Markus Reuter


Markus Reuter is a German multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer and instrument designer.
Reuter's work as recording artist, solo performer and collaborator spans electrophonic loop music, contemporary classical music, progressive and art rock, industrial music, world jazz, jazz fusion, pop songs and pure improvisation. Over the course of a two-decade career, he has been a member of multiple bands, ensembles and projects as well as a solo artist. Since 2011 Reuter has begun to establish himself as a contemporary classical composer, starting with the performance and recording of his large-scale orchestral piece Todmorden 513.
A specialist in touch guitar playing, Reuter became known as a leading player of the Warr Guitar and Chapman Stick during the 1990s and 2000s before developing, adopting and marketing his own U8 and U10 Touch Guitar instruments. In collaboration with former King Crimson member Trey Gunn, he runs the Touch Guitar Circle, a teaching and support network for touch guitar players.
As well as further collaborations with artists including Tim Bowness, Lee Fletcher, Ian Boddy and Robert Rich, Reuter has produced records by numerous musicians and released several solo recordings as both performer and composer. He is also part of an artist-owned production consortium which encompasses Iapetus Media, Unsung Productions and Unsung Records.

Musical style

Most of Reuter's performance work to date has evolved from exploring electric touch-style instruments and sound processing. Between 1993 and 1996, he predominantly played Chapman Stick, switching to 8-string Warr Guitar circa 1997. In 2008, he began using his own self-designed range of 8- and 10-string Touch Guitars. A technically skilled player, Reuter performs using a variety of approaches from unprocessed sound and standard technique through to extreme processed textural sounds and drones.
As a performer, Reuter is best known for his work as an art rock musician but as a keen and flexible collaborator by inclination, his work with other projects has also involved elements of chamber music, jazz, folk and various pop styles depending on context. Since 2011, he has been actively developing a parallel and linked career as a contemporary classical composer.
In terms of composition, Reuter has shown a particular interest in process music, using rules-based algorithmic and serial compositional techniques. He has also worked with generative music, which informs both the harmonic designs of some of his classical compositions and his work with the band Tuner and follows various improvisational approaches. Recently, he has been referring to his overall musical approach as "Modus Novus".
Reuter views his ongoing work as an opportunity to educate himself through broad experience and experiment. He has cited the challenges brought to him by long-term musical partners as being a particular inspiration.

Biography and career as musician

Initial studies, Guitar Craft and university (1975-1996)

Markus Reuter began training as a musician in 1975 at the age of three. Initially he studied as a pianist and later took up classical guitar and mandolin. During his childhood and early teens, he performed in concert both as a solo musician and as a member of ensembles and orchestras.
With Pollmann's aid and encouragement Reuter began composing in 1985 at the age of 11 or 12. He was inspired by a variety of influences - classic 1960s and 1970s pop music, classical music, progressive rock and contemporary crossover composers such as David Bedford. During his teens, Reuter studied music history, theory, and analysis with Karlheinz Straetmanns, a composer in the lineage of Harald Genzmer and Paul Hindemith.
In 1991, at the age of 18, Reuter began attending courses in Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft. Tutored by Tony Geballe, he continued to study Guitar Craft until 1998, combining intensive music courses with explorations of the philosophy of George Gurdjieff and J.G. Bennett. Gurdjieff's work - in particular, the Sacred Dances - would have a profound effect on Reuter's own subsequent work.
By his own admission, Reuter was not a particularly disciplined musician in his teens, initially relying on his innate musical talent. His approach changed when he took up the Chapman Stick in early 1993, following discussions with Fripp and inspired by Reuter's own admiration for King Crimson's Stick player Tony Levin. Learning to play both the 10-string and 12-string models of the instrument required a disciplined approach to study and practice, which Reuter adopted and turned to his advantage. At around the same time, he began to develop a serious interest in textural loop music and started to experiment with a form of "instant composition" using a system of out-of-synch looping devices.
In 1993, Reuter began a six-year degree course in psychology at Universität Bielefeld. While at university, Reuter pursued further musical education. Between 1993 and 1996 he studied free improvisation with Gerd Lisken and became a member of Lisken's Chaos Orchester Bielefeld. During 1995 he studied contemporary classical music with Belgian composer and touch guitar player Daniel Schell: he also studied Indian music with Ashok Pathak and developed his existing interest in permutation-based compositional principles. In 1996 Reuter performed his first complete concert of entirely self-written compositions, and embarked on a career as a professional musician.

Solo work

The majority of Reuter's solo releases under his own name have consisted of ambient textured music recorded using heavily effected touch guitar, Warr Guitar or Chapman Stick, plus laptop. Reuter began recording and releasing this type of music in 1998 - beginning with the Taster album - and has released nine such albums to the present day.
In 2017, Reuter released a very different album - Falling for Ascension, a twelve-tone pointillist suite reworked from several of his teenage compositions. Credited to "Markus Reuter featuring SONAR & Tobias Reber", it's effectively a Reuter solo album performed by him with a post-minimal Swiss electric guitar ensemble and added electronics. Falling for Ascension was described as "exceptional music for endlessly rewarding drift and ecstatic momentum... ensemble intricacy at its most musically stimulating" in Gapplegate Guitar and Bass Blog.

Work as classical composer

Although he'd previously composed contemporary classical instrumental pieces as early as 1988, Reuter's formal work as a classical composer began with Todmorden 513. For this work, he applied his ambient process music approach to chamber music in what he intends to be an increasing number of large-scale contemporary classical works for orchestras and chamber ensembles.
In 2011 Reuter released a recording of the small-ensemble version of the piece was premiered in Denver, Colorado in April 2013 and has been released on record twice – first as a studio recording in 2014, then as a live recording in 2016. Reviewing the studio recording in Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, Grego Applegate Edwards hailed Todmorden 513 as "sound like what Morton Feldman might have written had he advanced to a new stage... This, I am confident, is one of the most important orchestral works of our era.... a breakthrough in form and sound."
Reuter has gone on to compose and record further classical pieces:
  • the solo piano piece His Last Decade
  • the electro-acoustic chamber piece Daimon Fu for two flutes, violin, viola, cello, double bass, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, electric organs, vibraphone, electric guitar, electric bass and drums.
  • the electric chamber work Sun Trance for tuned/untuned percussion ensemble, bass clarinet, synthesizer and electric guitar/bass/touch guitar.

    Projects and collaborations

centrozoon

was the first band which Reuter joined on his professional emergence in 1996. It remains one of his main creative outlets to this day. For most of its career centrozoon has been a duo of Reuter and Wöstheinrich, with current third man and multi-instrumentalist/sound-designer Tobias Reber joining in 2008.. The project's music has touched on ambient electronica, free-form experimentalism, sung art pop, progressive rock and electronic dance music. To date, Reuter has released eight albums with centrozoon, plus a number of live and archive releases.

Europa String Choir

is an instrumental art rock/contemporary classical chamber ensemble with whom Reuter was active for four years Between 1996 and 2000, Reuter played concerts with the group and recorded two albums, Lemon Crash and Marching Ants.

King Crimson-related projects

Since 2005, Reuter has been affiliated with several projects related to King Crimson.
In 2005 Reuter began actively collaborating with King Crimson's drummer Pat Mastelotto. The duo released four albums under the band name of Tuner before releasing 2017's Face album as "Pat Mastelotto & Markus Reuter".
In 2010 Reuter joined Mastelotto and Tony Levin in the Stick Men trio, with whom he has released eleven studio and live albums plus an EP. In 2011, Stick Men united with the Adrian Belew Power Trio to form the six-piece Crimson ProjeKct and perform King Crimson material from the 1981 to 1995 period. Five of the ProjeKct's concerts have been released as live albums.
In the latter two projects Reuter performs many musical parts originally played by Robert Fripp. He has sometimes been hailed as Fripp's potential successor, despite always downplaying and rejecting this idea when questioned about it.

Work within pop music

In addition to his work on the art-pop phase of centrozoon, Reuter has been a long-term collaborator with producer, songwriter and art-pop musician Lee Fletcher, having met him on a Guitar Craft course in the mid-1990s. Reuter is a featured instrumental performer and general contributor to Fletcher's albums Faith in Worthless Things and The Cracks Within - FiWT Remixes, as well as recording the Islands single and playing on Fletcher's 2017 single The Chancer.
Reuter's work on Tovah's 2008 art-pop album Escapologist not only involved production but also all of the album's arrangements.
Since 2015, Reuter has been an associate member of Dutch Rall's synthpop studio project Nocturne Blue, providing touch guitar solos and textures.