soflute » Flute

Jean-Christophe Spinosi drives me crazy

soflute — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:58:42 +0000

A friend of mine introduced me to Spinosi’s interpretation of Vivaldi’s Op. 439 “La notte” – I found it amazing and fresh. Thus I want to share this amazing pice of music with you:

(Unfortunately I could not find the scores for the Vivaldi online beside this one at Google Books which is quite restricted.)

Also check out this Telemann interpretation (TWV 52:e1): which is as impressive as the Vivaldi above.

“Der Besondere Kuss” short movie from KDJ festival

soflute — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:44 +0000

The Kino Dynamique Jena (KDJ) festival offered a spot for filmmakers from all over the world to meet and work together producing short movies. They got 60 hours of time for developing an initial idea, filming, cutting, post-processing and presenting the movies in a public screening at the Schillerhof cinema – plenty of time so to say
Nico Herzog came up with the Idea to visualize the flute playing and the sounds coming from the instrument. Izabela Spaleniak and me used the opportunity to help out Nico playing a improvised voiceless dialog with our flutes. The title “Der Besondere Kuß” actually originates from an article by Arthur Schopenhauer, who stated that the flute player’s lips actually form the shape of a special gentle kiss rather for a beloved one than for an instrument. Probably, this is one reason for the very special relation between flautists and their instruments – I like that idea

See the result:

Thank you Iza, Nico and Mathias for your support and of course: Thanks to the people who organized the festival!

Also have a look at some other movies produced at the festival here!

Back from Denmark – Compagnie Aquanaut Tour 2009 with “Pirate Queens”

soflute — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:26:42 +0000

I am back from the 2009 tour of “Compagnie Aquanaut” where I was playing flute and EWI at the this years show “Pirate Queens”.

View Compagnie Aquanaut 2009 – “Pirate Queens” Tour in a larger map
Just let me put some pictures here:

Klangvölle: Freeze Police

soflute — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:01:56 +0000

Recorded by Martin Hünniger, Mathias Krauß and Stephan in May 2009.

Download audio file (Freeze%20Police.mp3)

“Freeze Police” is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.

Klangvölle: HammaKlavier

soflute — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:58:00 +0000

Recorded by the Dandy Desmond Doping Tour (Martin Hünniger/guitar, Stephan Hepper/flute and Jörg Breitbart/piano) in December 2008.

Download audio file (HammaKlavier.mp3)

“HammaKlavier” is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.

J.S. Bach, Matthäus-Passion, Nr. 57&58 “Er hat uns allen wohlgetan”, “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben” BWV244

soflute — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:34:30 +0000

Recitativo:

Er hat uns allen wohlgetan.
Den Blinden gab er das Gesicht,
die Lahmen macht er gehend;
er sagt’ uns seines Vaters Wort,
er trieb die Teufel fort;
Betrübte hat er aufgericht’t
er nahm die Sünder auf und an;
sonst hat mein Jesus nichts getan.

Aria:

Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben, aus Liebe,
aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
Von einer Sünde weiß er nichts, nichts, von einer Sünde weiß er nichts.

daß das ewige Verderben und die Strafe des Gerichts nicht auf meiner Seele bliebe.
Aus Liebe, aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
von einer Sünde weiß er nichts, nichts, von einer Sünde weiß er nichts.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben

Download Score from Werner Icking’s Archive

Bamboo Headjoint in buddhist Caves, Pune (India)

soflute — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:12:00 +0000

Few years ago I was traveling through India. While being on a trip around Pune I was visiting some old buddhist caves near Mulshi Lake with some frieds of Mystic Village. At that time I was into experiencing the sound capabilities of this instrument and also experimented with bamboo as an alternative material making flute headjoints.

The sweetness and expressive sound of the Indian Bansuri esp. in the low registers touched me in a way that no other modern concert flute ever did before. And I’m not the only one being impressed by that sound: later (just to do some advertising here) I a had some email conversation with Matti Kähönen from Matit Flutes and he too stated that the sound characteristics of the Indian Bamboo flutes, which might be a result of the fibre structure of the material, actually brought him into experimenting with carbon fibres to build his amazing Matit flutes.

So back to the caves: Their rich reverb brought me to do some recordings with my prototype bamboo headjoint mounted on my 200EUR Thomann flute:
Download audio file (bamboo.mp3)

Now here is some recording of a simular improvisation in the same room using the standart metal headjoint of the flute.
Download audio file (silver.mp3)

The intonation is not where it should be I admit, and actually that’s the point why I stopped investigating in that direction but still I do believe it was just my lack of craftsmanship rather than a fault of the material. So still I’m looking for a flute maker able to perfect my early experimental approches with bamboo headjoints.