out now: Made To Break: Provoke

out now!

Made To Break -  Provoke

Label:

Clean Feed ‎– CF273CD

Format:

CD, Album

Country:

Portugal

Released:

2013

1		Further (For John Cage)	23:35
2		Presentation (For Buckminster Fuller)	20:07
3		Of The Facts (For Marshall McLuhan)	19:13

• Recorded At – Teatro do Bairro
• Mixed At – Chicago Mastering Service
• Mastered At – Chicago Mastering Service

• Bass – Devin Hoff
• Cover, Photography By – Federico Peñalva
• Drums – Tim Daisy
• Electronics [lloopp] – Christof Kurzmann
• Engineer – Joao Serigado
• Executive-Producer – Trem Azul
• Liner Notes – Ken Vandermark
• Mastered By – Bob Weston
• Mixed By – Christof Kurzmann, Ken Vandermark, Bob Weston
• Photography By [Collage] – César Merino Masnou
• Reeds, Composed By – Ken Vandermark

Recorded in concert at TBC, Lisbon, on November 17th and 19th, 2011 Mixed at Chicago Mastering Service. Mastered at CMS.
Digipak packaging.

http://jesus-desdemicadiera.blogspot.com.es/2013/03/made-to-break.html

Tour: Made To Break

MADE TO BREAK ( Ken Vandermark, Timothy Daisy, Devin Hoff & Christof Kurzmann)

Fri March 1st: Narodni Dom Maribor, Maribor (Slovenia)
Sat March 2nd: Blue Tomato, Vienna (Austria)
Sun March 3rd: Cantina Cenci, Tarzo (Italy)
Mon March 4th: Kulturverein Waschaecht, Wels (Austria)
Tue March 5th: Sala Nasti, Madrid (Spain)
Wed March 6th: Jimmy Glass, València (Spain)
Thurs March 7th: Café Antzokia, Bilbao (Spain)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBzT_JKbj7I

Tour: Brandlmayr/Kurzmann/Vandermark

CHRISTOF KURZMANN, vocals, electronics. KEN VANDERMARK, reeds. MARTIN BRANDLMAYR, drums, percussion.

17.2.13 Belgium/Brugge @ Parazzar
18.2.13 Spain/Barcelona @ Atelier de l'opera
20.2.13 Netherland/Amsterdam @ OCCII
22.2.13 Austria/Gallneukirchen
24.2.13 Poland/Poznan KlubTeatar Dragon


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGX-b-GioIs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzxB-cSuHdQ

one more concert in buenos aires

charhizma & No Subject present: 

concierto en casa México

Thursday, 31. January 2013
21:00

Casa México

: barzabal

Leandro Barzabal, pibe solo

:: fiesta de 15

Omar Grandoso, trombón / accesorios
Sam Nacht, saxo tenor / fx
Flor Curci, batarra eléctrica
Roberto Etcheverry, laptop

::: rave · espinal · kurzmann

Ada Rave: saxo tenor y soprano
Jorge Espinal, guitarra eléctrica
Christof Kurzmann, ppooll

Dirección por inbox.

$15

4 concerts in buenos aires

12.01.13 Trio with Martina Greiner and Federico Colo Vernazza Callero
 Le Troquet De Henry, Guardia Vieja 3460, Buenos Aires - 20:00

Martina Greiner: cello
Federico Colo Vernazza Callero: keyobords, percussion
Christof Kurzmann: ppooll, b-cl, ...

19.01.13 Duo with Eliana Rosales
Palacio Beltran, Buenos Aires - 21:30

Eliana Rosales: cello
Christof Kurzmann: ppooll, ...

+ Ricarda Cometa

26.01.13 Quartet with Fabiana Galante, Lulo Vitale and Leonel Kaplan
Estudio Libres, Buenos Aires

Fabiana Galante: piano
Lulo Vitale: bass
Leonel Kaplan: trumpet
Christof Kurzmann: ppooll, ...

+ Fernando Perales Solo

02.02.13 Duo with Leonel Kaplan
en un buen lugar conocido en tiempos pasados

Leonel Kaplan: trumpet
Christof Kurzmann: ppooll, ...

+
Samuel Sahlieh: electronics

The Cherry Thing (Remixes)

neneh cherry & the thing - The Cherry Thing (Remixes)

Four Tet, Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke, Kim Hiorthoy, Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, Nymph, Lasse Marhaug and more contribute remixes of Neneh Cherry & The Thing's (Mats Gustaffson, Paal Nilssen-Love and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten) acclaimed covers LP 'The Cherry Thing'. Pushed to pick highlights, we'd point out Four Tet's cool interpolation of their Suicide version 'Dream Baby Dream'; a mysterious revision of Madvillain's 'Accordion' by Jim O'Rourke; the hyperjazz tension of Merzbow's mix to their re-do of Mats Gustaffson's 'Sudden Moment'; a brooding, honking take of their cover of The Stooges' 'Dirt' by Christof Kurzmann; the seething, barely repressed cosmic violence of Lasse Marhaug's Poole Blount Dub for their take on Don Cherry's 'Golden Heart'.

http://songs.to/#!pl=da618cb7311f30aac3e5f13a67ad9f510da37a9a

el infierno musical review / fertile listening

Though I've only recently come across Christof Kurzmann's work, it stretches back to that early 90s post rock era. What do you say about someone who's projects have involved deconstructed re-workings of Robert Wyatt songs, electronica, long-form improvised pop music and musique concrète-inspired ambience? One recent work sees a clipped clarinet duet over programmed beats while someone sings dryly about their discovery / admiration of Eric Dolphy.

His latest, El Infierno Musical, brings together an international set of artists from wide-ranging traditions to record a suite of songs with lyrics translated from a mid-20th Century Argentinian poet born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Confused yet? The album uses sound itself as an invisible glue between genres and techniques. The resonant scrape of a bow across a double bass merges in the space of your room with the clattering buzz droning from a laptop. The songs are sung with a sense of pop but shadowed closely by clarinet. I listened to the Infierno, both marvelling at it and wondering what exactly I was hearing.

Perhaps it's inevitable: we've only been recording music for a little over a century and we only very recently have access to so much of it so readily. I distinctly remember hearing an NPR report on how the Nonesuch label's introduction of field-and-world music recordings hit the Western music world with such shock in the late-60s / early-70s. By the 90s, it all still felt new; the tools and technologies (like samplers) were even newer. It could be that we are experiencing the first waves of musicians that are truly comfortable with both what the entire world of music has to offer as well as the tools with which we currently have to manipulate it.

Posted by ams  

http://fertilelistening.blogspot.com.ar/2012_11_01_archive.html

Kaplan & Kurzmann @ Musikprotokoll im Steirischen Herbst / Graz

Leonel Kaplan & Christof Kurzmann

Die Zusammenarbeit des argentinischen Trompeters Leonel Kaplan und des österreichischen Elektronikers Christof Kurzmann beginnt im Jahre 2007. Aus der Reduktionisten- Szene Berlins kommend ist es für Kurzmann nur eine Frage der Zeit bis die beiden Gleichgesinnten einander begegnen. Kaplan, ist für seinen ausgeprägt minimalistischen Trompetenstil nicht nur in Lateinamerika bekannt und arbeitete bereits mit führenden internationalen Musikern wie Xavier Charles, Lê Quan Ninh, Axel Dörner oder Tetuzi Akiyama und Michel Doneda. Von 2007 arbeiten die beiden nun verstärkt als Duo, welches auch manchmal um die Saxophonisten Eden Carrasco (Chile), John Butcher (GB), den Bassisten George Cremaschi (USA) oder die Tänzerin Nicole Bindler (USA) erweitert wurde, verstärkt zusammen. Die Konzentration auf das vertikale Untersuchen von Sound und Stimmung ist dabei der gemeinsame Nenner. Bisher zwei Veröffentlichungen (2011 – Una Casa/Observatorio – Jardinista Records und 2012 – Casa Corp – Dromos Records) sowie zahlreiche Konzertaufnahmen Lateinamerika und Europa belegen die Nachhaltigkeit dieser Kooperation.

Konzert

Termine: 

04/10/2012 - 23:30

Orte: 

• Camp: Wohnzimmer

InterpretInnen: 

Leonel Kaplan (AR), Trompete
Christof Kurzmann (A), Pool, akustische Laptops

http://www.leonelkaplan.com

http://musikprotokoll.orf.at/de/2012/werk/leonel-kaplan-christof-kurzmann

The Squid's Ear (El Infierno Musical by Kurt Gottschalk)

Christof Kurzmann
El Infierno Musical  
(Mikotron Recordings) 

review by Kurt Gottschalk
2012-08-04

Christof Kurzmann's interest in song form in recent years has brought him to a number of unexpected places. In the duo Schnee with Burkhard Stangl, he has borrowed from Prince and Neil Diamond and as a part of the group The Magic I.D. has crafted some wonderfully hazy duets with singer / guitarist Margareth Kammerer. Whether new compositions or well-known tunes, Kurzmann and company have presented them in beautifully uncentered ways, as if they were vague memories of songs. Kurzmann takes a similar approach now in what is a very different project and to great results. El Infierno Musical is a setting of six poems by the Argentian poet Alejandra Pizarnik, who led an accomplished life before willfully ending it at the age 36 in 1972. A Fulbright Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, Pizarnik lived in Paris (where she worked as an editor for Les Lettres Nouvelles) and left behind eight volumes of poetry (two unpublished during her life). Pizarnik's words are used here in service of the music, or seem to be at any rate. The phraseeology is so delicate that they tend to sit just behind the music, especially in Kurzmann's plaintive delivery. His scores are played by Ken Vandermdark (reeds), Eva Reiter (viola de gamba, contrabass recorder, dan bao), Clayton Thomas (bass) and Martin Brandlmayr (drums, vibraphone), with Kurzmann supplying saxophone, guitar and electronics. The music varies from seemingly open form improv to quiet, incidental music to easy grooves, with the verses interspersed irregularly, sometimes appearing as if to pull the threads of the music into a piece. If the poetry isn't dominant through all of the record, it seems clear that the moods it imparts are. Pizarnik's hand guides the proceedings even in absentia, to the extent that a fragment of the guitar solo from Janis Joplin's "Summertime" is heard in the distance during her poem "Para Janis Joplin." It's hard to know how close the texts come to Pizarnik's original words, having been translated by the musicians — an assemblage of Austrians and Americans — themselves. It is of course possible that the translations are quite faithful but even if they aren't it doesn't seem entirely to matter. The album isn't a poetry journal, and ultimately it comes off like a dramatic audio work inspired by the sad beauty of Pizarnik's lines. Near the end, she herself appears, in her native tongue and through the filter of a decades old recording. As she recites her "Ashes II," she sounds somehow comfortable with the goings-on. The Squid's Ear review by Kurt Gottschalk 2012-08-04 http://www.squidsear.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=1475

Orpheus in the Underworld (El Infierno Musical by Ed Pinsent)

Orpheus in the Underworld

Christof Kurzmann attempts grand things on El Infierno Musical (MIKROTON RECORDINGS CD 20). He composed all the music, plays electronics, saxophone and guitar, and sings all the lyrics where they appear; these words were written by the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and translated into English with the help of Cecilia Rojo. The aural experience is rich – an unpredictable melange of jazz, free jazz, improvisation, chamber music, blues, pop music and rock music, sometimes given a vaguely medieval / Renaissance flavour by the viola da gamba playing of Eva Reiter, who also plays the contrabass recorder on a couple of tracks. Plus the whole package is contextualised with images sampled from the “Hell” panel of Bosch’s famous Garden of Earthly Delights triptych.
Many musicians may have commented on, been struck by or even dreamed of making a concept album about this “musical Hell” proposed by Bosch, where sinners are punished in amongst a ghastly cacophony of archaic musical instruments, some of which are changed by the diabolical agency into engines of torture. I should point out that Kurzmann is not explicitly intending to do any of the above either, and only the title of this suite has any consonance with the Bosch painting, of which we see a Photoshopped variant provided by the visual artists Jimmy Draht and Stefan Haupt. The main aim of the work is to pay tribute to the poetess Pizarnik, a collection of whose writings also appeared under the title El Infierno Musical and indeed prompted Kurzmann, who purchased said volume almost by accident from a street seller while drinking coffee in Buenos Aires, to found the quintet of this name in 2008.
Musically this album is strong and convincing, even if not as chaotic as anything with a Bosch cover ought to be, and while the individual players – e.g. saxman Ken Vandermark, drummer Martin Brandlmayr – perform with authority, I sometimes find the package a shade too mannered and contrived for my tastes. Kurzmann is the sort of musical catholic who has no problem in mixing different vernaculars, styles and genres in his musical statements, often doing so in the same breath, if he decides that’s what is called for. The main stumbling block for me is Kuzmann’s rather effete voice, which recites rather than sings the lyrical content, and always sounds breathless or on the verge of tears as he negotiates another corny-sounding flattened fifth. So far this prevents me from reaching the core meaning of the work, which is probably encoded more into the poetry than in the music. Still, one needs to persevere with work of this complexity and depth. Don’t let my meagre prejudices prevent you from hearing this extremely unusual and distinctive piece of work. This arrived 31 January from a label based in Moscow.

The Sound Projector

July 1, 2012

By Ed Pinsent

 

http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2012/07/01/kosmic-blues/