Jazz Articles about Nik Bärtsch

Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Holon

by Chris May
January 29, 2008

Pianist/composer Nik Bartsch's wondrous synthesis of intellect and funk, of lofty cerebral abstraction and urgent physical energy, is so thrilling that it may produce in the listener an urge to scramble on top of the nearest building and start yelling “hallelujah!" and “eureka!" at everyone within earshot.

Holon is the second album Bartsch has made with his band Ronin for ECM, following Stoa (ECM, 2006), and is the latest addition to an outstanding body of work previously released ...

Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Live

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
August 22, 2007

Nik Bärtsch's Ronin Live Ronin Rhythm Records 2006

The critical enthusiasm that greeted Stoa (ECM, 2006), by keyboardist Nik Bärtsch's Ronin band, has encouraged some listeners to look into his back catalogue. It turns out that the Zurich-based musician has been developing the musical project that gave rise to Stoa for many years; this includes workshop-like performances at the Zurich club Moods, where all but the first track of this album were recorded live ...

Nik Bartsch: The Road To Stoa

by Budd Kopman
June 28, 2007

Pianist/composer Nik Bartsch calls what he does “ritual groove music," in an attempt to get across the mix of aesthetics and philosophy involved. This mix includes the mastery of technique, the total immersion in and lack of separation between thought and action, pure funkiness, emotionalism vs. minimalism, repetition vs. development, and trance vs. the dramatic--with the whole package delivered as a gift from the players to the listener. The individual elements that make up music can be loosely ...

Nik Bartsch: Commitment, Movement, and the Batman Spirit

by Paul Olson
July 24, 2006

Swiss composer/keyboardist Nik Bärtsch doesn't play jazz, pop, or classical music. Rather, he and his groups Mobile and Ronin play a remarkable synthesis of the above genres, and the result is something Bärtsch calls “ritual groove music." Although Bärtsch has been developing this music--and the elaborate aesthetic and philosophical aesthetic that support and surrounds it--most listeners' first encounter with it has been the new CD from his band Ronin, Stoa, Bärtsch's first album on ECM Records. It's utterly ...

Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Stoa

by John Kelman
April 29, 2006

One of ECM's strengths is its ability to find young players with new conceptions that not only keep its catalogue fresh and innovative, but also often create insidious paradigm shifts which extend beyond the label's purview. In recent years artists like saxophonist Trygve Seim and pianist Tord Gustavsen have--often in the subtlest of ways--helped reshape contemporary music. Add to that list 35 year-old pianist Nik Bartsch and his group Ronin. As significant and groundbreaking an album as you're likely to ...

Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Stoa

by Budd Kopman
April 26, 2006

What is this music? What genre does it inhabit? What label best suits it? Nik Bärtsch himself calls it Zen-funk, and it easily could fit the trance label, but only at times. Reichian or Glassian minimalism springs to mind, but again only at times. Calling it progressive rock would be a gigantic stretch. Is it jazz, whatever that means to you? Not if jazz requires improvisation or shuns through-composed music. Yet it has the feel of jazz, particularly in the ...

Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Stoa

by Chris May
April 25, 2006

From out of nowhere, Switzerland--best known in the jazz community for hosting the increasingly irrelevant Montreux Jazz Festival, whose headliners for 2006 include Simply Red, Solomon Burke, Deep Purple, Sting and Bryan Adams--seems suddenly to be turning out some seriously intrepid and innovative young players.

In the space of a few weeks, we've been introduced, first, to twin brothers Andreas and Matthias Pichler, the drum and bass wunderteam featured on Austrian guitar genius Wolfgang Muthspiel's heartachingly beautiful Bright Side. And, ...