Waterphone

Atonal Archaic Avant-Garde Music
This profile of Thomas Zunk
is designed to feature MUSIC PLAYED ON THE WATERPHONE
for all connoiseurs of odd instruments
The music here was recorded between 1995 and 2007.
For newest Waterphone tracks please go here
NOTE that all my other profiles (see links left side) also feature the Waterphone in different line-ups and bands!
Solo live at Umspannwerk Kreuzberg - Berlin GREENPEACE at Lange Nacht der Museen 2003.
Photo courtesy of Elke Postler
Present SOLO PROJECT for amplified WATERPHONE:
ZEUT - Archetypen / Archetypes for Waterphone. Solo recital
"Klänge zwischen Walgesängen und Weltall" - sounds between whale songs and outer space
Die zu ZEUT zusammengefassten, archetypischen freien Improvisationen zeigen die ganze Bandbreite aller auf dem Waterphone möglichen Spielweisen und sind eine Enzyklopädie der Klänge dieses besonderen Instruments.
ZEUT is an anthology of playing techniques used to create a catalogue of archetypal free improvisations and an encyclopaedia of the sounds possible on this remarkable instrument.
Dauer: Je nach Anlass und Gegebenheiten: 30 - 90 Minuten
Duration: according the event and situation: 30 - 90 minutes
Past performances of ZEUT:
Fête de la Musique, Berlin Jun 2001
Zionskirche, Berlin Aug 2001
Zionskirche, Berlin Okt 2001 Please listen to the Flashplayer on the left!
Jazztreff, Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Berlin Nov 2001
Zionskirche, Berlin Okt 2002, 2x
Umspannwerk Paul-Lincke-Ufer, Berlin Feb 1 2003, Lange Nacht der Museen
Club der Polnischen Versager, Berlin Nov 4 2004 Please listen to the Flashplayer on the left!
MACBA Barcelona May 12 2007
Photos of the ZEUT IX solo recital at Barcelona´s MACBA May 12 2007
below by Joan Ramon Guzman
I am a multi-instrumentalist and composer of new music. I am on stage with improvised and composed music since 1976. I play travers flute, hand drums s and percussion, analog synthesiser and odd instruments like the Theremin, the Kraakdoos and the Waterphone.
I am worldwide one of the few soloists on the WATERPHONE which I started to learn and play in 1987. Since 2000 amplified via contact mike and reverb unit.
I studied ethnomusicology at Berlin’s Free University (1976-83) and classical Javanese GAMELAN as well as new innovative percussion techniques with Indonesian composer Gutama Soegijo and was a member of the BANJAR GRUPPE BERLIN (1978-93), one of Europe’s leading avant-garde Gamelan ensembles where I got a full theoretical and practical training as Gamelan master musician with performances throughout Germany, Europe and overseas.
I worked among others with German-Japanese BUTOH dance group tatoeba - THEATRE DANSE GROTESQUE (1988/89), with drum n bass band WYRDSPHERE in Brighton/UK (1994), as flutist with Berlin art rock band SALAMAND (1995) and with British saxophonist Geoff Leigh (2002-2005) as duo MEN WORKING OVERHEAD.
I was also mastermind of GHETTO RAGA, one of Berlins most innovative and challenging free improvising projects which sadly disbandoned early 2007.
The Waterphone is a sculptural musical instrument made from stainless steel with brass playing rods. Its corpus may contain water.
It is not tuned chromatically but in "random microtonal" tuning and therefore has a vast quantity of overtones and soundcolours.
It may be played in various manner and sound - depending on whether they are beaten, rubbed, stirred with a vibrator or bowed with a special percussion bow - like sunken bells, the singing of the whales, mechanized noise, music on instruments of glass or early electronic devices like the Theremin or the Ondes Martenot.
The sound spectrum ranges from deep buzzing and vibrating to feedback-like whistling.
Its special characteristic is the glissando which appears when the instrument is moved during playing, generated through the water in its corpus.
There is hardly any acoustic instrument which sounds equally electronic.
I play a prototype model built by its inventor Richard Waters in 1974.