I have set up this site as a sort of interim site for Henry while
he establishes his own web presence. Below are press releases
which accompany(ied) concerts of his at Beanbender's.
I suppose this could be considered an unofficial fan site.
I welcome any comments or additions!
-- Dan Plonsey
dan@plonsey.com
Henry Kuntz of the free-improvising group Opeye will play solo tenor saxophone on Sunday evening September 29 at 8:00 PM at The Berkeley Store Gallery Annex, 2295 Shattuck Avenue (at Bancroft) in Berkeley.
His solo playing precedes an appearance by legendary performer-composer Pauline Oliveros with the Mills College Contemporary Performance Ensemble directed by Steed Cowert.
Henry Kuntz is a longtime Bay Area improvisor whose recent solo music (released in cassette form on his own label, Humming Bird Records) has utilized multi-tracking to create expanded formal archetypes for free group improvising. These archetypes cross cultural time and space, combining instruments and concepts from disparate countries and cultures.
Kuntz's solo saxophone performance is the first he has given in 15 years. His 1979 LP, Cross-Eyed Priest (Humming Bird 1001), which included his first solo work ever, was critically acclaimed in Coda (No. 176), Canada's jazz magazine, by British writer and avant-garde afficionado Peter Riley who included it on his list of 10 favorite records for the year.
The current issue of The Improvisor (No.XI) referred to Henry as one of the most personalized voices in contemporary improvisation and lauded the four remarkable pieces on his latest multi-tracked release, The Magic Of Mystery (Humming Bird Tapes 016) as being unhurried and relaxed, yet full of vitality.
His solo performance and that of the Mills College Ensemble is sponsored by Beanbenders.
Henry Kuntz has been intimately involved in free jazz and free improvisation for more than 25 years. From 1973 to 1979, he published the internationally known and acclaimed newsletter-review BELLS, a recognized authority in the field.
He first recorded on tenor saxophone in 1977 on Henry Kaiser's Ice Death (Parachute 005). He has played musette and various wood flutes since 1981, miniature violins since 1983, gamelans and xylophones since 1988. He has recently begun playing the double-reed Moroccan rhaita. On his own label, HUMMING BIRD RECORDS, (which he began in 1979), he has released 2 LPs, 16 cassettes, and 3 CDs of solo, group, and multi-tracked free improvisations.
HUMMING BIRDs Earth Series Cassettes presents indigenous music recorded by Henry in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Bali (Indonesia). These musics, along with Native American and other world musics -- Henry has made additional music and dance explorations to Ecuador, Nepal, Thailand, Morocco, and Java and Sumatra (Indonesia) -- have very much affected his overall musical concept.
Jazz writer John Litweiler, in his book The Freedom Principle, singles out Henry as one of a number of independent multi-instrumentalists who are extending free-form musical concepts begun by musicians of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) in Chicago in the 1960s and by the many free-wheeling English and European improvisors who burst on the scene in the 1970s.
His various multi-tracked recordings likewise explore possibilities for new
improvisational archetypes: radically divergent and open forms realized with
unlikely instruments and unheard-of instrumental combinations.
His music has been favorably reviewed in various print and online
publications, including Jazz Journal International, Cadence, The Improvisor,
One Final Note, Musings and New Creative Music.
(Updated November 2001)