NYC Premiere: Outstanding Pianist David Helbock Plays in Three “Bands” in One Night

New York, October 12, 2011 - On Wednesday, November 9, 2011, at 7:30 PM, an exciting evening of experimental music at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (11 East 52 Street; Free admission, rsvp required at acfny.org/event/658/) has 27 year-old Austrian pianist David Helbock meet various musicians in a quest to create a vibrant and utterly unique sound. Presenting different constellations throughout the evening, Helbock will team up with his frequent Austrian collaborators Simon Frick and Alfred Vogel, as well as NYC-based tubist extraordinaire, Marcus Rojas.

To kick off the free music extravaganza appropriately titled Helbock Meets…, Helbock will pair up with Simon Frick, a violin virtuoso with his own language of sound, to perform their own compositions, including pieces from David Helbock’s Personal Realbook (2009), in which he wrote a new tune every day for a whole year. The two musicians have been playing together since their school days.

Another pairing brings Helbock together with percussionist Alfred Vogel in a duo they callHellhound & Bird. Their collaborations revolve around film and the interplay between images and sound; David Lynch and the Gesamtkunstwerk aspect of his oeuvre are a frequent inspiration.

Finally, "phenomenal tubist” (Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker) Marcus Rojas, a New York City native, will jump into the fray, to team up with his three Austrian collaborators in sound.

By the end, the audience will have heard Helbock on piano, electronics, percussion, Fender Rhodes, synthesizer, and electronics, Frick on violin, e-violin, and electronics, Vogel on acoustic drums, pots and pans, and Rojas on tuba. They will also have amended everything they thought they knew about those instruments with the sounds of Helbock Meets…

Helbock studied piano and percussion in Austria and Switzerland. Since 2000 he has been studying with well-known New York jazz pianist Peter Madsen, with whom he plays in the band Mistura, and in CIA (Collective of Improvising Artists). He has won the Prima la Musica several times and in 2001 was awarded the prestigious Bösendorfer Scholarship (classical piano). In 2010, David Helbock won second prize at the Bösendorfer Jazz Solo Piano Competition at the MontreuxJazz Festival, and in 2011 he received Austria’s Outstanding Artist Award. Helbock has toured and recorded with many different projects in the United States, Mexico, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Kenya, Senegal, Indonesia, Argentina, Chile, and throughout Europe.

Simon Frick studied classical violin at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz, Austria, and has dealt extensively with other musical styles such as jazz, rock, experimental, free, and contemporary music. Along with performing his own compositions in solo and band projects, Frick has performed with Daniel Schnyder several times, with Christoph Cech’s Brückenköpfe Ensemble, the Janus Ensemble, the Think-Bigger Orchestra, Peter Madsen’s CIA, and the George Crumb Trio.

Brooklyn-native Marcus Rojas is considered one of "the best all around tuba players in the world" (Harvey Pekar, Jazziz). He has played at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, American Symphony, Joffrey Ballet, the New York Pops, Radio City Music Hall, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, and in ensembles led by Gil Evans, George Russell, Jim Hall, Lionel Hampton, Dave Douglas, David Byrne, P.D.Q. Bach, and others. He has also appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Today Show, Saturday Night Live, and The Grammys from New York City. Rojas is a graduate of New York City's famed High School of Music and Art and has a B.M. with distinction from New England Conservatory of Music. He serves on the faculty of New York University, Brooklyn College and the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division.

Austrian percussionist Alfred Vogel studied with Billy Hart, Memo Ascevedo, Billy Ward, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Johnny Vidacovich, among others, and runs his own label, boomslang records. Vogel is an organizer of the annual international Bezau Beatz Festival in Vorarlberg. Vogel has also produced a number of highly acclaimed records for South African singer/songwriter Brendan Adams. His new project, Vogelperspektive, has been called an “outstanding approach to avantgarde music” by renowned jazz journalist Wolf Kampmann, who went on to say: “it's a very rare thing to perform highly complex music in the relaxed, soulful way that Vogel and his comrades do.”

For more information on the CIA (Collective of Improvising Artists), please visit
www.collectiveofimprovisingartists.com/

For information on David Helbock:


For a sample of Helbock/Frick’s performance, please go to
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lCTKgI-y-0
Press Contact: Jim Eigo, jazzpromo@earthlink.net
www.jazzpromoservices.com