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RIP, the Wildly Inventive Jazz/Experimental Keyboardist Wolfgang Dauner
I don't know anything at all about this guy. I'm just posting because the article was there.
RIP, the Wildly Inventive Jazz/Experimental Keyboardist Wolfgang Dauner
by Dave Segal • Jan 13, 2020 at 1:35 pm
On January 10, the day when the world at large found out that the great Rush drummer Neil Peart had died, another fantastic musician also passed: German jazz and experimental keyboardist/composer Wolfgang Dauner, who was 84. Unsurprisingly, Peart's death overshadowed Dauner's, but the latter deserves his own passionate eulogy.
I've been a huge Wolfgang Dauner stan since I first heard his 1971 LP Et Cetera while tripping in Dallas, Texas, in 1997. That record instantly became my favorite ever, as it remains to this day. In my review of the 2010 reissue of Et Cetera in these pages, I referred back to that initial mind-altering encounter and called it "a disciplined yet free-ranging splay of astonishingly vivid sounds unlike any I'd ever experienced. Each of the five tracks pricked my ganglia in different, strange ways. Attempts to classify the sounds proved futile, but something extraordinary was flowing out of the speakers." The album's peak, "Raga," stands as the "Creator Has A Masterplan" of krautrock. The incomparable bliss and melancholy that the song summons make it an ideal piece to play at a loved one's funeral.
Backing up in Dauner's story, he started his own trio in 1963 with Detroit-born drummer Fred Braceful and German bassist Eberhard Weber; the latter would go on to record several crucial albums on the renowned ECM label. Rare for a European artist, Dauner drew comparisons to Miles Davis's—but perhaps it's not surprising given Bill Evans's influence on Dauner's piano playing.
Toward the late '60s, Dauner's music took on more freewheeling elements from the burgeoning psych-rock and krautrock movements, with even some non-cliché lounge touches sliding into the sound. Check 1969's The Oimels for a brilliant display of Dauner's facility with these styles, including an oddball cover of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life."
....
by Dave Segal • Jan 13, 2020 at 1:35 pm
On January 10, the day when the world at large found out that the great Rush drummer Neil Peart had died, another fantastic musician also passed: German jazz and experimental keyboardist/composer Wolfgang Dauner, who was 84. Unsurprisingly, Peart's death overshadowed Dauner's, but the latter deserves his own passionate eulogy.
I've been a huge Wolfgang Dauner stan since I first heard his 1971 LP Et Cetera while tripping in Dallas, Texas, in 1997. That record instantly became my favorite ever, as it remains to this day. In my review of the 2010 reissue of Et Cetera in these pages, I referred back to that initial mind-altering encounter and called it "a disciplined yet free-ranging splay of astonishingly vivid sounds unlike any I'd ever experienced. Each of the five tracks pricked my ganglia in different, strange ways. Attempts to classify the sounds proved futile, but something extraordinary was flowing out of the speakers." The album's peak, "Raga," stands as the "Creator Has A Masterplan" of krautrock. The incomparable bliss and melancholy that the song summons make it an ideal piece to play at a loved one's funeral.
Backing up in Dauner's story, he started his own trio in 1963 with Detroit-born drummer Fred Braceful and German bassist Eberhard Weber; the latter would go on to record several crucial albums on the renowned ECM label. Rare for a European artist, Dauner drew comparisons to Miles Davis's—but perhaps it's not surprising given Bill Evans's influence on Dauner's piano playing.
Toward the late '60s, Dauner's music took on more freewheeling elements from the burgeoning psych-rock and krautrock movements, with even some non-cliché lounge touches sliding into the sound. Check 1969's The Oimels for a brilliant display of Dauner's facility with these styles, including an oddball cover of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life."
....
