About

Mathias Rissi is an increasingly rare phenomenon, an underrecorded musician. As his few recordings attest, however, he is a musician whose playing reflects the same discretion. First working in the LIPSCHITZ ORCHESTRA with Danish Pianist/Composer Ole Thilo from 1975-77, Rissi has since led small groups and large, exploring extended composition, free improvisation, and mixed media work with poets and painters. He led the Q4 QUARTET from 1981-90, recording `Stepan Rasin` and `Plus` for Unit Records.

Rissi`s musical inspirations include John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, and some of the saxophonists associated with Taylor, Archie Shepp and especially Jimmy Lyons, to whom Rissi has dedicated an orchestral piece, `Lyons`Brood`, (heard on the Q4 ORCHESTRA`s 1989 CD of the same name on Creative Works).While that`s usually regarded as an expressionist tradition, and Rissi is a very expressive player, his immersion has been sufficiently profound to include the rigorous structural component that he so clearly extends. He diverges from many of the contemporary adherents in this striking capacity for form, for the clarity of his line and placement of notes, for his ability to build a long solo and the inflection he can concentrate in a single note.

First trained as an architect, Rissi has also found formal inspiration in the compositions of Alban Berg, Iannis Xenakis, and Dmitri Shostakovich, icluding his adaptation of the latter`s cantata, `The execution of Stepan Rasin`.
Equally adept on both alto and tenor, he`s keenly attuned to the inherent voices of each instrument, alternately emphasizing the sweetness of the higher horn and the rugged vocality of the deeper.

Stuart Broomer
Editor of the CODA MAGAZINE