DIE HOCHSTAPLER - THE MUSIC OF ALVIN P. BUCKLEY


Pierre Borel – alto sax
Louis Laurain – trumpet
Antonio Borghini – double bass
Hannes Lingens – drums

„The early crowd tends to dig your Radio Cologne sound. Later on we really swing.”
Thomas Pynchon, „The Crying of Lot 49“ 1966


“Le musicien est au son ce que le ver est à la pomme.”
From Alvin P. Buckley’s Journal, ca. 1963



Following their highly acclaimed double CD “The Braxtornette Project” (UMLAUT Records 2013),
Italian-French-German quartet “Die Hochstapler" (The Impostors) present a ground breaking
work based on the writings of the exceptional musician and mathematician Alvin P. Buckley.

A pioneering scientific resarcher (probability theory) as much as a versatile musician back in
Chicago, Buckley retired from active music making after an epiphanic encounter with Stockhausen
in Paris, but kept writing down ideas for musical games, structures and strategies for collective
composition, as well as melodic fragments and short philosophic aphorisms, in his journal.

Based on these journal entries and refraining from any use of notation, the quartet uses poetry,
card games, alphabets and other sources of inspiration to form the grammar for their discourse.

Four independent voices, free to suggest, pretend, agree, disagree or ignore at any time of the game,
collectively build up a rhetoric, full of hints and references, playful and ever changing.

01. le musicien est au son…
02. every bird must be catalogued
03. …ce que le ver est à la pomme
04. alphabets and alfa romeos
05. playing cards

Total playing time: 61:09

All music inspired by Alvin P. Buckley
Recorded March 2015 in Mulhouse by Augustin Müller
Artwork and Design by Pierre Borel and Léa Lanoë


CD
UMLAUT Records 2016


"Avancierter Jazz, der auf spontanen Dialog setzt"
Tim Caspar Boehme, taz

"Die kollektive Freiheit triumphiert über die individuelle Freiheit. [...]
ebenso bestechend wie funkensprühend."

Curt Cusine, skug

"Birst geradezu vor Spielfreude und Spielwitz! Ganz warme Empfehlung."
freistil