Jazz Articles about Nik Bärtsch

Enjoy Jazz Interviews: Nik Bärtsch

by Martin Longley
October 15, 2022

The Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch has become a virtual fixture of the Enjoy Jazz festival, which customarily inhabits at least three cities in southern Germany. It sprawls across all of October and half of November, presenting at least one performance each night in Heidelberg, Mannheim or Ludwigshafen. Sometimes there will be two or even three gigs on certain days, in different cities, and occasionally the town of Schwetzingen is used, famed for its Rococo Theatre. In 2020, Bärtsch ...

Music from Quique Ramirez and Michel Stekelenburg, plus Sonar and Nik Bartsch

by Len Davis
October 2, 2022

New music from the Netherlands with Trio Onoda, drummer Quique Ramirez with special guest David Binney, minimalist sounds from Sonar featuring David Torn, and Nik Bartsch from Awase. Jing Chi, Protocol and Allan Holdsworth.Playlist Michel Stekelenburg “Consecotalephobia" from Trio Onoda (Zennez) 00:00 Quique Ramirez “The Microtiming Man" from Through The Darkness (Self Produced) 07:16 Sonar “Tunnel Drive" from Transeportation Vol 1 (Rare Noise) 14:31 Nik Bartsch “Module 34" from Awase (ECM) 21:52 MSM Schmidt “Medusa" from Life (Laika) ...

Jazz & Wine of Peace 2021, Part 1-2

by Luciano Rossetti
November 3, 2021

Nik Bärtsch: Entendre

by Geno Thackara
April 13, 2021

Amidst the different shifting contexts that Nik Bärtsch has used to explore his unique minimalist-groove style known as Zen funk—his counterpart Ronin and Mobile groups having gone through a few changes and sometimes expanded with extra members as Ronin Rhythm Clan—it's a rare pleasure to simply hear him on his own. His compositions are titled as “Modul"s because their building blocks are meant to be adaptable to any number of different combinations or band lineups, and they're no less fascinating ...

Nik Bärtsch: Entendre

by Mike Jurkovic
April 6, 2021

Prepared, primal architecture sparks the core of pianist Nik Bartsch's rapid fire, polymetric obsessions. So he titles his works moduls (German) or modules as the are known in King's English. Each piece adaptable and transactional to the next. Each variant available to lend its unique ruminative or propulsive elements to the music preceding or succeeding it. It's a hypnotic concept to be sure, played out with the clock work precision of his ensembles Ronin, with recordings like the staggering Awase ...

Nik Bärtsch: Entendre

by Karl Ackermann
March 22, 2021

Swiss keyboardist & composer Nik Bärtsch has been recording for two decades, mostly with his Ronin and Mobile groups and their overlapping musicians. A ceaseless experimenter, his early release Hishiryo: Piano Solo (Ronin Rhythm Records, 2002) was a genre-neutral project where he played piano, prepared piano, and percussion. It has been almost twenty years between solo albums, but Bärtsch has made the wait worthwhile with Entendre, his seventh album for the ECM label. It reflects the notion that music does ...

Nik Bartsch: Entendre

by Chris May
March 7, 2021

Back in 2006, Swiss composer and keyboard player Nik Bärtsch's ECM debut, Stoa, recorded with his group Ronin, sounded like the album James Brown might have made if he'd appointed Steve Reich musical director of his backing band, The J.B.'s. Simultaneously cerebral and on the good foot, it was minimalism, Jim, but not as we knew it. Bärtsch called the music “zen funk." Since then, Bärtsch has continued to explore the deep space of music-as-math, shuffling and ...