Serious Series 2025

By Paul Acquaro

FRIDAY

It's a full house at the Exploratorium, a performance space tucked away in Berlin's bubbling Kreuzberg district. The Serious Series, a small but rather astounding avant-garde and experimental music festival, now in its 13th edition, is about to begin. The organizers of the event also happen to be the first performers: saxophonist Anna Kaluza and bassist Jan Roder. 

 

 

The duo, which released an album in 2022, Am Frankfurter Tor (Relative Pitch), helped ease the crowd into the music. Gentle, at first, Kaluza's tone was subdued and notes flowing while Roder filled the lower-register with quick, supportive walking lines. Playing acoustically, without amplification, the sound was crisp and balanced, so clear that one could hear his musical thoughts as he hummed his lines (no, not like Keith Jarrett's hair-raising screeches) behind Kaluza's whimsical melodic snippets. Their music unfolded like a chain of small musical events, tallying up to a cohesive composition in the end. 

 

 

Similar could be said of the entire festival which stretched out for three nights of the weekend. Each night presented three groups, each of which seemed to both contrast and compliment the other. Following Kaluza and Roder was the trio of pianist Marina Džukljev, bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener who released the excellent recording Industriesalon (Trouble in the East) earlier this year. Here, they started off with a provocative bass-line, followed by a tense run of notes from the piano and a very disciplined use of percussion. Džukljev's classical background provided a framing for their music as she created a lush harmonic bed with an austere, tense, melody. Weber and Griener worked deftly to sustain the tension and amp up the excitement as the music gained momentum, traveling further and further out. The explosive moments played well the quieter, exploratory ones, leaving the audience primed and ready for the last set of the night. 

 

 

British saxophonist Evan Parker and dutch woodwindist Peter van Bergen took the stage area and began the set with Van Bergen's gentle bass clarinet throbbing against a jittery melody from Parker's soprano saxophone, kinetic and nuanced interplay ensued. For the next piece, van Bergen switched to the the contrabass clarinet, an instrument whose range and timbre is capable of separating the soul from the body. His approach stopped short of that, though he did offer deep, woodsy tones in a captivating solo piece. Parker also performed a solo piece in his signature circular breathing style with quick wide intervallic jumps and kaleidoscopic melodic ideas. The two closed the set with an agitated piece featuring the contra-bass clarinet and soprano sax, both giving each other plenty of sonic space.

SATURDAY

The audience was a bit thinner on the second night, likely due to the sheer number of concerts and events happening around the city - a quick look at echtzeitmusik.de , the northern light of the experimental music scene, was basically a direct injection of FOMO. 

 

However, the opening act of trumpeter Artur Majewski and guitarist/daxophonist Kazuhisa Uchihashi was not one to miss. Majewski fed his trumpet through electronic processing to create an atmospheric and metallic tone, while Uchihashi summoned souls on the intriguingly rare daxophone - essentially a wooden theremin played with a bow that creates sounds spaning from human-like complaining to unearthly wailing. Uchihashi, who collaborated closely with the instruments creator Hans Reichel, is a master of the sensitive instrument and together with the straight ahead but adorned tones of the trumpet, began generating a talking drum like sound from and fell into a medium tempo groove that as it went on, began to unravel. Uchihashi later switched to guitar and the conversation flowed easily between melodic improvisations and eerie UFO effects. 

 

 

The duo was followed by Biliana Voutchkova's Dara String quartet, comprised of Voutchkova and Joanna Mattrey on violin, Isidora Edwards on cello and Vinicius Cajado on bass. The quartet began with a great dissonance, Cajado's bass throbbed as the others' legato notes had a swirling effect. Then, emerging from the audience, in what was first probably blamed a ring-tone, were sounds of bird chirps and hissing, but with which the group was tonally in sync. The music progressed slowly, each player taking the music in different directions. Then, things got wild at the Exploratorium: Cajado took percussion mallets to his strings, Mattrey flipped her instrument upside down, while Voutchkova began making thirsty zombie sounds. Perhaps it was somehow the tinfoil wad between Edwards' strings that then helped bring the group back together to a composed end. 

 

 

The final set of the night began quietly, so much so that a clink of a glass in the audience was louder than the fractured muted tones from saxophonist Matthias Schubert's quartet with Emily Wittbrodt on cello, Ronny Graupe on guitar and Christian Marien on drums. Schubert's keys clapping was audible as was Graupe's playing of the tuning pegs of his 8 string guitar. The key to listening, however, was patience. Eventually with a boom from Marien, the disparate tones cohered into more abrasive tone from the sax, textures from the guitar and cascade of musical lines from the cello. The next piece was more rhythmic and the final one was the head-bopping rocker with a baroque B-section and a heavy metal coda.

SUNDAY

The final evening, Sunday, began with the effervescent PIVOT, a duo featuring American ex-pats Liz Allbee on trumpet and Chris Heenan on contrabass clarinet. From the start, the rich, reverberant and flatulent tones of the contrabass clarinet laid an unusual sonic foundation. Building on subtle rhythmic figures, the duo engaged in a call-and-response that replaced melody and harmony with intention and timing. Percussive blats from Heenan were met with agitated jabs from Allbee, who also explored many the possible configurations of her horn. Overall, the set was a playful start to the evening. 

 

 

Guitarist Olaf Rupp began his set with an exploratory set of chord fragments on a well-worn classical guitar. Connected though a stream of consciousness, the tonal nodules and fleeting runs were delivered with alternating density. The chord voicings were unexpected - hardly a B♭7♭5 or E7♭9 to be heard, but rather ones that if written out would look like calculus. An uptempo section followed, then the application of a violin bow to the guitar strings. A fully satisfying moment came towards the end where the various strands of notes, rhythms and chord parts came idiosyncratically and wonderfully together. 

 

The festival's closer, renowned pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, opened the set with a series of bright chords at a mid-tempo gait. Saxophonist Henrik Walsdorff jumped in with a distinctly articulated and slightly sour melody. Then, bassist Antonio Borghini and Jan Leipnitz pushed the pulse and tempo towards an uptempo romp. The latter was a standout, his drumming fitting the music perfectly, with both light and heavy technique behind its swing. Schlippenbach, still spry at the keyboard, dropped fiery phrases between the angular riffs bookending the tunes.

 

A strong end to an excellent festival, Serious Series 2025, returning after a short hiatus last year, provided a showcase of the diverse and creative improvisational music scene in Berlin and beyond. Looking forward to the next one! 

 

 

 

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Serious Series 2023

By Paul Acquaro (text) and Cristina Marx (photos)

The Uferstudios, in Berlin's Wedding district, sit on the edge of the Panke, a small creek that cuts through the city from north to south. This collection of low red-brick buildings that once housed public transit workshop is now the long-term home of studios and theaters dedicated to dance. However, on a recent mild mid-December weekend, a theater space near the entrance to complex provided a live report on the state of avant-garde jazz and improvised music in the German capital.

The Serious Series, now in it's thirteenth year, is curated by pianist Achim Kaufmann and woodwind player Frank Gratkowski who took over programming from musicians Kathrin Pechlof and Christian Weidner in 2019. The program, a rich three nights of musical acts, draws heavily from the fertile Berlin music scene as well as reaching out to Europe and the USA. 

 

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15

 

The event began on Friday evening with a fantastic solo set by woodwindist Tobias Delius whose loose limbered demeanor is a perfect compliment to his exuberant playing style. Delius intersperses sudden squawks and vocalization into his melodic and bouncing lines, switching between Bb clarinet and tenor saxophone, and swinging breathlessly from dark and grumbling motives to buoyant and melodic ideas. Though the stage area was deep and wide, Delius filled the space with an inviting warmth. The pieces he played veered between melodic and atonal, the final one, dedicated to his longtime colleague cellist Tristan Honsinger who passed away this year, was a sweetly melodic theme.

The second set of the festival was by the long standing duo of guitarist Olaf Rupp and cellist Ulrike Brand. Having worked for many years together, the two musicians seem to be more a quantum entanglement than just a duo. Tones from one instrument instantly cause a reaction from the other so finely calibrated that one could imagine that even if the two were not within earshot, they would still be as acutely intertwined.

At some point, Rupp plucked a sequence of notes, Brand produced a gently droning reply, which became the catalyst of the guitarists next tone. What then began as a slowly forming soundscape drew to an understated peak. Brand played a sweeping, arcing melody line that settled into legato notes as Rupp clicked on the distortion. At times, both used bows to sculpt their sound. Through their sympathetic musical interactions, the two engage in a natural ebb and flow of ideas and uncannily calibrated responses.

The first night was rounded out by the duo of pianist Steve Beresford and trombonist Sebi Tramontana. Originally programmed as a trio, Frank Gratkowski was unfortunately sick and unable to perform. Undeterred, the two brought the evening to a successful close with humorous set of short pieces.

They began with a whimsical melody from Beresford and a muted melodic line from Tramontana. Then, an elbow to the the keyboard and the consonant melody splintered, Beresford forcefully expelling tonal shards and Tramontana sliding exuberantly through notes. Between - and during - the pieces, Beresford prepared and re-prepared the inside of the piano. He seemed to pull more and more playthings from the instrument's inside, including a penny whistle, what looked like an exercise weight, a rubber duck and a crackling electronic device that he used to augment the musical atmosphere. At one point, he flogged the strings of the piano with a cloth and in addition to the quivering sound from the strings, visible clouds of dust wafted out from the instrument. Tramontana too joined in with humorous vocalizations through his horn among some other extended techniques. 

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16

Saturday opened with a solo percussion set by French percussionist Toma Gouband featuring the unique use of plants as drumsticks, an array of tiny bells a top the single drum, and a bass pedal that knocked on a piled of bricks. In a sense, the performance could be called hyper-local as Gouband ingeniously incorporated plants sourced from the banks of the Panke as musical devices. Intense and focused, the set began with a curious and engaging energy but whose intense minimalism veered towards monotony after a bit.

The trio of Achim Kaufmann, woodwindist Michael Moore and bassist Nick Dunston picked up the energy again in a set that dazzled with ferocity and calmed with swinging coolness. Though first time performing as a trio, all three had performed with each other in different combinations, especially Kaufmann and Moore who have been playing together since 1998, as a trio they gelled quickly. 

Starting with a quiet but quickly moving improvisation, Kaufmann offered some sparse chords while Moore added a gentle melody with some slight dissonant moments over Dunston's deep, walking groove. The group's music fell somewhere on the "jazzier" side of the spectrum without landing in anything routine or staid. Next, the group engaged in an experimental exchange with Moore getting edgier and Dunston going beyond the strings with his bow. Playing with songs from Herbie Nichols mixed with compositions from Kaufmann and Moore, the music was seamlessly connected by buzzing freely improvised passages.

Drummer Michael Vatcher's project with electronics and dancers provided an exciting ending to the night. Taught interplay between Vatcher at the drum kit and Richard Barrett and his self built electronics provided a percolating soundscape for the two dancers, Liat Waysbort and Balder Hansen, to move fluidly around - and under - the musicians. Perhaps the most unusual moments, aside from some surprisingly agile movements from the dancers, was a dynamic exchange between Barrett's electronics and Vatcher playing a saw.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17

Sunday's concerts began with Serious Series' previous organizer and harpist Kathrin Pechlof with her newly formed Radical Empathy sextet. Pechlof is this year's winner of the SWR Jazzpreis and the piece, written for the group in particular, will be recorded at the broadcaster's studio in the coming months. In addition to Pechlof is Christian Weidner on alto saxophone, Elias Stemeseder on synthesizer and harpsichord, Robert Landfermann on bass, Leif Berger playing drums and finally Kaufmann on piano. The group's music is fluid, even ocean like, with slowly ebbing and flowing tidal movements, and ever lapping waves of sound bisected by melodic crosscurrents. During the set the occasional wave crested and blasts of free improvisation brought on musical white caps. 

 

 

The set began plinkingly with an exchange of the harp and harpsicord's delicate tones. Kaufmann took the first solo, one which slowly formed out the collective playing and ending with stabbing chords. At the same time, Landerferman's bass was a steady but restrained presence, providing a tension-full drone, foreshadowing the turmoil on the horizon. Weidner's sax provided occasional contrasting textures via overblown passages that resolved back into the group full sound. The set-long piece ended in a series of climatic passages, the final an excitingly arrhythmic peak, resolving satisfyingly after the long build-up.

Next, the ACM trio featuring pianist Celine Voccia, saxophonist Anna Kaluza and standing in for bassist Matthias Bauer, Meinrad Kneer (chosen, not just for his improvisational prowess but perhaps also that his first initial required no changes to the band's name), took the stage area to continue the evenings musical journey - though with a more spontaneous approach.

 

 

 

The trio's music exemplified the subtleties that come from listening closely to each other. In their three way conversation, Voccia masterfully crafted rich phrases that ranged from lightly melodic to dynamically urgent, giving the music a push and pull reflected by Kaluza who too swung between blasts of melodic fragments and textural passages. Kneer, whose approach covered the full spectrum of his instrument, fit in perfectly. Throughout the set, Voccia added tension to the music, often with a focus on the lower end of the keyboard, while Kaluza contributed as much tonal shading as she did bright powerful moments and Kneer provided rooted and poignant counter arguments. 

 

The closing act was an unexpected blast of energy in the form of the art-punk prog-jazz project Brique from pianist Eve Risser with the singer Bianca Iannuzzi, the acoustic bass playing of Luc Ex and the rock oriented drumming of Francesco Pastacaldi. The group was a study in contrasts with Risser's sometimes classically oriented playing mixing with Iannuzzi's no-wave/operatic singing and the commanding punk-like bass and drum work of Ex and Pastacaldi. Just as edgy as the music, with its strong punk attitude, was the lyrical content. While many of the details have melted away, the attitude remains. For example, one song was drawn from letters from patients in a psychiatric hospital in the 1980s. In general, the eclectic rock pulse and classical elements came together in an alluring retro-futuristic way.

 

The group's energetic set came to an even more energetic encore as Risser ran to the back of the hall to pick up a flute and welcome two guests, namely her Red Desert Orchestra collaborators, trombonist Matthias Mueller and trumpeter Nils Ostendorf. The wildly chaotic brass-band dance party brought the Serious Series to a seriously fun conclusion.

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