Nik Bärtsch's Ronin

Nik Bärtsch (piano) Jeremias Keller (bass) Kaspar Rast (drums) Sha (bass clarinet)

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With the zen-funk quartet RONIN, founded in 2001, Nik Bärtsch is constantly working on his 'Ritual Groove Music'. Together with Jeremias Keller (bass), Kaspar Rast (drums) and Sha (bass clarinet), the Zurich composer and pianist plays music that follows a consistent aesthetic: to achieve maximum effect with minimal means.

Despite the diversity of its influences, this music always reveals its own signature. Although elements from the most diverse musical worlds have found their way into it - from funk to new classical music to the sounds of Japanese ritual music - these forms are not juxtaposed or quoted in a postmodern way, but rather merge into a new style. The result is grooving, tonally and rhythmically highly differentiated music, composed of a few phrases and motifs that are repeatedly combined and superimposed in new and varied ways.

RONIN thus creates an aesthetic that is consistent at all levels of musical expression. Composition, phrasing, sound design, musical attitude and the dramaturgy of the piece together form a whole whose all parts are interrelated.

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Venue:

Stadtgarten

The first concert in the newly built Stadtgarten concert hall in the mid-1980s launched a program unlike anything Germany had seen: an independent, artistically driven concert series devoted to contemporary improvised music. It was guided neither by attendance figures nor by public subsidies, yet it guaranteed musicians minimum fees and was run on professional terms. The conditions mattered just as much: an acoustically optimized, street-level concert space offering a strong setting for audiences and performers alike. Operations were financed through the adjoining hospitality business, the Stadtgarten restaurant and beer garden, a model that drew attention well beyond Germany.

Today the Stadtgarten Köln ranks among Europe's internationally recognized venues for contemporary and improvised music. The American magazine Down Beat features it regularly in its listings; it has received Germany's federal APPLAUS venue program award several times, including "Venue of the Year" in 2016, followed by the German Jazz Prize in the same category in 2022. More than 400 events across the full spectrum of contemporary music now take place there each year. Its international standing rests above all on the high proportion of demanding, experimental programming.

A programming mission of this kind depends on reliable public support. The venue's 30th anniversary in September 2016 opened that prospect: through a partnership between the City of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, programming work is being substantially strengthened, and from 2017 onward the Stadtgarten Köln is being developed step by step into a "European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music" – with the goal of becoming one of Europe's leading music centers.

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