Looking Forward To The Past
Astronauts Alley
Alley of cosmonauts is an initiative conceived and realized by pianist and composer Mircea Tiberian, one of the most appreciated Romanian jazz musicians of the last decades. Tiberian has a prolific activity both as a performer, if we were to mention only the over 20 albums published under his own name throughout his career, but also as an educator being since 1990 the coordinator of the jazz section of the University of Music in Bucharest. The artist proposes to associate styles in appearance very distant. It is about Romanian light music or even some “slum” songs that merge with stylistic areas specific to jazz, contemporary music or the interwar Berlin cabaret. The chosen songs can be considered hits of the Romanian music, many of them being laureates at the light music festivals of the time and others being so well known that they were integrated to the party repertoire and considered collective creation. Not the last grinder Alley of cosmonauts is an initiative conceived and realized by pianist and composer Mircea Tiberian, one of the most appreciated Romanian jazz musicians of the last decades. Tiberian has a prolific activity both as a performer, if we were to mention only the over 20 albums published under his own name throughout his career, but also as an educator being since 1990 the coordinator of the jazz section of the University of Music in Bucharest. The artist proposes to associate styles in appearance very distant. It is about Romanian light music or even some “slum” songs that merge with stylistic areas specific to jazz, contemporary music or the interwar Berlin cabaret. The chosen songs can be considered hits of The Romanian music, many of them being laureates at the light music festivals of the time and others being so well known that they were integrated to the party repertoire and considered collective creation. Not the last grinder…
Last but not least, we must mention the exceptional vocal interpretation of the songs due to Nadia Trohin, a young artist with a spectacular evolution on the Romanian jazz scene, she also being professor at National Music University in Bucharest.
Mircea Tiberian and Nadia Trohin released two albums dedicated to Romanian pop music: La margine de Bucureşti (awarded the prize “Romanian jazz album of the year 2011”) and Aleea Cosmonauţilor, published in 2021 under the aegis of the Ministry of Education.
Nadia Trohin is a young artist with a well-defined personality in the Romanian jazz landscape. Between 2000–2004 she was the lead singer of the Millenium group, with whom she released two albums: The Hermit Girl and Christians, Christmas has arrived. He completed his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral studies at the National University of Music in Bucharest. In 2010, she was awarded at the Tg. Mures Jazz Festival and, in the same year, she started her collaboration with pianist Mircea Tiberian, with whom she recorded the CD La margine de Bucureşti, published in 2011, at soft records and Aleea cosmonautilor released by University of Music Bucharest. Since then, she has held numerous concerts in the country and abroad, collaborating with outstanding musicians of the jazz scene, including: John Betsch, Chris Dahlgren, Christian Lillinger, Maurice de Martin, Nicolas Simion, Cristian Soleanu, and the Radio Bigband Bucharest.
In parallel with her concert activity, Nadia Trohin is also involved in the educational field, being assistant professor at the University of Music Bucharest.
Duets with MAURICE de MARTIN
Dance around The Dragon Tree
Being seen as a link between ground and something superior the trees were always fascinating the people from Antiquity to the Jack and the Beanstalk times. The symmetry between crown and roots, the vertical position, the mystery and almost the meaningless of their existence and function system (why to be so big, why to pomp and suck etc.), the importance in maintaining the oxygen proportion in the air were important elements for keeping this conception alive. Central European people were born nearby the trees or among the trees and they had and still have a special religious attitude towards the forest and the lonely trees. There were thousands of references on this subject. The big trees (like sacred Oaks) and the Dragons represent archetypes in our way of reading the reality. In Romanian language Dragon is the root for words like Drac (The Devil) and Drag (Beloved) This is why a name like Dragon Tree has a special potential for our imagination. The sonority is also important. The group of consonants DR and TR need almost the same energy for speling. If we put the vocals on a circle where the highest point and frequency is represented by the EE and the lowest O U, when we say Dragon Tree we descend from A (the natural no pressure open mouth) to O and then jump on top (EE) resulting a balanced situation. And here we enter in the land of Poetry where there are strange links between meaning and sonority, importance and time attitude (Rhythm) and one needs intuition to go further. You want me to continue? I better stop here (cause anyway there’s no more space left for linear notes.
Originally coming from the small nucleus of the Munich-Avant-Jazz-Scene, very soon getting closely connected to the NY-Avantgarde and Art-Noise-Rock-Scene in the late 80ies (’89 debut with “Brother Virus” as first German band at the “old school” NYC clubs “Knitting Factory” and “CBGBs”), MAURICE de MARTIN found his home-base as a professional musician in an artistic atmosphere where the unity of performer and composer in one person as well as the art of multiple authorship was highly cultivated.
The missing necessity of specialisation and purity encouraged him to further on develop most of his multiple interests in the academic as well as the non-academic spheres of creation.
His studies in New York City (1990-95) led to a period in Berlin (where he moved in 1995), when he did the same time research and experimented with classical composition (Giya Kancheli), improvisation (the former DDR-Free-Impro-scene), the genuine Folklore of South Eastern Europe (performing with traditional ensembles in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria as scholarship holder of the DAAD), but also being an active performer and recording-artist in the various forms of Jazz, Metal, Noise, Rock and electronic music.
Later, through his longtime collaboration with the Ensemble Zeitkratzer, Maurice became an experienced interpret of Contemporary Music. His repertory in the Ensemble as well as a soloist goes from K.H. Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, La Monte Young, James Tenney, Alivin Lucier and reaches direct collaboration with now-music artists such as Elliott Sharp, Carsten Nicolai, Keiji Haino, Whitehouse,Terre Thaemlitz and Manuel Göttsching.
Up to today, Maurice de Martin is increasingly developing an attitude of creation that can be best described as: Expansion instead of deconstruction.
Besides the pure music, there is a certain love of the performative element coming from diverse activities around Fluxus-based performance-art (Donau Festival Krems /Schillertheater /Haus am Waldsee, Berlin) as well as a special focus on the work with language and the sound of language in his more recent works for Theater (Schaubühne), Music-Theater (Operdynamo West) and dance.
Percussion…
…combining self-built instruments, objects from the ethno-field that he usually collects on his trips, modern set-drumming and experimental setups with traditional/classical orchestral percussion-equipment and technique.
Research with tools out of the everydays-life-field, instruments and electronics, live-recording and live-processing.
Recently working as…
…steady percussionist for the ensemble “Zeitkratzer” (artist in residence at the Donaufestival Krems/Austria and guest-ensemble at the Volksbuehne Berlin) www.zeitkratzer.com, composer/musical director for several major Theater-productions (Schaubühne: Midsummernightsdream, Cat on the hot tin roof, Roomservice a.o.,stage-periods ’06,’07 and ’08, www.schaubuehne.de, and composer/musical director for the German-Korean Opera-installation “Freischütz-ga” with Janina Janke, Schillertheater/Berlin 08/08 www.operdynamowest.org, Theater-Installation “Der Findling” with Janina Janke, KGIT Soul/South Korea 10/08 in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Seoul, Korea-Foundation and Senate Berlin.
The inspiring and successful collaboration with Operdynamo West continued in the year 2010 with the multimedia-performance-project „VWS-Der Findling“ in Berlin.
Documentation of this project: Der Findling
Other important longtime projects
1989: “Brother Virus”, 1997: “Interzone” with Mircea Tiberian, 2000: Berlin Jazz Composers Orchestra/“Transylvaniana“, 2001: Zeitkratzer, 2003: “3D” with Christopher Dell and Chris Dahlgren.
Tiberian/Dahlgren/Betsch
Chris Dahlgren – double bass
John Betsch – drums
Many people believe that free improvisation is a musical genre in which arbitrariness and the artist’s own tastes reign supreme, in which having a large number of instruments is always a good idea even if you don’t know when and how to use them, in which the important thing is to be relaxed, to have a touch of humor and hold together an eccentric outfit. This view couldn’t be further from the truth but, unfortunately, it has spread thanks to a number of pseudo-artists who have turned musical freedom into a ridiculous concept.
The meeting of these musicians is an opportunity for listeners to be part of a performance of the highest level, intense and full of originality, a true sample of musical authenticity.
The real issue is that there are few artists who know what to do with this musical freedom, who don’t get lost when faced with an infinite number of possibilities. In fact the word of music is the same, whether is explored trough composition, performance or improvisation. The latter is simply one of many forms of expression in music.
The musicians played for the first time in this formula in 2006 at the festival Jazzy Spring in Bucharest, and then reunited in 2007in Brasov at Kronstadt Jazz Days. The recording of this concert became the first album of the trio Ulysses, published in 2009 at Open Art Records. Their stylistic area is situated somewhere in the area of modern jazz and improvised music, without ignoring the traditional parameters of main stream jazz. In other words, although their music is aimed at the audience open to experiment and originality, during the performance one can clearly distinguish elements from the tradition of African-American music and even from European classical music. Collective improvisation is the field in which the three of them show their true mastery that explains the notoriety they enjoy in the jazz world. Recently, the trio made a second album, entitled “Both sides of the river”, published in the United States at the “Tiger Records” label and in Romania at the “Concert Society” bistrita. This is also the title of the project that will be presented this year in front of the Romanian public.
John Betsch is one of the leading representatives of contemporary jazz percussion. After a brilliant career in the jazz fortress of New York he moved to Europe in the early ’80s where he became a permanent member of the famous quartet led by Steve Lacy; at the same time, he collaborates intensely with other African-American music legends such as Mal Waldron or Archie Shepp. In recent years he has toured with artists such as Benny Golson, Don Byron and Kirk Lightsey. The art of John Betsch is a living lesson in battery history, it can also give us a vision of the importance of this instrument in today’s music.
In his formative years, American double bassist Chris Dahlgren has traversed all contemporary musical genres starting, naturally, with rock music then playing jazz main stream in clubs in his teenage city of Cincinatti; the first discs he made are tributaries to alternative rock with wide openings to modern jazz and in his academic format years he studied composition with personalities of contemporary music such as La Monte Young and Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University. Chris Dahlgren participated in some of the latter’s projects, projects that materialized in several albums. After a period of intense activity in New York, he receives an offer to teach composition and ensemble at the Hoch Schulle fur Music “Hans Eisler” in Berlin and opts for the German capital where he currently lives. A few years ago Chris Dahlgren and Mircea Tiberian, together with the German percussionist Maurice de Martin, released in Romania a CD entitled “Intelligence is all around”, made at soft records. The musician is also known to the Romanian public from his stage appearances with the singer Maria Raducanu.
Mircea Tiberian is one of the characters with the most complex and spectacular evolution in Romanian music of the last decades. His musical activity has materialized in thousands of concerts and over twenty albums made under his own name; the most recent appeared in 2019 on Fiver House records under the title “Looking forward to the past”. Mircea Tiberian has, at the same time, an essential role in the pedagogy of jazz and improvised music in Romania, being the initiator and leader of the first and most important department of jazz and pop music in Romania. Tiberian is also active in the literary, musicological and artistic interference field, publishing numerous articles, books, or anthologies and being the author of several performances that include, along with music, poetry, theater or film. He was awarded five times the prize for jazz composition of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania, the last time in 2012 for the anthology volume “Jazz inside out”. Two other volmes, entitled “The Reference Sound”, published by Nemira in 2013 and “Magister musicae in the Land of Suris” (Tracus arte, 2017) enjoyed a warm welcome and praiseworthy appreciations, both in the literary world and among researchers of the musical phenomenon.
Four postludes to the “Fugue of Death” by Paul Celan
A project by Mircea Tiberian
This is a multilingual – musical essay focusing on the renowned poem Todes Fuge (The fugue of death).
Musicians / composers:
- Mircea Tiberian piano (RO)
- Nadia Trohin – voice (RO, MO)
- Daniel Erdmann – saxophones (FR, D)
- Chris Dahlgren- contrabass (USA)
- Tilo Weber percussion (D)
Paul Celan (Paul Antschel), whom George Steiner has called “almost certainly the major European poet of the period after 1945,” was born in Cernăuţi (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) capital of the province of Bukowina on 23 November 1920. He grew up in a multilingual environment. German, the language spoken at home and in some of the schools he attended, remained his mother tongue throughout his life, and Vienna was the cultural lodestar of his youth; but his language of daily speech was Romanian. Before his bar mitzvah he studied Hebrew for three years, and by the time he began a year of premedical studies at the École préparatoire de Médecinein Tours, France, in 1938, he was also fluent inFrench. (From Encyclopedia of World Biography)
In his Bremen Prize speech, Celan said of language after the II World War that: “Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand ‘darknesses’ of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and could resurface, ‘enriched’ by it all. “
Paul Celan escaped from the labour camps until February 1944, when the Red Army’s advance caused the Germans to abandon them, returning to Czernowitz (Cernăuţi) shortly before the Soviets returned to reassert their control. Early versions of Todesfuge were circulated at this time, demonstrating that the poem relied on accounts coming from the camps liberated by the Soviets in Poland. A first variant of the poem appeared as Death Tango in a Romanian translation in May 1947. The same year the poet wrote: There is nothing on earth that can prevent a poet from writing, not even the fact that he’s Jewish and German is the language of his poems. Todesfuge as we know it was included in the volume Mohn und Gedächtnis – Poppy and Memory (1952) and become one of the most famous poetic expressions of the Holocaust.
Our project consists in four approaches (visions) of the poem Fugue of death – half composed / half improvised musical works. Each musician of the group will propose his own version in relation with the poem red or sung in his own native language. This explains the name of the project Celan – postludes to the Fugue of Death. The ensemble will perform live the musical situation proposed by the readers – composers. The languages were chosen among the ones who had an important role in Paul Celan’s life: German, French, Romanian plus the necessary English. As an option we would like to present a version composed by a native speaker musician from the country where the performance will take held.
As you can see, the list of participants is still open regarding the artists from the French and Austrian space.
Tiberian / Dahlgren / Weber, presenting Acousmatics
I started from the distinction made in the school of Pythagoras between mathematikoi – those who dealt with the scientific aspects of reality and akousmatikoi – those who tried to approach the truth through inspiration, i.e. let reality come to them. This distinction led me to the idea of calling our way of making music acousmatic. But I don’t mean external auditory reality, as Pierre Schaefer understands acousmatics through his musique concrète. I feel closer to the connotations that the composer Iancu Dumitrescu gives to the term, although his musical vision does not entirely correspond to the meaning that I see. Music does not come from outside, although it has an external episode when transmitted from one to another. It lies mostly within us, in our memory, but mostly in our physiology and emotional code, in our register of preferences and expectations. It is a way of relating to the real using our own body and our own affectivity as a tool. The collective improvisation we practice is a way of making music that favours acoustic exploration. We can say that in the absence of a real acousmatic there is no collective musical creation. Improvisation here does not mean randomness, randomness, nor does it exclude musical anamnesis, references to the past. It is a musical act in the broadest sense of the word. It is musical “speech” that includes science, inspiration, intuition and – why not? – character. But before it can be heard on stage, music has to come to the attention of those who make it through acoustics. Hence the generic name of our concert and also of those who attend it: Acousmatics.