Event Details
X AVANT New Music Festival
Wednesday Oct. 21
CLUSTER
CANADIAN DEBUT + NORTH AMERICAN EXCLUSIVE!
With special guests
HAUSCHKA with String Quartet
Location: SPK (Polish Combatants Hall), 206 Beverley St.
Doors 7pm, concert 8pm
Advance tickets $25 TicketWeb, Rotate This & Soundscapes
BUY TICKETS ONLINE NOW!
At the door: Tickets $30 regular, $25 member, & senior, $20 student
Before Kraftwerk, there was Cluster. True pioneers of modern-day electronic music and “krautrock” — or kosmiche muzik (German space music) since the late 1960’s in Berlin, Cluster (originally Kluster) was formed by Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler as an improv group that used everything from synthesizers to alarm clocks and kitchen utensils in their performaces. Continuing on as a duo, Moebius and Roedelius eventually recorded many landmark LPs — including important collaborations with Brian Eno and Neu!'s Michael Rother (as Harmonia). Cluster also continued to explore ambient music well into the '90s, long after their contemporaries had drifted into tamer new age music or ceased recording altogether.
After a decade long hiatus, Cluster reunited in April 2007, and performed at the opening of documenta 12, a major exhibition of modern and contemporary art held every five years in Kassel, Germany. In April 2009, they released Qua, their first new album in 14 years. The Music Gallery is very pleased to present these modern music innovators in concert at their first-ever performance in Canada — and a North American exclusive engagement — to launch our fourth annual X Avant New Music Festival.
In the fall of 2007, the Music Gallery was treated to a very special performance by Hauschka, who entranced the audience with his prepared piano pieces: magical miniatures that showed the influence of modern electronic music in an acoustic context. That evening was a double bill with Toronto’s John Kameel Farah, which culminated in an improv piano duo by the pair. Now, for the launch of our fourth annual X Avant Festival, Hauschka returns for a collaboration with a Toronto-based string quartet.
Cluster: Biography
Cluster originally came out of a Berlin art/music collective named the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, formed by Conrad Schnitzler (one of the leaders of the city's avant-garde underground), and also including Hans-Joachim Roedelius plus future members of Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel and Guru Guru. After Schnitzler and Roedelius met an art student named Dieter Moebius, the threesome formed Kluster in 1970. The group performed around Europe and even in Africa, engaging in wild improv sessions. While touring they met engineer Conny Plank, soon to become a major part of Cluster's recorded output into the late '80s. The first three Kluster LPs, 1970's Klopfzeichen and Zwei Osterei plus 1971's Eruption, consisted of side-long improvisatory jams.
Soon after the release of Eruption, Schnitzler left the band for a solo career. Moebius and Roedelius continued on as Cluster and, with the help of Plank, released two eponymous studio albums in 1971 and 1972. An ongoing collaboration with Michael Rother (Neu!) began in 1973, after the duo founded their own private studio out in the German countryside. After inviting Rother down to record, the results were released as the 1974 Cluster LP Zuckerzeit, a watershed of electronic pop midway between Cluster, Neu! and Kraftwerk (the latter just about to explode with their own Autobahn LP). That same year, Moebius, Roedelius and Rother formed a Krautrock super-group named Harmonia; two excellent albums followed in the next year, Musik von Harmonia and Harmonia De Luxe, as well as a few sessions with Brian Eno (unreleased until 1997's Tracks & Traces).
Eno himself began his own collaboration with Moebius and Roedelius in 1977, when Sky Records released Cluster & Eno. The trio also recorded After the Heat two years later (technically credited as "Eno Moebius Roedelius"), and after a hiatus of six years resumed the relationship with Begegnungen and Begegnungen II (both featuring Plank in the lineup as well).
Though Roedelius and Moebius also launched solo careers around this time (1978 and 1983, respectively) they continued to release compelling Cluster material in keeping with Zuckerzeit, including Sowiesoso in 1976, Grosses Wasser three years later and Curiosum in 1981. Besides the Eno collaborations and many other solo works, almost fifteen years passed before the appearance of another Cluster album, 1994's One Hour. Moebius and Roedelius continued to work and tour together continually.
http://www.myspace.com/theonlyclusterthatmatters
Biography
Hauschka is the alias of German pianist/composer Volker Bertelmann, who currently resides in Dusseldorf. Having studied classical piano for 10 years, his work as Hauschka is based upon a playful exploration of the possibilities of the prepared piano. Clamping wedges of leather, felt or rubber between the strings; preparing the hammers with aluminium paper or rough films; placing crown corks on the strings, weaving guitar strings around the piano's guts, or pasting them down with gaffer tape — his resulting tracks are composed both originally and charmingly. The results are vivid, unconventional pieces made in a spirit of playful research-enthusiasm.
Rather than striving for any purist academic perfection, Volker’s playing seems as much informed by modern electronica or Indonesian gamelan as it is by any classical canon. With the aid of his interventions, the piano becomes as much a machine for generating rhythms as it does for melody. Now and again Hauschka utilizes synthesizer, drum machine, electric bass or other acoustic instruments like vibraphone, strings or brass. His pieces may be seen as small rhythmic sound-vignettes, or just quiet ballads which have their roots in East Asian harmonies, the minimalism of Reich, Glass or Nyman, and also in Satie or Ravel.
The foundations of Hauschka's piano music can equally be traced back to 20th century composers like Henry Cowell, who picked the strings of his piano as if it were a zither. Cowell in turn influenced John Cage, who redefined the rules of piano sounds and playing with his own experiments. The sound of the prepared piano has consequently inspired a whole range of composers. But it would be too easy to locate this playful spirit in the serious or academic realms alone. In the '50s, German comic Fritz Schulz-Reichel became a celebrity under the name of "Schräger Otto," his modified Ragtime sounds making him a huge success in the USA. And in the early '80s, new wave bands like the Flying Lizards or the Waitresses were experimenting with metallic, distorted piano sounds, not denying their avant-garde references.
Hauschka’s most recent release is Room to Expand (2007) on the 130701 imprint of UK label FatCat Records, also home to Sigur Ros, Animal Collective and Mùm. With the growing emergence of pianists working between the cracks in modern/classical/electronic genres — the likes of Max Richter, Sylvain Chauveau, Library Tapes, etc. — this album was quite timely.
In September 2008, his follow-up record, Ferndorf, was released. Where the previous album comprised mostly solo recordings of Hauschka’s prepared piano (with a few electronic and instrumental overdubs), Ferndorf is a far more expansive and fully-realised album, with many of the tracks also featuring a string duo, creating an increased solidity. His most recent EP, Snowflakes and Carwrecks, was released in January 2009.
