The drummer and producer Samuel Rohrer lives in Berlin since 2003 and quickly became one of the influential improvisational musicians of his generation. Growing up in a music connected family, he played piano from age 7 and started playing drums when he was 14. Following studies in arts and music in Berne and Boston, he then quickly started touring Europe and abroad in countless formations. 

 

Since then he has worked and his currently working with artists like Sidsel Endresen, Nan Goldin, Laurie Anderson, Max Loderbauer, Skuli Sverrisson, Tobias Freund, Ricardo Villalobos, Nils Petter Molvaer, Jan Bang, Eivind Aarset, Vincent Courtois, Daniel Erdmann, Peter Herbert, Trygve Seim, Matthieu Michel, Erik Truffaz, Mark Feldman, Michel Portal, Claudio Puntin, Soundwalk Collective,  Ferenc Snetberger, Björn Meyer, Joao Paulo Esteves da Silva, Markus Stockhausen, Arild Andersen, Charles Gayle, Ion Ludwig, Rhadoo, Ateq and many more.

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He is founding member of the Ambiq trio and founder of Arjunamusic Records. 

He recently released the debut of the group Dark Star Safari feat. Jan Bang, Erik Honoré and Eivind Aarset a band project where they define new territories of song driven improvisations, a quartet release of progressive ambient entitled KAVE with Max Loderbauer, Tobias Freund and Stian Westerhus (to be released in May 2020) and his new solo work which forms electronic and acoustic percussion into a very personal language.

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As an improvisatory sound pilot, he is able to elegantly navigate beats and anti-beats and expands the world of rhythmic functions with his artistic cross-style overall concept to include striking emotional components. Originally coming from acoustic improvised music and since a few years diving into the world of electronic music, he is one of the few defining a world by his own while balancing in between these two.

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With his latest work Samuel continues to quietly, yet confidently, make a name for himself as a genuinely unique figure within the European electronic music realm. In the current era, talk of blurring boundaries between musical genres and attitudes is more the rule than the exception, but not always something done with any degree of success. Rohrer is one of those rare alchemical explorers to have truly created a hybrid which is all his own, one that does not just exist to melt distinctions for its own sake, but is a natural result of years of experimentation with both the determination of electronic music and the ludic spirit of free improvisation. In terms of the emotional atmosphere he creates with his music, the pensive and questioning tone hearkens back to the ‘wide open’ state of electronic music in the mid- late 1990s, yet with a greater clarity and maturity of vision that makes this music feel like a possible answer to aesthetic questions being raised at that time.

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​​Samuel has been touring all over the world and played on major festivals like the NorthSea Jazz Festival, Montreal Int. Jazz Festival, Vancouver Jazz Fest., CTM Festival Berlin, Punkt Festival Norway, Bergen Jazzfestival Norway, JazzNoJazz Zürich, JazzdOr Strasbourg, Jazzfest Saalfelden, Banlieues Bleues Paris, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, London Jazzfestival and many more.

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