Mark Dresser – bass
Matthias Ziegler – Flöten
Denman Maroney – piano

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Seit über 20 Jahren gehört Mark Dresser zu den großen Bassstimmen der amerikanischen Szene, seit 5 Jahren arbeitet er mit diesem Trio. Hier sind 3 Musiker zu hören, die mit Phantasie, Erfahrung und unglaublichen instrumentalem Können eine Musik „erfinden“ die den Zuhörer von der ersten Sekunde in ihren Bann schlägt. Die Biografien der 3 füllen Seiten- kaum ein Name der bekannten Musiker der letzten 3 Jahrzehnte fehlt in ihren musikalischen Begegnungen (allein Mark Dresser hat über 80CDs veröffentlicht) So ist dieses Trio ein Muss, nicht nur für Bassisten, Flötisten und Pianisten- sondern für alle, die Kammermusik auf höchstem Niveau schätzen.

MARK DRESSER

Emerging from the L.A. „free“ jazz scene of the early 70’s, Mark Dresser performed with the „Black Music Infinity“, led by Stanley Crouch, and included Bobby Bradford, Arthur Blythe, David Murray, and James Newton. Concurrently he was performing with the San Diego Symphony. After completing B.A.and M.A. degrees at UCSD where he studied with contrabass virtuoso Bertram Turetzky and a 1983 Fulbright Fellowship in Italy with maestro Franco Petracchi, Dresser relocated to New York in 1986 after being invited to join the quartet of composer/saxophonist, Anthony Braxton. Dresser played with Braxton’s longest performing quartet for nine years.
Once in NY, Dresser began working with a wide variety of musicians in the greater New York community including Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Anthony Davis, John Zorn, Dave Douglas and others. He focused on composing for a pair of cooperative groups, Tambastics with flutist Robert Dick, percussionist Gerry Hemingway, and pianist Denman Maroney and the string trio, ARCADO, with violinist Mark Feldman and cellist Hank Roberts. Numerous European tours, awards, six CD’s, and several commissions resulted, including „For Not the Law,“ a composition for ARCADO and orchestra from WDR Radio of Cologne Germany, „Armadillo“ for ARCADO and the WDR Big Band, and „Bosnia,“ a work written for the Trio du Clarinettes of France and ARCADO. His collaborative projects include a trio, C/D/E, with multi-reed player virtuoso, Marty Ehrlich and master drummer Andrew Cyrille, a duo with pianist Denman Maroney, the Marks Brothers Duo with fellow bassist Mark Helias, and the duo with the cello virtuoso, Frances-Marie Uitti..

In addition to his trio, his current project is the Mark Dresser’s Modular Ensemble which performs his chamber works. He has composed and recorded original music for silent film including the German expressionist silent film classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Knitting Factory) and the French Surrealist collaboration of Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou. (Knitting Factory) Solo performance is one of Dresser’s specialties. He has designed custom made electronics for purposes of amplifying normally inaudible sounds. „Invocation,“ (Knitting Factory) was his first solo CD documenting compositions from 1983-94(Knitting Factory). His recent solo compositions are included on „Marinade“ (Tzadik-2000)

Commissions include, „Banquet,“ a double concerto for various flutes, contrabass and string quartet written for Swiss flute virtuoso Matthias Ziegler.(Tzadik CD-1997) , „Air to Mir,“ commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress (Marinade-Tzadik CD-2000.) „Althaus“ is for tuba virtuoso, David LeClair with bass, cello, alto sax, and clarinet. (Marinade). HIs most recent commission, „Remudadero“ is written for the saxophone quartet, „ROVA“.

A chapter on his extended techniques for contrabass, „A Personal Pedogogy,“ appears in the book, ARCANA (Granary Books). Other articles on this research appear in DOWNBEAT, MUSICIAN MAGAZINE, & JAZZIZ.

He has performed and recorded over eighty CDs with some of the strongest personalities in contemporary music and jazz including Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Jane Ira Bloom, Bobby Bradford, Tom Cora, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, Diamanda Galas, Vinny Golia, Joe Lovanao,George Lewis, Misha Mengelberg, Ikue Mori, James Newton, Evan Parker, Sonny Simmons, Louis Sclavis, Vladimir Tarasov, Henry Threadgill, and John Zorn. He has given lecture demonstrations at the Julliard School, Princeton, New England Conservatory, National Superior Conservatory of Paris, UCSD, and others.

QUOTES:

„He has proven to be one of the master bassists of modern jazz, perhaps even the most exciting….his improvisational fecundity was remarkable for its veritable ensemble-in-miniature, in which every orchestral maneuver can be deployed to advantage… Dresser’s rhythmic mooring, melodic liquidity, and timbral hues showed how sanguinely he absorbs and adapts available contexts, emotionally and generically. The almost palpable physicality of his pizzicato slaps and pedal plunging, the luxuriant tremolos of his arco passages and refrains, were as identifiable as the calling cues we associate with elder bass paragons.“
San Diego Reader

„Mark Dresser is a bassist and composer of the highest order. On this recording of his „notated“ chamber music, he presents two challenging works that are artistically interpreted. His creativity and sonic sensibilities need to be heard. This project, the assemblage of musicians, and this label make an important statement about the creative process… The performance is intriguing, engaging and profound. „
Bass World, The Journal of the International Society of Bassists 1998 review of Banquet CD-Tzadik

„To an experienced reviewer, it doesn’t happen too often that the music makes you speechless. It might be due to the genre of the silent movie that its music is hard to verbalize, maybe the film itself can possibly describe this wonderful music. Mark Dresser not only pays homage to a great German movie and its expressionist director, Robert Wiene, but also makes a statement about Neo-Nationalism and the current ethnic cleansing all over the world…This is the masterpiece of a masterful musician…“
JazzThetik on Mark Dresser’s „The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari“ * * * * *

„You’ve got to pity Dresser’s poor bass-you wouldn’t treat a dog the way he manhandles his instrument. But the gnarled tones and vicious swing he tortures out of it are worth the abuse. In Dresser’s slanted compositions, the jazz tradition is only so much grist for the mill.“
The New Yorker, August 18, 1997

„Mark Dresser awed the assembly with his compositions for solo bass-no one expected to be nailed to the floor by one guy with a four-string.“
Los Angeles Times

„Mr. Dresser, who constantly drove the group forward with his full, wide-bodied sound, would solo, hammering strings with both hands, creating the sound of several basses playing at once.“
N.Y. Times

„In terms of the soloist/accompaniment dichotomy, Dresser explodes the notion of the bass as both single instrument and back-up instrument. His arco work takes on a progressively seamless singing quality while occasional overdubs allow pizzicato dancing around the bowed slipstream. Thus glissandi and pitch shifts are pocked and plunked and shoved in a sometimes delirious display of talent. But even when it’s Dresser alone, sans overdubs, he’s a feverish, fast-moving string group unto himself…I count this among the best anti-virtuosic solo recordings to date. Anti-virtuosic playing is, of course, historically a function of interrogating the inherited history of technique and beauty, and here Dresser presents an alarmingly tense and exciting technique and a sense of beauty as something not simply or clearly or calmly related but rather something for which all involved must work.“ Andrew Bartlett – 5/4 Magazine (Review of INVOCATION on Knitting Factory Works)

„Dresser has a heroic sound and his double-, triple-, and quadruple-stopped glisses are stunning. …he should sustain his position as one of the few virtuosos of so-called avant-garde jazz.“
Village Voiceabout the premier of „The Banquet“ September ’95

„Mark Dresser who is able to jump over the highest stylistic walls in a single bound wrote a concerto that shows where this journey between contemporary classical music and jazz can go. Dresser wrote a piece of music that fits like a glove to the astonishing soloist, Matthias Ziegler. This piece has many element which you can’t find anymore in „serious“ music like drama, entertainment, rhythmic playfulness, variety of sound, and room for individual improvisational development.“-Neue Zurcher Zeitung

„Mark Dresser’s Promethean bass-playing powers one of the heaviest bands on the scene…Dresser consistently astonishes with his range of ideas and effects, not to mention his towering beat.“
Wire Magazine

„Mr. Dresser, a basssist of dexterity and power, isn’t content with dryly cerebral experimentation or some anachronistic idea of euphoria through tumult. He wants it all: timbral experimentation, pulsating rhythm, strong melodies, imaginative strategies for composing. …his well-rehearsedgroup, swinging four-way cohesion was always the issue.“
New York Times, May 30, 1997

„Mark Dresser first came to national attention in 1985 as the bass player for Anthony Braxton’s now legendary quartet. The band broke up in 1994 but Dresser continues to further the vocabulary of the acoustic bass through his eccentric and radical advancements in technique.“
Jazziz-The 150 Most Influential Artists who Moved Jazz’s Changes Since 1983. September, 1988

DENMAN MARONEY

Denman Maroney composes and plays „hyperpiano,“ which involves stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, strumming the piano strings with various objects — bars, bowls, knives, bells and mashers of metal, boxes and bottles of plastic, mallets of various kinds, and blocks of rubber independently of or (more often) in conjunction with regular keyboard action.

According to Wolf Kampmann of JazzThetik, „[K]eyboard genius Denman Maroney… [is] able to create and unfold a spectrum of sounds that range from new music to free jazz… The piano is so much estranged [sic] that it gives you the full array of sounds. Once again, Denman Maroney seems to be the only slide pianist worth mentioning.“ Chillingly good solo prepared piano.“
Jeff Gibson, Other Music

„Maroney, who concentrates on prepared piano playing rather than doing it occasionally, is far more sophisticated than most.“
Harvey Pekar, Downbeat

„In an ongoing work called ‚Music for Unprepared Piano,‘ Maroney whangs the strings of his Steinway L with glockenspiel tuning keys, savages them with butter knives, and diddles them with a potato masher. On occasion, he’ll wiggle the ends of marimba mallets against the soundboard to evoke barking seals. At other times, he’ll drop salad bowls onto the piano harp, dramatizing their reverberations with judicious pedaling or setting them jogging across the strings with tommy gun trills. Twitching with melodic tics, bewitched by detail and density, ‚Unprepared Piano‘ is mood music for obsessive compulsives.“
Mark Dery, Keyboard

„I have always been both fascinated and perplexed by all of the unique sounds [Maroney] gets. Hyperpiano is… in a world of its own. There are three 20 plus minute pieces found here and each explores new realms of inner piano weirdness. Each piece involves a specific idea to explore. Flux Time utilizes three tempos simultaneously, but sounds like a music box breaking down, going in different directions at the same time. Artemisia involves moving objects across the piano strings, producing high end spirits whispering mysterious clouds of fractured notes. Pretty scary at times. On the Contrary employs sliding objects along the strings, rumbling through a dark terrain, ancient ruins uncovered, myths revealed.“
Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter

Maroney’s recording credits include: Tambastics (Music & Arts 704) with Robert Dick (flutes), Mark Dresser (bass) and Gerry Hemingway (percussion); Mark Dresser’s Force Green (Soul Note 121273-2) with Theo Bleckman (voice), Dave Douglas (trumpet), Mark Dresser (bass) and Phil Haynes (drums); and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Knitting Factory Works 155) with Mark Dresser (bass) and Dave Douglas (trumpet).

Maroney has just released a CD Hyperpiano (Mon$ey Music) of his own piano works. Other recordings to his credit include the Roulette Intermedium compilation A Confederacy of Dances Vol. 2 (Einstein Records EIN003) with Earl Howard (electronics) and Stockhausen Performed by the Negative Band (Finnadar SR-9009) with Earl Howard (alto saxophone), Carl Stone (electronics), J. Paul Taylor (electronics), David Simons (percussion), Jon Weisberger (electronics) and Mike Fink (percussion).

Maroney has an MFA in composition from California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with James Tenney, Steven Mosko and Alan Chaplin among others.

MATTHIAS ZIEGLER

Matthias Ziegler is one of the world’s most versatile and innovative flutists. He is committed both to the traditional literature for flute as well as to contemporary music and concepts that cross the boundaries between classical music and jazz. Accordingly, his performances take place in a vast range of contexts: he plays principal flute with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, has toured with the percussionist Pierre Favre and performed with the pianist George Gruntz as well as with the American contrabass player Mark Dresser.

He is also a member of the Collegium Novum Zurich“, where he has worked with Mauricio Kagel, Heinz Holliger and George Crumb. Concert tours have brought him to the US, Japan, Australia, South America and Israel. Many recordings on CD document his inclusive musical interests. Matthias Ziegler currently teaches at the Musikhochschule Winterthur Zurich.

Searching for new sounds he enormously broadened the expressive potential of the traditional flute and the electroacoustically amplified contrabass flute. His solo music has been recorded on Uakti. (New Albion).

Amplifying the flute allows him to increase the volume of the microsound structures of the flute to an audible level. Inspired by the new dimension of sounds of these instruments, composers such as Michael Jarrell from Switzerland, Benjamin Yusupov from Tadjikistan, Matthias Ruegg from the Vienna Art Orchestra and the American Mark Dresser wrote flute concertos for him. („Banquet“-Tzadik CD)

Matthias Ziegler performs on a flute manufactured by Louis Lot (1880), on a quartertone flute Brannen/Kingma system , on a Alto- and Bassflute by Eva Kingma (Holland) as well as on his own invention, the „Matusiflute“, a uniquely designed instrument with a vibrating membrane. His contrabassflute has been constructed by Kotato Fukushima (Japan).

QUOTES

„Virtuoso Ziegler’s vision of a solo polyphonic music makes this the ulttimate flute record. “
The Wire Magazine on „Uakti“

„… step aside and make room for someone with real talent.“ Fanfare Magazine (USA)

„It was the most staggering and unique flute playing I’ve heard for a very long time and words cannot describe the variety of sounds and techniques that Matthias Ziegler produces. If you ever get a chance to hear him, do not miss it“ Adrian Brett-Flutewise review of concert at the Barbican“ Center London.

„This CD is just great. Definitely the best of this sort I have heard so far“
James Galway on Zieglers solo CD, „Marsyas Song

„Extended techniques are integrated nto a complete, unified musical vision, and that vision is most often magnificent and sumptuous. Ziegler is clearly a gifted musician, one whose skill and art come together to yield transcendent and glorious music“
The Wire