Werner Durand
Composer, instrument builder and performer based in Berlin. His interest encompasses many musical traditions: he performs his own music for saxophones, iranian ney, and self-made wind instruments since the late seventies. He studied with Ariel Kalma in Paris, La Monte Young in New York, Indian classical music in India and Berlin (with Kamalesh Maitra) and Iranian ney with Ali Reza Asgharia. His personal, mininalist style is characterized by the rich layers, textures and rhythmic effects he achieves using digital delays.
Composer, instrument builder and performer based in Berlin. His interest encompasses many musical traditions: he performs his own music for saxophones, iranian ney, and self-made wind instruments since the late seventies. He studied with Ariel Kalma in Paris, La Monte Young in New York, Indian classical music in India and Berlin (with Kamalesh Maitra) and Iranian ney with Ali Reza Asgharia. His personal, mininalist style is characterized by the rich layers, textures and rhythmic effects he achieves using digital delays.
Clearing
In addition to the unique musical proposals and the large body of work that they have developed separately, Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand have been performing together as a duo as well as in collaborations (Tonaliens, Born of Six) for more than 20 years. Fusing her Indian Raga singing in the Dhrupad style with his minimalist and experimental approach, they have expanded the reach of their soundworlds as well as proposed new paths for contemporary music.In this occasion, Uli Hohmann joins them in…
Resolve
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
Propellers In Love
Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…
ViewFinder / Hide & Seek (LP)
Black Truffle is thrilled to announce ViewFinder / Hide & Seek, a new release from acclaimed American experimental composer David Behrman, presenting recordings made in collaboration with Jon Gibson and Werner Durand between 1989 and 2020. Last heard from on Black Truffle as part of the collaborative art song/live electronics madness of She’s More Wild, these recordings find Behrman continuing the pioneering work in interactive electronics that have established him as one of the major living exp…
Schwingende Luftsäulen 3
Here the third and final chapter of “Schwingende Luftsäulen” the series dedicated by Werner Durand to the Pan-Ney, the wind instrument of his own invention. In confront with the first two volumes this one represent a sort of flashback. In fact the five pieces on the CD present “early” works, mainly created in the first half of the 90s. “Still Another Ocean” was composed in June /July1991 in Ile de la Réunion, in the wonderful house of Frédéric Borne.
“M-Ocean” was composed in the summer of 1994 …
Processions
*Reduced price. Last copies* Besom Presse is pleased to announce the July 2019 release of Processions, a double LP by composer, performer, and instrument-maker Werner Durand, with Amelia Cuni and Victor Meertens. Recorded and mixed in his home studio in Berlin from 2012-16, Durand offers four just-intoned drone works distilling global influence into compositions of singular beauty. Performed on an unlikely array of instruments including various self-made wind and reed instruments, sarod, mirlito…
Schwingende Luftsäulen 2
Werner Durand Schwingende Luftsäulen 2, the second chapter dedicated to Durand's music applied to the Pan-Ney, the wind instrument of his own invention. With gorgeous artworks by Karlheinz Bux and extensive liner notes by Adelio Fusé. "Schwingende Luftsäulen 2 is the second chapter of a trilogy featuring the Pan-Ney with its tubes or columns of vibrating air (Schwingende Luftsäulen, in fact). This second chapter, in which the Pan-Ney is flanked by the tenor sax, reconnects where the first one en…
I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics. The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he …
Tonaliens
Tonaliens is a Berlin-based group investigating the inner dimensions and outer limits of Just Intonation. It was formed in 2014 by Amelia Cuni (voice), Werner Durand (invented wind instruments), Robin Hayward (microtonal tuba), Hilary Jeffery (trombone), and Ralf Meinz (live sound, electronics). The group came together shortly after the release of the software version of the Hayward Tuning Vine, an interface for exploring microtonal tuning that allows for direct and intuitive interaction with th…
Schwingende Luftsäulen
At Soundohm, we’ve dedicated our lives to music which defies category and constraint - which ventures into unknown territories, risking everything to stand on its own. There are few better cases than Werner Durand - a true maverick of experimental practice. Since the early 1980s, the composer and instrument builder has been sculpting a singular landscape in sound, bridging countless compositional spectrums, while resting comfortably in none. Rising to the stunning singularity for which he has b…
Diasporagas
Amelia Cuni was born in Milan and has lived in India for more than 10 years where she studied dhrupad singing with various renowned masters. Werner Durand has been performing his own music for saxophones, Iranian ney and self-made wind instruments since the late 70s. He started building his own wind instruments from plexi-glass, PVC and metal tubes in the early 80s and has performed in various groups including The Thirteenth Tribe and Armchair Traveller. For more than 20 years, Cuni and Durand h…
Hemispheres
Going back to his early musical inspirations in the early seventies, Werner Durand was fascinated with the multiple saxophone sounds coming from Terry Riley's Poppy Nogood and Happy Ending, Dickie Landry's Fifteen Saxophones and Ariel Kalma's Reternelle. His particpation in the Parisian saxophone ensemble Urban Sax in 1976/77 became a starting point for his own musical endeavours. The 2 saxophone pieces presented here were composed and recorded roughly 10 years apart and document his move from f…
Hornbread
The collaboration between Victor Meertens & Werner Durand dates back to the mid 90s, when they started performing together in art circles in Germany. At the time their performances consisted of Victor's Actions, which included bread making processes with text recitals in combination with werner's musical performances on his invented wind instruments and his playing of Victor's home baked Bread Instruments with inserted pipes.In 2003/4 Werner was artist in residence in the Worpswede artists…
Svapiti
Born of Six, featuring Amelia Cuni, Catherine Christer Hennix, and Werner Durand, create exemplary drone compositions rooted in the traditions of Dhrupad, early minimalism and just intonation. Composed by Durand, Cuni, Hennix, Svapiti is one long composition measuring 55 minutes in length. 'A solid foundation is the best basis for the fundamental.' Narada´s exposition of the seven notes begins as follows: because Sadja (the tonic) arises from the combination of nose, throat, chest, palate, tongu…
Already awake in the night
Mindblowing new LP on ini.itu label, composed by Amelia Cuni & Werner Durand, with David Trasoff. The music on this LP is based on the Hindustani Raag Lalit and its modulation to Raag Todi. Lalit is performed in the early morning before sunrise, Todi later on, after sunrise. Here, they are both played against a background of sine waves tuned to the raag’s intervals and going through subtle phase shifting. The restrained sinewaves tapestry, ornamented with Amelia Cuni’s voice and David Trasoff’s …
Aqua Planing
In the enigmatic Aqua Planing, Werner Durand and Alio Die create a sonorous, powerful, impervious space; sometimes liquid, subtly endearing. A meeting of mysterious sounds, both improvised and organised, of the traditional and self-made wind- instruments and their hybrids by Werner Durand (persian and circular water ney, circular clarinet, khen, prepared shakuhachi) with the editing, loops and enviromental recordings by Alio Die. As in the title track, where they recorded the sound of the wind…
Remnants From Paradise
An amazing new CD by the german composer Werner Durand, whose drone style is characterized by its subtle, gradual alteration of pitch which leads one to loose a sense of "time" and draws one deeper and deeper into the sound itself. "The name Werner Durand might not be very well-known, which is a great pity. His claim to fame has nothing to do with his real music: he played flute on Muslimgauze' 'Mort Aux Vaches' release. But Durand's background is with improvisation and wind instruments. As far …
The art of buzzing (Excuse the delay vol.1)
A terrific drone album here, on this first solo-release, Werner Durand presents six works all dealing with the buzzing phenomena. This phenomena is found in many musical cultures around the world as an integral part of the sound, eg. with chinese and korean flutes, ethiopian and basque string instruments and also the Indian tanpura. The results are stunning: dense drones with pulsing, buzzing, dizzying movements swarm with an intoxicating cadence. Recorded in multi-track, the sounds are sometime…
Nodal excitation
dexter’s cigar reissue of Arnold Dreyblatt’s 1982 india navigation lp; a set of 8 pieces involving hammered/plucked string formations yielding an amazing array of dancing harmonics and upper-register activity... close your eyes in spots and it’s a lost takoma-lineage folk guitar record; at others it’s a cleaner/acoustic rendition of the early glenn branca symphonies...