About
Jeff Gburek is composer, improviser, sound artist, visual artist, poet, working with prepared guitar, unprepared guitars, stones and other objects, phonography, electronics, sampling, digital manipulation. He studied Javanese (Jogja) and Balinese (Ubud) gamelan music and worked for some years as percussionist, strongly influenced by Harry Partch. In NYC he played with Neel Murgai, Daniel Carter, Graham Haynes and did studio work for Joe Claussel and Nithin Sawney. He first lived in Berlin in 2000, playing with Joe Williamson, Michael Vorfeld, Marcelo Aguirre, Annette Krebs, Konrad Bauer, Tobias Vethake and others, thusly setting the tone for his paradoxical poetics of sound, while working on dance/theater with Ephia in Djalma Primordial Science (www.djalma.com)
In New Mexico (2001 -2004), he worked in relative isolation on the physiology of sound, recording three radically experimental CDs released on his own label and with Ephia taught numerous workshops, making two cross country tours, played with Keith Rowe, Kyle Bruckmann, Luperci, Raven Chacon, Bob Bellerue, Tom Carter (Charalambides), Bob Marsh and others, returning to Germany to work with various musicians each year, realeasing his first “official” CD with Nur Nicht Nur in 2003. It was in this time he visited the Tarahumara of Northern Mexico to study their music and religious rituals.
Since 2005, living in Berlin, he has toured widely in Europe, playing with Tetuzi Akiyama, Lucio Capece, Pascal Battus, Yannick Franck, Olivier Pe, Christine Sehnahoiu, Stephane Rives, Guillaume Viltard, Rinus Van Alebeek (and at numerous editions of Das Kleines Field Recordings Festival), Madame P., Olivier DiPlacido and others and was given a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam and presented sound installations in Darmstadt 2006, where he met Helmut Lachenmann. At the request of Noé Cuéllar, he composed a soundtrack for an invisible film which was subsequently released by Yannick Franck’s Idiosyncratics net-label. CD releases with Tetuzi Akiyama, Raven Chacon and his solo cd recorded in 2003 released by Foxy Digitalis followed. Many performances with Djalma Primordial Science took him far afield in this period: festivals in Amsterdam, France (twice in Rodez at Espace Antonin Artaud), Copenhagen, twice at Odin Teatret (Hostelbro) and two appearances at the UNIDRAM in Potsdam.
His CD “red rose for the sinking ship” was released by Triple Bath in 2007 to great praise and “virtuous circles” released by Absurd Records was also warmly recieved in 2006. After a short stay in Belgium he presented his first exhibition of drawings with Olivier Pe, before playing in Poland at Experyment Festival, 2008. Since living in Poznan he has been performing solo and at the Ad Libitem Festival in Warsaw with John Tilbury, Eddie Prevost and Phil Durrant. Numerous net releases followed all these occupations. Recently he has been playing with x-navi.et (aka Rafal Iwanski from Hati), Siamgda and with Joniecs (Kakofonikt). The new cd “remote provinces” is out now on Aural Terrains while another is forthcoming on the Brussels-based label N.O.T. Currently he is working with violinist Karolina Ossowska on reinterpretations of contemporary works for string and small ensemble and electronics (Anabasis Ensemble). He is also organizing the second edition of Retrograde in the Dromosphere Festival at Galeria ON in Poznan.
Jeff Gburek, born 1963 in Buffalo, New York, continues to be born in other places. Currently in Poznan, Poland.
