Ponty & Dauner Duo Two innovators in music are joining forces to perform as a duo. The bare instrumen- tation will allow audiences to fully appreciate the individual talent of each artist, as well as the musical heights that will emerge from their collective improvisations. Jean Luc Ponty and Wolfgang Dauner collaborated in larger ensembles in the 60s, then followed separate paths for years, until Dauner invited Ponty to perform with him as a duo at the Stuttgart Jazz Festivals in 1996 and again in April 2006. The two artists were so excited by the musical result of their last reunion that they decided to renew the experience in concerts around the world. Jean-Luc Ponty violin Jean-Luc Ponty is a pioneer and undisputed master of violin in the area of jazz and rock. He is widely regarded as an innovator who has applied his unique visionary spin that has expanded the vocabulary of modern music. The great American jazz violinist Stuff Smith hearing Ponty in the 60’s said “he is a killer, he plays on the violin like Coltrane does on sax” (Jazz Encyclopedia In The Sixties by Leonard Feather). In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976, Stéphane Grappelli said “No he is not a student, only a great friend...he is a great musician and invented a new style on the violin”, and Didier Lockwood wrote in his autobiography that Jean-Luc Ponty is the father of modern jazz violin and his model. Ponty was born in a family of classical musicians in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, his mother taught piano. At sixteen, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, graduating two years later with the institution’s highest award, Premier Prix. In turn, he was immediately hired by one of the major symphony orchestras, Concerts Lamoureux, where he played for three years. Representative and Booking: Hans J. Batschauer | Hasenbergsteige 20 | D-70178 Stuttgart Phone: +49-711-6 15 90 68 | [email protected] - 1 - Ponty & Dauner Duo While still a member of the orchestra in Paris, Ponty picked up a side gig, playing clarinet (which his father had taught him) for a college jazz band that regularly performed at local parties. It proved a life-changing jumping-off point. A growing interest in the jazz sounds of Miles Davis and John Coltrane compelled him to take up the tenor saxophone. Fueled by an all-encompassing creative passion, Jean-Luc soon felt the need to express his jazz voice through his main instrument, the violin. With a powerful sound that eschewed vibrato, Jean-Luc distinguished himself with be-bop era phrasings and a punchy style influenced more by horn players than by anything previously tried on the violin; nobody had heard anything quite like it before. In June 1964, at age 21, he recorded his debut solo album for Philips, Jazz Long Playing (Universal/Emarcy), then performed and recorded with top European jazz musicians such as Wolfgang Dauner, Eberhard Weber, Niels Henning-Ørsted Pedersen, John Surman, Daniel Humair etc. In 1967, John Lewis of The Modern Jazz Quartet invited Ponty to perform at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Jean-Luc’s first-ever American appearance garnered thunderous applause and led to a U.S. recording contract with producer Richard Bock for his World Pacific label (Electric Connection with the Gerald Wilson Big Band, Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio). In 1969, Frank Zappa composed the music for Jean-Luc’s solo album King Kong (Blue Note). In 1972, Elton John invited Ponty to contribute to his Honky Château #1 hit album. In 1973 Ponty emigrated to America and made his home in Los Angeles. He toured and recorded with Zappa’ Mothers of Invention, then with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, recorded with Chick Corea until 1975, when he signed on as a solo artist with Atlantic Records and formed his own group. For the next decade, Jean-Luc toured the world repeatedly and recorded 12 consecutive albums, which all reached the top 5 on the Billboard jazz charts and sold millions of copies, firmly establishing him as a figurehead in America’s growing jazz-rock movement. He went on to crack the top 40 in 1977 with the Enigmatic Ocean album and again in 1978 with Cosmic Messenger. Besides recording and touring with his own group, Ponty also Representative and Booking: Hans J. Batschauer | Hasenbergsteige 20 | D-70178 Stuttgart Phone: +49-711-6 15 90 68 | [email protected] - 2 - Ponty & Dauner Duo performed some of his compositions with symphony orchestras in the USA, Canada and Japan. On 1991’s Epic-released Tchokola, Ponty combined his acoustic and electric violins, for the first time, with the powerful polyrhythmic sounds of West Africa. He also performed for two months in the U.S. and Canada with a cast of African expatriates he had encountered on the Paris music scene. In 1995, Ponty joined guitarist Al Di Meola and bassist Stanley Clarke to record an acoustic album under the name The Rite of Strings. This all-star trio also undertook a six-month tour of North America, South America, and Europe that earned them intercontinental critical praise. In 1997, Jean-Luc Ponty put back together his group of Western and African musicians pursuing this new fusion that he started in 1991. Together they toured in North America, Western and Eastern Europe and triumphed from the Hawaiian Islands to Russia. In August 2001, Jean- Luc Ponty released his new studio CD Life Enigma on his own label (J.L.P. Productions, Inc.), a return to his concept from the 70s with a very modern production. In January 2003, Jean- Luc toured in India for the first time for the Global Music Festival organized by Indian violinist L. Subramaniam. Jean-luc brought along his bassist Guy Nsangué Akwa, both performed with Subramaniam’s band and drummer Billy Cobham who was also a guest star on that tour. In 2004, Jean-Luc Ponty released his first DVD In Concert in Europe (Le Chant du Monde/Hamonia Mundi 974 1195) and in North America (J.L.P. Productions, Inc./Navarre Distribution JLP 004). Since then Ponty has been touring with a new project called Trio in collaboration with Stanley Clarke on double bass and Bela Fleck on banjo, as well as with his band “Jean Luc Ponty & His Group”. Hejust signed a new exclusive recording agreement with Koch Entertainment/Universal in New York and will soon release a new album with his band. Representative and Booking: Hans J. Batschauer | Hasenbergsteige 20 | D-70178 Stuttgart Phone: +49-711-6 15 90 68 | [email protected] - 3 - Ponty & Dauner Duo Wolfgang Dauner grand piano Dauner was brought up by his aunt, who was a piano teacher and gave him lessons from his fifth year. He first worked as a mechanic, but took up music professionally in 1957 when he was offered a tour with a commercial band. In 1958 he studied trumpet and piano briefly at Stuttgart College of Music, but as a jazz musician he was largely self- taught. Initially, Bill Evans was his main influence but Dauner's restless energy and interest in experimentation and the theatrical side of performance soon led him to evolve his won musical climate and method of procedure. In 1963 he formed his own trio, with Eberhard Weber and Fred Braceful, and its unconven-tional performances caused a sensation at German festivals. He also worked with visiting American and European jazz stars, and had begun composing not only music, but also some bizarre, even outrageous events. In the second half of the 1960s e destroyed a violin and burned a piano on stage on one occasion, and on another he covered the heads of one of Germany's most renowned choirs in nylon stockings so that they could only emit noises. During this period he devised and recorded Free Action, for a septet featuring Jean- Luc Ponty, Psalmus Spei, for choir and jazz group for the 1968 Berlin Festival , and Dauner-eschingen, for jazz-soloists and choir for the 1970 Donaueschingen music festival. Since 1969 Dauner has led the Stuttgart radio jazz group, doing at least one broadcast a month with guest soloists such as Chick Corea, Ponty, Michal Urbaniak and Zbigniew Seifert. In 1970 he formed the group Et Cetera which combined electronics with rock rhythms. He has conducted many workshops for children, bringing out their creativity and helping them to improvise, and in 1974 he had his own TV Representative and Booking: Hans J. Batschauer | Hasenbergsteige 20 | D-70178 Stuttgart Phone: +49-711-6 15 90 68 | [email protected] - 4 - Ponty & Dauner Duo show, Glotzmusik, for children. In 1975 he founded the United Jazz + Rock Orchestra (UJRE) to play on a Stuttgart TV show for young people directed by his friend Werner Schretzmeier. The band became so popular that it began to tour regularly, and to record it Dauner got together with three other members (Volker Kriegel, Albert Mangelsdorff and Ack van Rooyen) and Schretzmeier, to form their own record company, Mood Records. Dauner also composes music for films, television and plays. In 1978 he collaborated with the composer Rolf Unkel in creating new background music for F.W. Murnau's classic silent movie Faust (1926), Unkel composing the acoustic score and Dauner the integrated electronic music. In the later 1970s he wrote The Primal Scream for symphony orchestra, choir, prepared tapes, solo voice and solo violin (played by Seifert), which as premiered at the Berlin festival. In 1985 he wrote Trans Tanz for symphony orchestra plus solo trombone (Mangelsdorff) and solo piano (himself).