Christian Muthspiel was born on September 20, 1962 in Judenburg (Styria). The son of a composer and choir teacher, who had received musical support from an early age, broke off his studies at the Graz University of Music “in good time and successfully”, according to his own statements, in order to continue his education as a scholarship holder at the School of Fine Arts in Banff, Canada, in 1987/88.
Since then he has been active as a musician in many ways – in jazz formations, in the field of improvised and composed music. He founded and directed numerous ensembles and formations such as the Yodel Group, Motley Mothertongue and Octet Ost.
Muthspiel: “Always acting between the chairs”
To celebrate his 60th birthday, two double albums will be released on Monday: “Diary – Selected Recordings 1989 – 2022” with 32 tracks from 33 years and “Homecoming” with his Orjazztra Vienna, founded in 2019 and consisting of 18 people. With the Orjazztra Vienna he fulfilled himself, “ignoring the tide of time, the dream of my own jazz orchestra, which I’ve been dreaming of since leaving the Vienna Art Orchestra in 2004,” he writes on his website.
The aim is an “orchestral approach to contemporary jazz via complex scores, which at the same time give the individual soloists the appropriate improvisational freedom, shaped by an acoustic, in this case deliberately electronic-free, harmony trained on the virtues of classical orchestral playing”. “Homecoming” is a live recording, compiled from the recordings of three concerts in March 2021 at Porgy & Bess, which were closed due to the coronavirus. The new program “La Melodia della Strada” will be performed there on October 19th and 20th and then go on tour.
After many years “as a composer, conductor and instrumentalist always acting between the chairs or regularly changing them”, the Orjazztra Vienna is his main focus. As a conductor, Muthspiel conducted the RSO Vienna, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the State Orchestra Hanover, the Camerata Salzburg, the “recreation” orchestra Graz and the ensemble “die reihe”.
Composed all Ö1 broadcast signatures
He received composition commissions in Vienna from the Musikverein and Konzerthaus, the ARD, the Hanover State Opera, the Klangforum Wien, the RSO Wien, the Philharmonie Essen, the Ruhrtriennale and the Brucknerhaus Linz, among others. Probably the most lasting and most resonant order came from the ORF: In 2017, all of the approximately 100 program identifiers and signations of the radio station Ö1 were recomposed by Christian Muthspiel and recorded with the RSO Vienna.
In addition to jazz compositions, his list of works includes concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, ensemble and choral music, chamber music as well as music theater works and theater/dance theater compositions. This work is documented on more than 30 CDs. The “Diary” that is now being released brings together a selection of two hours and 27 minutes of music from the years 1989 to 2022.
Christian Muthspiel received, among other things, the Austrian and the Lower Austrian Appreciation Prize for Music (both 2006) and the Hans Koller Prize as “Musician of the Year” 2007. He was a member of the Lower Austrian Cultural Senate from 2013 to 2022. Since 2006 he has also been a visual artist artist present. Muthspiel has shown his “Window.Pictures” and parts of his cyclical photographic works in more than 20 exhibitions to date.