FMP CD OWN 90012

8 PIECES FOR SINGLE
LISTENERS
and
YOU NEVER GIVE ME
YOUR PILLOW
Hotz Solo / Hotz & Bussmann

Preis / Price : 15.08 €
Bestell-Nr. / P/O No. : FMP CD OWN-90012

Gregor Hotz

soprano sax, bass sax, alto clarinet

Nicholas Bussmann

cello

A. 8 Pieces for single listeners

46:46

01.

Insight

04:36

02.

How far can you blow?

08:49

03.

Mondo cane

03:48

04.

Insight (reprise)

04:55

05.

Don't play noodles

04:10

06.

Double-entendre

08:37

07.

Staged materiality

08:19

08.

As above so below

03:32

B. You never give me your pillow (Suite for slow dancers)

25:38

09.

Part 1

03:40

10.

Part 2

03:18

11.

Part 3

02:53

12.

Part 4

04:53

13.

Part 5

06:13

14.

Part 6

04:41

Total time:

72:24

A by Hotz
B by Hotz & Bussmann
Recorded by Dietrich Petzold in March 1998 at Tonus Arcus Studio Berlin (tracks # 1-8).
Recorded by Nicholas Bussmann in April 1997 at Tonus Arcus Studio Berlin (tracks # 9-14).
Produced by Gregor Hotz and Nicholas Bussmann
Layout: Conrad Noack and Gregor Hotz
Photos: Oliver Kern, Rainer Hotz
Liner notes: Felix Klopotek

First published in May 1999

Excerpt from the booklet:
The structural upheavals in Jazz of the 60´s, the rising up of a music of improvisation which no longer exclusively draws from the reservoir of Jazz but utilises the structural language of New Music, has brought along a huge flood of solo recordings featuring the widest variety of instruments. While the in-public, unaccompanied solo in Jazz was limited to the piano, and solo excursions of Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy were the exceptions (…), after, let´s say: Anthony Braxton´s ´For Alto´(1969) there was no stopping.
Today, solo recordings of Braxton, Lacy, Evan Parker and, to a large extent: Wolfgang Fuchs, Roscoe Mitchell, John Zorn, Hans Koch, John Butcher, Peter Brötzmann or Kaoru Abe are taken for granted as part of the improvisation canon (not even to mention the bass, percussion, tuba and guitar solos). They fall within the purview of material research, of freeing the playing of an instrument from conventional roles (the bass no longer as the accompanying instrument, the soprano no longer the exotic) and the emergence of an individual form of expression: it is certainly an egocentric pleasure that one of the first publications of a young Chicago alto player is the first ever saxophone solo (double!) album.
It would be easy to place the solo pieces of the other young reed player GREGOR HOTZ, born two years after the recording of ´For Alto´, within the same purview. Not only because his matter-of-fact way of dealing exclusively with himself and the particular instrument proves that soloing has become exactly THE classic discipline in improvisation. Furthermore, this Swiss musician, living in Berlin, has worked with Wolfgang Fuchs, Steve Lacy and Hans Koch. The interchange across generations is thus taken as read. (…)

In the solo pieces of GREGOR HOTZ nothing special happens. (…) This means: nothing extravagant, no tiresome virtuosity, no spaces with twenty seconds of echo that would be considered perfectly suited for a solo. (…)
Instead: releasing the material from its ornamental claps until it seems to be playing itself. Clear parameters. Don´t play noodles. (...)
His music happens because it is improvised, played without any canonical intention. Very simple, very complicated (didn´t we have this before?) (…)

HOTZ shares his vocabulary with the cello player NICHOLAS BUSSMANN who is roughly the same age. Motifs, reduced to a few sounds, floating in such a sublime manner that even the ringing of a telephone is unable to disturb them, are taken up from the other and are spun out. (…) You can hear how important, important in the sense of a naturalistic materialism, the stroking of a bow across the strings is. It is this peculiar feeling of a tension which is not aimed at an objective but is contended in itself.
And this is what´s important.

Felix Klopotek
Translation: Isabel Seeberg / Paul Lytton