Die Berliner Musiker und Komponisten Thomas Böhm-Christl und Joachim Gies sind seit 1995 das Kern-Duo, die "Katalysatoren" des Not Missing Drums Projects. Das Ensemble ist stets im Wandel; aus dem Netzwerk der beteiligten Musiker/innen entstehen bei jedem Konzert neue Besetzungen mit ungewöhnlichen Instrumsentierungen. Für die Musiker wird die Begegnung mit immer anderen Mitmusikern zum Abenteuer: Es sind Musiker aus der klassischen Musik, aus der improvisierten Musik, aus dem Jazz dabei, und sie bringen unterschiedliche Klangvorstellungen in die Konzerte ein. Die Projektleiter machen Vorgaben durch Kompositionen, Spielanweisungen oder Zusammenstellungen von Musikern. Die Musiker in ihrer Lebendigkeit und Spiellust machen daraus Neue Musik.

Die Musiker des Not Missing Drums Projects spielen ohne Drums, weil so der natürliche Klang und die Nuancen der Instrumente besser hörbar werden. Jeder kann differenzierte, feine Impulse mit großer Wirkung setzen. Die starre Aufgabenteilung zwischen Rhythmusgruppe und Melodieinstrumenten ist aufgehoben. Ein neuer Reiz zum Hinhören, ein überraschendes, kammermusikalisches Konzept, was nicht heißt, auf heftige Qualitäten zu verzichten. "Urban Music": Heftigkeit und Melancholie, Nervosität und Freuden der Stadt. Der Verzicht auf das Schlagzeug macht das NMDP zur klang- und nuancenreichen Alternative in Zeiten elektronischer und elektrifizierter Rhythmusdominanz. Es entsteht "eine rein akustische Musik zwischen Improvisation und Komposition, wie sie spannender kaum sein kann."
(Rainer Bratfisch, Die Welt, Oktober 1996).

"Für Thomas Böhm-Christl und Joachim Gies gilt es in erster Linie, musikalische Prozesse anzuregen, bei denen Grenzen abgebaut werden, Grenzen zwischen dem Fest-Formulierten und dem Frei-Improvisierten, Grenzen zwischen dem Fixierten und dem Spontanen, zwischen dem Europäischen und dem Asiatischen, zwischen Programmierung und Erfindung, auch die Grenzen zwischen Ton, Sprache, Geräusch - und Stille.

Ihre Kompositionen stecken einen Rahmen ab, innerhalb dessen verschiedene musikalische Bereiche eine Synthese erleben, eine Symbiose unterschiedlichster Besonderheiten der Tonbildung, der Klangmodulation, der Phrasierung, der Instrumentbehandlung, der Artikulation - alles, ohne sich der synthetischen Möglichkeiten der heutigen Elektrotechnologie zu bedienen. Es entstehen dabei musikalische Beziehungen, die geordnet, aber nicht vorhersagbar, die gestaltet, aber nicht prädeterminiert sind, die zugleich spontan und musikalisch-logisch sind, im Detail farbenfroh, vielschichtig, faszinierend, insgesamt formal überzeugend, vom großen Spannungsbogen getragen."
Jolyon Brettingham-Smith, Hochschule der Künste Berlin, 1991

Korrespondierende Projektteilnehmer bisher u. a.:
Lauren Newton (USA) Stimme Joelle Léandre (F) Kontrabaß & Stimme Uschi Brüning Gesang Ute Döring Mezzosopran Margarete Huber Sopran Alex Nowitz Stimme Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky Saxophon |	Jürgen Kupke Klarinette| Ulli Bartel Violine Wolfram Korr Violine Aleks Kolkowski Violine Gesine Conrad Violoncello Gerold Genßler Kontrabaß Matthias Bauer Kontrabaß Bardo Henning Klavier Jens Thomas Klavier
Projektmitglieder: Joachim Gies, Elisabeth Böhm-Christl, Thomas Böhm-Christl, Hartwig Nickola, Thomas Wiedermann

Presse

English

Not Missing Drums Project : The group move in a chamber music concept on the borders of improvisation and composition. Differentiation, spontaneity, sensitivity to sound, and interaction determine the sound picture. That may extend to the complete silence of sound, but eruptions of sound create counterweights as well. Whoever wishes to, may find elements of jazz, contemporary or pop music in the performance. But for the musicians none of these artificial borders in music are compulsory; virtuosity and the joy of playing music tear down such barriers. Obviously this must be called Urban Music.

The project led by Thomas Böhm-Christl and Joachim Gies has no permanent cast. Sometimes 10 musicians take the floor, sometimes a smaller number. The permanent meeting of new musicians and the structural ideas of the project leaders create ever unforeseeable sound pictures. During the last years only acoustical instruments have been used by the group, but recently they discovered the usefulness of electronic elements in their sound. The group understand to structure spontaneously electronically unshaped sounds, to integrate them into the running course of the music, to evoke unheard-of tunes and to work here with minimal power. So, paradoxically even meditative structures are being created by electronically unshaped sounds.

Improvisation, contemporary music, jazz, sounds, and silence. Without drums, the natural sound and the subtleties of the instrument can be better heard; each instrument can give little impulses with great effect. There is no longer a rigid division between the rhythm section and the melodic instruments. The project combines the structural richness of contemporary music with the vitality of jazz; it is a concept of chamber music which retains impetuous qualities. All the vehemence and melancholy, nervous energy and the pleasures of a city.


Different Drummers
A look at the work of Joachim Gies and Thomas Böhm-Christl's Not Missing Drums Project
by Fred Grand

On the face of it, 'Not Missing Drums' is a curious way to define a project, a name which certainly needs some probing before it can begin to make real sense. When did you ever hear of a free-jazz ensemble calling themselves 'Not Missing Chords', or a hard-hop revival quintet appearing under the guise of 'Not Missing Innovation'? Admittedly the latter is less likely than the former, but a name which draws attention to something which may be lacking in the music is somewhat odd. Straddling new composition, free improvisation and jazz, the NMDP involves a rotating cast of Berlin-based musicians performing in all of these fields. Not a fixed line-up but a pool of players who meet to perform and occasionally record, the only rigid rule seems to be that drummers are not invited. A look at the personnel on any of the group's CD's confirms the absence of percussion, but this alone is surely not all that the leaders of the project had in mind when choosing a name. It is only when listening carefully to the music, with its self-imposed parameters, that the title's significance becomes more apparent. In concentrating solely on what are traditionally melody instruments, the full sonorities of different combinations of acoustic instruments can sound to their rich potential in a more chamberish setting. Furthermore, by breaking down the division that traditionally exists in jazz and related musics between rhythm section and horns, a new challenge is presented. In order to not miss the rhythm section, the roles of the instruments have to be carefully reconfigured for the music to sound complete and whole in itself. What I suppose Joachim Gies (reeds) and Thomas Böhm-Christl (cello), the project's co-leaders, seek to achieve is the production of a state whereby the listener can engage with their music without noticing the seemingly imbalanced instrumentation - to truly not miss the drums.

Last year's LeoLab release 'Offline Adventures' was the first time that I'd heard the group. Initially attracted by the presence of the great Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and trumpeter Axel Dörner, I was at the same time curious as to how an ensemble containing two pianists, four vocalists, seven string players and seven wind players would sound. Could this really be a suitable context for E-L P to cut loose? Happily I found that it was - and much more besides. An adventurous collage of twenty-three pieces, some mere miniatures, the disc has been played many times and grows in stature with each subsequent listen. Sometimes flowing smoothly in a suite-like fashion, sometimes jumpcutting with startling incongruity, I could hear a band that were clearly up to something unlike any other large European ensemble I'd heard. Their sound combines the vibrancy and immediacy of idiomatic jazz with spiky free improvisation and post-serialist dissonance - the prime objective seeming to be an exploration of contrasting string, reed, brass and vocal textures within this framework. It is an unmistakably European approach, and elements common to several other bands active in this field can to be found. NMDP are, it must be stressed, quite unlike any other band I can think of, and any traces of a common approach with other more established ensembles are insufficient to make their work in any way derivative. In their work you'll hear the formalism of Maarten Altena or Klaus König's ensembles, the jazz buoyancy and melodicism of Norbert Stein's Pata Music projects or the Vienna Art Orchestra, the wit of the ICP and Italian Instabile orchestras and the improvisational clout of Globe Unity or the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. You may wish to add to the list near neighbours the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra or some of the larger scale projects of Michael 'Bardo' Henning (who is also part of the group playing on Offline Adventures). No single group could be mistaken for NMDP and very few are so consistently absorbing over the course of a recording. Let's face it, too many recordings are released for anybody of average income to possibly keep abreast with, and not all will endure over time. An overcrowded market is easier to negotiate if quality is writ large, and on this basis NMDP deserve to be shifting a lot of units.

Prior to 'Offline Adventures' were two other releases from Gies and Böhm-Christl on Leo Feigin's Leo Lab imprint. The differences between the discs are heartening - no repetitive reruns of a successful formula are to be found here. Feigin jokingly refers to the group's 'two and a half' recordings. The 'half' disc, 'Different Distances', is not really a full-blown NMDP recording, but this is as deceptive as a Fellini half - the disc obviously being a pea from the same proverbial pod, and, if not fully formed, still an integral part of the oeuvre. Consisting of one Gies solo and twenty-two duets between Gies and five guests (including Böhm-Christl), 'Different Distances' is conceptually similar to its two big brothers. Mezzo-soprano Ute Döring brings a touch of the Milan Scala to her features, whilst vocalist Alex Nowitz improvises in a wordless style which recalls David Moss, Phil Minton and Mike Patton (when he's not on duty with Mr. Bungle). Nowitz also uses live electronics to sometimes startling effect on his duets, the only place you'll find any electronics on the three discs. Sounds range from Merzbow-like white noise to a cut-up piece ('Abysses') which resembles some of John Zorn's 'Locus Solus' work. Nowitz is the wild-card who upsets the flow of the disc and without him the territory would be far more conventional and slightly less interesting. Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky is again on hand for some searing duos, and the other two sparring partners, Böhm-Christl and trombonist Thomas Wiedermann, push the music into the realms of new chamber music, save for the opener where Böhm-Christl's funky electric cello takes us briefly back to the 70's heydays of Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield. All of the elements of NMDP are present and 'Different Distances' neatly showcases Gies' range and methods, perhaps breaking more borders than the other two discs because of Nowitz's outstanding contributions.

The critically acclaimed 'Urban Voices' (1997) was the first NMDP recording, and it sees the spotlight thrown on three distinguished vocalists, Lauren Newton, Joelle Leandre and Uschi Brüning. It is the closest to the jazz tradition of any of the three discs, and seems to contain more implied percussion (be it slapped double bass/cello bodies, piano preparations or driving Mingusian basslines). The opening piece is a startling collision of piano cluster-tones, boppish horn lines, pulsating string patterns and vocal gymnastics resembling a Teutonic take on the Maori Haka. The diversity of the elements and their thrilling juxtaposition sums up the virtues of the project. Clarinettist Jürgen Kupke is prominently featured, as is the double bassoon of Elisabeth Böhm-Christl, giving a woodier sound than 'Offline Adventures'. The disc also has a more suite-like feel than its successor, where the jump-cuts can at times impede a smooth flow. The wit is almost cartoon-like, and the ebullience of the jazz passages far more pronounced. The shorter length of the disc produces a slightly quicker pace and less space for the many fascinating abstract interludes which make the later disc so rich in detail. Areas of commonality are the seamless dissolves between passages of different styles, and of course the ensemble's distinctive sonority. If the different strands of inspiration were not fused so organically then the project would almost certainly fail, being little more than a pick-and-mix hybrid of styles. The music achieves such a seamless coherence however that this possibility just doesn't arise. Not only do we not miss the drums, we don't even need to stop to think about the internal logic of this instantly engaging music.

High standards of musicianship and a distinct vision for the organisation of sound and idioms should guarantee that NMDP join the pantheon of great large European ensembles. Their name only hints at the successful way in which the leaders foreground textures, melody and improvisation whilst backgrounding rhythmic elements. An authentic voice in European jazz and improvisation, where traditions of composed music are as important a source of inspiration for musicians as traditions of rhythm are in the African-American context. Gies and Böhm-Christl are taking a distinctive tack and the initially curious choice of both name and instrumentation for the project seem in the end to make good sense. London audiences will get a chance to hear them perform live in June, leaving enough time for those yet to catch up with the recordings to do so. I can't really say which you should hear first.

Avant 44 June 2000