Bezau Beatz, Aug. 6-9, 2026, Bezau, Austria

By Eyal Hareuveni

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.

1st Day, Aug. 6

The festival opened with the Danish-Norwegian quartet Emmeluth’s Amoeba - alto sax player and bandleader Signe Emmeluth, her partner, guitarist Karl Bjorå, 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 Bjorå, 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.

2nd Day, Aug.7

 

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 Słuchaj!; 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 Biłat, 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 Biłat 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”.

Day 3, Aug 8

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 Mockūnas - 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 night ended at the same location with the first-ever performance of the Vanish trio - the one and only American vocal artist Shelley Hirsch, Swiss master double bass player Christian Weber, and master drummer Alfred Vogel. This trio released its debut album earlier this year on Boomslang that revolved around Hirsch’s stream of thoughts, observations, insights, and stories. It was clear from the first moment that Hirsch is a natural on stage, with a deeply sensual, touching presence that immediately bewitched the audience, as well as Weber and Vogel, who kept challenging her with fragmented rhythmic patterns. Hirsch transformed this performance into a funny, moving, and thoughtful love letter to the festival, to the appreciative audience, and especially to the “beautiful white-haired women of Bezau” and to Weber and Vogel. She did so with a remarkable, commanding ability to shape the English and the German languages to her needs, with amusing onomatopoeic games, and poetic quotes from jazz standards. I hope that this trio will find more opportunities to explore its great potential.

Day 4, Aug. 9

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 Līva 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.

Read More

MoE & Ikuro Takahashi featuring Signe Emmeluth - Live at Børsen Kulturhus

 

By William Rossi

MoE, the vocals, guitar and bass duo of Guro Moe and Håvard Skaset, is one of the most interesting rock acts around today, merging aggression and a punk attitude and with a love for improvised and experimental music. On this release they're joined by frequent collaborator Ikuro Takahashi on drums and alto saxophonist powerhouse Signe Emmeluth. While collaboration and experimentation are to be expected with this band this record is notable for mainly two reasons: it was recorded live in concert (which came as a surprise to me because their chemistry is so great that I'd assumed a lot of their records were recorded live) and it's the first MoE album in which frontwoman and backbone of the band Guro Moe trades her trusty electric bass for a double bass.

While each of the six untitled tracks has its own identity, the album is a full gig recording with the dynamics of a concert as a consequence. After a short minute of mood setting and acclimatization the four musicians get straight to business with pummeling, fluid drumming, furious guitar bashing and driving bass setting the stage for Emmeluth to shine on her sax. This no holds barred first track immediately shows just how tight this band is and will be throughout the album, the especially fantastic interplay between the sax and the guitar being a highlight. The second track brings the energy down a bit and rests on Moe's signature bass playing, simultaneously gluing the band together and laying down a delightfully off-kilter groove. Takahashi and Skaset take a step back, the former focusing mainly on the cymbals and the latter turning his guitar into something that resembles a synth pad, leaving the bass and sax to their polyrithmic dance. 

 

Track four, the midpoint of the concert, introduces hints of psychedelia, with its effects-heavy guitar and a saxophone that at times sounds like a half-remembered dream, but the music and the mood are in constant evolution and the underwater feeling is soon spirited away by a massive bowed bass riff and a desperate shriek.

In the latter half of the album the music takes on a mysterious quality and something else takes center stage: Moe's fantastic vocal performance. While the vocals and lyrics are present throughout the record (MoE is a rock band at their core at the end of the day) it feels like at a certain point all four musicians collectively decide to give priority to the vocal performance for a while. And what a performance it is! Full of passion, melody and angst, ranging from hissing whispers to operatic highs, often in conversation and sync with Emmeluth's altissimo notes, it's endlessly engaging and captivating Takahashi and Skaset then take on a more active role, guiding the band towards a final crescendo of distortion, blister-inducing bass playing and squealing sax overtones. For the second time on the record the band proves to be just as capable at bringing the energy down as building it up, something arguably harder to do convincingly, and they close the concert out with a slithering bowed bassline enveloped by Moe's soaring vocals.

All four musicians are extremely talented and have a very assertive voice. The challenge for the band then becomes creating music that's balanced and doesn't particularily revolve around any one musician and I think they pass this challenge with flying colors. The players know exactly what and when to play, when to be active and when to play support in order to serve the music first and foremost. Emmeluth in particular is fantastic at exchanging ideas with the others, always picking the right notes to embellish a guitar chord or supporting a vocal melody,. There are no flashy solos or traditional jazz or even rock forms, just collective creation of a kind of music that revolves around attitude and emotion. It's an elating, moving and lively album, beautifully recorded and presented. I hope to hear this lineup together again soon.

 

Released on digitally and on CD by Conrad Sound.

 

Read More

Jack Wright/Ben Bennett – Tourne (self-released, 2026)

 

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos 

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

Read More

Frangenheim / Keune - New Traces (scatterArchive, 2026)

By Martin Schray

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.

Read More

Melvin Gibbs - How Black Music Took Over the World (Basic Books/Hachette Book Group, 2026)

By Lee Rice Epstein

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.

Read More

Ines Terra and Santiago Bogacz - Boca De Acero (ScatterArchives, 2026)

By Hrayr Attarian

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.

Read More

XENOFOX @ Konfrontation, July 2026

This past month, the duo XENOFOX — Olaf Rupp on electric guitar and Rudi Fischerlehner on drums — performed at the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf during the 46th edition of Konfrontationen. Held under the motto ‘A Tribute to Hans Falb’ in honor of the festival’s founder, who passed away in December 2025, this year’s program carried an added weight: this edition may be the festival’s final one.

Read More

Caleb Wheeler Curtis - Ritual (Chill Tone Records, 2026)

By Brian Earley

Tempus fugit . A number of up and coming adventurous saxophonists who once surprised with their original voices suddenly, it seems, have been around for quite a while now. Immanuel Wilkins, Stacy Dillard, and Caleb Wheeler Curtis, the subject of this review, by now have expansive discographies. Wheeler’s album The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery was listed as a top album of 2024 on the Free Jazz Collective by one reviewer. Ritual, for goodness sakes, is the multi-instrumentalist’s sixth album as a leader . And it’s so easy to lose track and just call a musician “new.” A case study for mistaken novice is the pianist on this record, the legendary Orrin Evans. Evans had anchored the Philadelphia jazz scene and had been a mainstay in New York’s jazz community for decades when he won Downbeat’s Rising Star award. It was great for the maestro to get some long overdue recognition, but remains one of the most baffling episodes in the history of that magazine’s historic poll.

Evans after all, by that point, was already serving in a mentor capacity to Caleb Wheeler Curtis, signing him to Imani Records. Ritual advances the narrative even more, as this is the first album as a leader Curtis has recorded for a label other than Imani, going this time with Chill Tone Records.

Ritual is a beautifully free-roaming album that is somehow simultaneously tightly controlled. For me, there are two standout tracks on this album: the first, “Fantasmas,” and the last, the title track “Ritual.” “Fantasmas” is a wonderful rubato ballad for which Curtis composes a traditional AABA theme. Despite the thematic jacket, the piece just meanders and floats in a sea of rhythm and atmospherics. The rhythm is largely thanks to drummer Michael Sarin, who on this album often chooses not to simply play time. The atmospherics are mainly the result of a stunningly powerful guitar performance by Emmanuel Michael. Together, Sarin and Michael remind me of the ECM Paul Motion and Bill Frisell albums.

Joe Lovano often was the horn player on those ECMs, while here Caleb Wheeler Curtis’s tone is much more hard edged, made a little sharp and prickly by his saxophone of choice: the stritch. Wheeler’s website cites possibly a more accurate reference point: Wheeler “draws from a wide range of influences including progressive bop and post-Coltrane/Ornette free improvisation.” Actually, one might say a song like “Fantasmas” is like Ornette Coleman playing with Liberty Ellman.

“Ritual” is a stunning composition that leaves bold seams of silence intact throughout. After a mournful eight note melodic line, this time featuring Curtis on trumpet, multi-instrumentalist Henry Paz on flute, and Vincente Archer bowing the double bass, the band stops playing for a full four seconds–and this four seconds of silence contains so much weight and power as I listened for when, or if, the band would return. These gaps are slowly filled in by the musicians: first Curtis on saxophone, then Sarin on drums, and finally Emmanuel Michael’s guitar.

The album, I should note, is more straight ahead than some followers of the FJC may want it to be. While there is tremendous freedom on the record, even those who loved The True Story of Bears may find Ritual to be quieter and tamer by comparison. And don’t mistake my point, I love the two tunes referenced above, but this album is filled with beautiful songs (check out “Florence,” “Pond,” and “The End of Power,” for instance). The Bandcamp page for Ritual says Caleb Wheeler Curtis “celebrates the ritual and practice of communal music making,” and this should appeal to those of us who love this music not so much for its virtuosity, but for the kind of world it imagines and makes possible. A ritual provides solace through routine. I would like to imagine our world in such dedicated practice of community that doing so becomes routine.

Ritual can be ordered here: https://calebwheelercurtis.bandcamp.com/album/ritual

Read More

Skúli Sverrisson with Bill Frisell - For All Your Flowers (Newvelle Records, 2026)

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.

Read More

Mats Gustafsson / Kimmo Phjonen - Two Balls Are Enough (Trost, 2026)

By Sammy Stein 

Some musicians seem destined to play together at some point. Not always at the beginning of their careers, but as their music develops, it feels as if their paths are compelled to cross. Gustafsson and Pohjonen have been in the other’s orbit for some time, but it took a suggestion from Bogdan Benigar that the duo perform together at the 2024 Ljubljana Music Festival to provide the impetus and foundation of a pairing that has since enlivened stages at events such as the Tampere Jazz Happening in 2024, where their energised performance impressed audiences.

Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen plays the accordion in ways you would not imagine. He creates music that changes how the instrument is viewed. With roots in regional folk and classical music, Pohjonen is also influenced by rock and punk. He has written string music for the acclaimed Kronos Quartet and played in the art-rock band KTU alongside King Crimson percussionist Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn.

Pohjonen uses accordions with additions to create enhanced effects, and his delivery has revolutionised accordion music and visual performances. He has, in effect, created a genre of his own, with the accordion at its heart. For the last thirty years, he has toured the world, taking part in events, festivals, and playing in different venues. His solo 5-row accordion project featured extreme and original compositions with effects and performances with lights and sounds. His custom-made accordion, along with his imaginative playing, has given him a renown as one of music’s most intriguing characters. He has released several albums and toured extensively in Europe, Asia, and America.  

Swedish musician Mats Gustafsson needs little introduction to improvised music appreciators and is also known for his experimental music, his diversions into punk, rock, classical, and his dynamic performances. He has composed for orchestras, created solo recordings, and toured extensively, as well as being a writer for jazz magazines.

Both musicians have strong stage presence and dynamic personalities, yet each is capable of pulling back to leave space. Their strong personalities could see them clash, but they also have the altruism and connection to others that true musicians possess, so as a duo, they create music both individual to each musician and that stands as duo work. Their similarities and differences combine to create a connection where they are pushed to excel beyond their normal range. It is clear from this recording that ‘Two Balls Are Enough’ brings together kindred spirits, each of whom contributes equally.

Gustafsson told me, “The duo was initiated by Bogdan Benigar, a mutual friend of Pohjonen and me. I have admired Kimmo for years. He may be slightly from another side of the improvised music spectrum, but the energy he is playing with is very appealing. He has amazing levels of energy, and the vibe and feel of the music is one hundred percent 100 % DIY.

We are both the same age, and both spring from punk rock in our teens. Our stupid interest in ice hockey and saunas unites us even more. This is just the beginning. The way Kimmo is using samplers and electronics with his accordion is heaven-sent.”

Both appreciate the capabilities of their instruments but embrace technology and effects that enhance and work with the sonic measurements of their instruments. Since that inspired curation in 2024, they have been blending their sound worlds, and ‘Two Balls are Enough’ is their first album out on Trost Records.

The opener, ‘Ice Heaven’ is a fierce, sparking, energy-laden piece, with intricate, heavy rhythmic patterns, backed by harmonics between the two musicians that bind and create a wholeness to the divergent patterns. Gustafsson unleashes a stentorian solo, while Pohjonen maintains harmonies and high-energy, powerful lines behind. The unified lines are loud, forceful, and incredibly effective in contrast.

‘Magna’ combines chords from the accordion with electronics and screaming effects across a pounding, intense litany of rhythms. A piece of three sections, divided by total silences, this is an intriguing listen. And wholly irreverent.

‘Snow.Linat’ is gentle, with Gustafsson’s flute floating, whispering over the constantly shifting soundscape foundation. Some sections feel powerful and intense, with the flute slashing through, contrasting with emotive, delicate sections, where the accordion’s voice sings, adorned with breathy vocal tones. The sudden shift to a powerful, pithy solo from the sax is gorgeous, and the intensity becomes palpable.

The title track is a messy, joyful, eclectic mix of pops, whistles, accordion chords, and electronic effects, into which Gustafsson’s flute weaves and dives. The track sums up the essence of the album, distilled into just over two minutes of chaotic mayhem, while ‘Its Body Falls Open’ is a tinkling, high-pitched maelstrom of swirling sounds and effects, topped by Gustafsson’s eccentric sax playing and jittering accordion, with ‘Worn Out Words’ providing more of the same.

‘Slow Down The Beating’ is a track that creates deep impact. It has gentleness, with the flute introducing a melodic section before a percussive deluge of changing patterns. This is backed by intricate beats and rhythms, and a development into a raw, pared-back piece with some beautiful rhythmic clashes and dynamic changes over a steady background beat.

‘Naga’ is an exemplar of interaction between two minds with chaotic intent, yet a definitive directive, the result of which is a confident exchange of ideas, manifestations and rhythms that rise and fall, creating an engaging listen. The musical foundations shape-shift, creating powerful imagery and an aural dynamism that evokes spirit. The tautness of the atmosphere is tempered with melodic lines from Gustafsson, as well as his fulgurating, strident phrasing.

“Backengrillen 1” (maybe named after the punk band Gustafsson plays in) creates epic grandeur yet is surprisingly intimate and filled with rustic beauty. The repeated melody on the sax intensifies and provides a gentler interlude before Gustafsson varies the phrasing, and all the while the rapid accordion runs provide a tight but moving backdrop.

Gustafsson and Pohjonen have been touring regularly over the last couple of years, and the release of ‘Two Balls are Enough’ demonstrates the powerful connection these two musicians have.

I commented to Gustafsson that the accordion was not an instrument I really liked – until I heard this. His response was, “Same here - it was never my favourite instrument, but after working with Kimmo, and also some insane Norwegian players: Kalle Moberg, and Ida Lövli (fantastic!) and Frode Hatli - I had to change my mind. It is a funny instrument!. I never thought I would work seriously with anyone playing it, but ha!”

(Moberg has recorded with Nilssen Love, Hakion thelin and many more, Lovli recorded her debut album Skumring (Twilight) on Lawo Classics, and Hatli is a composer who has released several albums and is part of multicultural projects worldwide).

Recordings like this unite different genres and also expand the possibilities of instruments, and maybe, just maybe, change how we hear and feel music.

To quote Gustafsson – “This is just the beginning.”

Read More