Walter Zimmermann’s music has a rare combination of stasis and flow. It wanders without being lost. It communicates calm curiosity and curious calm. Many composers have written music about nature, but Zimmermann’s is one of the few musics that seems as if nature itself could have created it.
In April, he turned 75. On Friday, Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin will open an exhibition, curated by André Butzer, of new paintings inspired by Zimmermann’s music. It will include a concert by Ensemble Adapter and a documentary. Zimmermann was professor of composition at the University of Arts in Berlin from 1993 until his retirement, and his legendary book, Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Composers, was essential in convincing the German new music scene that American contemporary composition had diversity, quality, and powerful expression to offer. I met Zimmermann on a sunny morning in his Berlin apartment, where we spoke in a mixture of German and his excellent English about the labyrinth of listening, the influence of John Cage, and the balance between architecture and intuition.
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