermission, always on top. If it would have started in Vienna after half an hour of rehearsal one of the musicians would say, I'm so thirsty, let's go to the bar. New York is completely the opposite.

The reason why we started Let's Make Love is that some guys wanted to make a program and I don't remember where I read that Monroe had an affair with Yves Montand during the filming of George Cukor's Let's Make Love. I thought about an imaginary play about this affair. I thought that both are similar. They never composed their songs, all from other people. I never saw the film. I don't know what kind of music was in the film. Monroe was never important for me as a personality, just an idea for a project.

Koglmann Sells Out The Bridal Suite

"It was the idea of Klaus Nüchtern, a cultural writer in weekly magazine in Vienna. A Friend of him had a wedding and he asked me to write a twenty minutes arrangement of Burt Bacharach songs for the ceremony. I knew Bacharach songs. These songs are full with bitter-sweet melancholy and elegant in between sounds and I know them very well because a long time ago I often played them in ballrooms and bars. It was the "šeasy listening' aera. We recorded it in one day, we did not have much time. We did not play all the songs, all stopped somewhere. "Walk On By" is just a remembering of the song, freely improvised and only in the end a minor triad. Harald Tautscher from Lotus Records, the distributor of ECM in Austria, heard it and wanted to make a recording. But we did not go again to the studio, that's why is each song is played twice. When it was released it was sold out and now they are printing a second edition, but this is absolutely a side project."

Future Projects

"There is third part in the trilogy with Christian Baier after O Moon My Pin-Up and the opera Fear Death By Water. I'm not sure at this stage what it will be. The city Sibiu in Romania will be next year the European cultural capital and they commissioned a chamber orchestra composition, around fifteen musicians. I'll use one of the Haydn symphonies composed for this city and the writings of the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran (who was born in Sibiu) and recordings of his voice as a basis for this composition. For a festival in Tyrol this summer I am writing for a kind of a brass sextet with an American and Austrian musicians."

Selected Discography

Franz Koglmann, Let's Make Love (Between the Lines, 2005)
Oskar Aichinger/Franz Koglmann, The Bridal Suite (Handsemmel Records, 2004)
Franz Koglmann, Fear Death By Water (Between the Lines, 2003)
Franz Koglmann, Don't Play, Just Be (Between the Lines, 2002)
Franz Koglmann, Venus In Transit (Between the Lines, 2001)
Franz Koglmann, An Affair With Strauss (Between the Lines, 1999)
Franz Koglmann, Make Believe (Between the Lines, 1999)
Franz Koglmann, O Moon My Pin-Up (HatHut, 1998; re-released by Hatology, 2001)
Franz Koglmann & Lee Konitz, We Thought About Duke (HatHut, 1995; re-released by Hatology, 2002)
Paul Bley/Franz Koglmann/Gary Peacock, Annette (HatHut, 1995; re-released by Hatology, 2001)
Franz Koglmann, Cantos I-IV (HatHut, 1993)
Franz Koglmann, L'Heure Bleue (HatHut, 1992; re-released by Hatology, 2003)
Paul Play, 12 (+6) In A Row (HatHut, 1991)
Franz Koglmann Pipetet, The Use Of Memory (HatHut, 1990)
Franz Koglmann, A White Line (HatHut, 1989)
Franz Koglmann, Orte Der Geometrie (HatHut, 1988)
Franz Koglmann, About Yesterday's Ezzthetics (HatHut, 1987)
Franz Koglmann, Ich (hat Hut, 1986)
Franz Koglmann, Schlaf Schlemmer, Schlaf Magritte (Pipe, 1984; re-released by HatHut, 1992)
Andrea Centazzo/Lol Coxhill/Franz Koglmann, Situations (Robi Droli/Newtone, 2000; recorded 1978-1982)
Bill Dixon/Franz Koglmann/Steve Lacy, Opium (Between the Lines, 2001; re-release of Koglmann's Pipe label Flaps and Opium For Franz, 1973-1976)