Seven Tears a tribute to John Dowland Christian Muthspiel 4 feat. Steve Swallow

• 1 Tears of Love 07:27
• 2 Happy Tears 07:52
• 3 Tears of Joy 04:37
• 4 Bitter Tears 06:22
• 5 Dancing Tears 02:14
• 6 Crocodile Tears 03:31
• 7 Tears of a Clown 04:26
• 8 Frozen Tears 07:54
• 9 Tears of Laughter 03:11
• 10 Endless Tears 08:54
• Total Runtime 56:28

Info for Seven Tears a tribute to John Dowland

Intelligent, contemporary and unique: John Downland’s Renaissance compositions in an improvised context between chamber music and jazz.

Classical music versus jazz. A rigid distinction between composed and improvised music is not only wrong, but also pointless. Improvisation has always been a part of classical music – from baroque to Mozart, although the high esteem of the interpretation in romantic tradition distorted this fact. Similarly, composition and arrangement have always been parts of jazz. Fortunately, in recent years this artificial gap has been overcome by several musicians of both genres. Austrian trombonist, pianist, composer and conductor Christian Muthspiel, who converts the master of English Renaissance music John Dowland (1563-1626) to jazz on his ACT debut “Seaven Teares”, also confirms this fact: “The parallels that become apparent between both styles and eras indicate how significant improvisation is for Dowland’s music.”

Christian Muthspiel is the ideal man to bridge the 450-year gap between Dowland and the present day. The 50-year-old has always been a wanderer and a mediator between classical and jazz, it runs in the family: he and his younger brother, the star guitarist Wolfgang, grew up with a wide spectrum of music and their father, Kurt Muthspiel, was a choir leader, music educator and composer. In addition to Alpine folk music, Christian’s passion was Renaissance choir music. Christian started playing the piano and trombone and continued studying the instruments at the University for Music Graz, however the atmosphere was not what the multitalented musician was looking for and he decided to drop out. In the mid-eighties he felt more at home in crossover projects such as “Orchesterforum Graz”, which he co-founded. From then on he was renowned in European jazz as a solo artist, in a duo with his brother, with his own trio and as a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra (from 1995 to 2004). At the same time, he composed for classical orchestras and for theatre as well as exploring genres from Jandl interpretations to contemporary classical music, also as a composer, and in recent years, a painter.

Muthspiel‘s field of work is wide - he works with small jazz bands and symphony orchestras, from solo performances to multimedia music theatre, with different ensembles and musicians who interpret his musical inventions. In 2007 he was awarded the most prestigious Austrian jazz prize, the Hans-Koller-Preis, and has most recently excited audiences with his Yodel Group.

With a top-class international sextet he converted the folk songs his father had collected into new symphonic music. Frankfurt Allgemeine Newspaper gave the project its “highest respect”, whereas the British Magazine Jazzwise wrote that “gems like this don't come around that often”. Two of his colleagues from that sextet, who Muthspiel knows from the Vienna Art Orchestra, have joined in on “Seven Teares”. His wish was to find musicians who “are at home in the worlds of both composed music as well as improvisation and jazz.” This is true for the Swiss trumpeter Matthieu Michel as well as for the French vibraphonist Franck Tortiller who, amongst other things, became famous as the director of the Orchestre National du Jazz. And naturally also for the fourth man in the team, Steve Swallow, who is not only the grand old man of electric bass and has played with almost all US jazz stars, but also an acclaimed composer.

Together they start a fascinating journey along ten songs of Dowland’s ingenious instrumental cycle “Lachrimae, or Seven Teares”. The compositional metamorphoses of the compendium of tears from “Tears of Love” and “Bitter Tears” to “Crocodile Tears” are thematically similar to the original. According to Muthspiel the challenge is “to modify the very specific form of melody and harmony resulting from it, interpret it and transfer it into another context”. The result, however, is much more fun: “Happy Tears” begins with a flute theme before electric piano, vibraphone and muted trumpet join in, the bebop ballad “Endless Tears” or the brass driven “Dancing Tears” with New Orleans Growl. The material, despite being over 400 years old, proves to be remarkably adaptable and can be turned into contemporary music with fantastic results.

With “Seaven Teares” Christian Muthspiel joins the group of ACT artists who combine different sounds and make music for listeners who are not interested in dividing music in genres and categories, but are rather fascinated by intelligent, contemporary and unique music.

Christian Muthspiel, trombone, piano, e-piano, recorder
Matthieu Michel, trumpet, flugelhorn
Franck Tortiller, vibraphone
Steve Swallow, electric bass

Recorded August 26/27, 2012 by Roland Baumann at TSB, A-Steinakirchen
Mixed by Roland Baumann and Christian Muthspiel at TSB
Mastered by Roland Baumann at TSB, www.tsb.at

Music composed and produced by Christian Muthspiel

Christian Muthspiel
Born in Judenburg, Austria, in 1962; at the age of 6 piano lessons, of 11 additional trombone lessons. Studies at the Musikhochschule Graz (Trombone classical and jazz), all studies broken off in time; 1987/88 scholarship at the School of Fine Arts in Banff/Canada.

As trombonist, pianist, composer, and conductor, Christian Muthspiel is internationally active in the areas both of jazz/improvised music and of new classical music. Numerous invitations to perform, produce, and conduct in many important musical centers of the world and compositions commissioned by renowned orchestras, ensembles and soloists prove the innovative cross-over quality of his work. Christian Muthspiel's main concern is the combination of improvised and composed music, i.e. the junction of the energies of single moments with the formal possibilities of predetermined material. Muthspiel's field of activity and possible cooperations with interpreters of his musical inventions reaches therefore from small jazzbands to symphony orchestras and electronic multi-media operas.

Christian Muthspiel's main activity in the past few years has been as a composer and as a conductor for his own cycles of very special programmed concerts, for instance with the "Camerata Salzburg" and the "Münchener Kammerorchester". These include the four "Mozart Loops" for orchestra at the Philharmonie Essen and in Salzburg 2006/07. Here classical orchestra work meets different styles of jazz and pop (performed together with Wolfgang Muthspiel).

In 2008 the premiere of the commissioned composition for the Wiener Musikverein (a work for large choir to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Wiener Singverein) was followed by the premier of a song cycle for Angelika Kirchschlager in Weimar, commissioned by the Siemens Arts Program. A double concert for violin, drums and large orchestra as well as a new ensemble piece will be premiered in 2009.

ENNAHH... (for Albert Mangelsdorff) a concert for trombone and large orchestra, commissioned by the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) and the Philharmony Essen, was performed in 2006 by the Radio Symphony Orchestra and Christian Muthspiel as the soloist at the Musikverein in Vienna and at the Brucknerhaus in Linz. It will be played in April 2008 in Essen and Kaiserslautern with the German Radio Philharmony.

In 2007 Christian Muthspiel was awarded the Hans Koller Preis „Musician of the Year", in 2006 the Austrian Award for Outstanding Achievements in Music, and the Award for Outstanding Achievements in Music in Lower Austria and together with Wolfgang Muthspiel the Jazzpott 2006.

Having started in 2006, a series of exhibitions presenting Muthspiel's work as a painter, which he kept concealed for a long time, is currently taking place at different galleries and museums.

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