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LIVE FROM NEW YORK July 2, 2017

Creative Music Studio Spring Workshop 2017

Creative Music Studio Spring Workshop 2017 Full Moon Resort Big Indian, NY June 12-15, 2017 There are multiple facets to the lengthy, imaginative musical journey of Karl Berger and Ingrid Sertso. Together with Ornette Coleman, they founded the Creative Music Studio and Foundation in 1971. Their old Woodstock wilderness lodge soon attracted a rolling cast of significant artists, frequently performing in permutations that wouldn't be heard elsewhere. Over the decades, Berger (piano, ...

ALBUM REVIEWS October 29, 2015

Karl Berger/Kirk Knuffke: Moon

By John Sharpe

Cornetist Kirk Knuffke joins veteran German vibraphonist Karl Berger for a poised meditative duet on Moon. The origins of the set lie in a meeting at a concert celebrating drummer Ed Blackwell in New York City after which Berger invited Knuffke to his Creative Music Studio to teach. So successful was the endeavor that the duo was born. Each of the principals contributes half a dozen pieces supplemented by four joint ventures in a program comprising eighty minutes of music ...

TAKE FIVE WITH... September 10, 2015

Take Five with Rob Saffer of the Creative Music Foundation

By Creative Music Foundation

In this installment of Take Five we hear from Executive Director Rob Saffer of the Creative Music Foundation, an organization founded in 1971 by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso and Ornette Coleman. CMS has brought together leading innovators in the jazz and world music communities through their CMS workshops. About the Creative Music Studio Fall Workshop: Composer/multi-instrumentalist and Creative Music Studio alumnus Peter Apfelbaum, master percussionist/educator Billy Martin, and composer/saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa will join CMS Artistic Directors/Co-founders ...

MEGAPHONE September 10, 2015

The Creative Music Studio Goes To College!

By Karl Berger

This article was originally published in 2005. In 1972 I founded the Creative Music Studio (CMS) with Ingrid Sertso and Ornette Coleman. Many luminaries were among the initial advisors: John Cage, Gil Evans, Gunther Schuller, Alan Ginsberg, George Russell, Don Cherry, Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, Dave Holland, Frederic Rzewski, Anthony Braxton and Jack DeJohnette, a list of participant artists that reads now like a who's who in new music, jazz and world music. For many years CMS, which ...

ALBUM REVIEWS May 23, 2012

Karl Berger and Dom Minasi: Synchronicity

By Eyal Hareuveni

Pianist/vibraphonist Karl Berger and guitarist Dom Minasi are both forward-thinking and experienced composers, improvisers and educators, with discographies that goes back to the 1960s--including, in the case of Berger, collaborations with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Carla Bley; and, with Minasi, 1970s work with Joe McPhee and Matthew Shipp. Synchronicity's twelve freely improvised duets were recorded in 2010 at Berger's Woodstock studio. All rely on an emphatic and patient interplay that stresses the melodic and harmonic avenues ...

ALBUM REVIEWS March 23, 2012

Hasler / Paeffgen / Berger: Hasler / Paeffgen / Berger

By John Sharpe

At first sight, the main talking point on the eponymous offering from trumpeter Werner Hasler, drummer Gilbert Paeffgen and Karl Berger is the vibraphonist's co-optation into the multinational trio. That impression lasts no longer than the first listen to this fresh and open collaboration. Berger, a German-born, New York-based veteran, has a long-held interest in world music, a product of his association with wandering griot trumpeter Don Cherry, which proves to be the perfect grounding for this meeting. Paeffgen, in ...