- He studied painting in Wuppertal and was involved with the Fluxus movement but grew dissatisfied with art galleries and exhibitions.
- He experienced his first jazz concert when he saw American jazz musician Sidney Bechet while still in school at Wuppertal, and it made a lasting impression.
- Peter Brötzmann was a German saxophonist and clarinetist.
- In the 1980s, Brötzmann flirted with heavy metal and noise rock, recording with Last Exit and the band's bass guitarist and producer Bill Laswell.
- In 1968, Machine Gun, an octet recording, was released. The album was self-produced under his BRO record label imprint and sold at concerts, and later marketed by FMP. In 2007 Atavistic reissued Machine Gun.
- He taught himself to play clarinet and saxophone, and is also known for playing the tárogató.
- Brötzmann had released over fifty albums as a bandleader and had appeared on dozens more.
- Among his first musical partnerships was with double bassist Peter Kowald. "For Adolphe Sax", Brötzmann's first recording, was released in 1967 and featured Kowald and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson.
- Brötzmann had not abandoned his art training, designing most of his album covers.
- Since 1997, he had toured and recorded regularly with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet (initially an octet) which he disbanded after an ensemble performance in November 2012 in Strasbourg, France.
- From 1997 to 2012, he toured and recorded with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet (originally an octet). In the past few years, his health had declined, as pneumonia ravaged his lungs, leaving them enlarged, like those of a glassblower. Still, he continued to play, reuniting what British critic Peter Margasak characterized as his "mind-melting" quartet with bassist John Edwards, drummer Steve Noble, and vibist Jason Adasiewicz earlier this year before being told by doctors that he had to stop altogether.
- He led the Albert Ayler-inspired Die Like a Dog quartet, additionally comprising trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, bassist William Parker, and drummer Hamid Drake, for over ten years.
- Around 1970, he joined the Amsterdam-based tentet Instant Composers Pool, of which Bennink was a member, along with Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg. Bennink would appear, drumming on trees and various other woodland flora, on Brötzmann's 1977 Schwarzwaldfahrt, recorded outside the Black Forest.
- Peter Brötzmann, whose fiercely innovative style and explosive playing made him a towering figure in the world of European free jazz, died June 22 at his home in Wuppertal.
- Emerging as a visual artist and as a self-taught saxophonist and clarinetist at the end of the 1950s, Brötzmann ultimately chose improvisational music as his main mode of expression, one that arguably found its most unalloyed form in his landmark 1968 album Machine Gun.
- European tours with such American jazz greats as Cherry, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, and pianist Carla Bley further burnished Brötzmann's reputation.
- As the 1980s dawned, heralded by the wailing guitars of heavy metal, the industrial shriek of bands like the UK's Throbbing Gristle and the squall of seminal noise rockers like Germany's Einstürzende Neubaten, Brötzmann turned toward these and other uncompromising sounds. With guitarist Sonny Sharrock, bassist Bill Laswell, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, he formed the punk-inflected free jazz supergroup Last Exit, whose volume typically exceeded even the earsplitting levels associated with free jazz.
- He initially studied painting, falling in for a time with the Fluxus movement, befriending Joseph Beuys ("I still have some letters from Beuys at home," he told the Red Bull Music Academy in 2018. "He always said, Brötzmann, do your shit, do your thing") and working as an assistant for Nam June Paik, notably helping the future video-art legend to situate his inaugural gallery installation, at Wuppertal's Galerie Parnass in 1963.
- Relentlessly active, Brötzmann played on dozens of albums by other artists as diverse as pianist Cecil Taylor, avant-garde guitarist and vocalist Keiji Haino, and multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee.
- Inspired by the American jazz legends then touring Europe, among them Sidney Bechet, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Eric Dolphy, Brötzmann began making music. In 1967 he released his first album-on his own label, BRO, thanks to his belief in the Marxist adage that "the worker shouldn't give the tool and product out of his own hand.".
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content