Bürck - Graeter Duo
Bürck - Graeter-Casserley Trio
Rainer Bürck, piano
Roland Graeter, cello/voice
Lawrence Casserley, live electronics
One of the main concerns of contemporary music after 1945 was the development of new musical forms, which were intended to be completely different from any traditional form. This meant at first a rejection of the development-oriented dramatic form of the classic-romantic period. Stockhausen, for example, presented his concept of the "moment form" in opposition to the traditional idea of musical form. Each musical moment should be autonomous in itself and shouldn't receive its meaning from what had been played before or afterwards. Nothing should be predictable, anything should be expected to happen next. Though having been created by complex mathematical operations, this music sounded more or less spontaneous and, in a way, improvised.

In the autumn 1995 Rainer Bürck, composer and pianist specializing in contemporary repertoire, and Roland Graeter, specializing in improvised music, decided to form a duo, trying to build bridges from their different backgrounds between contemporary "composed" and improvised music. When Rainer Bürck met composer Lawrence Casserley in the summer of 1996 the idea was born to transform the duo into a trio with Casserley processing the sounds of the piano, cello and voice with the help of his IRCAM signal-processing work-station. Rehearsals aimed less at the creation of particular musical material than at the process of reacting to, and communicating with each other, aiming to let the unexpected and unpredictable happen and trying to avoid cliches.

See also http://www.chiltern.demon.co.uk/BGC.html