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Keyboardist Nik Bärtsch (at times spelled "Baertsch") is a player, composer, and improviser very much in the European classical-oriented style of jazz, but has created a language that transcends these basic categories. A native and resident of Zurich, Switzerland born in 1971, he began his nine-year piano studies at age nine, and also briefly took up clarinet. Listening to blues, jazz, and string quartets, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and ethnic musics from Japan, Greece, Romania, and Sweden have all shaped his personalized music. Initially influenced by Chick Corea, Bärtsch attended the Zurich Musikhochschule, then studied philosophy, linguistics, and musicology at the University of Zurich. It was then that he was listening to modern 20th century composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Steve Reich, thus fusing the multiplicity of disciplines. In 1980 he first met drummer Kaspar Rast, who is a rhythmic fixture in his ensembles, Mobile and Ronin. He performed and toured with the Europ...