Razor Sharp & Bone Deep

By Paul Acquaro

The trombone, simple to say, has played a crucial role in jazz history, from supporting instrument to prominent leading role and solo voice. Already in early jazz, the instrument's unique slides, growls and scoops added a raw, expressive quality to the music. Later, it showed off its more lyrical and smooth side, and in Bebop, it was as agile and expressive as any of the other horns. Of course, it can also be funky, alliterative and, best of all, abstract. In avant garde and improvised jazz, resourceful trombonists have hooked the music in the curves of the horn, pulling in all sort of different direction.

Cox, Ajtai, Gyárfás - URGENT (PMG Jazz, 2025) 

One example where you can hear just about every expressive tone that the trombone can make is on Hungary based, American trombonist Christopher Cox's trio recording URGENT out on the North Macedonian PMG Jazz label. Cox, as gleaned from his website, has a resume that includes working with "Marco Eneidi, Glenn Spearman, Jason Robinson, Billy Bang, Cecil Taylor, political hip-hop/jazz group Junkyard Empire, and famed poet Amiri Baraka." This trio is filled out by drummer Attila Gyárfás and bassist Péter Ajtai. Likely new names to many of our readers and both with growing discographies. URGENT is the second recording in this formation. 

 

The trio's approach is quite diverse. There are moments of unbridled free jazz but that is more the exception, as the music does proceed with intensity, but of a more reflective and textured kind. The recording begins with 'Instructions,' and right away the interaction of the players and their sensitivity to each other is apparent. These interactions add up, cascading to a first, reserved peak. Then, time stretches out. Gyárfás's percussion becomes sparse, interjecting only when the time seems right (and it does seem to pick them well), while Ajtai shadows Cox and lays down some long droning bass tones. The notes morph into sliding, atonal sounds and the drums and trombone add agitated energy to the mix. Quite an introduction! 

 

The follow up tracks are just as gripping. For example, the next one, 'Hunting for the Winners,' takes a different tact: Cox plays a dark-hued melody over a thrumming bass line, as rhythmic figures add motion. They gain even more momentum as Cox plays quicker and quicker figures, the melody developing into a throbbing, and dangerous seeming, thing. The expressiveness of each track captures the listener, whether it is notes that do not even form, like the intro to 'Dragonflies from a Dead Sky' or the intense give-and-take in 'And there Came what Always Was,' the trio seems to revel in the process of making something together, and the end product is captivating. 

Matthias Müller Andreas Willers - self titled (Trouble In The East, 2025)

Both trombonist Matthias Müller and guitarist Andreas Willers are established musicians in the Berlin experimental music scene. Müller's list of collaborators is long and varied sporting an international roster of who's who. Willers too, who counts Paul Bley, John Abercombie, as well as Enrico Rava and E.L. Petrowski among his connections. So, while this review is ostensibly glued together through the trombone, with all of its possible slides and honks, this is just as much a guitar album, I mean what instrument can plink and plonk and squeek and skronk like an electric guitar? So, what is certain is that they two bring together their wide breath of experience and tonal discoveries to bear on this excellent duo recording out on the Berlin based Trouble In The East records.

 

From the opening moments of 'geel dropen,' the listener is confronted with an otherworldly soundscape. There is a structure, a syntax, but in an alien tongue. As the track progresses, the swaths of sound become more coherent and instead of a series of atomic reactions, there is a blending partial chord from Willers' guitar and continuous tones from Müller. The following, 'as sik dat höört,' builds on a different set of tones. The aliens are arguing now. Effects add a metallic tinge to the guitar and the trombone is agitated, tightly filling the space with a demanding melody. The argument settles later, and they seem to have agreed on a common enemy now, as the guitar begins to seethe and the trombone growls. By the time we reach the end of the album, the duo has seemed to exploit every valves and fret available to their illogical ends, but that they end leaving a musically fantastic impression is quite logical.

 

Conny Bauer - Das Bassposaunen (Jazzwerstatt, 2023)

Put the word 'bass' in front of an instrument and color me intrigued. The bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet (I associate Anthony Braxton with this one!), bass saxophone, and let's add Conny Bauer to this list for bass trombone. Bauer, a master of the instrument from his formative years in East Germany with groups like Synopsis (later Zentralquartett) and Fez to current day collaborations with say William Parker and Hamid Drake, is always a pleasure to hear. On this solo recording from 2023, Bauer performs three songs with names referencing locations in Berlin. 

 

First, 'Dreieck Funkturn,' which clocks in at 29-minutes, is a trip through the trombonist's oeuvre . Using multi-tracking, Bauer, at first, explores a stately harmonized melody embellished through improvised excursions. As the track continues, the mood darkens and elements of electronics become audible. Ringing, echoing and droning tones surround his swarthy timbre, and as the track continues it decomposes into more experimental realms. A follow-up dip in the 'Rummelsburger Bucht' drips with melody. Bauer multi-tracks counter melodies accented with a valve-made percussion, and then half-way through the 14-minute track, he contrasts the preceding lightheartedness with an expansive solo excursion that eventually leads back to a folksy feel-good multi-bone ending. Bauer eventually leaves us in 'Tempelhofer Feld,' which uses the multi-tracking to build a proper regal brass choir. 

 

Add a Helge Leiberg sketch as a cover and you've got a consummate piece of art in your hands (and ears).