Josh Berman Trio – Everybody Else’s Life, Too (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2026)

By Nick Ostrum

Everybody Else’s Life, Too is the latest from Josh Berman, a stalwart of the Chicago scene still somewhat underappreciated outside of his hometown. He has played the gamut of Chicago improvisors (including Mars Williams’ A Very Ayler Xmas project, the all-too-short-lived Michael Zerrang and the Blue Lights, and Ken Vandermark’s Audio One), sneaked across the Atlantic to record with Paul Lytton, Edward Perraud, and Jon Rune Strøm, and led several of his own bands. On this one, he is joined by bassist Jason Roebke – a reliably punchy oft-times sideman of Chicago circles - and the indefatigable drummer Chris Corsano for a live date at Chicago’s Constellation from 2025.

I cannot say there is much surprising here if you are familiar with Berman’s previous headline albums. That said, this is more of what this listener wants rather than simply more of the same. Berman clearly has a thing for bop, in its various forms, and maybe the title is even a nod to his appreciation of those who came before and inspired him. The songs on here start with a catchy head, or a few more plodding, smokey ones, and from there break down into spurs, knotty angles, and spindly striations. One could play this album for someone who thought Miles went too far when he went electric, or Coltrane with Ascension, and they would happily bob their head along with Roebke’s walking bass or Corsano’s steady patter behind Berman’s jumpy melodies. But restricting this to such a palatable bridge would miss the other point, which lies in the free form sections that, yes, are tied to the head but in a sensual way that deviates from its rhythm, tune, and key in favor of capturing, extending, and straining the intricacies of a spontaneous moment. Those sections are when Berman stretches into flutters, crackles, and bites, when Roebke leans into timbre, and Corsano eschews rhythm for sound.

Those sections are limited; in this case I think for the better. That is not because trio cannot stretch out into the unknown. (Take the eighth cut, Scale, as an example of their exploratory chops.) Instead, it is because they do so within Berman’s bookending melodic confines that set the direction and mark the terminal point. And were those themes not inspired, this would fall flat. But they are and do not. For doubters, just listen to the wonderfully lonesome and wistful closer, Second Look, where Corsano’s brushes lay a soft-rain backdrop to Berman’s and Roebke’s melancholic dialog.

Everybody Else’s Life, Toois much in the vein of a different Josh Berman Trio’s A Dance and a Hop (2015) and should be considered an expansion of that project. Again, you might well know what to expect if you have been following Berman already, but that does not make what you hear any less satisfying.

Everybody Else’s Life, Too is available download from Bandcamp and a CD from a few choice independent music outlets. See the CvD website for more.

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Summer Bummer in Focus

At the end of this summer, the Free Jazz Blog will be heading to Antwerp to check out the Summer Bummer festival. Held over the last weekend of August, it's been on our 'bucket list' of festivals over the past few years as its reputation has leaked across the ethers. Today, we present an interview with programmer Koen Vandenhoudt, about the festival's origin and concept ... but first a short impression of event from the festival itself:

Paul Acquaro: How did the very first edition of the festival come into being?

Koen Vandenhoudt: The first edition of Summer Bummer came into being as the celebration of 25 years of Freakscene, my radio show at Antwerp’s Radio Centraal, so originally it was Freakscene’s Summer Bummer. But even then it was a combined effort of music enthusiasts, supportive artists and a lot of volunteers that made and still make it happen.

PA: What do you think distinguishes your festival from others in Europe?

KV: We work purely by content, and though we pioneer many artists and give chances to lesser known and emerging artists, we go less by trends or commercial choices. At Summer Bummer we often present artists in constellations that have never happened before or that are brand new. That’s super exciting but hard to promote. People want the hear and see things before hand. So to see people coming from all over the world to witness this musical adventure, gives us a good feeling. It’s a trust kind of thing built over the years.

Another important thing is that we never do overlaps. We use multiple stages but always make sure that people can see all the shows -- and very important, it’s a community thing, where people can hang out, meet the artists, participate in an installation, enjoy some nice homemade food or score some excellent records.

PA: What guides your programming choices from year to year?

KV: We would like to say the artists and the ever changing amazing music they make. The international network and knowledge we built from within our Sound in Motion organization - volunteers, professionals, artists and like minded organizations - over all the years is pretty vast. This means that from all over the world we are continuously fed with the ins and outs of the music world.

On top of that, we support musicians over the long term, from the early stages, where the artist is new and unknown, to the moment where the international stage starts noticing.

PA: How do you decide when a project is “right” for the festival?

KV: That’s a very subjective process and impossible to pin-point exactly. We sometimes set out a kind of wish list or some minor themes but this very often gets overruled by the sheer quality of surprising offers or by the fact that every day is a day of potential musical discovery. Being able to keep this flexibility, this room to manoeuvre is crucial...

PA: How do you balance presenting established artists with discovering new voices?

KV: Since the first Summer Bummer edition and also in our nomadic concert series, our Dropa House residencies and our Dropa Disc label, we always balanced the older generation with established artists and the up and coming generation. In an age where pioneers of improvised, adventurous and experimental music are rapidly forgotten and disappearing, it’s super important to stage these different generations together. Sometimes we can combine them, like Peter Brötzmann with Farida Amadou and Thurston Moore, or Cel Overberghe with Adia Vanheerentals and Ornella Noulet (60 years of age difference), and Joe McPhee with Mette Rasmussen and Dennis Tyfus is also a good intergenerational and genre defying example. 

And sometimes it’s exemplary of how the past is still more than relevant and moves into the future, like the trio of Barry Guy, Evan Parker, Paul Lytton or the historic duo of Fred Van Hove and Brötzmann. As said earlier we support musicians over the long term. Therefore some artists who are considered established these days still have a strong bond with Summer Bummer and Sound in Motion as an organization. Being able to show how these artists evolve is something very beautiful and exciting to witness. 

This year we have some beautiful examples of this with the world premiere of Rodrigo Amado, one of the hardest working reed players around, in a trio with the legendary bass player/icon Joëlle Léandre and the genre hopping genius drummer and electronics manipulator Gerald Cleaver, not a trio we requested but a proposal by the artists themselves. 

And what to say about one of the all time greats, Alexander von Schlippenbach, who will play this years Summer Bummer in a duo with phenomenal drummer and one of the most prominent representatives of the scene Paal Nilssen-Love, another request by the artists themselves and super exemplary of everything we stand for. And maybe the ultimate example of mixing up generations, gender, established and new artists is the passage at Summer Bummer in 2024 of Fire! Orchestra CBA and Fire! Orchestra CBA Youth. Mindblowing and very inspirational indeed.

PA: Are there artistic boundaries you intentionally avoid—or intentionally cross?

KV: Crossing artistic boundaries is inherent to the invited artists. Creating the platform to cross potential boundaries is the essence of Summer Bummer as a festival and to Sound in Motion as an organization. Just look at this years program and you know what we mean.

PA: What do you hope musicians experience here that they might not elsewhere?

KV: We once published a book with the title Food For Thought asking the artists how they experienced playing for Sound in Motion. One of the answers was: 'Feeling at home away from home.’

We like to think and hope that we are part of a handful of organizations and festivals that actually make this happen. That we can create the perfect environment for artists so they can focus 100% on their craft and artistry.

PA: What do you hope audiences experience here that they might not elsewhere?

KV: That there’s more than just mainstream music, forced upon everyone by mainstream media. And that, unlike mainstream channels will make you believe, it is not by definition difficult music. Even alternative channels struggle with this, shying away or being apologetic when music is abstract or noisy or not following known paths, as if there’s something wrong with it. No, embracing the unknown and enjoying it full on is the way to go.

PA: How do you see the festival’s role within the local music community?

KV: By showing the international dynamic of adventurous, improvised and experimental music and putting local musicians in the spotlights, introducing them first hand to international mainstays the Summer Bummer Festival tries to open international doors and opportunities.

PA: What is one thing that we didn't ask you that you think we should have?

KV: Sound in Motion is a nomadic organization, how does that relate to the concert series and the festival, and what's the importance of this within the field of improvised and experimental music and free jazz?

Sound in Motion uses a "nomadic" model that fundamentally shapes both its ongoing concert series and its annual festival. In fields like free jazz, improvised, and experimental music, this structural fluidity is not just a logistical choice—it is an aesthetic and philosophical necessity. Experimental and improvised music has historically suffered from being ghettoized either as purely academic or overly elitist. By refusing to stay inside a traditional, high-art institution, Sound in Motion actively de-academizes the genre. Bringing free jazz into a rock club one week, a community art space the next, or a cultural center the week after meets diverse audiences where they already are, embedding avant-garde sound into the community fabric.

Free jazz and free improvisation are built on the rejection of rigid frameworks, fixed charts, and predictable patterns. As a nomadic organization, Sound in Motion mirrors this artistically. When an organization is not connected to a physical building, it avoids the institutional inertia that forces venues to book "safe," commercially viable acts to cover high overhead costs.The organizational structure is as improvisational, adaptive, and high-risk as the music itself.

Because we must constantly collaborate with different physical venues and artistic spaces, Sound in Motion inherently builds an inter-connected infrastructure. We do not guard our audience; instead, we aim to cross-pollinate with the crowds of the partner venues. This creates a robust safety net for touring experimental musicians, making Belgium a vital European hub for artists who rely on agile, grassroots bookers to sustain their careers.

 Find out more about Summer Bummer here.

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John Butcher: Seasons and Dreams

By Stuart Broomer

John Butcher has been among the most creative figures in improvised music for several decades, during that time both maintained long-established partnerships and sought new possibilities, whether it’s a fresh ensemble or a different sonic environment. These two recent recordings present longstanding associations that continue to grow creatively.

John Butcher & Angharad Davies - Two Seasons (Weight of Wax, 2025) 

John Butcher and Angharad Davies have been playing in duet and other situations for many years, and there’s an essential chemistry at work in their music. This recent duo combines two extended works recorded in live performance in Berlin and a series of short pieces,”Granwyns”, recorded in a studio in Nottingham.

The opening work, “Hydref i”, might be the whole package, an intense 25-minute duo improvisation in which two high-pitched instruments – soprano saxophone and violin – are individually explored and countered, creating a tenuous universe of intense depth and mystery in which solo and duo passages strangely merge. With sufficiently close listening, one enters a microcosm of sounds overlapping and interacting. It is a world in which the concept of A440 is largely suspended, in which most tones deviate from the norm, with Davies frequently mining intervals that differ sufficiently in timbre to suggest two different instruments. The music is always active, always sustained, whether one or both musicians are playing. String and reed have never been closer. There are times when the lines exchange identities, often at very low volume, the grit of string, the vibrating air of the saxophone, twinning and separating. The saxophone can function as strained obbligato, the violin its eerie double. A careening passage, consuming the last few minutes, is so complex, intense and interwoven that it could never be composed or imagined – the essence of great collective improvisation.

The second piece from the Berlin concert, “Hydref ii”, is a brief work in close resonance, long tones abounding, Butcher’s hyper-resonant soprano activating the air, Davies’ high-pitched, bowed tones moving towards the silence of sonic eclipse. When its four-minute playing time is up, it feels like it is continuing, whether lending character to the air or merely anointing its continued presence.

“Granwyn i”, remarkably bright sounding, has a relatively provisional feel, attention riveted on the combination of room ambience and the interaction of overtones. “Granwyn ii” has the feel of a hurdy-gurdy, that ancient, resonant wail suggesting the character of a trance. “Granwyn iii” is air-drenched squall; “Granwyn iv” is densely compacted, each instrument occasionally coming to the fore; “Granwyn v” is the soul of somber sound, an interaction of reed harmonics and violin glissandi; “Granwyn vi” has an uncanny suggestion of oblique calypso; “Gwanwyn vii”, the last and most developed of the Nottingham pieces, is as astonishing as anything else here, an improvisers’ mind-meld in which the two musicians are constantly modulating their sounds, adjusting their volumes, pitches, air column or bow, harmonic spectra – creating a six-minute piece that manages to suggest the scale of the opening “Hydref i”. 

 

Last Dream of the Morning - Sharp Illusion (FSR, 2025) 

Last Dream of the Morning is a collective trio that includes two other essential figures in contemporary improvised music, bassist John Edwards and percussionist Mark Sanders. The group’s first CD appeared in 2017 with their current name as title; it became a band name with 2020’s Crucial Anatomy . Sharp Illusion continues a series that is required listening for anyone interested in the current state of free jazz or free music. I’d like to begin with a certain confession. I was struck a few times by the presence of extended clicking passages, certainly not the first I’d heard from Butcher but by Sanders as well. I knew I’d heard the techniques before, but here the affinity with certain South African click languages seemed particularly striking. I googled “John Butcher click languages” and was struck by the first result, a review of the trio’s first recording from 2017, then paired with another Butcher trio CD, The Open Secret with Gino Robair and Dieb 13, the latter including a track entitled “Last Morning of the Dream”. The review appeared in this journal on April 21, 2018, and, embarrassingly, was written by one Stuart Broomer. Why some respectable linguist/musicologist hasn’t pursued this line of inquiry is beyond me, but it’s both a busy and increasingly preoccupied world, however much all this might reflect on a positive and inter-penetrating – not to mention utopian – human future.

That instrumentation – “sax and rhythm” – will signal a certain tradition, a format employed by numerous musicians and one that has resulted in some of the masterpieces of jazz and/or improvised music (a problematical distinction in some quarters that doesn’t have to arise in the utopian space enjoyed here). This music will stand solidly on its own, but it might also stand comparison with a certain hierarchy. The foundational masterpieces for consideration include Sonny Rollins with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones (at the Village Vanguard), Lee Konitz with Sonny Dallas and Jones (Motion), Albert Ayler with Peacock and Murray ( Spiritual Unity or Prophecy ) or anything by Evan Parker with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton (say Imaginary Values ).

Like them, Sharp Illusion, a July 2024 performance recorded at the Cultural Centre in Lublin, Poland, is about the specific potential of its specific time, or perhaps already an anytime when anything might be possible. If Butcher can be celebrated for numerous innovative voices, more recently he frequently sounds declarative/authoritative in a traditional tenor saxophone voice. Meanwhile his partners here participate freely, often beyond traditional functions. The effect is a trio that occupies an exalted space, at once intimately entwined with free jazz and improvised music, at once alive to the tradition of the former and still expanding potential of the latter, a dialectic organized around both utopian form and a potential for a shared state of auditory grace.

The opening “Roof Rattle” is a continual, 13-minute, reshaping of auditory space, beginning in a trio passage of equal parts bending individual instrumental sounds into an eerie and supportive collective voice. Eventually distinctions come to the foreground, loosely linking arco bass and a miscellany of percussion that can suggest any number of non-musical implements. As it rolls along Butcher becomes more conventionally central to the collective narrative, sometimes assuming a “boss tenor” voice that might recall musicians like Yusef Lateef or Booker Ervin, all the time supported by arco bass grunts, swivels and high harmonics, and a percussive storm that willingly ventures well beyond the conventional, the whole giving way to an extended click dialogue that involves the entire trio to varying degrees..

Each of the other tracks represents comparatively subtle evolutions, reshapings and transformations, always redefining the roles and relationships of three musicians’ constantly evolving views of the individual potential of the collective music, whether it’s the 12-minute “Turning the Soil”, hive interior or rich earth; the rich play of the longest track, the 28-minute “Movable Bridge”, which shifts positions in the manner of the preceding pieces but with even further development; or the very brief “Afterglow”, which Butcher begins with a strange transformation to a convincing simulation of a trumpet voice before turning to an openly tenor saxophone voice as his partners join in, eventually ending with more forceful clicks.

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Pöschl, Dörner, Gordoa - Native Acts (Trouble in the East, 2026)

By Brian Earley

With Native Acts, a new recording by Sunk Pöschl on drums and percussion, Axel Dörner on trumpet and electronics, and Emilio Gordoa on vibraphone, percussion, and electronics, listeners find themselves, in the most unassuming and modest of conditions, in the middle of free jazz history.

While not on the tip of every experimental listener’s tongue, these musicians have played with damn near everyone. Don’t believe me? How about a short list of Peter Brötzmann, William Parker, Paul Lytton, Alexander von Schilppenbach, Evan Parker, Harri Sjörström, and Silke Eberhard. That’s the truncated list. Dörner himself has paired with Sven-Ake Johansson (the guy played on Machine Gunfor goodness sakes) and John Butcher so often these ensembles alone would fill out a resume.

While Gordoa hails from Mexico City, he spends a great chunk of his time on the Berlin music scene. The other two musicians, Dörner and Pöschl, originate from Cologne and Munich respectively, forming Germany as the nexus of their collective activity. The three men gathered in 2021 in Berlin for PANDA Platforma, itself an intrepid power for experimental arts, and recorded Native Acts for Trouble in the East Records, which released the music some four years later on February 5, 2026.

The simplest way to say it is that this is a really strong album. I found myself at times thinking there were four or five instrumentalists, at other times, only one (or none at all!). Silence, it seems, sits in as a fourth member of the group. The opening piece, simply titled “Part 1” (there are nine total works on this recording, all of which are pragmatically titled “Part 1,” Part 2,” etc…), opens with quiet vibes, then a trumpet altered by electronics, almost unobservably so, then one low volume cymbal, and one soft drum hit. And then, in what is characteristic of this album as a whole, a drop off into total silence. The trio plays for a mere twenty seconds before leaving the listeners with a solid seven seconds of silence.

This use of silence appears again and again. Try “Part 2,” for example, during which the electronics rumble with bass more felt in the stomach than heard in the ear, then a gathering of quiet thunder, thwacking percussion, the sound of chimes or vibes played close to the microphone and feedback like screeches arch over the piece. Then at the 5:46 mark, total silence.

Quiet works often bring to my mind the word restraint, but the musicians on this album never feel to me like they are holding each other back. Actually the playing is absolutely non-competitive. Sometimes the three instrumentalists play vertical lines beside each other, sometimes a single player assumes the lead while others play accompanying work in the background, as Gordoa does around the 8:50 moment in “Part 2.” And, just as Gordoa steps forward, he drifts quietly into the back again allowing Dörner’s trumpet to take center stage before he himself grows quiet as Pöschl’s drum work closes out the work. Communion and close attention allow all members to thrive in this music society.

This is not to suggest the recording is low on energy. Just listen, for instance, to the first first four or so minutes of “Part 7.” Silence quickly lurches into a topsy-turvy slapping of percussion that itself grows into Dörner’s trumpet whipping through the electronic air. The sound cuts in and out like there is something wrong with your speakers, and by 2:20 things are really cooking and the high energy is pushed forward, forward, forward by Pöschl. Gordoa’s vibes soon assume a leadership role again until at 3:30 Dörner’s trumpet holds a single long note with an electric soup of sound beneath.

Close attention to the music really pays off on Native Acts , and despite this being a trio recording roughly 80 minutes long, it feels so varied, awake, inventive and nuanced. I really enjoyed becoming familiar with this album, and encourage all sound travellers to check it out for themselves.

Native Acts can be found at: https://troubleintheeastrecords.bandcamp.com/album/native-acts. 

 

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Lawrence Casserley at 85

Photos by Charlie Watkins

Lawrence Casserley has been a pioneer of electronics in improvised music, particularly through his development of the Signal Processing Instrument. To celebrate Lawrence’s 85^th year, Charlie Watkins sat down with him to discuss a few records which have been particularly important to him and the events he has planned for 2026.

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By Charlie Watkins

I meet Lawrence at his home studio in Oxford. The already small room is made even smaller by the books, CDs and audio equipment lining each wall. There are three computers, one of which is the Signal Processing Instrument (SPI), another displaying a book manuscript Lawrence is working on, and the third with various audio files open. It’s a fitting setting: even in his 85 ^th year, Lawrence is still full of ideas and as hardworking as ever. Before we’re even sitting down, he is already explaining to me how the SPI works, and I rush to start recording before I miss anything.

The first album Lawrence and I discuss is Solar Wind (1997), which he recorded at STEIM whilst developing the SPI. He explains to me how the record came about: ‘I had three weeks there [at STEIM]. Evan [Parker] was there, not all the time, but most of the time. And Barry Guy joined us for the last part.

‘After a couple of days of just getting going, Evan said “Whenever we play, we switch the recorder on,” and so we had all this stuff, lots of stuff. Sometimes I'd say to him, “Look, I've got to do some programming, I've got an idea,” so he'd go off for a walk, or practice, or do the crossword, and then I’d say “Come on, we're ready.” That's how the CD came about.’

Lawrence tells me how those early sessions at STEIM were a pivotal moment in the development of the SPI. ‘A lot of that original structure of the instrument is still here. I've tweaked various stuff and added bits, added things and taken things away, but the basic structure and the way it works was established at that time. The current version has been pretty much stable for about 10 years, so I finally stopped developing it and started learning to play it! Michel Waisvisz [STEIM’s artistic director] said to me “There comes a stage when you've got to stop changing stuff and just learn how to play it really well.”’

Solar Windwasn’t Lawrence’s first foray into live electronics. He dropped out of Columbia University to study music instead, and his first composition with live processing was in 1969, during his postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music. ‘My composition teacher at the time was Herbert Howells, who was quite a conservative. But he was really interested in what I was doing and he was very, very smart and very good. At the end of the year, I came into the lesson and he said, “I've had a letter about this electronic music course [with Tristram Cary]. I've put you down for it, of course.” That kind of encouragement was really good.’

Even in those early years, as Lawrence started to utilise electronic processing in his compositions, he had a clear vision for how he wanted to be using electronics in live performance. ‘I got this idea: I wanted an electronic instrument that was like playing the cello or something, “my instrument” in that sense. It just took 20 years for the technology to catch up! When I finally got there, I was working with people like Barry Guy, who had such a physical way of playing, and I said, “I want to play electronics like that.”’

Although there was already an improvisatory element in his early compositions, Solar Wind was really Lawrence’s entrance onto the improvised music scene. Thirty years on, I ask Lawrence how he feels about the album now. ‘It was a remarkable thing in its way. I'm certainly not ashamed of it. The whole thing gelled, and Evan was so supportive of the whole thing; that was sort of the catalyst that made it happen. It’s a very special CD. I rate it as one of the best things I've done.’

Lawrence consistently describes his duo work as what he is most proud of. ‘You can get much more involved in the integration between the player and the processing. When I work with more people, it becomes a bit more diffused; this sort of really tight, close integration comes best in duos, and some of the trios.’ That certainly comes across on his album with Philipp Wachsmann, Garuda (2016). ‘I think Garuda is quite possibly the best thing I've ever done. First of all, Phil is so amazing. The range of his playing and the range of his experience is very, very large. And his thinking is very deep, too. He always produces such fantastic material for me to work with. Again, we worked over several days, recording different kinds of things in different ways. I play some percussion as well and sometimes the percussion is processed with his sounds, and other times it's just the violin. It was a very rich sound palette that we had and we worked a long time on it and I think we formed a very special sort of integration. He inspires great things.’

Listening to Garuda, it’s clear that both musicians are having a lot of fun. I ask Lawrence how he understands the role of ‘play’ in music that can often be quite serious. ‘I don't think serious and playful are very far apart. Like a lot of things, they’re different sides of the same coin, and all these things are part of life. If you can't have fun, then part of your life is missing. And it's the same with the music, if you can't have fun, part of the music is missing.

‘Music is an expression of life. And I think for me it almost is life. It's a lot of other things as well, but music is kind of the core of everything.’

Finally, we discuss a more recent recording, Corps et Biens: Hommage à Robert Desnos (2025) with the vocalist Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg. Lawrence has worked extensively with vocals over the years, including his own; I ask whether there is a reason he keeps choosing to work with vocals. ‘The voice is very interesting because there's so much you can do with it. It's so flexible. The work I did with [performance poet] Bob Cobbing back in the 70s and 80s was a very crucial part of my life because it was Bob who really taught me to be a performer. I didn't have a way to be a performer – I wanted to be, but I didn't have an instrument that served the purpose yet. Bob pointed me towards using what there was to perform with.’

One of Lawrence’s early works was a piece called 15 Shakespeare kaku, which was a setting of poems Bob had written for the Globe Playhouse Trust. ‘He took the letters of Shakespeare's name, cut them up in different ways and stuck them all in different shapes, and he would use these as source material for vocalization. I recorded several different versions and used small amounts of pitch change and a bit of ring modulation and things like that.’

That early example of using electronics to process the voice feels a million miles away from what Lawrence and Jean-Michel are doing together now, a relationship which has developed over many years. ‘When you work with somebody for a long time there are things that seem almost permanent, but then there are other things that are always renewing themselves. If you stop renewing yourselves it becomes difficult to do any more, or you find that people move in different directions. I think that's more or less what happened with me and Evan. We've gone in different directions: it was fantastic what we were able to do while we were working together, it just came to a stage where it sort of didn't happen anymore, which is the way of things.’

In some ways, Lawrence has had a very consistent approach since he started playing improvised music, which he recognises as he looks back on his early recordings. ‘Just after we got back from STEIM, Barry [Guy] booked Gateway Studios at Kingston, and we recorded Dividuality , which is really excellent, and it kind of got lost. A little while ago, somebody said to me, ‘This is a really great CD,’ and I'd more or less forgotten about it. And actually, a lot of the things I was doing then, I can see the seeds of what went into [Evan Parker’s] Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. That's really where it begins.’ But at the same time, the need to ‘renew himself’ is clear; Lawrence has never stopped learning. ‘At the beginning I was a bit nervous about how it all worked, whether it was going to work, and how I could do it. It's very different to the way I function now. I'm much freer in how I do stuff. It’s partly self-confidence, feeling more in control, understanding the instrument so much better.’

At the end of our chat, Lawrence tells me about his plans for his 85 ^th year. He’s starting with three concerts at St Alban's church hall in east Oxford. ‘It’s a very nice space: quite intimate but big enough. The first one is on Tuesday 7 April with Emil Karlsen, the Norwegian percussionist. We had a CD out on Bead last year, Aspects of Memory . The second one will be on Tuesday 21 April with Hannah Marshall. We've long wanted to do some duo work; I worked with her previously in a trio with Alison Blunt. The third one is a very nice quartet with Dominic Lash, Massimo Magee and Phil Marks: we’ve just released an album called Livingry from a concert we did in early October at the Hundred Years Gallery. That will be on Tuesday 28 April. And Hannah and I are working towards putting something out, so they're very current things.

‘For my actual birthday, tenth of August, I'm planning to have the wonderful trio, Valid Tractor , with Pat Thomas and Dominic Lash, and Paul Lytton is coming over from Belgium to do a duo. Hopefully there will also be a quartet at the end of that.

‘Later that month, I'm hoping to get the Spanish composer and performer, Llorenç Barber, with his bell tree. Martin Mayes is coming over from Italy, a French horn and alphorn player. He will be a special guest with HyperYak , a quartet I have played with for 25 years. I want to have a concert with Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg and Viv Corringham. We were planning to do a trio in 2020, which got overtaken by COVID. Two wonderful vocalists but a really interesting contrast. For that concert I'm hoping we'll have Harri Sjöström as well. He very rarely comes to England, he hasn't been here for around 10 years, so it would be lovely to have him. The other one I want to do is some of my early electronic work contrasted with improvised electronics, with Martin Hackett.’

It’s an impressive number of concerts to organise, especially at 85. But Lawrence seems excited to be sharing his music. ‘Most of these concerts will be on a pay what you can basis. People should be encouraged to come and enjoy the music and there's no pressure to pay lots of money. I want people to enjoy the music.’

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For more information on Lawrence Casserley’s 85 ^th birthday celebrations, keep an eye on Lawrence’s social media or on the Oxford Improvisers website: oxfordimprovisers.com

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Jason Stein, Marilyn Crispell, Damon Smith, Adam Shead – Live at the Hungry Brain (Trost, 2025)

By Dan Sorrells

Famished minds no longer sated by spi-raling horn, one of last year's standout releases, can now feast upon Live at the Hungry Brain. Recorded the night before renowned pianist Marilyn Crispell entered the studio with the Midwest force of bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Damon Smith, and drummer Adam Shead, Live at the Hungry Brain features the third of three concerts the quartet played in June 2023.

If antecedents help orient one to this music (more on that anon), Crispell’s presence—along with Smith’s place in a bass lineage that passes through Mark Dresser—makes it tempting to call up Anthony Braxton’s storied Forces in Motion quartet. This isn't really that. In terms of sheer brow-sweat and preternatural interaction, the music onLive at the Hungry Brainis more allied with Crispell's incursions into the Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton trio. Here, as there, she's a shining light settled into the very heart of an established trio's sound, backlighting its dense tangles from within, casting different shadows. But such comparisons are at best a makeshift compass. They'll get you pointed in a direction, but reveal little about what you'll find upon setting out.

"A Borderless Event" begins with Smith and Shead in an agile coalition, Smith deftly springing between arco and pizzicato. Shead's rapid patter can be reminiscent of those clattery Europeans like Lytton, but his assertive feeling of pulse often positions him as a more marked rhythmic goad. As Crispell and Stein enter, the group traffics in a dizzying array of ideas before winnowing into Stein's increasingly fretful solo, pierced by chiming piano chords. Crispell's chords soon fray, rapidly spilling notes, the pressure mounting until the rhythmic elements have superheated and Stein's dark looping calligraphy has transformed into glowing, Twombly-red coils. Even at its most unfettered, Stein's eloquence with the bass clarinet is remarkable. Spanning the breadth of its range, he rafts the complex timbre of his instrument over the piano's melodic swells and into the rich undercurrents of the bass and drums. On the shorter second piece, "Bone Eaten Up by Breathing," he finds a strong rapport with Smith as they trade lines through cascading piano and cymbals, Stein eventually stepping back to send the rhythm section along with Crispell's hypnotic arpeggios, beautiful and intense.

Music of this intensity, being played at this level, is possible not only because the approach provides a platform for spontaneity and virtuosity, but because it is a conduit for instruction. Here's where forebears return. It's hard to talk about music like Live at the Hungry Brainwithout them. Describing the music in the manner I just attempted falls short, but the players themselves are a reference—a living history—a genealogy of past selves setting expectations that they presently rework. Smith has made no secret of his belief in the importance of playing with "elders," and his formidable technique and instinct have been honed over decades of apprenticeship with experienced improvisers of every stripe—players exactly like Crispell (or Roscoe Mitchell, who has also joined the trio in performance). Likewise, Crispell has recently spoken of her deep love of playing with younger musicians who seek her collaboration; the conduit directs flow in both directions.

So, the resulting music is astonishing, slippery. It's novel, but not free of influence. It is a crucible. This influence extends beyond music and into engagements with abstract visual artists, poets, even practices of body and mind like those Milford Graves conveyed to his student Stein. Rarely do these things directly initiate the music. But, acknowledged—added later as song titles, liner notes, album art—they sound their own sort of resonance, expressing accord or juxtaposition that's beyond (or even before) fumbling attempts to speak of them. Like the visceral Cy Twombly paintings that grace the covers of the quartet's records, this music also lays bare the physical work that it essentially is. It's abstract not because it is inscrutable but because it remains largely ineffable, constituted wholly of but never adequately described by the gestures of its makers. Our fascination lies in this mysterious something emergent in the work, prone to dissolve when we focus our attention too keenly on the parts: just a mark on a canvas, the strike of a tom, a bow dragged across string. "Tear a mystery to tatters," Barthelme said, "and you have tatters, not mystery." Our hungry brains devour the likes of Live at the Hungry Brain, our ears drink in this vital music, the vitalizing talent of these musicians. But our mouths, agape, can't quite find the right words.

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Gjerstad / Schlippenbach / Narvesen - Seven Tracks (Relative Pitch, 2025)

By Martin Schray

It’s hard not to compare this band with Alexander von Schlippenbach’s trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens, a formation that has existed since 1970 (initially with Michel Pilz on clarinet). However, there was a break after 2018, when Paul Lovens was no longer able to tour (on their famous winter journey), even though Paul Lytton was a more than worthy successor. Recently, Schlippenbach continued go on a winter tour again, with Rudi Mahall on clarinet and Norwegian drummer Dag Navesen. Navesen is also featured on this recording, plus saxophone legend Frode Gjerstad (also from Norway) replacing Evan Parker, so to speak. That being said, expectations were high for Seven Tracks, a recording that came out of the blue for most of the fans of the old trio.

“1“ begins like a typical Schlippenbach Trio piece, with the band immediately hitting its stride. You’re confronted with seemingly isolated, short phrases that nevertheless come together and belong together. After two minutes, there is a first break, set by a piano chord. It becomes clear that Schlippenbach plays more romantically than in the wild years, but he still makes radical statements and creates structure with block chords. Nagesen shows that he’s very much in the tradition of Lovens and Lytton, but of Tony Oxley as well, which proves continuity and a sense of tradition. At the same time, he’s also a very energetic drummer, who has developed a style of his own. The biggest difference to the Schlippenbach Trio, however, is Frode Gjerstad. He hovers above the improvisation as if he was the group’s sound poet, who comments on the action calligraphically. His sound and his playing are rougher and more squeezed compared to Evan Parker, but they are also very varied, as he proves in the second piece. At first, there’s even a short passage that swings, but then the tempo picks up significantly. Gjerstad communicates intensively with the man at the piano, setting clever counterpoints between Nagesen’s elegant figures. In general, between these two warhorses of European improvised music the drummer is an absolutely equal explorer of sound worlds, underlining and initiating areas of discourse with nervous reflexes and a wide range of percussion sounds, most clearly in a short solo in “4”.

The music presented on Seven Tracks is remarkably unsentimental; Schlippenbach avoids the interior of the piano, instead offering dense, dissonant lines at breakneck tempos (the man is 88 years old), but he also likes to invent ballad arrangements without abandoning free tonality. What is more, his sense of form is as incorruptible as ever, and at the end of his career, his love for Thelonious Monk and the influence his music has had on him is becoming increasingly apparent. This can be heard in “5“ for example, where the sublime rhythmic shifts give way to expressive force (as they often did in the old trio), but they determine the improvisations even more obviously, and the control that the musicians have over their interplay seems more light-footed.

Yes, this music is complex, but that’s undoubtedly part of its strength and a reason to hope that this album will not be the last from this band.

Seven Tracks is available as a limited CD and as a download. You can listen to it and buy it here: 

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Stefan Keune / Steve Noble / Dominic Lash - Black Box (scatterArchive, 2025)

By Martin Schray

In recent years, Stefan Keune has mainly been involved with the reformed King Übü Örchestrü and the orchestra’s nucleus, XPACT (at least that’s how it seems to me). Keune, who has replaced the late Wolfgang Fuchs in the new outfit, is the perfect substitute, as he is a master of subtle, abstract and elegant playing. However, he can also play differently when his fellow musicians demand it. His trio with Dominic Lash on bass and Steve Noble on drums, with whom he has been playing for more than ten years now, brings out a more powerful Keune without pushing the nuance and the intricacy into the background.

In 2017, the trio played a few gigs in Germany, the last of which was at the Black Box in Münster, a renowned venue for free music in West Germany, before they played at the Moers Festival a few days later. Two days before the Münster gig, I saw them in Schorndorf and was impressed by how well they worked together and how organic the musical interaction was. In the liner notes to this new recording, Keune mentions that he plays too rarely with the two "but whenever the opportunity arises. There is a great familiarity and security, even in the freest of contexts, that I really enjoy." Black Box is the perfect example for these words.

The music simply kicks in and you’re thrown straight into the action. Keune’s lines smear around, while Lash and Noble rumble darkly. However, the music immediately becomes more precise, exploring its possibilities, bouncing against the limits of the registers. The musicians stretch out time, but then condense it in the next moment; the whole thing happens at a rapid pace and with the greatest possible elegance. In the trio’s music, the loud-quiet-passages, which structure the sets, are decisive. The improvisation then seems to implode out of nowhere, e.g. when saxophone and bass simply stop playing in the first piece and briefly leave the field to Steve Noble’s drums. But then they immediately feel their way back into the piece. And as is so often the case with excellent saxophone trios (and we are dealing with one here), it’s the quiet passages that are the most convincing ones. Keune, Lash and Noble create an enormous tension here, an urgency, a presence that we only know from the best of their genre, e.g. Evan Parker’s trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton. Keune’s rough melodies are turbulently taken by surprise by Noble and Lash, drum beats patter, rimshots hail, the bowed bass jerks and twitches and churns, the strings purr, bolt, creak and boom. It’s pure joy to listen to.

Anyone hoping for new magic and adventurous kicks from new chamber music, magic ignited by sparklers and a captivating interplay between cacophony and subtlety, melancholy and expressiveness - here is what you are looking for.

Black Box is available as a download.

You can listen to it and by the music here:

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Trance Maps large and small, near and far

By Stuart Broomer

Evan Parker and Matt Wright have been working together since 2008. Wright initially contacted Parker to explore his extensive collection of ethnographic field recordings and it eventually evolved into a duo in which Parker improvised on saxophone and Wright improvised with turntables and samples. The two have since added other musicians to the project (their presence signalled by a “+”), resulting in groups from trios to a sextet, occasionally including musicians’ materials that were recorded apart from the core ensemble’s recording.

The process has extended Parker’s long-term exploration of his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble in which acoustic improvising instrumentalists were paired with electronic musicians, further developing the acoustic input. The original sextet paired the Parker - Guy - Lytton trio with three electronic musicians, with Guy’s own doubling with electronic processing paired with Phil Wachsmann’s viola and processing. That ensemble has been active as recently as 2019 ( Warszawa, 2019 [Fondacia Sluchaj]), while it reached its most expansive form in an 18-member version at Lisbon’s Jazz em Agosto in 2010 (an extended reflection is available here).

Transatlantic Trance Map - Marconi’s Drift (False Walls, 2024) ***** 

Transatlantic Trance Map might be the most remarkable performance of improvised music in recent years, if only for the compound “location” of its performance, 13 musicians on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The significance of the work is tremendous, both in its realization and its potential, in a world where travel is increasingly challenged by environmental and disease concerns. The technical distribution here is apparent in an early “draft” of the process. Parker and Wright initially tried a “dry run” in November 2021, with a quintet version still called the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble interacting with the SPIIC ensemble in Hamburg directed by Vlatko Kučan. This is available on YouTube.

On December 17, 2022, Parker, playing soprano saxophone, and Wright (laptop sampling and live processing) gathered a septet at the Hot Tin in Faversham, England with Peter Evans (trumpets), Pat Thomas (live electronics), Hannah Marshall (cello), Robert Jarvis (trombone) and Alex Ward (clarinet, guitar). Meanwhile, a similar sextet of regular Parker collaborators gathered in New York at Roulette: Ned Rothenberg: (reeds, shakuhachi); Sam Pluta: (laptop, live electronics); Craig Taborn (piano, keyboard, live electronics); Ikue Mori (laptop live electronics); Sylvie Courvoisier (piano, keyboard) and Mat Manieri (viola), most of whom had played in the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble or its Septet variation, while between them, the two ensembles reunited the compact supergroup Rocket Science, consisting of Parker, Evans, Pluta and Taborn.

The most remarkable technological feature consists in the brevity of the time gap between the two groups: in his notes Wright mentions the work of the technical directors at Hot Tin and Roulette and that “After a number of tests we were able to work at high resolution, almost treating each location as a separate room within a studio, albeit with the slight, but workable delay of around 65 to 120 milliseconds,” a gap that Wright was later able to reduce further in mixing while creating a stereo spread that integrated the two bands.

The most remarkable feature, however, beyond the technology is the musical achievement. Parker has been expanding both instrumental technique and applied technology since the late-1960s as well as the breadth of his musical associations. While the Atlantic may separate these bands, the connections are dense. One of the features of the extended piece is a pattern of duets and trios sometimes featuring alike instruments that also draw in other members to create larger ensemble improvisations. The depth of musical relationships? Parker and Rothenberg, paired together here, first recorded as a duo in 1997, while others would be playing together for the first time.

Rather than attempting a description of a work this dense and rich, I’ll leave that to individual listeners. This is an amazing achievement, creative music managing the kind of global event usually reserved for pop superstars. Like several recent events of significance in the field, the project acknowledges the assistance of the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation. 

Trance Map - Horizons Held Close (Relative Pitch, 2024) ***** 

What could be more different and yet somehow the same? In the same period as Trance Map’s greatest expansions, Parker and Wright here return to their original duo form, with Parker playing soprano saxophone and Wright simultaneously employing turntables, software, sampling and processing, transforming Parker’s lines and field recordings into an orchestra of the imagination and strongly referencing his own journey to Mongolia in 2009. Just as it’s rooted in Wright’s turntables, it seems to mimic the LP, though available only as download and CD, with the near identical playing times of two pieces: “Ulaanbadrakh” runs 24:16; “Bayankhongor”, 24:10.

Parker’s intense chirping soprano multiphonics are set amidst an ever-shifting, recycling soundscape in which Parker own’s complex parts are multiplied, repeated, transformed, Parker himself interacting with the variations and the insistent and multiple percussion of Wright’s ever transforming synthetic orchestra, a reflection and extension of Parker’s long-expanding universe of mirrored and transforming musical impulses, as much a communal, collectivist, organic meditation as the globalizing social vision of Transatlantic Trance Map. It is at once constant, hypnotic yet ever changing, an ideal that Parker has been pursuing for decades, and perhaps first fully realized in the solo music of Conic Sections, recorded in 1989.

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Music Unlimited Festival #38, Wels, Austria, Nov. 8-10

By Eyal Hareuveni

This year’s edition of the festival was curated by Ken Vandermark, one of the unofficial mayors of the Music Unlimited community throughout the years, who said that this festival is the most important festival for him. The festival ran under the slogan: The Future In Both Directions and devised by Vandermark (together with the director of the festival Wolfgang Wasserbauer) around the essential dynamic between innovative improvisers from the past and present, and how this interplay will affect the future, with many musicians associated with the Catalytic Sound musician cooperative. John Corbett (of the Corbett vs Dempsey gallery and label, who mentored young Vandermark already in the late eighties) expanded on this idea and found common similarities in the way great improvisers tested the relevance of their now - Charlie Parker who named his tune “Now’s the Time” was different from the now of Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, or the implied now in Ornette’s Tomorrow is the Question, and, again, different from Joe McPhee’s Pieces of Time or Derek Bailey and Tony Coe’s Time, or The Ex’s History Is What’s Happening, or Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come. Vandermark brought from Chicago the huge artwork of Dan Grzeca and Richard Hull, Trojan Horse Exquisite Corpse, and reminded us all that culture often functions as a trojan horse. Vandermark quoted The Ex’ always-relevant song “Listen to the Painters” which corresponded with Grzeca and Hull’s suggestive artwork and our troubling times:

“We need poets, we need painters 

We need poets, we need painters

We need poetry and paintings…

Narrow minds are weapons made for mass destruction

File them under giant ass seduction

Sheep with crazy leaders, heading for disaster

Courting jesters who take themselves for masters…”

The festival also celebrated a photo exhibition of Belgian gifted photographer Geert Vandepoele, Let the Free be Free.

1st Night, Nov. 8

The opening performance featured an ad-hoc quartet in its only second performance yet (the first one was in the Music Unlimited edition of 2002 as Skins & Strings with Vandermark as a guest) featuring two master drummers - Dutch Han Bennink and American Hamid Drake with The Ex guitarists - Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor. Bennink, now 82 years old but energetic as ever, plays with Hessels as a duo and collaborated many times with The Ex, directed this noisy commotion with a perfect sense of timing and great humor, cutting the improvisations when they went too far, charmed the audience when he sang a ballad dedicated to the late Misha Mengelberg and enjoyed the playful dynamics with Drake, who later on thanked him for “opening the door” for a younger generation of drummers. The performance lost momentum when Hessels’ finger was cut and covered his ancient Guild guitar with blood, But Hessels did not give up and kept playing with a drum stick, screwdriver and a plastic cover on the guitar strings.

The second set was by the duo of American trumpeter Nate Wooley and British Drummer Paul Lytton, two associates of Vandermark, who already released three duo albums. Both Wooley and Lytton explored unconventional techniques for the trumpet and the drum set, taking the concept of “cleaning the creative slate”, and often their masterful, introspective and thoughtful performance sounded like a poetic, abstract dialog of sonic magicians sketching fragmented, mysterious themes. Surprisingly, this set gravitated into the uplifting, anthem melody of South African trumpeter Mongezi Feza’s "You Aint Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me".

The set was of the Belgian trio g a b b r o - baritone sax and bass clarinet Hanne de Backer, pianist Andreas Bral and drummer Raf Vertessen - and focused on slow-cooking dynamics that highlighted De Backer's gift to tell imaginative, complex stories with infectious energy, humor and elegance, adding wordless vocals and wooden recorder that added a folky, cinematic dimension to the delicate stories. Bral and Vertessen, who played in the last album of g a b b r o, The moon appears when the water is still (Self-Released, 2022) documenting a walk on the Belgian coastline in the company of a camel, embraced beautifully her enchanting musical stories,

The fourth set featured the quartet of Japanese Otomo Yoshihide on turntables and electric guitar and Sachiko M on sine-waves, German Axel Dörner on a trumpet augmented with electronics and Austrian percussionist Martin Brandlmayr (of Radian), who has been working since 2005. These idiosyncratic, fearless improvisers offered the creative and attentive manner of sculpting subtle sounds into suggestive textures throughout the deconstruction and reconstruction of the sonic palette and the musical histories of the trumpet, the electric guitar and the turntables, but mostly impressed with Brandlmayr’s unique approach to time, timing, and texture. This quartet insists that meaningful and sensual music can be made with noises. It may be unsettling as it frees itself from common aesthetics, but resistance draws its greatest strength from the quiet in a time of disquieting events.

The first night ended with a powerful set of DKV, the longest-running band of Vandermark with double bass player Kent Kessler and drummer Hamid Drake, celebrating this year its thirtieth anniversary, and its third performance at the festival (its first performance at the festival was documented in Live In Wels & Chicago, Okka, Disk, 1999). The masterful performance reaffirmed the charismatic, commanding presence of DKV, the telepathic dynamics and the profound rapport of Vandermark, Kessler and Drake, singing and dancing through melodic themes and moving as one massive, propulsive rhythmic unit from one cathartic climax to another.

2nd Day, Nov. 9

The afternoon performances were held at the Landesmusikschule, close to the festival HQ, and offered three free improvising duos. The first one was also the first meeting of Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik (who plays with Vandermark in the DEK trio with drummer Didi Kern) with American guitarist Joe Morris and was focused on deep listening, introspective exchange of ideas, The dynamics were immediate and flowed organically and both Harnik and Morris always served its free-associative stream of ideas, even when it was totally free. The second set was also a first meeting between British veteran vocal artist Maggie Nichols, a frequent guest of the festival, and American-Korean electronics player Bonnie Han Jones, a member of the Catalytic Sound cooperative, in her first appearance at the festival. Again, the musical chemistry was immediate and respectful, and Jones ornamented beautifully Nichols’ musing about free improvisation (“mistakes take us somewhere”) and against the war in Gaza. Surprisingly, and at first, without appreciating the irony, Nichols’ encore was the traditional Scottish folk song “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean”, which obviously, delighted the audience and Han Jones. The last set featured a classic drum and sax format - with the great Han Bennink and the young but already great Danish alto sax player Mette Rasmussen, who have played together before. Rasmussen was in her most jazzy mode and Bennik entertained his antics, including telling a joke about a drummer bewitched into a frog. It was a joyful, uplifting set, full of passion, humor and risk-taking.

The evening began with a performance of the trio Arashi - Japanese alto sax player-clarinetist-vocalist Akira Sakata, Swedish double bass player Johan Berthling and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, equipped with four gongs, a day before beginning a Japanese tour. Arashi - 嵐 - means storm in Japanese (the trio is titled after a legendary album by the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, in which Sakata played, with the butoh dance group Dairakudakan Frasco, 1977) and the free improvised set of the trio was structured like a stormy ritual, beginning with a meditative and restrained piece, then exploring a perfect, cathartic storm, leading to Sakata reciting with a commanding emotional power a famous Japanese anti-war poem by Shuntarō Tanikawa, “死んだ男の残したものは” (What the dead man left behind, to which Tōru Takemitsu composed music. Thanks for Eckhart Derschmidt for the translation), and finishing with a contemplative, majestic-ritualist encore that sounded as purifying the space from any sympathy for aggressors anywhere and in any time.

The second set featured an American Mid-West quartet, the Oceanic Beloved - soprano sax player Marcus Elliot, vibes player Victor Vieira-Branco, legendary double bass player Jaribu Shahid and drummer Ben Hall, who founded this quartet. This quartet expands the legacy of AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and St. Louis’ Black Artists Group. This quartet offered its own conversational, economic and reserved form of raw and lyrical free jazz, or as Hall calls it “Trunk Rattle Jazz”, explored through patient, slow-shifting variations.

In between sets, and outside the festival hall - Vandermark and Hessels introduced outside, in the freezing cold, their new duo album This Is Not A Holiday, with Hessels’ partner Emma Fischer improvising a painting.

Vandermark introduced Gush - Swedish reed player Mats Gustafsson and pianist-vocalist Sten Sandell (drummer Raymond Strid had to cancel due to excruciating back pains) who has been working since 1988 - by saying that seeing a performance of the trio in the mid-nineties in Chicago was a “mind-altering” experience that changed what he thought improvised music

could be and how it could be made, and later opened for him a long-running collaboration with Gustafsson. The set featured Gustafsson in his most vulnerable, emotional and lyrical playing - on tenor and baritone saxes and flute, crying and moaning in an Ayler-ian mode, but wisely contrasted with ironic, subtle comments of Sandell and his poetic wordless vocalizations, that emphasized the profound, unpredictable dynamics of Gush.

This night ended with one Circus, Paal Nilssen-Love’s new “Dance band”, featuring vocalist Juliana Venter, trumpeter Thomas Johansson, alto sax player Signe Emmeluth, accordionist Kalle Moberg and electric bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen, augmented by The Ex’ guitarists - Hessels, Moor and Arnold de Boer. And if you thought that Nilssen-Love’s level of energy was already insane during the set of Arashi you have seen nothing yet. He played faster and louder, pushing Circus forward with irresistible, earth-shaking force. Circus allows all musicians to do whatever they want at any given time but this band already settled on an inclusive mode that embraces elements from West Africa, Brazilian and Ethiopian music, free jazz, punk and spoken word and tap dancing, which keeps its anarchistic chaos with humor and rhythmic power. The Ex’ guitarists already performed with Circus in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis (and an album that captured this performance is due out in March 2025) but in this performance, the expanded Circus did a wild, noisy cover of a song of an obscure Scottish punk band Stretchheads turned by Venter into a call for freedom for all, and, obviously, for Free Palestine!. This set reached stratospheric, ecstatic territories, and forced all to dance, if only in the seats (and as MC Guy Peters suggested, moving the hips a few centimeters in each direction is considered legitimate dance).

3rd and Last Day, Nov. 10

The afternoon performances moved to the picturesque space of Bildunghasu Schloss and offered three more duets, accompanied by an improvised painting of Emma Fischer. The first one was the first meeting of Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk with Austrian bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer, both regular guests of the festival. Blonk told dramatic, wordless stories and Gartmayer chose to serve his expressive storytelling by resonating cleverly his dadaist vocal gestures and adding a sparse rhythmic pulse. The second set featured the one and only Joe McPhee reading insightful and amusing poems about music, and playing the tenor sax, accompanied by Vandermark on tenor sax (both have been collaborating since Vandermark invited McPhee to play in Chicago, resulting in the album A Meeting in Chicago, Okka Disk, 1998. Check McPhee reading his poems on Musings of a Bahamian Son: Poems and Other Words by Joe McPhee, Corbett Vs Dempsey, 2024). McPhee told life lessons of Ornette Coleman who was once asked by trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr.: in what key would like us to play, and the master answered: the only keys I have are the keys in my pocket. McPhee finished this inspiring set with the poem “Fuck Free Jazz”, with McPhee asking the audience to suspend belief and imagine him reading it in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson: …Over sixty years is a long time, fuck free jazz, time for new shit. This afternoon concluded with another “dance band” - the duo of Chicagoan sound artist Damon Locks with Austrian drummer Didi Kern (who plays with Vandermark in the DEK trio). Kern immediately locked Locks’ spontaneously combined beats, words and samples in tight, electrifying grooves and kept feeding Locks with incisive rhythmic ideas that allowed Locks to dance - literally - with his imaginative ideas.

The evening performance began with an ad-hoc sextet with improvisers selected by Vandermark - baritone sax player Hanne De Backer, alto sax player Mette Rasmussen, double bass players Norwegian Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and American Luke Stewart, Brazilian drummer Mariá Portugal and sound artist Damon Locks. The music was propelled by the powerhouse rhythm section of Portugal, Håker Flaten and Stewart, allowing De Backer, Rasmussen and Locks to add melodic layers and dance with soar over the rhythmic drive, but it climaxed with all locked into a Brazilian groove powered by Portugal and conducted playfully by Rasmussen and De Backer.

The second set offered a new quartet of Austrian electronics player-vocalist Christof Kurzmann with Danish sax hero Lotte Anker, with whom Kurzmann played in a duo format before, American drummer Tim Daisy, who plays with Kurzmann in Vandermark’s Made to Break quartet, and Argentinian cellist Paula Sanchez acting as an agent provocateur in this quartet. This was the second performance of the quartet before heading to a studio recording of its material. Kurzmann always knows how to capture the distressing spirit of the times with wise poetic references, and thoughtful improvisations, and in this set, he recited a poem about the “dangerous time” we are living in, then he and Portugal chanted - in English and Portuguese - “For No One Is A Slave” (referencing Goethe’s saying: No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so) and finishing this inspired, moving set with a cover of Robert Wyatt’s iconic song “Dondestan” (“Palestine is a country / or at least used to be…”).

The next set featured Vandermark’s Edition Redux quartet featuring young Chicagoans - keyboard player Erez Dessel Keyboard, tuba and electronics player Beth McDonald and drummer Lily Finnegan. This quartet offered Vandermark’s recent methods for composing

for improvisers, combining ideas from free and experimental jazz, post-rock, dub, funk, contemporary music and electronics, all channeled into complex unpredictable and layered textures. Vandermark’s compositions for Edition Redux cleverly balanced between precise and well-coordinated notated reading of the charts and powerful, rhythmic free improvisations.

The festival concluded - almost - with a performance of its home “dance band”, The Ex - Hessels, Moor, de Boer and drummer-vocalist Katherina Bornefeld, celebrating its 45th anniversary in its 14th visit to the festival. MC Guy Peters, who is now busy writing the biography of The Ex, told some necessary facts about this influential band. Hessels’ battered Guild guitar is called in Ethiopia Lucy, after the female skeleton of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis, considered to be about 3.2 million years old, and de Boer, who has played with The Ex 650 performances is still “the new guy”. This time, there was plenty of space to dance and enjoy the much-awaited new songs of Th Ex’ upcoming album (only two were released as a single - “Great!” and “The Evidence”), and the celebration became happier and crazier when sax players - Mats Gustafsson, Hanne De Backer and Ken Vandermark, all with baritone saxes, and Mette Rasmussen on alto sax, joined the celebration and jumped and danced on stage (in Guy Peters definition of dancing). No better conclusion for an inspiring, life-affirming festival and its unique spirit and strong and supportive community.

But it really ended with s short, wild session of drummer Mariá Portugal and cellist Paula Sanchez, located within the audience. Waiting now for the next year's edition of the festival.

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Hans Schneider (1951 - 2024)

By Martin Schray

The period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s can certainly be described as the golden age of European and therefore, of course, German free jazz. Apart from the big names - the Brötzmanns, Schlippenbachs, Kowalds etc. - the heyday of this music would have been inconceivable without the musicians who were always there and without whom the trios, quartets and even larger ensembles would have been unthinkable. The wonderful bassist Hans Schneider is a prime example of this. He has now died after a long illness.

Schneider was born in 1951 in Leverkusen, West Germany. He turned to music at an early age and at the beginning of the 1960s he first started playing in beat bands, then in rock and jazz groups, where he met guitarist Erhard Hirt. It was the start of a long musical journey together, which began in a band called Jazz Community. In addition to these local bands and his double bass studies at the Cologne University of Music, Schneider soon became part of the scene around the legendary FMP label in the 1970s. From 1974 he was a member of Georg Gräwe’s quintet, with whom he later also played in the Grubenklangorchester. Since 1979 he has also worked on different projects with Erhard Hirt. Together with saxophonist Wolfgang Fuchs, the two were then among the founding members of the King Übü Orchestrü, to this day one of the most unusual large formations in the field of improvised music. But Schneider’s musical activities were not limited to Germany. In the mid-1980s he played in a quartet with Evan Parker, Paul Lytton and Paul Rutherford, and over the years with many greats of improvised music such as Maggie Nichols, Peter Kowald, John

Tchicai, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Phil Minton, Sven-Åke Johansson and Peter Brötzmann. Projects such as Frisque Concordance with John Butcher, Georg Gräwe and Martin Blume and the re-formed XPACT (with Stefan Keune, Erhard Hirt and Paul Lytton), the nucleus of the King Übü Orchestrü, were also highlights in his later work.

From the 1990s onwards, he frequently played with saxophonist Stefan Keune, who - apart from their common interest in music - became a friend for life. Their trio, initially with Paul Lytton on drums, who later was replaced by Achim Krämer (also a lifelong friend), lasted a long time. He later worked with Melvyn Poore and Frank Gratkowski, among others. Schneider was finally back at the first concerts of the King Übü Orchestrü, which was re-launched by Erhart Hirt. Schneider was able to the concert in Bonn, but it was already becoming apparent that he was in pain. He was suffering from severe circulatory problems and had to be hospitalised. The doctors realised that one of his legs had to be removed. Since then, he was unable to play, a heavy blow for him, whose life and thoughts were largely determined by music.

His friends and fellow musicians always emphasised how unique Hans Schneider sounded as a bassist and the Unlimited Festival in Wels also celebrated him as “... one of the most distinguished bass players in free music in Central Europe for over 35 years.“ Felix Klopotek summarised his playing like that: “Hans Schneider very often creates connections; as a player, you can actually always refer to his rich, inviting playing in order not to lose the overview in the heated (musical) debates. But Schneider can also refuse to play and withdraw until he imperceptibly reappears and sets the final accents.“ These recordings may epitomise this:

The first recordings with Georg Gräwe, New Movements (FMP 1976) and Pink Pong (FMP, 1978) with Gräwe (piano), Horst Grabosch (trumpet), Harald Dau (saxophones) and Achim Krämer (drums) are secret FMP classics. Also worth mentioning is the trio with Wolfgang Fuchs (saxophone) and Klaus Huber (drums) and their somewhat underrated recording Momente (FMP 1979). Waterloo (Emanem, 1985) with Evan Parker (saxophone), Paul Rutherford (trombone) and Paul Lytton (drums) is a great disc, as is XPACT’s Frogman's View (Uhlklang, 1986) (with Fuchs, Hirt and Lytton). Of course, the first recording of King Übü Örchestrü, Music is Music is ... (Uhlklang, 1985), should not be forgotten here. My personal favourite is his trio with Stefan Keune and Achim Krämer, especially their album No Comment (FMP, 2009) and Nothing Particularly Horrible (Live in Bochum’93) (FMR, 2019) Stefan Keune, John Russell (guitar) and Paul Lovens (drums). Also absolutely worth listening to are the re-formed XPACT with XPACT II (FMR, 2021) and of course the King Übü Örchestrü: Roi (FMR, 2023).

With Hans Schneider goes an important part of the l’age d’or of this music. May he rest in peace.

Here is a video of XPACT II with Hans Schneider on bass:

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