Nik Bartsch's Ronin

[GA Russell]

Twenty years ago I was into minimalism for a while. I went to see Philip Glass a couple of times and Steve Reich once.

I recently got an album called Stoa which came out a year ago by a German band called Nik Bartsch's Ronin. It's exciting.

Bartsch is the pianist and composer. The quintet also has contrabass and bass clarinets, bass, drums and percussion.

The drummer and percussionist play important roles on the album. The result is Philip Glass music that swings. I really enjoy it.

The band is on a brief tour of North America. They played Vancouver last night, and will play the Montreal Jazz Festival at Cabaret JPR tonight at 9:00 pm. Tomorrow night they will be in New York City at Joe's Pub at 7:30 pm.

I wish I could go!

[GA Russell]

I googled Nik Bartsch today and found that he was featured at NPR's website when the album Stoa came out:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5507990

I note that it refers to Bartsch as "Swiss-born", so maybe the band isn't German after all. I assumed it was because he wrote the liner notes in German, which were then translated into English.

[Van Basten II]

Did not attend the show in Montreal, only comment i read about it from an etablished jazz writer (Alain Brunet) called it a little bit too ECMish.

Maybe we have found Chewy's identity.

Edited July 8, 2007 by Van Basten II

[GregK]

I really like the Stoa album. It is a little repetitive in places, and I would like to hear the contrabass and bass clarinets more (they seem to be just emphasizing the lower end; a solo or two would be nice), but the music is very good. It's not THAT ECM-ish.

[Van Basten II]

He was refering to the live performance not the CD.

[GregK]

Yes, I know. And I was referring to the CD, not the live performance.