Peter Brötzmann

Peter Brötzmann is a Saxophoniste and Clarinettiste of Jazz German born on March 6th, 1941 with Remscheid, Germany.

Brötzmann is regarded as one of the most important musicians of the Free European jazz. It is famous to have a sound of powerful saxophone, and an energetic play. Its disc Machine Gun recorded in 1968 became traditional free jazz.

Biography

Beginnings

Born during the Second world war, Brötzmann learns the clarinet as an autodidact with adolescence, by listening to discs of Kid Ory. It starts to play in a group of Dixieland, then takes part in less traditional formations, and is put at the Saxophone tenor.

It follows studies of Visual arts to Wuppertal and is implied in the movement Fluxus. He will work even a few months with Nam June Paik in 1963. This experiment remains important for him, because it in particular enables him to discover the artistic creative process. Brötzmann sees a source of its influences there. For the magazine Jazzman, there is before and after Machine Gun for the European scene of the Free jazz. In addition to the impressive fury of the album, it is also the meeting and the constitution of a community of European musicians of the free, as well as the presence of two saxophonists tenors who became since symbols of the impromptu music: Brötzmann itself and Evan Parker. It is besides at the time of a round of Gun Machine that Evan Parker will be presented to Manfred Eicher by Peter Kowald, thus initiating the collaboration of the English saxophonist with the label ECM.

The disc is own-produced but will be included later in the catalog of the label FMP that Brötzmann Co-founds in 1969. Machine Gun is the best sale of the label. Jazz magazine qualifies this album of “scathing attack of the European radical elite”.

Always in 1969, Brötzmann Co-founds the label Free Music Production with Jost Gebers, Peter Kowald and Alexander von Schlippenbach. This label was born from a will to organize and have an independence vis-a-vis the recording companies.

Always in trio, Brötzmann explores as the format saxophone, double bass, battery, with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo, rhythmic as Brötzmann describes as being “ perfect for me ”. Last Exit also makes it possible to widen the public of Brötzmann, until there primarily of the amateurs of free informed jazz, with the punk scene and rock'n'roll, and allows him to establish its fame with the the United States.

Experimenter, Brötzmann also tries himself to touch the public ones varied, for example in 2007 when he plays in first part of Sonic Youth with the jazz festival from the Villette in Paris.

In 1993, Brötzmann founds the Die Like has Dog Quartet , with Toshinori Kondo with the trumpet, William Parker with the double bass, and Hamid Drake with the battery. The group insipre of the work of Albert Ayler, the first album, Fragments off Music, Life and Death off Albert Ayler , pays homage to him. Four albums will follow, until 2002. The sound of the group is less violent than the majority of work of the saxophonist, in particular thanks to the presence of Hamid Drake.

In spite of the economic difficulties, the tentet of Brötzmann turns and records regularly (10 albums since 1997).

Style

The principal instrument of Peter Brötzmann is the Saxophone tenor, but it uses also much its first instrument, the Clarinette, as well as the low clarinet and the Tárogató, an instrument of Hungarian origin halfway between the saxophone and the clarinet. One can sometimes also hear it on most of the family of the saxophones: Soprano saxophone, Alto saxophone, Saxophone baritone or even with the Saxophone low.

Peter Brötzmann plays extremely, with much energy, even brutality, with an abundant use of the Suraigu S and Multiphonique S. It privileges energy and the urgency, by pushing to the extreme the ideas of Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. Brötzmann is especially known for its sound power, which itself regrets, other facets of its play being sometimes forgotten. Questioned on this subject, it particularly pays to be impressed, by the vision of Sydney Bechet playing as extremely as it could it, at the time of a concert to the beginning of the year 1950, whereas Brötzmann was still child.

To play strong is a need for Brötzmann, of which one required why he played also extremely answers: How could I play gently whereas people die of hunger in Ethiopia? It evokes also the physical feeling to be invaded and even exceeded by the music and the sound

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