Matthias Muche studied trombone at the Conservatorium Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Cologne and completed postgraduate studies in Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Based in Cologne he works as a freelance instrumentalist and composer in jazz and contemporary music. The focus of his work includes interdisciplinary projects in music, theatre, dance and video art with which he has performed in over 50 countries under the label Zeitkunst.
He uses a wide variety of playing setups: feeds of speech and soundscapes into the trombone, spatial expansion using external bells, interactive computer graphics as synaesthetic perception, or simply the pure, naked trombone. Muche received the WDR Jazz Prize 2021 in the category Improvisation and his works were nominated at the German Record Critics’ Award.
FACTS
1. Tolerance
2. Competence
3. Resonance
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Resonance in space – inner space & outer space – making space
2. How and when did you get into making music?
The trombone was my first choice, when I was 12. Starting in a church choir had a big influence on the way I listen. The overall sound of music was more important than particular elements. After my trombone study at the Amsterdam Conservatorium, I stepped into experimental music and attended Cologne’s Academy of Media Art, where I collaborated with computer musicians and visual artists, furthering my trombone research while connecting with “the digital aesthetic”. Acting more like being part of a multichannel installation. Distribution of different sound sources within a particular space has become very important for my work. Specially my new group BONECRUSHER, a 10 piece trombone ensemble plus 2 percussionists amplifies and expands these investigations.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Duke Ellington – Money Jungle
Charles Mingus – Ah Um
Sidsel ENDRESEN – Undertow
Albert Mangelsdorff – The Wide Point
Markus Schmickler – Sator Rotas
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Things never stay the same and never change.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Rehearsal space at Stollwerck next to Rhein river and the beaches in the south of Cologne.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Building a house.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
James Fulkerson playing Christian Wolff (etcetera-records)
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Laurie Anderson
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Playing my music with BONECRUSHER – 10 trombones & percussion ensemble at Kunststation St. Peter Kšln 2020
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Very Important and not. I consequently followed the vision of a true fusion of acoustic music, electronic music and computer graphics, understanding the musical instrument as an extension of the human body, to be stretched and developed, reconciled and reconfigured (Vinko Globokar) and above that using realtime generated computer graphics as synaesthetic space to extend the music. Creating my music is much influenced by parameters and aesthetics of this old and new technologies but that means NOT necessarily always using it. It could be only the idea of creating an installation, dealing with synthetic sound values, forms and structures or following a graphic score in mind… more in the sense of getting inspired by technology or finding hybrid situations resonating together in the same physical space or throwing everything away and just play the nacked horn.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
No siblings but feeling “Geschwisterlichkeit” to many
