Daniel Buess (28 January 1976 – 10 March 2016) was a Swiss

drummer A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drums. Most contemporary western music ensemble, bands that play Rock music, rock, Pop music, pop, jazz, or Contemporary R&B, R&B music include a drummer for purposes including timekeepi ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

player and sound artist from Basel.

Biography

He studied percussion at the Musikhochschule Basel with Siegfried Schmid and with Isao Nakamura in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

. His studies included the traditional south Indian percussion-music, specially the

Mridangam The ''mridangam'' is an ancient percussion instrument originating from the Indian subcontinent. It is the primary rhythmic accompaniment in a Carnatic music ensemble. In Dhrupad, a modified version, the pakhawaj, is the primary percussion in ...

from 1995 till 1998 and the Arabic percussion music during a three months residency in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

, Egypt from November 2007 till January 2008. He also worked as a percussion teacher at the Musikakademie Basel for many years. Daniel Buess was involved in various groups and Ensembles in the realm of experimental and improvised music, such as the Ensemble Phoenix Basel of which he was a co-founder. He had been a core-member and solo-percussionist since its foundation in 1998. Other important acts are: CORTEX (with the composer, saxophone player and electronic-musician Alex Buess),

16-17 16-17 is a band from Basel, Switzerland. Their music combines punk rock, hardcore punk, jazz and industrial music. Biography 16-17 was founded in 1983 by Alex Buess, Knut Remond and Markus Kneubühler. When the group played its first con ...

, Buggatronic (with James Hullick), HOW2 (with the percussionist Daniel Stalder), B&B (with the flautist Christoph Bösch), MIR (with Papiro and Michael Zaugg) and NoiseZone (with Artur and Sebastian Smolyn) His collaborations include artists like

Zbigniew Karkowski Zbigniew Karkowski (14 March 1958 – 12 December 2013) was a Polish experimental musician and composer. Biography Karkowski was born on 14 March 1958 in Kraków, Poland. He studied composition at the State College of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden ...

, Alex Buess, Hany Bedair, Kasper T.Toeplitz, John Duncan, Jürg Henneberger, Michael Wertmüller,

Phill Niblock Phillip Earl Niblock (October 2, 1933 – January 8, 2024) was an American composer, filmmaker, and videographer. In 1985, he was appointed director of Experimental Intermedia,Alan Licht, ''Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Music ...

, Knut Remond,

Z'EV Z'EV (born Stefan Joel Weisser, February 8, 1951 – December 16, 2017) was an American poet, percussionist, and sound artist. After studying various world music traditions at CalArts, he began creating his own percussion sounds out of indu ...

, Julio Estrada, Antoine Chessex, Christoph Bösch, Volker Heyn, Thomas Lauck,

Tim Hodgkinson Timothy George Hodgkinson (born 1 May 1949) is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds, lap steel guitar, and keyboards. He first became known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry ...

, Marco Papiro,

Iancu Dumitrescu Iancu Dumitrescu (born 15 July 1944) is a Romanian Avant-garde music, avant-garde composer. Life and works Dumitrescu was born in Sibiu, Kingdom of Romania, Romania. He received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest, where his teache ...

, Ana Maria Avram, Jerome Noetinger, Cadlag and many others. His drumming could be described as highly intense and energetic, archaic but nevertheless sophisticated and multitimbral: he tended to use electronic percussion devices as well as acoustic drums and percussion instruments. Daniel made an extensive use of his self-built percussion devices such as electronic metal shakers, percussive string instruments or electronically modified skin instruments. On his regular tours through Europe, Asia and Australia, he performed at the most highly recognized festivals for experimental music such as

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (also known by the acronym HCMF, stylised since 2006 as the lowercase hcmf//) is a new music festival held annually in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. Since its foundation in 1978, it has featu ...

(2015),

Lucerne Festival Lucerne Festival is one of the leading international festivals in the world of classical music and presents a series of classical music festivals based in Lucerne, Switzerland. Founded in 1938 by Ernest Ansermet and Walter Schulthess, it curr ...

Warsaw Autumn Warsaw Autumn () is the largest international Polish festival of contemporary music. It was established in 1956 by two composers, Tadeusz Baird and Kazimierz Serocki, and officially established by the Head Board of the Polish Composers' Union ...

(2006), as well as at several underground-places, open spaces and independent venues. In 2010 he organized the Echo Festival in Belgrade which was documented by a book as well as a CD. In November 2011 he curated and organized the very successful event TERRAINS: JOLT Swiss Australian Sonic Festival The live recordings of this festival have also been published on CD and vinyl. In 2014, he released a solo album called "Pitch", dedicated to

at Pharmafabrik Recordings. Buess died in early 2016, in his home town of Basel.

Discography (selection)

* HOW2 ''Turing Machine'' (1998), percussion duo Daniel Buess and Daniel Stalder (1998). Compositions by Rico Gubler, Alex Buess, MaartenAltena and Iannis Xenakis Label: United Phoenix Records * Ensemble Phoenix Basel: ''Portrait-CD

Detlev Müller-Siemens Detlev Müller-Siemens (born 30 July 1957) is a German composer and conductor. Life and career Born in Hamburg, Müller-Siemens began with piano lessons at age six and began composing. He was invited to a composition class at the Musikhochschule ...

'' (1999). Label: Wergo * 16-17 (1999) "Mechanophobia" (The Soundsystem Mixes), Vinyl-EP, Label: Praxis UK * Ensemble Phoenix Basel (2004) "Repulsion". Compositions by Tim Hodgkinson, Dror Feiler and Alex Buess.Label: United Phoenix Records * Ensemble Phoenix Basel ''Live-Recordings'' (2008). Works by Jim Grimm, Beat Furrer, Jorge Sanchez-Jong, and Alex Buess. Label: Musiques Suisses/ Grammont Portrait * Zbigniew Karkowski "Physiques Sonores" (Book& CD) Label:Editions Rip on/off * MIR – ''MIR'' (2009) live at Reitschule, Bern. Co-release by 3 Labels: A Tree in a Field Records, Wallace Records (Italy) and Savage Land Records (France) CD and 12" vinyl versions. * ''ECHO'' Echo Festival Belgrade 2010 (Book & CD) with Manja Ristic, Knut Remond, Antoine Chessex and Ivan Kadelburg. Label: UMNA-Art&Science * CORTEX: "Vacuum Theory" (2011) Label: Praxis (Praxis 48) Vinyl 12" EP * MIR: "Shock Your Moneymaker"(2013, CD/LP) Label: A Tree in a Field Records * Zbigniew Karkowski _ "Unreleased Material", CD Compilation, Zbigniew Karkowski & Daniel Buess – live from LUFF does Tokyo.Label Fibrr Records * Ensemble Phoenix Basel conducted by Jürg Henneberger, Marianne Schuppe Voice: "RITO" works by Giacinto Scelsi (2014) Label: telos music * Antoine Chessex – "Selected Chamber Music Works 2009-2013", Ensemble Phoenix Basel plays "Metakatharsis". Label: Tochnit Aleph * "Live at the JOLT-Festival Basel(2011)" Compilation (Vinyl+CD), 3 Tracks with CORTEX, 1 Track with Cortex and the Ensemble Phoenix Basel.CD and Vinyl 12" Label: A Tree in a Field Records * "PITCH" (feat. Cal Lyall & Kikuchi Yukinori) by Daniel Buess. Label: Pharmafabrik Recordings (2014) * "My Daily Noise", Duo with Kasper Toeplitz, Label: ZORA Records * "SKIN CRAFT" – RIND & NOL Works by Alex Buess & Daniel Buess arranged by CORTEX. Label: Praxis Records (2016)

References

External links

*
Daniel Buess at discogs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buess, Daniel 1976 births Musicians from Basel-Stadt Swiss drummers Swiss male drummers 2016 deaths 16-17 members