Teiku - Klang (Ginko Records, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Teiku comprises pianist Josh Harlow, percussionist Jonathan Barahal Taylor, double bassist Jaribu Shahid, and, newly adopted into the ensemble, bass clarinettist Jason Stein. Their sophomore release on Gingko Records is Klang, a meditation on focus and intention. It follows ‘Teiku’ (577 records, 2024) – a release that built on the foundations of the music of their Jewish-Ukrainian ancestors that they grew up with.

Teiku was founded by Chicago pianist Harlow and percussionist Barahal to interpret their respective families’ unique Passover melodies as conduits for spontaneous musical expression. On Klang, Teiku expands on the meditative themes of ‘Teiku,’( 577 records 2024), which was a meditation on their shared history and a tribute to the aurally transmitted ancestral melodies that they grew up singing. Klang expands on these themes and takes its source from historical music, but also rare manuscripts, voice recordings, and chants. All the elements imbued in this album stem from influences on the lives of the musicians, so the music feels personal and intimate, yet not to share it would seem a selfish act because the music is exceptional.

Five of the six tracks represent the same Passover song/liturgical text, Ki Le Naeh (For Him It Is Fitting), but each, due to regional and family variations, is a distinct, unique melody. Far from the standardised versions prevalent today, the ancient melodies are transfigured, deconstructed, and reframed, but their essence, of respect, collective power, and remembrance, remains.

Stein comments, "Improvisational music has always been squarely in the tradition of expressing the essential right of all people to be free. It’s a great pleasure and opportunity to be a part of Teiku’s musical expression and alignment with this sense of freedom from oppression as it applies to the present moment in the world. It was a great pleasure to work with Josh, Jon, and Jaribu. I love the collective and open feeling everyone brings to the music and to the process of interpreting this traditional and deeply spiritual music."

Understanding the recording requires attentive listening if you are to comprehend how vocal sounds, musical exploration, references to free expression, and detail come together to create a recording that is both communicative and profound. Every time the oral traditions are imagined and re-imagined, subtle changes happen, and with Klang Teiku adds their own voice to this lineage. You can hear strong references to Jewish traditional music, with the associated rhythms, chordal changes, and beautiful harmonics that lend themselves to the musical interpretation of emotive, lyrical music. Yet, although the interpretation is of historical music, Teiku treats it as living, evolving material, adapted to modern trends of exploration, divergence, and freedom of playing. The listener needs to know nothing of the influences that helped create it, because the music is complete in itself, while the tracks feel distinct, yet connected.

Barahal’s drumming adds beautiful touches to the patterns and dance-like themes of some of the tracks. There is a step-like motion to his rhythms that can’t be ignored. His vibraphone playing creates intimate moments through delicate phrasing and harmonic subtlety. Harlow builds a harmonic foundation and rich textural atmosphere on both piano and electronics, and his use of silence is deliberate, creating space for other instruments and configurations to be heard. Stein knows when to support or solo, and his innate sense of dynamics means there is movement to the music, carried in some places by his interpretation and how he builds and relaxes the intensity. Jaribu Shahid’s bass lends its voice to poignant moments and also offers structural support in many areas, and the same can be said of Harlow’s input. The sense of musicians playing in harmony is strong in Teiku, and a sense of reverence in this music that is inexplicable. It is as if each track is taken and delivered with sincerity and respect, while at the same time allowing the individuality of the players to be heard and felt. While Teiku is a quartet, the unannounced, yet constantly present fifth member is the historical music that is an essential collaborator with a modern jazz style of playing.

Barahal and Harlow comment, “The process of reframing our ancestral melodies to make this music reminds us to keep searching and imagining. As Jews, we embrace our spiritual and cultural heritage of care and community, of rituals and questions. We reject all forms of violence that have become associated with that heritage by genocidal nationalists. To that end, we dedicate this set of music to the Palestinian people and all suffering people. Thank you to our families, our mentors, and our friends, who continue to teach us the way forward in a fractured world.”

The first track, ‘Ki Le Noeh (Krumholz melody),’ is deeply traditional, with modern inputs. Krumholz means twisted, contorted, and the melody is repeated, varied, and tested in different ways throughout the track. Stein's bass clarinet lends expressive tones and melodies, while the insistent drums and the full-voiced bass line add depth and cohesion. The piano, when it emerges from the background, is gloriously uplifting, particularly when it is duelling with the bass clarinet. What is great about the track is how the traditional melodic patterns are underpinned by explorative free styling from all four members of Teiku.

‘Ki Lo Laeh (Fendrick Melody)’ is other-worldly and reverent, with gentle vocal recordings from Sue Fendrick; there are some wonderfully warped tones that add to the ethereal nature of the music. It feels oddly like a prayer, in its delivery and comparatively tentative nature, particularly the final phrases.

In ‘Khasul Seydur Peysakh (Chasman Melody)’ there are melodic lines from Stein’s bass clarinet, toned with supportive bass and percussion, and a piano that underpins everything, seemingly in a melodic thought of its own for much of the time, but one that reflects the rest of the ensemble. Stein excels in his free, explorative expression, while the track swells and ebbs, creating waves of change. Shahid’s solo evolves into an expressive solo punctuated by percussive elements and eventually accompanied by the ensemble, with Stein's melody leading into a brief dance rhythm and an ensemble finish.

‘Ki Le Noeh (Shlita Melody)’ is at the beating heart of this album, and as the translated honorific of the title might suggest, is an homage to many rhythms of Jewish music, but afforded the Teiku treatment and given a modern free jazz twist. The bass ukulele adds sonorous undertones, while Stein’s bass clarinet positively dances its way across patterns, changes, and rhythmic explorations. The final minute is explosive and somehow cathartic in its energy expenditure.

On ‘Ki Le Noeh (Gerster Melody)’ there is the gentle start of the vibraphone solo, into which the ensemble drops, the clarinet rendering an equally gentle line. The track has essences of modern jazz along with the traditional music, and the bass solo is beautiful. The closing track, ‘Odir Bimlikhe (Lunski Melody) is a free-played improvisation paired with elements of traditional-sounding melody lines. It is standout, with the ensemble creating a dynamic, energetic track filled with the emotional input of all that has gone before.

The album is outstanding in many areas. Teiku is apt as a name for this ensemble of musicians because it has several meanings. In Japanese, it means to keep doing or continue, while in Aramaic, it is a derivation of the word meaning ‘the question stands,’ and the ensemble feels as if they have addressed several questions, explored some of the answers, but in the end, the question remains, and it is this. How do we relate historic, traditional music to modern styles of playing and freely improvised expression? Teiku tried to find at least part of the answer.

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Lance Austin Olsen and Jamie Drouin – a field far beyond form and emptiness (Infrequency, 2026)

By Nick Ostrum

A field far beyond form and emptinessis a return to form. It is Lance Austin Olsen and Jamie Drouin’s first musical collaboration in six years, following a period marked mostly visual arts projects, some joint work on comic books, and an extended bout with Covid. And as with previous recordings, it features Drouin and Olsen on a range of instruments acoustic - dulcimer, cello, piano, children’s and trainer guitars, objects – and not – radio, laptop, amplifiers. Likewise, as with their previous collaboration, this one focuses on unconventional techniques coupled with a lot of frictive and crumbly percussions and Drouin’s electronic manipulations.

The result is a noirish soundtrack to the equally dark and perplexing comics they released a few years ago. Sounds are ephemeral and together evoke a disjointed assemblage of incidental and environmental sounds from a radio play. Woody clicks spatter across one ear. Dramatic tinny dulcimer chords and a lone piano key pock the other. Then silence, and hums, and a quick tumble of acousmatic clatter. One can only imagine what, if anything, is lurking behind it all, the creaks of a settling house, a clumsy cat, or some more ominous disturbance gathering. Breaking the acousmatic spell, a news reporter intervenes at 21:, announcing “The shortages have been fueled by US sanctions.” An extended hum follows, which opens into a period of silence, then a busy minute-long stretch of rummaging.

Silent intervals fill much of the space, serving not only as markers of subtle change but also curious spaces of musical sound in the Cagean sense. They also give the listener time to process and wonder before the next brief flutter of activity. In sense, the core of a fieldmay very well be these loose agglomerations of sounds and the silence, the connective tissue holding it all together. However, one could also flip that equation, as the sound elements are imposed and intrude upon the underlying silent base, which could be the titular field that transcends shape and order but is also pregnant with possibilities. Whichever way one may consider the album – as sounds on silence or intervallic silence amidst sound - the listener is left to wonder what all this space and abstraction is about. It is something unpleasant, for sure. It also says something about the uncertainty of today, as the sanctions report, just one of two spoken insertions, hints. If anything, that contemporary ambiguity and precarity can be a menacing and lonely place, albeit with the dialectical potential for calm and beauty.

a field far beyond form and emptinessis available as a download from Bandcamp:

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Caroline Kraabel / Pat Thomas / John Edwards / Steve Noble - Transgressive Coastlines (Shrike Records, 2026)

 By Richard Blute 

I was happy to see saxophonist Caroline Kraabel reviewed in Stef’s recent article “female artists and solo horn performances”, as I had been spending a great deal of time listening to Transgressive Coastlines. I’ll admit I bought it because of her bandmates. The trio of Pat Thomas on piano, Steve Noble on drums and John Edwards on bass struck me as an unstoppable combo, and it was a pleasure to discover that Kraabel more than holds her own in this distinguished company.

Pat Thomas is a member of the great band [Ahmed], who put on one of the most astonishing shows I’ve ever seen at Big Ears 2025, and also appeared on The Locals Play The Music Of Anthony Braxton, the album where Braxton gets the funky treatment. Noble and Edwards have worked together on countless albums, providing the backbone for any number of the most important albums in free jazz. Check out their work with Peter Brötzmann and Jason Adasiewicz on Mental Shakes or that quartet’s live album, called simply The Quartet. It’s Brötzmann’s final show.

Caroline Kraabel is a saxophonist, conductor, composer and improviser. She’s performed with an extraordinary number of great musicians, including her bandmates here, Charlotte Hug, Maggie Nichols, Louis Moholo, Susan Alcorn, and on and on. She also “founded a large improvising group made up of all sorts of trans-masc, trans-fem, nonbinary, and women improvisers…. they have been exploring improvisation and difference in monthly labs and regular performances”. I would love to have heard her “solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushchair.” [Both quotes are from her website.]

The opener Dark Rainbow begins as a masterclass in how to gradually build up tension. Edwards is scraping his strings, inviting his bandmates to join him. Thomas plays just a few notes, seemingly always at the right moment. Noble and Kraabel are also lightly responding. But they build up the sound quickly and before long Kraabel is playing longer flowing lines with occasional shrieks as punctuation. I’m always impressed with Edwards in the way he switches so smoothly from bowing to plucking in response to his bandmates. The intensity of all four musicians increases sharply, they’re communicating deeply, with lots of stops and starts and changes in tempo. As in all the best free improvisation, we feel as if we’re listening in on a profound conversation. The whole album is full of subtle moments of peace and eruptions of intensity. Each of the musicians are happy to take the lead or take a step back as the collective wishes.

I really enjoy Kraabel’s playing throughout this album. While I clearly hear Evan Parker in her style, I also hear something unique in her use of the high extremes of instrument and in her use of breath sounds. She seems to be talking into her sax at several points.

This is a year-end list contender for me. I’ll be diving into Kraabel’s Bandcamp page as soon as I finish this review. 

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Some AACM on Record (Part 1)

By Gary Chapin

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was one of the most fertile creative organizations … ever … (yes, I said “ever”), serving as apprenticeship for swarms of indispensable players. Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrahms, Lester Bowie, Wadada Leo Smith, and a ton others formed and emerged from the AACM. In any discussion of post-Coltrane jazz, improvisation, avant garde, experimentation, and black identity in music, you will hear of the members of the AACM. They created the standards and then exceeded them.

Sixty years later, the organization continues apace, perhaps a more conventional non-profit, but still the hotbed of iconically iconoclastic innovation that it has always been. Bandcamp recently ran a piece featuring the AACM artists featured on that site , and it was indeed great! Every disc on there was worthy of the attention, but they were almost all re-releases or resurrections of work by the masters back in the day.

We decided to look at some current releases either by AACM members or featuring them. Like the recently reviewed dance! skip! hop! by AACMer Tomeka Reid (reviewed here), these are filled with life, worthy of attention, and driven by AACM values.

Yowzers - Ben Lamar Gay (International Anthem, 2025)

Yowzers opens with an old old feeling church-ish song (reminded me of “I got a Bible I can read”), laying in some solid ground and then going into a creatively abundant set of compositions that lean into small percussion, chants and songs, electronics, and the post-bop jazz fractured rhythms that I love so much.

The main band is Ben LaMar Gay - cornet, voice, synth, bells, diddley bow, percussion, programming, manipulations; Tommaso Moretti - drums, percussion, voice; Davis - tuba, piano, bells, voice; Will Faber - guitar, ngoni, bells, voice. With a few “also featured” joining with their voices and Rob Frye on flute and bass clarinet. It’s an unusual ensemble but feels entirely organic — one section leads to the next with the inevitability of a great story.  

Emma Dayhuff, Kahil El’Zabar, Dee Alexander, Isaiah Collier - Innovations and Lineage: The Chicago Project (Division 81 Records, 2025)  

Innovations and Lineage: The Chicago Project (featuring Emma Dayhuff, Kahil El’Zabar, Dee Alexander, and Isaiah Collier) plumbs similar depths but spends much more time in the dirty, mumbling groove that immediately brings to mind Kahil El’Zabar. This project builds more on traditional percussion (tambourines, gourds, thumb piano) than on Art Ensemblish “small instruments” and its reliance on a careening 6/8 feel for so much of the time is addictive. You can feel the after-rhythm when the song ends. Alexander and El’Zabar sing and vocalize their bluesy moans and shouts. Emma Duff’s bass is relentless — the MVP of the record. Isaiah Collier’s tenor is bar sax and post-Monk — I hear some Charlie Rouse.

In the end it’s meditatively rhythmic, driving and energetic. So in the pocket and joyful that you become the journey.

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Paula Rae Gibson and Alex Bonney - In Another World We Will Live For Ever (33Xtreme Records/33 Jazz Records, 2026)

 

By Sammy Stein

When Paula Rae Gibson contacted me to ask if I would review her new album, she described it simply yet profoundly as ‘an ode to friendship.’ Her best friend had died the year before, and, as she explained, “the least I could do was try to articulate what she meant to me, as a way to heal and a way to stay close to her.”

Few artists possess the imagination and musical instinct required to translate grief into something tangible, but Rae Gibson does exactly that here. This album is steeped in loss, love, and longing, yet reaches far beyond. It becomes, ultimately, a path toward hope, reminding us that beauty and sorrow are often inseparable. That such beauty can result from loss must be a sign of hope and a vehicle towards acceptance and light that we all crave at times.

The album’s origins are as intimate as the music. A small Japanese publisher released a limited edition collection of photographs Rae Gibson had taken of her friend, and while collaborating with trumpet and cornet player, producer, and live electronic musician Alex Bonney on a soundtrack incorporating her friend’s voice messages, the project gradually ‘came to life,’ as Rae Gibson described the experience.

The music moves through emotional and sonic spaces that feel almost suspended between worlds. Bonney’s visionary electronics don’t just accompany Rae Gibson’s vocals; they deepen and amplify them, creating an atmosphere that feels immersive, spectral, and oddly transcendent, as if the listener is afforded fleeting glimpses into another, almost tangible dimension.

The eerie opener, ‘Alive’ is atmospheric and backed by electronic fuzziness that perfectly depicts the sense of otherworldliness that loss can blanket us in. There is a keening keyboard that carries throughout the number, and layers of electronic haze drift beneath whispered words like a prayer, and distant church bells that toll like a summons but also set an undertone of reverence. The sense of emotional dislocation is carried into ‘The Gloves That You Gave Me,’ which sums up the strange power objects acquire after loss. Everyday items become saturated with memory, carrying traces of those who once touched them. The whirring background rhythms feel like a whirlpool, the undertow dragging us towards a darker place. The organ-like background and the gentle, mesmeric vocals of Rae Gibson, punctuated by occasional birdsong, evoke a deep sense of absence. The words ‘everything feels broken’ and ‘nothing will ever be the same, only rain feels right, right now, only tears feel right, right now’ perfectly sum up loss and cut to the heart of bereavement with devastating simplicity.

‘Dreamt of You’ is a beautiful summation of how we dream of those who have gone, and how our imagination fills in the gaps, using phrases they used to say. Offering herself comfort, the singer tells of dreaming of a lost one and how they tell her they are fine – comforting and yet disturbing, as the music adds touches of menace and uncertainty to the snippets of conversation, which the intellect tells us cannot be real, but is redolent of the collective brainstorm our minds flood us with when we have lost. Tender, unsettling, and painfully human.

‘Wait For Me Wait’ is heartfelt in its sincerity. Pitched against relentless rhythmic repetitions, the vocals sing their plea but also accept that it cannot be different. The words speak of talking forever, that there is so much more to say, and a wish for just a little more time. ‘Funny Confessions’ is about sunshine, joy, and how the presence of someone can change things, and the lingering instinct to wonder what someone might say if they were still with you.

‘Lean On’ is an investigative journey into the feelings of leaning on the love for someone, sharing their fire, dancing, and celebrating who they were with the world, while ‘Very Alone,’ is the album’s emotional centrepiece, a number that will resonate with anyone who has experienced deep loss. The lyrics, ‘checking in with you, checking in with me,’ capture the strange ongoing dialogue we maintain with people we have lost, while the line ‘I’ve got to learn to do this alone’ lands with heartbreaking honesty, demonstrating the reluctant acceptance our minds understand we must come to.

This album could have turned into something of an introspective journey, but, while the essence of the album is loss, there is also music that continually reaches outward, and this carries the listener beyond the subject. There is warmth and connection. The album is uplifting, a testament to music’s ability to hold pain, transform it, and return to us a gift. The journey toward the light of how music can carry us, heal us, keep us close to those we have temporarily lost, and offer a vehicle for emotions that no other art form can do.

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Columbia Icefield - A Silence Opens (Out of Your Head, 2026)

By Eyal Hareuveni

A Silence Opens is the third, and unfortunately, the last album of the Columbia Icefield, the quartet that trumpeter Nate Wooley founded, and featuring pedal steel master Susan Alcorn, guitarist-vocalist Ava Mandoza, and drummer Ryan Sawyer. A Silence Opens is informed by the death of close ones and the endless grief their death entails, and began as a tribute to the trumpeter Ron Miles (who passed away in March 2022), Wooley's mentor and someone he looked up to as an older brother, credited for saving Wooley’s life and making him a better person, expanded to a memorial album for Alcorn, whose idiosyncratic sound distinguished the quartet’s sound, who passed away in January 2025, while Columbia Icefield completed the album.

Wooley writes: “Death is a lack with weight. At the moment that you realize that someone you love is irrecoverably gone, a small tear in your life opens up. As days go by, the sliver of grief grows, becoming a rift, a gap, a gulley, a canyon. At the point that you feel lost in the immensity of space where that person used to be, the expansion stops; the hole—the vast and airy part of your life that used to be occupied by that person—becomes solid. Maybe it decreases in size, but more likely, your memories grow to occupy its space”.

Wooley decided to transform the “pressure with sadness” and fill the silence and the vacuum that death brings with new sounds and new voices, creating a deeply emotional and life-affirming musical statement. The album includes three Miles’ pieces, and Alcorn’s favorite protest song - Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara’s “El Derecho De Vivir En Paz” (The Right to Live in Peace, the song that closes Alcorn’s Canto album, Relative Pitch, 2023). The third, unrehearsed interpretation of this song featured a choir of Alcorn’s friends - Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Wendy Eisenberg, gabby fluke-mogul, Laura Ortman, Patrick Holmes, with Wooley, Mandoza, and Sawyer. “We just felt the joy—in saying thank you, we love you, and goodbye—that Susan would have taken in seeing friends and bandmates all lined up, eyes closed, following the lines of a melody she felt in her heart”, Wooley says.

A Silence Opens immediately occupies your full attention with its powerful emotional urgency, faithfully capturing the complex musical essence and personas of Miles and Alcorn. It is structured as a mournful suite or ritual that celebrates the lives and the gift of knowing Miles and Alcorn. It begins with Wooley’s vulnerable whistling solo, the melody of “El Derecho De Vivir En Paz”, followed by Miles’ ballad “Howard Beach” (from My Cruel Heart, Gramavision, 1996), with Mendoza contrasting and pushing Wooley’s touching and soulful playing into aggressive storms; then Mendoza, who almost cries as she recites “El Derecho”; Miles’ dramatic “Darken My Door” (from I Am a Man, Yellowbird, 2017); the choir who “El Derecho” in a waythat makes you want to join their singing; Wooley’s poetic centerpiece, “We Say Goodbye Twice/Wildwood Flower”, that distills the musical and emotional core of this inspiring, heartfelt album with Alcorn’s arresting playing; the quartet offering a joyful interpertation of “El Derecho””; an intense and urgent, distortion-heavy and propulsive version of Miles “You Taste” (from Woman’s Day, Gramavision, 1997); and concluding with Wooley’s solo trumpet of “El Derecho”, simultaneously singing and crying this song, and then whistles it, marking a final acceptance of the passed one, and also as a requiem for Columbia Icefield itself, until it disappears in silence.

Columbia Icefield was in many ways a kind of musical family, and it sounds like a close-knit musical organism. It was one of those few, rare bands that keep expanding its musical universe with every new album, a band that you cherish all its albums, a band that is larger than its parts. “May we always bear the weight of these losses as a gift of presence and memory,” Wooley concluded.

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The Utopia of Better Processes: An Interview with Christian Lillinger

Photo by Nino Halm

By Ljubisa Tosic*

Anyone lucky enough to have seen Christian Lillinger's project Open Form for Society live in 2019 at Donaueschingen or at the Jazzfest Berlin will easily understand why he calls it a "sound organ." After years on hiatus, the drummer is now reviving this deeply resonant project.

When one confronts Christian Lillinger with prominent colleagues' names, intending to find out how lasting his encounters with figures such as Rolf Kühn, Joachim Kühn, David Liebman, Alexander von Schlippenbach, or John Tchicai may have been, he responds with a staccato stream of additional names that have inscribed themselves into his musical biography:

Tamara Stefanovich, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Joe Lovano, Christopher Dell, Peter Brötzmann, Beat Furrer, Peter Evans, Sofia Jernberg, John Schröder, Bob Degen, Lotte Anker, Barre Phillips, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, William Parker, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, and many others...

Of course. When it comes to lasting influence, says Lillinger, "It's a difficult matter." To speak only about 0.1 percent of those influences would be unfair.

On the other hand, there were naturally his own decisions and major life steps that were connected to certain individuals. Lillinger speaks first of the decision "to start playing drums at all," and then of "having the opportunity, at sixteen, coming from a village, to study and pursue a professional path."

Here the support of Günther "Baby" Sommer, a towering figure of free jazz, was essential. "Another decisive moment was getting to know Joachim Kühn, who encouraged me to manifest my own music." From this ultimately emerged Christian Lillinger's Grund, an ensemble known for its distinctive dynamic forms of interplay.

If we continue digging deeper, Lillinger agrees that his search for a controlled freedom and openness in music-making is connected to personally perceived limitations- such as the traditional role of the drummer in jazz- as well as to his own biographical experiences:

My outlook was shaped by independence from a very early age. At the same time, I believe the classical role of the jazz drummer should be one of further development and expansion. Tradition is a constantly evolving form while preserving its roots.

For him, tradition also means, "being able to articulate oneself freely on one's instrument and develop one's own language." No surprise, then, that Lillinger regards jazz itself "as an art music" that demands alertness and continuous development.

Only in this way, he argues, can one do justice to the legacy of great innovators and carry their heritage forward through one's own artistic stance. "Everything else is dead music to me- music that merely fulfills a certain mood or expectation and thereby loses its timelessness. That interests me very little..."

Listening to Lillinger's music, it quickly becomes apparent that here is someone who hovers powerfully above stylistic boundaries. It is therefore tempting to throw a few more names and concepts at him to discover if he is influenced by contemporary classical music. Perhaps the aleatoric methods of John Cage or the open-form concepts of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Earle Brown play a role. 

 

Open Form for Society group shot. Photo by Nadja Hoehfeld.

Perhaps the great sonic precision known from works by Pierre Boulez is also essential, particularly for the current and second recording by his ensemble Open Form For Society (OFFS). "Aleatoricism plays no role whatsoever in OFFS," says Lillinger. "My music is very concretely composed and written down in conventional notation."

Nevertheless, influences from contemporary classical music are numerous. He describes them with terms such as "serial" and "microtonal." His musical thinking also revolves around traditions such as spectralism, New Complexity, and concepts of micro-time and irrational time. These are, he says, "important procedural and inspirational sources."

Someone who formulates his ideas so consciously can perhaps summarize his aesthetic position in something approaching a manifesto:

It is a "new new" chamber music that incorporates space into its actions just as much as what is prescribed and written. The placement and interpretation of the notes are always in dialogue with spatiality. The performers create the space; within this space they navigate themselves. I am opposed to genre labels, so I would rather speak of "post-genre" and of "composer-performers," because everyone involved bears responsibility for shaping and further developing the material. It is a music that operates in a certain scientific manner and thereby continuously discovers new paths.

Immersing oneself in the recording Open Form for Society II (Plaist), one feels as though embarking on a journey through an enchanted sonic garden that gathers collective musical reflexes and conveys an atmosphere of highly energized, controlled freedom.

At times there are slowed-down events reminiscent of musical stalactite caves, as in "Aufgefächert." Elsewhere pulsating sound structures emerge, creating an almost nervous sonic world. Abstract piano figures and energetically charged sound spaces continually return, while density is omnipresent within this sounding architecture.

"Vector" and "Ocker" recall an originally abstracted and further-developed bebop aesthetic, yet with their own freely treated thematic material and repetitive patterns. Introspective and expressive structures form the poles of this musical universe.

How does such a world, constantly shifting between these poles, come into being? Does the personnel come first, or the composition?

It is a very heterogeneous process, one that I wanted to pursue as naturally as possible. Initially there was the vision of assembling a larger ensemble with a strongly percussive sonic language that reflects my way of seeing and realizing structure. Here the sound of Boulez's Sur Incises was an important inspiration.

At the same time, his work with nearly all of the musicians involved in various ensembles was another important factor.

Whether Dell Lillinger Westergaard [DLW], Stemeseder-Lillinger, the collaborations with Petter Eldh and Kaja Draksler, with Robert Landfermann, or with Anna D'Errico through my work with Klangforum Wien- all of this was formative and gave me a clear idea of how and what I can write and hear.

It is fitting that Lillinger mentions Boulez's Sur Incises. With its instrumentation of three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists, it is a sonic laboratory, an organized form of energy that Lillinger has expanded upon. Alongside himself on drums and electronics are Kaja Draksler (upright piano), Elias Stemeseder (spinet and synthesizer), Georg Vogel (electric clavinet), Anna D'Errico and Cory Smythe (piano), bassists Robert Landfermann, Jonas Westergaard, and Petter Eldh, and Christopher Dell on vibraphone.

The process of selecting collaborators was equally heterogeneous:

The criteria emerged from previous work with all participants in different projects. For me, this ensemble is the perfect way to connect and transcend the worlds of classical music and modernity. Some musicians are primarily responsible for the text, others for further developments regarding sound. My musical utopia requires excellent preparation: precise reading, abstraction, further writing, and transcendence. In this ensemble I consciously distribute that responsibility.

Transcendence, he says, is less a concept than "a result of working with the material itself. We combine influences from contemporary classical music, the avant-garde, and modern beat culture, creating a common point of fusion. Everyone involved must be capable of developing their own further plan based on what is written."

What may sound free is nevertheless clearly prescribed in many respects and directions, including highly detailed polyphonic notation and rhythmic structures:

[This project] has very little to do with conventional notions of freedom and openness. Freedom begins with the possibilities of variation and dynamics. Through repetition and the slow variation within those repetitions, an individual space emerges. Everything conditions everything else and appears as a shared whole: a meta-instrument, a sonic organism.

Working with the same colleagues over a long period can, of course, lead to a comfortable routine. One knows what the other person will do, adapts accordingly, and clichés may emerge.

Lillinger sees it differently. "I don't see that danger. Because I work with the same musicians over a long period, a genuine awareness develops of what the next stages might be." Intensive work and insight make it possible "to take those next steps. With consistent and continuous work, neither boredom nor routine arise."

A convincing explanation.

This leaves the title Open Form for Society, which seems to suggest a close connection between music and social thought. "The collective negotiation of the music I initiate serves as the foundation and basis for negotiation."

Does this also concern ideas of an open, liberal society, or democracy?

The latter, absolutely! It concerns the utopia of a continually improving social process sustained through negotiation and the collective discovery of solutions. However, I must say that this project is more a sound that accompanies and encourages open processes than one that fully embodies them. Because I am the composer and initiator, it ultimately belongs more to a closed, albeit flexible, structure.

For the openness of jazz, it is far too fixed and strict; for classical music, however, it remains too open. "It therefore exists between these often rigid and ultimately inadequate categories and hopefully inspires further thinking about these social limitations. The point is this: Never stop communicating and working. Never stop thinking!"

This is Lillinger's ambitious approach. One that could also help people outside music avoid more than a few traps of cliché and convention. 

*Interview originally published in Jazz Podium, translated from German. 

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Christian Lillinger - Open Form for Society II (Plaist Records, 2026)

By Martin Schray

There is improvised music that grabs you right by the guts, the connection to this music is immediate and direct. Often you can feel it; it sweeps you away, strikes right to the core, and is able to lift you into a different state of consciousness. Peter Brötzmann and Joe McPhee, might come to the mind, Matana Roberts and Mette Rasmussen represent a younger generation. But there’s also music that takes a more intellectual approach, it’s harder to access, more abstract, more conceptual. That doesn’t mean it can’t move you, though - it just does it on a different level. The classic example of this would certainly be Anthony Braxton. Christian Lillinger’s projects also work this way - and they do so in a thoroughly fascinating way, especially when it’s his Open Form for Society outfit.

Lillinger describes the second album of his project as conceived, condensed chamber music - an exploration of sonic possibilities featuring a specially developed ensemble, which can be rightfully called a who’s who of modern European improvisers (plus an American one): Kaja Draksler (celesta, upright piano), Elias Stemeseder (harpsichord, synthesizer); Georg Vogel (claviton), Anna D’Errico and Cory Smythe (piano) make up the keyboard section, Robert Landfermann, Jonas Westergaard and Petter Eldh are on the basses, Christopher Dell is on vibraphone, and Lillinger himself is responsible for percussion and the composition of the music. Added to this are electronic and electroacoustic enhancements, conducted via metronome. Characteristic of this music are highly condensed conceptual structures and rhythmic polyphony, yet at the same time there’s a springy openness that makes it possible to appreciate this music even without prior knowledge of music theory. Spaces of freedom emerge every now and then, in which individual shaping and independent interpretative decisions become possible - and it’s precisely in these moments that the music happens to be more tangible and exciting.

At the heart of the album is the 14-minute “Poliform” - OFFS II in a nutshell, so to speak. Driven by flickering percussion and bone-dry basslines, the keyboards duel and support one another, creating expansive textures, breaking them up with rapid runs, and ensuring that the focus is constantly changing. Space and time are permanently shifted; it often sounds as if a cassette was wobbling along in an old cassette player. This creates the impression of coexisting temporal structures and a multitude of perspectives; rhythmic and harmonic cells are analyzed as if under a magnifying glass, only to then rewind the composition and direct the gaze toward a larger whole. The music thus eludes immediate grasp because it undergoes maximum change through its minimal shifts. Free jazz clusters exist alongside airy, transparent passages; frantic drum patterns reminiscent of pinball machine sounds are attacked by heavy bass lines. Here and there, a swing passage flashes briefly; in various corners of the room, individual keyboard chords flare up, only to burn out again very quickly.

One can hear this album as a musical inquiry into the relationship of time, a question once posed by Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and discussed here by Lillinger, but one can also simply enjoy tracks like “Topping Abnormal” for their unusual beauty, or the punk attitude of “Vector“. Another possibility is to explore the psychedelic side of “Setzung” or the heavy metal influences of “Plant.” For this album is, quite simply, a lot of fun.

In contrast to the first release, where the separation in the studio was the focus, OFFS II is about the unity of a shared space. The recordings were made in the studios of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne and reflect a sonic live image in which the entire material (with only a few overdubs) resounds and lives in a single room.

Open Form for Society II is available as a double album on vinyl, as a CD and as a download.

You can listen to parts of it and buy it here.

You can also watch a teaser of the recording sessions: 

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Hyper Elastic Jinx - We Vote Force Majeure (Barefoot Records, 2026)

By Brian Earley 

 

Let it happen at our peril.

 

This is the title of the final track on We Vote Force Majeure, a powerfully free set of collective improvisations by the band Hyper Elastic Jinx, and it is a prophetic warning.

 

For instance, climate change is projected to increase coastal flooding around Norway, Denmark, and Germany, where the musicians on this album primarily reside, by a factor of 10, 100, or even 1000 depending upon emissions scenarios.

 

“Let It Happen At Our Peril,” the song, opens with two saxophones, one the alto of Signe Emmeluth, one a tenor played by Nana Pi, both of whom are deeply connected to the Scandinavian experimental music scene. The saxophones warp and twist around each other as the song progresses. By mid-tune, the piece has erupted into a catastrophic explosion of sound, with drummer Halym Kim crashing down on the snare and cymbals, and guitarist Keisuki Matsuno firing hits and chords full of color and fuzzy, chorus-filled reverb that sounds to me like it's played on an old Fender amp built in the 1970s. Kim and Nana Pi have played extensively together on the Northern European scene, including on the 2022 album Tactical Maybe , a gorgeous and raucous experimental work I highly encourage everyone to check-out. Matsuno, on the other hand, has ties to the John Zorn world, playing on Zorn’s Bagatelles Volume 11 in 2022 with Jim Black. Emmeluth, of course, has forged a fiery reputation as dynamo of what the Free Jazz Collective has called The New Danish Thing.

 

But We Vote Force Majeure is not about its individual performers. It is an album of collective free improvisation for which all musicians share equally in the song-writing credits. It is a community in communion with the greater good, and despite my use of the word catastrophic in the previous paragraph, notes about the album on the Barefoot Records webpage state “The album is not an invocation of catastrophe, but a longing for a superior and irresistible force that people can’t ignore - a force that focuses on social values, cultural exchange and ecological sustainability.”

 

Despite this persistent optimism of the will, the album is meant to remind listeners “that the world and the structures we are living in are not socially, economically, ecologically or politically sustainable and benefit only a minority of people.”

 

The album warns it is “Always the Others,” the title of the second work on the record. Experts on the history of concentration camps point out that camps functioning in far away times and places are easily labeled as evil, while those erected and running here and now are commonly believed to hold the real bad guys. The individuals held in these places are so quickly othered. And, it is so easy for fascism to take root when its citizens believe it is always the others who face genuine danger. Here in the United States, for instance, by April 2026, 42,000 people with no prior criminal records were being detained in camps throughout the United States. These are camps for the mass detention of civilians, not war-time prisoners, who have not been given due process and were detained on the prejudicial basis of a larger group identity.

Perhaps “Let It Happen At Our Peril” and “Always the Others” call back and ahead philosophically to the album’s fourth track “Zero Point 75.” In the world of optometry, +0.75 Diopters is the lowest level used in a prescription to correct short-sightedness. The short sightedness of humanity may be a reality, but it is still at a correctable state. I don’t think the musicians play programmatically on this album, but I find it fitting that Halym Kim opens this song playing the drums as though it were the ticking of a manual alarm clock. We can only remain short sighted for so much time.

 

So, instead of shrinking away in despair of catastrophe, we can choose now to function like the example set by the musicians on this record: individually contributing to a working group dynamic. Here, this musical dynamic is one where the energy rises and washes over the listener more than any individual solo. The value is located in the spontaneous and present collective, not in a perfected show of musical virtuosity. It is force majeure: a force of such superior power that it is irresistible. And, as displayed on this wonderfully powerful album, it can be used as a force for good.

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JAZZ IS DEAD! FESTIVAL - Torino, May 29-31

By Ferruccio Martinotti

A small yet great festival that along the years brought into town the likes of Peter Brotzmann, Mats Gustafsson, The Necks, Zu, Oren Ambarchi, Jamie Branch, Boris, John Edwards, Evan Parker, just to name a few, earning the perennial gratefulness of a faithful, constantly increasing, legion of diehard followers. But not only. While the music industry is devouring itself in a sick cannibalism of insanely expensive gigs, pre-sale tickets in the clutches of mafia-like algorithms and fake sold-outs, here at JID! for 15 euros (10 if you can’t afford more and 40 for the 3 days pass) you can see concerts from morning till night, when even the most grindcore eardrums beg ENOUGH. For its ninth edition, the festival is moving from post-industrial warehouses (The Bunker) to the green grounds of a farmhouse (Cascina Falchera), less than a mile from the noisy and busy outskirts of the city. Trees, lawns, camping, showers, blankets on the grass, hammocks, and barefoot children running around, create a fun and enjoyable short circuit between a hippie-esque, micro-Woodstock atmosphere and a soundtrack that is the furthest from those muddy Peace & Love days. This year’s lineup highlights once again what a properly focused festival should be: a defined perimeter, within which to showcase the various facets of the "editorial" prism, setting aside the rhetoric of a headliner and a bunch of (often out of context) support bands in front of a bored/distracted/pissed off audience, frantically waiting for the Star. Then there's everyone's taste, as it should be. Below, ours.

DAY 1 

Lucrecia Dalt

The Colombian, Berlin based musician takes the stage with her guitar, flanked by bass/double bass, and drums for a set that, almost entirely, features her latest album, "A Danger to Ourselves," released last year. Her experimental electronica, a blend of avant-garde pop and dreamlike sound design, is always intriguing, but in its live outdoor dimension, it loses something compared to her recordings. 

 

Photo Fabiana Amato

Matmos

After 30 years spent mixing up and transforming all kinds of electronic madness into "enjoyable" music, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt seem still eager to have fun, and, of course, so are we. Glitches, loops, beats, and a set of steel containers struck with concentrated mastery are the menu of the evening. For the final piece, to bid farewell to the audience, they launch an irresistible straight-kick, 4/4 groove, which, for people who used to record liposuctions in operating rooms, is truly Super Yacht Rock Time! Legendary.

Photo Fabiana Amato

DAY 2

Yazz Ahmed

The Bahraini-born trumpeter, here on flugelhorn, accompanied by Ralph Wyld on vibraphone, weaves wonderful sonic textures that blend jazz and psychedelia, all flavored with Arabic fragrances inspired by her home country: a rock-solid sonic bridge between ancient worlds and contemporary avant-garde. Sublime, even at 11 am.

Photo Fabiana Amato

 Moor Mother

She prepares her laptops gently and smiling, but when she presses the ON button, the San Andreas Fault sends a shockwave that can be felt all the way to Torino: Apocalypse Now. In the maelstrom generated by devastating industrial sounds and telluric dub rhythms, Camaye Ayewa dives headfirst, not only taking possession of the music but being totally possessed by it, just to reemerge wildly fiery and furious. Seen a month ago with Irreversible Entanglements, in her solo version she reaffirms one certainty: there’s no one like her out there.

 

Photo Fabiana Amato

Sorvina

From New York, but based in Berlin, the smiling charm of Sorvina jumps on stage as a full-band on this occasion, and her music, which blends jazz, rap, soul, and gospel, is enriched in its unique expression. Through her unmistakable voice, capable of conveying joy and vulnerability, she combines lyrical complexity and groove, always remaining faithful to the roots of authentic hip-hop.

Photo Fabiana Amato

The Heliocentrics

Among the cornerstones of British nu-jazz, they were one of our highlights on the agenda, and the concert fully met expectations. Featuring bass, cello/electronics, keyboards, drums, and sax/flute, theirs is a stunning synthesis of jazz, funk, and psychedelia, producing a hypnotic and sizzling sound, articulated by the stunning talented singer Barbora Patkova. After all, they've collaborated with true legends like Mulatu Astatke and members of the Sun Ra Arkestra for a reason. 

Photo Fabiana Amato

 DAY 3

How would you measure the love for music? The number of records you own? Too easy. The concerts you’ve seen? Nah. Or maybe, starting Day 3 of the Festival at 2 PM, while the heat bomb hits Torino like Milford Graves on his drum kit? Well, that could be a unit of measurement.

Dwarfs of East Agouza

Is it possible to blend the radical improvisation and hypnosis of krautrock with the energy of Egyptian shaabi? You have to be an absolute champion to pull it off, but with Maurice Louca, Sam Shalabi and Alan Bishop we are talking about off the scale cats. Assembling electronics, wind instruments, Arabic scales, jazz, and psychedelia, their angular trajectories obliterate any space/time dimension, and their constant balance between chaos and composition, imbued with an emancipatory free jazz spirit, is captivating above and beyond daydreaming. 

Photo Fabiana Amato

Glacial

Elusive is an understatement. In 25 years, a single album and a handful of concerts for a rendez-vous of legends, Lee Ranaldo, Tony Buck, and David Watson: those who were there will be able to tell their grandchildren about it. Buck's polyrhythms (of Necks' fame) are accompanied by Ranaldo's anti-guitar playing (Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth), where the instrument is struck, dragged on the ground, played with the bow and Watson's bagpipes (Yoshi Wada, Phil Niblock), all generating a cascade of noise, free, drones, and psychedelia. Glacial in name and in deed.

Photo Fabiana Amato

Sanam

Blossomed into the Beirut scene after a collaboration with Hans Joachim Irmler from Faust, they confirm on stage the amazing, original outcome heard on their last album “Sametou Sawtan”. Modern Arabic poetry delivered by the stellar singer Sandy Chamoun, feedback, improvisation, traditional music and jazz, are delivering a unique sonic synthesis that defies all genre boundaries. The geographical boundaries of their Homeland have already been defied and breached by tanks. 

Photo Fabiana Amato

 

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