Christian Wolfarth is a Swiss percussionist and improviser, born in Zürich in 1960 and based in Bern since 1981. He has been active in improvised music since the 1980s and is known above all for his acoustic solo work on single drums and cymbals, which he often plays with a bow, with close attention to overtones and fine detail. Wolfarth studied with Billy Lewis Brooks at the Swiss Jazz School (1982-1986), with Pierre Favre in Lucerne (1992-1996) and took composition lessons with Siegfried Kutterer.
Tip! "Whether we experience music as abstract or concrete depends largely on our sensitivity to the richness of perception. Common opinion – often reductive – draws a sharp distinction: music is abstract when it does not “speak,” when it seems diffus…
2016 release **
"This release by Edition Wandelweiser Records collects recent compositions by Katharina Weber, Jack Callahan, Alex Goretzki, and Alfred Zimmerlin, performed by Christian Buck on guitar and Christian Wolfarth on percussion. It opens wi…
Joke Lanz and Christian Wolfarth are two of the most interesting and extreme Swiss improvisers. They combine ritual reductionism with anarchistic playfulness, atmospheric soundscapes with cut-up noise and physicalness with unpredictability. Physical…
"The creative process, a means by which creative work finds its way into realization, has consistently reconfigured its basic principles as the content of art has evolved. The choices we make, the decisions that make sense to us, reveal our nature an…
The improvisational and untraditional piano trio of Michel Wintsch (piano, synthesizers), Christian Weber (bass), and Christian Wolfart (drums) in a fantastic, live performance from Willisau.
The piece consists, as the title suggests, of three parts. Each of these parts contains a so-called large form. These consist of 39 tracks each and are played on deadwood, a drum, and on 39 pine cones, respectively. The note values, the corresponding…
The Box contains all of four 7" vinyl singles from the "acoustic solo percussion" series. It comes with a booklet including texts written by Franz Aeschbacher, Tomas Korber, Nina F. Schneider and Michael Vorfeld, with photos by Christian Wolfarth.
** 2021 Stock ** A typical modern drum set consists of a bass drum, a snare drum, hi-hats, a few toms, and a couple of cymbals. When played as a drum set, the characteristics of each sound combine to create what many people recognize as a single inst…
2021 release ** "Between 2009 and 2011, Swiss percussionist Christian Wolfarth released four 7"s presenting eight short examples of his playing. Utilising purely acoustic methods, they varied between remarkably electronic sounding drones to clatterin…
The international quintet Glück combines percussionists of diverse stripes and their individual pronounced ways of playing. The five musicians are internationally renowned as soloists and with various musical outfits. An extremely sound orientated, f…
Limmat is the second CD from Günter Müller, Jason Kahn and Christian Wolfarth, following their first album Drumming released in 2005 on Creative Sources. Recorded during one afternoon in Kahn’s Zürich studio, “Limmat” features three unedited improvis…
**Edition of 100 copies on heavy weight 180 gram vinyl, comes in hand-painted cover on thick grey cardboard. In process of stocking.** "Spirits marks the second release of my duo with Christian Wolfarth, though in 2010 recordings of a trio with Chris…
The double-CD contains all the pieces of the acoustic solo percussion vol. 1-4 series on the first CD and Remixes by Rashad Becker, Hans Joachim Irmler (faust), Joke Lanz (sudden infant) and Günter Müller on the second CD.
Christian Wolfarth's work clearly thrives on tactility and manipulation. In he also applied some techniques to concoct and subsequently remodel the acoustic substance on offer. On the one hand, his instrumental expertness is in evidence: one the o…
Michael Wintsch, piano, synthesizer. Christian Weber, bass. Christian Wolfarth, drums. Ten years ago Michel Witsch (piano, synthesizer), Christian Weber (bass) and Christian Wolfarth (drums) met - 3 musicians who have not only shaped the European sc…
Following his two previous 7“s with ‘acoustic solo percussion’ (see Vital Weekly 687 and 706), here is the third volume. Like before it’s hard to believe its percussion music. But this time we get a detailed notes on the proceedings: side E has ‘two …
Great follow-up to the Swiss percussionist's first single. It has one side of music created by disturbing the skin of a drum head and another with a kind of spidery almost drumming. There is definitely the sense of a drum head being struck by somethi…
Swiss percussionist Christian Wolfarth has a long resumé in jazz and improvised music, but I daresay this is probably the first bright red single he has been on. The first of four planned volumes, it pairs a lovely drone (presumably bowed cymbal/rubb…
There is not a lot to say when a young talented percussionist meet one of the master of improvised music, also percussionist ; we can just sit and listen what happens. this is what exactly did the guys at cosabeat studio during "mirrors" recording …