Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday October 10th, 2012 with Bernard Stepien
Summer Jazz part III: Berlin guitarist Olaf Rupp

On my way to a conference in Prague I felt the urge to stop in not far away Berlin. I stayed with saxophonist Frank Paul Schubert and after a couple of days of two hour sessions of duo practices we decided to hit the town which in Berlin is a very natural thing. Berlin, which has the highest unemployment rate in Germany has become a major musical tourist attraction. Tourists come from all over the world to see shows of all kinds, from classical music to Rock to Jazz and even Free-Jazz. Thus one could say that in this vibrant city of Berlin, music saves the show! That night, guitarist Olaf Rupp was playing in one of the zillions of Berlin art galleries that feature avant-garde Jazz among other styles of music. Olaf Rupp has an impressive trail of 30 CDs over a decade that started with the famous FMP label. I quickly realized that I was facing something new to me. Olaf Rupp has developed a unique technique on the guitar. First of all, he holds his guitar vertically like a Chinese pipa. Then, he uses all of the well-known guitar plucking like rasgueado, arpeggio and tremolos in continuously changing musical elements. Somehow he seems to have developed an independence of each individual finger on the right hand that allow him to build parallel rather than linear musical elements whether they are melodic lines, chords or clusters but more important all at a virtuoso speed. Olaf Rupp’s music is also a visual experience. See the following web sites not to mention youtube: http://www.audiosemantics.de/ http://www.olafrupp.de/ Tonight, we will review some of his solo improvisation as well as collaborations with saxophonist Frank Paul Schubert on the qliqq label.