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Christy Doran & Izumi Kimura: Glacial Voyage
by Ian Patterson
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 ...
Continue ReadingMorpheus Trance - Christy Doran: In Trance We Trust
by Glenn Astarita
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 ...
Continue ReadingChristy Doran: in The Corner Of The Eye
by Ian Patterson
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 ...
Continue ReadingChristy Doran & Stefan Banz: Aerosols
by Ian Patterson
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, ...
Continue ReadingBeady Beast: On The Go
by Ian Patterson
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 ...
Continue ReadingOM: It's About Time
by Ian Patterson
In 1982, after five albums in ten years, Swiss free-jazz quartet OM called it a day—its four members, Christy Doran, Fredy Studer, Urs Leimgruber and Bobby Burri going their separate ways. A supposed one-off reunion in 2007 to open an exhibition on the youth movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to a successful series of festivals appearances on home turf. Those concerts resulted in the live album Willisau (Intakt Records, 2010), a return to OM's improvisational heartland, and signalled ...
Continue ReadingChristy Doran's Sound Fountain: Lift The Bar
by Ian Patterson
With four records in as many years Christy Doran's Sound Fountain seems in 2020 to have eclipsed New Bag as the guitarist's going concern. However, just because New Bag hasn't recorded since Elsewhere (Double Moon, 2015) doesn't mean that the band, founded in 1997, won't still make a comeback. After all, who could have foreseen the 2016 return to the road of OM, thirty-four years after Doran, Fredy Studer, Urs Leimgruber and Bobby Burri called time on the seminal Swiss ...
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