My first visit to the Bezau Beatz festival, located in a small village in a valley in the Bregenz Forest region of the Austrian Alps, and founded by drummer and head of Boomslang Records Alfred Vogel, and now run together with another Bezau native, the Berlin-based drummer Valentin Schuster. This festival enjoys the growing pool of musicians who have already released their work on Boomslang Records, but also suggests an experience that is more than musical, of life in a small, peaceful, and laidback community that disarms you instantly of the restless, tension-filled atmosphere of urban landscapes and fosters creativity that enjoys its beautiful, natural scenery.
First Day, Thursday, Aug. 7
On each day, at noon, at the festival HQ at Hotel Post, Little Konzett, the head of Little Big Beat Studios in Liechtenstein (and a mastering studio near Bezau), conducted a Deep Listening Session, evoking the almost ancient art of listening to vinyl in a high-end, audiophile system, recorded and produced exclusively through analog equipment, with no digital processing, in nthe highest standards possible. In our time, where most music is consumed by streaming services, through cell phones, and in a much inferior quality, it was a sweet reminder about the wonders and sheer joy of listening to just simple, good music through such a superb system.
The first performance of the festival took place at the Hotel Post lobby and was by Leipzig-based quartet Stax, headed by drummer-composer Max Stadtfeld, and featuring tenor sax player Matthew Halpim, guitarist Bertream Burkert, and double bass player Reza Askari. Stax’ third album, Fancy Future (Boomslang, 2024) marked Stadtfeld’s forward-thinking compositional ideas. The melodic and rhythmic core of his compositions is articulated by Halpin and Askari, while Stattdtfeld’s free drumming and Burkert’s effects-laden electric guitar playing deconstruct and reconstruct the melodic and rhythmic ideas, often in ironic and even subversive manners, transforming them into prog-rock or twangy American terrains, and keep feeding the tension.
Next, at Hotel Post basement, aka SuBBwayZ, the Berlin-based Denkyū Unlimited duo of sound artists, bassist Bernhard Hollinger and drummer Fabian Rösch, sketched dark. free improvised soundscapes that introduced the rhythmic sound of lightbulbs, and lightbulbs as light sculpture (an art pioneered by Berlin-based percussionist Michael Vorfeld). Later, the festival moved to the local locksmith’s workshop, Kunstschmiede Figer, which hosted the Bremen-based contemporary string quartet Pulse (violinist Johannes Haase and Susanne Hapf, violist Yuko Hara, and cellist Jakob Nierenz) with Berlin-based drummer Tilo Weber for an intimate, subtle, and playful set of compositions that used the extended percussive bowing techniques of Pulse and visited West-African, Gnawa rhythmic patterns.
Later that Evening, at the Festival’s main stage, Remise Wälderbähnle. The old steam locomotive garage, Cologne-based pianist-composer Felix Hauptmann presented his sextet Serpentine (flutist Jorik Bergman, alto sax player Fabian Dudek, bassist Ursula Wienken, vibes player Samuel Mastorakis, and drummer Leif Berger, who is also playing in Hauptmann Percussion Trio), on its second-ever performance, and before recording its debut album. Hauptmann is a brilliant composer who insists on his idiosyncratic vision, constantly shifting, labyrinthine rhythmic patterns, and complex, detailed textures, which make full use of the profound interplay between himself, excellent drummer Berger, and vibes player Mastorakis. At times, the Serpentine sextet sounded as if corresponding with Tim Berne’s serpentine compositions and the unique manner the compositional ideas feed the improvised parts, and vice versa. A promising performance that made me go through Hauptmann's entire discography.
Second Day, Friday, Aug. 8
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| How Noisy Are The Rooms? |
The morning concert Kunstschmiede Figer was titled Promoter’s Brunch (coffee and cakes were served) and featured organizers-drummers Vogel and Schuster’s bands. Vogel’s How Noisy Are The Rooms? with Berlin-based vocal artist Almut Kühne and tutntables wizard Joke Lanz, released earlier this year, its sophomore album (Tühü, Boomslang, 2025). The trio played an uplifting, free improvised set, full of unpredictable sonic inventions, that often left the audience smiling with joy. Kühne spread her magic with a stream of abstract vocalizations and quotes from the poetry of German visual artist and poetess Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (the Dada baroness), with Joke Lanz stretching and mutating her phrasing and Vogel locking it in brief grooves. The dynamics of this trio were a treat for the ears and eyes.
Schuster’s Berlin-based Crutches is a completely different beast. This quartet features Jan Frisch on a double-neck bass-guitar, Olga Reznichenko on keytar and bass synth, and Laure Boer on what she aptly calls withctronics (telephone, bowed monochord, mikes, electronics, and voice). Crutches calls its music tongue-in-cheek, acrobatic punk with metric ambivalence and offers yin-yang dynamics. Schuster, with his prog-metal drumming (you could hear echoes of Meshuggah), and Frisch’s mathematical guitar bass lines, were countered by ironic, disruptive responses by Boer and Reznichenko, and this kind of playful tension fed the hyperactive dynamics. For the encore, the two bands joined together and deepened this powerful, energetic vibe, with Kühne leading with her dadaist vocalizations, Boer and Joke Lanz forging a subversive alliance, and Vogel and Schuster locking the sonic mayhem in an engaging groove.
The afternoon program, back at the Remise, began with the Leipzig-based Olga Reznichenko Trio, with the Russia-born Reznichenko on piano, double bass player Lorenz Heigenhuber, and drummer Stadtfeld. This trio has already released two albums and established a deep, intuitive affinity that has translated remarkably Reznichenko’s rich and unorthodox melodic ideas, always spiced with a quirky sense of irony (one of the pieces was titled “A Ballad For a Cowboy Who Is Yet To Find Out About Fear”), and performed with commanding rhythmic energy that bring to mind the hypnotic grooves of Nik Bärtsch. The trio concluded the set with a beautiful homage to the great Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky.
Back at Hotel Post SuBBwayZ, the Berlin-based GORZ duo of Argentinian-born vocalist-guitarist Lara Alarcón and Swiss guitarist Cyrill Ferrari filled the room with extroverted, fast, and seductive rhythmic songs that mixed raw and noisy, killer black metal riffs, and dramatic, athletic dances that often sounded as if blending Arto Lindsay’s skronk world with Nina Hagen.
Back at the Remise, the Berlin-based sextet Deranged Practicals of double bass player Felix Henkelhausen, with trumpeter Percy Pursglove, tenor sax player Philipp Gropper, vibes player Evi Filippou, pianist Elias Stemeseder, and drummer Philip Dornbusch, performed brilliantly pieces from the sextet’s debut, self-titled album (Fun in the Church, 2024). Deranged Practicals inhabits Henkelhausen’s rhythmic counterpoint and labyrinthine, unraveling forms, always on the verge of complete yet joyful chaos, but, miraculously, the puzzle-like, contrapuntal dynamics not only reflect the complex polyrhythmic music but drive the individual, commanding solos.
Before ending the night, the audience jumped into the old Wälderbähnle (forest railway), and after two stops, the 16-year-old DJ INNX (Marlon Ebner-Innauer) made everyone dance. The night ended with the London-based Witch N’ Monk duo of Colombian flutist Mauricio Velasierra and anarchic soprano-guitarist Heidi Heidelberg, who offered punkish-shamanic songs where Velasierra’s South American flutes were enhanced into otherworldly percussive instruments.
Third Day, Saturday, Aug. 9.
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| Liudas Mockūnas |
The morning concert at the old Kirche Reuthe featured the Lithuanian quartet Ward 4, led by sax player (tenor, soprano, and sopranino saxes) Liudas Mockūnas, with two tuba players - Simonas Kaupinis and Mikas Kurtinaitis, and drummer Arnas Mikalkėnas. The quartet played a few extended pieces that highlighted not only its unorthodox instrumentation but its wisdom and far-reaching, poetic musical vision. It opened with an insightful version of one of Anthony Braxton’s early compositions, with the tuba players playing the rhythmic parts, Mikalkėnas colors it with delicate touches, and Mockūnas' wise solo expands its complex rhythmic ideas. The quartet continued with another remarkable composition, a dedication to the iconic Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza IX” (for alto saxophone, 1981), which Mockūnas confessed that he never managed to play properly, that, again, exhausted the resourcefulness, irreverent musical choices, and the rare dynamics of Ward 4, beautifully resonated in the acoustics of Kirche Reuthe.
The afternoon program, back at Hotel Post SuBBwayZ, featured the Berlin-based percussionist Joss Turnbull, who presented his "struggle drumming", playing the Persian percussive instrument, tombak, through many effects and live-processing, and creating layered, urgent, and radical soundscapes that take this instrument into futurist sonic landscapes. Soon after, the audience moved to the nearby Mittelschule Bezau and enjoyed the touching conclusion of the Hear and Now workshop of choreographer and dancer Naïma Mazic and vibes player Evi Filippou for local participants, featuring two promising children.
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| Benoît Delbecq |
Later, at the Remise, French master pianist-composer Benoît Delbecq performed a solo set on a prepared piano and played a most poetic program that encompassed his rich musical universe, referencing the Chicago Loop, the spiritual architecture of Japanese Tadao Ando, a dedication to Steve Lacy, and the black paintings of the late French painter Pierre Soulages. Delbeck offers enigmatic, deep conversations with the resonating piano, often sounding as if juggling between struggling to discipline the prepared piano or surrendering to its unpredictable percussive sounds, but always with a calm, almost nonchalant authority. He concluded with this an encore, a moving, poetic adaptation of Don Cherry’s “Mopti”, without any piano preparations, that cemented, again, his profound, creative spirit.
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| Stemeseder-Lillinger UMBRA |
Then Bezau Beatz offered another opportunity for the audience to flex its muscles and dance with the Ghanaian, Austria-based Kofi Quarshie and Agoo Group at the open Dorfplatz. Later, back on Remise, the Stemeseder-Lillinger UMBRA modular quartet of Austrian pianist Elias Stemeseder, German drummer Christian Lillinger, augmented by American trumpeter Adam O'Farrill and double bass playerJoe Sanderse (who recorded themselves a day before the festival at the Little Big Beat Studios), played an acoustic set of the ever-growing Umbra compositions. Umbra is a sonic lab that focuses on a synthesis of various,genre-defying musical systems, but most of all, it stresses the immediate, deep, and telepathic interplay of Stemeseder and Lillinger. They execute the most complex, layered musical ideas with such a poetic, spellbinding manner, with Lillinger dancing, literally, on his drum set, moving as if painting the musical flow in the air. It took O’Farill and Sanderse a while to find their place in such an elaborate sonic ecosystem, but once they fit in, the music sounded as if it had unstoppable natural power of its own.
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| Jim Black |
The night ended at Hotel Post Lobby with Meow, the wildest band of American, Berlin-based drummer Jim Black (dressed in a cat t-shirt), with vocalist Cansu Tanrıkulu, keyboard player Liz Kosack (with a cat mask), and bassist Dan Peter Sundland. This quartet releases its debut album MICE! (Self-Release, 2020) that somehow went under the radar and missed its aggressive, furr-improvising, groom metal meets, synth-pop, nonsensical hip-hop, with Black’s synthesized Barry White-like vocals and heavy Balkan beats (check Black’s nineties Pachora band). Yes, Meow declares that it detests programmatic music and cat puns. Meow cat stand it. Mewo protests and sings about feline-gender issues (“It Is Hard Being Mr. Pussy”). Meow had all the right ingredients to keep its audience dancing and shouting meows whenever the charming, charismatic Tanrıkulu called: Come on, Cats after teasing the audience for almost an hour. Meow returned for another half an hour encore and made sure that all would dream about singing felines in all colors and variations.
The festival ended on Sunday morning with a relaxed, sensual set by Portuguese vocalist Joana Raquel and her Queda Áscua quartet, with a taste of the traditional farmers' breakfast of this region, Riebl (a kind of cider), and coffee, at the Remise.
Bezau Beatz Orchestra of Good Hope - Live at Bezau Beatz 2024 (Boomslang, 2025)
During the festival, Boomslang Records released the debut album of the Bezau Betaz Orchestra of Good Hope, a few weeks before it coming performance in the Saalfelden Festival. This free jazz nonet was organized by Vogel and Argentinian pianist Leo Genovese, and features new and old associates of Vogel - Argentinian tenor sax player Camila Nebbia, baritone sax player Sofia Salvo, and double bass player Demian Cabaud, Portuguese trumpeter Luís Vicente, and João Pedro Brandão, and Swiss bass clarinetist Lucien Dubuis. This Orchestra was recorded live at the Remise during the previous edition of Bezau Beatz festival.
The democratic Orchestra of cosmic sisters and brothers celebrated Vogel’s return to performing and running the festival after being diagnosed with Leukemia and going through a tasking, long therapy. The 57-minute, fiery “Suite of Good Hope” was indeed a spiritual celebration of music and life, focusing on generous, compassionate dynamics and spreading the healing vibrations of powerful, free improvised music. Vogel, who was in top form, said that he felt as if he was running through a finishing line.
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