INTERDEPENDENZEN is a solo violin album (with one piece on viola) by German, Berlin-based and classically trained composer-scholar-poet Maria I.J. Reich who explores her improvised music research. Reich composes music in the fields of classical, jazz and free improvised music and for television and film productions, and She collaborates in international and interdisciplinary productions worldwide. She leads her own string quartet and has a trio with French pianist Eve Risser and fellow German vocalist Laura Totenhagen.

The 11 short pieces are uncut and were recorded in Berlin and Wilsum Between December 2022 and May 2023 on Reich’s iPhone, with the idea to capture the situation, the material that became audible, the wood, the bow hair, the room, the recording device, and Reich the musician, “like the reflections of light on an uneven surface”.

Reich employs an array of extended bowing techniques to sketch colorful, inventive textures, with an imaginative, poetic sense (Reich thanks Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke «for speaking to me and for changing me») and a clear mind Zen Buddhist. Or as she describes her improvisations: «A gesture of hands in space that catches a glimpse. Spider webs vibrating and tearing» or as one piece is titled, «Die Vögel fliegen still durch uns hindurch» (The birds fly silently through us). The violin becomes a vivid sonic entity with its own independent voice, embracing all sounds, dirty and rough, touching and lyrical, melodic and percussive. Reich sees the beauty in all of them, as well as their inconspicuous and imperceptible interdependence that weaves between all things.

Eyal Hareuveni

Maria Reich (violin, viola)