Recorded live at London's Cafe OTO over two nights in February 2023, The Quartet presents the great Peter Brötzmann's final concerts. The concerts reunited Brötzmann with one of his iconic groups, a quartet with bassist John Edwards, drummer Steve Noble, and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz. Cafe OTO's house record label was launched with a debut recording of Brötzmann, Edwards, and Noble, a searing blast of delight titled the worse the better. The follow-up, Mental Shake, introduced Adasiewicz to the group, expanding of course the size and sound of the quartet, also reshaping it as a unit with four equal sides. That recording was made in 2013, released in 2014, and ten years later, the new one shows the quartet continued to grow as a powerful, dynamic, and passionate improvising group.
In four tracks representing early and late sets by night, Brötzmann, Edwards, Noble, and Adasiewicz perform more like an organism in fluxing evolution than something nearing the unexpected end of its time. Edwards and Noble, in particular, are two of the most creative players in the area of free jazz, layering in polyrhythms and countering melodic gestures with unexpected rhythmic pivots. Brötzmann organized a number of iconic trios, it’s the addition of Adasiewicz that gives this quartet its unique position in his tremendous discography. One of the notable aspects of Brötzmann that’s always worth revisiting is how, unlike other “lead” saxophonists, his trios and quartets were egalitarian, a representative characteristic of European free jazz. Throughout all four sets, there’s never a sense that it’s Brötzmann and his backing band—you could list any of the four players as a “lead,” without changing a note, and the feeling would be the same.
Remarkably, for players associated so closely with words like raw, blast, and power, The Quartet (and, naturally, the quartet itself) demonstrates how sensitive and connected the music is; despite common misconceptions of Brötzmann as an overblowing machine, he was an inventive player who approached improvising with intention and clarity. “Part 2” opens with a fantastic Rollins-inspired swinging melody, which, owing to Edwards and Noble’s inventiveness, lingers in an extended meditative state before switching gears. Later, “Part 3” begins on an improvisatory invocation, featuring Adasiewicz in gorgeous form. Each set finds the quartet anew, pushing its own boundaries, serious and playful, and inarguably transcendent.
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