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| Photo by Nino Halm |
By Ljubisa Tosic*
Anyone lucky enough to have seen Christian Lillinger's project Open Form for
Society live in 2019 at Donaueschingen or at the Jazzfest Berlin will easily
understand why he calls it a "sound organ." After years on hiatus, the
drummer is now reviving this deeply resonant project.
When one confronts Christian Lillinger with prominent colleagues' names,
intending to find out how lasting his encounters with figures such as Rolf
Kühn, Joachim Kühn, David Liebman, Alexander von Schlippenbach, or John
Tchicai may have been, he responds with a staccato stream of additional
names that have inscribed themselves into his musical biography:
Tamara Stefanovich, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Joe Lovano, Christopher Dell,
Peter Brötzmann, Beat Furrer, Peter Evans, Sofia Jernberg, John Schröder,
Bob Degen, Lotte Anker, Barre Phillips, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith,
William Parker, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, and many others...
Of course. When it comes to lasting influence, says Lillinger, "It's a
difficult matter." To speak only about 0.1 percent of those influences would
be unfair.
On the other hand, there were naturally his own decisions and major life
steps that were connected to certain individuals. Lillinger speaks first of
the decision "to start playing drums at all," and then of "having the
opportunity, at sixteen, coming from a village, to study and pursue a
professional path."
Here the support of Günther "Baby" Sommer, a towering figure of free jazz,
was essential. "Another decisive moment was getting to know Joachim Kühn,
who encouraged me to manifest my own music." From this ultimately emerged
Christian Lillinger's Grund, an ensemble known for its distinctive dynamic
forms of interplay.
If we continue digging deeper, Lillinger agrees that his search for a
controlled freedom and openness in music-making is connected to personally
perceived limitations- such as the traditional role of the drummer in jazz-
as well as to his own biographical experiences:
My outlook was shaped by independence from a very early age. At the same
time, I believe the classical role of the jazz drummer should be one of
further development and expansion. Tradition is a constantly evolving form
while preserving its roots.
For him, tradition also means, "being able to articulate oneself freely on
one's instrument and develop one's own language." No surprise, then, that
Lillinger regards jazz itself "as an art music" that demands alertness and
continuous development.
Only in this way, he argues, can one do justice to the legacy of great
innovators and carry their heritage forward through one's own artistic
stance. "Everything else is dead music to me- music that merely fulfills a
certain mood or expectation and thereby loses its timelessness. That
interests me very little..."
Listening to Lillinger's music, it quickly becomes apparent that here is
someone who hovers powerfully above stylistic boundaries. It is therefore
tempting to throw a few more names and concepts at him to discover if he is
influenced by contemporary classical music. Perhaps the aleatoric methods of
John Cage or the open-form concepts of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Earle Brown
play a role.
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| Open Form for Society group shot. Photo by Nadja Hoehfeld. |
Perhaps the great sonic precision known from works by Pierre Boulez is also
essential, particularly for the current and second recording by his ensemble
Open Form For Society (OFFS). "Aleatoricism plays no role whatsoever in
OFFS," says Lillinger. "My music is very concretely composed and written
down in conventional notation."
Nevertheless, influences from contemporary classical music are numerous. He
describes them with terms such as "serial" and "microtonal." His musical
thinking also revolves around traditions such as spectralism, New
Complexity, and concepts of micro-time and irrational time. These are, he
says, "important procedural and inspirational sources."
Someone who formulates his ideas so consciously can perhaps summarize his
aesthetic position in something approaching a manifesto:
It is a "new new" chamber music that incorporates space into its actions
just as much as what is prescribed and written. The placement and
interpretation of the notes are always in dialogue with spatiality. The
performers create the space; within this space they navigate themselves. I
am opposed to genre labels, so I would rather speak of "post-genre" and of
"composer-performers," because everyone involved bears responsibility for
shaping and further developing the material. It is a music that operates in
a certain scientific manner and thereby continuously discovers new paths.
Immersing oneself in the recording Open Form for Society II (Plaist), one
feels as though embarking on a journey through an enchanted sonic garden
that gathers collective musical reflexes and conveys an atmosphere of highly
energized, controlled freedom.
At times there are slowed-down events reminiscent of musical stalactite
caves, as in "Aufgefächert." Elsewhere pulsating sound structures emerge,
creating an almost nervous sonic world. Abstract piano figures and
energetically charged sound spaces continually return, while density is
omnipresent within this sounding architecture.
"Vector" and "Ocker" recall an originally abstracted and further-developed
bebop aesthetic, yet with their own freely treated thematic material and
repetitive patterns. Introspective and expressive structures form the poles
of this musical universe.
How does such a world, constantly shifting between these poles, come into
being? Does the personnel come first, or the composition?
It is a very heterogeneous process, one that I wanted to pursue as naturally
as possible. Initially there was the vision of assembling a larger ensemble
with a strongly percussive sonic language that reflects my way of seeing and
realizing structure. Here the sound of Boulez's Sur Incises was an important
inspiration.
At the same time, his work with nearly all of the musicians involved in
various ensembles was another important factor.
Whether Dell Lillinger Westergaard [DLW], Stemeseder-Lillinger, the
collaborations with Petter Eldh and Kaja Draksler, with Robert Landfermann,
or with Anna D'Errico through my work with Klangforum Wien- all of this was
formative and gave me a clear idea of how and what I can write and hear.
It is fitting that Lillinger mentions Boulez's Sur Incises. With its
instrumentation of three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists, it
is a sonic laboratory, an organized form of energy that Lillinger has
expanded upon. Alongside himself on drums and electronics are Kaja Draksler
(upright piano), Elias Stemeseder (spinet and synthesizer), Georg Vogel
(electric clavinet), Anna D'Errico and Cory Smythe (piano), bassists Robert
Landfermann, Jonas Westergaard, and Petter Eldh, and Christopher Dell on
vibraphone.
The process of selecting collaborators was equally heterogeneous:
The criteria emerged from previous work with all participants in different
projects. For me, this ensemble is the perfect way to connect and transcend
the worlds of classical music and modernity. Some musicians are primarily
responsible for the text, others for further developments regarding sound.
My musical utopia requires excellent preparation: precise reading,
abstraction, further writing, and transcendence. In this ensemble I
consciously distribute that responsibility.
Transcendence, he says, is less a concept than "a result of working with the
material itself. We combine influences from contemporary classical music,
the avant-garde, and modern beat culture, creating a common point of fusion.
Everyone involved must be capable of developing their own further plan based
on what is written."
What may sound free is nevertheless clearly prescribed in many respects and
directions, including highly detailed polyphonic notation and rhythmic
structures:
[This project] has very little to do with conventional notions of freedom
and openness. Freedom begins with the possibilities of variation and
dynamics. Through repetition and the slow variation within those
repetitions, an individual space emerges. Everything conditions everything
else and appears as a shared whole: a meta-instrument, a sonic organism.
Working with the same colleagues over a long period can, of course, lead to
a comfortable routine. One knows what the other person will do, adapts
accordingly, and clichés may emerge.
Lillinger sees it differently. "I don't see that danger. Because I work with
the same musicians over a long period, a genuine awareness develops of what
the next stages might be." Intensive work and insight make it possible "to
take those next steps. With consistent and continuous work, neither boredom
nor routine arise."
A convincing explanation.
This leaves the title Open Form for Society, which seems to suggest a close
connection between music and social thought. "The collective negotiation of
the music I initiate serves as the foundation and basis for negotiation."
Does this also concern ideas of an open, liberal society, or democracy?
The latter, absolutely! It concerns the utopia of a continually improving
social process sustained through negotiation and the collective discovery of
solutions. However, I must say that this project is more a sound that
accompanies and encourages open processes than one that fully embodies them.
Because I am the composer and initiator, it ultimately belongs more to a
closed, albeit flexible, structure.
For the openness of jazz, it is far too fixed and strict; for classical
music, however, it remains too open. "It therefore exists between these
often rigid and ultimately inadequate categories and hopefully inspires
further thinking about these social limitations. The point is this: Never
stop communicating and working. Never stop thinking!"
This is Lillinger's ambitious approach. One that could also help people
outside music avoid more than a few traps of cliché and convention.
*Interview originally published in Jazz Podium, translated from German.
