DÖRNER • BEYER • RUPP • WAGNER

improvised & experimental music at the Kühlspot Social Club

Axel Dörner is a German trumpeter, pianist, and composer. Dörner studied piano in the Dutch town Arnhem (1988–89) and at the Music Academy in Cologne (1989–1996). From 1991 he studied trumpet with Malte Burba, and during his studies he collaborated with trumpeter Bruno Light as the "Street Fighters Duo". The duo expanded to form the "Street Fighters Quartet" and the "Street Fighters Double Quartet", with members including Matthias Schubert, Bruno Leicht, and Claudio Puntin. He formed the "Axel Dörner Quartet" with Frank Gratkowski, Hans Schneider, and Martin Blume, and played with saxophonist Matthias Petzold on the albums "Lifelines" and "Psalmen Und Lobgesänge". Dörner has lived in Berlin since 1994 and is an integral part of the Berlin scene of new improvisational and experimental music. Besides playing solo and in his trio "TOOT" (with Phil Minton and Thomas Lehn), he has played with artists such as Otomo Yoshihide and in groups such as "Die Anreicherung" (with Christian Lillinger, Håvard Wiik, and Jan Roder), Ig Henneman Sextet, Ken Vandermark's Territory-Band, Hedros (with Mats Gustafsson, Günter Christmann, Barry Guy, and others), and the "London Jazz Composers' Orchestra". A versatile musician, he is also able to work in idiomata such as bebop. He played on pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach's album "Monk's Casino", featuring interpretations of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk.
https://axeldoerner.org/

Kriton Beyer is a Greek-German musician and composer, who – as a performer and improviser – mainly works with the harmonium and the daxophone. He studied musicology in Greece where he collaborated with a variety of local music groups as well as musicians like Sakis Papadimitriou and Floros Floridis.
In 2004 he moved to Berlin, where he got heavily involved in the improvised music scene of the city.
Since then, he has worked with many musicians like Phil Minton, Kalle Kalima, Axel Dörner, Kresten Osgood, Tristan Honsinger, Tomomi Adachi, Richard Scott, Willi Kellers, Matthias Bauer, Antonis Anissegos, Olaf Rupp, Els Vandeweyer, Harri Sjöström, Nicola Hein and Liz Allbee, dancers like Yuko Kaseki and visual artists like Akiko Nakayama. Kriton Beyer is a member of the electroacoustic trio “uproot”, the ensembles “Redox Reaction”, “AEAEA” and the “Berlin Soundpainting Orchestra”.
In his work with the harmonium, Kriton Beyer uses both the natural sound of his instrument and “traditional” playing techniques as well as preparations, objects and extended techniques, while his daxophone play is characterized by a very personal musical and sonic aesthetic, and an unconventional technique, sometimes also supported by the subtle use of electronics. As an improvising musician, he has performed throughout Europe. His compositions are usually characterized by conceptualism.
Kriton Beyer has also conceived and commissioned the music software CinePrompt®, which was specially developed for the use for live musical performance and live recording to films.
He also curates and manages the concert series and record label “The Procrustean Bed”, dedicated to Experimental Improvised Music.
www.kritonbeyer.com

Olaf Rupp is a German guitarist working in the field of improvised music.
Rupp started playing the guitar at the age of twelve and is a self-taught musician. From 1987 to 1992 he studied linguistics at Saarland University. At the beginning of the 1990s he mainly played improvised pop music in duos with drummer Hanno Leichtmann (EmakBakia), later with Stephan Mathieu (Stol).
In 1993 Rupp moved to Berlin, where he met musicians such as Rudi Mahall, Paul Lovens, Johannes Bauer, Cecil Taylor, Harri Sjöström and Wolfgang Fuchs. In 1998 he participated in Butch Morris' FMP production Conducts Berlin Skyscraper '95 as part of the Total Music Meeting. In 1998 his first solo album September was released on the GROB label in Cologne, followed in 1999 by the CD Life Science on the FMP label and in 2000 a solo appearance at the Total Music Meeting. In 2002 he recorded the album Weird Weapons with bassist Joe Williamson and drummer Tony Buck for the EMANEM label. In 2009 his solo album Whiteout was released on FMP. He has also toured with Lol Coxhill, Marino Pliakas, Michael Wertmüller, Shoji Hano, John Zorn, Paul Lovens, Martin Schmidt and Thomas Lehn in Russia, Japan and many European countries. He plays in the HDRS quartet with Axel Dörner, Tristan Honsinger and Oliver Steidle.
Rupp's way of holding the guitar in an upright position is inspired by Chinese pipa players. He integrated techniques such as rasgueados, tremolos and arpeggios into his playing in order to achieve overtone and cluster effects.
www.audiosemantics.de

Eliad Wagner is an Israeli composer, performer, sound artist and lecturer, a classically trained musician, holding academic degrees in physics and music. His musical activities explore the meeting point of composition and performance while addressing thoughts on the vocabulary of electronic music, autonomous processes, intention and attention in audio culture, and people’s natural relationship with technology.
In 2012 Wagner relocated to Berlin, where he quickly became an active member of the city’s experimental music scene as a performer of live electronic music (playing the modular synthesizer) as well as composing for small ensembles and installations. He is co-founder of and regularly contributing composer to the electro-acoustic ensemble ‘Circuit Training’. As a performer he worked with artist such as Ignaz Schick, Marta Zapparoli, Wolfgang Seidel, Alexi Borisov, Tristan Honsinger, Olaf Rupp, Els Vandeweyer, Emilio Gordoa, Andre Vida, Richard Scott, Alexandre Babel, Tomomi Adachi, Dean Roberts, Andrea Parkins and Robyn Schulkowsky.
Since 2015, He is the head of the Electronic Music Production and Performance degree programme at the Catalyst Institute for Creative Arts and Technology in Berlin- an international, diverse, genre-agnostic academic programme he has designed to train students in composition and performance of electronic music.
https://eliadwagner.com/

DÖRNER / BEYER / RUPP / WAGNER

Axel Dörner, trumpet
Kriton Beyer, daxophone
Olaf Rupp, electric guitar
Eliad Wagner, modular synthesizer

A highly developed individual musical language delivered on an augmented trumpet, an obscure melodic instrument called the daxophone, completely genre-free playing on the electric guitar and a modular synthesizer played with extraordinary musicality.