"Nothing tears the curtain of silence more gracefully, but also so more remorselessly, then the sound of the piano. Ulrike Haage uses the flirt with 88 keys as a catapult into both her most deeply intimate and most extensive worlds. How do we understand Laozi's proverb, that the most flexible parts of the world shall conquer the most fixed parts of the world?
How can the clamour of daily making and consuming be countered by quiet art? The lucid pieces of her new album "Weisses Land" not only reflect Haage's inner relationship to the instrument, but rather cast in their meditative quality questions for our time." (Jazzfestival Saalfelden)
Influences
...the music of Morton Feldman, Moondog, Bill Evans, Igor Strawinsky...With my parents there was always Jazz music in the house or some special classical or pop music. I liked genial dilettanism as much as I liked highly professional performances. During my studies of classical piano music I did always exercise improvisation, which is a way to transform what you learn into your own way of playing or imagining music. The grand piano was first a big elefant for me, and over the years I wanted to tame it, which means to make it sound like what I want to get out of it. So it was obvious that I had to find out, how I could prepare the strings, how I could use every element of this enormous instrument to make it sound my way.
Parallel I always loved to work with synthesizers and computers. They became my partners in crime. Mainly it is curiosity as well as a good book [like "Everything is illuminated" or all books by Paul Virilio], a movie [like "Ghost dog" or all films by Chris Marker] or an interesting journey to the places, where nature and human beings seem to live consistant. It is the unseen and the unknown, that drives me...AND free space...
Sounds Like
..Selavy.. easily links the rigid tightness of a piano work with the modern ingredients of
electronic sounds. In vain you look for the purity of a solo piano album here. (Klaus Hübner)
...For a sound engineer like her jazz is not purism, the instrument itself is not limited to
a black and white interpretation. Even physically she enters the instrument, when bent for-
ward, plucking, beating or caressing the strings of the piano, works its parts of the body in a
percussive way or makes a musical clock slide over the strings producing a buzzing effect.
Emotion mostly gains victory over a keen mind...(Jürgen Stark)
Music possesses the immaterial quality of
conserving memories for a long time and, conversely, triggering lost memories.
Its a memory in constant movement.
What fascinates me is those sounds that form a trail leading to
concrete things, that have their own associations and connotations
and therefore create a
new sound space.
PIANO WORX FOR FILMS "LE PIANOSCOPE" IS OUT NOW ON ITUNES
A collection of classical solo piano compositions, exclusively written for films and images, live recorded @ TRAUMTON Studios, Berlin.
CD Le Pianoscope
* HEIMSUCHUNG by Jenny Erpenbeck RADIO PLAY ADAPTION (Bavarian Broadcast) with the SOUNDTRACK by Ulrike Haage, DOUBLE CD, EICHBORN VERLAG 2009, OUT ON NOV 1, 2009 *
ANTHEM PREMIÈRE AT EDEN PROJECT SATURDAY NOV 14 THREE VIDEOS + THREE COMPOSITIONS
The actuel concert program WEISSES LAND
(grand piano, electronics and light design) is offered as a Solo Show or in special cases as a Duo with the drummer Eric Schaefer.
1984 - 1989 pianist and composer of the first european womens jazz orchester REICHLICH WEIBLICH. This band had an enormous success after a memorable gig at the Jazz Festival Moers 1987, because of its audacious mixture of styles and the use of electronics within an orchestra line up.
Joining the invitation of the saxophone player Alfred Harth to form the experimental group VLADIMIR ESTRAGON. VE had a remarkable appearance at the Jazzfestival Berlin in 1989, where they brought a mixture of 4 personalities and 4 styles into one musical plan. Out of this group rose the trio GOTO with Einheit, Haage, Minton.
1989 - 2000 keyboarder, pianist and co-composer of the german shooting star pop group RAINBIRDS. During the same time period member of the trio STEIN with fm einheit and katharina franck.
Producing radio plays in the Trio Ammer Einheit Haage. Parallel working and composing for selected theatre plays. A personal style between the piano and its inside percussion together with modern electronics, develops.
Since 2000 collaboration with the choreographer Felix Ruckert and the musician Christian Meyer in the project RING. Touring through out the world.
2003 Ulrike Haage receives the Albert-Mangelsdorff-Award, (GERMAN JAZZ AWARD) "for her outstanding and truely versatile life-work that permanently reinvents itself"(Markus Müller).
2004 she releases her first Solo album SÉLAVY. Invitations brought her as a performer from Russia to Afghanistan and to Siberia.
2005 Ricordi Publishing releases the piano edition PIANOSCOPE. The collection of 31 piano compositions combines many kinds of influences to a unique style, permitting astonishing piano sonorities that excite curiosity and at the same time leave scope for ones owns feelings.
...fingerprints...
2006 her second solo album, the double CD WEISSES LAND, is published. WEISSES LAND includes the Bonus CD THE WONG SESSIONS with an uncut 25-minute improvisation called 9frogslightgreen and the electronic trance-track weißes land.She composes the music in "The making of Requiem", director: Hans Christian Schmidt.
2007 A new production for the Bavarian Broadcast is based on an idea for a composition with basically only few words vanishing in a musical reflected space, called "Die Stille hinter den Worten".
2009 - 2010 Preparing the III. Solo CD.
2008 - 2010 Ulrike Haage will be collaborating with the FONDATION HARTUNG BERGMAN, Antibes, for an opus, that will be written as a musical reflection on the paintings of Anna Eva Bergmann and excerpts of poems from her favorite writer Franz Werfel. The project is called NUNATAK and will have premiere in 2009. A composition for chamber orchestra, vibraphone, marimbaphone and electronics.
NUNATAK est une composition pour orchestre de chambre, deux voix et sons éléctroniques, miroitant le mystique et l'indicible d'un processus artistique, du moment du concept à la réalisation.
Anna-Eva Bergman était fascinée par l'écriture de Franz Werfel, qui parlait beaucoup du contact de l'être humain avec le divin, l'indiscible ; ce mystère qui rend les choses plus grandes que nous.
La base du texte de NUNATAK provient des extraits des journaux de Anna-Eva Bergman et des poèmes de Werfel.
Il s'agit non seulement d'un hommage mais de la réflexion d'une pensée, qui avait tant occupée Bergman : le moment spirituel et mystique, qui aide a créer sa propre vision artistique du monde.
2008::
"DIE STILLE HINTER DEN WORTEN" BR, 2008
featuring Carlos Bica, Double Bass, and Anna Lena Zühlke, Voice.
"An author has made off. Disappeared. Leaving us only with a few words, bringing the abandoned spaces of life with nothing but faded fragments of memory. These words sparkle like relfections from a distant past, flashes of erstwhile ideas. His absence has left a trail, laying down a track of resonance and rekindling memories of a vague presence that is no longer language but a mere of the words - thought tracks transformed into soundtracks. We, the deserted, remain behind in this space full of silence, of silence fulfilled. Yet, somewhere among the sounds, the fragments of language and the music IT can surely still be found: the "was", the "has been", that is so implacably present. Every sound, every syllable, every word and every name acts like an invocation, filling the space of silence with a tangible presence. Outlines of the real, of passion, of death...Nothing disappears. Nothing disappears without traces. Not in the fissures of the world, not in the arcanum of silence." (Harry Lachner)
CD Die Stille hinter den Worten
2008:: Ulrike Haage is writing the music for the radio production WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame with the german radio WDR 5 in Cologne. It will be released in December 2008. AN INSTRUMENTAL RELEASE of the music is planned for 2010.
2009:: "ALLES ABER ANDERS" 12 musical miniatures about the artist EVA HESSE (Production: Bavarian Broadcast/ CD release Sans Soleil)
2009:: "DER KREIS IST ROT"
Music and Light Performance about the artist Oskar Schlemmer ::
based on his diaries
SUMMER - WINTER 2009 ::
Writing the score for the radio adaption of the book "Heimsuchung" by young german author Jenny Erpenbeck. The music will almost sound classical written for grand piano, cello and clarinet.
And ... writing the filmscore for the project "ZWIEBELFISCH" by documentary filmmaker Christian Bau. A film about [Max Ernst's son] Jimmy Ernst in Glücksstadt, the city that hosts the world famous printing press "Augustin".
2010 :: 3rd SOLO ALBUM
THE latest solo albums SÉLAVY and WEISSES LAND are available through::
hallo ulrike, danke für die grüße:-) Bin z.Zt. mit Firmenneugründung beschäftigt, so dass es vorerst leider nicht für einen Australien-Trip reicht... :-( Ich hoffe wir sehen uns mal irgendwo wieder... Berlin...Köln...Zürich...Friedrichshafen... Ich schulde dir ja noch einen Schampus :-)
eine wunderschöne Musik, ich stelle mir sofort vor, wie diese Stimmung, die du mit deiner Musik erzeugst, Filme lebendiger machen kann... bin beeindruckt! liebe Grüße aus Köln, dorina
huhu ulrike:)... danke für deine anfrage... deine musik ist wirklich toll... hat viel tiefgang... und die klavierklänge sind hammer.... ich werd deine seite sicher noch oft besuchen. mach weiter so:) liebe grüße aus heidelberg
www.myspace.com/nepomukk
...fingerprints...
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