Walter Zimmermann
(b 1949) German composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, piano, and electro-acoustic works that have been successfully performed and recorded across Europe. From 1968-70, he was pianist in the Ars Nova ensemble in Nuremberg and studied composition with Werner Heider. From 1970-73, he studied with Mauricio Kagel and at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. In 1974, Zimmermann began his stay in the USA, first in Hamilton, New York to study computer music, and then around the States to have conversations with 23 American composers (which were published in the book Desert Plants).
(b 1949) German composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, piano, and electro-acoustic works that have been successfully performed and recorded across Europe. From 1968-70, he was pianist in the Ars Nova ensemble in Nuremberg and studied composition with Werner Heider. From 1970-73, he studied with Mauricio Kagel and at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. In 1974, Zimmermann began his stay in the USA, first in Hamilton, New York to study computer music, and then around the States to have conversations with 23 American composers (which were published in the book Desert Plants).
Cause and Curiosity: Walter Zimmermann in Conversation with Richard Toop (Book)
**Essential reading!** Having issued a truly remarkable suite of publications, dedicated to radical reaches of musical practice and thought, over the last year or so - George Lewis and Harald Kisiedu's “Composing While Black”, Hans Reichel's “Daxophonie”, Guillaume Belhomme's “Eric Dolphy”, Phil Freeman’s “In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor”’ and “Radio Cologne Sound Das Studio für Elektronische Musik des WDR”, to name just a few - Wolke Verlag returns with “Cause and Curi…
Beginner's Mind
Over the years, the venerable New York based imprint, Mode Records, has operated to give Walter Zimmermann a solid platform, issuing both new work and reissuing lost classics. Mode continues this essential project with the first-ever LP reissue of Zimmermann’s first recording, the 1978 solo piano classic “Beginner’s Mind”, which will also be available soon in CD format.
Chantbook for Lipparella
In intensive collaboration with the Swedish ensemble Lipparella, which specializes in creating contemporary repertoire for baroque instruments and countertenor, these 10 timeless contemporary songs were created.
Peter Söderberg, the founder of Lipparella tells: "After having met by chance at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin in 2019, Walter Zimmermann and I started discussing whether it would be possible to perform some of his music by Lipparella. After suggesting some already existing works, w…
Voces
Voces documents many of Walter Zimmermann’s compositions for voices from 1979–2016. The words set range from Meister Eckhart and Hadewijch to Lermontov, Mandelstam, Jabès, Tranströmer, Ingold and Robert Creeley (with his voice accompanying the musicians). Performers include: Claudia Barainsky, the musicians of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (including David Tudor & Takehisha Kosugi), Tehila Nini Goldstein, KNM Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Peter Schöne / Jan Phili…
Songs Of Innocence & Experience
** 2021 Stock ** This is the first complete recording of Walter Zimmermann’s string quartets. The 10 Fränkische Tänze, from the project Lokale Musik (Local Music) explore the folk music of Franconia in Germany. They are built on research of old peasant books of dances, some dating back to the early 19th century and the beginning of the notation of folk music. The many dance melodies including waltzes, Schottische [German polka], mazurka, galop etc. are captured, rejected and presented in just in…
The Echoing Green
** 2021 Stock ** Like Morton Feldman, whose music he acknowledges as an influence Walter Zimmermann (b.1949) is fascinated by the relationship between painting and music, and how material of an apparently simple nature played by apparently “normal” instruments is capable of almost infinite subtlety. Frankfurt’s HCD Ensemble are also members of Germany’s infamous Ensemble Modern. They are joined here by the superb violinist Peter Rundel and cellist Michael Bach. Wüstenwanderung [Wandering in the …
Shadow of an Idea
** 2021 Stock ** The influence of two American composers – John Cage and Morton Feldman – has been decisive on Walter Zimmermann. With Cage, it was his music from the late forties – works like the String Quartet, the Suite for Toy Piano and the Six Melodies – that caught his attention: works underpinned by precise numerical construction, yet with an engaging directness of expression. Feldman has been an inspiration to Zimmermann’s lyrical impetus, and Cage to his constructivist urges. Yet the t…
Synastria
* 2021 Stock * Philosophical writings from antiquity have frequently underlaid Zimmermann’s work of recent years, particularly in relation to notions of time an ‘harmonia’ [...] Another recurrent theme in later works is that of the ‘broken unison’ (both melodic and rhythmic), which clearly has an allegorical/social dimension as well as a musical one [...] The isolated performance of single of his pieces emphasises their ‘otherness’ in relation to the main trends in new German music, whereas the …
Desert Plants
**Essential reading!** Walter Zimmermann interviews Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jim Burton, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, Larry Austin, James Tenney, J. B. Floyd (about Conlon Nancarrow), La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, Charles Morrow, Garrett List, John Mc Guire and Ben Johnston (about Harry Partch).
Lokale Musik
Despite having an undeniable canon, the minimalist music movement which developed during the 1960s and continues to flourish and evolve today, is defined by a remarkable breadth in ideas and compositional approach. Particularly in Europe, it rapidly took on a diverse number of influences and became very much its own thing. Of the composers who proposed an alternate reality for this territory of sound, there have been few more accomplished than the German composer, Walter Zimmermann.All too often…