GÜNTER CHRISTMANN

This Polish-born master of the avant-garde trombone got into improvising through jazz music from the other end of the spectrum, the early Dixieland style. He suffered from polio as a child, a disease that would later return to severely limit his touring activities in his later years. His first musical inspirations as a child were the New Orleans jazz sounds of Kid Ory and George Lewis, the earlier of the two jazz greats by this name -- ironically both have a link to this German musician. The New Orleans players beckoned him into their world of joyous extrapolation with their fat, swaggering tones. The younger George Lewis, a Chicago trombonist from that city's Assocation for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, was one of many young improvising trombonists who would be inspired by Gunter Christmann's fluid use of newly invented musical language on that often cumbersome and difficult to control instrument. read more...