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Nik 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 ...
Continue ReadingNik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria
by John Kelman
Nik Bärtsch's Ronin Llyrìa ECM Records 2010 Few artists have emerged in recent times with so unique and fully-formed a voice as pianist Nik Bärtsch. Living largely, as he does, in the jazz world--especially since coming to ECM in 2006 with Stoa, after years foundation-setting and groundbreaking work in his native Switzerland, honing the distinctive blend of minimalist repetition, interlocking polyrhythms and compelling grooves that he's dubbed “Zen Funk" and “Ritual Groove" on a series ...
Continue ReadingNik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria
by Chris May
Pianist Nik Bärtsch's Ronin has traveled a long way since its formation in 2001, through its early albums on Ronin Rhythm Records, its signing with ECM, and the three discs that label has so far released. Mid-decade, the Swiss band was forging its reputation with a relentlessly beat-centric style which Bärtsch dubbed “Zen funk" and “ritual groove music"--a blend of minimalism and James Brown which gave P-funkster George Clinton's maxim “free your ass and your mind will follow" a new ...
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