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Hartmut Geerken

Hartmut Geerken (born 15th of Januray 1939 in Stuttgart, Germany) is a German musician, composer, writer, journalist, playwright, and filmmaker. He is widely travelled. Worked for the Goethe Institute in Cario (1966-72), Kabul (1972-1979), and Athens (1879-1983). The years in Egypt seemed to be particularly musically significant as he brought The Sun Ra Arkestra there in 1971, and also co-founded the The Cairo Jazz Band and The Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble.

Hartmut Geerken (born 15th of Januray 1939 in Stuttgart, Germany) is a German musician, composer, writer, journalist, playwright, and filmmaker. He is widely travelled. Worked for the Goethe Institute in Cario (1966-72), Kabul (1972-1979), and Athens (1879-1983). The years in Egypt seemed to be particularly musically significant as he brought The Sun Ra Arkestra there in 1971, and also co-founded the The Cairo Jazz Band and The Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble.

Afghanistan per Du Perdü
**100 copies** In hardbound embossed special package (like previous edition in this series), numbered & signed, with an original work by Hartmut Andryczuk, signed and numbered.  52 pages with a foreword by Hartmut Geerken and 38 applicants for the Goethe Institute in Kabul in the 1970s. With Audio CD. To do justice to the dark irreparable situation afghanistan, bombed far back by the west, is in today, i am juxtaposing 38 passport photos of afghan people, in original format & still from the time…
Music for Angela Davis / Heliopolis (2LP in bundle)
This bundle includes both the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble LPs released by Holidays Records, namely:Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble "Music for Angela Davis" (LP, single-sided, 1971)Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble "Heliopolis" (LP, 1970)Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble "Music for Angela Davis" (LP, single-sided, 1971)**500 copies. Deluxe edition with special printed inner and insert** One of the legendary projects of 20th Century Egyptian jazz, the Cairo FreeJazz Ensemble was formed by Hartmut Geerken - who sadly left thi…
Music for Angela Davis (LP, single-sided)
**500 copies, one-time pressing. Deluxe edition with special printed inner and insert** One of the legendary projects of 20th Century Egyptian jazz, the Cairo FreeJazz Ensemble was formed by Hartmut Geerken - who sadly left this planet on October 21st - as an avant-garde offshoot of The Cairo Jazz Band - the first jazz big band in the country - formed by Salah Ragab in 1968.Sinfully under-documented, in 1970 the band issued Heliopolis, what has since become one of the rarest, most celebrated and…
Kivikkat, The Greenland Experience
**100 copies, signed (by Hartmut Geerken) & numbered** Nuuk in the evening. The audience sits at round tables and drinks juices or beer. Kresten Osgood goes to the piano and immediately has the full attention. Hartmut Geerken with anklung, Tibetan short tube, Nubian Argool, Byzantine bells, waterphone and roll piano and the "Snoeleopard" on the electric guitar and various s.e. wind, percussion and string instruments, some of them self-made, answer, accompany, comment, and set new accents. The gr…
Heliopolis
A real stunner brought back to life with a much-needed repress. Edition of 300 copies, remastered, comes with a 6 pages 30x90 fold out booklet "One of the great projects in Egyptian jazz, the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble was formed by Salah Ragab and Hartmut Geerken as an avant-garde offshoot of The Cairo Jazz Band - the first jazz big band in the country - formed in 1968 when Ragab was appointed chief of Egypt’s Military Department of Music and had at his disposal a vast staff of musicians (almost …
Nach Else Laker-Schülers Tragödie Ich & Ich
**50 copies** In hardbound embossed special package (like previous edition in this series), numbered & signed, with an original work by Hartmut Geerken. DVD with the recording of the radio-play from November 1994
Omniverse
Twenty years after its first publication, Art Yard are proud to present the fully revised 2nd edition of Hartmut Geerken's long unobtainable Omniverse Sun Ra, a definitive hitch-hiker's guide to the Sun Ra galaxy. 304 full colour pages / 1850 gramms - Size: 290mm x 245mm Portrait. Revised and expanded second edition of Hartmut Geerken and Chris Trent's comprehensive reference Omniverse Sun Ra, originally published in 1994. Full-color 304-page hardcover book. French fold cover with metallic silve…
Obertonorgien
Edition of 25 copies, 14 CDs, book-bound, with 14 original collages by Hartmut Geerken (on each of the 14 CD sleeves). Archive edition of Geerkens' talk pieces in a period of twenty years with Klaus Ramm, Pierre Garnier, Robert Lax, Jochen Gerz, Herbert Achternbusch, Grace Yoon, Sainkho Namtchylak, Jörg Drews, and others. Hartmut Geerken is a German musician, composer, writer, journalist, playwright and filmmaker. Geerken studied orientalism, philosophy, German studies and comparative religion i…
Live in Kabul 1976 (Art Edition)
Art Edition with an additional LP, issued in 26 copies onlyThe highly influential Sagittarius A Star label return with a prime piece of Eastern-tinged  Improviation dated 1976 from Hartmut Geerken and Michael Ranta... then in Nov. 1976 we started our Far East Tour from Kabul to Teheran, New Delhi, Calcutta, Dacca, Bangkok, Manila, Seoul & Osaka (as documented on qbico 101 box set & qbico sigma). the very 1st Helio recording (on a Uher Report 4000 reel-to-reel tape machine), before this 4 weeks t…
Heliopolar Egg Live in Kabul 1976
The highly influential Sagittarius A Star label return with a prime piece of Eastern-tinged  Improviation dated 1976 from Hartmut Geerken and Michael Ranta... then in Nov. 1976 we started our Far East Tour from Kabul to Teheran, New Delhi, Calcutta, Dacca, Bangkok, Manila, Seoul & Osaka (as documented on qbico 101 box set & qbico sigma). the very 1st Helio recording (on a Uher Report 4000 reel-to-reel tape machine), before this 4 weeks tour, was our dress rehearsal in my house in Kabul on Nov. 2…
Orpheus
Limited edition of 200 copies. Fantastic sound-poetry piece by Hartmut Geerken, coming with an auto-photograph taken by the author during a four-week long isolation research program held by the Max Planck Institute in a bunker (!) in Andechs, Germany. Holiday Records presents Orpheus by Hartmut Geerken. Fantastic sound poetry piece by Hartmut Geerken restringing the "Sun Harp", the Ukranian bandura that Sun Ra gave him in 1971 when he visited Egypt for the first time. The acoustics of his man…
Insistency!
Third - and sadly last - chapter of the archival recordings fixed on tape by Hartmut Geerken during his stay in Kabul in the 70s. Insistency! was recorded at the Goethe Institut of Kabul on same day of the duo session of Hyndukush Serenade - May 22, 1977 - but sees also Maqsud Schukurwali and Ghafur Rasul - members of the Free Jazz Group Kabul - joining Geerken and John Tchicai and playing an insistent anthem, featuring also an eight year old Olaf Geerken at congas. On side B, the music g…
The Heliopolar Egg
Documentary recordings of Hartmut Geerken and Michael Ranta’s November and December 1976 tour of the Middle East and East Asia. Geerken is known for his long relationship with Sun Ra (including compiling a discography), but he wears many other hats too: musician, film-maker, archivist. Ranta is a percussionist best known for his famous “Improvisation Sep.1975” collaborative record with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takehisa Kosugi. This is a CD reissue of an LP boxset, originally released in 2010 as the …
Hindukush Serenade
Remembering his old friend and the days when this live recordings were taken, says Hartmut Geerken: "When John came to visit us in Afghanistan and in Greece, where we lived in the 70's and 80's, my wife Sigi had to extend his bed always with fruit boxes. His height didn't fit into a normal sized bed as well as his musical dimensions were too far out to fit into the mainstream taste of the masses. It was wonderful to hike with him in the Hindukush mountains up the Salang Pass. Afghanistan was a v…
Live in Kabul 1976
Outstanding archival recordings by Hartmut Geerken. German author, poet, composer, film-maker, performer, and gifted musician who collaborated with John Tchicai, Sun Ra (he was the first to bring Sun Ra over to Egypt in 1971), Embryo, Michael Ranta, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Takeisha Kosugi and many more. This is an incredible live recording of a concert hosted by the Goethe Institut of Kabul on September 22, 1976. More than sixty minutes of convulsive jams - and hypnotic obscure interludes to …
West Africa Tour (Sierra Leone, Liberia & Guinea), April 1985
special box in 26 copies, made in high quality leather various African objects/artworks from various African tribes, stunning booklet with many rare photos (30) of the Tour (mostly color and b&w) cola nuts (to break the colanut with somebody african saying, which means to make friendship) an extra one-sided LP (I side) on gold and gold/green wax, - ALL recordings available here for the 1st time! "One of music's most amazing powers is its ability to tell a story. In the case of The African Tapes,…
Stalllife
A spare, dark, improvised performance between Hartmut Geerken and Valeri Scherstjanoi – recorded at the start of the 21st Century, but with a depth that goes back to Geerken's earlier work! As with some of his best recordings, there's a quality here that's almost more focused on sound than music – lots of unusual percussive moments and ringing tones – shaped by the freedom of the performance, and slightly augmented by some wordless vocal utterances too! The record is only single-sided – a very u…
Brasilia in waitawhile
"It has always been one of my desires to do an album with Brazilian musicians/flavours... i remember years ago trying to do a free-funk-samba album with saxophonist Ivo Perelman which unfortunatly never happened ?! when Hartmut told me about a very special number that he did with Don Moye and musicians/artists from Brazil under the effect of Santo Daime's sacrament, i sensed that this might be what i was waiting for so long... warning: you'll NOT be able to hear this music seated... hip DJs took…
Einem Luftigen Akustischen Kosmos Entgegen
Collaboration performance by this two infamous german visual artists, writers & sound-poets, recorded at Lyrik-Kabinett München, June 1991. This is Carlfriedrich Claus' only sound-collaboration ever. Both artists prepared a 60-minute backing-tape and wrote a detailled score for live-performed poetry and voice-operations. In addition to these fixed compositions they left room for spontaneous improvisation and the use of small cymbals ('tschinkas'). This is like nothing else. Very serious, …
The Heliopolar egg 1976
This is one of the ultralimited edition of 26 copies (numbered from A to Z) with a different artsy cover, with one piece of Wayne Jacob (Michael Ranta's alter ego) original painting, and on back Hartmut Geerken original Lomographies; hand-colored, stamped and signed. It comes with ORIGINAL flyers/booklets, as well as a full LP, NOT one-sided as the regular edition...Again, truly monumental last ever Qbico release is a feast of exotic instruments, skilful playing and spirituality. No less than si…
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