Martin Siewert

Martin Siewert (born 11 May 1972 in Saarbrücken) is a German musician in the field of jazz and free improvisation (guitar, electronic) and film composer. Siewert lives in Vienna.^[1]

Life and Works

Siewert has been living in Vienna since the age of 10. He studied guitar at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. As a guitarist, he started his public performances in 1995. In his early performances, he played with Herwig Gradischnig, Freier Fall, Franz Hautzinger and his own band Duckbilled Platypus. With this band, he published two albums under the label Extraplatte. Almost like other musicians in Vienna in that time (Boris Hauf, Dieb13, Hautzinger, Werner Dafeldecker or Hilga Hinteregger), he began to free himself from jazz idiom and developed an abstract sound by guitar. Soon, he became a member of Efzeg (with Burkherd Stangl and Hauf) and Komfort. He invited Dafeldecker, Hinteregger, Wayne Horvitz and Tony Buck to the group Komfort. In the group Trapist, he played with Joe Williamson and Martin Brandlmayr. In My Kingdom for a lullably, he played with Christof Kurzmann, Axel Dörner and with the video artist of Efzeg, Billy Roisz. He also performed as member of guitar quartet SSSD. Other members of SSSD were Taku Sugimoto, Werner Dafeldecker and Burkhard Stangl. He worked also with Oskar Aichinger, Christian Fennesz, and in a duet with Dieb13 and Comforts of Madness, and also with Wolfgang Mitterer, Elliott Sharp, Franz Koglmann, Thomas Lehn, Karlheinz Essl, Briggan Krauss, Ken Vandermark, Michael Sarin, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, dem Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Steve Heather, Yannis Kyriakides, Georg Gräwe, Frank Gratkowski, Michael Vatcher or Klangforum Wien. Besides, he made music for theater, ballet, film, remix recordings and sound art.^[2]

Discography

• Heaven and Bye and Bye I’m Going to See the King (Staubgold, 2010)
• Lucia Pulido, Christian Fennesz, Martin Siewert, Burkhard Stangl A Girl & a Gun [Soundtrack for a Film from Gustav Deutsch, Single] (Interstellar Records, 2009)
• Christian Weber, Michael Moser, Hans Koch, Christian Wolfarth, Martin Siewert 3 Suits and a Violin (HatHut, 2006)
• No Need to Be Lonesome (Mosz, 2004)
• Efzeg Wuerm (Charhizma, 2003)
• Trapist Highway My Friend (HatHut, 2002, with Martin Brandlmayr, Joe Williamson)
• SSSD: Home (Grob, 2002)
• Siewert/ Horvitz/ Dafeldecker/ Hinteregger/ Buck: Komfort (Charhizma, 2000)
• The Comforts of Madness: röhren (Charhizma, 1999, with Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Stefan Aschböck, Helge Hinteregger)

References