TONUS-MUSIC STORY
The Sound Garden of Don Li – Minimal Is Beautiful – A Portrait in 6 Parts
by Tom Gsteiger (Zürich, 1/27/06) translated by Friederike Kulcsar Part
One – The Longest Journey / Curved Beats
Don Li (*1971) is the instigator, driving force, and integrative figure behind a musical movement that got started in the peaceful and placid city of Bern about a decade ago and has meanwhile arrived in one of the world’s greatest metropolises, New York, among other places. Nota bene: not everything that originates in the province is provincial – least of all Don Li’s Tonus-Music. To draw a comparison, which is, admittedly, a bit off-the-wall: Bern was also the city where Albert Einstein formulated the theory of relativity. Apropos Einstein: «Time-Experience», premiered at the 2003 Willisau jazz festival and again a collaboration between Don Li and the video artist Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, is dedicated to the physicist.
«Time-Experience» is one of Don Li’s two fascinating, exactly one-hour long pieces in which he explores speech patterns, that is to say musical processes derived from the rhythmic and tonal analyses of speech recordings. Unlike Steve Reich, who undoubtedly had a great influence on his work, Li refrains from splitting and splicing the sentences and instead concentrates his attention on a rhythmic precision which presents an enormous challenge to even the trickiest and most experienced groove specialists. The first speech patterns piece, entitled «The Longest Journey», was composed in the winter of 2002 and is based on an aphorism by Lao-tzu, which was translated into eight languages; this work will be released on DVD this year.
Working with speech patterns inspired Li to extend his already complex rhythmic vocabulary by developing a new technique: by superimposing binary and triplet beats he creates the impression that the music speeds up and slows down – in this connection Li speaks of «curved» beats. To use this extremely challenging rhythmic language in a natural and relaxed way you have to team up with congenial partners; with bassist Wolfgang Zwiauer and drummer Fabian Kuratli, Li’s trio Out Of Body Experience features two groove maestros who have been collaborating for many years and are able to master even the most difficult curves with an awesome mix of vigor and elegance.
Part Two – Askese versus overkill
In his essay «Vomit» from 1997, Eliot Weinberger attempts to answer the unsavory question why there’s so much vomiting on MTV. The phenomenon of the «fashionable complaint» bulimia leads him to a diagnosis that on a higher level holds true for Western civilization. We live in an age of excessive overproduction, be it consumer goods or cultural products; but the wider the choice, the more one is plagued by the feeling of having chosen the wrong thing. Weinberger writes: «The images of vomiting that appear as one nervously clicks the remote control are not only there as bizarre novelties to make us pause at a certain channel and its commercials. They are there because we wish we could clear a space, make some room, expunge all the half-digested consumption and its attendant anxieties, know again the feeling of hunger and satisfaction. We look at people throwing up because we wish we could throw it all up – including these images of people throwing up.»
This situation presents new challenges to art: Does art have anything comparable to this stimulation explosion? As everybody knows, the strategy of postmodernism says: ANYTHING GOES! In the realm of music the hectic sound collages of Naked City, the combo formed by John Zorn, seem to be the apotheosis of this strategy: sadomasochism for the ears. At the other end of the spectrum neo-conservative entertainers like Wynton Marsalis or André Rieu mourn for times past: here the diagnosis is nostalgic escapism. The so-called minimalists have come up with an attractive alternative to overstimulation: LESS IS MORE! They react to what knocks us senseless with works that – in completely different ways – let us come back to our senses. They don’t let themselves be swept away by the hurricane but are in the eye of the hurricane where everything is calm. The minimalists’ important maxims are: clarity, concentration, reduction and repetition. Where minimalism does not drift towards banal esotericism it is probably the best antidote to the overkill of hypes and trends, it doesn’t shroud us in a mist of a diffuse well-being but sharpens our senses. The same holds true for the equally ascetic and complex music of Don Li.
Part Three – Tonus-Music
In art, thinking in categories, together with the inability to differentiate between things, often lead to gross simplifications. This is why Don Li is still considered part of the jazz scene in many places, although he has long turned his back on the voluntaristic virtuosity of jazz (that is, its cult of spontaneity). It is true that Don Li has his roots in jazz, but he has long since emancipated himself from this music and developed a system of his own, which he calls Tonus-Music. He knows how to effectively utilize the dialectical opposition between clear rules and intuition – which also means the ability to permit silences and thus create an inner tension which lies in doing without a mere display of virtuosity. Whoever thinks that Li’s approach to time and structure has affinities with classical Indian music is on the right track. Tonus-Music is grooving minimal music, often with a sculptural gesture. Li’s oeuvre incorporates parts that are numbered consecutively and can to some extent be combined with each other. His music is characterized by uneven meters, exactly notated drum beats and does not feature extensive solos (if there is solo playing at all, improvisation is an integral part of the structure); very often you’ll also discover instrumental delays, which Li calls fade patterns, and only quite recently the aforementioned «curved» beats. Lately, examples of intermedia collaborations have become more frequent. The musical concepts that Li sticks to are strictly defined and thus immediately identifiable; but on the other hand, they evolve with the power to intrigue both in completely different social contexts and variable instrumentation (from electro to symphony orchestra).
Part Four – Friends & Neighbors
Writers or composers are usually happy when they have the opportunity to hatch their works in peace and seclusion: too much a hubbub would only have harmful effects on the creative mind. Musicians who compose for themselves or for ensembles of different sizes need phases of introspection too, but to really blossom they depend on contact with a community that is familiar with the idiosyncrasies of their styles. If there is no such community, building one is a prerequisite for artistic survival. Just think of Ornette Coleman for instance: if he had not gathered a number of congenial comrades-in-arms around him (Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Dewey Redman …), his name would probably be just a footnote in the annals of jazz history today. Likewise, the pioneers of minimal music have also formed their ensembles.
Don Li is one of those visionaries whose passion forces them to commit themselves with their whole heart – almost like monks in an order. Li, however, is his own master: he can release his work in progress on his own label, Tonus-Music Records, which also provides international distribution channels and has met with big response for quite some time now; and he can work and perform in his own location, the Tonus-Music Labor, which he set up in an unpretentiously but equally elegantly renovated cellar in Bern’s old town in December 2000. Increasingly dissatisfied with the club scene’s outdated rituals of presentation, Li considered the laboratory an essential prerequisite for the development and adequate presentation of his aesthetic concepts; as one can expect, he uses all his strength and enthusiasm to keep this unique space going, which invites listeners to immerse themselves in music.
Over the years, Don Li has built an ever-widening network of artists from completely different fields (jazz, new composed music, dance, film, photography ...), who usually have completely different approaches to his Tonus-Music. Furthermore, Li can also be regarded as a source of inspiration for a number of musicians, who in the meantime have developed their own versions of a grooving minimal music and whom he as a producer has presented to a Tonus-music audience that already advocates non-mainstream music. First and foremost there is certainly the Zürich pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch with his Ritual Groove Music; then there are Mik Keusen, Zimoun and Sha, who represent a younger generation, and flutist Andreas Stahel. Not to be forgotten are also Ania Losinger, Kaspar Rast, Marco Repetto and Gwendolyn Masin, who have become famous for their interpretations of Tonus-Music compositions.
Part Five – No More Sax
From a simplistic point of view Li’s development can be divided into three stages so far. The first step was to find musicians with whom Li could work continuously on his concepts – for example he had been working very intensively with a regular ensemble from 1993 onwards. This phase culminated in his albums «Suun» and «Gen». At that stage, his group consisted of Werner Hasler (trumpet), Patric Lerjen (guitar), Nik Bärtsch (piano), Björn Meyer (bass) and Marco Agovino (drums). The opening of the Tonus-Music Labor marked the beginning of phase two, the breeding ground for Li’s experiments with completely different line-ups – up until today about 150 concerts have been taking place in the laboratory, with about 60 artists participating, among them Tibetan monks, a Butoh dancer, all the Tonus-Music Records artists, and jazz masters such as Bänz Oester and Norbert Pfammatter, with whom Li formed the trio Trigon. In 2001, some of the results of this diversification process were presented in a five-hour happening at the first BeJazzWinterFestival in the Dampfzentrale in Bern. This impressive performance featured, among others, xala player Ania Losinger (the xala being a floor xylophone which is played with feet and sticks and which was developed by dancer Losinger and instrument builder Hamper von Niederhäusern). Losinger has belonged in the inner circle of the Tonus team for many years, and Li has also composed music especially for her, for instance the one-hour piece «Tonus-Music» for xala and symphony orchestra and «New Ballet for Xala» for xala, surround electronics and string quartet.
Li composed «Tonus-Music» during his first stay in New York in 2002, where he found important inspiration for a reorientation, triggered not least by his desire to emancipate himself from the concepts of a new Tonus-Music generation influenced by his pioneering work. His detachment from the Swiss scene and deep interest in the works of contemporary visual artists encouraged him to reject the entertainment aspect even more resolutely – but he was also deterred by the hyper-activity of most of the New York jazz musicians. The pace and profusion of all kinds of stimuli inspired to utilize his skills in music all the more selectively and sparingly. It was also in New York that Li discovered the instruments he’s focusing on at present: a contrabass clarinet and a one-dollar B-flat metal clarinet. He hasn’t taken his long-time favorite instrument, the alto saxophone, out of its case: «The sax is immediately associated with jazz. I am more limited on the clarinet and thus less seduced into mere babbling. Instead, I can concentrate more on phrasing and sound and be happy about the fact that the listeners can no longer tell exactly what instrument I’m playing.»
Part Six – Coda
The movement of the wind, the plashing of water, the ripening of grain, the breaking of sea waves, the greening of the earth, the brightness of the sky, the glimmering of the stars—these I consider great; the storm gathering so mightily, the lightning that splits houses apart, the tempest that drives the waves, a mountain spewing fire, an earthquake that devastates the countryside—I do not consider these greater than the other phenomena. In fact, I consider them lesser, because they are only the results of much higher laws.
Adalbert Stifter, preface to the collection of short stories Bunte Steine (Many-Colored Stones) (1852)
The Sound Garden of Don Li – Minimal Is Beautiful – A Portrait in 6 Parts
by Tom Gsteiger (Zürich, 1/27/06) translated by Friederike Kulcsar Part
One – The Longest Journey / Curved Beats
Don Li (*1971) is the instigator, driving force, and integrative figure behind a musical movement that got started in the peaceful and placid city of Bern about a decade ago and has meanwhile arrived in one of the world’s greatest metropolises, New York, among other places. Nota bene: not everything that originates in the province is provincial – least of all Don Li’s Tonus-Music. To draw a comparison, which is, admittedly, a bit off-the-wall: Bern was also the city where Albert Einstein formulated the theory of relativity. Apropos Einstein: «Time-Experience», premiered at the 2003 Willisau jazz festival and again a collaboration between Don Li and the video artist Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, is dedicated to the physicist.
«Time-Experience» is one of Don Li’s two fascinating, exactly one-hour long pieces in which he explores speech patterns, that is to say musical processes derived from the rhythmic and tonal analyses of speech recordings. Unlike Steve Reich, who undoubtedly had a great influence on his work, Li refrains from splitting and splicing the sentences and instead concentrates his attention on a rhythmic precision which presents an enormous challenge to even the trickiest and most experienced groove specialists. The first speech patterns piece, entitled «The Longest Journey», was composed in the winter of 2002 and is based on an aphorism by Lao-tzu, which was translated into eight languages; this work will be released on DVD this year.
Working with speech patterns inspired Li to extend his already complex rhythmic vocabulary by developing a new technique: by superimposing binary and triplet beats he creates the impression that the music speeds up and slows down – in this connection Li speaks of «curved» beats. To use this extremely challenging rhythmic language in a natural and relaxed way you have to team up with congenial partners; with bassist Wolfgang Zwiauer and drummer Fabian Kuratli, Li’s trio Out Of Body Experience features two groove maestros who have been collaborating for many years and are able to master even the most difficult curves with an awesome mix of vigor and elegance.
Part Two – Askese versus overkill
In his essay «Vomit» from 1997, Eliot Weinberger attempts to answer the unsavory question why there’s so much vomiting on MTV. The phenomenon of the «fashionable complaint» bulimia leads him to a diagnosis that on a higher level holds true for Western civilization. We live in an age of excessive overproduction, be it consumer goods or cultural products; but the wider the choice, the more one is plagued by the feeling of having chosen the wrong thing. Weinberger writes: «The images of vomiting that appear as one nervously clicks the remote control are not only there as bizarre novelties to make us pause at a certain channel and its commercials. They are there because we wish we could clear a space, make some room, expunge all the half-digested consumption and its attendant anxieties, know again the feeling of hunger and satisfaction. We look at people throwing up because we wish we could throw it all up – including these images of people throwing up.»
This situation presents new challenges to art: Does art have anything comparable to this stimulation explosion? As everybody knows, the strategy of postmodernism says: ANYTHING GOES! In the realm of music the hectic sound collages of Naked City, the combo formed by John Zorn, seem to be the apotheosis of this strategy: sadomasochism for the ears. At the other end of the spectrum neo-conservative entertainers like Wynton Marsalis or André Rieu mourn for times past: here the diagnosis is nostalgic escapism. The so-called minimalists have come up with an attractive alternative to overstimulation: LESS IS MORE! They react to what knocks us senseless with works that – in completely different ways – let us come back to our senses. They don’t let themselves be swept away by the hurricane but are in the eye of the hurricane where everything is calm. The minimalists’ important maxims are: clarity, concentration, reduction and repetition. Where minimalism does not drift towards banal esotericism it is probably the best antidote to the overkill of hypes and trends, it doesn’t shroud us in a mist of a diffuse well-being but sharpens our senses. The same holds true for the equally ascetic and complex music of Don Li.
Part Three – Tonus-Music
In art, thinking in categories, together with the inability to differentiate between things, often lead to gross simplifications. This is why Don Li is still considered part of the jazz scene in many places, although he has long turned his back on the voluntaristic virtuosity of jazz (that is, its cult of spontaneity). It is true that Don Li has his roots in jazz, but he has long since emancipated himself from this music and developed a system of his own, which he calls Tonus-Music. He knows how to effectively utilize the dialectical opposition between clear rules and intuition – which also means the ability to permit silences and thus create an inner tension which lies in doing without a mere display of virtuosity. Whoever thinks that Li’s approach to time and structure has affinities with classical Indian music is on the right track. Tonus-Music is grooving minimal music, often with a sculptural gesture. Li’s oeuvre incorporates parts that are numbered consecutively and can to some extent be combined with each other. His music is characterized by uneven meters, exactly notated drum beats and does not feature extensive solos (if there is solo playing at all, improvisation is an integral part of the structure); very often you’ll also discover instrumental delays, which Li calls fade patterns, and only quite recently the aforementioned «curved» beats. Lately, examples of intermedia collaborations have become more frequent. The musical concepts that Li sticks to are strictly defined and thus immediately identifiable; but on the other hand, they evolve with the power to intrigue both in completely different social contexts and variable instrumentation (from electro to symphony orchestra).
Part Four – Friends & Neighbors
Writers or composers are usually happy when they have the opportunity to hatch their works in peace and seclusion: too much a hubbub would only have harmful effects on the creative mind. Musicians who compose for themselves or for ensembles of different sizes need phases of introspection too, but to really blossom they depend on contact with a community that is familiar with the idiosyncrasies of their styles. If there is no such community, building one is a prerequisite for artistic survival. Just think of Ornette Coleman for instance: if he had not gathered a number of congenial comrades-in-arms around him (Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Dewey Redman …), his name would probably be just a footnote in the annals of jazz history today. Likewise, the pioneers of minimal music have also formed their ensembles.
Don Li is one of those visionaries whose passion forces them to commit themselves with their whole heart – almost like monks in an order. Li, however, is his own master: he can release his work in progress on his own label, Tonus-Music Records, which also provides international distribution channels and has met with big response for quite some time now; and he can work and perform in his own location, the Tonus-Music Labor, which he set up in an unpretentiously but equally elegantly renovated cellar in Bern’s old town in December 2000. Increasingly dissatisfied with the club scene’s outdated rituals of presentation, Li considered the laboratory an essential prerequisite for the development and adequate presentation of his aesthetic concepts; as one can expect, he uses all his strength and enthusiasm to keep this unique space going, which invites listeners to immerse themselves in music.
Over the years, Don Li has built an ever-widening network of artists from completely different fields (jazz, new composed music, dance, film, photography ...), who usually have completely different approaches to his Tonus-Music. Furthermore, Li can also be regarded as a source of inspiration for a number of musicians, who in the meantime have developed their own versions of a grooving minimal music and whom he as a producer has presented to a Tonus-music audience that already advocates non-mainstream music. First and foremost there is certainly the Zürich pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch with his Ritual Groove Music; then there are Mik Keusen, Zimoun and Sha, who represent a younger generation, and flutist Andreas Stahel. Not to be forgotten are also Ania Losinger, Kaspar Rast, Marco Repetto and Gwendolyn Masin, who have become famous for their interpretations of Tonus-Music compositions.
Part Five – No More Sax
From a simplistic point of view Li’s development can be divided into three stages so far. The first step was to find musicians with whom Li could work continuously on his concepts – for example he had been working very intensively with a regular ensemble from 1993 onwards. This phase culminated in his albums «Suun» and «Gen». At that stage, his group consisted of Werner Hasler (trumpet), Patric Lerjen (guitar), Nik Bärtsch (piano), Björn Meyer (bass) and Marco Agovino (drums). The opening of the Tonus-Music Labor marked the beginning of phase two, the breeding ground for Li’s experiments with completely different line-ups – up until today about 150 concerts have been taking place in the laboratory, with about 60 artists participating, among them Tibetan monks, a Butoh dancer, all the Tonus-Music Records artists, and jazz masters such as Bänz Oester and Norbert Pfammatter, with whom Li formed the trio Trigon. In 2001, some of the results of this diversification process were presented in a five-hour happening at the first BeJazzWinterFestival in the Dampfzentrale in Bern. This impressive performance featured, among others, xala player Ania Losinger (the xala being a floor xylophone which is played with feet and sticks and which was developed by dancer Losinger and instrument builder Hamper von Niederhäusern). Losinger has belonged in the inner circle of the Tonus team for many years, and Li has also composed music especially for her, for instance the one-hour piece «Tonus-Music» for xala and symphony orchestra and «New Ballet for Xala» for xala, surround electronics and string quartet.
Li composed «Tonus-Music» during his first stay in New York in 2002, where he found important inspiration for a reorientation, triggered not least by his desire to emancipate himself from the concepts of a new Tonus-Music generation influenced by his pioneering work. His detachment from the Swiss scene and deep interest in the works of contemporary visual artists encouraged him to reject the entertainment aspect even more resolutely – but he was also deterred by the hyper-activity of most of the New York jazz musicians. The pace and profusion of all kinds of stimuli inspired to utilize his skills in music all the more selectively and sparingly. It was also in New York that Li discovered the instruments he’s focusing on at present: a contrabass clarinet and a one-dollar B-flat metal clarinet. He hasn’t taken his long-time favorite instrument, the alto saxophone, out of its case: «The sax is immediately associated with jazz. I am more limited on the clarinet and thus less seduced into mere babbling. Instead, I can concentrate more on phrasing and sound and be happy about the fact that the listeners can no longer tell exactly what instrument I’m playing.»
Part Six – Coda
The movement of the wind, the plashing of water, the ripening of grain, the breaking of sea waves, the greening of the earth, the brightness of the sky, the glimmering of the stars—these I consider great; the storm gathering so mightily, the lightning that splits houses apart, the tempest that drives the waves, a mountain spewing fire, an earthquake that devastates the countryside—I do not consider these greater than the other phenomena. In fact, I consider them lesser, because they are only the results of much higher laws.
Adalbert Stifter, preface to the collection of short stories Bunte Steine (Many-Colored Stones) (1852)