A musically eventful year, 2024, is coming to an end. It will remain in the memories of many of us for a long time — especially for the visitors and participants of the PARALLEL UNIVERSE festival, held to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Offene Ohren e.V.
But there were also other concert highlights throughout the year.
From the intense piano solo evening by Eli Wallace to the precise interplay of the TIAN Quintet, the program was enormously varied and inspiring. Additionally, the first CD created by musicians from one of these concerts has already been released: Ask 'em Y in Germany (March 15, 2024) contains musical excerpts from that evening — see here: www.setoladimaiale.net/catalogue/view/SM4850.
Further releases, especially from the festival, are in the planning stages — including the King Übü Örchestrü concert on October 20, 2024.
Before we leap into our winter break, we would like to express a big THANK YOU:
Our thanks go to everyone who made our concerts possible — the musicians, the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, Musikfonds, Initiative Musik (APPLAUS Prize 2023), BR Klassik, who supported us financially, as well as our partners at the venues MUG at Einstein Kultur, schwere reiter, Halle 6, Steinway-Haus, the technical and backline crew, all other helping hands and above all, of course, our members and our dedicated and attentive audience.
To you all: Happy and peaceful holidays, a quiet and relaxing time "between the years" and a happy and healthy New Year 2025!
The music will continue in the new year thanks to support from the Cultural Department of the City of Munich and the prize money from APPLAUS 2024, which Offene Ohren e.V. received at the end of November in the category "Best Small Venues and Concert Series" — for the seventh time now.
Our concerts once again will promise thrilling experiences for all fans of improvised music. Here is a first preview until May 2025:
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Timothée Quost, trumpet, electronics [F]
Gonçalo Almeida, bass, elecronics [Portugal]
Photo left: © Sebastien Bozon | Photo right: © Nuno Martins
Improvisor, composer, trumpet player, Timothée Quost is a young French musician walking along the borders of different musical practices. He first trained in classical music then in jazz, from which he obtained a master's degree from the Conservatoire de Paris.
He shared the stage with musicians such as Joachim Kühn, Olivier Py, Riccardo del Fra, the National Jazz Orchestra or the big band Umlaut; and in the Offene Ohren e.V. series with Swiss trumpeter Silvan Schmid.
Very quickly Timothée Quost showed interest in free improvisation and developed a personal approach of his instrument by enhancing it with a specific amplification device. This would eventually lead to his solo program "seul" which he has been developing since 2019, and now also in our Munich concert venue MUG.
Gonçalo Almeida is a Portuguese double bassist and composer based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. With a strong interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to his work, Gonçalo Almeida plays in a variety of projects ranging from free jazz, jazzcore, and free improvisation music, having shared the stage with improvisers such as Ab Baars, Balázs Pándi, Chris Speed, Carlos Zíngaro, Ig Henneman, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jasper Stadhouders, John Dikeman, Jorrit Dijkstra, Luís Vicente, Luís Lopes, Martin van Duynhoven, Nina Hitz, Peter Jacquemyn, Rodrigo Amado, Rutger Zuydervelt, Susana Santos Silva, Tobias Klein,Tony Malaby, Wilbert de Joode, among others.
Gonçalo Almeida questions the future of the double bass and of music in general, inventing a sound that has not yet been heard. Like many important discoveries, his invention required more imagination than equipment: "My setup is simple,", he says, "just an amp and a volume pedal."
Listening, one also imagines a subtle interaction between the amp and the bass: slight movements that change the position and distance of the resonator (the body of the bass) from the speaker to create controlled feedback. We also imagine something like a gymnopédie with the volume pedal, modulating a distortion that enhances the bowing stroke, the pizzicato resonance and several mysterious preparations.
The improviser has the advantage over the traditional composer of hearing in great detail the specificity of the sound he invents. This live listening pushes him to other lines that he would not have imagined in the silence of a working room.
This concert is made possible also by the Federal Culture Prize Applaus, which Offene Ohren e.V. was awarded in autumn 2024.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
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Jomar Jeppsson Søvik, drums [N]
Henrik Sandstad Dalen, bass [N]
Amalie Dahl, alto saxophone [N]
Photo: live at Kafé Hærverk, Oslo (Photo source: https://torhammero.blogg.no/2024/07)
Amalie Dahl (alto saxophone), Henrik Sandstad Dalen (double bass) and Jomar Jeppsson Søvik (drums) play their very own kind of camouflage improvisation, twisting and turning, luring the listener onto false trails, resulting in surprisingly captivating results.
The last two years, they've toured far and wide in Europe and released two internationally praised albums "Fairytales for Daydreamers" (2023) and "Live in Europe" (2024). In March 2025, they're heading out for their third annual tour. Don't miss it!
"[...] We are dealing with musicians here who you have to keep an eye on. Absolutely exciting." (Martin Schray, The Free Jazz Collective, April 17th 2024)
"An excellent release. And most importantly, and surprisingly, after an hour and a half of listening, I want to hear the continuation as soon as possible." (Ilia Belorukov, Jazzist, March 2024)
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
Gianni Mimmo, soprano saxophone [I]
Elisabeth Harnik, piano [A]
Clementine Gasser, cello [CH]
Photos (CD "10.000 Leaves"): G. Mimmo © Agua Mimmo | E. Harnik © Carmina Escobar | C. Gasser © Peter Purgar
About a dozen years after their debut recording,the Wild Chamber Trio, a cross-alpine meeting of the Italian Gianni Mimmo, Swiss Clementine Gasser, and Austrian Elisabeth Harnik, luckily decided to pick up the threads again, and will take us on a joyride through the land of jazz energy and classical sonority without a road map.
The idea of playing improvised music in a “chamber” setting dates back to the early 60s, when cool-jazz reed player Jimmy Giuffre stepped further away from convention in the company of the then-young, now-legendary Steve Swallow and Paul Bley. Compared to the explosive, confrontational, blues-steeped flights of his more-famous contemporary Ornette Coleman, Giuffre’s drumless music was one of an intimate, boundless, searching dialogue.
Sixty years later, the trio continues the conversation, navigating through sounds of considerable variety and surprising originality. All three constituents possess the prerequisite musical skills for high-level free improvisation. They have the musical ears and brains to pick up and instantly expound upon the most abstract statements of their partners, and the physical ability to execute each impulse seamlessly.
The real liberating factor in the group, however, is the huge range of effects the musicians conjure from their actual instruments. The possibilities for new textures expand with each successive minute of their musical conversation. When the trio deals in notes, their dialogues show deep invention and expert cohesion, but when they play with sounds, they attain near-telepathy.
The improvisations open with powerful collective statements of atmosphere, and at moments of climax, the ensemble sound is an overwhelmingly rich cacophony, leaving the listener with the wish not to let the concert ever end.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
dieb13, concept, composition, software, turntable [A]
Patrick Kessler, concept, composition, bass, orchestra manager [CH]
Screenshot © YouTube channel Chuchchepati Orchestra: September 18, 2021 live at "Rümlingen Neue Musik" Festival
Thematic concert installation for an 8 to 32 loudspeakers orchestra, an oversized record player, plus a various number of musicians.
Pardon? Chuchichäschtli?
If you only understood Chuchichäschtli when hearing Chuchchepati you’re not completely wrong. The two terms from Nepali and Swiss German are some of the few that have three «ch» in them. With his Chuchchepati Orchestra, the Appenzell-based double bass player, experimental musician and sound art mediator Patrick Kessler combines the two terms and lets them ring true. «Chuchchepati» (pronounced djudjepati) means horizon in Nepali and is also the name of a town district of Kathmandu. The name of the orchestra refers to the origin of the 32 large loudspeakers that function as a polyphonic sound installation.
Feeding them live on stage is the Chuchchepati Orchestra, which performs in changing line-ups; the permanent pool includes both local and international experimental and jazz musicians. The soundtrack is developed collectively during performances. The open concert space is transformed into a laboratory-like «chuchi» (the Swiss German term for kitchen) in which the sounds, noises and tones simmer, bubble, boil up and cool down, and the interactions between orchestra, loudspeaker installation and audience become a horizon-expanding listening and viewing experience.
The Makrograph is a giant record player on a scale of 2.77:1, on which sound carriers with a diameter of 33⅓ inches (82.9 cm) of very different materials and surface finishes can be "played".
While in a classic record player a needle slides in the groove and translates vibrations into audible sounds, in the Makrograph, a laser beam scans the surface of the sound carrier. The digital data obtained in this way form the starting material for the composition. The basic principle of the macrograph is the translation of form into music. For the composition process this means that the "translation" of the data into music can be determined according to freely definable parameters, and even non-musical topologies can be translated into interesting musical results.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
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Kazuhisa Uchihashi, e-guitar, daxophone [Japan]
Chris Biscoe, soprano / alto saxophone [GB]
Roger Turner, drums[GB]
Photo source: www.areasismica.it/event/swipe-trio-gb-jp/
Three grand masters of improvisation!
The band itself is quite new, but Roger Turner has played in duos with both Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Chris Biscoe for a long time already.
Chris Biscoe comes from a time when jazz was experiencing a period of awakening and change. He is one of the musicians who built a bridge between the worlds of jazz, free jazz and improvised music, with musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. He has recorded with leading composers such as George Russell, Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor and has explored the compositions of Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus.
Roger Turner has been active as a drummer and percussionist since the early 1970s, earning himself a firm place in the world of improvisation.
He was also an integral part of groups that helped shape international improvised and new music: The Recedents, The Tradition Trio, The Phil Minton Quartet, Konk Pack and so on.
Solo percussion, work with electroacoustic and vocal ensembles, extensive work with dance and visual artists as well as special jazz ensembles led to collaborations with the most interesting European and international musicians and performers from Annette Peacock to Phil Minton, Cecil Taylor to Yuji Takahashi, Charles Gayle to Lol Coxhill, Derek Bailey to Otomo Yoshihide, and countless others.
Kazuhisa Uchihashi has helped to define the language of Japanese improvised music for forty years, both in Japan and the world beyond. A pioneering Japanese guitarist, he has worked with a wide range of musicians, from Derek Bailey to Kevin Ayers, but he remains committed to free improvisation.
Born in Osaka in 1959, Kazuhisa Uchihashi began playing guitar at the age of 12 and later studied jazz music. He was a member of Otomo Yoshihide's Ground Zero from 1994 to 1997. He also plays the daxophone, and in addition to his role as a free improviser, he has been the musical director of the Ishinha theatre group in Osaka and has held improvisation workshops (a project called New Music Action) in various cities in Japan, as well as in London, Oslo and Vienna.
A live recording of a performance at the end of 2023 at London's Café OTO is available on the CD THE SWIPE TRIO.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
The friends of improvised music of the Offene Ohren e.V. would like to thank the Kulturreferat München for its continuous help allowing to present improvised music in Munich.