Nik Bärtsch: LISTENING Music - Movement - Mind

Nik Bärtsch, in collaboration with Andrea Pfisterer:
LISTENING Music - Movement - Mind
Lars Müller Publishers 2021

Design: Integral Lars Müller 15 × 21,5 cm, 6 × 8 ½ in 352 pages, ca 190 illustrations paperback 2021, 978-3-03778-670-3, English

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Texts

13    Preface
16    How Can You Hear a Silent Movement? Listen!
30    The Ligne Claire as Inspiration
48    Democracy, Artistry and Band Balance
86    Azuki Bean Trap
88    The Art of the Unobtrusive Difference
102  Partnership and Perception
124  Poetic Police
150  Composition, Interpretation and Improvisation as a Creative Cycle
166  Swiss Musical Warriors on a Peace Mission 172 Narrative Discography
238  Fresh Fruit in the Dark
242  Tree of Life
244  Monday Series MONTAGS 月曜
248  The EXIL, an Exile for Music in Our Own Town
260  Reduction – Contemporary Perspectives of a Musical Strategy
266  On Composing, Improvising and Performing
306  Surface, Self and Practicing
314  About Current, Constant Collaborators
324  My Perfect Day
328  Samurai at the Piano
332  Epilogue

Bio-Poetic Phenomena

41    Introduction
42    Great Apes – Cooperation and Empathy Are Older Than Philosophical Ethics
44    Coral Reefs – Megalopolis
100  Butterfly – Holometabolic Metamorphosis as a Poetic Strategy
140  Blob – Body Learning
148  Llyrìa – Ancient Evolution Inspires Modern Creativity
252  Whales – Evolution of a Song through Modular Creativity
262  Cephalopods – Dynamic Camouflage

Music Movement Mind Charts

82    Paths of Communication
128  Ki and Presence
130  Circles and Cycles
136  Posture and Mind
138  Three Levels of Flow
162  Shaker Meditation
164  Rhythm Levels and Relations
256  Reduce Things to Three Principles

LISTENING: Music – Movement – Mind is a conceptual and practical book about the creative relationship between mind and body in the context of music and martial arts. Over 20 years, musician and composer Nik Bärtsch, founder of the so-called Ritual Groove Music, has developed techniques that offer musicians and martial artists useful and surprising tools to support, focus and simplify learning processes in many fields of activity and daily life.
The book is based on the long-standing experience of Nik Bärtsch and his wife Andrea Pfisterer as performers in live music, aikido practitioners, cultural entrepreneurs and teachers of music and physical techniques. Through essays and pictures, interviews, exercises and games, the book conveys the authors’ poetic understanding of body and mind and inspires the individual creativity and consciousness of the readers, regardless of their backgrounds. It also documents the stages of Bärtsch’s musical development as composer, solo pianist and bandleader of Ronin and Mobile, two formations that enjoy international recognition.