This is the second part of the coverage of the 2025 Moers Festival. The
first can be read here.
Sunday, June 1
Sunday morning continued with some bizarre weather. Light, quick drying long
pants that could become shorts, a t-shirt, a long-sleeved over-shirt, Gore-Tex lined sneakers, plus umbrella and rain jacket seemed like the minimal gear required to go outside and enjoy some music. First stop, the smaller
"Traktor" stage set on a corner the festival's market square.
Mark Holub, Charlotte Keefe, Ashley John Long, Meinrad Kneer, and Evi Fillipou
Already lining the stage was a hard core group of similarly equipped
attendees waiting patiently under the piercing sun, stormy clouds, sudden
downpours and only slightly annoying drizzle for "Freysinn #6" to start.
Clutching coffees and shielding precious smartphones, the early-birds
scrunched in as close as they could to be under the stage's cover as drummer
Mark Holub, trumpeter Charlotte Keefe,
bassists Meinrad Kneer and
Ashley John Long, and vibraphonist Evi Fillipou worked out the kinks in the
sound with the technical crew. Once everything was in order, they began
their set and the sun suddenly appeared as the two swirling basses
solidified around Fillipou's uptempo figure and Keefe's lithe blips. Both
energetic and exploratory at times, the collection of British, German and
American musicians provided a lovely wake up concert under unsure skies.
A quick shuffle into town was up next. Through the park, past the sloping
'Rodelberg' field that previous years' attendees were lamenting was not
being used this year, past the leafy mature trees and many water fowl, past
the old castle, into a cafe for a to-go coffee, and finally to a
small hair salon in the old city, to hear a solo set from Lao Dan.
Outside the salon, in the rain, on the otherwise normally quiet Sunday
morning street, a small crowd had gathered around a frog playing saxophone.
At least it may have been a frog. Two characters, a princess carrying a long
listening tube and her frog, who was now playing saxophone, had been popping
up at and between different locations interacting with festival goers and
introducing events.
Lao Dan
Eventually, the action moved inside the crammed salon as
Lao Dan
began his solo set with a full-on saxophone pummeling. Moving about the
small space that the audience had cleared in the middle of the salon, Lao
Dan segued from the initial eruption to a lovely melody on a flute that he
pulled from his back pocket. Circular breathing techniques underscored the
flowing meditative melody. Then, switching back to the sax, the clacking of
the keys provided a percussive effect to a softly sung melody, whose words -
if they were in fact words - were lost on me. The short set ended with a
final power blast of saxophone.
Back now at the main festival site, the next moers sessions!
was about to begin. Again, these were sets curated and officiated by
saxophonist Jan Klare that were occurring throughout the festival - and as I
had learned over the past two days, they were proving to be one of the
festival's highlights.
The first of the three sets featured saxophonist
Pete Grogan
and Tim von Malotki, guitarist
Jasper Stadhouders, bassist Liran Donin, and drummer
Konrad Matheus, who
launched into an updated 70s electric Miles Davis form of free-jazz, a
collective whirlpool of sound underpinned by electronic beats and tight
pulsating drumming. The saxophones buzzed and the energy
built over dark rumbling bass and lightly abrasive guitar work. There were
echoes of a dub as the group dug into some rock beats and swirling dark
magic tones.
Then, back to town. Skipping out on what were likely excellent follow up
sets, it was back through the park to the old town hall building across the
cobblestone street from the medieval castle.
Willi Kellers, Bart Maris,
and Hans Peter Hiby were playing alongside narrator
Joachim Henn, who was performing the works of cabaret and
satire writer Hanns Dieter Hüsch. The writer, born in the
Netherlands, lived as a young man in Moers, and the city is celebrating his
centennial this year.
Joachim Henn, Hans Peter Hiby, Willi Kellers and Bart Maris
The music was fantastic. As mentioned previously, Maris, artist-in-residence, has been involved more with the education programs and organizing than performing on the main stages. Thus, this was a nice opportunity to hear him with the scorching Hiby and multi-faceted Kellers, as the
three interjected short improvisations in between Henn's artful narrations. While the words in German were difficult to grasp
for me, the many native speakers in the audience seemed rather delighted,
and the music erupted spontaneously each time, controlled but electrifying.
Led Bib
The afternoon segued into the evening at the open air stage where the UK's
Led Bib introduced their current sound - a quick stroll
through their back catalog seemed to suggest an evolving approach over their
over 20 years of playing together. The quartet of drummer
Mark Holub, saxophonists Chris Williams and Pete Grogan
as well as bassist Liran Donin approached the set with patience
and gravity, the songs were slow, based on complex rock beats with tinges of North African modalities. The baritone saxes' effects created a lush,
reverb drenched atmosphere and an early electric bass solo featured an earthy, gut stringed gimbri-like tone. The song meandered a bit before
finally building to a climatic jazz-rock end, which was generally how the set
proceeded. The encore piece revealed a different side of the band, short and
punchy, the energetic tune left the audience buzzing.
At this point, I was seeking a time-out in order to let the all the sounds
swirling in my head settle down. A cup of coffee seemed like a fine way to
begin this moment of mindfulness, which of course meant that there were a
bunch of other events happening between the festival grounds and town that
proceeded without me. Such are the sacrifices we must make.
Haydon Chisholm's Kinetic Chain
The next two concerts in the main hall featured an enticing set of high
profile musicians. First was New Zealander (but Europe based) saxophonist
Haydon Chisholm's crack band featuring pianist
Achim Kaufman, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer
Jonas Burgwinkel, all of who are often associated with more experimental music, but in
Kinetic Chain they help Chisholm deliver a meditative
modern jazz journey. The performance was a thoughtfully balanced set of
compositions that featured restraint and mood over velocity, but let the
players all bring something unique to the stage.
Angelica Sanchez
The second concert was a
solo set by American pianist Angelica Sanchez who offered a
rich presentation of thorny passages and light melodic interludes. From
rather a ruminative, un-jazzy start to sharp, angular attacks and lush chord
voicings, the set fluctuated quickly and decisively.
Caspar Brötzmann on scissor lift
While the evening of music was not over, it seemed like the world might be.
Outside the hall, lifted above the festival grounds,
Caspar Brötzmann was flattening the landscape with a solo bass set from the scissor lift.
Turned up to 11 (in Spinal Tap terms), the bassist let loose a fury of deep,
gut shaking sound from above. While the music was more expressionistic than
melodic, intentionally or not, phrases of the Modern Jazz Quartet's tune
'Django' seemed to be woven perfectly into the sound fabric.
The final act of the evening at the main hall was a percussion oriented
composition from Koshiro Hino. Bringing the piece to life was
Ken Furudate on electronics,
Masayoshi Fujita
on vibraphone, marimba, and percussion, Tsuyoshi Maeda on
taiko drums and percussion and Kanna Taniguchi on
vibraphone and percussion. That was indeed a lot of percussion on stage,
producing whooshing drones and marching band-like cadences alike. The
composition felt quite modular with sections following each other, and use
of the mallet instruments in creative and traditional ways to add splashes
of melody and texture.
Monday
Monday began with a press event and ended with a Massaker. Starting
with the press, Tim Isfort, musician, composer, long time Moers resident and director of the festival since 2017, addressed a small group of
reporters and writers in the ice rink. Under his leadership, the festival
has developed its signature multi-discipline, post-structural thematic
approach, resulting in a dense thicket of music, time sensitive discussion
topics and some good-natured chaos.
A pressing topic in recent years has been funding, and in reaction to
tightening budgets, Isfort has been exploring new ways to support the
festival. This year, a new ticket pricing structure based on what they
called the "Pay What You Want" solidarity principle was introduced. As I
understand it, the idea is to make attending the festival more affordable
and grow the audience for Moers. So, along with the children activities and
stages, the open market square that offers free concerts to the public, and
the many events that happen in the downtown, which are also free to attend,
there are many ways for people to participate and - hopefully - pay more
over time.
The highlight of the press conference came however when Isfort was not asked
about tickets, pricing or funding but rather about the precise locating of
the "Traktor Stage." The director was nonplussed and answered the
question at the level of soil density and permitting.
Ok so now, a Massaker was promised, and we will get to it soon enough, but
let us first wander past the food trucks, past the kids activities and down
to the open air stage to the next moers session!
moers session!
It was a quiet start to the set from laptop artist Tan Shuoxin, violist
Matthias Kaiser, bassist Meinrad Kneer, and
a percussionist whose name I did not catch. The long, moaning bass tones, the
viola's gentle plucked notes with the electric buzz of the electronics and
percussion revealed a minimalist heartbeat, making ripples like
water-skating insects on a still lake. The second set with pianist Simon Rummel, trumpeter
Charlotte Keefe, saxophonist
Hans Peter Hiby
and drummer Andy Hafner was quite a contrast to
the previous. Hiby played a forceful, though reserved line while Keefe
concentrated on her mouthpiece before plugging it into her trumpet, while the
piano provided stabbing chords along with the vigorous drumming. The horns
spared with each other, finding ways to compliment and compete, while the
piano set the overall tone. This was rapturous music, always ready to
explore, and always steeping back just in time to keep the tension rising.
Another set was scheduled to start up at the "Traktor Stage," yes, the very one
whose position was hotly discussed at today's press talk. The start was
delayed though perhaps by the giant fly whose enervating buzz was being
broadcast over the festival ground loudspeakers. The 15-foot long fly was
afloat over the festival marketplace, doing its best to annoy giant puppet
man. The piece, Der Kasper schlägt die Fliegen tot (Caspar kills the flies) was puppetry maximus, a tale of "a gigantic musical fight for survival" at a
monstrous scale.
At this point, it seems that the scheduling got a little loose, or my sense
of it did at least, and the experience became a kaleidoscopic mix of sounds,
foods (the kimchi + bbq burrito was a fantastic discovery), and more sounds.
It seemed that Caspar Brötzmann had enjoyed the previous
evenings solo flight over the festival grounds so much that he did it again,
this time a full-volume thumping of the general festival goers, and an obvious
surprise to those who were clasping their ears and accelerating their pace.
Another fun surprise was the ska band Butterwegge, who
leaned hard on peppy horn arrangements and spouted uplifting, inclusive lyrics.
The band amassed an almost pogo-ing audience.
Vijay
Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith
Eventually, all roads taken led to headliners Vijay
Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith, who in
the main hall were presenting their music from the ECM recording
Defiant Life. Iyer sat behind a Fender Rhodes with a couple smaller
electric keyboards placed on top, a grand piano flanked him. He began on the
piano playing a gentle trickle of high notes with one hand and a deep bass
rumble with the other. Smith cycled through some grittier tones and let out
a sharp blast. Iyer pivoted to Rhodes and let some clear tones ring out. A
persistent drone came from one of the small electronics as the two played
slow, opened ended phrases, with sometimes a bit of hesitation. The
performance very true to the recording, which itself is pensive, probing,
tense and at times defiant. Smith added at the end of the riveting set, "
Defiant Life is dedicated to young people, who can make the world
beautiful, the world we old people messed up." If there was a set that
captured the spirit of Stille best, this was it. The underlying tensions of
the music were magnified by the reflective space within it, leaving the
audience at once satisfied but also a bit unsettled.
Caspar Brötzmann's Massaker
And finally, the Massaker. The closing set of the festival
was Caspar Brötzmann's power trio. After two stints
rattling the festival grounds (and presumably all within a few surrounding
kilometers) from above with his bass, Brötzmann, now with guitar in hand,
hit the stage of the main hall with drummer Saskia von Klitzing and bassist
Eduardo Delgado Lopez. The group was loud but through the primal drones,
deep plodding riffs and thrilling feedback laden solos, the song structures
still poked through. A stiff night cap to help close the festival.
. .. and in the end...
When I first
encountered the term "Stille" as the theme for the festival, I wondered how could this be applied to such a multifaceted event? Now, after four days living in the "Unimoresum" (their term), it seems that the word at face value is less valuable than what it represents and when
considered across the many dimensions of the festival, it becomes something other than
itself. I began to think of it is as reflection, those moments when I stepped away from the music and other festivities and enjoyed the atmosphere, the chance encounters and the unusual ideas (probably as much was left out of this write-up as made it). So, this stille makes up the moments in between the actions and events. So, between the music, the political discussions, and of course all of the other activities, the real experience comes when you take a chance reflect on what it means to you. It does not, however, take make much reflection to say, hope to see you at the 55th edition!
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