infotext:
THE WANNSEE RECORDINGS “Life is complex, it's not just black-or-white, it's colored, beautiful and ugly and everything in between and something beyond. Colors we don't understand, colors we agree to and colors we deny exist. Because art may reflect and express that complexity of our human existence and condition, art is ambiguous by its nature, as is life.” In the present recordings, Gunnar Geisse's fascination applies on the one hand to the acceptance of the ephemeral actual state and its often contradictory musical design elements and the perception of its change, which is inseparably linked to time, so to speak per se Form creates, but on the other hand also the artistic possibility of expressing and reflecting the condition and complexity of our ambiguous human existence, here in particular transformation processes of a tonal, structural and formal nature, i.e. the aesthetics of time-related changes to which all living things are subject - almost the domain of music. Geisse developed an instrument that he laptop guitar calls, an extension of his former main instrument, the electric guitar, with the computer, which enables him to continue the analog game on a digital level. In addition to »signal processing«, he primarily uses the software-supported real-time conversion of audio to MIDI data, based on the spectral properties of the output signal, to control virtual instruments and samplers. It doesn't matter what kind of audio signal is used as the source: It can be the electric guitar, it can be speech, it can be noises, even "translating" music into other music can be realized in this way. After a serious hand injury from a climbing accident in the early 1990s, Geisse devoted himself more to composing and as a result turned to electronics. The desire matured in him to understand the laptop as a meta-instrument with which the most diverse virtual instruments could be conceived, built and actually played. With the renewed integration of the electric guitar into this setup, things have now come full circle for him. Geisse names three exemplary sources from art as the decisive influences on this long-term development: the Date Paintings from the Today Series by On Kawara, the staged photography by Jeff Wall (in reference to this, Geisse Samples also likes to call “acoustic photographs”) and the highly symbolic story of the encounter with Willem de Kooning, often told by Robert Rauschenberg himself, which led to the creation of his picture Erased de Kooning Drawing led. “So I thought the only way to do it is like with an erasure. When I just erased my own drawings, it wasn't art yet. And so I thought 'Aha, it has to be art'. And Bill de Kooning was the best known acceptable American artist that could be indisputably considered art … And so, I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels, and hoped that he wouldn't be home when I knocked on his door. And he was home. And we sat down with the Jack Daniels, and I told him what my project was; he understood it. And he said, 'OK. I don't like it, but I'm going to go along with it because I understand the idea.' He went through one portfolio, and he said, 'No. It'll have to be something that I'll miss.' … And then he went through a second portfolio … and then he said, 'I'm gonna make it so hard for you to erase this.' And he had a third portfolio that had crayon, pencil, charcoal and - and it took me about a month, and I don't know how many erasers to do it... It's not a negation, it's a celebration. It's just the idea!" / “Vandalism is the other alternative” / “And for you?” / “It's poetry.” (Robert Rauschenberg) Today, Gunnar Geisse uses the computer both as an improvisation instrument and as a production tool in well over 20 radio plays for BR, WDR, SWR, NDR, ORF and for DLR Kultur, in commissioned works for the musica viva, the Munich Opera Festival, the Munich Biennale and the Donaueschinger Musiktage, where he did the real-time translations from speech to music for the piece Hotel to the Eternal Lamp developed and composed by Michael Lentz. Geisse used real-time manipulation of the sound of choir and orchestra (Württemberg Chamber Choir and Philharmonic) in Gregor Hübner's De Profundis, a work commissioned by the International Bach Academy Stuttgart, based on the Missa Sacra by Robert Schumann. As an instrument of interpretation, he most recently used the computer at the theater in Erfurt in electronic versions of excerpts from the B minor Mass and the St. John Passion from Bach. He is currently working on an electronic transformation of Debussy's string quartet with musicians from the Munich Philharmonic. In addition to his work as an electric guitarist in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra, the Stuttgart State Orchestra, the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Orchestra and the Broadway Musical Company New York, in which – alongside operas, operettas and musicals – he played works of new music from Helmut Lachenmann and Hans Werner Henze to Dieter Schnebel and Friedrich Cerha to Gérard Grisey and James Tenney, his love of improvised and experimental music brought him to collaborations Eivind Aarset, Richard Barrett, Jaap Blonk, Peter Brötzmann, Marc Ducret, eRikm, Vinko Globokar, Barry Guy, Joëlle Léandre, George Lewis, Phil Minton, David Moss, Olga Neuwirth, Lauren Newton, Phill Niblock, Evan Parker, William Parker, John Russell, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Elliott Sharp, Mike Svoboda, Gary Thomas and Michael Wertmuller. |
program:
THE WANNSEE RECORDINGS 1 [01] VII.4 [10100111_A7_*167] 01:58 [02] V.1 [1011000_58_*88] 02:11 [03] I.1 [11_3_*3] 01:10 [04] I.2 [1011_B_*11] 03:33 [05] III.2 [110011_33_*51] 01:08 [06] V.3 [1100110_66_*102] 06:35 [07] VI.1-3 [1110001-1110010-1110011_71-72-73_*113-114-115] 05:13 [08] II.4+V.4 [100100+1100111_24+67_*36+*103] 13:33 [09] VII.3 [10100101_A5_*165] 02:58 [10] VII.6 [10101011_AB_*171] 04:15 [11] II.3 [100001_21_*33] 05:35 [12] V.2 [1011111_5F_*95] 05:54 [13] I.4 [1111_F_*15] 03:34 [14] VII.9 [10101111_AF_*175] 04:26 [15] IV.4 [1010110_56_*86] 03:05 [16] VII.1 [10011111_9F_*159] 03:30 [17] I.3 [1101_D_*13] 06:31 [18] IV.1 [1001101_4D_*77] 01:25
THE WANNSEE RECORDINGS 2 [01] II.2 [100000_20_*32] 10:27 [02] VI.5 [1111100_7C_*124] 03:23 [03] II.5 [101011_2B_*43] 01:18 [04] VII.8 [10101101_AD_*173] 02:56 [05] VII.2 [10100100_A4_*164] 02:24 [06] VII.5 [10101000_A8_*168] 01:26 [07] III.3 [1000101_45_*69] 05:47 [08] VI.4 [1111011_7B_*123] 08:56 [09] VII.10 [10110001_B1_*177] 04:06 [10] VII.7 [10101100_AC_*172] 03:26 [11] VII.12 [10110011_B3_*179] 03:48 [12] II.1 [11010_1A_*26] 12:44 [13] IV.2 [1001111_4F_*79] 02:01 [14] III.2a [110011_33_*51] 00:58 [15] III.1 [101111_2F_*47] 07:57 [16] IV.3 [1010101_55_*85] 01:29
Gunnar Geisse laptop guitar
The laptop guitar instrument is a unique hardware / software set-up that allows to pursue the analogue playing on a digital level, consisting of an electric guitar, a laptop, a MIDI controller, and software which converts audio signals to MIDI messages in realtime for the purpose of operating and controlling any virtual instrument, and in fact a lot of them at the same time, with a non-virtual electric guitar. Signal chain: Numbering key: THE WANNSEE RECORDINGS solo improvisations recorded live direct to SSD Initiation, realization & recording supervision: Jörg Diernberger Thanks to Jörg Diernberger, Marty Cook, Geoff Goodman, Friedrun Geisse, This music is for you. |
Press:
Composing in the medium of samples Gunnar Geisse's "The Wannsee Recordings" (2018) are two CDs with improvisational pieces that are technologically so innovative that they cannot be named using conventional generic terms. […] Geisse's improvisations are certainly among the most technologically advanced music projects currently in existence. […] Harry Lehman
5against4.com – a blog dedicated to the most interesting, innovative and impressive music of our time Gunnar Geisse - The Wannsee Recordings The Wannsee Recordings is a double album by German composer and improviser Gunnar Geisse, released on the NEOS label earlier this year. In some ways, that sentence is about as certain as i can be about the album because, to be honest, i was as impressed by it as i was flummoxed by it. Usually, when an album ramps up its flummox factor it doesn't take too long for it to become unengaging and ultimately boring, but in the case of The Wannsee Recordings, despite the fact that I regularly found myself staring at the speakers in a certain amount of disbelief, something about it kept me hooked for its complete 150-minute duration. Let's back up a bit: the album is essentially an anthology of 34 individual improvisations, ranging in length from 58 seconds to well over 13 minutes, performed by Geisse using a special laptop guitar rigged up to a MIDI controller and a laptop enabling the instrument to transform into a host of other instruments and sounds. Sometimes the guitar stays fairly close to its own identity, but in most cases it would be impossible to tell that what you're hearing is emanating from a guitar. [...] In terms of its stylistic and methodological traits, The Wannsee Recordings brings to mind the late work of Frank Zappa, particularly his glorious swansong Civilization Phaze III. […] The comparison isn't an entirely fair one, since Zappa's music was (and, more importantly, sounds) composed rather than improvised, but where Geisse's pieces become problematic is precisely in the nature of their improvised behavior, which might be generously described as 'rhapsodic', but other words like 'haphazard' or even 'schizophrenic' would suit many of them just as well. Put simply, it's the difference between frenetic and manic, and while it's fair to say that in none of these improvisations does it ever sound as if Geisse has lost control, the same isn't necessarily true of the plot. There's a pervading sense in many of these pieces that its sense of direction is arbitrary, that the Geisse software is using is glitching his materials to the point that while their integrity is maintained, their place within an ongoing continuity is much harder to comprehend. […] despite the fact that a great deal of The Wannsee Recordings plays exceptionally fast and loose with notions of continuity or coherence or even sense, it somehow never stops being compelling. This is probably due in equal parts to its ear- and mind-mangling levels of WTF and its underlying, irrepressible sense of sheer glee. Either way, I think the only thing I can say with certainty about this remarkable album is that the more I spend time with it, the more I find myself giving into its deranged charms and feeling less and less concerned about trying to make sense of it all. Ultimately, it really is enormous fun. Please read the full article here.
This double CD entitled "The Wannsee Recordings" contains two and a half hours of improvisation by Gunnar Geisse on the laptop guitar he developed. The titles were recorded at seven live concerts in 2016 and 2017. Gunnar Geisse began his career as a jazz guitarist, but soon turned to free jazz and experimental music. After losing two fingers on his right hand in a climbing accident, Geisse devoted himself more to composing and quickly caused a stir. He was particularly interested in digital instruments that can be programmed and controlled by computer - later he picked up the electric guitar again and connected it to his computer system; so Geisse can generate the tones on his guitar and modify them digitally live.
In the November 2018 issue, Manfred Karallus deals with four new editions of NEOS under the title “What does peculiar mean?” (...) He developed an instrument that he called "laptop guitar": an extension of his main instrument, the electric guitar, to include the computer, which enabled him to "continue" the analog game on the digital level. Light, high basic pulse, flickering and fleeting, flickering and fluttering, jazzy, sometimes very attractive, improvisational to the point of arbitrariness. (...) Read the full article by Manfred Karallus here.
September 2018 The man has collaborated with jazzers like Peter Brötzmann and Eivind Aarset, with Joelle Leandre and Evan Parker, but also with Olga Neuwirth. As an interpreter on the guitar, he performed works from Henze to Lachenmann and Tenney. A serious hand injury forced Gunnar Geisse to shift his focus even more from interpreting to composing. He expanded his main instrument to include a laptop, which he can use to sample or create music. No matter what the original source may be: voice, noises, instruments - Geisse can transform everything, transform itself. Gradually the guitar came back. Things came full circle for Geisse. From then on he called his instrument Laptop Guitar. And now “The Wannsee Recordings”, two live CDs full of, there is no other way to put it, brutal music. First of all, this makes perfect sense in terms of stringency. The pieces have each gone through a special process of alienation or, better, modulation. Structures were revised again and again, cut and reassembled until a completely new one emerged. (Tilman Urbach) |
