Gunnar Geisse

Gunnar Geisse (born July 11, 1962 in Gießen , Germany) is a German musician, improviser, composer and interpreter. He moves in the field of tension between experimental / improvised music and new music . For this he developed a complex set of instruments consisting of an electric guitar and electronic sound processing, which he calls laptop guitar . He also plays various other stringed instruments, in addition to the banjo and mandolin, mainly those from Central Asia, such as Uzbek or Persian Dotâr.

Life

Geisse began his musical career as a rock guitarist in early youth. At the end of school he switched to jazz and then completed an apprenticeship as an electric guitarist. While attending a concert at the Moers Festival , he saw Ornette Coleman being carried onto the stage in a coffin and playing the free jazz that he had shaped in a glittering disco suit . After this key experience, Geisse bought plastic toy saxophones for his band members and abandoned the original plan to play classical jazz standards. Improvisation and an experimental approach were anchored in his musical understanding during this time. His first professional engagement was with the “New York Broadway Ensemble”, with whom he toured Europe for about two years. To be part of an orchestral ensemble was the essential experience for him.

The avant-garde combo "Brother Virus" with Werner Klausnitzer, Patrick Scales and Maurice de Martin had a decisive influence on Geisse at the end of the 1980s. They made guest appearances in New York (Knitting Factory) and were the first band to play improvised music live on German television to a TV show - "Veranda" by Dagobert Lindlau . With "Brother Virus" Gunnar Geisse for the first time treaded the musical paths of his own that had already emerged in his development over the years. In 1991, Enja released the album "Happy Hour".

In 1992, Geisse lost the two middle fingers of his right hand in a serious climbing accident. During the multiple stays in the hospital, it was initially not clear whether he would be able to continue his musical career. In dealing with the compositional techniques of the 20th century, he found his interest in structure. While still in the hospital, he wrote down his first compositions that can be attributed more to New Music. In order to reproduce them aurally, he later played the individual tracks - up to 200 on top of each other - in a recording studio. Out of his interest in structure, he worked with the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Magdeburg in the fields of complexity theory, nonlinear phenomena and simulation and incorporated structural models of nature into his music. The recordings were published under the title "AtEM".

As part of a composition competition, Hans Zender became aware of this extraordinary music as a juror. Gunnar Geisse received a one-year scholarship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude . It was there that the composition “The Discrete Now” was created. He immersed himself in the phenomenon of musical time. In the renewed search for possible structural specifications of nature, he received important suggestions and impulses at the Institute for Medical Psychology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (LMU) on the subject of "Time and its Perception". The classic design parameters of tempo, meter and rhythm were pushed into the background by this broadened perspective in favor of a psychological perception of time.

After working on structure and time, Gunnar Geisse asked himself about an elementary approach to harmony. Since 2003 he has been investigating the non-linear phenomenon of combination tones that arise in the cochlea of the inner ear without being physically present in the airspace. As a missing component to the already used elements partial tone row and partial tone matrix, the combination tones completed his harmonic composition instruments to an independent composition technique. The works have been published on CD under the title "MEtA" by Creative Sources Recordings. In 2006 he gave an insight into his specific harmonics through a theoretical script.

Paradoxically, with these compositional and tonal specifications, noise-based improvisation and its physical, expressive moment also became more and more important for him; his improvisation models changed under these influences. From 2005 on, electronics and laptops were increasingly used as tools for work and expression. In this context he developed his own hardware / software circuit ( laptop guitar ) which enables him to continue his analogue playing style on a digital level.

Gunnar Geisse has received several awards and grants, including the Music Prize from the City of Munich and the composition grant from the Akademie Schloss Solitude , Stuttgart. He has lived in Munich since 1985.

collaboration

Gunnar Geisse played with many musicians from the three main areas of his musical creativity - experimental / improvised music, new music and contemporary jazz.

He played with Richard Barrett , Phil Durrant , eRikm , Pierre Favre , Vinko Globokar , Barry Guy , Franz Hautzinger , Jason Kahn, Joëlle Léandre , Thomas Lehn , Michael Lentz , George Lewis , David Moss , Günter Müller , Olga Neuwirth , Phill Niblock , Evan Parker , Elliott Sharp , Giancarlo Schiaffini , Ed Schuller , Mike Svoboda , Gary Thomas , Wu Wei , Maurice de Martin and Xu Fengxia .

Gunnar Geisse worked for / played works by Hans-Jürgen von Bose , John Cage , Peter Maxwell Davies , Fred Frith , Gérard Grisey , Hans Werner Henze , Tom Johnson , Helmut Lachenmann , Anestis Logothetis , Chico Mello, Josef Anton Riedl , Iris ter Schiphorst , Dieter Schnebel , James Tenney , Kurt Weill , Jörg Widmann , Christian Wolff and Udo Zimmermann .

He played - also as a soloist - under Stefan Asbury, Paul Daniel, Péter Eötvös , Franck Ollu, Lothar Zagrosek with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (BR), the orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera , the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra of the SWR , the Stuttgart State Orchestra , the orchestra of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Munich and the Munich Symphony Orchestra .

Geisse was / is also a member of the band Brother Virus, le petit chien, ICI ensemble, Go Guitars , Berlin Jazz Composers Ensemble, Fractal Gumbo, NIE Quartet.

Discography (selection)

1987/1988: Gunnar Geisse ballads , MGI records / Intercord (also as LP)
1991: Brother Virus Happy Hour (Knitting Factory NYC), TUTU / enja records [3½ * Down Beat, 4 * Jazzthetik]
1992: No Distance different guitars , Outside Records
1999: le petit chien woof. , enja records [5 * Jazz Zeitung, 3½ * Rolling Stone]
2000: Drum For Your Life Glückmann , Samara Tone
2000: Gunnar Geisse At∃M⎪MEtA , NYX
2001: Michael Lentz & Go Guitars that ends well. Speech files , edition selene / BR
2001: Adam Pieroñczyk Digivooco feat. Gary Thomas, PAO [5 * Fono Forum, "CD of the Year"]
2002: Marty Cook Fractal Gumbo , TUTU records
2003: Maurice de Martin, Berlin Jazz Composers Ensemble Transylvaniana , Chaos Records
2005: Go Guitars & Singer Pur Electric Seraphim , K&K Verlagsanstalt Edition Kloster Maulbronn
2006: Ici Ensemble The Wisdom Of Pearls , PAO / BR
2007: Ici Ensemble & George Lewis , PAO
2007: Gunnar Geisse MEtA⎪At∃M , CS creativesourcesrecords
2008: Ici Ensemble & Olga Neuwirth , NEOS
2017: Udo Schindler / Ove Volquartz / Gunnar Geisse, Artoxin , Unit

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Article Down Beat 1993, Publisher: Kevin Maher , Review Brother Virus - Happy Hour , p. 48 and Article JazzTimes 1993, Publisher: Glenn Sabin, Review Brother Virus - Happy Hour , p. 55

personal data
SURNAME	Geisse, Gunnar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German musician
DATE OF BIRTH	July 11, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH	to water

[1] Article Down Beat 1993, Publisher: Kevin Maher , Review Brother Virus - Happy Hour , p. 48 and Article JazzTimes 1993, Publisher: Glenn Sabin, Review Brother Virus - Happy Hour , p. 55