Daniel Riegler

Compositions 2011

admin — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:14:46 +0000

“Fanfare II” - sound sculpture for Big Band – Premiere on 10.09.2010 by the Jazz Orchestra Vorarlberg. ->Download Score

“Fanfare I” – for 6 performers / improvisers and eight channel PA. – premiered on 08/09/2011 by Gerald Preinfalk, Franz Hautzinger, Andreas Eberle, Lorenz Raab and Daniel Riegler ->Download Score

“Lead Casting” – for two cellos ->Download Score

“18 diphthongs – Miniatures for Paul and Klaus” - for Clarinet and Horn

“Gruntz – for mixed jazz ensemble” - premiered at the Ensemble Studio 11/06/2011 by Dan

Compositions 2010

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“Cardea” – for 13 musicians (version 1) – world premiere on 01.06.2010 by the ensemble Reconsil ->Download Score “Harz” – for cello, trombone and marimba – premiered on 18/12/2010 by the ensemble Studio Dan ->Download Score „Gruntz“ - for Violoncello Solo ->Download Score

Compositions 2009

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“Käfig V” – for cello and electronics – world premiere on 09.04.2009 by Benedikt Leitner and Florian Bogner / Klangforum Vienna ->Download Score

“Haydnarbeit” – for clarinet, trombone cello, percussion, piano and a virtual conductor – premiere on 22.10.2009 by the ensemble szene instrumental

“Dekadenz” - for chamber orchestra and rhythm section – premiered on 09/09/2009 by the Ensemble Studio Dan ->Download Score

“ATTYAN” – version for voice, viola, cello, bassoon and bass clarinet – premiered on 09/09/2009 by the Ensemble Studio Dan

“Hit I” – version 2.1 for ensemble and electronics premiered on 20.02.2009 by the ensemble Studio Dan Swiss Edition ->Download Score

Compositions 2008

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“Etude No. 1″ - for chamber orchestra – world premiere by the ensemble Studio Dan 26/03/2008 by Dan

“Glut” - concept for variable ensemble piece – premiered on 01.04.2008 at the JazzWerkstatt Vienna 2008

“Käfig III” – for chamber orchestra and rhythm section – premiered by the ensemble Studio Dan 26/03/2008 by Dan

“Käfig II” – for Big Band – Premiere on 09.03.2008 by the Big Band Swing Factory Götzis

“Hit V” – for Big Band – Premiere on 03.09.2008 by the Big Band Swing Factory Götzis

“Franz Tanz” – for oboe, double bass and percussion – premiere by Theresa Melichar, Herbert Mayr and Margit Schoberleitner

Artists & Friends

admin — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:37:01 +0000

Peter Ablinger

Robert Bachner

Georg Breinschmid

Viola Falb – Falb Fiction

Joanna Lewis – Köhne Quartett

Raphael Preuschl – Fuzz Noir

Julia Purgina – Ensemble Lux

Winfried Ritsch – algo.mur.at

Peter Rom

Clemens Salesny

Matija Schellander

Wolfgang Schiftner – Kelomat

Ensembles

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Ensemble XX. Jahrhundert

Institutions & Initiatives

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IEM - Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik

MICA – Music Information Center Austria

mur.at - Webserver

SKE-Fonds - Soziale und kulturelle Einrichtungen der Austro Mechana

Wikipedia – Online Lexikon

Presskits

admin — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:59:31 +0000

Fotos by Claudio Casanova

Fotos by Ditz Fejer

DR_CV2011_eng

DR_Presse_engl

Press

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„Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ , 6.2.2010 / Ulrich Ohlshausen

A Pack of Mad Dogs

Vienna Art Orchestra, Nouvelle Cuisine, Jazz Bigband Graz and now this: a group with the unspectacular name of Studio Dan (a takeoff of Frank Zappa’s 1979 album “Studio Tan”). With this band, Austria may now take its place among the world’s leading big band countries – a position not determined by numbers alone but through incisive individual profiles and an overflowing, vital virtuosity throughout. This 18-piece collective (one-third women) invokes in particular the connections between Jazz and New Music, naming among its influences Thelonious Monk, John Cage and Iannis Xenakis. Though he’s not mentioned by name, a six-minute citation from “The Rite of Spring” – among other things – also pays homage to Igor Stravinsky.

The musicians’ biographies read like a compendium of musical curiosity and stylistic giftedness, stretching from recorder lessons to the Vienna Philharmonic, from the baroque violin to hip-hop, from the Volksoper to electronica, from studies in America to a dissertation over aleatory music. A list of the prominent teachers, honors and prizes would fill pages. The entire Austrian experimental music scene shows up in the wildly diverse side projects of the individual band members. The band itself, which has a long-term rehearsal home in the Viennese jazz club Porgy & Bess, is five years old and now – after a preview single – enters the wide world with its real debut, the brilliant double album “Creatures & Other Stuff” (JazzWerkstatt Records/www.crackshop.at). The program, half composed by leader and trombonist Daniel Riegler, the other half mostly by other band members, is pleasantly rounded; taken one by one, though, the single pieces are characterized by an almost jagged diversity. Howling turbulences, twelve-tone ballads, drilling repetitions, brutal clusters, twilit atmospheres, soloistic flights over ragged rock rhythms – or normal swing – a trilling, frayed walz, a dragging piece in which the tones “get lost”, a charming contrapuntal miniature . . . all this havoc is wreaked, with fine plays of color from violin, viola, cello, bassoon, electronics, marimba and the instruments more customary to jazz.

The work is dedicated to David Foster Wallace, whose book Infinite Jest (after three years of translation work now also available in German) has already stimulated many a newspaper supplement. And the dedication is apt: at the very least, the two works of art are united by shrill humor and bizarre border crossings in their respective languages, including a little Dada and Gaga. The writer of the liner notes cuts nicely to the chase: “Why choose simple when you can do it complicated? Complicated is sometimes a lot more interesting than simple.”

„All about jazz“ No.93, January 2010 / Kurt Gottschalk

Globe Unity: Austria

Maybe there’s something in the Austrian water. Or maybe it’s in the Wiener Schnitzel. The nation’s population is just about equal to New York City’s, but it boasts Mozart, Haydn and Mahler and Schoenberg, Berg and Webern among its favorite sons. More recent explorers include Gunther Mueller, Burkhard Stangl, Fennesz and the artists under review here. The small republic has a rich tradition of intelligence and innovation.
(…)
Literary references are to be found in the liner notes, if not the music, of Daniel Riegler’s Creatures & Other Stuff. Tom Gsteiger’s essay mimics (and is dedicated to) David Foster Wallace, the late American novelist whose writing comes fast, long and from all directions. Wallace is a fitting totem for Studio Dan, a young and 18-strong composers orchestra. With half the band contributing compositions, there are more than enough vantages swirling around. Riegler’s “Creatures” occupies the first of the two discs, an eight-section romp that is unpredictable without trying too hard. There’s a bit of circus and theater and a lot of fun, modern big band music. The second half, featuring the other composers, is necessarily more eclectic, pushing at the seams a bit more with some raggedy cabaret, edgier electric pieces, epic attacks and piano laments. (…)

„DER STANDARD“, 4.9.2009 / Andreas Felber

Sitting on fences

Crossing musical borders: A portrait of JazzWerkstatt Wien co-founder Daniel Riegler

Vienna – “In retrospect, I’m glad it took so long. I think the CD came out well partially because we’ve been playing some of the pieces for years and because we’re familiar with the material. You can make a CD quickly these days; for just that reason you’ve got to be precise,” comments Daniel Riegler on the double CD Creatures and other stuff (JazzWerkstatt/Lotus) from his large ensemble, Studio Dan – one of the most exciting groups to come out of the JazzWerkstatt Wien (a successful collective of young Viennese bandleaders which has spawned emulators in Graz, Bern and Berlin since their coming-out in 2005).

Behind Studio Dan lurks a 20-piece sound machine that maneuvers between all genres with ease. There are rifflike big band themes, colorful, pulsing chamber-musical structures and sharply cut patchworks à la John Zorn as well as sound improvisations in the spirit of John Cage, altogether an impressive compositional visiting card: “The music of Studio Dan is a mirror of my musical socialisation.”

The 32-year-old completed a course of study in classical and jazz trombone in Graz and Vienna and has practical experience in both improvisational ensembles and the likes of the Klangforum Wien. The compositions of Giacinto Scelsis (the source of notated improvisation and as such for Riegler a bridge between the two worlds) have also influenced Studio Dan’s music, he says. The ensemble’s name, by the way, is inspired by another great genre-buster: Frank Zappa, specifically his 1979 album Studio Tan.

“In my opinion Zappa didn’t settle on a specific sound or style. The consistence with which he refused to settle is unique, especially since his music never really drifts into simple eclecticism or crossover,” says Riegler. He also sees a connection between his own ensemble and the Vienna Art Orchestra, a group that has mutated into a jazz chamber orchestra in its latest incarnation: “The musicians are more versatile and better educated. After all, for simple economic reasons it’s almost impossible these days to focus on only one thing, like jazz or classical music. And there are less and less people who want that.”

Kleine Zeitung, 16.11.2008 / by Otmar Klammer

In Frank Zappa’s Footsteps

The native Grazer, Daniel Riegler, causes an uproar with his orchestra “Studio Dan”, an ensemble of musicians from opposing stylistic backgrounds.

What is said, remains said: “I have never really liked Graz.” Thus spoke the native-born Grazer, Daniel Riegler, knowing that we would not agree with his sentiment. Of course, that was not the reason why he relocated to Vienna as a youth. (I WOULD LEAVE THIS OUT IN ENGLISH: That would have been the icing on the cake! AND ADD: Oh, no) No, the real and truly mundane reason he left was to study the trombone under Rudi Josel.

At that time Frank Zappa, who always played a “major role” in this young composer’s musical view of the world, had unfortunately already been dead for some years. It was, however, still possible to listen to the records made by this US-anti-law-abiding citizen in Vienna. “Studio Tan”, for example, a ground-breaking recording from 1978, after which Riegler was later to name his 17-head ensemble.

Sensational

As “Studio Dan“ this group, which lives in that agravic space between contemporary jazz and new music, has for the past three years been causing a sensation in our country, particularly since this year when playing their way through Zappa’s central Œuvre as Stage Band for the Viennese Jazz-establishment “Porgy&Bess”.

Riegler – who arranged Zappa’s works specifically for his band and, as a composer, takes Frankie Boys kaleidoscopic cosmos as a starting point – does not, however, intend to appear as a “cover-band”. His aim is rather, together with the widely varying musical personalities in his ensemble, to follow his vision of a “large orchestral plane with a very specific sound”.

Collective new sound-play

Although Riegler is a founding member and one of the masterminds behind the Jazzwerkstatt Wien, this man with a clear voice is certainly not a jazz-musician in the classical sense. And knowing his “personal affinity for new music” – after all, if one studies Zappa, no path avoids Edgar Varèse - this very specific sound can no doubt be found somewhere in the vicinity of collectively improvised new sound-play. If there is a thread running through the distinct compositions of Daniel Riegler, then he would like this thread to be improvisation, and “often his starting point when composing is already improvisation”. Truly zappaesque.

Magazines & Broadcast

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:11:57 +0000

Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Ö1

The Wire