Music production Black Forest

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MPS Records
Active years 1968 - today
founder Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer
Seat Villingen , Germany
Website https://www.mps-music.com
Label code LC 00979
distribution Edel SE
Genre (s) Jazz , classical

The Music Production Schwarzwald ( MPS ) is a German record label from Villingen in the Black Forest , which is primarily due to its jazz productions with musicians became known around the world.

history

MPS emerged in 1968 from the record label of the radio manufacturer SABA , which was operated by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in Villingen since 1963 . Together with Joachim-Ernst Berendt , Willi Fruth , Achim Hebgen u. a. was Brunner-Schwer as a producer and sound engineer in-house recording studio operates. Some productions were created in a private atmosphere in the living room of the villa of the label founder.

In addition to own productions, recordings from various jazz festivals such as the Berlin Jazz Days , the Donaueschinger Musiktage or the New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden were published . Occasionally, MPS also released recordings by US jazz labels under license . For Prestige , MPS even briefly took over sales in Germany in 1968.

In addition to the high recording quality of the MPS products, the appealing design of the record sleeves , as well as the information about the artist, instrumentation and playing time were a trademark of the label.

In September 2009 a sales campaign took place on the premises of the former studio in Villingen, during which several thousand brand-new records from old MPS stocks with more than 800 different titles were offered.

From September 7th to 9th, 2018, various events related to the label and the studio took place in Villingen under the title "50 Years of MPS". On the opening evening, the pianist Steven Reich gave a concert with the vocalists Petra Simone Acker and Erik Leuthäuser in the MPS studio. On September 8, the brothers Rolf and Joachim Kühn stood on the stage of the Franziskaner Konzerthaus. The opening act was played by the Chicago trumpeter Rob Mazurek with his band Immortal Birds Bright Wings. On the same evening there was a performance by the British James Braddell alias Funki Porcini in the Villinger Jazzkeller in Webergasse.

The singer Petra Simone Acker again concluded the concert in the MPS studio with a concert in which she only interpreted songs by Billy Taylor .

Music styles, performers

The jazz performers published by MPS include Oscar Peterson , Hans Koller , Horst Jankowski , George Duke , Erwin Lehn , Volker Kriegel , Albert Mangelsdorff , the Singers Unlimited and Wolfgang Dauner . In addition to the Kenny Clarke / Francy Boland Big Band , Jean-Luc Ponty , Lee Konitz , Charlie Mariano , Alphonse Mouzon , Monty Alexander and Dave Pike were among the frequently presented artists. The stylistic breadth is remarkable as it ranges from Dixieland and Swing to Jazz Rock and Free Jazz . In the "Jazz meets the World" series, jazz greats like Tony Scott or George Gruntz met musicians from Bali or India and were thus the godfathers of a genre that later enriched music history as world music. Not to forget the cross-genre projects with the Austrian pianist Friedrich Gulda , which dissolved the boundary between jazz and classical music .

In addition to the recordings with jazz musicians, Brunner-Schwer devoted himself extensively to the (often regional) traditional folklore and classical music with MPS . This is how recordings with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra with works by Max Reger were made under his direction . With musicians from the orchestra and choir of the Südwestfunk , Brunner-Schwer played various works of early music on traditional instruments. B. Beethoven's Bonn songs (with Max van Egmond and Wilhelm Krumbach ).

Another focus of the label's repertoire was recordings of church music. With the Birnauer Kantorei a . a. Recordings of works by Haydn , Bach or FX Richter in the Birnau monastery church . With the organist Konrad Schuba from Radolfzell and the Viennese Kurt Rapf , extensive recordings were made, both on domestic organs such as in the Frauenkirche in Munich or the Münster in Freiburg , but also in Austria , Switzerland and even in the USA .

After Christian Kellersmann reactivated MPS as a jazz label for Edel: Kultur in 2015 , new recordings by Khalifé Schumacher Tristano , Rolf Kühn , Hamilton de Holanda , Lisa Bassenge , Baden Powell , Malakoff Kowalski , Malia , Barbara Dennerlein , China will appear there for the first time in over 30 years Moses and Erik Leuthäuser .

The studio

As early as 1923 , the factory owner Hermann Schwer set up the first recording studio on the SABA site , which is said to have been state-of-the-art at the time. The studio later moved to an external building - Richthofenstrasse 1 - and from 1958 , under the supervision of Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, recordings were made there that were later released on the in-house label Saba-Schallplatten .

Long before the Saba studio became the MPS studio, Brunner-Schwer experimented with stereophonic recording and playback technology, which became more and more popular in the 1960s and in which sound engineers and musicians discovered completely new possibilities. For Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer , who was a pianist himself, the key question was the sound of a piano and how it could best be reproduced stereophonically as part of an ensemble . His idea of placing the microphones inside the instrument and thus being able to offer the listener practically the same listening experience as the pianist himself had been unique up to then and was responsible for the very own sound character of the studio.

Over the years, the almost 100 m² studio has been continuously expanded and remodeled. With technology from Siemens and Telefunken , microphones from Neumann, tape recorders from Ampex and Telefunken, the studio was always state -of-the-art . Most recently, a mixer in SITRAL cassette technology (silicon transistor planar) with 24 channels was built with which can still be used today in analog quality.

The recording studio in Villingen was declared a cultural monument in 2011 “because of its originality and integrity, the particular rarity of some pieces and their general documentary value”.

In addition to the concerts that took place in the MPS studio for the 50th anniversary of the label, there was a performance by the young German band Fluchtpunkt on November 23, 2018 .

In the spring of 2019, Julia Kadel was the first musician in almost 40 years to record an album for the MPS Records label in the original studio.

distribution

From 1968 on, MPS marketed itself in-house, but had DGG at its side as a partner , which was responsible for the production of the records.

From 1971 the Ludwigshafen-based BASF took over the distribution with its sound carrier branch. With BASF, MPS had the opportunity to offer its products overseas for the first time.

After BASF had closed its loss-making sound carrier department, MPS was marketed as a sub-label by Metronome Musik GmbH Hamburg from April 1976 , which included distribution via Phonogram (later Polygram ).

1983 sold Brunner-Schwer the label to PolyGram Group , the MPS of Polydor angliederte. From 1994 the newly founded Motor Music released individual recordings on CD. In 1999 Universal Jazz took over the MPS program in UMG sales .

In 2000 , Speakers Corner Records released individual MPS albums under license as records with original covers.

In January 2014 , the acquired Edel AG the MPS catalog and made much of the MPS catalog also available digitally. Streaming and download offers are available from all common providers such as Spotify , Amazon , Deezer or iTunes .

Discography

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History. In: mps-villingen.de. Retrieved May 15, 2020 .
  2. ^ From the program booklet “50 Years of MPS”, organizer: Förderverein MPS-Studio Villingen eV
  3. ↑ 50 years of jazz history - the MPS label is celebrating a milestone birthday MPS Records - 50th Anniversary. In: alsterkind.com. April 1, 2018, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer - MPS - Dr. Helmut Puschmann. In: dr-puschmann.de. Retrieved May 15, 2020 .
  5. ↑ https://www.mps-villingen.de/studio/
  6. ↑ https://www.zum.de/Faecher/G/BW/Landeskunde/themen/news/11/tonstudio_mps.htm
  7. ↑ https://www.mps-villingen.de/studiokonzert-am-23-november-2018/
  8. ↑ Janko Tietz: Julia Kadel puts the legendary MPS studio back into operation after almost 40 years. In: Spiegel Online . May 5, 2019, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  9. ↑ https://www.edel.com/de/label-verlage/musik-2/mps/