I remember one summer evening, meeting Frank Gratkowski at the Stadtgarten in Cologne. The restaurant was bursting at the seams. Still, we managed to find each other, though we’d never met before. I was already familiar with Frank’s music, but as we talked, my impression of his individuality was deepened and reinforced.
We lost no time in getting down to the crux of our meeting. Frank is obsessed with what he does. Crudely put, he takes musical material and reduces it to its core. Practical experience of improvisation has shaped and developed his playing to the point where this process of reduction is the performance. Frank’s playing is (contrary as this sounds) a form of listening: He always concentrates on what the music is saying.
Frank says that years ago, when he still lived in Hamburg, he was fascinated by the playing of Charlie Mariano. This fascination enticed him to Cologne, Mariano’s base of operations. But with time, practice and experience, Frank felt compelled to push on in another direction, exploring the aesthetics of an even purer sound. Frank talked to me that night about how he had grappled with Stockhausen’s and Scelsi’s scores. His curiosity is shared by the musicians he works with: improvisers with a keen ear for “Neue Musik”: Georg Gräwe, Klaus König, Radu Malfatti...
Articulations is an album into which Frank put a hell of a lot of work without, however, compromising the light, playful quality of his music. By persistently employing the saxophone to its fullest, he challenges the very processes by which sounds and timbres are formed. So, in our conversation, we touched on many technical topics: on circular breathing, harmonics and multiphonics; on combined key and breathing sounds; on percussive and vocal elements that mimic electronic tones, shrill alarms or rustling noises in the dark; ways of breathing and playing that evoke animal utterances, and choral chants...
Considering the many innovations introduced by saxophonists over the last 25 years, it is becoming increasingly difficult to develop individual techniques. Frank Gratkowski succeeds by purposefully working with specific sounds, sequential series of tones and combinations, and by being extremely selective with – on occasion even ruthlessly reducing – the material he uses.
Myriad voices wafted in from the Stadtgarten patio as night fell. Some of those conversations seemed trivial; others were pregnant with significance. It occurred to me that where we were sitting, proximity and articulation had the power to transform the general into the particular. Immersed in conversation with Frank Gratkowski, I was learning how to hear.
Bert Noglik
Translation: Gabriele Günther and Ethan Ames
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