Nik Bärtsch - Entendre

The Guardian 0

(ECM)
The European jazz star’s austerely named compositions can be hard work – but reworking them for solo piano frees them up

The Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch is many things: a club proprietor (he describes his Zurich venue Exil as a “self-perpetuating organism for creating experimental music”), an academic (he studied linguistics and philosophy and currently lectures on aesthetics) and a martial artist (with a black belt in aikido). For 20 years, he’s also been one of the biggest names on the European jazz circuit, but his music has always drawn from myriad sources – the spiky modernism of Bartók and Stravinsky, the polyrhythmic funk of bands like the Meters and proggy indie-rock bands such as Battles and Tortoise.