Bernhard Günter, born 1957 in Germany, begins his musical life playing the drums at age 12, then changes to electric guitar at 17. He moves to Paris in 1980, where he takes up auto-didactic studies of contemporary composition techniques in the libraries of IRCAM and the Centre Pompidou, and attends Pierre Boulez's lectures at IRCAM and Collège de France.
Returning to Germany in 1986, he starts working on computer-based music in 1987; after four years of preparation and one year of work he releases his influential first CD 'Un Peu de Neige Salie' (1993), followed by 'Détails Agrandis' (1994). In 1995, he founds his own label, trente oiseaux. During the following decade, Bernhard releases numerous CDs and performs his music around the globe. 'Un Peu de Neige Salie' is listed as one of the "Top 100 Albums that set the World on Fire" by The Wire, one of his works receives an Honorable Mention at the 1999 PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA.
After a decade of composing electroacoustic music, Bernhard rediscovers his interest in playing instruments and improvised music in 2004. He records two albums that combine pre-recorded electro-acoustic basis tracks and improvisation with Graham Halliwell and Mark Wastell under the name of +minus, and an entirely improvised album with Reinhold Friedl and Michael Vorfeld, playing a self-devised string instrument he calls the electric cellotar. Both trios also perform live
In 2005, Bernhard adds various bamboo flutes, the shakuhachi and the xiao among others, to his sound palette, and begins exploring a middle course between composition and improvisation that uses multi-tracking, editing, and arranging improvised parts that are exchanged between artists through the mail. The first result of this approach ( which Bernhard dubs 'compovisation' ) is the release of Ataraxia (2005) in collaboration with Heribert Friedl, followed by Trans (2006)
Bernhard begins playing the clarinet in mid-2006, using it for a through-the-mail collaboration project with guitarist Gary Smith. Bernhard and Gary form a duo and give and name it Klangstaub. In Klangstaub, Günter plays clarinet, alto clarinet, pocket trumpet, and frame drums and contributes live looping and mixing to the duo. He continues exploring the synthesis of composition and improvisation, incorporating live sound processing and looping as a means for the formal organization of 'instant compositions'
Günter plays and records with the French improvisation ensemble SAP(e) in Montpellier in February 2008, and records and performswith alto clarinettist Dorothea Krishnabhakti in 2010. Bernhard and Dorothea keep working together under the monicker Reflection and Resonance. Their next project is to work with a track created for Bernhard by Italian composer Luigi Turra.
