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Jazz Articles about Nik Bärtsch
Nik Bärtsch: Possibility in Paradox
by Geno Thackara
Like the master-less samurai his primary band is named for, Nik Bärtsch forges a path and follows a code all his own. The pianist's music is best described by his own key phrases “ritual groove music" and “Zen funk," merging Eastern minimalist simplicity and patient trance with the interplay and communal aspect of jazz. It makes for a bundle of seeming contradictions: steadily repetitive and ever-changing, precise yet improvisational, highly cerebral and body-movingly catchy, it develops structures of sometimes breathtaking ...
read moreECM Showcase at NYC Winter Jazzfest 2017
by Tyran Grillo
ECM Showcase at NYC Winter Jazzfest 2017 Tishman Auditorium, The New School New York City January 7, 2017 Music has been a comfort in troubling times ever since there were humans to bring about troubles to begin with. Rare, however, is that music which seeks not only to placate but also demonstrate. The world of ECM Records, insofar as it has come to be defined through nearly five decades of mapping, demonstrates in every sense ...
read moreNik Bärtsch’s Mobile at the Rubin Museum of Art
by Tyran Grillo
Nik Bärtsch's Mobile Rubin Museum of Art New York, NY May 6, 2016 When is music a ritual? A relevant question in regard to pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch, one of few modern musicians to live out his worldview in every thought and action. His “Ronin" project laid fresh tracks in the vast network of ECM Records--no small feat considering the label's diverse, decades-long locomotion. But behind Ronin's curtain, in his native Zürich, ...
read moreNik Bartsch's Mobile at The Rubin Museum of Art
by Budd Kopman
Nik Bärtsch's Mobile Rubin Museum Of Art New York, NY May 6, 2016 Having seen Nik Bärtsch's Ronin live (albeit eight years ago), listened to Continuum and read the detailed review which notes the differences between the groups, did not lessen the impact of Mobile in concert. The venue was perfect--a small auditorium which held about three hundred, facing a raised stage. There, the Mobile quartet was arranged with Nik ...
read moreNik Bärtsch's Mobile: Continuum
by Claudio Bonomi
Nik Bärtsch, pianista svizzero famoso ai più per le sue gesta con i Ronin, torna alla ribalta con un nuovo album che, semmai ce ne fosse ancora bisogno, ne conferma il talento e il genio creativo. Qui è a capo dell'ensemble acustico Mobile, che per l'occasione si esibisce in una formazione allargata includendo una sezione d'archi composta da due violini, una viola e due violoncelli. L'approccio stilistico è noto e affonda le radici in un patrimonio musicale ...
read moreContinuum
by John Kelman
Few musicians have continued to hone a concept as singularly unique and instantly recognizable, irrespective of context, as that being explored by Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch since he first formed Mobile with Don Li, Kaspar Rast and Mats Eser in 1997. First emerging on record in 2001 with Ritual Groove Music (Self-Released, reissued Ronin Rhythm, 2006), Bärtsch has evolved three very different contexts with which to explore the confluence of trance-inducing minimalist elements with rigorous, ritualistic compositional constructs, a deep ...
read moreNik Bärtsch's Mobile: Continuum
by Karl Ackermann
The timing couldn't have been better. Following up on the stunning double-CD live outing, Nik Bärtsch's Ronin Live (ECM, 2012), Bärtsch returns with his acoustic group, Mobile, for Continuum. With clarinetist Sha and drummer Kaspar Rast crossing over from Ronin, a new addition, Nicolas Stocker, on drums and percussion completes the core quartet. A string quintet augments three of the eight tracks, infusing a multiplicity of effects in the process. Mobile has been around for almost twenty years ...
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