Jazz Articles about Christy Doran

About Christy Doran

Album Review

Formed in Lucerne in 1972 by saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran, bassist Bobby Burri, and drummer Fredy Studer, the original quartet fused the raw voltage of rock with the open architecture of free improvisation, arriving at a sound they eventually dubbed “ElectroAcoustiCore." Studer's death in 2022, weeks ahead of the release of the anniversary album 50 (Intakt), 2022), might reasonably have closed the book. Instead, the three surviving founders did something a lesser band would not have attempted: they ...

Album Review

Christy Doran's May 95 Sextet: Same But Different

Read "Same But Different" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
October 14, 2025

Curse or blessing? A festival handing a musician carte blanche for a one-off adventure sounds liberating, but the allure of artistic freedom can be tempered by pressure: what if the personalities do not gel? What if it bombs? Christy Doran, the Ireland-born Lucerne-based guitarist, has never been one to dodge a challenge. His entire career has been marked by adventure and innovation. From jazz-rock fusioneers OM in the early '70s to his later groups New Bag, Sound Fountain, ...

Album Review

Christy Doran & Izumi Kimura: Glacial Voyage

Read "Glacial Voyage" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
June 22, 2025

One was born in Ireland in the aftermath of WWII and grew up in Switzerland on a diet of Jimi Hendrix; the other was born in Japan a generation later and trained in classical music. But neither time nor musical upbringing can drive a wedge between veteran guitarist Christy Doran and pianist Izumi Kimura. Though each has worked in a wide range of different settings over the years--Doran in jazz-rock pioneers OM, Kimura with John Cage's music, for example--what draws ...

Album Review

Morpheus Trance - Christy Doran: In Trance We Trust

Read "In Trance We Trust" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 5, 2024

Renowned Switzerland-based guitarist Christy Doran's In Trance We Trust is a musical dreamscape you cannot quite pin down but may never want to escape. The album unfolds like a sonic labyrinth, twisting and turning through genres and moods with the cool confidence of a seasoned psychonaut. Doran, wielding his six-stringed wand, conjures textures that oscillate between otherworldly and hypnotically familiar. In the marketing one-sheet, Doran declares, “There is no boss"--a nod to the democratic ethos of the trio as they ...

Liner Notes

Christy Doran: in The Corner Of The Eye

by Ian Patterson
January 15, 2024

For forty years, Irish-born, Lucerne-based guitarist Christy Doran has recorded prolifically for numerous labels. Inevitably perhaps, many of his earlier works are out of print, so it's cause for celebration that this release brings together the very best of Phoenix (hat Art, 1990) and What a Band (hat Art, 1992), two long-neglected yet essential Doran recordings. The majority of Doran's releases have been with bands, from the seventies jazz-rock/free jazz group OM to New Bag, his main working ...

Album Review

Christy Doran & Stefan Banz: Aerosols

Read "Aerosols" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
November 11, 2021

Aerosols is Irish-born, Lucerne-based guitarist Christy Doran's fifth solo album in a career which began in the early '70s, and his first since Acoustic Isles (Creative Works Records, 2006). That CD/DVD was an intermedia collaboration with visual artist Susanne Dubs. In similar vein, Aerosols sees Doran respond musically to five paintings by Swiss multi-media artist Stefan Banz. In turn, vla his own medium, Banz answers to five pieces of music composed by Doran. The paintings--with accompanying text--adorn the CD booklet, ...

Album Review

Beady Beast: On The Go

Read "On The Go" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
September 14, 2021

Guitarists Christy Doran and Franz Hellmüller, the duo known as Beady Beast, were once teacher and student. That was in the early 2000s, when Hellmüller studied with Doran at Lucerne's Musikhokschule. Since graduating summa cum laude in 2003, Hellmüller has established a reputation as an original electric guitarist, usually playing in the company of Patrick Sommer and Martin Perret, or with Luca Sisera and Tony Renold. Longer of tooth, Doran has blazed a singular trail since the early '70s with ...