Tierkreis (German for zodiac) is Stockhausen’s most accessible, most adapted, and likely best-known work. It may also be the most symmetrical, its twelve movements conforming to the zodiac’s twelve signs, each melody based on a twelve-tone row, the pieces arranged in the sequence of the chromatic scale. The original sound source ensures the piece’s celebrity: Stockhausen had a music box constructed for each of the melodies. Bruno Heinen, an English jazz pianist whose parents played with Stockhausen, has arranged Tierkris for a jazz sextet with five of the music boxes in hand.
From the opening sound of a music box being wound, Heinen keeps finding ways to expand and vary the material, deploying the members of his band in surprising ways. “Gemini,” a quartet feature for tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger, is reharmonized into a moody ballad that suggests mid-’60s Wayne Shorter, while “Libra” has Heinen playing the music box in a duet with drummer Jon Scott. Contrasts abound: Fulvio Seguria’s clarion trumpet adds an element of baroque fanfare to the theme statement of “Leo,” while bass clarinettist James Allsopp takes free-jazz liberties with “Scorpio.”
Touching on the furthest precincts of nostalgia and commemoration, this work provides fresh perspectives on both Tierkreis and the methodologies of modern jazz.
Stuart Broomer has written extensively on music, mostly improvised, for both general and specialist publications, and his liner essays have appeared on CDs by musicians from some 20 countries. The author of Time and Anthony Braxton (Mercury, 2009), he is currently writing a fantasia on the life of Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips. He has been intermittently active as an improvising musician since 1965; his composition Found Theme for the Age of Reason appeared in Musicworks 112. He lives in Toronto.