Raphael Walsers GangArt - Stüdis Da La Natüra (2020)

Thanks to nature as an inspiration outside of the jazz world, this music takes on a pleasantly effortless gesture. In the foreground there is a rhythm without tightly knitted notes and everything else serves more as a means to an end than for boasting.

In the past few years Raphael Walser has repeatedly dealt with the sources of inspiration nature - landscapes - moods. Translating moods from pictorial memories of landscapes into music has been the main source of inspiration for him and the music of his quintet GangArt since the first attempts at composition during his studies. While this happened more subconsciously on the first album "Wolfgang" (2014, Double Moon Records), for the second album "Zwischen Grund und Grat" (2019, QFTF) the double bass player decided to use the famous alpine triptych by the painter Giovanni Segantini. “I wanted to see what would happen while composing, if instead of using my own pictorial memories, I would take existing landscapes. At Segantini I found pictures from a cultural area that come close to the pictures in my head. They also tell the story of the cycle of life. ”In this cycle of life, Walser has cleverly embedded three Swiss folk songs with a similar origin in time and place, which surround the stories of the Segantini compositions. The band implemented the songs in a very unprepossessing way. In Schaffhausen, for example, the Helvetic greets him only from afar, is an inspiration that leads to something completely different. Or as Walser says: "I have almost completely digested Swiss folk music, maybe you can put it that way."

After these studies of alpine culture from bygone times, Walser moved into the current time for his current album and teamed up with the Engadin illustrator Pia Valär. The interdisciplinary project is called “Stüdis da la natura” (Romansh natural studies). “A lot of similarities in our work led to discourses that were refreshing for both of us and that revealed new approaches to each other. The basis is the shared fascination for the local mountains and the associated cultures. My translation when composing mood / image in music contrasts with the transformation of text / sound into image with Pia. So the idea for a joint, audiovisual project was born with the question: What paths do we take when we move from the same point of inspiration with our own artistic means and are in dialogue during the process? Where do the paths and image and sound meet in the end product? ”Various elements in sound and image as well as a joint live performance as a duo were created during the project.

Walser has now recorded some of the compositions with GangArt for his third album “Stüdis da la natura”. The artwork is of course by Pia Valär. Because the illustrator experimented with analogue printing methods for her part of the work, the covers of the limited LP edition were screen-printed herself, which underlines the visual value of the plate.

Walser's musical roots lie in both classical music and traditional Swiss folk music. Coming from a family of musicians, he came from Zurich to the double bass at the age of 10 and to jazz during puberty. Self-taught, he got to know the different types of jazz on the double bass almost chronologically, and only found out about current popular music styles while studying music. Thanks to this well-founded experience of jazz history, it is not surprising that a clear, but very unpretentious reference to jazz history can be heard in GangArt's music. The compositions also allow a free approach to the music: The pieces want to leave dynamic processes open and thus grant the band moment-related freedom of design and the characters space for individual development. Thanks to nature as an inspiration outside of the jazz world, the music takes on a pleasant, effortless gesture. In the foreground is a rhythm without tightly-knit note specifications and the instrumental technique at GangArt serves more as a means to an end than for bragging. Pieces like “Siluettas - Gemsfairen” or “Nüvlas” celebrate a dreamy, relaxed atmosphere, as we know it from Miles or Wayne Shorter.

Just as important for GangArt's typical band sound as the compositions are the fellow musicians, who thanks to the freedoms granted to them have decisively shaped the music of GangArt for almost 10 years. Walser has played with drummer Jonas Ruther in various formations since high school. Ruther's sound-conscious playing makes him a sought-after "beat wizard" in the jazz improv area, e.g. as co-leader in the spherical sound meditations and minimalist grooves of the duo HELY. Tenor saxophonist Ganesh Geymeier is known as the fiery soloist of the "Rainmakers", a South African-Swiss quartet under the direction of Bänz Oester, a former teacher of Walser. As a lyrical counterpoint to Geymeier, Niculin Janett stands at the alto saxophone. With his family background as a descendant of the Engadine folk music dynasty Janett, he shares part of his musical roots with Walser. Marc Méan made a name for himself as a sideman with the quintet “Mats-Up” as well as a band leader and recently as a solo artist on the piano and electronic keyboard instruments.