Manufaktur, Schorndorf, June 2026
Kühlspot, Berlin, May 2026.
Zentrale zum Rieblwirt, Landshut, May 2026. Photo Klaus Kitzinger
Manufaktur, Schorndorf, May 2026
Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, May 2026
Morphine Raum, Berlin, May 2026
What can we say about [Ahmed] that hasn't been said already on these pages by Ferruccio Martinotti, Fotis Nikolakopoulos, Stuart Broomer, Lee Rice Epstein, Sarah Grosser and Paul Acquaro?
So, instead of trying to say more, we say, take a front row seat at Cafe OTO and enjoy a show:
Video by roustghoti, published on YouTube.
Second time at the Bezau Beatz festival, located in a small, beautiful, and most peaceful village in the Austrian Alps, but much closer to Switzerland, Italy and Germany than to the Austrian free music scenes. Thanks to the festival's artistic directors and producers - drummers Alfred Vogel and Valentin Schuster - the festival has managed to create a friendly and highly attentive community of music lovers and musicians that is welcoming and shares all kinds of musical adventures and experiments. A perfect place to take a vacation from the local or global disturbing reality and its abhorrent horrors and stupidities, and find some nurturing, fresh air - literally. This festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.
The festival opened with the Danish-Norwegian quartet Emmeluth’s Amoeba - alto sax player and bandleader Signe Emmeluth, her partner, guitarist Karl BjorÃ¥, pianist Christian Balvig, and drummer Ole Mofjell - which stormed the intimate space at the festival’s headquarters, Hotel Post. This quartet has already released four albums and has developed a tight, telepathic interplay, using Emmeluth’s skeletal compositional motifs for exploratory, intense rhythmic improvisations. There were times that the interplay sounded as if BjorÃ¥, Balvig, and Mofjell challenged Emmeluth’s commanding, natural flow of ideas with playful, even disruptive moves. Still, she used their tactics to steer the quartet into collective, even more powerful, cathartic eruptions.
Later, down at the hotel’s basement - the SuBBwayZ - the duo NarrSteidle - German guitarist and electronics player Steffi Narr and drummer and electronics player Oliver Steidle (of The Killing Popes and Ilog), who has released a debut album on Vogel and Schuster’s Boomaslang label (Ghost Ants, 2025), weaved resonant acoustic, electronic, and processed sounds into fragmented rhythmic patterns, that slowly evolved into rich yet twisted and restless grooves.
The evening program moved to the main space - The Remise, a vintage locomotive garage most days of the year (with a strong aroma of grease), where Danish guitarist Teis Semey (who confessed that he has never seen mountains so high before) led his Amsterdam-based quintet: alto sax player José Soares, tenor sax player Jesse Schilderink, double bass player Jort Terwijn and drummer Giovanni Iacovella - with a set of playful pieces that flirted with free jazz, fusion and even pop songs, charged with youthful, passionate uplifting energy.
The following performance of the German, all-female quartet Hilde - vocalist Marie Daniels, violinist Julia Brüssel, cellist Emily Wittbrodt, and trombonist Maria Trautmann - was completely different. This quartet has already released three impressive albums (the most recent, Timbre, on Boomslang, 2026) and offered its refined aesthetics that search for unexpected ties between abstract timbral invention, chamber art song format, and free improvisation, with elegant grace, organic interplay, and wit, always highlighting the four distinct voices. Hilde never chose familiar routes, and it explored coordinates of time and space with its own mysterious and thoughtful inner logic. There were some arresting musical games, especially when trombonist Trautmann contrasted Daniels’ warm and beautiful vocal delivery with her subversive, ironic trombone vocalization.
The day ended at the Hoel Post with Schuster’s new quartet WOBBLE8 - baritone sax player Sofia Salvo (of Kuhn Fu), guitarist-vocalist Dan Peter Sundland (of Frank Gratkowski's Entrainmen, and Lina Allemano's Ohrenschmaus), vintage synth player Sebastian Pfeifer, and Schuster with a drum set with two pedals on the bass drum. This quartet prepares for the release of its debut album soon, The Moon is not there when nobody looks and exploded on the small stage with manic energy, propelled by Schuster’s massive, metal-like drumming, Salvo’s merciless Ayler-ian blows, Pfeifer’s prog-rock keyboard layers, and Sundland’s spiky guitar lines. The endless Dadaist-apocalyptic energy could supply enough electricity for the whole region for months. Looking forward to exploring WOBBLE8’s new album.
Austrian, New York-based Luisa Muhr opened the day’s program with an early performance of her conceptual work TEUFLIN/SHE-DEVIL (released on Boomslang, 2024), a feminine, irreverent interpretation of original, rich German texts from Goethe’s Faust, accompanied by cellist Elisabeth Coudoux and tenor sax player Jonathan Reisin, all dressed in black, and performing in the small church, Kloster Bezau. This work is based on a graphic score and questions the concept of "evil" from a female perspective, the separation of "good" and "evil," as it is particularly ingrained in Western traditions, and contemplates issues of life, death, and morality. It centers on Goethe’s phrase “Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren; / Das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren” (What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; / What’s genuine, shall Posterity inherit). Clearly, not the easiest issues to process early in the morning, but the wise, graceful performance of Muhr, Coudoux, and Reisin charmed and deeply moved the audience, some even to tears.
Luckily, the next performance of the free improvising trio of Portuguese alto sax hero José Lencastre and bassist João Hasselberg and Danish master drummer Kresten Osgood changed the atmosphere. This trio released its debut album last year, This Anger is a Liar (Fundacja SÅ‚uchaj!; the title is taken from a song by Kip Hanrahan), and the performance suggested how three idiosyncratic and opinionated improvisers converse and explore the unique space of the local artist locksmith’s workshop, Kunstschmiede Figer, and its artifacts. Lencstre opted for exploring brief melodic and introspective ideas; Osgood, with a Ninja Turtles T-shirt, was, as usual, all over, playing his drum kit as if he was making love to it, with commanding pathos but equipped with a profound musical sensibility, provoking the audience with his eccentric antics, but completely bewitching all; and asselberg was torturing his bass guitar (titled “Lily”) with feedback sounds, aggressive hammering, and effects. Somehow it all made perfect sense, as the trio relied on its deep listening dynamics to search for uncharted timbres and resonances, even when Osgood sang solo the Hanrahan’s song. The performance ended with Hasselberg dismantling the neck of the guitar and rubbing the bass string against the pickups, offering a symbolic interpretation of Eric Dolphy's immortal saying: “When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again”. All left this performance with a big smile on their faces, agreeing that our world needs many more Krestens desperately.
The afternoon performances returned to Hotel Post with a performance by the German, Cologne-based Philip Zoubek Trio - Zoubek on piano and synth, double bass player David Helm, and drummer-percussionist Dominik Mahnig. This trio has released five albums (including one in its electric version as Placebo Domingo) and is about to release its sixth one soon on Boomslang. It played a highly powerful set that highlighted its tight, inexhaustible, resonant kinetic-rhythmic energy as if it were a three-headed sonic entity, synchronized to the most minute detail, while following the intricate, composed score.
Down at the SuBBwayZ, the futurist trio Meat.Karaoke.Quality.Time. - EWI and Moog synth players Florian Walter and Jan Klare, and Karl-F. Degenhardt on sensory and AI percussion, all dressed in black, as mad scientists from another planet. They cooked otherworldly - literally - weird but accessible sonic spices.
Back in the Remise, Argentinian, Berlin-based tenor sax player Camila Nebbia presented her sextet, The Hanged One, inspired by the tarot card number 12, representing letting go, patience, reassessment, insight, and sacrifice, which is usually a symbol for new perspectives. This band: : cellist Julia BiÅ‚at, guitarist Arne Braun, electronics player Andres Marino, double bass player Vinicius Cajado, and drummer Lukas Akintaya, is about to release a new album by Relative Pitch. The sextet explored the tension between jazz-tinged composed parts with powerful grooves and experimental improvisation and timbral explorations, with BiÅ‚at and Marino more active on this edge. Nebbia encouraged individual, generous solos that allowed all ideas to be turned upside down, and new perspectives to emerge without fear of clash, but Nebbia’s economic, soulful solos glued all contrasting poles into an impressive, coherent statement.
Next, at the same location, French drummer Edward Perraud presented his Sauvages Paradis (White Paradise) quartet - organ player and pianist Eve Risser (the leader of Red Desert Orchestra), flutist Delphine Joussein (of Nout trio and the Flöjter duo with Mats Gustafsson) and guitarist Arthur Delaleu. This collective quartet just released its criminally short debut album, Wild Thing (Gigantonium, 2026), and immediately captured the audience with its hyperactive, ever-inventive, and inspired sonic paradise. This quartet created cathartic, hypnotic, and trance-like textures that demonstrated how these resourceful improvisers keep feeding and pushing each other, with generous doses of humour, ecstatic storms, and dream-like, cosmic soundscapes. Perraud sang in gibberish, played on a strange guitar, Risser introduced North African meditative pulses on the piano, and Joussein transformed her flute into a mean, effects-laden electric guitar, and only Delaleu sat still as if the exhilarating sonic mayhem did not touch him. This quartet delivered on its promise from its album: “surrendering to the collective fever and opening yourself up to a journey of no return”.
The morning performance began with "Three men in a church with no Maria", the Littorina Saxophone Trio - Finnish Mikko Innanen, Swedish Fredrik Ljungkvist, and Lithuanian Liudas MockÅ«nas - playing within the beautiful acoustics of the ancient Kirche Reuthe, but without its founding member, Estonian Maria Faust, who had another engagement. This quartet of reed masters, who play the saxophone family, from the sopranino to the bass, is titled after the original name of the Baltic Sea and released a debut album last year. Leaking Pipes (NoBusiness, 2025). The touching, beautiful set stressed the profound, emphatic, and playful dynamics of this trio and its own independent aesthetics, rooted in Nordic folk motifs and European schools of modern jazz. Ljungkvist’s soulful, moving ballad “Nils-Olof”, dedicated to his father-in-law who passed away, and the trio’s interpretation of Ljungkvist's “Oslo”, were the highlights of this set, which could have been much, much longer, as far as the attentive audience cared.
In the afternoon, Israeli-born, New York-based tenor sax player Jonathan Reisin presented his thought-provoking, complex compositions from his album Too Good X Unreality (Boomslang, 2025) at the Remise, with Korean-born, Amsterdam-based pianist Chaerin Im and Italian drummer Francesca Remigi (neither played on the album). Reisin introduces post-Cageian extended techniques and Steve Reich-like minimalism, and his sax playing and his compositions suggest a distant, sober, often even ironic perspective on the jazz legacy. This performance allowed his demanding, intricate compositions to blossom with the new voices of Im and Remigi, and often Reisin simply stood aside and enjoyed how they breathed new, unpredictable fresh air into his ideas, letting this ad-hoc trio push the boundaries of its instruments.
At the same location, Finnish, Berlin-based guitarist Kalle Kalima presented his new trio Detours, with German drummer Christian Lillinger (who plays with Kalima in the KUU! quartet) and Argentinian, Brooklyn-based keyboard player Leo Genovese, who played the Hammond organ, Crumar electric piano, Korg synth, and piano. This trio was formed in the 2025 edition of the Saalfelden Jazz Festival, but this was one of its first-ever performances, and music was composed, focusing on the high-energy, dense, and physical rhythmic outputs of these gifted, versatile improvisers, with little variance in the radical, electric textures. But there were times that I could swear that Genovese had at least four hands, if not much more.
The festival ended with a morning performance at the Remise with a guest band from a twin festival in Porto, Portugal. Portuguese, Amsterdam-based Vocal artist and composer Vera Morais presented her new quintet EUPNEA - with vocalists LÄ«va Dumpe, Sarah van Eijk, and flutists Teresa Costa and Ketija Ringa-Karahona - that just released a debut album. Morais’ compositions offer a beautiful, touching synergy of breath, air, and vocal pitches, flirting with contemporary music and influences of Meredith Monk ensembles, and encapsulate the quintet as a human organ that explores highly immersive chamber music. Morais is a creative force worth following.
This, unfortunately, digital only release is a treat, a future hidden gem, probably, for all those interested in the free thinking ethos of improvisation. Jack Wright is on the saxophones (alto and soprano, I believe) and Bennett on the drums and some other percussive objects. Tourne is comprised of three long tracks, each over or around the ten minute mark, and presents their take of playing live.
When I’m saying that this is their take, I mean it literally. Even though there’s a certain generational gap when it comes to those two players’ age, they both refer to the early days of free improvisation (we could comment that those days where having jazz as a reference but nothing more) when a new language –every sound is possible and only the players are liable for it- was being formed and presented through playing live.
This is how both of them antagonize with their preconceived ideas about playing music: by challenging each other to go further and further, even beyond the margins of what is sound, what is music, what is that should be heard from percussion and saxophones. This is not their first collaboration but, still, they sound fresh and willing not to fall in the shaky ground of presenting “good” music-not even playing “challenging” and “adventurous” stuff. They just are themselves, staying true to the basic ethos of free improvisation. Trying, at least, to present something new each time.
Bennett’s playing is agile, feverish and energetic as never before. He seems to be enjoying himself as he releases low level percussive barrages. Wright, restless as ever, follows but also runs in parallel releasing saxophone sounds as if his respected instrument is made of rubber and can bend and displace notes and phrases.
I’m not sure if I made my point clear out to you, but this is a joy to experience release that has to be, at least, listened by a lot of people.
Fot.isn
Bassist Alexander Frangenheim and saxophonist Stefan Keune belong to the third generation of European Improvised Music (or fourth, depending on how you calculate). I came across Keune and his trio with bassist Hans Schneider and drummer Achim Krämer with No Comment (FMP 2009), Frangenheim was on my radar because he was a member of Cecil Taylor’s Workshop Band (Legba Crossing,FMP 1988) and later on he released several very good recordings on the Creative Sources label. Their musical style - not atypical for European Improv in the 1990s and 2000s - was more abstract than the recordings of the godfathers of this music which - while experimental - were often very concrete. Whereas concrete improvisation works with direct, tangible materials, situations, or predetermined rules - be they small melodies, energetic structures, or even a pure desire for destruction (one need only think of Peter Kowald’s and Peter Brötzmann’s “Kaputtspiel” phase - even if the latter disliked the term), abstract improvisation detaches itself from external circumstances to express feelings or states of mind primarily through sound, structure, and form.
Abstractions are evident in many ways on New Traces, Frangenheim’s and Keune’s debut collaboration as a duo: first, in the pauses - moments of silence that are repeatedly interspersed among the music’s hectic passages, as in “New Traces 1” or “New Traces 7” - and second, in the music’s extreme density and concentration. Both musicians employ extended playing techniques such as harmonics, overtones, and percussive strokes. It’s not about melodies, but about exploring timbres, textures, and dynamic extremes. Ultimately, however, the abstract moments are most evident in the frenzied runs and competing trills, the contrasts in register (especially in “New Traces 4“, where they really reach the limit of what listeners can bear to hear), the impetuous stylistic drive, and the simultaneous clarity of the sound. True, Keune still hisses, coos, hums, and gurgles for all he’s worth, and Frangenheim scrubs away, making his bass weep and crash - yet it’s as if one had stripped Barry Guy & Mats Gustafsson’s Sinners, Rather Than Saints (No Business, 2009) of all its embellishments, oriental flourishes, vibratos, frills and obvious crescendos (don’t get me wrong, I love this album) - to draw a concrete example for comparison. Just listen to “New Traces 8“. Here, the improvisation takes unpredictable turns and surprising sounds are created, yet the structure of the piece remains crystal clear. A prerequisite for this is that both musicians have such an excellent technique that during the more frenzied moments, instrumental timbres coalesce without getting in one’s way.
The album is a treat for fans of abstract music and sonic exploration. Very recommended.
New Traces is available as a download.
As a writer, researcher, musician, composer, and artist in the public sphere, Melvin Gibbs seems to have been working towards something like How Black Music Took Over the World for while now—a synthesizing work that brings together personal history, polemic, Black music made in and beyond America both under and in spite of a racialized cultural hierarchy, and the heartbreak and joy that come with learning and acknowledging this shared (like it or not) history. How that synthesis enacts itself on paper is one of Gibbs’s particular skills, his melding of register (as he lays out in the Prelude) replays his musical practice. An open reader who lets the book take over will be, I think inarguably, rewarded.
One of the key areas that’s under-discussed in literature, as far as I’m aware, which Gibbs both personally and academically goes over in the book is the Gullah-Geechee, the community rooted in the Sea Islands, along the Georgia and Florida coast. In the chapters “Stono’s Children” and “Changing Time With the Times,” Gibbs recounts his discovery of his Gullah heritage, then takes readers on a fascinating journey of the elemental components of rhythm, from ring shout, hambone, swing, and backbeat, to dub. What works pretty well in idea—merging registers, mixing personal memoir with rhythmic analysis—plays out (pardon the unintentional pun) wonderfully on paper. From an extended rhythmic analysis in “Stono’s Children,” Gibbs drops us right into a Harriet Tubman rehearsal. In a later chapter “Can’t Stop,” Gibbs breaks down a specific rhythm he’s dubbed the “lunch table cell,” then demonstrates its use in school lunch ad libs, James Brown’s “Soul Power,” Fela Kuti’s “Shakara,” and Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” There’s a joy in taking all this in, and the infectious enthusiasm Gibbs seems to take in sharing the rhythms and ideas he’s studied and generated.
“The Music of Black Science” demonstrates the linkage from mythos developed through sharing stories to cosmologies that underpin systems of belief, math, science, and artistry. As a somewhat mystical rumination on West African frameworks, and what Gibbs describes as an ontology of Black music. The ensuing pages explore mythologies, fables, and physics through the lens of oral communication and visualization. It’s one of the chapters I’ve dipped back into multiple times, letting myself drift to and fro, which doesn’t seem to contradict Gibb’s intent.
However intentional, or not, How Black Music Took Over the World is in conversation with two crucial writers and researchers in this area, Race Music by Guthrie Ramsey and Blacksound by Matthew Morrison. Ramsey’s been in the space for over 30 years building up a compelling and provocative (for me, personally, I’m using this word in terms of “provoking intellectual thought and reflection”) body of work, and Morrison’s Blacksound is the kind of seminal work that hopefully becomes required reading for anyone seeking to understand the acoustical aspects of blackface minstrelsy that became the bedrock of the recording industry. Much like Gibbs’s assembly of evidence showing Black performance and foundational rhythms permeating styles and genres, Morrison demonstrates how Blacksound (re-)centers the ephemeral sonic and performance aesthetics that were capitalized on by early white adopters of vaudeville and dance. While no single author can be expected to cover all aspects of a topic, there are areas Gibbs elides or leaves out of his narrative that are readily picked up in these two—and, yes, many other—books, which an earnest reader is encouraged to also seek out.
To say that a work starts with a bang is a cliché, yet Boca De Acero definitely has an explosive intro. Not only that, the momentum on this five-movement duet remains taut till the final note. A collaboration between two singular musicians, the Argentinian vocalist Ines Terra and Uruguayan guitarist Santiago Bogacz, this album is entirely improvised and demonstrates a seamless camaraderie between them.
This abstract, cinematic conversation has a shifting mood and thrilling twists and turns within the underlying harmonic narrative. Track “1” opens with fiery, angular guitar strums and Terra’s wordless vocal acrobatics. Terra makes her shouts and cries bounce off Bogacz’s strings with dramatic flair. The guitarist weaves a dense and dynamic soundscape around Terra’s chants.
[Text Wrapping Break]Despite embracing dissonance, the pair maintains a subtle lyricism throughout their exchanges. The darkly hued “2” brims with mysticism. Terra’s rising and falling voice hauntingly floats over Bogacz’s sparse chords. The refrains that evolve with each repetition have a ritualistic feel, almost like the ceremonial liturgy of a long-forgotten ancient rite.
With “3” the somber mood continues, becoming quieter and more nocturnesque. Terra softly whispers, and Bogacz plucks single notes that underscore the serenity of the mood. Their conversation takes on a sublime theatricality. Meanwhile, on “4” the two artists fully embrace mysticism as her throat singing and his hypnotic strums ebb and flow against a quiet backdrop, ending on a passionate note.
The fifth piece features synthesizer sounds that distort the emotive and stimulating improvisation, creating a delightfully otherworldly atmosphere. The burgeoning piece melds the organic quality of the human voice with sharp, acerbic electronic vamps for a performance that is simultaneously stimulating and eerie.
With Boca De Acero, Terra and Bogacz have undertaken a successful sonic experiment that is provocative and moving. It is also a much-needed glimpse into South America’s vibrant improvisational scene. That, much like the recording’s creators of this album, is unique, expressive, and fearless.
By Nick Ostrum
For All Your Flowers does not check the usual boxes for my reviews. It is not free jazz or avant garde. It does not really stretch the boundaries, or fuse unlike elements, or shattered the eardrums. Nor is it quiet, or phased, or whatever other attributes I often ascribe to experimental music. What is more, it is guaranteed to get due attention in a variety of other music publications and will likely come to listeners’ ears regardless of what I write. Still, For All Your Flowers presents a blend of crystalline beauty and pastoral expansivism that I find irresistible right now. It captures warm feelings of nostalgia that I have been pining for lately. And it is good music.
None of this should be shocking. Both Bill Frisell and Skúli Sverrisson have catalogs that run decades of years back and albums deep. They have earned their reputations, and I am not sure For All Your Flowers is as much a departure or venture into new pastures than a continuation of the styles and sounds Frisell and Sverrisson have already made their own. As points of comparison, one could include Frisell’s mid-1990s collaborations with Gary Peacock, which are generally more abstract, or the 2021 Sverrisson-Frisell duo Strata, which occupies similar sonic space, but is glitterier. In terms of feeling, however, Charlie Haden and Hank Jones’ 1994 Steal Away , a collection of masterfully performed and unadorned southern spirituals, comes to mind as a reference point. Differences, of course, abound. For one, the songs on For All Your Flowers are primarily penned by Sverrisson, rather than unknown American authors and communal groups of generations prior. The instrumentation is also different with the commonality of bass and the substitution of electric guitar for upright piano. (And Sverrisson and Haden are very different bassists.) However, For All Your Flowers hits me in the same visceral and mistily wistful way. The folky melodic simplicity, the spaces of controlled adornment, and the impressionistic imagery of the hinterland are all there, as is that sense of a time and place past, regardless of where or whether they actually existed. Owning that ambiguity is, of course, what the best art can do. It takes the listener away to a fantasy land to experience vicariously, through sound, image, or narrative, something new and apart from their own lifeworld. Sverrisson and Frisell achieve that, not through uncompromising innovation or eccentric displays of virtuosity, but a shared sense of melody, vision of space. and untouchable precision.
For All Your Flowers is available via Newvelle Records as part of the Newvelle Ten collection.
