Bernhard Günter – A Short Biography

Bernhard Günter, born 1957 in Irlich, Germany, begins his musical life playing the drums at age 12, then changes to electric guitar at 17. He moves to Paris in 1980, where he takes up auto-didactic studies of contemporary composition techniques in the libraries of IRCAM and the Centre Pompidou, and attends Pierre Boulez's lectures at IRCAM and Collège de France.

Returning to Germany in 1986, he starts working on computer-based music in 1987; after four years of preparation and one year of work he releases his influential first CD 'Un Peu de Neige Salie' (1993), followed by 'Détails Agrandis' (1994). In 1995, he founds his own label, trente oiseaux. During the following decade, Günter releases numerous CDs and performs his music around the globe. 'Un Peu de Neige Salie' is listed as one of the "Top 100 Albums that set the World on Fire" by The Wire, one of his works receives an Honorable Mention at the 1999 PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA.

After a decade of composing electroacoustic music, Günter re-discovers his interest in playing instruments and improvised music in 2004. He records two albums that combine pre-recorded electroacoustic basis tracks and improvisation with Graham Halliwell and Mark Wastell under the name of +minus, and an entirely improvised album with Reinhold Friedl and Michael Vorfeld, playing a self-devised string instrument he calls the electric cellotar. Both trios also perform live concerts.

In 2005, Günter adds various bamboo flutes, the shakuhachi and the xiao among others, to his sound palette, and begins exploring a middle course between composition and improvisation that uses multi-tracking, editing, and arranging improvised parts that are exchanged between artists through the mail. The first result of this approach (which Günter calls 'compovisation') is the release of Ataraxia (2005) in collaboration with Heribert Friedl, followed by Trans (2006).

Günter began playing the clarinet in mid-2006, using it for a through-the-mail collaboration project with guitarist Gary Smith. Günter and Smith have formed a duo and given it the name of Klangstaub; in Klangstaub, Günter plays clarinet, alto clarinet, pocket trumpet, duduk and bass duduk, acoustic baritone guitar, and contributes live looping and mixing to the duo. He continues exploring the synthesis of composition and improvisation, incorporating live sound processing and looping as a means for the formal organization of 'instant compositions'.

Klangstaub has recorded a body of improvised music in July and November 2007, and March 2008; their first concert took place at no.signal @ Wire 25 festival – AvantJazz in London on 17 November 2007. Günter also played and recorded with the French improvisation ensemble SAP(e) in Montpellier in February 2008.

In order to ensure his artistic independence regardless of economic considerations, Günter works part time as an English teacher in adult education, and as a translator. In his free time, he enjoys reading, photography, and mountain biking.

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