By Ferruccio Martinotti
It's rare to come back home empty-handed from a foray into Corbett vs
Dempsey’s territorial waters, and this mission is no exception. Today, we're
talking about the Atlantic Pact, set between the ever-erupting, volcanic
Chicago scene and the anarcho-free stronghold of Amsterdam, that nothing and
no one will ever conquer. No drones, tanks, Patriots, or F-35s, but the only
weapons useful to humanity: reeds, pianos, drums, and basses. These Things
Happen provide them with their sophomore album, "A Gentle Reminder",
following their 2022 self-titled debut.
This album, recorded at Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago and at WNUR Studio, Northwestern University, confirms the band's recipe: original songs interspersed with renditions of Misha Mengelberg and Thelonious Monk, presented not in a slavish, calligraphic manner but through a contemporary reinterpretation of tradition.
The players on the field deserve to be met up close. Keefe Jackson, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet. Born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, he arrived in Chicago in 2001 and performed across US and Europe with the likes of Tomeka Reid, Tim Days, Dave Rempis, Mike Reed, Jeb Bishop, Jason Adasiewicz, Satoko Fujii, Ab Baars and Bill Meyer. His partner in crime on the other side of the Pond, Oscar Jan Hoogland, piano, is a top notch badass. A leading figure on the Dutch impro scene, Hoogland sprung onto the Amsterdam landscape around 20 years ago, at the forefront of a new group of improvisers to arrive and simultaneously uphold the tradition of New Dutch Swing even while tearing it apart. As always, collaborations define the breadth of a musician's chromatic palette and so, read here about Oscar: improvisation with Senegalese singer Mola Sylla and percussionist Frank Rosaly; sound installations and performances with Practical Music and his Phonograph Orchestra; cumbia with Ibelisse Guardia Ferraguttis’s Superinca and the Galactic Green; Ethiopian jazz and Eritrean traditional music with Semer Welday’s Adulis. His work with Arnold de Boer and the duo with mythologic Han Bennink incontrovertibly attests to the caliber of the artist. The rhythm section that supports the two pals features Jason Roebke on double bass (collaborations with Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Jeff Parker, Chad Taylor, and Rob Mazurek), who replaced Joshua Abrams during the process, and Mikel Patrick Avery on drums (Rob Mazurek, Marshall Allen Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker, and Kurt Vile on his CV).
The record: Jackson's opening track "20 Years Past 12 O'Clock," a sonic excursus that moves across multiple time scales, is followed by a piece by Hoogland dedicated to Ab Baars, "Upperclass Underground," and a reinterpretation of Monk’s "Green Chimneys," whose genesis is described as follows: "it started out as a punk song on the setlist before taking a thin-threaded turn on the night." Two original compositions keep the pace in the right mood, constantly balancing compositional rigor with a loose flow, free from excessive constraints. The revisitation of Mengelberg's "Een Beetje Zenuwachtig," from minor to major, pays homage to the legendary Ukrainian pianist's key change when he played "Round Midnight" in Chicago, while "Well You Needn't" pushes Monk "max so far," as Hoogland puts it, with a sculptural declination of an ongoing sonic pendulum swinging between modernity and tradition. The album closes with “Over het Zijn en het Hoera”, its title drawn from an absurdist story by Dutch writer and artist Armando.
As it has rightly been said, this is music that knows its history inside out and wears it lightly. The generosity of spirit here, between players, between cities, between Monk and Mengelberg, between composition and the moment, is the real subject. You know, sometimes things like these happen.
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