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Keith Rowe

Keith Rowe (born in Plymouth, England) is an English free improvisation guitarist and painter.

Rowe is a founding member of AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and a founding member of M.I.M.E.O. He trained as a visual artist, and Rowe's paintings have been featured on most of his own albums.

After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of electroacoustic improvisation, and many of his recent recordings have been released by Erstwhile Records.

Rowe began his career playing jazz in the early 1960's--notably with Mike Westbrook and Lou Gare. His early influences were guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and Barney Kessel. Eventually, however, Rowe grew tired of what he considered the form's limitations. Rowe began experimenting, slowly and gradually. An important step was a New Year's resolution to stop tuning his guitar -- much to Westbrook's displeasure. Rowe gradually expanded into free jazz and free improvisation, eventually abandoning conventional guitar technique.

This change in his approach to guitar, Rowe reports, was partly inspired by a teacher in one of his painting courses who told him, "Rowe, you cannot paint a Caravaggio. Only Caravaggio can paint Caravaggio." Rowe reports that after considering this idea from a musical perspective, "trying to play guitar like Jim Hall seemed quite wrong." For several years Rowe contemplated how to reinvent his approach to the guitar, again finding inspiration in visual art, namely, American painter Jackson Pollock, who abandoned traditional painting methods to forge his own style. "How could I abandon the technique? Lay the guitar flat!"[1]

Rowe developed various prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body and pickups in unorthodox ways to produce sounds described as dark, brooding, compelling, expansive and alien. He has been known to employ objects such as a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar. A January, 1997 feature in Guitar Player magazine described a Rowe performance as "resemble a surgeon operating on a patient." Rowe sometimes incorporates live radio broadcasts into his performances, including shortwave radio and number stations (the guitar's pickups will also pick up radio signals, and broadcast them through the amplifier). Axel Dörner and Keith Rowe in Chicago, Illinois, 22 September 2004.

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6
Live Review

String Theory 2016

Read "String Theory 2016" reviewed by Ian Patterson


String Theory 13 North Great Georges Street jny: Dublin, Ireland May 20-21, 2016 String Theory, a two-day celebration of avant-garde guitar craft was no ordinary festival. The fact that the music was experimental, largely improvised and inherently risk-laden isn't what set this inaugural Dublin festival apart, after all it's what we've come to expect from co-promoters Improvised Music Company, Note Productions and festival curators Bottlenote Music--a collective of renowned local and international musicians.

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Album Review

Keith Rowe and John Tilbury: Enough still not to know

Read "Enough still not to know" reviewed by John Eyles


It was back in late 2011 that the last collaboration between Keith Rowe and John Tilbury was issued, E.E. Tension and Circumstance (Potlatch, 2011), having been recorded live in Paris in December 2010. As that was their second duo recording, following the double CD Duos for Doris (Erstwhile, 2003), and they had not played together since Rowe left AMM in 2004, it was not unduly pessimistic for the review of it to conclude, “[W]e know from Duos for Doris that ...

3
Multiple Reviews

Three From Intonema

Read "Three From Intonema" reviewed by John Eyles


When the ninth and tenth releases on St. Petersburg's Intonema label were released, it was noteworthy that neither of them featured a Russian musician, despite the label's catalogue previously featuring such notable Russians as saxophonist Ilia Belorukov, bass guitarist Mikhail Ershov and pianist Alexey Lapin alongside a distinguished cast of fine overseas players. Happily, the label's three subsequent releases, below, have not continued that trend, as two of them feature Russians, including one solely by the Russian Andrey Popovskiy. And, ...

87
Album Review

Keith Rowe / John Tilbury: E.E.Tension and Circumstance

Read "E.E.Tension and Circumstance" reviewed by Mark Corroto


If it weren't for the sound of one hand clapping, we would have no resonance at all.That snarky summation might best describe this hour-long duo performance by former AMM ensemble band mates Keith Rowe and John Tilbury. Like the zen koan “one hand clapping," this music evokes an almost instantaneous meditation.Recorded just outside of Paris in December 2010 at Les Instants Chavirés, this duo brings together two legends of British improvisation not heard together on record ...

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Extended Analysis

Keith Rowe and John Tilbury: E.E. Tension and Circumstance

Read "Keith Rowe and John Tilbury: E.E. Tension and Circumstance" reviewed by John Eyles


Keith Rowe & John Tilbury E.E. Tension and Circumstance Potlatch2011 It happens every year. Just as the old year is drawing to a close, after the best-of-the-year lists have been compiled and published, a release arrives just too late to make those lists but deserving to feature in their upper echelons. For 2011, E.E. Tension and Circumstance was the one. Pairing Keith Rowe on guitar and John Tilbury on ...

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Interview

Keith Rowe: One Bird Flying Through

Read "Keith Rowe: One Bird Flying Through" reviewed by John Eyles


In early June 2009, multi-instrumentalist Keith Rowe made one of his rare visits to London to play a concert at Cafe Oto as part of Another Timbre's Unnamed Music Festival in a trio with saxophonists Martin Kuchen and Seymour Wright, before heading north to Leeds to play another set the following evening with the same trio. Having been in the audience for the first night of the festival--and seeing fine sets by Sebastian Lexer and Aleks Kowalski, Rhodri Davies, Lee ...

139
Live Review

Keith Rowe: Mixing Soundscapes and Politics at Musrara Mix Festival in Jerusalem

Read "Keith Rowe: Mixing Soundscapes and Politics at Musrara Mix Festival in Jerusalem" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


Keith Rowe Musrara Mix Festival #8Naggar School of Photography, Media and New Music Jerusalem, Israel May 27, 2008

Music, at least apart from recorded documentation, may be the most impermanent art. Yet there are many musicians or concerts that can leave a lasting mark, altering the way we perceive music, the music- creating process and its very importance to our personal lives. Keith Rowe's 30-minute concert at the annual multidisciplinary festival produced ...

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175

Interview

Avant-Guitarist Keith Rowe Interviewed at AAJ

Avant-Guitarist Keith Rowe Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz

In early June 2009, multi-instrumentalist Keith Rowe made one of his rare visits to London to play a concert at Cafe Oto as part of Another Timbre's Unnamed Music Festival in a trio with saxophonists Martin Kuchen and Seymour Wright, before heading north to Leeds to play another set the following evening with the same trio. Having been in the audience for the first night of the festival--and seeing fine sets by Sebastian Lexer and Aleks Kowalski, Rhodri Davies, Lee ...

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