Nik Bärtsch - Entendre (2021) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Stripping sometimes makes it possible to take stock. The pandemic also plays an obvious introspective role for artists cut off from their audience and the stage. With Entendre, which he recorded in Lugano in September 2020, Nik Bärtsch puts in parentheses his various formations (Ronin, Mobile) to find himself alone at the piano. The Swiss finds great freedom in aesthetic restriction, while seizing the opportunities to embark his music on new lands. This work developed in parallel with his group activities. For Bärtsch, key moments included the ECM label's fiftieth anniversary celebrations at Lincoln Center in New York in 2019, as well as its collaboration with artist and video artist Sophie Clements. Not to mention his solo piano tour in 2017 which took him to Tehran, Alexandria, Cairo, Calcutta and Delhi, stimulating his reflection on the relationship between performance and ritual music in different cultures. Elements and experiences that fed the preparatory work of Entendre.

The tracks numbered Modul, five of the six tracks on the album, look like models more than the form of fixed and definitive compositions. Nik Bärtsch likens them to " basic martial arts training, which can be adapted to all kinds of situations. My way of working is to create new contexts. Each piece plays with the idea of composition, interpretation and improvisation, and feeds on the same strength, but can create very surprising results. "An obvious observation on Modul 58-12 that mixes two old compositions played in groups, Modul 58 with Ronin on the album Awase (2018) and Modul 12 with Mobile on the album Continuum (2016). "Everything was done naturally in the studio, I had not planned anything, nor hoped for such a result. The combination of these two pieces may not be a coincidence but rather an inner appeal. "In solo, Nick Bärtsch does not offer a classic jazz piano touch. His style rather intertwines chamber music, solo playing in the classical tradition but also in the contemporary and minimalist tradition, and groove. But the most interesting thing is that the road map of Hearing, seemingly very cerebral, gives birth to a very carnal disc. A kind of long human adventure, strongly narrative in his writing. With lyrical sequences, others refined and minimalist. In short, a palette as wide as life finally…

TRACKLIST

1 Modul 58_12
2 Modul 55
3 Modul 26
4 Modul 13
5 Modul 5
6 Déjà-vu, Vienna



Thanks to the Original customer.