NIK BÄRTSCH´S RONIN | Switzerland

Bärtsch has described the band's work as "Zen-funk" and "ritual groove": "Our music is somewhere between jazz and modern composition, progressive pop, ritual music, groove music in general. This music derives its energy from the tension between compositional precision and the self-effacement of improvisation. From self-implicit limitation comes freedom; ecstasy through asceticism."
 
Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch was born in 1971 in Zurich, where he still lives. He took piano and percussion lessons from the age of 8 and then studied at the city's Musikhochschule and university, while also working as a freelancer in various bands, "playing everything from fusion to free-funk and all kinds of extroverted jazz".
 
 
Project RONIN
The band Ronin (named after freelance warriors in Japanese history who served no master) was born in 2001 out of Bärtsch's desire for a group that could also work in clubs and "play with more power". The pianist described the band's work as "Zen-funk" and "ritual groove": "Our music is somewhere between jazz and modern composition, progressive pop, ritual music, groove music in general". Writer Michel Mettler has characterized the group's aesthetic as "creating maximum effect with minimum means": phrases and motifs are repeated, combined and layered to create shifting complex rhythmic patterns that usually build slowly over time with stunning dramatic impact.
 
Ronin have released three studio albums on ECM to date, Stoa (2006), Holon (2008) and Llyrìa (2010), as well as double CD Live (2012), which anthologizes a set of concert performances from their shows around the world. It is a collection that reveals its own internal logic and dramaturgy.
 
Nik Bärtsch (piano)
Sha (alto saxophone, bass and double bass, clarinet)
Kaspar Rast (percussion)
Jeremias Keller (double bass)