Sonic Biosystem: Nik Bartsch's Ronin

"POPPING" AND "LOCKING" are moves associated with breakdancing. But there are also movements that describe Nik Bartsch's Ronin. The Swiss pianist makes self-described "ritual groove music" and "Zen funk," but it could also be tagged as "breakdance jazz."

Bartsch's new CD, "Holon" (ECM), features interlocking motifs from piano, bass, drums, percussion and reed instruments that pop, lock, spin and twirl in all sorts of acoustic boogaloo. During the course of six titles dubbed "Modul" and numbered (e.g., "Modul 41_17") to reflect their place in the creative process, a la classical music, the experimental Ronin band captures the wandering warrior spirit from which it takes its name.

While Bartsch's last Ronin CD, "Stoa," featured some Fender Rhodes keyboard, for "Holon" he sticks to the piano, giving his nuanced and hypnotic tunes a more organic origin. The band acts like a musical biosystem, too, shifting as one like water rushing over a fall, or pushing and pulling against the rhythms, melodies and harmonies like countercurrents in a stream.

But for all the natural-world vibes, this is urban-rooted music, planted in minimalist funk. As Bartsch says in the liner notes: "To me music is an art of motion, and thus akin to dancing."

In other words, Shabba Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp would love Nik Bartsch.

Nik Bartsch's Ronin performs Monday night at Blues Alley, and Express spoke with the pianist about the natural world, human movement, martial arts, modular music, discipline and ECM Records head honcho Manfred Eicher.

» EXPRESS: Scandinavian musicians are asked the following question all the time — and they are sick of it. But I hear the same sort of openness and wide-sky approach to your music that I hear in Nordic jazz. So I'll sheepishly ask you anyway: How does nature influence your music?
» BARTSCH: I was just talking about this with the Norwegian pianist Christian Wallumrod. I don't think the question is wrong, but I think it's very difficult to answer because in musics like jazz and funk, the urban context is also very important. So when I started thinking about my music, actually nature did not play such a big role. But in the last years, [my] thinking of space touched [on] the sorts of landscapes [out there], not only of urban spaces and energies. I think of the archaic [mountain] landscapes in Switzerland. Also especially water and rivers and rains and stuff like that have, of course, impacted [me]. I also often listen to rain.

To exactly describe what in the music is comparable to nature — to nature energy to nature spaces — is often very difficult. But when I walk on the lake here in Zurich, or on the water in the river, I think of several levels of interlocking light, flowing water and the different streams in the river and the waves, and how they all influence each other. It's a very interesting scenario, and it touched me very deep, especially water. But to describe exactly how it influenced the music is very difficult to describe.

» EXPRESS: In an interview with Modern Drummer magazine, Ronin's drummer, Kaspar Rast, described the band as "a musical biosystem." Since the current album is fully acoustic, now that you've dropped the Fender Rhodes piano, is this another example of becoming more "natural," more organic — a sonic biosphere?
» BARTSCH: The hands craft, the really art side, the practical art side, is really very important. Of course, I listen to a lot of electronic music and drum 'n' bass, and also work myself with the computer — not live, and not really on synthesizers, because I think that's an instrument itself; you have really to work on it to find your sounds and so on. And I know how to handle the computer, and I also sometimes compose on the computer, and often the computer is a very good thing to try out some interlocking [musical motifs] and stuff. But to play, it's very important that the movement of a human being, also of animals or plants, like bamboo trees in the wind — these movements inspire me a lot. People who dance — or also in sports — if you watch how they move, these things are very inspiring for me in the moment, and that came more and more [influential].

So I totally believe in performing and live playing.

Especially in the martial arts, this mixture of being in the moment — being relaxed and having a tension — is something very inspiring and a thing on which you can work lifelong. I think in our music, this intuitive going together, growing together, moving together — and also playing with each other and also against — is something very lively and inspiring. And when you use computers or loops and stuff like that, you're in a bit of a cave. ... I'm interested in a music that is made live — that sounds maybe influenced by different [electronic] musical styles — but a lot of the music that is created on the computer you can also create on the piano and the bass and the drums with filters made by your hands.

» EXPRESS: Why did you decide to go with the numerical naming system for your songs?
» BARTSCH: First of all, it's simple. In older forms of music you have this numbering through of the pieces just to show more or less when they were written. But I often find in [modern] titles of musical pieces already hints for the listener in what direction he or she has to hear. For me, it's very important that the music is kind of like an offering; as a listener you have the possibilities and capacity to find your own visions, your own pictures, your own energies in the music. Not everybody is hearing or feeling the same.

"Modul" is kind of a neutral title, but on the other hand the number allows the piece to be in a context. And the module itself shows a musical way of treating compositions and improvisation; that we're working on a modular system, that we can interpret the tunes with respect for the compositions but also the freedom of improvisation, of micro-phrasing on a tune, is a given.

This tension and balance between composition and improvisation is very important, and I thought this was best described as a modular treatment of everything. Also, combinations appear that we did not know before [when we blend the modules together]. So the music has its own life and sometimes surprises even the composer. Something could happen like "Modul 39_8," which is a combination of an old and a new module.

» EXPRESS: At the Bazillus Club in Zurich, where you hold a residency and develop your music, you know the piano, the environment, know the space. How is it to play this acoustic music — which, funky beats aside, depends heavily on nuance and details — on tour, with a different piano and room each night?
» BARTSCH: That's a very good question, because each piano is very different. But we also have certain kinds of concerts. If you play on a big festival, we play with a monitor system because the music is amplified since the stage is bigger. So this is a challenge for the band.

With this modular music, this band is very capable of changing its space energy. For example, Bazillus Club is quite small, and I recently played a solo acoustic concert on this piano. It's not a brilliant piano, but we worked on it last year very much. It's a small club, it's very intimate, people are listening very close; the energy between audience and player is very direct. When you play on a bigger festival where the music is much more amplified and the audience is more far away, it's also a big challenge because your presence is something else; the whole band organ has a different presence.

I think that all the players have a lot of experience, and that is also an advantage of this band, that it does not only work in a small intimate club, or only in a funk place ... but it's a very flexible organism, and very alive organism, and this maybe is something that is also this ronin spirit, that we are challenged by the situation, and also very interested in finding the space and presence for each place we are playing.

» EXPRESS: Do you do any meditation or martial arts to get in the proper headspace and prepare for your music or concerts?
» BARTSCH: Well, I have to apologize: I was late [for the interview] because I was in aikido training [laughs] and my master made the lesson a big longer than normal. And I could not—and also did not want to leave—before he stopped because sometimes he shows some things and it's very impolite.

I study aikido as much as I can. This is the martial arts discipline that I like most, that gives me the most spiritual and philosophical background — the most challenging energy. As far as meditation, I only do it in a Zen sense, but I'm not a monk. I just do that for myself. And of course, my thing is music; I meditate in my music.

I try to transpose martial movements and techniques to music, to the playing, to my own body, to the musical motifs and patterns. I often watch the patterns I find and look at what potential they have: how they move, how they move together; if you find two patterns, or if you're looking for interesting interlocking cycles. So this idea of how a pattern moves is very important for me, and I think I learned a lot in the past few years from movement techniques like aikido and Feldenkrais, which is a very small movement technique which works with the connection of brain and muscles in a very simple sense. For instance, you try to walk in a good walk; so you try to learn to walk better. Very simple things. And I like that because in the nuances and the subtle details, there is a lot of potential, like you can hear in our music. So ghost notes and little phrasings are very important.

» EXPRESS: You sound very disciplined.
» BARTSCH: I think discipline is a very important thing, to focus on certain things. But openness and a kind of distortion or irony to reflect your own discipline is very important. Because, of course, not everything is planable. But sometimes it's an advantage if you can focus on things and have a focus and stay on it. Because the modern urban world is quite fast and busy and there are a lot of interesting things but also a lot of difficult things. And I think it's very important that the concept of less is more is also [important], but it's not a stiff concept; it's a concept that I need because I'm interested in so many things. I'm so open that I often have to tell myself, "Man, stay focused on your things and your band and your players and your friends." [Laughs] Because then you slowly get deeper into our [band] concept, and it develops very slowly; it needs a lot of attention together, socially.

» EXPRESS: You've working on your musical concept for a while now, but how did the well-defined aesthetics of Manfred Eicher and ECM Records help you realize your vision, or help reshape your vision?
» BARTSCH: Very much, very much. It was inspiring on several levels. First of all, directly on the music. Manfred taught me a lot about piano sounds; about hearing piano in combination with other instruments. Of course, I've played the piano long before I met him, but in some days when we met first item in the studio in France for the first record, "Stoa," in these three days he opened my ears — it was amazing. It helped me a lot to find a new way of listening to the piano and the combination with other sounds. Of course, classical thinking of orchestration was always important to me, but he opened my ears. It was kind of a magic, I must say. In Japan they say, "If you learn, you learn heart to heart." This goes faster than when you're going by the brain. This sounds a bit romantic, but it's meant in the sense that the personality can often, in a few minutes or hours, open your eyes or ears more than when you study it for years somewhere else.

» Blues Alley, 3 Wisconsin Ave. NW; Mon., $20, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; 202-337-4141.

Photos courtesy Nik Bartsch