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Walter Zimmermann

(b 1949) German composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, piano, and electro-acoustic works that have been successfully performed and recorded across Europe. From 1968-70, he was pianist in the Ars Nova ensemble in Nuremberg and studied composition with Werner Heider. From 1970-73, he studied with Mauricio Kagel and at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. In 1974, Zimmermann began his stay in the USA, first in Hamilton, New York to study computer music, and then around the States to have conversations with 23 American composers (which were published in the book Desert Plants).

(b 1949) German composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, piano, and electro-acoustic works that have been successfully performed and recorded across Europe. From 1968-70, he was pianist in the Ars Nova ensemble in Nuremberg and studied composition with Werner Heider. From 1970-73, he studied with Mauricio Kagel and at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. In 1974, Zimmermann began his stay in the USA, first in Hamilton, New York to study computer music, and then around the States to have conversations with 23 American composers (which were published in the book Desert Plants).

Beginner's Mind
* CD Edition * Over the years, the venerable New York based imprint, Mode Records, has operated to give Walter Zimmermann a solid platform, issuing both new work and reissuing lost classics. In 2019 the label reissued the entirety of the composer’s 1982 triple-album masterpiece “Lokale Musik”, including some newly recorded material, followed two years later with “Voces”, a lavishly packaged 3CD box focusing on Zimmermann’s vocal music from 1979-2016. Mode also reprinted the composer’s invaluable…
Voces
Voces documents many of Walter Zimmermann’s compositions for voices from 1979–2016. The words set range from Meister Eckhart and Hadewijch to Lermontov, Mandelstam, Jabès, Tranströmer, Ingold and Robert Creeley (with his voice accompanying the musicians). Performers include: Claudia Barainsky, the musicians of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (including David Tudor & Takehisha Kosugi), Tehila Nini Goldstein,  KNM Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Peter Schöne / Jan Phili…
Songs Of Innocence & Experience
** 2021 Stock ** This is the first complete recording of Walter Zimmermann’s string quartets. The 10 Fränkische Tänze, from the project Lokale Musik (Local Music) explore the folk music of Franconia in Germany. They are built on research of old peasant books of dances, some dating back to the early 19th century and the beginning of the notation of folk music. The many dance melodies including waltzes, Schottische [German polka], mazurka, galop etc. are captured, rejected and presented in just in…
The Echoing Green
** 2021 Stock ** Like Morton Feldman, whose music he acknowledges as an influence Walter Zimmermann (b.1949) is fascinated by the relationship between painting and music, and how material of an apparently simple nature played by apparently “normal” instruments is capable of almost infinite subtlety. Frankfurt’s HCD Ensemble are also members of Germany’s infamous Ensemble Modern. They are joined here by the superb violinist Peter Rundel and cellist Michael Bach. Wüstenwanderung [Wandering in the …
Shadow of an Idea
The influence of two American composers – John Cage and Morton Feldman – has been decisive on Walter Zimmermann.  With Cage, it was his music from the late forties – works like the String Quartet, the Suite for Toy Piano and the Six Melodies – that caught his attention: works underpinned by precise numerical construction, yet with an engaging directness of expression. Feldman has been an inspiration to Zimmermann’s lyrical impetus, and Cage to his constructivist urges. Yet the two do not always …
Lokale Musik
Despite having an undeniable canon, the minimalist music movement which developed during the 1960s and continues to flourish and evolve today, is defined by a remarkable breadth in ideas and compositional approach. Particularly in Europe, it rapidly took on a diverse number of influences and became very much its own thing. Of the composers who proposed an alternate reality for this territory of sound, there have been few more accomplished than the German composer, Walter Zimmermann.All too often…
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