Breathing, Remembering, Dissolving Kukuruz Quartet

• Clara Allison: In My Body (The Room That Will Outlive Us):
• 1 Allison: In My Body (The Room That Will Outlive Us) 06:44
• Seán Ó Dálaigh: Ruainne III:
• 2 Dálaigh: Ruainne III 10:40
• Julie Herndon: When the Machine Rhymes with My Body:
• 3 Herndon: When the Machine Rhymes with My Body 12:30
• Marcel Zaes (b. 1984): Dissolving Archives I:
• 4 Zaes: Dissolving Archives I 16:04
• Hassan Estakhrian (b. 1983): Forty Finger Machine:
• 5 Estakhrian: Forty Finger Machine 06:49
• Manuel Pessôa de Lima (b. 1981): From Memory:
• 6 Lima: From Memory 07:38
• Total Runtime 01:00:25

Info for Breathing, Remembering, Dissolving

Breathing - Remembering - Dissolving is a collaborative record bringing together a collection of contemporary experimental musical perspectives that all share a common interest: challenging the idea of what the human is in a musical performance. Composers, Clara Allison, Seán Ó Dálaigh, Julie Herndon, Hassan Estakhrian, Manuel Pessôa de Lima, and Marcel Zaes, contribute unique responses to themes we typically associate with being human, the body, and the larger aspects of sociality in/with/around humans. The project collects six works by composers of various backgrounds, gender and racial identities, and diverse musical styles, coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, United States, Latin America, and Europe. Each original work was created specifically for the Kuku-ruz Quartet while in residence in the Bay Area. Based in Switzerland, the Kukuruz Quartet- 4 pianists on 4 pianos - is a close-knit group of divergent artistic personalities, all trained in disparate musical fields: Simone Keller is a versatile pianist in contemporary and classical music, Philip Bartels is an exper-imental theater stage director, Duri Collenberg studied composition in Amsterdam, and Lukas Rickli has broad experience in improvi-sation. They are equally at home on theater stages, concert halls, clubs, bars, office buildings, and studios. The ensemble was founded in 2014 in a corn field - Kukuruz means "corn" in several languages. These four pianists were first seen and heard making their contribution to a production by musician and theater director Ruedi Häusermann at the Zurich Schauspiel-haus. From the outset, the group has been engaged with classical music, jazz, and improvisation. This album is sponsored by Innova Recordings and American Composers Forum's Bay Area Pilot program with support from Pro Hel-vetica and the Stanford Department of Music.

Kukuruz Quartet:
Simone Keller, piano
Philip Bartels, piano
Duri Collenberg, piano
Lukas Rickli, piano
Marcel Zaes, tape
Manuel Pessôa de Lima, tape

The Kukuruz Quartet
is equally at home on theatre stages, concert halls, in clubs, bars and studios. It was founded in 2014 in a corn field – “Kukuruz” means corn in several languages, and the Swiss-German expression “Mais machen” (literally “to make corn”) means to stir up mischief. The four pianists were first seen and heard making their contribution to a production by musician and theatre director Ruedi Häusermann at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. The quartet was performing on four so-called “well-prepared one-hand pianos”, having spent long sessions exploring different preparations and constructions. From the outset, the group has been engaged with classical music, jazz and impro- visation. In the same year it was founded, Kukuruz also started its involvement with Julius Eastman and his musical works. The pianists went on an extensive tour through Switzerland, Germany and Holland, were they performed in concert halls, clubs, bars and breweries and made Eastman’s pieces accessible to a wide audience.

In 2017, their performance at documenta 14 in the Megaro Mousikis concert hall in Athens – where they exchanged their rickety instruments for concert grand pianos – earned a standing ovation. They performed Eastman’s “Evil Nigger”, “Gay Guerrilla”, “Buddha” and “Fugue no. 7”. Back in Zurich in November 1917, the quartet presented their Eastman pro- gramme on their pianos at the Schlosserei Nenniger as part of the unerhört! Festival. The recording of these four Eastman piano pieces followed in November 2017 on four Steinway D pianos in the main hall of the historic Radiostudio Zürich. It is now released on Intakt Records. In the summer of 2018, Kukuruz will take Julius Eastman’s work on a “guerrilla tour” through Switzerland, transporting its own pianos. The tour will take the quartet to several juvenile offender institutions, where they will play together with inmates. They will also perform in hospitals, thrift shops, clothes stores, galleries, bars and of office buildings.he Kukuruz Piano Quartet features 4 pianists on the unfamiliar combination of 4 upright or 4 grand pianos and sheds new light on the music of Julius Eastman.

The Kukuruz Piano Quartet is a close-knit group of divergent artistic personalities, emergent from training in disparate musical fields: Simone Keller is a versatile pianist in contemporary and classical music, Philip Bartels is an experimental theatre stage director, Duri Collenberg studied composition in Amsterdam und Lukas Rickli has broad experience in improvisation.

This album contains no booklet.