Alterity Stream

Alterity Stream presents a unique composition cycle by Christopher Dell, the internationally acclaimed composer and vibraphonist, who is known and highly respected for his experimental music. Taking the confrontation of the jazz quartett and classical wind ensemble as point of departure, Dell transforms this hybrid into an ecstatic montage of forms. Superimposed on the grid of serial structures, Alterity Stream unfolds as a captivating musical relais, which not only indulges in the overview, but also in the insight of the simultaneity of manifold musical practices. This publication is the first publication in the new retroactive series of the exclusive artist’s label edition niehler werft (enw). Conceptualized and produced in the year 2000, the recording was meticulously re-mastered by the German sound engineer and composer Arne Schumann in 2020.

This publication is the first publication in the new retroactive series of the exclusive artist’s label edition niehler werft (enw). The retroactive series releases recordings from my archives as a critical comment and homage to the present discourse in music. It is through the retroactive series that I am revisiting and recontextualizing hitherto unpublished material recorded earlier in my career in order to draw new conclusions on the development of contemporary experimental music and my own positioning towards it. With the attempt to contribute to a rewriting of contemporary experimental music’s canon, the retroactive series provides insight into the role and significance of collaborations I have undertaken, of procedures and strategies that have been crucial to the development of my work, and of the conceptual apparatus I have employed. This series paints a picture of the range of my different musical activities and sheds light on the role it plays in the world of contemporary experimental music. The retroactives series sheds light on historical markstones of my ongoing effort to rethink the identity of contemporary composing music and to rewrite its canon. Perspetivizing questions not only of notation, interpretation, composition and improvisation my work focusses on reconceptualizing the notions of materialility and the plasticity of the rhythmic embodiment as well as the tension between the physical presence of the playing in relation to compositional structures.