Henrik Schwarz & Bugge Wesseltoft
Biography Henrik Schwarz & Bugge Wesseltoft
Henrik Schwarz
The internationally celebrated producer/performer/composer for electronic music Henrik Schwarz always expresses an eclectic approach towards music, composition and sound design. He easily and uniquely bridges the gap between performances for seated audiences at renowned concert houses and his dance sets around the globe.
Henrik Schwarz is an artist on one hand highly on request to create energetic dance music productions for Boy George, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, indie stars Ane Brun, The Foals, Omar, or jazz legends like Mark Murphy. His intense laptop performances in major clubs and the largest international music festivals in Japan, USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America catapulted Schwarz into the Top Ten League of electronic music performers.
As remix producer over 200 releases on major and indie labels saw the light of the world so far. 5 albums/ compilations on !K7 Recs and Universal Music are added to this in the last years.
Over the last two years Schwarz developed an innovative approach to transfer his personal aesthetics of modern techno productions into acoustic chamber music arrangements. The Tonhalle Zurich, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester & Deutsches Kammerorchester commissioned arrangements to be performed in their residential venues. The concert at the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall was sold out.
These arrangements are created by Johannes Brecht as a fully acoustic listening experience of Schwarzs chart topping melodic compositions. 8 compositions are transcribed for an impressing 10 piece contemporary music ensemble. Both performed and recorded strictly acoustic, without the backbone of any electronic instruments, or pretending to be dance music at all, the pureness and elegance of wood brass, strings and percussions are transporting the repetitive grooves and hymnic anthems into renowned concert halls.
Henrik Schwarz was born and raised in South Germany where he also took his first musical steps as a DJ in local Clubs playing Rap, Hip Hop, Rare Groove and Jazz and Detroit Techno. Soon after he started to spin regularly he was also interested in computer music production and started to do his own productions in 1992 with a few drumachines and synths. When he got his first Laptop in 1998 he started to integrate it into his DJ-Sets and soon the Laptop played an important role in all his music activities. The software got better and better and Henrik was enjoying the new possibilities.1999, after he had finished his studies in Graphic Design, Henrik decided to move to Berlin and worked as a Graphic Designer for several years. By-and-by things developed nicely also on the music side and he had the chance to found his own label SUNDAY-MUSIC together with Sasse Lindblad who had just released Henrik’s first ever Vinyl 12? called “SUPRAVISION EP” on his label Moodmusic Records in 2002. “Marvin”, one of the tracks on the record, got attention from many DJs around the world, especially BBC’s Gilles Peterson took it in his show and played it with immediate effect. From that moment things made a great leap forward for Henrik: He received first remix requests and started to travel to the UK and other European countries. His next releases “Jon” on SUNDAY-MUSIC and especially “Chicago” on MOODMUSIC became very successful and made him shift his activities more and more from Design towards music production and travelling.
Over the last years with international bookings all around the globe, with regular appearances in Japan, America etc. Henrik improved his HENRIK SCHWARZ LIVE show and is now one of the most requested live acts in the dance scene. At the same time Henrik produced a string of very well received remixes and own tracks: WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES for Coldcut on Ninjatune became one of the biggest club hits of 2006, LEAVE MY HEAD ALONE BRAIN bridged the gap between Jazz and Techno and Soul and was super well received by Deejays from Hip-Hop to House to Techno and became the biggest hit for SUNDAY-MUSIC so far. Until today he has done remixes for many very well known names like Mari Boine (Universal), Kuniyuki (Mule Musiq), DJ Hell, Tosca (G-Stone), Ethnic Heritage Ensemble (Deeper Soul), James Brown, Dark Globe feat. Boy George, Omar feat. Stevie Wonder, Jazzanova, Jesse Rose, Detroit Experiment, Michael Jackson (Motown) and many others. Today many fans are awaiting his debut album which is in the works effectively since a few months.
2006, as a result of him getting more and more known by a wider audience, Henrik was asked by !K7 to do one of their famous DJ-Kicks series and the result has been regarded as “one of the highlights of the series” and led to another cooperation of the label and Henrik: HENRIK SCHWARZ LIVE with recordings from his intoxicating live shows from all over the world.
With Dixon and Âme from Innervisions Henrik released “Where We At” with Derrick Carter on Vocals which became an instant classic and marked the beginning of a fruitful and close collaboration between Henrik and Innervisions until today with successful releases and remixes like AMAMPONDO AND HENRIK SCHWARZ – I EXIST BECAUSE OF YOU (Amampondo is a very famous south african percussion group), ANE BRUN – HEADPHONE SILENCE (Henrik Schwarz Remix, Dixon Edit), Crocodile IV-RMX for UNDERWORLD, HOLD MY HAND IV-RMX for UNKLE and many others culminating in the first unforgetable Laptop Supergroup Live show of the dreamteam together “A CRITICAL MASS” in Amsterdam and more gigs around 2009 at Melt!, Dissonanze in Rome, Detroit Electronic Music Festival, NY, Japan and many others to come.
2009 also saw the release of a very well received compilation called THE GRANDFATHER PARADOX where Henrik Schwarz, Âme and Dixon were looking back at the last 50 years of minimalistic music from Stevie Reich to Robert Hood and correlated the past and today to throw a glance at the future with the help of todays technology.
Early 2010 Henrik released the SCHWARZONATOR. It is a music software plug in on the basis of the music programming environment MAX/MSP. SCHWARZONATOR helps creating complex harmonic structures for the computer musician. It can also help interacting with instrumentalists and led to another major discussion about the use of the computer as a musical instrument. More software like this will be written by Henrik in the future to expand the performance and improvisation possibilities given by computers today.
Henrik already worked with the Chicago based Jazz trio ETHNIC HERITAGE ENSEMBLE on live performances earlier in his career with gigs in Bordeaux and Chicago etc. His most recent Live duo project together with world-famous Jazz virtuoso BUGGE WESSELTOFT from Norway happened at several venues all over Europe in 2009 with gigs in Berlin, Oslo, the Jazz Festival Montreux and others. It is about the free improvisation between a laptop and a grandpiano played by two musicians who both have a great knowledge from the other one’s musical background. 2010 took the duo to a sold out London’s Royal Festival Hall with more gigs in 2010 for example at the Philharmonic Hall Cologne or the Norway Numusic festival and many other venues around the globe. WESSELTOFT & SCHWARZ DUO album will be released in June 2011 worldwide through UNIVERSAL/JAZZLAND.
A CRITICAL MASS (H. Schwarz, Âme, Dixon) wrote a new scoring of the black and white horror movie classic “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari” which was performed live by the group at the Jetztmusik Festival in Mannheim early 2010. The future looks bright as we will see more of his one-of-a-kind remixes and remarkable releases in the near future, more collaborations with Bugge Wesseltoft, Dan Berglund (E.S.T.), percussion legend Guem, Jesse Rose as Black Rose more Live shows!
2011 his duo ensemble with norwegians famous jazz artist BUGGE WESSELTOFT, a grammy honoured pianist, got signed to Universal Music. They are performing to a mixed audience of jazz and electronic music lovers at concerthalls like Royal Festival Hall, Philharmonic Halls and international jazzfestivals.
Bugge Wesseltoft
is a border crosser and is considered one of the most innovative jazz pianists of today. His collaborations with DJs like Henrik Schwarz and experiments with electronic music have made him known far beyond the jazz scene. In the early 90s, Wesseltoft became a leading figure in a radical new conception of jazz in the Norwegian progressive jazz scene around musicians such as Nils Petter Molvær and Eivind Aarset. He called his groundbreaking project "New Conceptions of Jazz", in which he incorporated house, techno, ambient and noise elements into jazz with partly free improvisations. Wesseltoft's lyrical and melodic playing, however, always remains at the centre of his art. And it is precisely this facet with which he has made a name for himself, especially on ACT: the Christmas album "It's Snowing On My Piano" from 1997 presents him solo in an intimate, acoustic setting. In 2012, the continuation of this special, aesthetic line in Wesseltoft's work appeared, so to speak: The album "Last Spring", created in collaboration with the classical Norwegian violinist and violist Henning Kraggerud. On this album, too, there is a recourse to Norwegian folk tunes, but also to classical works - by Edvard Grieg, for example - which lead into sustained, minimalist meditations.
“There is no musician or artist in the world that is not inspired by others. However, the important thing is to let inspiration develop, to work towards finding a unique means of personal expression.
This is what I believe and is what I have always tried to achieve … to find my own thing, my own voice. I dont want to be another carbon copy of any great musician, past or present: I don’t see the point of that. There have been so many good things done before, but one must find ones own sound.” (Bugge Wesseltoft)
Since the early 1990´s Bugge Wesseltoft has made an impressive, truly post-modern transistion from his ECM nordic jazz traditions. Playing and recording together with the likes of Jan Garbarek, Sids el Endresen, Terje Rypdal, Nils Petter Molvaer, Jon Eberson to forming his own innovative New Conception Of Jazz group and exquisite label “Jazzland Recordings”.
Wesseltoft is multi-decorated with critics prizes for creating a unique, fresh blend of “modern jazz”.
