RISSI / MAZZOLA / GEISSER - Anaximandros (April 2021)

The architecture of the music by RISSI-MAZZOLA-GEISSER reminds us how intellect, bravery, and raw expression are often cohorts in the cream of creative improvised music.

Greg Buium, Coda Magazine

My long-time cooperation with Guerino Mazzola started in the Summer of the year 1978; in these past years of realy wonderful team playing we formed besides other projects in the eighties the quintet/sextet FLOW UNIT, in the nineties the quartet ARTofTIME and other groups such as the Q4 ORCHESTRA until to the trio RISSI-MAZZOLA-GEISSER with the drummer Heinz Geisser who was playing with us since mid 1994 to the year 2006.

Mathias Rissi

1. Herakleitos 25:56

2. Anaximandros 10:44

3. Thales 22:26

Mathias Rissi - tenor-, alto saxophones

Guerino Mazzola - grand piano

Heinz Geisser - percussion

Compositions by RISSI-MAZZOLA-GEISSER

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Stefano Leonardi, Marco Colonna, Antonio Bertoni, Fridolin Blumer, Heinz Geisser - L'Eterno (LEO RECORDS 2018)

Second CD produced by Stefano Leonardi (flute, sulittu), with international quintet. Marco Colonna (clarinet, bass clarinet), Antonio Bertoni (cello), Fridolin Blumer (bass), Heinz Geisser (percussion), the first CD being "Conversations About Thomas Chapin" CD LR 702. All the musicians are firmly established in Leo Records catalogue and recorded before in different combinations L'Eterno is the name given to the silvery and dead trunk of an old Swiss pine, the remains of a majestic tree struck by lightning in the Lagorai mountains.

Artwork – Re delle Aringhe

Cello – Antonio Bertoni

Clarinet, Alto Clarinet, Bass Clarinet – Marco Colonna

Composed By [All Compositions By] – Antonio Bertoni, Fridolin Blumer, Heinz Geisser, Marco Colonna, Stefano Leonardi (3)

Double Bass – Fridolin Blumer

Flute, Bass Flute, Flute [Sulittu], Launeddas [Launeddas (Mancosedda)] – Stefano Leonardi (3)

Mastered By – Fridolin Blumer

Mixed By – Fridolin Blumer, Heinz Geisser

Percussion, Waterphone – Heinz Geisser

Producer [Produced By] – Leo Feigin, Stefano Leonardi (3)

Recorded By – Ettore Gilardoni, Paolo Falascone

1 Old Roots 9:55

2 Towards The Light 9:00

3 Spirits Inside 6:08

4 Fractured Branches 8:34

5 Resistance 11:04

6 Echoes 4:53

7 Eternal Voice 9:14

8 At Last, Forever 6:10

Heinz Geisser - Guerino Mazzola Duo: Someday (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Someday" by percussionist Heinz Geisser and pianist Guerino Mazzola is a companion album to "Folia/The UNAM Concert" by the same duo. These recordings were made at the Someday Club in Tokyo and at Sala Carlos Chávez in Mexico City during their autumn 2000 tour of Korea, Japan and Mexico. It is by comparing the "Someday" performances with each other, and with those on "Folia", that the extraordinary beauty of the duo's extemporising becomes clear. This is music of great sensitivity and shared, instinctively attuned responsiveness, with details rich in information and highly nuanced. Only the third CD by the duo from its remarkable ten years of existence, "Someday" is a tremendous listening experience. One to be savoured. 

Contemporary free jazz and improvised music are afflicted - to comparably ruinous degrees - by a malaise of overproduction. Musicians of questionable repute are happy for their names to appear on four or five albums per calendar year; musicians of more established renown see nothing amiss in releasing as many as nine or ten. In the context of such heedless profligacy, the Swiss duo of Heinz Geisser and Guerino Mazzola are a refreshing anomaly. 

Now heading into their tenth year of collaboration...  more

1. Someday 36:34

2. Tormenta de tiempos 36:57

Guerino Mazzola grand piano

Heinz Geisser percussion

Heinz Geisser - Guerino Mazzola Duo: Folia / The Unam Concert (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

Swiss drummer Heinz Geisser and pianist Guerino Mazzola have worked together since 1994, dovetailing their considerable creative energies into an ever-closer musical symbiosis. This recording was made in Mexico City in October 2000 under the best possible circumstances. A CD was played in the limousine which drove the duo to this concert of Rachmaninoff’s 'Corelli Variations', a reworking of a theme that had appeared earlier in Corelli’s 12th Violin Sonata in D minor. Even at that time it was a found theme originating in the 'Folia' madness, a fertility dance from the late 15th century. Rachmaninoff’s 'Folia' theme became a crucial agent in the Mexico City performance. As Mazzola reported, 'You can in fact hear this short theme all over the concert and it turned out that it fits incredibly well in my own harmonic, melodic and rhythmic strategies.' Geisser and Mazzola decided to call this CD Folia for its spontaneous mixture of madness and control. 

Their musical and improvisational abilities as a duo are nothing short of sensational throughout this exciting session. 

Time's Ecstasy 

Folía: the UNAM Concert is a recording in which two accomplished improvisers, already deeply familiar with one another's work, fold chance and circumstance into their developed dialogue to...  more

1. The Man of the Sun 27:12

2. Sacrifice of the Dancer 25:27

3. Fiery Mirror 09:25

Guerino Mazzola Boesendorfer grand piano

Heinz Geisser percussion