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Jazz Articles about Nik Bärtsch
Continuum
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 ...
Continue ReadingNik 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 ...
Continue ReadingNik Bärtsch's Ronin: Live
by Dan McClenaghan
Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch and his group Ronin joined the ECM Records roster in 2006 with their label debut, Stoa. Since then they have produced a new ECM set every two years, with Holon (2008), Llyría (2010), and now their first recorded-in-concert set for the label, the double-disc Live. Ronin's music has been called Zen Funk, ritual groove music, and mechanistic minimalism. Live proves the group is just as tight onstage as it is in the studio. This ...
Continue ReadingNik Bärtsch's Ronin: Live
by John Kelman
Change can be good, though there's often a sense of loss when a significant adjustment happens. Honing his very specific Ritual Groove/Zen Funk music for more than a decade, Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch was hit with a particularly big change when Ronin's founding bassist, Bjørn Meyer, left in 2011 to pursue personal projects. The more recent departure of equally longstanding percussionist Andi Pupato on September 1, 2012, leaves Ronin--with new bassist, Thomy Jordi, in tow--to forge ahead as a quartet, ...
Continue ReadingNik Bartsch's Ronin: London, England, November 16, 2011
by Ian Patterson
Nik Bärtsch's RoninLondon Jazz FestivalKing's PlaceLondon, EnglandNovember 16, 2011 Looking at the listings for day six of the London Jazz Festival, the term “spoilt for choice" sprang to mind. At the Barbican, pianists Stefano Bollani and French veteran Martial Solal led a double bill supported by Marcin Wasilewski's piano trio; at the Purcell Room, rising stars Phronesis promised a night to remember in a concert without lights, entitled Pitch Black, while at ...
Continue ReadingNik Bartsch: Rhythmically Dancing Around Fugato Fires
by Ian Patterson
Hungarian composer and pianist Béla Bartók once said, “In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution." Pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch would be the first to recognize that he is no revolutionary, as his aesthetic vision draws inspiration from multiple sources, ranging from 20th century classical music to funk, and from Japanese ritual music to minimalism. The distillation of all these sounds results in a music that invites meditation and ...
Continue ReadingNik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria
by Dan McClenaghan
On Stoa (ECM Records, 2005), Nik Bärtsch's Ronin offered up music made with a clock-like precision. Zen Funk, Ritual Groove Music--take your pick of descriptive tags--was meted out by a machine-like ensemble, using repetition and reduction and space sparked by the leader's punctuating, crystalline piano notes underlain, a great deal of the time, by a bass/contrabass clarinet rumble that suggested a sinister gargantuan presence dwelling in the basement beneath the machinery.Holon (ECM, 2008), the Swiss band's second recording ...
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