Tag Archives: free jazz

Sonore/The Thing, Vienna Blue Tomato, 15 October 2009

Posted on by
Reply

A truly blistering night of free jazz and improvisation from five of its finest exponents. Consisting of a series of combinations of the all-reeds trio Sonore (Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson) and Scandinavian power trio The Thing (Gustafsson plus Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on double bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums), the evening showed up the rock and noise crowds’ frequent claims to ‘extremity’ and ‘intensity’ for the empty boasts they are. With no guitars, no electronics and no amplification, these five gentlemen conclusively demonstrated that there is no music in the world more extreme and intense than the cry of a saxophone being flayed from the inside out, and the thunderous rumble of a drummer assaulting his kit into submission.

The concert began with a beautifully balanced set from Sonore, followed straight after by an incandescent duo set from Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love. Next up, Vandermark and Håker Flaten varied the mood and pace considerably. Vandermark showcased his sheer versatility, foregoing his usual Ayleresque attack with a bout of cerebral blowing that reminded me of Anthony Braxton. Håker Flaten remained onstage for The Thing’s set, during which Mats Gustafsson played sax with a jaw-droppingly physical ferocity. The inevitable conclusion saw all five men come together in a breathtaking show of mutual understanding, improvisational flair and deranged sonic attack.

Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Vienna Porgy & Bess, 23 May 2009

Posted on by
2

A stunning evening of molten free jazz and way-out Improv from the ever reliable Brötzmann and his largest, most diverse configuration. Over two hour-long sets, the saxophonist led his group down a maze of glorious soloing and bravura ensemble interplay. Never letting up, always reaching for higher and more dangerous territory, these guys took your breath away.

Without any need for prior planning, the ten gifted musicians knew instinctively when to come together and when to step back to let in other members of the troupe. This is the magic of group improvisation – that wonderful blend of intuition, togetherness and respect.

Brötzmann’s co-stars, for me, were his regular collaborators Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson (both on saxes) and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. The two reedsmen proved themselves the German’s equal with their ferocious blowing; Vandermark took a particularly fiery solo with no-one but Nilssen-Love for company, while Gustafsson’s relentlessly physical approach was perhaps underexposed. As for the Norwegian percussionist himself, his face told a story of formidable effort that was reflected time and again in the awesome power of his playing, including a fierce double-headed drum interlude with the more undulant approach of Michael Zerang.

It wasn’t all plain sailing; I could certainly have done without the irritating presence of trombonist Johannes Bauer, whose entire demeanour radiated smugness and self-satisfaction. But his solo interventions were thankfully brief. Other than that Bauer was part of a brass section that, when it was not tussling spiritedly with the reeds, laid down a slew of brisk and imaginative patterns, bolstered by Fred Lonberg-Holm’s whizzy, effects-heavy cello work.

Now twelve years into its existence, the Chicago Tentet is a group at the height of its powers. Brötzmann may be the nominal bandleader, but there was precious little evidence on Saturday night of him shaping and controlling the music to any great extent. Which is as it should be, of course. In the mysterious, elemental world of free improvisation, meaning and inspiration come not from individuals but from the spaces and the traces between them.

The Neu New York/Vienna Institute of Improvised Music, Vienna Celeste, 6 April 2009

Posted on by
Reply

This evening was just another example of how live music in Vienna has the capacity to constantly surprise and entertain. “The Neu New York/Vienna Institute of Improvised Music” is the peculiar name of a free jazz/improv blow-out session that takes place every Monday at the Celeste bar in the fifth district. The setting is surprising enough in itself: you walk along a quiet, nondescript street, find the bar, go downstairs and suddenly, as if this were the most normal thing in the world, find yourself in the midst of a hundred-odd people, all enjoying the wilfully unco-operative music, the deliciously tasty food available and the general atmosphere of relaxed bonhomie.

Curated and championed by American-born, Austrian resident saxophonist Marco Eneidi, the session consists of a changing cast of jazz and improv musicians who take the stage in various duo, trio and group formats to blast their way through short sets of music. It’s rather like munching your way through a box of chocolates – it doesn’t matter if you come across one that’s not to your taste, because you’re sure to find one that you do like soon enough.

On this particular evening – my first visit to the session, and hopefully not my last – I arrived in the middle of a fairly frantic piece of blowing by Eneidi, accompanied by an agile and vigorous drummer. (Apologies for not knowing the names of most of those who played.) The evening became even more engrossing when Susanna Gartmeyer came along on the bass clarinet, joined by two guitarists and a drummer for a superb slice of bone-crunching improv. Things did go slightly awry next, courtesy of a sub-Haino guitar abuser with a rote, uninspired drummer who bafflingly stuck to one snare drum and one cymbal for pretty much the entire turn, but quickly looked up again with a delightful and infectious workout for burbling analogue synths.

After that, Marco Eneidi returned for another serpentine flare-up on the sax, joined this time by Didi Kern behind the kit. Next up, a fidgety yet compelling improv for guitar, bass and drums, Eric Arn (of Primordial Undermind) peeling off wave after wave of arcing bottleneck slide runs from his acoustic. That was closing time for me, but not for most of those present, who carried on long into the night.

Ether column, March 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Not much doubt in my mind about the concert of the month (although work commitments mean that I can’t be there, annoyingly) – an evening of blistering free jazz courtesy of The Thing, aka Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and Swedish bassist Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten. Regular readers of this column will not be surprised to learn that both Gustafsson and Nilssen-Love are frequent collaborators of the titanic German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, Gustafsson in the all-reeds trio Sonore, Nilssen-Love in various group formats. Together with Haker-Flaten they walk the precipice between free jazz, out-there rock and garage punk. Gustafsson channels the spirit of Fire Music legend Albert Ayler in his inspirational sax playing, while Nilssen-Love attacks his kit with savage ferocity and the bassist anchors the whole edifice with his rock-solid pizzicato work. Playing in the intimate surroundings of the Blue Tomato, The Thing will surely blast the roof off the place.

If The Thing represent modern European free jazz at its most extreme, saxophonist Paul Dunmall is an example of the kind of dedicated, unsung musician thrown up by the British free improvisation movement. Where Brötzmann and his ilk picked up the sound of American free jazz and took it even further out, Dunmall was part of a British scene that went in the other direction, towards abstraction and relative quiet. Best known for his membership of Mujician, a quartet led by the formidable English pianist Keith Tippett, Dunmall appears in Vienna with a trio that is effectively Mujician without Tippett, i.e. accompanied by Paul Rogers on bass and Tony Levin on drums.

Intriguing evening in prospect – at least for those with good German, which counts me out – at the WUK this month, as Einstürzende Neubauten mainman Blixa Bargeld reads from his new book Europa Kreuzweise: Eine Litanei.  As an attempt to answer the question “what does it mean, to be on a non-stop concert tour for two months?”, the book describes the monotony of movement, interrupted by restaurants, readings and meetings. As I noted in my preview of Neubauten’s last Vienna appearance in April 2008, Bargeld is a lyricist of great skill and acuity, his texts replete with tumbling wordplay and caustic imagery. Between Neubauten activity in recent years, he has given solo vocal performances under the title Rede/Speech, in which he treats his voice with a variety of foot pedals and effects equipment. Expect this not to be a standard book reading.

Peter Brötzmann/Toshinori Kondo/Massimo Pupillo/Paal Nilssen-Love, Vienna Fluc Wanne, 10 March 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Wow, this was a really spectacular evening’s entertainment. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen Brötzmann play over the last three years, but I have to say that this was probably the finest of the lot. On this occasion everything just fell perfectly into place, resulting in a non-stop 90-minute tour de force of overwhelming power and intensity.

For non-stop is what it was. No short pieces, no interval, just one endless oceanic tidal wave of brutally organised sound. Nilssen-Love (drums) and Pupillo (bass guitar) were a rhythm section to take your breath away, ceaselessly inventive and frequently locking into a lashing, irresistible groove. Kondo was a vital, turbulent presence on trumpet, his squalls of sustain often fighting for supremacy against the forceful blowing of the saxophonist, whose looming and thunderous playing is still unparalleled.

Total improvisation of this kind is extraordinary to listen to and, equally, to watch. You find yourself wondering, how do the players know when to take it up, take it down, drop out, start, stop? Answer: they listen to each other in real time, they respect each other, they know how to interact with one another for maximum power and impact. This is the kind of awareness that only comes with years of intuition and mutual understanding. It’s the one thing that makes improvisation such a vitally important and creative act.

Kudos to all those people who turned out for this concert, a nice mix of young hipsters and grizzled old jazz fans (I’ll leave you to decide which of these groups I fall into). The latter didn’t seem particularly comfortable amid the Fluc’s distressed concrete aesthetic, but they came anyway because they know what magic this music is capable of conveying. What annoys me are the hordes of avant rock and noise fans who like to see themselves as in thral to the way out and the extreme, yet wouldn’t cross the street to see a performance of free jazz or improv (in the unlikely event that they even knew it was taking place at all). Such people are merely ignorant of the fact that this music serves up sonic extremity and wildness of a kind that nothing in the rock world has ever come close to emulating.

Anthony Braxton, Krakow, Poland, 6 December 2008

Posted on by
Reply

With the memory of Anthony Braxton‘s inspirational concert at Porgy & Bess last year still remarkably fresh in my mind, it was a no-brainer to make the 600-mile round trip to Krakow to catch the maestro in action again. Playing with the same septet as the last time I saw him, Braxton did not disappoint, playing two engrossing hour-long sets (for the record, they were Compositions 356 and 183).

There was real group interaction onstage; I’ve never seen a group of musicians exchange so many signs, nods, glances and smiles on a stage as this lot did. This degree of communication between the group’s members was testament to the fact that there was a fair old degree of improvisation going on, even though all of them had scores in front of them and appeared to be following those scores pretty intently for most of the time.

Braxton was the star, of course – an utterly formidable onstage presence, powering the music along with his endlessly vital saxophone work. Of the rest, I particularly enjoyed Mary Halvorson’s contributions on guitar. There was something very Fripp-like about her playing, with its hard, splintery quality. I wasn’t greatly impressed by Taylor Ho Bynum on the brass, he seemed rather smug and histrionic to me (in marked contrast to the more focused energies of the rest of the group) and at times the brashness of his playing threatened to drown out the subtleties of the music altogether. Ultimately, though, this – my last concert of 2008 – was an enthralling performance.

Evan Parker/Alex von Schlippenbach/Paul Lovens, Porgy & Bess, Vienna, 3 December 2008

Posted on by
3

Evan Parker was the first free jazz/improv saxophonist I ever heard, and the one who made me fall in love with this kind of music. Before I had heard Ayler, Braxton or Brötzmann, Parker was the one who showed me that the saxophone could be a source of great passion and intensity. Live, his serpentine solos and jaw-dropping circular breathing technique burned themselves into me in a way that very few rock performers had ever done.

It’s been a long time since I saw Parker live – there was a stimulating collaborative show with Zoviet France, a phenomenal trio gig at the old Vortex in Stoke Newington, and a concert in Brighton with Spring Heel Jack – so it was great for me to see him for the first time in Vienna, this time as part of his long-standing trio with pianist Alex von Schlippenbach and drummer Paul Lovens. Their improvisational instincts honed by many years of playing together, the trio proceeded to play two long and engrossing sets. Schlippenbach was an agile and eloquent pianist, Lovens an enthralling presence on the drums. Parker was the star for me, but at the end of the day this concert, like all the best group-based improvisation, was an extended conversation between these three gifted musicians.

Peter Brötzmann/Mats Gustafsson/Ken Vandermark, Fluc Wanne, Vienna, 2 December 2008

Posted on by
Reply

Just another evening of great intensity from Sonore, following on from the last time I saw them in the summer. Entertainingly, the gig took place in the blasted post-holocaust surroundings of the Fluc Wanne, not a place where beardy jazz fans are often seen. I know Einstürzende Neubauten played some early gigs under an autobahn, but is there any other venue in the world that sits in a former pedestrian subway?

Funnily enough it was Mats Gustafsson who emerged as the star of this particular show, for me at least. I loved the way he wrestled with his outsize reed instruments, looking as though he was fighting to bring them under control. His resonant low-end horns provided some vestige of a rhythmic structure to these short, hard-hitting pieces, around which Brötzmann and Vandermark improvised forcefully.

Peter Brötzmann/Michiyo Yagi/Paal Nilssen-Love, Alter Schlachthof, Wels, 9 November 2008

Posted on by
Reply

Another eye-opening, ear-cleansing evening of free music in Austria. The appetite of this country for this kind of music never ceases to astonish me. Here we were in a small, unfashionable city on a wintry Sunday night, with the streets pretty much deserted. But you walk to the Alter Schlachthof and suddenly you are in the middle of, what, 300? people, all of whom have paid a not insignificant sum to be there. The upstairs and downstairs bars are both lively and animated, there are well stocked record and CD stalls, then you walk into the hall and you find it is full to capacity with people listening attentively to two people making abstract sounds on a viola and a double bass. And that’s only the first of four full-length concerts this evening; all the others will be equally well attended.

One of the things I like about living in central Europe is that free jazz and improvisation are not regarded here as way-out, avant-garde, experimental or difficult musics. The people here just take this stuff in their stride, and that includes the music of Peter Brötzmann, who played in Wels in a trio with Michiyo Yagi on koto and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. I’m running out of superlatives to describe Brötzmann, so let me simply state that he was as intense as ever. Nilssen-Love, whom I had not seen play before, was a ferociously inventive drummer, while Michiyo Yagi was a total revelation on the koto. Together the three of them made a beautiful and utterly inspired racket.

Peter Brötzmann/Ken Vandermark/Mats Gustafsson, Konfrontationen Festival, Nickelsdorf, 18 July 2008

Posted on by
Reply

On this, my third summer in Austria, I finally made it to Nickelsdorf for the Konfrontationen festival of free jazz and improvised music. This is a very special event — an intimate, three-day open-air festival that takes place in a restaurant/jazz club in an unassuming Austrian village close to the border with Hungary. What makes it even more remarkable is the calibre of the artists the festival attracts. Any event that can count Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, AMM and Peter Brötzmann among its past guests has to have something special going for it.

There was, however, some doubt as to whether this year’s festival would be able to go ahead, due in large part to owner Hans Falb’s financial difficulties. The main problem seems to have been that the Austrian performance rights organisation sued Falb for a large amount of unpaid performance royalties. There was a lot of talk on Friday about “resistance”, as though the very fact that the festival was taking place this year at all was an act of defiance against the authorities. Well, sadly taxes and duties are a fact of life, and if it is true that the festival’s precarious financial situation is the result of non-payment thereof, Falb can in reality have few grounds for complaint.

In any case, last Friday’s opening night of the festival was extremely enjoyable. Blessed by a warm summer’s evening, the covered courtyard attracted a large and enthusiastic audience — far larger than I had expected, and certainly way in excess of the numbers that would turn out for an event of comparable stature in England. My wallet took a hammering at the excellent record stalls; these guys seemed to have more free jazz and improv CDs for sale than I had ever seen in one place before.

It was a long evening, with four groups all performing full-length sets and extended pauses between the acts, but for once this unhurried approach to scheduling didn’t bother me; it contributed to the overall atmosphere of relaxed informality. Having said that, the first act, all-female Norwegian improv quartet Spunk, entirely failed to hold my interest with a rather aimless set. Things soon looked up, though, with an engrossing performance by the trio of Joëlle Léandre on double bass and voice, Elisabeth Harnik on piano and Erik M on the turntables. I could have done without Léandre’s extended vocal techniques, but other than that the set was gripping, with Harnik’s gorgeously loose and freewheeling piano threading around Erik M’s static-heavy turntable interventions. The third group of the evening, the eight-strong Roscoe Mitchell band, made a glorious racket and on any other night would have made worthy headliners.

It will hardly come as a surprise that my main reason for attending Konfrontationen this year was to see Peter Brötzmann, this time in Sonore, his all-reeds trio with Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson. I caught this trio at the Blue Tomato last November, and it’s safe to say they haven’t gone rockabilly or anything in the meantime. With no rhythm section to anchor it down, the music veered off in all sorts of wild and utterly unexpected directions. Gustafsson’s low-end blats provided a fine foil for Vandermark’s pulsating lines and Brötzmann’s firestorm blowing. Towards the end all three men were playing tenor saxes simultaneously, a beautifully symmetrical model of alliance and understanding.