Karlheinz Essl profile picture

Karlheinz Essl

About Me

Portrait

Karlheinz Essl performs on a laptop computer that he has transformed into a live electronic musical instrument. The result is exciting and musical. You just won't hear these sounds anywhere else. He performs solo and in duets and trios, responding with sensitivity to fellow musicians, producing fascinating sound transformations, creating spontaneous surprises, and moving quickly from loops to cacophony to tiny clips of vocal sounds to all kinds of textures and ideas. He does all this with his m@ze°2 (Modular Algorithmic Zound Environment) performance software. (Joel Chadabe, CDeMusic, Januar 2002)

Biography

Born 1960 in Vienna. Austrian composer, improviser and performer. He studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna (doctorate 1989 with a thesis on Anton Webern). As a double bassist, he played in chamber and jazz ensembles. Besides writing experimental music and composing electronic music, he performs on his own electronic instrument m@ze°2, develops software environments for computer-aided composition (such as the RTC-lib for Max/MSP) and creates generative sound and video environments – often in collaboration with artists from other fields.Essl served as composer-in-residence at the Darmstadt Summer Courses (1990-94) and completed a commission for IRCAM. In 1997, he was presented at the Salzburg Festival with portrait concerts and sound installations.Since 1994, Karlheinz Essl curates experimental music concerts and sound installations at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg. Between 1995-2006 he was teaching „Algorithmic Composition” at the Anton Bruckner University in Linz. Since 2007 he is professor of composition for electro-acoustic and experimental music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

Feature

Der Komponist Karlheinz Essl gehört zu den führenden Elektronik-Performern Österreichs. Er macht das Unmögliche möglich: Unendliche Musikstücke, strengste Konstruktion, die spirituelle Kraft der Improvisation, das alles - und mehr - findet sich in seiner Musik. Wenn Essl in die Tasten greift, sitzt er vorm Laptop.Was ist ein Musikstück, wie fängt es an, wie hört es auf und wie ist es strukturiert? Fragen, die den Komponisten und Performer Karlheinz Essl während seiner gesamten Musikerkarriere begleitet haben: "Ekstase und Trance haben für mich immer eine gewisse Bedeutung gehabt als etwas, das ich auch mit musikalischen Mitteln zu erreichen versuche."Die Einflüsse auf Karlheinz Essls Schaffen sind mannigfaltig: Rock-Musik, Jazz (Essl spielte selbst Kontrabass), Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, die seriellen Welten eines Webern genauso wie die Klangräume der computergenerierten zeitgenössischen Musik. Vorderhand Außermusikalisches nutzt Essl, um die normativen Grenzen des Komponierens zu sprengen.Das Schaffen Essls reicht von auskomponierten Instrumentalwerken über Mischformen wie Kompositionen mit Live-Elektronik, bis zu Realtime-Kompositionen, Improvisationskonzepten , Klanginstallationen und Internet-Projekten.Meist tritt Essl als Komponist und Performer in Erscheinung. "Es ist heute wieder so, dass diese getrennten Bereiche der Instrumentalisten, der Ausführenden und der Komponisten - also der Erfinder -, sich immer mehr verschränken", erläutert Essl. "Was den Komponisten auszeichnet ist, dass er in der Lage sein soll, nicht nur für sich und sein Instrument zu schreiben, sondern Musik jeglicher Besetzung und Kategorie schreiben zu können."Mit den Prinzipien der Ordnung und der Dramaturgie hat sich Essl intensiv auseinander gesetzt. Manche Stücke wurden von Beobachtern gar "konstruktivistisch" genannt. "Konstruktion als solche ist ja nicht mein Interesse", sagt Karlheinz Essl, "sie dient mir bloß, um in Regionen zu gelangen, in die ich sonst nicht vordringen könnte".Scheinbarer Gegensatz dazu: Improvisation . Auch die spielt im Schaffen Essls eine bedeutende Rolle. Beim Improvisieren habe er oft die Erfahrung gemacht, "dass dabei Dinge passieren, die man als Komponist niemals notieren oder planen könnte. Was mich seit meiner Teenagerzeit, wo ich als E-Gitarrist Rockmusik gespielt hatte, bis heute fasziniert ist die Erzeugung von psychischen Grenzzuständen mit Hilfe von Musik. Ekstase und Trance haben für mich immer eine gewisse Bedeutung gehabt als etwas, das ich auch mit musikalischen Mitteln zu erreichen versuche."

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 28/12/2007
Band Website: www.essl.at
Band Members:
Influences: Perotin, Guillaume de Machaut, Johannes Ockeghem, Anton Webern, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, CAN

Margarete Jungen and Karlheinz Essl performing Sequitur IX for voice and live-electronics
20 Oct 2009 (Vienna, University of Music and Performing Arts)

Algorithmically generated visuals based on video footage of
Karlheinz Essl's sound performance SOUND MARKS
Soundtrack: PENDENTE (2002) by Karlheinz Essl
13 Jun 2009 (Berlin, 401contemporary Art Gallery)

Karlheinz Essl performing Sequitur VIII for electric guitar and live-electronics
13 Jun 2009 (Berlin, 401contemporary Art Gallery)

Karlheinz Essl improvising with his realtime composition environment m@ze°2
13 Jun 2009 (Berlin, 401contemporary Art Gallery)

Karlheinz Essl performing Lexikon-Sonate
on a Bösendorfer CEUS computer piano
12 Dec 2008 (Vienna, Bösendorfer-Saal)

Recording session of the CD Gold.Berg.Werk
Preiser Records 2008

ESSL.BURGER: Karlheinz Essl (electronics) and Klaus Burger (tuba)
Essl Museum Klosterneuburg/Vienna (3 Jun 2007)
Sounds Like:Improvisation should be something that is taken for granted - and yet in the course of music's history it has been marginalized. If jazz had not put such heavy emphasis on spontaneity, improvised music might have disappeared entirely. Initially Karlheinz Essl also learned the craft of composition under Friedrich Cerha. It was first through electronics that he rediscovered the talent for improvisation honed in experimental jazz formations as a trained contrabassist. Interactive live electronics have opened up unsuspected possibilities for Essl's exploration of new improvisational terrain.m@ze°2, derived from the acronym for "Modular Algorithmic Zound Environment," is the name of his new (keyboard) instrument, an individually developed meta-instrument running on an Apple PowerBook and using his own software library written in MAX/MSP. It allows Essl to react spontaneously to fellow musicians or unfold a pyrotechnic spectrum of new sounds in solo performance.All of the cuts on ©RUDE were produced live, either in solo performances or together with selected musical collaborators like Bertl Mütter, who on VOICE TRACKING contributes not only a sliding trombone but also a howling voice; or Martin Siewert, whose corrosive guitar sounds are heard on AT THE EDGE; or Boris Hauf, who plays short plopping saxophone tones in the aforementioned piece and also proves himself to be a congenial PowerBook partner in UNCHAINED. Quite often these duets and trios, with Essl's contribution of a rich palette of sound structures, get caught up in movements that take on a spiraling form.In and of themselves, such cyclically appearing rhythms are nothing new. They are also one of the jazz improviser's most important tools. What makes interactive electronic music so exciting is its indispensable element of surprise. The way in which the seemingly harmless loop in the trio AT THE EDGE develops into a dense cacophony that makes even the wildest free jazz improvisation sound like a children's song is hardly imaginable without electronics. Essl's solos are also full of surprising turns: Listen to REplay PLAYer, recorded at the Electroacoustic Music Festival in Florida, a track that tears through deep rhythmic whirlpools and suddenly mixes word particles - mostly unintelligible - into the relentless sound loops. No doubt: With interactive live electronics, not only are previously unheard new sounds making their way into music, spontaneity is also experiencing a triumphant comeback. (Reinhard Kager, 2001)
Six years after his last CD ©RUDE, Karlheinz Essl has released a new album with electronic music, entitled SNDT®X. As the name already suggests, the music on this release is related to other arts, serving as a comment or a sonic subtext to paintings, movies and performances of artists from other fields. Furthermore, several pieces are dealing with music of from various origins, namely psychedelic rock music (a tribute to CAN), advanced classical music (remixing Mozart's Dissonanzenquartett), chants from various religious contexts, or the ringing of a church bell.Besides exploring the possibilities of free improvisation in his live performances, Karlheinz Essl uses his idiosyncratic electronic instrument m@ze°2 for his compositional work as well. All tracks on this release have been modeled with his algorithmic sound environment and were performed by himself at various occasions through the last years.SNDT®X is comprised of 11 tracks with a total length of 137:37 min and was re-released on 2 Feb 2008 on the net label tlhotra. You can listen to the album or download it for free.
All of Karlheinz Essl's CD releases...
Record Label: KHE
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

Karlheinz Essl: Detune (2009) fragment for oboe and large orchestral

40 Jahre ORF-RSO Wien40 geschenkte Orchesterminiaturen von Cerha, Essl, Nitsch, Zabelka u.v.a. Wien (OTS) - Am 19. September 1969 gab das ORF-Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien im Großen Sendesaal sein Deb...
Posted by on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:09:00 GMT

Matthew Ostrowski + Karlheinz Essl: Live in Brooklyn

http://issueprojectroom.org/2009/04/20/matthew-ost...at the old american can factory Tue May 5th, 2009 - 8:30 p.m. ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
Posted by on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:54:00 GMT

Rediscovering the Electric Guitar

Having played the electric guitar as a rock-obsessed teenager, I re-discovered it 25 years later. In the meantime, I have studied composition and musicology and became heavily involved in electronic a...
Posted by on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:20:00 GMT

The Development of Karlheinz Essl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qySH4piNc0 On Sep 18th, 2008 the cellist and artist Anton Lukoszevieze (Norwich, UK) made a series of portrait photos from Karlheinz Essl utilizing the ancien...
Posted by on Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:40:00 GMT

Gold.Berg.Werk: interpretation of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations by Karlheinz Essl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT2K49xPCNc Interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations for string trio and live-electronics by Karlheinz Essl Just released on CD (Preiser ...
Posted by on Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:44:00 GMT