Peter Brötzmann

Peter Brötzmann ( born March 6, 1941 in Remscheid, Germany ) is a German jazz musician, the great influence on the European free jazz has. "Of all the jazz innovators he is the one who has the most radical break with all traditions - not only jazz, but the music-making at all. " He is - from the Fluxus movement coming - a more adventurous saxophonist who occasionally also plays clarinet and Tárogató. In particular, the bass saxophone - an otherwise rarely used instrument - was paid by Brötzmann new attention in jazz. For Brötzmann's distinctive and energetic style of play is in free jazz circles, the term " brötzen " emerged.

Life and work

Brötzmann learned as a nine year old clarinet. At seventeen, he began a four-year study art at the Art School in Wuppertal. The same time he worked as a graphic artist, played in various bands clarinet or tenor saxophone and became interested in the early 1960s to the free jazz. In 1961 he founded with Peter Kowald and Dieter Berger Rauscht a trio. Brötzmann played on relevant festivals, worked in Paris in 1966 with Michael Mantler, Carla Bley and Aldo Romano (with whom he also went on tour ). He was one of the founding members of the Globe Unity Orchestra. His 1968 -rehearsed with an octet record Machine Gun is one of the most provocative works of modern jazz history of Europe. Brötzmann is one of the founders of the record label Free Music Production in Berlin. Until the 1980s, he appeared regularly on the Total Music Meeting, 1973, 1979, 1980 and 1984 but also in the official Berlin Jazz Festival. In 1976, he put his solo LP Half a dog can not pee before ( in 2001 another solo album followed ). In collaboration with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo " rhythmic energy as the central driving torque " won a " preponderance of the theatrical, crisscrossed by Dadaist performance practice episodes " of the 1970s.

Brötzmann was a regular presence in the U.S. and Japan since the early 1980s, in alternating trios and larger ensembles, but also often in duo constellations. Since 1981 he has also worked sporadically with Bernd Klötzer. In 1986, he was next to Sonny Sharrock and Ronald Shannon Jackson a member of Bill Laswell Jazz Noise group Last Exit, with the he recorded several albums. Since that time, especially in the 1990s, Brötzmann surprisingly won great popularity in the United States.

With Ken Vandermark (sax, cl ) from Chicago and the Swede Mats Gustafsson (sax ) as a core group of his Chicago tentett he plays since 2002 in intergenerational trio Sonore. 2004 Brötzmann formed with Michael Wertmueller (dr ) and Marino Pliakas ( b ) to a trio Full Blast.

Peter Brötzmann's son, Caspar Brötzmann, is also a musician. As part of a live recording of the Peter Brötzmann Tentet 1992 in Wuppertal Caspar participated as a tenth of the line-ups. Father and son playing together an album Last Home. Brötzmann curated in November 2011, the 25th edition of the Unlimited festival in Wels and went there for four days with the different line- up, with musicians from the Chicago and the New York scene, but also with the Japanese as Masahiko Sato Michiyo Yagi or. The festival was sold out months earlier and was documented with the 5 CD box Long Short Story.

In addition to his career as a musician, he also worked as a painter, graphic designer and object artist with exhibitions in Germany (including Berlin Academy of Arts in 1979 with Han Bennink ), Sweden, the United States (including Chicago), Austria, the Netherlands and Australia. In the early 1960s he was in Wuppertal and Amsterdam assistant to Nam June Paik in his early installations and participated in Fluxus actions in Germany and Amsterdam.

Honors

In 2005 he was awarded the Von der Heydt - Cultural Prize of the city of Wuppertal, after he had in 1971 received the Award of this cultural price.

On the New York Vision Festival 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award. In the same year he was honored for his lifetime achievement with the German Jazz Award.

Discography (selection)

• The Peter Brötzmann Trio (1967, with Peter Kowald and Sven Åke Johansson ) ( FMP) / Atavistic
• Machine Gun. (1968, with Willem Breuker, Evan Parker, Fred Van Hove, Peter Kowald, Buschi Niebergall, Han Bennink, Sven -Åke Johansson )
• The End. (1971, with Van Hove, Bennink and Albert Mangelsdorff )
• Brötzmann / Van Hove / Bennink. (1973)
• Brötzmann, Aaltonen, Kowald, Vesala Hot Lotta (1973, CD 2011)
• Brötzmann / Solo. ( 1976) ( FMP) 0360
• 3 Points and a Mountain ... Plus (1979, with Misha Mengelberg and Bennink )
• Opened, but hardly touched. ( 1980, with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo )
• Low Life. (1987, with Bill Laswell )
• Réservé. (1988, with Barre Phillips and Günter Sommer )
• Little Birds Have Fast Hearts. (1997, with Toshinori Kondo, William Parker and Hamid Drake )
• Be music, night. (2004, with the Chicago Tentet )
• Full Blast. (2006, Brötzmann Pliakas - Wertmueller )
• Ascent and descent: A Night in Sana'a. (2009, with Michael Zerang, Abdul- Aziz Mokrid, Barkosch Khalid, Ahmed Al- Khalidy, Ali Saleh, Yasir Al- Absi )
• Long Short Story ( 2011; Prize of the German Record Critics )
• A Fish Stinks from the Head (2013 ), Paal Nilssen -Love with

Filmography (selection)

• ! Rage, directed by Bernard Josse ( F 2011 )
• Brötzmann. Film Production winner Busch, directed by René Jeuckens, Thomas Mau and Grisha Windus (cinema, DVD, D / UK 2011 )

Writings

• Christopher J. Bauer, Peter Brötzmann: Brötzmann. Conversations. With an essay by Christopher J. Bauer. Posth Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-944298-00-9.
• Peter Brötzmann: We Thought We Could Change the World. Conversations with Gérard Rouy. Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-95593-047-9.

Lexigraphic entries

• Wolf Kampmann: Reclam Jazz Encyclopedia. Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010528-5.
• Martin Kunzler: jazz lexicon. Vol 1, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-16512-0.