Oswald

James Oswald was born in 1710 in the village of Crail in Fife to John Oswald, a town drummer frequently jailed for drunkenness and public swearing, the younger Oswald quickly developed a talent for music. By 1734 he was active as a cellist, dancing master, and composer in Dumferline and Edinburgh. His early works, including a sonata based on Scots tunes, were published under two Italian pseudonyms, “Dothel/Dottel Figlio” and “David Rizzio.” A move to London followed shortly thereafter, where Oswald opened a music shop and became a music publisher in addition to his more creative endeavours.

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best.

Oswald von Wolkenstein - Play It Again, Oswald - Marcello Fera & Opas Diandl (2013) {Schloss Tirol}
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© 2013 Schloss Tirol | [none]
Classical / Medieval

Oswald von Wolkenstein was a German composer whose music bridged the Medieval and Renaissance eras; the last of the poet-musician knights whose monophonic music explored the ideal of courtly love, he also wrote polyphonic music in more contemporary forms. As noble "von" indicates, Oswald was from a knightly family of the Villanders line. The surname "von Wolkenstein" comes from the name of their property of Wolkenstein in Groednertal, South Tyrol (a mountainous Austrian province that was taken by Italy in World War II). As he was of high birth, there is some information available about his life; key events were written in family archives. Still, as is the norm with composers of the day, there are numerous gaps that can be filled in only imperfectly by extrapolation from his works.

Portuguese virtuoso Artur Pizarro makes a welcome return to the Romantic Piano Concerto series with the outpourings of two brilliant pianist-composers. Their names may not be familiar to listeners today. The Brazilian Henrique Oswald and the Portuguese Alfredo Napoleão were born in the same year, less than three months apart, when Schumann, Brahms and Liszt were alive and Chopin recently deceased. Both were of mixed European heritage: Oswald with a Swiss-German father and Italian mother, Napoleão with an Italian father and Portuguese mother. Both were child prodigies who became widely travelled concert pianists, pedagogues and composers. In 1868 Oswald gave his ‘farewell recital’ and left Rio de Janeiro to study in Europe; Napoleão went to Brazil.

Grateful Dead and John Oswald - Grayfolded (1996) {2CD Swell-Artifact Music S/A 1969-1 - Dark Star in Plunderphonic}
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© 1996 Swell / Artifact Music | S/A 1969-1
Rock / Avant-Garde / Psychedelic Rock / Plunderphonics / Sound Collage / Experimental / Prog Rock

Grayfolded is a two-CD album produced by John Oswald featuring the Grateful Dead song "Dark Star". Using over a hundred different performances of the song, recorded live between 1968 and 1993, Oswald, using a process he calls "plunderphonics", built, layered, and "folded" all of them to produce two large, recomposed versions, each about one hour long. The first disc of Grayfolded, titled Transitive Axis, was released in 1994, and the second disc, Mirror Ashes, was released in 1995, both on the Swell/Artifacts label.

Oswald von Wolkenstein - Reflektionen - Lutzenberger, Fröhlich, Frederiksen (2013) {deutsche harmonia mundi}
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© 2013 deutsche harmonia mundi / Sony Music | 8 87654 16182 6
Classical / Medieval / Early Music / Sacred

Oswald von Wolkenstein is considered today os one of the most important poet-composers of the Middle Ages. On this CD, three leading interpreters of early music, Lutzenberger/Fröhlich/Frederiksen, forge a link between Wolkenstein's creativity and their own free and uninhibited approach to making music.

Nils Petter Molvaer & Moritz Von Oswald - 1/1 (2013) {EmArcy 06025 3743670}
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© 2013 EmArcy / Universal | 06025 3743670
Jazz / Electronic / Experimental / Modern Jazz / Trumpet

With the breakup of his trio responsible for the superb Baboon Moon (Sula, 2011), it's been a fair question to wonder: what's next for Nils Petter Molvær? One possible answer is certainly 1/1, the Norwegian trumpeter's debut with German multi- instrumentalist and influential techno producer Moritz von Oswald and his nephew, Laurens. The trio's debut performance at Kristiansand, Norway's 2013 Punkt Festival, while strong, was largely misleading; the show certainly occupied some of 1/1's more ethereal territory, but Molvær and his partners also traveled to far more beat-driven, danceable terrain.

When the devastation of the Thirty Years' War came to an end, Andreas Oswald the Younger, the son of a musician from Weimar, was just fourteen years old. When he died in 1665, he was barely more than thirty – an auspicious talent, relegated to the poorly-paid position of Eisenach city organist three years after the death of his art-loving Duke William IV of Saxe-Weimar. Although he died so young, Oswald had great potential. His surviving legacy includes eighteen sonatas for small instrumental ensembles of a maximum of four players, which are composed so skilfully and inventively that a wide expressive spectrum can be heard.