Markus Stauss was born on September 10, 1954 in Basle where he passes all steps to social incorporation from kindergarten (in Riehen) up to his Bachelor degree and the first semester at the Basle University, where he is taking history courses. He enrols in his obligatory military service at the French speaking Swiss-French border town Vallorbe in the Swiss Jura mountains. Follows his primary teacher diploma in Basle; he teaches there ever since, at present as an advanced level part time teacher, teaching music, math and some natural science.He begins his own musical education in 1972, taking flute lessons with G. Marini (until 1975). Later he enrols in a music teaching education program for primary school level (1974-1976). The same year he takes up saxophone courses with R. Fisch, in 1977 changing to Ch. Bader, where in addition to the saxophone lessons he picks up the basics in theory of music. In 1991 he turns to Franziska Heiniger for recorder lessons in Medieval and Renaissance music. In a self taught manner he conducts studies in the development of Hard Rock, Free Jazz and Jazz Rock, as well as in that of medieval music.
At that time he starts his own and quite diversified music teaching activity as classroom teacher for music, is involved in developing teaching curricula for the midlevel student classes and also in continued education for music teachers, but also a saxophone teacher at Hug, Basle and in private. He is approaching his public also by sharing his historic and theoretical knowledge, lecturing about Hard Rock, Jazz Rock and Free Jazz.
Interview with Markus Stauss, march 2010.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : How did your adventures with music begin, did you have any musical training or are you self-taught?
Markus Stauss : 1970 - Unsatisfied of listening music only I bought a bamboo flute and started playing. No score no theory just improvising, inventing the music anew. In many ways this bamboo flute was a little limited, so I bought other flutes with different tuning and sound colour. After a while I began to play a "real" flute and took lessons for 3 years in classical music. Instead of practice the exercises and tunes for the flute lessons I improvised a lot with rock bands. Then I got in love with the sound of saxophones and bought my first alto sax. My flute teacher didn't understand the world anymore and I stopped the flute lessons. I took sax lessons (classical music) for one year and later some theory lessons in jazz. That was it; the rest was practicing and listening music of any kind. Oh, I almost forgot, 20 years ago I played recorder for a while and I had some lessons how to play medieval and renaissance music with this instrument.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : What music genres do you yourself listen to, and is there some kind of music that inspires you?
Markus Stauss : I listen what is called Avant-garde, medieval, rock of any kind, Jazz-Rock, some fusion as long it's not too sweet, free jazz, free improvised music. Aside this I listen music from musicians I once played with and music from MySpace friends they exchange CDs with me. Since my music (albums / bands / projects) gets compared with the music of bands I never heard about, I listen the music of these bands to hear what is all about and to know what the reviewers are talking about. This way I learned that this style is called "Prog" (with its sub genres). I don't like this term "Prog", it even sounds silly to me! At the end of the 60th we called it just "intelligent rock music that demands a good listen".
I get inspiration from visionary composers and monster players, the more these are aside of any mainstream the more it evokes my interest.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : If you should mention 10-15 records that have meant something to you and your music, what would they be?
Markus Stauss : When I have a look at my collection of vinyl albums and CDs I recognize that there are +/- 75 composers, bands and musicians I don't want miss. From each of these I owe at least 2 – 3 albums I cannot decide which one is the best. This says that I am talking about 150 – 225 records. Under these circumstances I have to stretch the list to 25! I make a very "personal" selection strictly from the point of view "have meant something to me and my music AND STILL ARE MEANINGFUL" not regarding the importance these albums have for the (mainstream-) history of music. Could be there are some quite shocking items in this list:
1) Jimi Hendrix "Band of Gypsys" (LP Polydor 2480005)
2) The Doors "Absolutly Live" (2LP Elektra EKS 9002)
3) Frank Zappa "Hot Rats" (LP Reprise Records RS 6356)
4) Man "Do You Like It Here Now?" (LP United Artists UAS 29236)
5) Cream "Wheels of Fire" (2LP Polydor 2658 110)
6) Wolfgang Dauner's Et Cetera (LP Global Records 6306 901)
7) Wolfgang Dauner "Output" (LP ECM 1006)
8) Mahavishnu Orchestra "Birds of Fire" (LP CBS S 65321)
9) The Tony Williams Lifetime "(turn it over)" (CD reissue Verve 314 539 118-2)
10) The Tony Williams Lifetime "Emergency!" (CD reissue Verve 314 539 117-2)
11) Jan Garbarek – Arild Andersen – Edward Vesala "Triptykon" (LP ECM 1029)
12) Jan Garbarek – Bobo Stenson – Terje Rypdal – Arild Andersen – Jon Christensen "Sart" (LP ECM 1015)
13) Gato Barbieri "The Third World" (CD reissue RCA – BMG 7 4321 1257 582 european edition)
14) Albert Ayler "Witches & Devils" (LP Freedom FLP 40101 Polydor 2383 089)
15) Art Ensemble of Chicago "Nice Guys" (LP ECM 1126)
16) Jimmy Lyons / Sunny Murray "Jump up / What to do about" (2LP hat Hut Records TWENTYONE 2R21)
17) King Crimson "Beat" (LP EG diffuse par Polydor 2311 156)
18) Guillaume Dufay "Missa Caput", Clemencic Consort (LP harmonia mundi France HMA 996)
19) Dimthings & Jean Chaine, Ulterior Lux "Those Unforgetable Shaman" (LP Thingsflux Music TF – 504)
20) Ioculatores "Songs and Dances of the 13th to 15th Centuries" (CD Raumklang RK 9301)
21) Edgard Varèse "The Complete Works", Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble, Riccardo Chailly (2CD DECCA 460 208-2)
22) Morton Feldman "the viola in my life" (CD reissue New World Records 80657-2)
23) Luigi Nono "Como una ola de fuerza y luz / … sofferte onde serene … / Contrappunto dialettico alla mente", Maurizio Pollini, Slavka Taskova, Nino Antonellini, Claudio Abbado (CD Deutsche Grammophon, 20th Century Classics 423 248-2
24) Fausto Romitelli "Professor Bad Trip", ictus (CD cypress records CYP 5620)
25) Harrison Birtwistle "Theseus Game / Earth Dances", Ensemble Modern, Martyn Brabbins & Pierre-André Valade, Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Pierre Boulez (CD Deutsche Grammophon 20-21 00289 477 0702)
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : You are in my ears a musician who is in constant movement and going in many different directions from track to track and from release to release. Where do you get your ideas from and what is your secret (if you have one)?
Markus Stauss : Yes, when you have a look at this list of albums I mentioned right now as meaningful for me and my music, it's obvious that I must be in constant movement and going in many different directions. The adventure "music" becomes more and more exiting and when I look in different directions it makes me even more hungry to check things out: Adventurers like / with somnambulate certainty / penetrating massive thicket / digging hidden treasures / extracting fascinating preciousness is the motto since a long time yet.
I let the music flow in many directions by improvising a lot with my main instrument the tenor sax. This way I find patterns, scales, melodies, short riffs, ideas how to get structure into a tune, improvisation concepts et alii. I write down what sounds interesting to me and evaluate it by improvising again and some of the material gets enlarged e.g. a little riff may become a real melody. It's a long process until a new tune is born. Some fragments wait for years until, all of a sudden, something is moving forwards and from time to time I throw many notes into the waste-paper basket to create more space. When the major part of a composition or and improvisation concept is finished, I begin to think about which band could play this.
IMPORTANT: the basis of my music is this:
A) Sound, tone colour of different qualities and the subjective perceptions
B) Textures, patterns, stratum overlays (stratifications). These occur during
a) composition, b) improvisation, c) interaction of composition & improvisation and d) dissociation, produced by diverging playing instructions
C) Energies in different states of matter, changes of these states, the emergence of new energies just because of these changes.
Going into different directions I never think in categories of music genres. All twists and turns you hear in my music, e.g. let a mood flow or cut it abruptly, happen with the intention to change "energy", "textures" and "sound colours" in many different ways. They are never eclectic citations of styles. The often-used expression "stylistic crossover" relates to sound occurrences that explicitly belong to a style, the change to another sound occurrence may be perceived as a change in style; stylistic featuring is happening in the listener’s head, they are listening habitudes.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : Are you a full time musician are music your second job ?
Markus Stauss : I work a 70% day job teaching music and mathematics. This gives me the independence to develop my music without regard for commercial success.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : If a new listener were about to buy his first recording with your music, which one would you recommend as the best introduction to your amazing music?
Markus Stauss : The best starter is SPALTKLANG "Surprise" because it contains material (riffs, melodies, tunes) from a long period: 1978 until 2003. All this material has undergone a radical treatment during 2003. I incorporated new musical material into the compositions, expanded the arrangements polytonally, changed improvisation concepts and structures of the selected tunes to developed complete new compositions. Therefore all tunes appear almost completely unrecognisable from any existing or non-existing “original” version. This is a technique I like very much and I work in a similar way on the compositions for my other projects too.
SPALTKLANG "Surprise" evoked great enthusiasm; unfortunately it is almost out of print, few copies left here and there.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : Your music is hard to put in any musical boxes, because it has so many different styles mixed with each other. In my opinion you belong in the progressive/rock/jazz part of the music world. Do you agree with that? And what are your opinions on that genre, and genres in general?
Markus Stauss : Concerning the "style discussion" I refer to what I said before about the many different directions in my music and what I call "the basis of my music". Of course most people think in different styles to have a starting point to discuss music with each other. Regarding this, yes, to put me in the progressive/rock/jazz part of the music world is OK to get an idea how my music could probably sound.
As I said before, personally I have not interest in genre names at all. I make distinctions into "music that evokes my interest" and "music that evokes boredom". Other distinctions I use are "improvised music", "written music", music for big or small ensembles, ethnic music, music that demands to be called "art", music played with instruments we associate with "rock", "jazz" and "classical". When I started playing, we only had the distinctions "pop", "rock", "jazz" and "classical" an it worked. Why to create new terms and expressions that only add to the general confusion? Which confusion you may ask? Just this: the genre expression "progressive/rock/jazz" (what I understand as "prog and its subgenres") opens a wide field: post rock, avant rock, free rock, classical prog, jam rock, AOR, RIO, Canterbury, retro prog, chamber rock, jazz-rock, fusion, art pop, punk jazz … Enough confusion or did I miss some expressions?
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : At your concerts and on your records as well, how much is improvised and how much is planned before you start?
Markus Stauss : This differs from concert to concert and from record to record as well. It depends on the musicians I play with. A band with improvisers will improvise more than a band with mainly classical academic musicians or rockers used to play every tune the way it has to be played to satisfy the listeners' expectations. To name my current projects: ZAUSS is 95% improvised, the music of TZGIV is 70% improvised (maybe less) and SPALTKLANG is 70 % composed (more or less, it depends on the album or the set we play at a concert).
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : What's your best advice for young aspiring musicians, who want to make it in the progressive music world or any world for that matter?
Markus Stauss : If they can afford to do it about economical reasons: Be yourself and lick nobody's ass. Stretch out to play with good players, become a composer or work with interesting composers.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : Could you tell us a little about all you different projects?
Markus Stauss : SPALTKLANG was born in 2001 when I had the idea to create with modern instruments what in medieval times was called a "broken consort" (Spaltklang – "split sound" is the German word for it) - a band composed of wind (saxes) and pluck instruments (Stephan Brunner: electric bass) and strings (Olivier Vogt: viola and violin) including a percussion unit (Rémy Sträuli: drums). This ensemble was to play music by ÜBERFALL and ECHOES (Stauss-Anliker-Kayser-Vogt) which never have been recorded previously as well as to play the original score of compositions they have been performed in a “low budget 3 – piece version” until now only. In the meanwhile the new albums (the 3rd "Lontano" and the 4th "en Suite") contain new compositions instead of remakes of older material. It's the project we play mostly composed music with some splashes of improvisations.
NEOLITHICUM: In 2004 I released an album with this title, playing bass saxophone solo & extras. The extras were VERY old electronic devices: a Korg digital delay SDD 3000 and an Akai sampler S 612 (one of the first samplers ever made) which I played with a Yamaha WX 11 digital horn (from which I did not to use the Yamaha sounds). In 2005 I extended this project with Francesco Zago (leader of YUGEN) to become NEOLITHICUM DUO. Aside of playing guitar Francesco took the part of the extras by looping my sax as well as his guitar and I didn't play the extras anymore. In the meanwhile NEOLITHICUM is myself playing the bass saxophone solo without any devices.
ZAUSS is the new name for NEOLITHICUM DUO about the reason that our duo sounds different now: We begun to play mainly free improvisations and I play other saxes too aside the bass saxophone. Sometimes I even play soprano sax exclusively as you may hear on our album "neulich neben der Grenze". And we invite guest musicians from time to time.
TRANK ZAPPA GRAPPA IN VARESE? (TZGIV) is a Belgian / Swiss ensemble featuring Michel Delville (The Wrong Object, douBt, etc), Damien Campion (The Friendly Dogs, Belch', Ma petite robe rouge, etc) and Laurent Delchambre (The Wrong Object, The Friendly Dogs, etc). We play tunes of mine that work fine when we open them up with extended, mainly collective improvisations. It's a rather wild music and in a review on our album "More Light" I could read what sounds very appropriate to me: " ... The compositions are difficult to confine to any single genre. Diverse influences (ranging from modern jazz and esoteric rock to medieval strains) crash and collide to form curious structures of dazzling charisma. The general mood is modern, though, while the vivacity of the performance spawns a breathless appreciation. If sound could generate light, this music would need to be appreciated wearing sunglasses."
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?
Markus Stauss : Funny: It was at a ÜBERFALL concert. The band started the second set in a illegal underground club, playing a long and grooving intro, while I still was talking with someone in the audience. This guy didn't stop talking to me, even when I got the cue to enter the stage he followed me talking and talking about saxophones without a break. All of a sudden he recognized that he stays on stage, still talking to me while I was playing already. Then he was frightened and surprised and he left the stage. The audience loved that funny situation.
Worst: A gig with an ensemble mixed up with all kind of musicians, improvisers, academic musicians and others. One of the musicians wrote a minimal music piece for this ensemble. While we were playing the composer lost the orientation in his tune, he forgot how to conduct his own tune, his cues were unclear … this way the tune stretched out to become a 10 minute piece instead of 4 minutes, very embarrassing, maybe the composer was drunk.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : Where do you see yourself in 5 years, still making music for the masses?
Markus Stauss : I continue with what I am doing. Making music I don't think in terms of "how many years", not regarding how many people listen my music. There are long time fans that wait hungry for every new release and more and more people begin to discover and estimate my music. Just for these I compose and improvise music.
Jazz/Prognet Denmark : Finally, what are your plans for the future and what will be the next release from your many projects?
Markus Stauss : 1) I work on a new project with Francesco Zago related to ZAUSS, nevertheless it will contain some world novelties. We checked some new compositions, fragments and ideas for improvisations some weeks ago with Paolo Botta (vintage keyboards) and Valerio Cipollone (bass clarinet, soprano sax). I want enrich this ensemble with bass and drums and probably with other instruments. Of course the whole thing should become available on an album, played live in the studio, no cheating as many prog bands do (!!!). The schedule is not fix so far.
2) At these days I work on my participation for the next album of YUGEN and for the first album of Yugen's keyboard player Paolo Botta. On both albums I'll play bass, contralto and tenor sax.
3) Thinking forward to some gigs and new tunes with TZGIV.
4) I have some ideas for small ensembles, duo and / or trio, playing improvised music with little composed fragments. Maybe a rebirth of ULTERIOR LUX …
5) Let's see what's going on with FINNEGANS WAKE and the collaboration with Henry Krutzen.
6) Keeping Fazzul Music alive to make sure that some of these ideas will get adequate released.
Markus Stauss, Basel 13. 03. 2010