Jeff Platz, Max Goldman & Brendan Carniaux - With Orbit (Self, 2021) ****

By Stef Gijssels

In the early and mid 90s, some twenty years ago, I was a big fan of Seatlle-based band Babkas, a trio with Brad Shepik on guitar, Briggan Kraus on sax and Aaron Alexander on drums. The sound was raw, adventurous despite the obvious composed part of it, and open to musical ideas from outside jazz. The absence of a bass made the sound just a touch harder. 

I have the same feeling and appreciation of this trio with Jeff Platz on guitar, Brendan Carniaux on sax and clarinet and Max Goldman on drums. The music is direct, nervous, energetic and combines raw tones with moments of lyricism. It's not really violent, aggressive or fast, just raw and fresh, stripped of all outward sophistication and finesse, yet driven by some brutal sense of authenticity and honesty. And strangely enough also friendly, close and intimate. 

Platz is in my opinion a guitarist and musician who deserves wider attention, as he is both technically strong and has interesting musical ideas. He does not make his guitar sound like anybody else, and limiting his pedals to accentuate or emphasise tone rather than to distort them, resulting in a jazzy sound with a sometimes brutal grunge approach. Interested readers should check out his two solo albums of last year, one more gentle ("Yo Como Solo") and one more harsh and experimental ("Unknown Year"). Over the years Platz has performed with musicians such as Daniel Carter, Stephen Haynes and Jan Klare. 

Drummer Max Goldman is less known, and to our readers possibly as the drummer of the Danny Fox Trio. Brendan Carniaux is even lesser known, at least to me, and he also deserves wider attention. His approach to the sax fits perfectly with the intense and raw musical vision of the trio. The three musicians met as the result of the Covid pandemic. 

I think the resulting album is excellent: it is at the same time a musical statement, as well as great fun to listen to. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Playfield – Volume 1, 2, 3 (Orbit 577, 2021) ****

Playfield - Volume 1 – Sonar

Playfield – Volume 2 – The Middle

Playfield – Volume 3 – After Life

By Nick Ostrum

I cannot speak to the exact circumstances surrounding the formation of this unit, but Playfield is another one of those countless projects that would not have happened had the pandemic not disrupted the status quo. Absent the normal forms of collaboration that clubs, auditoria, bars, and studios had offered, musicians took to the streets, per the liner notes, to take part in the welling protest movements and perform in the open air. Given Daniel Carter’s previous involvement with the busking quartet TEST and his decades of constant hustle through the Downtown-now-Brooklyn-based New York scene, it is not surprising that he took the initiative to embrace these new opportunities for collaboration outside of conventional performance spaces.

Playfield is Luisa Muhr (vocals), Ayumi Ishito (sax), Eric Plaks (nord piano), Aron Namenwirth (guitar), Yutaka Takahashi (guitar), Zach Swanson (Bass), Jon Panikkar (drums) and Daniel Carter (reeds). Although their work has been released in a series of three albums, each with a single extended improvisation, all albums seem to come from a single outside recording session in October 2020. I love the concept: a group that joined initially outdoors in the heat of summer protests capturing some of that same flame and passion by recording in similar spaces. Surprisingly, however, the recording is crisp and the urban environs seem largely inconsequential to the sound itself. (At times, I think I hear cars passing or gusts of wind, but they are faint.) The music, however, succeeds in playing the tensions that band seek to explore.

Vol. 1: Sonar begins with a sweltering, Summertime (Gershwin) vibe and drifts along hazily and ominously as Ishito and Carter’s horns entangled, Namenwirth and Takahashi’s guitars vie (one in the left ear, the other in the right), and Plak’s electronics percolate. Swanson and Panikkar rumble in the background and Muhr skats, mumbles and flutters around the others, as if providing the muffled murmur of the demonstrators just a few blocks away, the whisps of cars and trains, the general clatter of the city. Around the halfway point, Panikkar lays down a harder beat, and the piece transforms from a amorphous exploration of converging sound into a free-bop romp that slowly draws back into the spacious romanticism that began the session.

The second release. Vol. 2: The Middle, follows a different trajectory, commencing with a soulful stew of swelling energy, with Muhr’s vocals again adding a necessary human element that links the performance Playfield’s own origins in the public spaces of the city, offering both a decentering account of the tensions of the summer of Covid and adding a hopeful sonic image that those hitherto mundane sounds of people will return. The track then slows into another exploration of angular improv patchwork, only to regain its energy and drive in the final few minutes of climax.

The final installment, Vol. 3: After Life, begins with resounding call and response dialog between Muhr and Carter (I think) around which the other instruments slowly gather. The tapestry is complex, but patient and even sultry. Plaks’ keys and Namenwirth or Takahashi’s guitar effects contribute funk elements to the mix, as the dual saxes trade off brief sweltering licks. Muhr slips to the background and for a few moments it sounds as if she is pacing around the rest of the group encircling them with her incantations. Unlike Sonar and The Middle, After Life avoids ebb-flow-ebb/flow-ebb-flow or the gradual crescendo structures that many of these improvised sessions rely on. Instead, it simmers for the most part, never really breaking into a boil but also never really dying down until the very end. That makes After Life all the more engaging, as it plays with a tension that never quite breaks and showcases collective will toward restraint. It is like a steady breeze on the most sweltering days of summer: it never fully gusts but it undulates just enough to break the stagnant heat.

All three releases are available for download on Bandcamp:

Orbit 577 did press some CD versions, as well, though it seems these sold out quite quickly.

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André Carvalho - Lost in Translation (Outside In Music, 2021) ****½

By Jim Marks

For his latest release, New York-based bassist André Carvalho fronts a drummerless trio with José Soares on alto and André Matos on guitar that, on three tracks, expands to a quartet with the addition of João Almeida on trumpet. The group produces a wide array of sounds and textures with plenty of space in between. An interesting comparison for the core lineup is the considerably more up-tempo 2019 release by the Michael Formanek Very Practical Trio with Mary Halvorson and Tim Berne ( reviewed on this site by Stephen Griffith ), though a closer sonic relative to the present recording is Melt, the recent release by Hearth ( reviewed on this site by Stuart Broomer ). While instrumental music is often described as atmospheric, here, the term is entirely apt; the concept of failed communication aside, these compositions often conjure up images of, if not gloom, at least foreboding along with somewhat less frequent moments of peace and beauty.

Carvalho’s previous release, Garden of Earthly Delights (2019), featured a larger ensemble (including Matos) and arrangements more dense, varied, and, as the title suggests, upbeat. Here, by contrast, the tones are subdued and contemplative, with one cluster of notes often being allowed to fade before another begins. The leader, equally adept with fingers and bow, tends to play a supporting role for Soares and Matos but also provides several tasteful solos.

Opener “Luftmensch” establishes the atmosphere, with the three instruments engaging in a tentative conversation punctuated by lulls and pauses. The clean guitar alternates between keening notes and arpeggios over plucked bass while Soares drifts and darts in between. On “Kilig,” the pace slows to a crawl with menacing distorted guitar and bowed bass with which the sax combines on occasion to create unusual harmonies. “Uitwaaien” maintains this atmosphere, though less gloomily, developing and resolving in a pleasant swirl of sound.

“Goya” changes things up with creepy bowing and menacing distorted guitar joined by jolts and sputters of trumpet marking Almeida’s first appearance, but the chaos gives way to strings of clearer notes before a fade-out of soft-blown sax and what sounds like electronics or echo. On “Alcheringa” and “Kalpa,” the guitar is once again clean and melts into the sax, and Carvalho provides a spacious solo in the former.

Almeida’s trumpet more complements the trio’s sound than expands it. On “Karelu,” he alternately plays off the sax and guitar before the quartet coalesces to sputter slowly to a halt. The brief “Murr-ma” showcases Soares’ gentle, breathy playing, while the equally brief “Boketto” showcases Carvalho’s bowing. “Mångata” begins with swells of bowed bass and stately guitar chords supporting Soares’s bird-like notes until the bowing gives way to plucking and the other instruments seem to float away. In “Resfeber,” chiming guitar notes open up into a cinematic blend of sounds before transforming into a smattering of harmonics. The brief “Wabi-sabi” provides a fitting ambient coda.

The “lost in translation” theme, Carvalho explains in the liner notes, represents an attempt to “embrace the unknown” through reflection on untranslatable words (hence the titles of the songs) and the universality of music. This recording certainly encourages listeners to approach improvised in a distinct way, facilitated in particular by the lack of a drummer, which allows the phrases to float and interact in a kind of timeless space. Carvalho may feel unable to say exactly what he means, but he communicates well this sense of restless exploration.

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Kuzu – All Your Ghosts In One Corner (Aerophonic, 2021) *****

By Tom Burris

Expansion was happening in Kuzu's music before COVID shut the world down. The band was wrapping up a short U.S. tour right as the world's doors were being locked. The music that was created on the last two nights of that run, which the band members knew would shut them down for a long time, is documented on this disc. That openness, that expansion that was opening up their sonic world would be taken from them in a matter of hours – and often the anger, apprehension, and doubt about it all explodes in every direction. It's the sound of raging artists destroying their most advanced works in the face of an impending void because what the fuck does any of this mean now?

There is also a looseness that's not quite been this loose before. Yes, it's the comfort of playing with your brothers; but it's also the feeling of trying to ignore the tension that surrounds everything too. It's only relaxing on the surface when Tyler Damon does a lop-sided, lazy swing on the drum kit to Dave Rempis' slow reeding down the midnight 1970s Bowery sidewalk. Tashi Dorji throws in an occasional guitar pwang! while his amp buzzes. They're half of the Lounge Lizards on the nod. A little painful, but rest assured it hurts them more than it hurts you. It's the sound of DEPRESSION, full tilt. And then like Kaoru Abe waking up on a stage with a sax in his mouth, “Scythe Part 1” rips into the ether and then calms and then rips again, this time with a blinding, eye melting intensity that will have you feeling around your cheeks for blood and eye yolk.

“Part 2” doesn't provide much relief. Damon & Rempis sound like James Chance beating up Big Bird while Dorji chases 'em around with a hot fire poker. A drunk and bitter Tex Avery producing children's television. Dorji has the guitar fueled with far more distortion than Sharrock or anyone else even remotely associate with the word Jazz. He wrangles with an extra loose string underneath Rempis' overblown cries when things get winded. Out of nowhere, there's this image of Rempis thinking “fuck Chance; what if LYDIA played the sax?!?” Everything speeds up. The lights in the room get brighter, threatening to pop. But then the possession subsides a bit, with Rempis playing some sustained notes. The spirit trance hasn't been completely broken – and that becomes crystal clear when Rempis' fire music shoots through Damon and Dorji's house of mirrors like a flamethrower. Dorji's volume pedal dance combined with Damon's rapid clanging as the house burns down literally makes me dizzy.

At the point where Rempis is honking Morse code, Dorji plays with a radioactive device, and Damon beats the metal bowls covering the heads of electric chair death row inmates, it finally hits me that this is the most intense music the group has ever released. Then again, there is this artful spaciousness they've been crafting and attempting to present that nearly always precedes the chaos throughout. Maybe that's the reason the intense bits burn so brightly. Hard to tell. Even after multiple listens. Art reflecting the burning world, I guess. Hard not to do that when your ass is on fire. What you gonna do without your ass?

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José Lencastre Nau Quartet + Pedro Carneiro - Thoughts Are Things (Phonogram Unit, 2021) ****½

 By Stef Gijssels

How many times have I listened to this album? Possibly fifty times. And I'm sure I will listen even more to it in the future. The band is saxophonist José Lencastre's Nau Quartet with Rodrigo Pinheiro on piano, Hernâni Faustino on double bass, and João Lencastre on drums. The new voice is Pedro Carneiro on marimba to become a quintet. 

They present us four tracks of around ten minutes, all clearly improvised, but how! The piano and the marimba form an unexpected great match, both creating a flowing harmonic river that creates the structure for José Lencastre's strong tenor or more sensitive alto. The bass and drums actively participate in creating the fullness of the band's sound. 

Whether in the more intense opener "One Way To Cultivate Courage", or the slower and more lyrical "Thought Atmospheres", the vibrant "Your Latent Powers", or the gentle "The Magnet Of Thought", the whole band is in supershape, making music that is cohesive and unidirectional. 

Like with Lencastre's other bands or with the RED Trio, the music is warm, emotional while being free as the wind and flowing as the river, even to the point of being hypnotic. As the listener, you can only sit back and well ... listen and enjoy this warm blanket of sound to envelop you, to rejoice in the solos and the interplay. Despite its inherent freedom, the music has a post-boppish accessibility with sometimes even bluesy undertones, only showing that they are deeply rooted in jazz tradition. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Watch "Thought Atmospheres" on the video below. 

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Eric Zinman/Mario Rechtern/Weasel Walter – Mermaids and Sirens Know (Studio 234, 2021) ****½

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

I must state from the beginning, that this is the best piano trio that I’ve listened so far in 2021. The fun fact is that Mermaids and Sirens Know comes out ten whole years after the four tracks were recorded. All three players have really made their names heard in the grey, but so appealing to some of us, zone between free jazz, free improvisation, rock and, even, noise. Walter, who is a disciple, of all out punk attack in drumming, has managed to participate in so many great free jazz albums. Call him a jazz drummer too… In bands like the Flying Lutenbachers, but also in various more jazzy formations he has proven his skills. Yes, I’m a fan…Pianist Eric Zinman, apart from being a member of the amazing Linda Sharrock Network, has also shared the same stage and studio with saxophonist Mario Rechtern, again in various formations that cover any ground from improvisation to jazz, to any kind of experimentation.

Mermaids and Sirens is comprised of four tracks with a total duration of more than an hour. All four of them present the three musicians in great form, eager and aggressive to explore. Zinman’s Tayloresque playing allows room for the other two to attack their instruments (which are alto, baritone and sopranino saxes for Rechtern), while he bangs on the keyboard with the force and wit of the great Cecil Taylor.

I’ve already wrote about him, but it makes no justice to him, to label Walter’s playing as just “energetic” or “dynamic”. Apart from being the backbone in all tracks, his interaction with his fellow comrades makes him a point of reference for the cd. Rechtern’s sax playing, as always, make him the ideal partner. Even though he tends to get carried away (but is this a bad thing when we are talking about a free jazz recording?), he never slips out of phenomenon, meaning the collective feeling of the trio. I also believe that he has listened to a lot of Frank Lowe’s playing…

Their aggressive playing leaves enough room for small details that prove fruitful for the listener: Zinman’s piano timbre, Walter’s percussion work on the less noisy parts, the shifts between the saxes from Rechtern.

Overall a great recording, that, so far, has made it to my shortlist for the best of 2021. You can listen and buy here:

@koultouranafigo

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Kahil El'Zabar Quartet - A Time For Healing (Spiritmuse Records, 2021) ****

 By Stef Gijssels

Percussionist Kahil El'Zabar is always a pleasure to hear. Over the decades, he's carved out his own musical style that delves deep into African grooves, a bluesy undertone, a spiritual sentiment, jazzy harmonies and freedom for the soloists to expand and soar. 

His quartet further consists of Corey Wilkes on trumpet and spirit bowls, Justin Dillard on keyboards, and 
Isaiah Collier on tenor and soprano sax. All musicians also play percussion. 

The long opening track, accessible via the video link below, sets the tone of the album. The music is open, welcoming, intimate and spiritual. The theme is beautiful and infectious, the soloing deeply moving, the rhythms compelling. El'Zabar's shamanistic singing further accentuates the generous mood of the piece. One of the signature aspects of his sound is its totally unhurried pace. As a listener, you get the time to get into it, to be absorbed by the magic of El'Zabar's sonic universe. 

The second track is more uptempo, with El'Zabar reciting his own poetry, accompanied by multiple and polyrhythmic percussion. 

"Urban Shaman" is upbeat, with Dillard's keyboard capturing the rhythmic sounds of an African electric guitar. "Eddie Harris" is more funky and dedicated to the late saxophonist. "The Coming Of Spring" is jazzy and a real boppish song. "We'll Get Through This" and "Time IS" demonstrate El'Zabar's unique compositional style, including strong performances by the soloists. 

The quartet brings strong renditions of Coltrane's "Resolution", and Gerschwin's "Summertime" to end the album (a crowd pleaser, sure, but still so beautiful).

El'Zabar remains honest to his own sound, which is recognisable from afar. It's compelling and infectious in the good sense: it draws the listener in, and projects an optimistic view of the future, taking us with him out of this pandemic. He can heal our souls at any time. 

It's a double LP that will be released on November 19. Today is Kahil El'Zabars birthday. We congratulate him, and suggest that it's also a good moment to get yourself a present. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Whit Dickey, William Parker, and Matthew Shipp - Village Mothership (Tao Forms, 2021) ****½

By Jim Marks

Further proof of the inexhaustibility of the piano trio format, these long-time musical comrades offer up a new recording that is both adventurous and fun to listen to. Having played together in various combinations for decades, including (at times) forming three-fourths of the David S. Ware Quartet, on Village Mothership, they join forces as a threesome for the first time in nearly 30 years. A joyous session it is, too; in these improvised pieces, Dickey, Parker, and Shipp bounce off of each other, step back to let each other solo, and find numerous grooves.

All three are, of course, well known for producing prodigious amounts of high-quality music. Village Mothership complements such releases as Dickey’s pair as a leader a couple years back ( reviewed for the FJC by Lee Rice Epstein ) as well as Parker’s Painters Winter with Daniel Carter and Hamid Drake ( reviewed for the FJC by Kenneth Blanchard ) and Shipp’s latest solo outing Codebreaker, both also released this fall. Like Dickey’s and Parker’s records but unlike Shipp’s, most of these tunes are relatively lengthy, with three of the six topping ten minutes, so there is plenty of room for melodies and rhythms to develop and evolve.

The concept behind the title as explained in the liner notes is a bit vague (an “homage to the rich environment that fed the development of these artists”), as is the relationship of the cover photo and song titles to the music, which, appropriately, is left to speak for itself. Opener “A Thing & Nothing” and closer “Nothing & a Thing” bracket the proceedings and well represent them, the former a release of pent-up energy as the three enter almost simultaneously and the latter developing slowly from Shipp’s initial exploration of vaguely Monk-like harmonies. Both tracks then ebb and flow, often with one member of the trio hanging back while the others explore an idea.

The relatively up-tempo “Whirling in the Void” and “Down Void Way” seem similarly positioned to complement one another, being more dissonant and unpredictable than the surrounding tracks. Parker’s ability to provide simultaneous harmonic and melodic support (including some of his signature bowing on the latter track) is fully on display, his deep tones maintaining the forward momentum. Here, the jazz is especially free. “Nothingness,” by contrast, though its title shares the theme of emptiness, is almost a ballad though punctuated by occasional bursts of activity.

The centerpiece title track starts with a somewhat halting solo from Dickey, who locks in once Parker and Shipp enter. The interplay between cascading piano notes and cymbals perhaps suggests the mothership taking flight. Nearing the midway point, Shipp drops out and lets Parker ride the wave of cymbals for a while before establishing a walking pattern for Shipp’s reentry. The pattern repeats as the mothership, now in full flight, takes listeners through space where, to quote Dickey from the liner notes, “mystical stuff is happening” until the rhythm section brings the craft in for a gentle landing.

Unsurprisingly, then, Dickey, Parker, and Shipp have crafted another great record that will appeal to a wide range of contemporary jazz fans. Hopefully, the trio will not wait quite as long to reconvene again.

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New York United - Volume 2 (577 Records, 2021) ***½

By Stef Gijssels

Often the electronics we hear in free improvisation are disruptive, challenging, pushing the music more into zones of discomfort than comfort. With "New York United" the approach is the opposite. Sound artist Tobias Wilner and the rest of the band create a very welcoming environment, with the electronics, field recordings and synths creating a warm blanket that keeps everything nicely together, rhythmically and in terms of sound colour. 

We reviewed New York United, Vol. 1 in 2018, and compared it to the nu jazz explorations that Matthew Shipp once engaged upon. The band is the same as on Volume 1, with Daniel Carter on saxophones, clarinet, flute, and trumpet, Wilner also plays piano and guitar, Djibril Toure on bass, and Federico Ughi on drums. The references that come to mind are the Nordic endeavours by Bugge Wesseltoft, Nils Petter Molvaer or Terje Isungset. Wilner's presence is critical for the overall sound. The Dane has been active as a composer of soundtracks (including "Follow The Money", and excerpts of his compositions were used for "Miami Vice",  "Twilight" and the "Vampire Diaries"), and together with Bo Rande he forms the two-person nucleus of 'dream pop' band "Blue Foundation". 

The music is a mixture of ambient, fusion, world music and jazz, and with a strong narrative and energetic component on each track. The recipe is that the music was first recorded as an improvised piece, then transformed in the studio by Wilner. The result is very remote from what we usually review, and as said before, purists may shudder at the approach, but on the other hand, it may also lead to wider audiences for jazz in general by tapping into today's more commercial sounds. 

Fans will be interested to know there are some limited LP versions available. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Listen to the opening track "New York Flower"

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Jazzfest Berlin 2021

Silent Green, Berlin

By Paul Acquaro

Thursday night at Boulez Hall

We raced it from the Hauptbahnhof to Boulez Hall in the rain. My train had been delayed and we had about 10 minutes to make the 10 minute bike ride, show our proof of vaccination, scan the tickets, peel off our wet rain clothing, and find our seats. We were a bit frazzled by the time we located our places in the upper balcony of the lush ovular hall. Through a light clatter from the drums, a rustle of musical scores, and a few dolphin calls emanating from the bass, we began to settle in. Then, the first notes from Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson flowed from his keyboard and our nerves were quickly subdued.

The first night of the Jazzfest Berlin was off to a start. The main part of the festival was at the Silent Green culture center about 8 kilometers from the classical music hall that this concert was taking place in. The festival, which has been shifting and growing, extending and morphing over the past several years, was back in person (an online), after being forced to be entirely online last year, and spread out even further than before. The constraints of the pandemic last year fostered a connection with Roulette in New York City, where a live stream connected the cities. This year, the idea grew with live streams from concerts in South Africa (curated by Jess White in Johannesburg), and multimedia contributions from Brazil (Juliano Gentile and Manoela Wright for São Paulo) and Egypt (Maurice Louca in Cairo). In Berlin, aside from the Silent Green, and tonight, Boulez Hall, the festival also would be featuring the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Charlottenburg, the nerve center of former West Berlin. More about these locations later, now back to Stenson's trio.

Bobo Stenson. (c) Roland Owsnitzki / Berliner Festspiele

 
The music was ebullient, but at the same time, reserved. This seems to be the pianists trademark. Effortlessly, his melodies intertwined with Anders Jormin's bass bowing, and the bright - and sometimes humorous - responses from Jon Fält's percussive accompaniment. The trio, aside from some selected favorites, was presenting a set of new music that will be recorded for an upcoming ECM release next year. From gentle, slightly dissonant intros to pulsating, vibrant crescendos, the trio's work was refined and radiant.

Kaja Draksler and Susanna Santos Silva. Photo by Roland Owsnitzki / Berliner Festspiele 

The duo of trumpeter Susanna Santos Silva and pianist Kaja Draksler followed. The two have been performing together for a decent portion of their lives and alhough from opposite ends of Europe, they share an obvious musical affinity. At the Boulez Hall Steinway grand piano, Draksler began with a series tightly coupled, short phrases, while Silva seemed to emit what I can best identify as microtones. Both seemed equally as apart in their playing as connected on the outer edges, which was quite a contrast to the previous set. As their interplay continued, the duo engaged in ever more complex parallel play, hitting dissonant intervals and unexpected harmonies. The pathos grew as Silva's long legato tones changed to explosive bursts, and Draksler's began traveling energetically up and down the keyboard. The improvisation turned inward towards its end, for example, plucked notes from inside and outside the prepared piano and the 'pop' of the mouthpiece extruded from the trumpet made up an extensive passage. 

Vijay Iyer. (c) Roland Owsnitzki / Berliner Festspiele

The final set was from pianist Vijay Iyer's trio that recently released Uneasy - namely the pianist with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh. It also happened to be the first date of their European Tour and Iyer's excitement was palpable. "The pandemic," he said, "has given us chance to realize what's important and playing for all of you is it." Setting an example, he continued "we may play masked, but our hearts are open." 

What happened next was extraordinary. The album, without a doubt, captures the 'unease' that has been growing under society (for Iyer in the US, but it's not geographically limited) over recent years, but in concert, the energy that the trio generated on the tunes was staggering. Iyer's playing was lyrical and rollicking, Oh's bass playing was kinetic and as much a part of the melody as the support, and Sorey's work was that of the conductor of this mini-orchestra. Songs like 'Combat Breathing' and the war horse 'Night and Day' are powerful on the recording, and live, nearly combusting. Any wisp of musical exhaustion after the first two hour of music was whisked away immediately by the gale winds from the trio.

It was still raining when the concert ended, but it hardly mattered, we were gliding through the night.


Saturday night at Silent Greene.

As noted, the festival is expansive. Covering multiple nights and multiple venues, it's hard to take it all in, and, to be honest, it can be bit of a sensory overload. I was still holding onto bits of Thursday's show when I arrived at the entrance to the former crematorium turned cultural space in the Wedding district on Saturday. The 19th century buildings are stately, the grounds surrounded by the period architecture that makes up the most stately parts of Berlin, and deep underground, in the 'Betonhalle', the performance space is a high-tech set up. Large video displays on each of the walls live-casted concerts and video installations, all showing different angles. (During one set I was wondering why someone seemed to starting directly and unflinchingly at me, until I realized he was concentrating on the screen to my left, while I was intent on the one to the front).

The opening show was a live-cast from Johannesburg. Bassist and composer Shane Cooper and the Dinaledi Chamber Ensemble performed a suite of new music. The music was pleasant as it explored and layered folk-like melodies with light electronics and poly-rhythmic ideas. 

Nate Wooley's Columbia Icefield. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Then, reverberant breathing through the trumpet and the gentle roil of the drums opened the next set from trumpeter Nate Wooley and his Columbia Icefield project. The mournful, charged, amplified breath blew a cold breeze across the stage. It was musical dawn, and guitarist Ava Mendoza provided the first rays of light breaking through the tonal darkness. Deep, thick droning tones hovered in the background, emanating from Susan Alcorn's pedal steel guitar. As the music awoke, the textures came into sharp relief: Wooley changing from a metallic rush of sound to a mournful melody, drummer Ryan Sawyer adding additional texture, and Mendoza delivering aggressive arpeggios and discordant tones. 

The music refers to Wooley's heimat in the Pacific Northwest of the US, where the Columbia River's waters collide with the tumultuous Pacific ocean. The tentatively titled tunes certainly projected this atmosphere. From the icy winds to the soaring grandeur. Plus, the ghosts of western music are strongly bound with Alcorn's instrument. While her playing far transcends 'country', she brings something intangibly 'western' to the setting. The music is impressionistic and often slow moving, but also at times explosive, it works its way between memory and feeling, and leaves a long lingering impressions.

My goal was to trace the physical breadth of the concert as much as possible with the time I had (I covered about 1/3 of the concerts, and 3/4 of the locations), so I left the Betonhalle for the Kuppelhalle, after catching the first twenty minutes of the riveting drummer/vocalist Maria Portugal's set of explosive free-jazz and Brazilian flavored music. At the Kuppelhalle, the smaller, cathedral-like former mourning hall, Turkish vocalist Cansu Tanrıkulu performed with a trio plus one. The trio, saxophonist Tobias Delius, bassist Greg Cohen, and the plus one, guitarist Marc Ribot. How could I not be there? I would have surely died from FOMO had I not been.

  Cansu Tanrıkulu Trio +1 (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Beneath projected video art featuring images of the vocalist, emergency blankets, and CRT monitors, the trio + 1 wasted no time getting started. Tanrıkulu's otherworldly vocals sailed effortlessly through the octaves and around Delius' powerful lines. Throughout, Cohen was aflutter and at first, Ribot - was he even plugged in? - scratched at his strings, but then over Cohen's unwavering rhythm, the guitarist starting building up a jazz inflected solo that went from an acoustic whisper to splitting its pants. The music, a freely improvised cocreation of the moment, was impulse and reaction. It breathed naturally, unforced, and as precise as it was unexpected.

Ahmed (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Back at the Betonhalle, the evening wrapped up with the live music of Ahmed, an ensemble, named after oudist and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, comprised of British pianist Pat Thomas, French drummer Antonin Gerbal, Berlin-based Swedish bassist Joel Grip, and British saxophonist Seymour Wright. The group, which bases its music off motives composed by Abdul-Malik for his Middle-Eastern/Jazz fusions, spent the better part of an hour locked in a hypnotic and demanding groove. The music had the feel of something from another time, Middle Eastern jazz noir, so to speak. Grip and Gerbal were a relentless and powerful engine driving the music, while Wright blew ceaselessly, twirling the themes around and around, making small incremental changes and adding tension at every turn. Thomas sometimes struck the extremities of the keyboards with his palms flat out, as percussive of an action as one can do while still making music with the instrument. This approach was interspersed with close dissonant tonal clusters that effectively wound the music ever tighter. Often in improvised music the flow is to start exploratory and searching until locking into something, these guys had it all backwards, and it worked! They only backed off at the very end when Grip seized the moment to quickly distill everything just played in a highly effective solo bass outro.


Sunday at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Anticipating feeling pretty musically saturated, I had opted for a single concert on the last day at the other location for the festival, the memorial church on Kurfürstendamm in Charlottenburg. The memorial church is an octagonal building comprised of a staggering 21,292 stained glass inlays. The original church spire, heavily damaged in World War II, remains as a reminder of the atrocities. Around the church grounds, there are barricades everywhere - a reminder of the ever under construction city and unfortunately of the 2016 Christmas Market attack.

After weaving around the bollards and traffic fences, we entered the church and picked a seat facing the large Jesus sculpture and settled in for the solo organ piece from Norwegian keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, the man at the heart of Elephant9 and Supersilent, as well as a key member of Terje Rypdal's groups from the past decade or so. I had no idea what to expect, but what came next was something that I actually had a hard time taking notes on as it unfolded.

Ståle Storløkken. (c) Roland Owsnitzki / Berliner Festspiele

The work was new, entitled Ghost Caravan, and just released on Hubro. The music was textural, and while there were motives, they were more like sonic happenings. Storløkken was able to draw out sounds that you typically do not expect from a church organ, and also used the familiar sounds to great effect. The music was alternatively minimalistic and bombastic, there were times when the whole church shook from nearly soundless vibrations, and other times when the pipes peeped in perfect harmony. 

Possibly the strangest part was that there was nothing to see. This was a listening event, as the organ itself was above the heads of the audience, invisible. So, the mind wanders and at some point I wondered: could the music itself work outside of the church itself? Could you sit at home and have this experience, one where, left with just the music, and under the outstretched arms of Jesus, indistinct memories and thoughts mix and travel through you in their own ghostly vehicles? My thoughts were interrupted, however, when Storløkken pulled out all of the stops and in an existentially threatening moment, seemed to play all of the notes at once, jolting all back to the now.

I left a bit puzzled, and wonderfully so.

Watch it all here, available for a year: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-020309/jazzfest-berlin/

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