Sun Ra before Sun Ra : an interview with Guillaume Maupin & Pablo Guarise

 

By David Cristol

Two filmmakers from Belgium, too young to have seen Sun Ra live, release a new documentary about everybody's favorite afrofuturist pianist and composer. In September of this year they showed the film at the 15th edition of Toulouse's FIFIGROT, a seven-day manifestation dedicated to cinematic oddities old and new. Hot on the heels of Christine Turner's Sun Ra : Do the Impossible and before the Kickstarter-funded Sun Ra : Door of the Cosmos still in the making, Maupin and Guarise's The Magic City : Birmingham according to Sun Ra takes an original approach to the subject, focusing on the first three decades of cult keyboardist Herman Sonny Blount's sojourn on Earth, before his move to Chicago and foundation of the Arkestra.

How did you meet and decide to work on this project?

Pablo Guarise (PG) -We first met because Guillaume works at a community cinema, where he’s been a programmer for 25 years. There’s a 15-year age gap between us. I was at film school in Brussels, where I was part of the film society, and we decided to invite French director Jean-Pierre Mocky [1929-2019, known for his anarchistic personality and unhinged media appearances as much as for his numerous films] . The other person we planned it with became the film’s editor. But we couldn’t simply invite him to the school – Mocky asked for money and we didn’t have any – so we contacted the NOVA theater to suggest doing a screening at the school and organising an additional programme of screenings at the NOVA Theater. NOVA agreed, with Guillaume volunteering to lend a hand.

Guillaume Maupin (GM) - We spent a weekend lugging Mocky around, with him telling the most outrageous stories, utter nonsense that made you want to hide under the table. He told us he was planning a film with Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen, but it wasn’t going ahead because they were too old and, on top of that, they didn’t see eye to eye politically. That was how we first met. We reckoned that when you’ve spent three days with Mocky – as if you’d been through a war together – you’ve made friends for life.

PG - Guillaume had directed a collaborative film a few years prior. And I was working on my graduation film. We bumped into each other at the end of the summer; I’d seen the film, and thought it was brilliant. So we had a bit of a chat, and I asked Guillaume why he hadn’t done anything else. He said, ‘I don’t know’, so I asked, ‘What would you like to work on?’ . ‘Sun Ra’ was his answer. I didn’t know who that was. He told me about it, and we thought, ‘Let’s make a short film’. Guillaume had an idea for a scene, so we worked on that; we’d found a producer, and it all fell into place. It allowed us to get to know each other, learn how to work together, and for me to get my feet wet too, because I started listening to the music and beginning to understand how it was put together. We wanted to make a film that could be both fascinating for people interested in this music – allowing them to learn things along the way – and also serve as a gateway for the uninitiated. And we felt that telling the beginning of the story was relevant because it allowed, given that he hadn’t recorded anything and that, throughout the early part of his career, had concealed his earthly origins, to explore that aspect. We felt that it gave a more complete understanding of what he chose to do, without diminishing the legend. We’re both sensitive to the question of space in films, and filming across the city was a way of ensuring that people could also connect with the film through an interest in the history of the place.

GM -For a year and a half, we worked whilst nothing was happening. Then it became too expensive. But there were more and more elements on the table.

Did you secure any funding?

GM -No. But the more we discussed it, the more it became a possibility. During that year and a half, there was Covid. And whenever we talked to other people about it, we’d explain the whole Ra story and universe. And we realised that it should be a long format. And it would have to be a documentary, so that we could actually meet the people involved in these stories, go there ourselves, and get to know that world better. I’d already read John Szwed's biography about Sun Ra, so I read it again with a fresh pair of eyes. I told Pablo that what always struck me is that bit about the early years, in Birmingham. I’d already wanted to adapt a novel set in the South of the United States. I was really curious about those towns we don’t know anything about, the ones we only imagine from Mark Twain's or William Faulkner's writings. We thought, why not give it a go? The Sun Ra periods are chaptered by the cities he lived and worked in. Why not start by talking about Sun Ra’s arrival before he became Sun Ra? That meant we’d need to make four films - set in Birmingham, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia - but let’s focus on one for now. We went back to the producer to pitch the idea of a film about the early decades of Ra in Birmingham, which appealed to him, because there was a central theme. We’re both fans of films about cities, so we found some common references. 

PG -Guillaume had made a feature-length docu-fiction film, centered around music. I’d made documentaries, a short film in 16mm, and we’d shot the music video for Guillaume’s band in 16mm as well. We gradually began to see more clearly how to pull it off.

Visually speaking, the cinematography looks stunning, not only professional but also artistic, with painstakingly composed shots in different formats – notably the 16mm.

GM - There aren’t many musical films that I really love. My favourites are Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, and Don’t Look Back about Bob Dylan. When it comes to films about jazz, there are hardly any that I like. Of course I like Step Across the Border [the 1990 film about Fred Frith] and Jazz on a Summer’s Day, which is like a prototype for Woodstock , where you see people on stage, musicians rehearsing… There’s a bit of a promotional angle to it, since it’s the festival organiser who’s making the film. But the music is brilliant, the cinematography is brilliant. Woodstock is more like a news report than anything else; its cinéma-vérité is simply great! They ride on the festival’s coattails to make a film. We thought, if we make a film about jazz – given how few great jazz films there are – we’ve got to give ourselves the means to make something proper, because jazz deserves to have films made about it. And then, with a figure like Sun Ra, if you make something cheap, you’re not really paying him the respect he deserves. For me, he’s genuinely one of the greatest musicians in the history of Western music. I like Fred Frith, but I mean, they’re not artists I’d put on the same level. In the movie we’re not going to say every three minutes that Sun Ra’s brilliant. It's the scale of the film that needs to give him a magnificent place.

Had you seen the previous documentaries about him, such as Robert Mugge's A Joyful Noise?

GM -Sure. We wanted to do something different. Take Step Across the Border for example. The film’s structure centers on music, but not simply as a theme. The film has an unusual structure, which mirrors to some extent how Fred Frith makes music and how he listens to sounds. The editing is very distinctive. We wanted to find another way of talking about music. There really was a desire to shoot in 16mm, partly so that – since we knew we wanted to use archive footage from John Coney's 1974 Space is the Place – there would be a consistent texture and we could sort of get lost between eras. And we’d seen Shirley Clarke’s film about Ornette Coleman, which is good too. She has archive footage of Ornette from the 1960s, when his son Denardo was a child. And then we see them again as adults. And because she films it using the same sort of imagery and cameras, it also feels a bit lost in time. We thought that was a brilliant idea. So it reinforced our thinking.

Is the scarcity of archive footage in the film a question of costs or an artistic choice?

PG -We knew we’d be faced with a lack of archive footage, but we saw that as a constraint to do with, precisely to set ourselves apart from films that rely solely on archive material. The sets allowed us to play around with that, playing with contrasts, the film grain, that sort of thing. We felt we’d better capture the absence of traces by using a physical medium rather than going digital. The smooth digital image would have made the city seem cold and set in the present day, which we didn’t want; we wanted the city to have a bit of warmth, and not set in a very identifiable time period. 

This is almost a portrait in absentia – through the places, family members, people who played with him – quite a risky approach for audiences used to traditional documentaries. And it’s as much a documentary about the city as it is about the artist… A new hybrid.

GM - That was the gamble – to come up with a new form. Most documentaries are a bit of a bore… We wanted to shake things up a bit. About the scarcity of actual Sun Ra archives, it’s quite a tradition, in theology. We’re talking about negative, apophatic theology – that’s when you talk about God, and as He is ineffable, you can’t name Him or label Him. You speak of Him in negative terms. And I always find that a beautiful approach. With Sun Ra, we’re creating an anthropological portrait of him. There was also the challenge of figuring out how to recreate the past. In documentaries, you can’t stage too many things, as you do in a drama, with costumes, and go to all that trouble. Those were the questions we asked ourselves. How do you show what happened before? How do you convey the sense of something that’s no longer there? In most music documentaries, this is resolved by using archive footage. You have people speaking in the present time whilst we see images from the past. We wanted to find a different style and, rather than just showing images from the past, try to convey that strange feeling you get when you’re walking around and sense that something happened there before. We wanted to try and recapture that sense of transcribing the past, find new ways to describe it, something that’s a bit rarer. That’s why we used loads of different things. In the film, you also hear Sun Ra's music all the time, and not necessarily his most best-known tunes.

You did include a two-minute excerpt from Space is the Place.

GM -The thing about the Space is the Place movie — when you look at it as a gateway — is it's rather vague in what it’s trying to say at times. But that’s also why we wanted to revisit a section of it: because sometimes, at first glance, when you discover Sun Ra, you might get the impression that the story is not much more than a series of vignettes. And we wanted to show that it wasn’t at all a series of vignettes but, on the contrary, something rooted in a consistent, solid perspective. That’s why we included the clip where he speaks to young people in Space is the Place . It’s a film that was made with students from Berkeley, and he wasn’t entirely happy with it because, whilst there were elements where his ideas were incorporated, he strongly rejected the film’s sexualised and exploitative elements. We took the scene where he’s talking to the students and placed it following the speeches by Condoleezza Rice [afro-American U.S. Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009 during the George Bush administration] and Angela Davis [writer and Black Panther militant] that we included, so that we could hear what they were saying in a different light. To make it clear that this was neither a charade nor a riddle, but rather a profound reaction to the place where he’d lived and the inextricable political situation in which he’d found himself, and that he’d managed to find a way out and forward. 

What about the scene where we see a black and white film of Duke Ellington's big band playing on the stage of the deserted theatre. Did you work out the camera angles in advance in relation to the archive footage?

GM -We projected the film onto the walls of the stage of the rundown theater. Everything was written out in great detail before shooting. I put some tape round the projector so you couldn’t see the edges of the projection, to make it look more ghostly. It was all done live, not as a post-production special effect. It was the first scene we filmed for the film, because they were about to carry out some renovations, make everything neat and tidy, and we wanted to capture this impressive place from the past falling into disrepair.

PG -All the effects, everything we could do for real, by hand – we did it. First and foremost, we think it adds something to the film. It’s often more beautiful to do things for real, with practical effects in front of the camera. We like films where you can wonder how the crew made them. And we’re both from Belgium, where there isn’t a film industry with a lot of money in it, and where there’s a long-standing tradition of documentary filmmaking in a DIY, artisanal sort of way. We saw a lot of filmmakers finding ways to get around problems and tending to improvise rather than having big budgets.

GM -We drew inspiration from Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind . In the film, the characters are making fake films, because someone’s wiped the tapes. But in the end, they make a film with the whole neighbourhood about Fats Waller, who’s supposed to have grown up in that house. I thought it was brilliant, a great idea to make the film with the locals, using practical effects. Gondry’s brilliant at such effects in front of the camera. 

Often, when you’re filming the streets, there’s no traffic and not a soul in sight. Did you film this early in the morning or erase cars and people in post-production?

GM -There really wasn’t anyone there! We had to wait to get a few vehicles in the shot. The first time we arrived in Birmingham by train, that was striking: the streets were empty. But in other shots, like the scene in front of Sun Ra’s house, there were cars passing by more often than we’d have liked, and that’s where the noise is coming from. We used those contrasts to bring the city to life. One moment the streets were empty and suddenly there’s an event and the streets fill up with 100 people appearing out of nowhere. We were quite happy with that, it actually gave the city a mysterious feel to it. 

How did you shoot the black-and-white segment with the Black magician, which is a fictional scene, with actors playing roles. Could you explain how the idea came about and how the shoot was organized?

GM -We shot it in a studio in Brussels. Jan Rymenants - a Flemish friend who creates fantastic sets and structures in Belgium - handled the recreation of a cemetery; we wanted it to have a real Ed Wood vibe. We set it up in front of a screen displaying a rear-projected photo of a cemetery in the American South. The atmosphere was amazing. The magician is played by Nganji Mutiri, who was born in the Congo but has lived and worked in Belgium for a long time. He is a filmmaker, actor and photographer. It was important to us to cast people from Brussels whom we knew - artists in their own right. Featured in the scene are Sergine André (Haitian painter), Léo Jean Baptiste (Haitian poet and performance artist), Lazara Rosell Albear (Cuban free-jazz drummer and trumpeter, dancer, filmmaker, and artist), Zita Rulens - dit Rosier - (French-Togolese actress and model), Rhian Vialva (producer from Trinidad), and Giovanni Kabanda (Rwandan photographer). We wanted the actors and actresses to come from different countries to represent the diversity of the Black populations in Birmingham, Alabama. Right from the start, we wanted to include studio scenes of that kind, between arthouse and B-movies. We love that style in many films, particularly those of Guy Maddin, whose My Winnipeg was a major inspiration. Lazara also performs - again against a rear-projection backdrop - in front of footage of a passing train from an old movie. She is superimposed over the actress Joan Crawford from the original footage. The sequence featuring Sun Ra discovering the Solovox and then the Sound Mirror was shot in black and white but using a scale model. The sequence involving the aliens was always conceived as an outdoor scene; this allowed it to stand apart from the other scenes while remaining connected to them through the use of black and white and a sense of fantasy. 

Although some of Sun Ra's relatives are involved, you stay away from any attempt at easy or obvious elucidation of the subject's life.

GM - It was important for us to respect Sun Ra's artistic persona, and take his words and work at face value. When people write about Sun Ra, it’s always Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. He didn't record in Birmingham, but that's where he spent the longest time, his first three decades on planet Earth. We wanted to make a coming-of-age story. So, let’s start at the beginning: Sun Ra's arrival on Earth. We’re not going to question whether he actually went to Earth or not. If he says he came to Earth, it's good enough for us. But what were his formative years about? Who were his teachers and colleagues? What was life like in the 1910s to the 1940s in segregated Alabama where he grew up? Those were the basic questions the film aimed to find answers to. There are things we couldn’t say because it was too much information, or decide not to include. For example, if you played the piano as a teenage Black man, it meant you were a bit effeminate. We didn’t touch on his love life either, because he didn’t talk about it.

These days, everything revolves around that. I’ve just watched the documentary on Jeff Buckley – it’s all about his girlfriends and his mum. They don’t even mention that he played with Gary Lucas. You pick the bloke who played with Captain Beefheart – that’s no small thing. And they don’t explain that his second album was with Tom Verlaine from Television. They're not talking about music, they're talking about Jeff Buckley’s love life – I couldn’t care less. There’s a constant focus on people’s individual problems and psyches, and we found that approach to be politically irrelevant. Sometimes there are elements that might shed a little light on the work, but that’s not the angle from which one should view everything. We made a conscious effort to ensure it wasn’t psychologising, and at the same time, we wanted the film to be moving, because we found his story moving. Like the moment when you hear his poem, "If they only knew". He recites the whole poem while we see images of Bessie Smith and all that…  

I heard the poem but didn't recognize his voice.

GM -It’s him, yes. It’s him as a young man, when he arrived in Chicago. He recorded himself reading that poem. There’s only one bit in the film where we put some text on screen; we didn’t want to put much text on screen so it wouldn’t look like a TV program. And when we ask the audience to close their eyes and just listen, we just wrote Discipline 27-II which is the name of the piece.

PG -Throughout the writing process, we wanted it to be a film people could watch several times. So there was that balance to strive for. We wanted to make a film with a slightly magical feel to it, and not overexplain things. But there was specific information we had to provide. So it was always a balancing act, between giving information and at the same time, keeping that narrative, novel-like quality. When writing, we wondered at what point did it become too didactic or too instructional? There were things we simply couldn’t leave out.

How long did you work on the film and stay on location in the US?

GM -We made four trips. Eight months altogether, over a period of five years. On each trip, we filmed a bit. The first time, we only shot one scene. The second time, we shot two. One of which isn’t in the film. After that, we had two long shooting sessions. Each time, we’d go back to the writing room to refine the script more precisely, and then work out the staging, how we were going to shoot the scenes we hadn’t filmed yet. We moved forward bit by bit. We didn’t do one long shoot. We had time to think about what needed to be done. In that respect, it was an incredible luxury. I’m not sure we’ll get a chance to make a film that way again. That length of time was necessary because - we’re white. It’s not our history. So, there was a need to spend time with people, to understand what we were getting ourselves into, explain our intentions, make sure that people were also on board and trusted us. It took a while. We didn’t want a film where it felt as though we were outsiders looking in from a distance. We wanted there to be a sense of warmth with the people. With each character you see, it was a real process to get them to take part in the film, to work out how to film them. It’s a different approach to production. 

There are brilliant scenes like the one with the musicians entering the frame one after another, playing their instruments and joining the jam.

GM -When the nine musicians play in front of Sun Ra's house, right up until the day before, we didn't know if they were going to turn up. They had a jam session every Tuesday; we went to see them for 11 weeks in a row. They’d seen us dozens of times, but even so, they’d think, ‘Ah yeah, we'll see...’. And after all was done and put on film, when some of them saw the result, they said, ‘Well, thanks – so we’re part of the history you're telling!’ . We said, ‘Of course! We've been telling you about it all along!’.

There is also the scene with the children playing games in the forest.

PG -In order to shoot that scene, the two of us couldn’t exactly take 15 children into the forest on our own. So, we found a park with a corner that looked like woods. We invited the parents to come along; we’d brought some tacos and a little picnic, and we’d set the parents up in one part of the park where we’d laid things out on a dining table – and we were working with the children right next to them. It seemed crazy because nobody makes films like that, especially with a 16mm camera. For the most part it was just the two of us; the director of photography came to work with us for shorter periods, but there was no one in charge of production, we had to manage all aspects ourselves – organising people, finding solutions. It was a very hands-on film. And we didn’t want it to be a bunch of old white blokes talking about jazz – there had to be children, women, teenagers, a collective feel to the film. We’d tell the story together. It isn’t an easy town to meet people. We were the only pedestrians in town. We wondered, ‘How on earth are we going to meet people?’ So we went out for drinks. We bought people drinks, invited them to restaurants, and then, because we were always in the same places, they got used to us. The fact that we were Europeans took the edge off a bit. Maybe if we’d come from New York, it would have been more complicated. There was something odd about us coming from far away, to this town which isn’t well-known. And then there was our unusual approach to doing things.

I loved the simple and effective ideas like putting furniture in the street for interviews, or the floating door with the girl watching through the keyhole, recreating a scene told in John Swzed's Sun Ra biography...

We had to hunt for all the furniture in local second-hand shops and say : “Right, we’ll buy it from you, but could you keep it for us for three weeks or a month? And afterwards we’ll give it back to you. We’re not hiring it from you; we’ll pay you the price you’re selling it for, but we’ll give it back to you.” They thought we were crazy and we can't blame them for it. The door had to stand upright, so it wasn't as simple as it seems. We had to ask someone to build a mechanism so it could roll. Same thing when the girl gave the presentation – she had to wear a suit. Finding the right suit took a week. There were lots of things that, when writing them, didn’t seem all that complicated. What’s quite miraculous is that we never got discouraged. Thinking to ourselves, ‘Hang on, there are bits and pieces we’ve let slip’ but still, we’ve stuck with a lot of things. We didn't have a plan B and stuck to our original ideas.

Spoiler alert : we do see, in the film, some footage of Sun Ra's burial ceremony!

PG -We hesitated about showing him like that, but we thought these scenes with the family were very powerful as well as the contrast between a family from the South and the orchestra in full regalia. For me, Marshall Allen’s saxophone solo at the funeral is the finest of his career. And even for people who struggle with free jazz, they cannot fail to see that this is music of unique expressiveness. And then there’s a resurrection. After the funeral video archive, we see him come back to life, parading in the streets [a 1989 street event in Birmingham, with Ra dancing and autographing records for fans] … We really wanted to finish on a joyful note. 

It was footage I hadn’t seen before.

GM -Nobody’s ever seen that. It's a funny paradox: the whole film plays on the fact that there isn't any footage of Sun Ra. Then, at the end, we’ve got some absolutely mind-blowing footage. When the funeral takes place, there’s a priest who comes up and says, ‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes’ . And you really get the sense that Sonny’s returned to his family – a family that’s not at all part of that musical world we know and love. And at the same time, the whole orchestra was there. It also highlighted that he’d returned where he’d come from. He came back to Birmingham in early 1993 or late 1992.

You found the narrator among the local residents, through encounters you had whilst carrying out the fieldwork. Most people we see on screen are living in the city.

PG -Her name is Wilhelmina Thomas, ans she's known in the community. We got in touch with an organisation called Urban Impact, which is a Black organisation promoting Black businesses in the city. The guide we see in the film was working for them and leading city tours as part of that. And right from the start, he wanted to see if we’d done our research. And he said, ‘Well, get in touch with Wilhelmina Thomas’ – the woman providing the voiceover. She spoke to us for an hour, and at the end admitted that he’d asked her to find out whether we were trustworthy or not. So, when we arrived in Birmingham, we spent some time with her. And then, one day, during the first year or two of the film, we asked ourselves, ‘But who’s going to provide that voice?’ You need to know this before you finish writing, because you want the voice to be a character. We thought, ‘Let’s ask her’, and she said ‘OK.’ We did a trial run. As brilliant as she is, she’s not an actress. It didn’t work. We were willing to pay for a coach. So she found someone, Lloyd Bricken, a Birmingham actor and musician, and he’s the person who reads the second letter. And she did great, we're very happy with that voiceover, an essential part of the film. Since she knows the city's history so well, this also allowed us to incorporate the perspective of someone from the community into the writing process. We knew she wouldn't say anything she disliked or found irrelevant.

The last chapter has locals and participants in the film joining at a party, where you screen the funeral and resurrection.

GM -That stemmed from the experience we’d had at the Nova cinema, doing open-air screenings. We had a notion of the atmosphere that it creates. We wanted the local people to be involved, and it became this wonderful and inclusive thing that became Sun Ra Day. We didn’t want the film to end with Sun Ra drifting away in that crowd. So, the idea came up instead to organise this party. It was a party featuring all the characters involved in the film. It was a long process figuring out who to work with and where to do it; we also had to decide which neighbourhood to choose. We’d found a way to ensure that people could see what was going on. It happened, and it really is something quite powerful. We managed to bring together people we’d seen over the previous three years, who’d inspired us, for the conclusion. We wanted to finish with something along the lines of a symbolic resurrection. The footage at the end, where he’s performing at the concert, where you see him with the big dolls, was very hard to come by. I had to do some digging, in Philadelphia and through various sources. And one day, three years later, someone sent me a link to download the footage. Right up until the end, we weren’t sure we'd have anything to show, anything to screen for people. That was quite something. And at the screening in New York, there were two trumpeters playing at the funeral: Jothan Callins, who’s mentioned in the film – he’s the one who gave Sun Ra cassettes when he was hospitalized. The other is Ahmed Abdullah, who wrote a book about his experience with the band. He came to see the film in Harlem. We knew from the start that we’d be faced with screenings where people who had been part of the story would show up. 

 Is the film circulating in festivals?

GM -In the US, not really. We have to organize screenings ourselves. When you submit a film to a festival in the US, there’s a box to tick, that asks if you're part of the community you’re filming. And if you tick ‘no’, you're out. But we’ve just been selected for the Black Independent Film Festival in Vancouver. This year, their theme is "The Sounds of Afrofuturism", so it's a perfect fit!

Your entrance in the theater, singing Along Came Ra as you came from the back of the room to the screen, was a nice touch.

PG -Thank you; in any case, it feels really good – singing like that really gets you in the swing of things.

GM -We did it when Marshall Allen was there, in Philadelphia, to see the film. We thought, ‘Wow, we’re going to walk on stage singing, with Marshall in the audience!’ And he was delighted. When the film was completed we went back to Birmingham and screened it outdoors, in the factories that you see in the film, right in the middle of the city. Behind us, trains were passing by, and it was a full moon; we couldn't have imagined a more successful screening. And we went to New York and showed it at the Maysles Documentary Film Centre.

Would you like to make a film about another artist?

GM -When it comes to jazz musicians, I'm thinking of Eric Dolphy. I’m a massive fan of his, so I’d really like to do something. For me, he’s just as important as Coltrane. And there are lots of recordings, if you count all the stuff he’s played on. With Chico Hamilton, with Coltrane. A film also should be made on Sam Rivers – people don’t really know much about him, but he's an important figure. And do you know where Arthur Doyle’s from? Birmingham.

Are you going to make more films about Ra and tell the rest of the story?

PG -Personally, I want to make films about issues where locations, the imagination and existence blend together. I'm thinking about a film set in Ireland, a portrait of an island, and the question of transmission. It’s a place brimming with stories.

GM -Pablo isn’t quite as big a fan of Sun Ra as I am. But I’d really like to make more films, following on logically, you might say, about the Sun Ra years in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. A film about Philadelphia, featuring musicians who still live there – that would be worth doing. We’d have to find other approaches. Perhaps there’ll be sequels. We’ll see.

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Davis/Bishop/Cheli/Walter - Maximus, To Themselves (Mother Brain Records, 2026)

By Richard Blute 

“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.”

-Richard Strauss*

*Further research suggests that Strauss never actually said this. But I’m keeping it in the article anyway.

Today, we’re looking at Maximus, To Themselves, an album from the quartet of Jeb Bishop on trombone, Seth Andrew Davis on guitar, and Kevin Cheli and Weasel Walter on drums and percussion, with added electronics from Bishop and Davis.

I’m a big fan of Jeb Bishop, so it’s good to get a chance to write about him. If you’ve never heard Bishop, check out The Flame Alphabet with Rodrigo Amado’s Motion Trio, Ibsen’s Ghost with Joe McPhee, Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and Michael Zerang or Flayed with Weasel Walter and Alex Ward. Bishop and Walter in particular make a great pairing. Their playing together goes back to one of the early versions of The Flying Luttenbachers and their albums Constructive Destruction and Destroy All Music (the most Walter-ish titles imaginable). Bishop is a brilliant trombonist with great improvisational skills and the ability to bring the fire as needed. While Walter can no doubt (constructively) destroy all in his path, he can also be a wonderful partner to his fellow musicians. Flayed is an album I find myself returning to frequently.

Another appealing feature of Maximus, To Themselves is the two drummers. The concern with small bands with two drummers is that the drummers will either trip over each other or overwhelm the rest of the band. Neither happens here.

The opening track, Edge Detection, comes in at a whopping 33+ minutes and not a moment of that runtime feels wasted. The trombone plays off the guitar and electronics in an elaborate conversation, with the drumming propelling the conversation forward. Neither drummer seems interested in playing anything like traditional jazz drums. Davis’s spiky guitar work manages to play off both the electronics and the drumming. There are quiet segments here and fiery ones, each feels entirely appropriate in the moment.

Maximus, To Themselves has well over 90 minutes of music played by 4 fine improvisers who work together to produce a musical universe one can get lost in, and it’s well worth the trip to get there.

Also, be sure to check out Mother Brain Records, a label started by Davis and Michael Eaton that carries a lot of great music. In addition to the present album, I can recommend Lowland, Orchid, Forge and Branches Choke.

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Ziv Taubenfeld, Luis Vicente, Jeff Williams, Michael Formanek - Song Of The Weeds (Full Sun Records, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Bass clarinettist Ziv Taubenfeld has recorded Song of the Weeds alongside musicians he has admired for a long time, Luis Vicente on trumpet, Michael Formanek on double bass, and Jeff Williams on drums. It is Taubenfeld’s second release on the label.

The album is dedicated to Abdullah Ibrahim, Robert Wyatt, and Ab Baars. Taubenfeld says, “The music on the album is a result of the group's work over the past couple of years, exploring and shaping music. It's a really deep experience making sound with these gentlemen.”

The opening track ‘The Village’ uses a repeated 6-note melody and the listener is in danger of being lulled into a sense of security and predictability – but this is false and thank goodness for that. The trumpet blasts and blares its way across the bass clarinet in colourful whirls of madcap music – gloriously undoing the calm set up by the theme.

‘Mumin The Minimalist’ is dedicated to Robert Wyatt and, with a strong sense of form, development, and a nod to rock format, coupled with the ensemble’s inputs – the highlight of which is a solid double bass solo from Formanek, with bass clarinet joining in an evolving duet, which becomes a trio and finally the full quartet, creating now a swinging, meandering journey of soundscape that leads the listener ever deeper into the interwoven connections within this music.

‘A Wheel, The Wheel’ circles around variations of a short theme, which the bass clarinet then takes and evolves into a gloriously warm solo, across the percussive elements. The middle section is a demonstration of ensemble work, underpinning the solo work from Taubenfeld, which continually develops. The bass clarinet drops out to leave Williams with a drum solo before the warmth of the ensemble, and the theme is re-asserted, but just when you feel a sense of calm – again a bit of mayhem erupts.

‘Under the Ab Tree’ is dedicated to Ab Baars, the multi-genre Dutch musician, and the ensemble makes full use of the dedication to embrace different styles, senses, and the eclecticism of the Dutch scene and Ab in particular.

‘Question~1 (Where Does It All Go)’ is quiet to start with, with a sense of searching as the ensemble repeats a motif that is answered by growling, intense double bass, and deep-throated bass clarinet, adding warmth and textural context. The middle section is beautifully balanced with croaks and squelches, followed by melodic interludes, before the trumpet enters and a change of intensity develops.

‘Falling Star’ is the closing track, and this serves to bring together different patterns, rhythmic changes, and themes, with a rich, walking rhythm and a Latin feel to the arrangement.

The album is released in a DIY format: the front covers screen printed on kraft paper, and the gluing and extra colour work was added at Taubenfeld’s home. Production is limited to 100 CDs.

This album is beautifully put together and has a balance of tone and form that is ultimately intrinsically pleasing. It feels complete, and the musicians have a connection through the music, which ultimately comes to the listener. A wonderful album.

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Solo bass - an update

By Stef Gijssels

I love solo bass albums, yet I often find myself struggling to put the music into words — a nearly impossible task in itself. So my aim here is simply to introduce interested readers and listeners to some recent releases, leaving it up to you to explore, discover, and choose from all this wonderful music. We'll start with a few well-known bassists before turning to some less familiar names, often bringing fresh and intriguing approaches to the instrument. Not everything here is jazz, nor is it all strictly solo bass, but I suspect that lovers of solo bass albums will enjoy the occasional detours along the way. There are some novelties to explores. 

Mark Helias - Snapshot (Self-Released, 2024)

With close to 400 albums in which he participated, including with artists such as Don Cherry, Ray Anderson, Dewey Redman, Anthony Davis, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Dresser, Benoît Delbecq, Denis Gonzalez  ... Mark Helias needs no further introduction. 

This is his second solo album, after "Available Light" (2020). 

I copy from the liner notes: "This new collection is a set of 12 improvisations performed and recorded on September 25, 2023. I had received a new bass commissioned from Martin Penning in late summer and in the process of getting accustomed to the instrument I decided to explore its possibilities in a solo recording.I was pleased with the result and felt that it was time to release a document of spontaneous compositions done in rapid succession with no pre-determined design; just explore the instrument and imagine the sound."

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

John Edwards - Lisbon Solo (Robalo, 2025)

John Edwards has performed on no less than 532 albums, of which 143 as leader or co-leader. Despite this, "Lisbon Solo" is only his third solo album that I could verify, after "Volume" (2008), and "Just Another Day At Home..." (2020). As you can expect from one of the luminaries of the British free improvisation scene, the technical quality of the playing and the adventurous nature of exploring sound are exceptional and omnipresent. 

The albums contains one single 36 minute track. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Bruno Chevillon - États des lieux (Blaser Music, 2026)

French bassist Bruno Chevillon was invited to perform in the Lutheran Protestant Church of "Bon Secours" in Paris in 2011. He played in the church for two days and "Very quickly, it revealed itself to me as a particularly responsive partner, the richness of all its acoustic possibilities inspiring what I call states, each time different and surprising. (...) Listening attentively to the space led us to move through it in search of different sensations of how sound circulates. By varying the distance between the double bass and the microphones, we were able to play with effects of perspective and resonance, without trying to
 erase the sounds of the city outside, which remain audible between the pieces". 

The bassist was then challenged by the sound technicians for two tracks: he received headphones with music on which he had to improvise, including singing from Bali. 

The end result is impressive, a rigorous selection of the final 120 minutes of recording. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Martina Verhoeven - Solo Double Bass (New Wave Of Jazz, 2023)

Martina Verhoeven is possibly best known as the pianist appearing on the Belgian label "New Wave of Jazz", on albums with Dirk Serries, Colin Webster, Luis Vicente, ... 

She is less known as a bassist, which makes this an interesting and open-minded album. She started in a rock band in her earlier years on electric bass, and she switched later to double bass. Her playing is predominantly arco, with a style all of herself, with small sonic bits slowly creating a pointillistic landscape, more aligned with free improvisation than free jazz. 

This album is unfortunately not available by itself, yet only as a VIP membership of the label. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Andrew Schiller - Rumble, Rubble, Ripple (Self-Released, 2025)

‭Andrew Schiller is a bassist, composer, and educator, living in Boston. He holds a DMA from New England Conservatory and is an‬ Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, where serves in the Ear Training‬ department.
This is one more outcome of the pandemic, like so many solo albums: "This project emerged from a period of necessary‬ solitude," explains Schiller. "I wanted to challenge‬ myself to expand the sonic possibilities of the double‬ bass in its purest form, using only the physical‬‭ instrument and exploring its full range of expression."‬

His bass playing is technically excellent and plucked. He plays his own compositions, but also some songs by Hoagy Carmichael, John Coltrane and Michel Legrand.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Nicolas Leirtrø - Cherry Blossom (Sonic Transmissions, 2025)

We reviewed Norwegian bass player Nicolas Leirtrø's quartet recording "Action Now" earlier this year, but he also released a solo album - or rather a cassette - a year earlier. 

It contains the seven pieces that he improvised in full and in the order of performance in one single take on the track. As he says: "One day, one bass, one bow, one reel. Nothing spectacular, just pure feeling, focus and spontaneity in a legendary place (Electrical Audio in Chicago) recorded directly on tape and presented to you in the same order they were recorded."

Despite his somewhat downplaying of his own art, it's worth checking out. 

credits

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

David Bowden - Unsung Songs (Self-Released, 2026)

David Bowden is a bassist and composer based in Glasgow, UK, working across jazz, folk and contemporary music on both double and electric bass. He performs in a range of settings, from small ensembles to larger orchestral projects, and has worked extensively in the UK and internationally.

His music starts with composed material, and often more rooted in pop, folk and other more accessible genres, which makes this album a kind of contradiction. It is nice and welcoming, yet not the kind of album that will find a large audience in these genres, and it's maybe a little too unadventurous for jazz audiences. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Henry Fraser - Pneuma (Kou Records, 2026)

Since 2019, New York-based Henry Fraser has focused heavily on solo music for the double bass, culminating in now four releases and establishing himself as a technical and creative force among his generation of bassists. 

His music is adventurous, multi-layered and dark, switching between ethereal landscapes and brutal noise. 

Fraser describes the philosophy behind the work as “I approach my solo music as a collaboration with the instrument itself—working with the bass’s resonance and materiality so that form can emerge through deep listening.”

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Kyle Grimm - Forever Eve (Neuma Records, 2026)

Kyle Grimm is a classically-trained bassist with a D.M.A. in Music composition from The Hart School University of Hartford, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Composition.

"Twist, Then Pull", the first track on "Forever Eve" is built on existing material from Max Roach and Jimmy Garrison, and the juxtaposition somehow does not work well for me. His own composition "Serendipitous" is much more coherent, and stylistically tight, and really shows the quality of his skill as a bass player and composer. "All About It" is again a phenomenal piece for arco bass, intense and beautiful.

Like so many young musicians, finding a personal musical voice is often a challenge. Grimm has it at moments on this album, which make it worthwhile to explore. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Mark Urness - Asuka Kakitani Kakitani - The Garden (Neuma Records, 2026)

Another "classical" solo bass album from the Neuma label, this time with compositions by Asuka Kakitani  Kakitani and performed by Mark Urness. Urness is Associate Professor of Music and Teacher of String Bass at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

The music is excellent. A little gem in my eyes. The main theme is the growth of plants in a garden, a tiny micro environment that is ideal to expand and grow the intimacy of the music. Urness's sound is precise and controlled, ideal to illustrate the slow movement of nature in its most essential forms. 

As the liner notes say "The music draws inspiration from small moments that often go unnoticed, such as the unfurling of a leaf, the emergence of a tiny bud, and the quiet work of pollinators, inviting listeners into a space of reflection, attentive listening, and discovery. Like tending a garden itself, the album rewards patience, and reveals subtle transformations over time."

Without a doubt one of my favourites in this long overview. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Kuba Dworak - Roots (Brooklyn Records, 2026)

Born in 1991, Kuba Dworak is a Polish bass player coming from a musical and artistic family. He started with piano at age six, then discovered his love for the double bass at thirteen, initially focusing on classical music before transitioning to jazz. He completed his BA and MA degrees specializing in jazz double bass at the Faculty of Jazz and Popular Music at the Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland. He travels when touring and spends his time between his native country and New York. 

On "Roots", he shows his art and technique in twelve relatively short pieces, moving from intimate plucked pieces, such as the opening track "Angels—The Feeling of Death", a Polish traditional song, laying the foundation or roots for the rest of the album, to more dramatic arco compositions such as "Ober No 5". Two of the arco tracks - "Kujawiak No 7" and "Mazur No 6" - also have several overdubs, sounding like a chamber ensemble. 

A nice introduction to an accomplished bass player. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Amanda Irarrázabal - Imprimiendo (Relative Pitch, 2026)

This is the music of paper printers, recorded in Santiago de Chile in March of 2025, which Chilean bassist Amanda Irarrázabal (°1982) uses as the inspiration for her bass accompaniment. She lived in Chile, Argentina and Mexico where she studied and worked as a performer and teacher. Her work is "rooted in sonic experimentation and the search for her own musical language through various musical expressions". Her sounds are short arco strokes, very much 'in the moment' like British free improvisation, exploring timbres and effects rather than developing a narrative. Her voice is coherent yet every track has its own distinct character. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Bruno Råberg - Circulus (Orbis Music Records, 2026)

Over the years, we've had several reviews of albums by Swedish bass player Bruno Råberg, for solo and ensemble albums, as a leader and as a sideman.  In 1981 he moved to the US, thanks to a scholarship to the New England Conservatory in Boston. There he studied with Miroslav Vitous, Mick Goodrick, George Russell, and Bob Moses. He graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Jazz Studies with Distinction in Performance.  He has performed with musicians such as Kris Davis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kenny Werner, Sam Rivers, Tony Malaby, Mick Goodrick, Ben Monder, Bruce Barth, Jim Black, Matt Wilson, Ted Poor, Bob Mintzer, and Mike Mainieri to name just a few. 

He has been a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston since 1986. 

Across fifteen relatively short tracks, Råberg showcases not only his technical mastery of the bass but also his remarkable ability to craft a distinctive narrative within each piece. His improvisations unfold naturally, never compromising the coherence or character of the music. His deeply resonant pizzicato tone and precise, expressive delivery are captivating throughout. The album exudes intimacy and warmth, making it the perfect companion for dark winter evenings spent beside a crackling fire. Råberg's rich, enveloping sound only adds to the sense of comfort and quiet contemplation.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Birgir Steinn Theodorsson – Live at Hannesarholt (Self-Released, 2026)

Birgir Steinn Theodorsson is an Icelandic bass player who initially started playing brass instruments (tuba, horn, and trumpet) before moving to the electric bass in rock and pop bands, and eventually settling on the double bass.He graduated from the Tónlistarskóli FÍH in the spring of 2015 and later pursued graduate studies in Berlin and New York. He teaches electric and double bass at the Garðabær Music School and Reykjanesbær Music School in Reykjavik. 

Live at Hannesarholt features eight relatively short pieces, all delicately plucked, intimate, restrained, and measured. At times, I found myself wishing for a little more boldness and adventurousness, though that is, of course, a matter of personal taste. Still, for anyone seeking a warm, comforting album to accompany another wintry evening, this is an easy recommendation.

There is also a vinyl version of the music. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Björn Meyer - Convergence (ECM, 2026)

Björn Meyer is also a Swedish bass player, yet performing on a six string electric bass. "Convergence" is his second solo bass album after "Provenance"(2017). He has or is active in many genres, from folk music (Bazar Blå) over world music (Asita Hamidi's Bazaar) or jazz (Nik Bärtsch's Ronin). 

His technique on his instrument is exceptional and all his own. I can recommend to look at this video on Youtube to get an idea of his playing. Not all tracks have this nervous repetitiveness, yet it's clear that this is stylistically not really jazz. 

He says: "Experiences gathered in the last few years of more intense solo playing have converged into this album. The many solo performances have also allowed me to go deeper in my research of the six-string electric bass. New playing techniques, sounds and ways of improvising and composing for and with this instrument have found direct ways into my musical practice, and not only in a solo context"

It's worth checking out for anyone interested in bass playing. The sound quality of ECM is excellent as can be expected.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Håkon Thelin – Heiwa (Peninsula Audio Records, 2026)

With Håkon Thelin we stay in the Nordics, but now in Norway. He is an exceptional musician, active in many bands and ensembles. He is a member of the ensembles POING, Oslo Sinfonietta and Cikada, and regularly visits Ensemble Modern and Musikfabrik. For many years, he was working with all the major Norwegian symphony orchestras, with longer stays as principal double bass in the Norwegian Opera and Ballet. 

As a solo artist, he's been quite prolific, with three new solo albums this year already. It's hard to categorise his music stylistically. He himself speaks about zen music, folk music, modern classical music. 

"Heiwa" is built around a programmatic algorithm: "Seven chords in random order, symbolizing spiritual awakening, the completion of a cycle, and the journey toward enlightenment. Four notes in each chord, based on the Four Noble Truths. Duration determined by the sacred numbers 4 and 108". And perfomed by tuning forks on strings. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Håkon Thelin – echoes and traces, together (Peninsula Audio Records, 2026)

"Echoes and Traces, Together" is of a different nature. Performed arco and with occasional overdubs, Thelin demonstrates again is phenomenal skills on the instrument. In the liner notes we read: "Thelin is explicitly reacquainting himself with the fundamentals of his compositional practice, which he has defined, essentially, as negotiating between poles: tension and release, dynamism and stasis, solitude and togetherness. His musical materials, many of which he repeats or remixes throughout these three pieces, seem relatively economical in scope to begin with, but dispense their bounty over time as the listener learns to perceive their direction and resonance".

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Håkon Thelin –Abyss (Peninsula Audio Records, 2025)

I also added "Abyss" for the interested reader, on which Thelin again has a different approach, here performing work by modern classical composers, either written or transcripted for double bass. The nature of the compositions differs, from the impressionist to the dramatic (listen to Idin Samimi Mofakham's "...of struggle and hope". 

Thelin also describes on the Bandcamp page his approach to each track, which is both interesting and revelatory, especially because the sheet music for each track can be downloaded in pdf format. 

If we can believe him, there is more solo work to come: "This is the first release of what will hopefully become a series of releases documenting the works that are being composed for me".

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Pedro Ivo Ferreira - In Loco (Self-Released, 2026)

Pedro Ivo Ferreira is a Brazilian bass player, who studied in Sao Paulo and Paris, after which he moved to Amsterdam where he now resides. He leads the quartet ORÈ and is a long-standing member of the Nefertiti Quartet. The title of the album refers to the places where the improvisations took place: streets, home, studios, abandoned buildings. "I wanted to explore how space and environment directly influence an improvisational performance. There are the more obvious elements: acoustics, reverberation, environmental interference; but also the way the performer, or in this case the composer, absorbs these elements and lets them shape the music".

The eleven pieces are relatively short, each clocking around two to three minutes.  

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Gonçalo Almeida - Goz - Bone Medo (Zona Watusa, 2026)

Of a totally different nature is this album by Portuguese bassist Gonçalo Almeida who no longer needs an introduction on this blog. In two sixteen-minute soundscapes, he creates heavily distorted double bass sounds into a drone-like noise,  exploring "a dark and immersive landscape where time seems to dissolve". 

Despite the closeness to a tonal center, the sound does evolve, gradually, slowly, patiently, while layers are added, and added and new sounds are introduced, "creating a dense, hypnotic sound world where physical resonance meets decaying memory". 

Listeners will recognise some of his work with The Selva in his music: its darkness and slow relentless power. 

Not for the faint of heart. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Borguefül - Vêtue (Carton, 2026)

We will end this series with two outliers: two young female musicians who play double bass and sing. They are not jazz musicians, but something else entirely, merging folk music (avant-folk?) with modern classical music, singer-songwriter, free improvisation and jazz. 

The first one is by Mélanie Loisel, whose artist name for this project is "Borguefül". She studied classical double bass and Baroque music at the Tours Conservatoire. She has also devoted herself to the regular practice of improvised music. Her influences include The Dirty Three, The Ex, Electre Lane, Joëlle Léandre, traditional Albanian music, Noir Désir and Claude Tchamitchian.

Her language in French is the Haute-Loire dialect, with its strange syllables, dissonances and rhythm. The sound of the double bass, played mainly with a bow, unfolds here in all its richness: melodic and rhythmic fragments, changes in timbre, distortions of texture, deep vibrations. 

It's great to hear young musicians carve out their own musical space, unbothered by commercial or  crowd-pleasing interests, but just stubbornly developing their own voice and sound. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Helen Svoboda – Headwater (Self-Released, 2026)

Please give this album a try too: you will wonder why we review it here since its has nothing to do with free improvisation or free jazz, yet it's worth listening to. With Finnish/Australian heritage, Svoboda lived and studied in the Netherlands and Germany, specialising in soloistic double bass composition.

Her singing is like open-ended, folk singing, with a fine level of innocence and gravity. Listen to "Child", with its crystal clear purity and simplicity to be followed by "Blur", a mad and intense arco bass intense for two basses, Jacques Emery playing the second instrument. 

Like her voice, her bass playing possesses a natural beauty—precise and clear, delicate yet deeply expressive.

Her music defies genre, and that alone makes it compelling. She has a voice entirely her own and has carved out a sonic universe that belongs to no one else. In a world saturated with harsh noise and commercial beats, to create something so original, intimate, and deeply personal feels not only refreshing, but genuinely precious.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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