Hans Tammen

Hans Tammen creates music that has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He discovers hidden sound properties through means of his modified ENDANGERED GUITAR, interactive software programming, stereo and multichannel sound systems, and by working with the room itself. Signal To Noise called his works "...a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage", All Music Guide recommended him: "...clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s."

His numerous projects include site-specific performances and collaborative efforts with dance, light, video, and theatre, utilizing technology from planetarium projectors to guitar robots and disklavier pianos. His THIRD EYE ORCHESTRA open form compositions for large ensembles and live sound processing are inspired by Earle Brown's Available Forms, and based on meanwhile hundreds of scored "building blocks" that are constantly rearranged when performed.

Hans Tammen received a Fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) in the category Digital/Electronic Arts in 2009 for the Endangered Guitar.

His works have been presented on festivals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia and all over Europe. He recorded with a wide range of artists such as Herb Robertson, Denman Maroney, Günther Müller, Keith Rowe, Alfred 23 Harth, or Dominic Duval - on labels such as Innova, ESP-DISK, Nur/Nicht/Nur, Creative Sources, Leo Records, Potlatch, Cadence, and Hybrid.

In the 1970s influenced by Sonny Sharrock’s energetic playing and Pete Cosey's guitar experimentalism, he is also inspired by the phase techniques of Steve Reich's early Minimalism, Stravinsky's layering technique, György Ligeti's micropolyphonic works with its constant flux of sounds, Stockhausen's early electronic works, and the rhyhmic concept of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew period.