220 pp., pbMaking audible what is usually inaudible, rendering sound visible in an unusual way, and facilitating a spatial experience of sound­—this is what constitutes the pioneering work that makes Alvin Lucier one of the most important representatives of American music in the second half of the twentieth century. The stated aim of the study at hand is the detailed historical and theoretical exploration of Alvin Lucier’s work, with particular focus on his decidedly reflexive experimental aesthetics. The research is thus based on two essential methodological approaches: on the one hand, a musicological study of the genesis of Lucier’s work, and on the other, an aesthetic analysis of the role of the real within Lucier’s aesthetics.Lucier’s experimental compositions are aesthetic reflections that are constantly making reference to the phenomenology of sound, as well as to the perception of perception itself. His aesthetic vision gravitated towards devising minimalist constellations and processes which, due to the withdrawal of the compositional subject, gave expression to an acoustic phenomenon and the unforeseeable idea inherent to it.

‘The Music Mind Experience’ is all about how we can transform our playing and listening into convincing performances and satisfying meditations every time. No neuroscience here: this book is thoroughly practical, intuitive, chock-full of simple practices and deep, common-sense insights. “A fantastic resource. Karl’s purpose is to reach beyond all intellectual concepts and feel the magic of intuitive playing and listening that we are all born with. Very easy to read and follow“ says the world-renown keyboardist John Medeski. The Italian composer Luciano Troja adds: “Karl’s book is miraculous because it speaks in a simple but profound way to musicians and listeners of any background. It opens worlds“ ‘The Music Mind Experience‘ speaks for all kinds of music and styles, because it addresses the elements common to all the music in the world. The great guitarist John Scofield comments: “Karl’s book reminds me of what I‘ve learned from conversations with the great musicians I‘ve known. These masters spoke the truth about getting in the ‘flow’ and the best mental attitude while playing. I‘ve found that these techniques are universal.“ In this book we emphasize the extraordinary power of our intuitive minds. The masters‘ ‘techniques’ that John Scofield is referring to are all explored here in surprisingly simple practices and exercises. We learn to integrate them into our daily routines of musical practice and listening with astounding results: our satisfaction and confidence is growing strong and steadily.Pianist/composer Carla Bley refers not just to this book only, but to Karl Berger‘s life-long work at the now world-renowned Creative Music Studio when she says: “Karl has made it ok for hoards of musicians to explore their particular and personal identities without fear of censure“. The German composer Markus Stockhausen says: “Karl shows us that we all have a hidden capacity of unexplored, infinite creative potential“. And he concludes: “Listening is the key to all the music mind.”

Published: Trost Released: March 2021 Language: english Hardcover: 222 pages First edition, 2021A doumentation of art made while on the road from 2010-2020 by the one and only Peter Brötzmann. --- Being on the road so much, the time-space between the tours is not long enough for preparing big canvases and starting oil-paintings. You use what’s on the table - paper, cardboard, an empty cigar box, pens, felts and brushes, ink in a glass or a Chinese ink stone.You use what there is and that’s what we musicians call improvising and that’s what the works in this book are about [and my life too]: IMPROVISATION - Peter Brötzmann, Wuppertal, October 2020 --- Texts by Brötzmann, Stephen O'Malley, John Corbett, Karl Lippegaus, Heather Leigh, Sotiris Kontos, Thomas Millroth, Markus Müller --- Trost, 2021

Composing While Black eröffnet einzigartige neue Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische afrodiasporische Komponist:innen, die zwischen 1960 und heute aktiv waren bzw. sind, ein Zeitraum, der von der Forschung, der Programmgestaltung von Konzerten und journalistischen Darstellungen vor allem in Europa bisher weitgehend ignoriert wurde. Diese interdisziplinäre Aufsatzsammlung befasst sich mit Oper, Orchester-, Kammer-, Instrumental- und elektroakustischer Musik sowie mit Klangkunst, Konzeptkunst und digitalen Intermedien und zeigt die afrodiasporische Neue Musik als einen interkulturellen, generationenübergreifenden Raum der Innovation, der neue Themen, Geschichten und Identitäten bietet. Composing While Black presents unique new perspectives on Afrodiasporic contemporary composers active between 1960 and the present, a period that academic inquiry, concert programming, and journalistic accounts have largely ignored up to now, particularly in Europe. This interdisciplinary essay collection engages with opera, orchestral, chamber, instrumental, and electroacoustic music, as well as sound art, conceptual art, and digital intermedia, revealing Afrodiasporic new music as an intercultural, multigenerational space of innovation that offers new subjects, histories, and identities. “Composing While Black is a brilliant collection of essays on the black presence in contemporary Classical music. From the poignant and richly resonant title through the editors‘ authoritative historical introduction to the mix of reflection, anecdote, analysis, and study of the compositional process across nine essays, the book illuminates black creativity on terrain previously figured as white. Timely, informative, and challenging, this bilingual text is a must-read for anyone interested not only in the work of Afrodiasporic composers but in the reach of the very notion of the contemporary itself.” KOFI AGAWU The Graduate Center, City University of New York “What an essential book this is: an invigorating corrective packed with bright sounds, big musical personalities and astute social context. The introduction alone is a terrific primer; the chapters are vivid case studies written with fresh and authoritative clarity. Above all, the music of this book demands to be heard. Its pages will send you down countless avenues of discovery and fill whole notebooks with names, ideas and intersections to pursue – the greatest thrill.” KATE MOLLESON, author of Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears to the 20th Century. “This brilliantly illuminating survey of twenty-first-century Afro-diasporic composition testifies to the countervailing powers of identity and difference. The modes of art-making that the editors place under the rubric “Composing While Black” are, in fact, a teeming, ever-expanding universe of musical possibility, one that resists, absorbs, and transmutes immense pressures. Composers are seen both as self-governing individuals and as figures within far-flung, intricately networked communities: the doubleness of vision honors the inward-outward ardor of human creativity.” ALEX ROSS

No music swung as erratically between extremes as his: folk song, march or acoustic apocalypse – anything was possible in the cosmos of Albert Ayler’s soundscapes. With his furious instrumental glossolalia and his pathos-laden ballads, the musician from Cleveland, Ohio quickly became the most radical of the Sixties free jazz expressionists. In his hands the saxophone became a different instrument and even John Coltrane’s late work was unmistakably shaped by the influence of his younger colleague. He had little time to proclaim his message of a new spiritual music: in 1970, at just 34 years of age, Albert Ayler died in mysterious circumstances.  Peter Niklas Wilson spent six months in the USA following in Albert Ayler’s footsteps. Through conversations with numerous contemporary witnesses (including Ayler’s father and brother, as well as drummers Sunny Murray and Milford Graves, violinist Michael Samson, multi-instrumentalist Howard Johnson, bassists Gary Peacock and Steve Tintweiss) and analysis of both Ayler’s published and unpublished recordings, he reconstructs the biography and erratic musical path of this prophet of the 'new thing'.

A catalogue book about the Wuppertal „universal artist“ Hans Reichel, the third in the triumphant marriage with Brötzmann and Kowald. Hans Reichel was a musician, composer, improviser, instrument inventor and builder, sound engineer, typeface inventor, game designer, graphic designer, photographer and much more. His music, which cannot be confined to any genre, was of „complex beauty“. As a sound researcher, he developed instruments such as the Daxophone, which sounds out of itself. His music, whether improvised or composed, is recorded on numerous discs and performed again and again by ensembles. It has lost none of its power and effect, with which it has put our listening habits to the test and at the same time opened up a new cosmos of sound for us. The catalogue presents his entire world of artistic creation in numerous contributions and is a treasure trove for musicians, typographers and designers alike.