Max E. Keller

Max Eugen Keller ( born March 19, 1947 in Aarau ) is a Swiss composer, jazz pianist and improvising musician. He was one of the first free-jazz musicians of Switzerland. His oeuvre includes more than 150 works from the field of stage, orchestral and chamber music ( electronic music ). As president, he led from 1985 to 1993 the theater at the track in Winterthur. He was also from 2007 to 2010 Chairman of the Swiss Society for New Music ( SGNM ). For his contributions to contemporary music, he was, inter alia, in 2006 awarded the Culture Prize of the city of Winterthur.

Life

Max Eugen Keller was born in 1947 the son of a print shop owner in Aarau. His ancestors include the liberal politicians and Emil Gottfried Keller. Keller received in his youth Recorders and piano lessons and attended from 1964 to Matur 1967 Old Canton Aarau. Contrary to the traditional music business he was active from 1966 to 1973 as one of the first free-jazz musicians ( pianist and tenor saxophonist ) of Switzerland. In 1967 he made his debut at the Zurich Jazz Festival. He played in this time in various improvisational ensembles, such as the group, founded in 1969 for music and founded in 1970, German -Swiss trio NED. For the latter occupation, the musician Gerhard Staebler included ( voice ) and Wilhelm Schulz ( Cello ). Keller went on then in concerts and on the radio in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Poland. From 1967 to 1974 Keller studied German literature and history at the University of Basel and musicology with Hans Oesch. At the same time he graduated from in 1969 to study composition with Hans Ulrich Lehmann at the Music Academy of Basel.

In 1970 he attended the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt. Controversial was his performance in 1972 ( participation as a Fellow of the city of Darmstadt ), when he was briefly ruled by political manifestations of the courses. Together with Rudolf Frisius, Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Nicolaus A. Huber, who was later his teacher, and Ernst Albrecht Stiebler he called over the management of the Darmstadt Summer Courses at Ernst Thomas democracy and internationalization. The following year, he received lessons in composition with Helmut Lachenmann. From 1975 to 1976, he then studied electronic music with Nicolaus A. Huber and Dirk Reith at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. In addition, he composed his first pieces. From 1976 to 1977 he worked as a fellow of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the Southwest Radio (SWR ) with Thomas Kessler and Thomas Johnson at the Electronic Studio Basel. Ibid was also his first electroacoustic piece Sure its ... (1976 ) for speaker and tape. He worked in the wake of scenic and political music, such as the cantata fontamara ( 1984-86 ) based on the novel by Ignazio Silone, which was in several European countries, also on radio stations listed.

In 1977 he became a teacher for German and political science at the School of Engineering Sciences in Winterthur. In addition, since 1980, he worked again as an improvising musician with emphasis on piano and electronic musical instruments. Concert tours have taken him to South America, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Musical encounters he had, inter alia, with Dani Schaffner, Christoph Gallio, Peter A. Schmid and Mathias Rissi in improvisation ensemble Tangramusic (since 1988), with Hannes Bauer and D. Petzold trio Ampio (since 2003) and with Kurt Grämiger, Daniel Mouthon, Thomas Borgmann, Hans Koch, Urs Leimgruber, Günter Müller, Hans Hassler, Charlotte Hug, Matthias Ziegler, Christian Wolfarth, Günter Heinz and Barry Guy in various chamber music ensembles.

Since 1985 he has organized new music ( series musica aperta, since 1999) and jazz concerts in the theater at the track in Winterthur. From 1985 to 1993 he was President of this cabaret theater. In 1985 he was one of the cultural sector Christoph Keller, Mathias Knauer and Jürg Stenzl to the co-organizers of days for political music at the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich. He was also a representative of the Swiss Association of Musicians at the Berlin Music Biennial (DDR ). From 1989 to 1991 he was represented as a board member of the ISCM in Zurich. As the successor to Jean -Luc Darbellay he worked from 2007 to 2010 as chairman of the Swiss Society for New Music ( SGNM ). In addition, Keller regularly involved with contributions in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the provincial deputies and Tages-Anzeiger in public discussions about Swiss culture and education policy.

Since the 1970s he has about 150 pieces composed, with included electronic music. His works have been performed in Europe, Australia, South Africa, North and South America, Russia, Korea, China, Mongolia and Azerbaijan. Among the artists belonged ensembles such as the Orchestra Musikkollegium Winterthur, the group New Music Hanns Eisler and the Silesian String Quartet. The World Music Days of the International Society for Contemporary Music ( ISCM / ISCM ) in Zurich (1991) and Mexico City ( 1993), the New Music Miami ISCM Festival ( 2002) and the biennials of Berlin and Paris received him into the program. In Montevideo, a composer portrait in 1995 held about him. With a grant from the canton of Aargau ( 1999) he stayed for several months in a studio in Berlin. A total of two Grammont Portrait of Musiques Suisses CDs emerged over basement, including the recording of his orchestral music moonscape (1999) with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under the direction of conductor David Zinman U.S..

Tonal language

Max E. Keller is a member of the so-called '68 generation, which also expresses itself in his musical language. Keller grew up with music improvisation and defined them in 1973 as: "Improvisation [ ... ] highlights the division of labor Composer - Artist, which always implies a relation of domination tend to. No longer has a performer enact what a composer he prescribes, but the improviser is also the creator and player of the sound elements. Within a collective of individual players trying to musically realize his full potential in the dialectical relationship with his players. " The Tuebingen musicologist Otto Paul Burkhardt sees his work, therefore, with a" [r ] certain [n ] distance to popular spellings ". Several of Keller's compositions are deliberately not written out and have free-jazz elements.

Through exposure to new music with Helmut Lachenmann in the 1970s, Keller found access to the so-called " serious music ". Influenced by his German teacher of composition, he developed sympathies for the " noise music " ( Musique concrète ). Later he composed using tapes and synthesizers more electro -acoustic pieces. He tries his left socially critical concern by the combination of music and text ( Fried, Weibel, Geerk ) express. He takes stylistically related to Hanns Eisler, who pursued as expressionistic approaches. Keller left equally incorporated serial and free approaches to his works. He used design techniques of the Schoenberg school, such as twelve-tone technique. In the basement a special turning to musical theater is observed. His extensive theatrical works we offer are the miniature opera Egon - from the life of a bank officer (1981 ), the cantata fontamara ( 1984-1986 ), and the chamber opera The ax (2004-2006). With its scenic and theatrical contributions as Achuapa / Nicaragua (1986 ), Swiss Fiction ( 1990) and configurations III (1991 ) it binds the listener despite the complexity of his works. Since the 1990s, he composed predominantly never entered text for instrumental ensembles. According to the Zurich composer Alfred Zimmerlin basement currently trying " chamber music to look for new, unfamiliar sound systems ."

Awards

Max E. Keller has been awarded several prizes and promotional income. He received his first 197 price? be for Sure ... at the Concours international de musique Electroacoustique in Bourges (France). It was in 1995 a grant from the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich for Cruising routes, which he shared with Werner Baertschi, Ulrich Gasser, Martin Sigrist and Peter Wettstein. In 1997 he was awarded for his contribution to contemporary music in the Winterthur worth CHF 10,000 art prize of the Carl -Heinrich -Ernst Foundation. In 2001, he received tenuto, battuto, fulminant a funding contribution of the Aargau Trustees. A contribution to the artistic creation of the Aargau Trustees (2003) joined them. In 2006, he received a "great musical work that attracts international attention " the Culture Prize of the city of Winterthur for his. Another contribution to the artistic creation of the Aargau Trustees was awarded to him in 2008. Last cellar was a second prize in the composition competition of the Deutsche Oper Berlin ( for: wanawizzi ) 2012 Award.

List of Works

Discography

  • Procuste Deux Stars / Windows / repetitions I- V ( 1988 plans ) with Martin Derungs / / repetitions I- V
  • Chamber music ( Col Legno, 1990) with David Riniker, Burkhard Glaetzner, Gerhard Erber, Béatrice Mathez Wüthrich, the New Music Ensemble Zurich under Dominik Blum and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Basel under Bernhard Wulff / / mandrel path, peace song of a oboist, state I -VII, Achuapa / Nicaragua, configurations II
  • Chamber Music 1986-1993 ( Jecklin 1995), with Teodoro Anzellotti, Christoph Jäggin, Martina Bovet, Heinrich Mätzener, Christine Theus, Ensemble Opera Nova, Christoph Brunner, Ensemble Aventure and Johannes Nied / / Enduring and moving, memories IV, IV songs Nine figure, blown apart
  • Cruising routes - Composers Secretariat Zurich ( Grammont MGB 1997) with the Sinfonietta Wetzikon under Howard Griffiths / / Pentalog
  • Ex machina ( Cybele 2001) with Hans Suter / / you
  • Rotondo or "the art of joining " ( STV / ASM 2002) with the Ensemble Aventure under Christian Hommel / / Rotondo
  • Max E. Keller ( Grammont MGB 2003) with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under David Zinman, Johannes Nied, Victoria Ifrim, the Gruppo Musica Insieme di Cremona, Susanne Stelzenbach, Ralf Hoyer, Eiko Morikawa, Sarah Hornsby, Daniel Göritz and the Silesian String Quartet / / moonscape, dialog boxes, Progressions, String Trio, act and react, deformations, string Quartet No. 2
  • Festival l' art pour l' Aar - Concert November 2003 ( Müller & Schade 2006) with the Leipzig percussion ensemble / / insieme, a coppie, indipendente
  • Accent - figure - layer ( Dreamscape 2010) with Christoph Erb, Dani Schaffner, Max E. Keller, Egidius Streiff, Muriel Swiss and Dominique Girod / / accent, unione e tremolo, layer, figure, accent and layer, all three, nononono, from three -to-one
  • Marcela Pavia - Max E. Keller (NEOS 2011) with Werner Baertschi, the Quadriga Bassoon Ensemble and the trio Flair / / self-talk, Cinque, Trio Fluido
  • Grammont Sélection 5 ( Grammont MGB 2012) with Katja Guedes and Matthias Bauer / / The Sisters

Publications (selection )

  • Heard and composed structure in Stockhausen's " Cross Game ". In: Melos 39 (1972 ) 1, pp. 10-18.
  • The Darmstadt Delegation from 1970 concludes. In: Melos 39 (1972 ) 6, pp. 360-361. ( together with Rudolf Frisius, Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Nicolaus A. Huber and Ernst Albrecht Stiebler )
  • Improvisation and commitment. In: Melos 40 (1973 ) 4, pp. 198-203.
  • The resistance is dead! Long live the resistance! In: dissonance 105 (2009), p 23
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