Alfred 23 Harth

Alfred Harth, now known as Alfred 23 Harth or A23H, is a German multimedia artist, band leader, multi-instrumentalist musician, and composer who creatively mixes genres.

Harth founded a free improvisation band, Just Music (1967 to 1972), which in 1969 was recording number 1002 on the Munich based label ECM. In 1967 he opened the platform centrum freier cunst in Frankfurt/Main — a meeting point for live free music, art exhibitions, experimental poetry, action, and happening events. He formed the group E.M.T. (1972 to 1975) with artist and pianist Nicole Van den Plas from Belgium and Sven-Åke Johansson from Sweden. E.M.T. implemented Dada elements, integrating European Music Tradition by using fragments of composers (Edvard Grieg, Schumann). In 1975 he had just returned from three months in New York City, playing there with some greats of the Loft scene: Perry Robinson, John Fischer, Jay Clayton, a.o. and met Heiner Goebbels in Frankfurt/Main with whom in 1976 he recorded a first LP Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler (FMP/SAJ 08), including works from Hanns Eisler as Duo Goebbels/Harth (1975 to 1988). Meanwhile, also having established the Sogenanntes Linksradikales Blasorchester to bring political music to the streets within student’s protest actions, they played a lot of concerts and festivals all over Europe.

Harth’s activities became more & more diversified: In 1980 he recorded a meeting of mixed styles from jazz, punk and classical music for the label JAPO/ECM. He invited Christoph Anders, Goebbels, Paul Lovens, composer Rolf Riehm, and Annemarie Roelofs for this project-LP, Es herrscht Uhu im Land using words by Kurt Schwitters a.o.. This record's musical program led to more focused work in the group Cassiber (with Anders, Chris Cutler, Goebbels and Harth) from 1982 on. The Duo Goebbels/Harth had become a highly creative nucleus for lots of enterprises. In 1983 Burkhard Hennen asked Harth to form an "all star“ combination for the Moers Festival. This group became Duck and Cover for which he conceived a main structural composition idea in relation to contemporary politics. In 1984 the Duo Goebbels/Harth created a musical theatre piece, Nach Aschenfeld together with the author and director FK Waechter and actors Heinz-Werner Kraehkamp and Michael Altmann. This was mounted at the Residenztheater in Munich where they played live within the stage scenery on a huge amount of instruments, some partially self made, a kind of role model for Heiner Goebbels’s Musik Theater in his later years. The same year Harth made a LP Melchior with his theatre composition for Frank Wedekind’s play Spring Awakening at National Theatre Mannheim played by Bob Degen and himself and Cassiber put out its second CD, Beauty and the Beast, released in Germany and Great Britain.

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