Edgar Froese, Adventurous Leader of Tangerine Dream, Dies at 70
Edgar
Froese, the leader of the long-running and prolific German group
Tangerine Dream — first an improvising avant-garde rock band, then an
ambient electronic-music project, and finally an arena-filling machine
of smooth and heroic synthesizer pulsations — died on Jan. 20 in Vienna.
He was 70.
His
death was announced on the Facebook page of his son, Jerome. He had a
pulmonary embolism, according to a posting on the Tangerine Dream website.
Over
many periods and many different lineups, with Mr. Froese as the only
constant, Tangerine Dream released more than 100 albums. In the
mid-1970s, when the band was signed to the Virgin label, it could amass
unit sales in six figures for an instrumental album, with little radio
play.
During
this period, Mr. Froese, along with his bandmates Christopher Franke
and Peter Baumann, created a meditative aural space of slowly unfolding
patterns. Two of the group’s most successful records, “Phaedra” (1974)
and “Rubycon” (1975), were albums of serene sonic research, their
individual tracks lasting up to 20 minutes with no singing or drumming
and minimal melodic or harmonic material.
Edgar
Froese (pronounced FRO-zee) was born on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in Tilsit,
which was then in East Prussia and is now the town of Sovetsk, Russia.
He took piano lessons at 12 before turning to guitar. He studied
painting and sculpture at what was the Academy of Art in West Berlin at
the time, and for a few years played guitar in a rock band called the
Ones. While visiting Spain in 1966, he met Salvador Dalí, whose
insistence on following a path of originality inspired Mr. Froese’s
thinking from then on.
The
first version of Tangerine Dream was a free-improvising group
influenced by Pink Floyd, with Mr. Froese on guitar. After two albums in
that vein, the group got rid of drums; briefly incorporated the
musician Florian Fricke, later of the band Popol Vuh, who owned a
modular Moog synthesizer (rare in Germany in 1972); and shifted to
contemplative sounds for the albums “Zeit” (1972) and “Atem” (1973).
In
the mid-’70s, Tangerine Dream became known for performing in
cathedrals. After a greatly oversold 1974 concert at the cathedral in
Reims, France, Mr. Froese told interviewers, Pope Paul VI banished the
group from any further performances in Roman Catholic churches. The next
year they played in Protestant cathedrals instead.
Mr.
Froese went on to score dozens of films from 1977 through the 1980s,
including the Hollywood features “Sorcerer,” “Thief” and “Risky
Business.”
The
band’s music changed as the technology changed, becoming less sonically
immersive and more beat-driven as the musicians began using digital
synthesizers. With the addition of Jerome Froese from 1990 to 2006, the
band moved in the direction of dance music.
Besides his son, Mr. Froese’s survivors include his wife, Bianca Acquaye.
After
Mr. Froese set up his own label in the mid-’90s, the group increased
its output enormously, releasing as many as four albums a year. By its
final tours, the band was incorporating introspective spaciness, Latin
rhythms, smooth-jazz soprano saxophone solos, brisk synth-pop and
versions of songs by Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles alongside the old
pulsating Tangerine Dream instrumentals.
The
group’s first wave of popularity alarmed some rock critics, who feared a
takeover by a Eurocentric, rhythmless pop that relied on machines and
encouraged passivity. Lester Bangs, reviewing a 1977 concert at Avery
Fisher Hall for The Village Voice in 1977, described it as “three
technological monoliths emitting urps and hissings and pings and
swooshings in the dark,” and said he left early.
But
the group’s influence has endured. It can be heard in Detroit techno,
English electronica and the work of current electronic bands like Glass
Candy and the Chromatics. In 2013, Mr. Froese wrote music for the video
game “Grand Theft Auto V,” contributing over 60 hours of material.
Though he was usually viewed in the context of German art rock and electronic music, Mr. Froese felt allegiance to neither.
“If
there is a true possibility of creating modern synthesized music
without any mental barriers,” he said in a 2010 interview, “I would
consider myself as one of the strongest followers of such a movement.”
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