Hauschka & Dustin O’Halloran – A Duet for Solo Pianos

The Modern Solo Piano Festival in Berlin commemorates to the days when the piano played the central role in entertainment. Nowadays, the festival organizers accent, “elitist structures foster a restrictive academic approach, thereby preventing a relaxed relationship with the instrument.” A lot of people (including me) will feel reminded of music lessons at school which prevented many young people being able to engage in classical music. Nicely, the festival distributed a couple of pianos in public places all over Berlin and invited people to experiment with the keys. The festival assembled a broad mixture of modern music (tango, electro jazz, free jazz) with solo piano players among them like Bugge Wesseltorft, Aki Takase and Alexander von Schlippenbach.

Those last two free jazz stars (you wouldn’t believe von Schlippenbach to be well above 70 years old) were the main acts on Saturday night’s last concert of the festival. But before that performance two very well-known artists for frequent listeners of fluid radio joined on stage: Hauschka and Dustin O’Halloran. Volker Bertelmann from Duesseldorf/Germany, aka Hauschka, is known for preparing his grand piano with wooden chops, chains and ping-pong balls. Dustin O ‘Halloran is a pianist and composer from Los Angeles, now living in Berlin, known for his soundtrack contributions to director Sofia Coppola’s film “Marie Antoinette” and other soundtracks and recordings like his latest live album “Vorleben” (German word with double meaning “past life” and “exemplary life”), recorded in Berlin’s Grunewald-church. You might remember that environment from projects by Greg Haines or Nils Frahm. Dustin O’Halloran is the classical composer among the modern composers, always reduced to his instrument, neither field-recordings nor electronic effects, just the delicate sound of keys, hammers, strings and pedals.

Saturday night was a world-wide premiere: For the first time ever Hauschka and Dustin O’Halloran played together. After a one-month-tour in the United States in March of this year (tour blog) they decided to play one show together. First hurdle to take on was to find a suitable place to work: With two grand pianos. They found it with the help of friends and could spend a couple of days in a studio at Berlin’s Savignyplatz. The results were eight songs of both composers. The highlight came in the middle: “Opium”, a fast and furious piece written in collaboration. It is not yet available for purchase and was played only once in public. But we can hope the two will enter a studio and release it some time next year.

The festival guide gave a nice insight into the musical youth of both composers. Now we know that Dustin’s first record was by The Cure and his first concert was by new wave heroes Devo (btw they still exist and have a new record out this summer). Hauschka likes to whistle Henry Mancini’s classic “Wind River” and even listens to RnB nowadays. It is this musical background which can be felt in their compositions. It makes them lovable to people who listened to punk, electronic or pop songs in their youth and would never have expected to enjoy a grand piano concert (see above: music lessons at school!). But it still keeps them at distance from free jazz improvisations from the main act of the evening. A small, but continuous flow of visitors left the hall after the more pleasing sounds of Hauschka and Dustin O’Halloran. Their compositions aren’t revolutionary, less provoking and well structured. But maybe it is the right soundtrack for today’s world, giving listeners a new experience without closing doors to their cd collection of the nineties. They don’t have to break rules or conventions like musicians socialized in the sixties or seventies.

There will be a new record out by Dustin O’Halloran later this year and Hauschka will publish more work during the next 12 months. One example will place him on a big theater stage in a costume. If you can make it to Frankfurt (come and join me!) in the last quarter of 2010, please don’t miss Hauschka as the musical part of Kevin Rittberger’s  production of the “Marquise of O”, originally written by German novelist Heinrich von Kleist, in the town’s Schauspielhaus (playhouse).

- Review by Torsten Herrmann for Fluid Radio

www.modernsolopiano.net
www.myspace.com/hauschka
www.dustinohalloran.com