Sammy Stein - Women in Jazz: The Women, The Legends & Their Fight (8th House press, 2019) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

A couple of years ago I picked up a book edited by Renata Da Rin and William Parker called Giving Birth to Sound: Women in Creative Music. It came to mind as I was reading Sammy Stein's new Women in Jazz as the topic obviously intertwined a bit. Both books incorporate interviews heavily into their construction, but whereas Giving Birth to Sound lets a picture of individual musician's journey through the jazz world emerge from their words, Stein's investigates and shapes a story, supported by the interviewees insights and descriptions, of the current state of women's experiences, good and bad, in a predominantly male industry. 

Stein is a direct and positive writer, and the impression that you take away from the book is an upbeat, and honest, assessment of this current state of women working in jazz. She discusses women's successes, from the struggle for acceptance to the pushing of boundaries, and does not sugar coat the injustices and mistreatment along the way. Stein approaches this broad topic in a scientific manner, interviewing and grouping emergent themes into categories such as the sexism of yesterday and today, reactions to successful women, and ongoing change in attitudes, just to name a few, and splices in first hand quotes between her own descriptive interpretations. 

Stein lays the groundwork with a visit to New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. She follows with a chapter on the rather tricky question of "what is jazz?" and then moves on with developing a review of literature that reveals many of the underlying assumptions and conclusions of what women encounter in the jazz world, and the varying perceptions and attitudes that need to be overcome or are slowly being overcome. This is then capped off with succinct but thorough profiles of some of the pioneering women in jazz, ranging from Bessie Smith and Billy Holiday to Alice Coltrane and Carla Bley, underscoring that women have always been an influential and driving force in the development of jazz.

The interviews that then follow reveal a lot about the artists, the conditions, and the various ways people relate to the challenges that they have had and still come up against. Many of Stein's subjects are vocalists, but there are a number of instrumentalists as well, such as saxophonists Jane Ira Bloom and Kim Cypher, guitarists Mimi Fox and Faye Patton, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, as well women who are in the publicity and management side of the music business. All the perspectives - and there are many - help to form the picture of the challenges and attitudes that women in a traditionally male dominated industry endure and overcome. Some of the interviewees have a pragmatic point of view, and others more defiant, but most all seem to agree that the industry is has moved, and continues to move, in a positive direction for women.

Lastly, Stein discusses the future of jazz, and spends a good number of pages on jazz education. Possibly a topic that invites as much passion as the main one here, she broadly traces the development of jazz education, from the more male-oriented 'cutting session' to its gradual acceptance into the academy. Stein notes that while 50 percent of the students in music schools studying jazz are women, that number decreases dramatically afterwards, especially when looking at the number of women registered with the music licencing bodies like ASCAP, BMI and so on. Appropriately, she wonders, what is happening here?

While I would have been interested in hearing from more voices from the experimental side of the idiom (perhaps a second edition?), Women in Jazz is a fair and even-handed report from the field, with a welcome accentuation of the positive.

I'd like to leave off with a quote from the book, from saxophonist Kim Cypher, who I think captures the spirit of the book well:

I think it is an exciting time for women in jazz right now. We are living in a time when anybody can do anything and women are empowered as we continue to move away from an industry that was traditionally male dominated. It is exciting to see so many incredible female jazz musicians on the scene, especially in terms of instrumentalists.

Women in Jazz is a great read and a excellent and contemporary report on an important topic.

Learn more/order Women in Jazz here.

Women in Jazz was awarded the 3rd spot in JazzTimes' 2019 Readers Poll.

Read More

Art Ensemble of Chicago - We are on the Edge (PI Recordings / Erased Tapes Records 2019)***(*)

By Hinrich Julius

Anniversaries deserve to be celebrated – and with this recording, two of the historic five members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago do celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the band. Roscoe Mitchell and Don Moye gathered an ensemble of 18 musicians (including a conductor) and dedicated the recording to the deceased members Lester Bowie, Shaku Joseph Jarman and Malachi Favors Maghostut. The ensemble includes well-known artists connected both to recent versions of the Art Ensemble and to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) like Nicole Mitchell, Hugh Ragin, Jaribu Shahid, Tomeka Reid and Junius Paul. Three strings and three basses in addition to three percussionists give it a flavor unknown to other recordings of the Art Ensemble and with reservations it can be called a nice and successful recording - not the highlight of the ensembles output, but in large parts a worthy addition to the catalogue.

Yes, it is a record of the Art Ensemble of Chicago – even with the augmented personnel. Since its beginnings other musicians have been members or at least been integrated for a recording, at the beginning especially in the position of percussion and then also as guest stars like Fontella Bass (Les Stances à Sophie, Pathé Marconi, 1970) or Cecil Taylor (Thelonious Sphere Monk: Dreaming Of The Masters Vol.2, DIW 1991 ) . The Art Ensemble was always liberal in allowing its members to do other projects as described in the highly recommended book by Paul Steinbeck: Message to Our Folks (University of Chicago Press 2017 ) . The ensemble also continued with new part-time members when Joseph Jarman dropped out of music for 10 years before returning in 2003. Today two of its historical members are still alive and active with especially Roscoe Mitchell producing both improvised (e.g. Bells for the South Side, ECM 2017 ) and composed music (e.g. Littlefield Concert Hall Mills College March 19-20,2018 Wide Hive 2019 ) on a continuous basis. This recording contains more composed passages than earlier Art Ensemble records probably due to the influence of Mitchell, but it also is a continuation of traditional spirits of the Art Ensemble – Black Power, Groove and Melody.

It is not easy to evaluate the music’s quality, as parts are charming and draw you in, while other pieces even do annoy, although in a calm and peaceful way. In its review of 50 years AACM, this blog called the already mentioned record with Cecil Taylor the Art Ensembles’ Swan Song, its last relevant recording. Reviews of a concert of a smaller version of this Art Ensemble at the Berlin Jazzfestival in November 2019 make you hesitate to judge positively. The performance was called stale (“altbacken” in German ). It was neither black nor future, but rather conventional chamber music. And yes, partially these evaluations are true to these recordings as well. Largely it is composed music, pleasant, but not too pushing the boundaries of avant-garde music.

Percussion focused music / groovy, melodic pieces in my eyes work best (Bell Song, Saturday morning, the old Chi Congo 50, Oasis at Dusk). These songs are performed not as wild as on older records; the percussion instruments create a wide sound, very rhythmic and pulsating. The melodies are simple and enjoyable. It is a refined version of this music, not harming anyone, nice and very uplifting. It seems that Don Moye shared more responsibility for these pieces as they carry his name as composer.

Images of Black Power music shine in pieces featuring Moor Mother / Camea Ayeva (We are on the edge, I greet you with open arms, Mama Koko). She does not sing, she does not cry, but rather recites. The texts deal with the situation of black people in the US and refer to situations today and in the past, but set against a modern-conventional chamber-music background. At first, I was confused as the presentation seems to take the blood and life out of the old style protest songs. Composed strings introduce the title-song: “We are on the edge of victory.” "Victory" seems to mean that black people are now going to colleges and are able to move out of the projects, however, it is not said what we are on the edge of, and at one point it becomes "we are on the edge of open fire. A new hell." Ayeva's words are layered, there are twists and folds. What are the victories then? Once original expectations of old raw protest music is left behind, one can enjoy these refined versions.

Modern chamber music fills the rest of the recording (Jamaican Farewell, Villa Tiamo, Fanfare and Bell, Variations and Sketches from the Bamboo Terrace). Roscoe Mitchell composed Jamaican Farewell for a classical tenor (Rodolfo Cordoba-Lebron) – short interludes in the overall-composition. Many jazz musicians flirt with classical singing, and a short flirt it is here. In all pieces with strings, the orchestration is nice, modern, but not harmonically challenging. Dissonances are there, but swiftly resolved. “Fanfare and Bell” goes the furthest and allows longest frictions, while “Variations” stays blunt quite long and slightly gains through the classical baritone of Cordoba-Lebron. These pieces are new to the world of the Art Ensemble and I have to admit I had my difficulties with them. It is the attempt to extent the bands repertoire to a new field and repeated listening helps enjoying it.

The recording came out as a double CD-Box on PI Recordings / as Double LP (Studio recordings) / Four LP Box (Studio and Live concert), both on Erased Tapes Recordings. The CD-version and the Box contain as extra a live performance of nearly the same ensemble at the time of the recording in Ann Arbor “Live at the Edgefest” at the time of the recording. Both singers/speakers are not participating. The same pieces are performed and one can hear that the ensemble primarily follows the written charts. The live recording offers a very welcome addition of “Tutankhamun” – spirited, groovy and with Mitchell squeaking joyfully against the full ensemble.

In this recording, the old Art Ensemble continues to exist. Both surviving members enjoy the possibility to continue with its old traditions – one rather on the percussive, groovy path (Don Moye), the other with a vision of black, composed music (Roscoe Mitchell). They are older, so why not allow them a more gentrified version of the old uproar. Overall not a recording that pushes the boundaries of modern jazz or music in general, but a pleasant output of a band that has accompanied many of us in most of our active listening-time. Recommended – with above reservations to anyone who is open to enjoy a soothing version of the old anarchic Art Ensemble.

Read More

Cornelius Cardew –Treatise- Gerauschhersteller (Noise Maker - NM1CD, 2018) *****

By Guido Montegrandi

Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise is a193 pages graphic score composed between 1963 and 1967, which appears as a flow of signs that goes on page after page guided by a double staff at the foot of each page. A text which is an underrated milestone in contemporary music and that offers many questions and many possibilities to the interpreter.

Cardew himself in his 1971 Treatise Handbook gave this definition: “Treatise is a long continuous drawing composed according to musical principles and is intended to serve as a score for musicians to play from. However indications of sounds, noises and musical relationships do not figure in the score, which is purely graphic (…) Each player interprets the score according to his own acumen and sensibility.”

The above lines can give a glimpse of what we are talking about; notes, observation and descriptions about Cardew, his tidings with Cage and then with Stockhausen, even the whole score, are available on the Net for those who love to have a deeper insight.

The Gerauschhersteller (noise maker) recording is a 5CDs box and, as far as I know, is the most complete attempt to record Cardew’s work. Being such a problematical piece of music, I asked the interpreters to tell me something about their approach to it and Stuart Riddle (Electronics, Harmonium, Little Instruments, Saxophone) was so kind to give me his point of view as well as many of the material the ensemble used to organise their performance: “Our recording of Treatise was the culmination of two or three years work on the score – it was a piece that we continued to return to in rehearsal. We gave a concert in Wimborne where we played two sections and we were very pleased with the results (…) I always wanted to record the whole piece – although shorter excerpts are valid, I thought that the lack of a recording of the whole piece was a real gap in the literature.”

Cardew suggested in its notes that “no meaning is yet attached to the symbols. They are however to be interpreted in the context of their role in the whole.” To this point Stuart Riddle said: “we spent a lot of time discussing the symbols and possible approaches (…) In the end, we reached the point where we had sufficient familiarity with the score, and a shared understanding of the ways to approach it. We deliberately did not have an approach where, for instance, a triangle is always a triad, and a square is always a four note chord. Each player’s approach to the symbols was private, but informed by the group’s history of discussion and involvement with the score.”

Certainly a relevant point in performing this score is the role of improvisation. Cornelius Cardew during the years of his writing moved from an academic position to a different and more open paradigm – he had joined the AMM (a seminal British free improvisation group) in the meanwhile, so improvisation is part of the game. Of course the role of improvisation in indeterminate pieces like this is quite complicated and certainly it is not possible to discuss it into a review, anyway The Gerauschhersteller decided to follow the path of interaction so that each player could react to what the other players were doing. This as opposed to the approach that Cage gave to his indeterminate pieces where musicians would play their part independently from each other.

The music that springs from these premises is challenging but rewarding even more rewarding if you have the score in front of you while you listen. Gerauschhersteller found a fine balance between sound and silence, noise and music so definitely something to dedicate time to and to meditate upon. A piece of music everyone should be aware of and a relevant performance.

Read More

Sunn Trio – Electric Esoterica (2182 Recording Company, 2020*) ****½

By Phil Stringer

The things we do for reviewing. I have just immersed myself in the Best of Duane Eddy and conducted a thought experiment: what if Duane Eddy had taken a different turn, into improvised music?

During the last months, I have had an immersive Sunn Trio experience. I took a risk on buying Fayrus (Unrock), last year’s release, on the basis of an Unrock newsletter from Michael Stahl. It was a worthwhile risk; it is a tremendous album. I learnt that Sunn Trio is a fluctuating group of musicians with guitarist Joel Robinson a constant. And that they are Arizona based. I listened to that album, a performance with a different line up at London’s Café Oto in October, and now, as I listen to this album, Electric Esoterica, trying to escape a head full of categories suggested by what I read. Is Joel Robinson like Sonny Sharrock? Maybe, at times, like Sharrock’s opening section of ‘whatthefuckdoyuwant 4’ and ‘5’, before Brotzmann pitches in. But Robinson’s gorgeous, deep, reverb, it must be an oblique homage to Duane Eddy, who I then discover lives in Arizona. Surrounded by different musicians, what could Eddy’s ‘Guitar on my Mind’, ‘Eve of Destruction’ or ‘Lonesome Road’ sound like?

Listening to Sunn Trio, like a lot of what I listen to and gets reviewed on this blog, it’s in categories until the categories snap. Sunn Trio is distinctly Sunn Trio.
On Electric Esoterica, it’s the same band as Café Oto, Paul Borman (bass), Andrew Flores (drums) join Joel Robinson. On the album they play a wider range of instruments and Robinson contributes shortwave and field recordings. Partly because of this and because I’m listening to the album repeatedly at home, it brings richer, deeper feelings and images on top of the raw, sonic burst of the gig.

I close my eyes. Side A begins with effects, effects, effects….wild, reverb guitar and Borman and Flores lay down a deep, underlying rhythm as the track unfolds and then ebbs into the next track. I’m in a souk, North African trance rhythms, leading the way. Then, an extended guitar opening, echoing somewhere in that souk as the rhythm insistently propels me down narrow, twisting lanes and then into a crowded square where the guitar fills that square. Vaguely, is it Marrakech? Track 4, a rest, in an antechamber, close to the souk, with a crescendo of percussion, bells and gongs and then, the remainder of the side, I’m back outside, moving quickly away from the crowds, along a highway, out of the city, through valleys with guitar bouncing back, a repetitive drone into feedback fade and heading towards mountains.

Side B, first off, a running bass, still in open country, searching, probing, ever vigilant. Night falls, and the next track, I’m in a chamber, a large hall, back in the city, a wash of guitar and rhythm, a distance chanting or calling. Then, a call to embrace the dance that follows, a dance with percussion, bass, warm fuzz of guitar tones. Track 4, echoing gongs, I have left the dance, into an antechamber, distant sounds of voices, echoing through chambers, fading, fading into a brief ecstatic free for all, a static interruption. Then, finally, an escape from what was verging into an uneasy kind of ecstasy. My pulse is racing, my heart is pounding, my head is swimming with sound. Where have I ended up? Not far from the souk, in that antechamber again, drums, percussion, bass, swirling guitar, distorted voice, repetitive, persistent, trance. Somewhere, a vision is created.

I open my eyes. There are passages when I have felt on edge but now, overwhelmingly, I feel a joyous burst of energy, spilling into me and back out. I think Sunn Trio are making great, vibrant music. They work together, listening, responding, it is dynamic. This album is every bit as tremendous as Fayrus. And, I have told anyone that’s interested that this is music that it will wrap you up and carry you away. It does.

(*I bought a test pressing of this album at Café Oto. It is the best presented test pressing I have come across with a printed sleeve and insert. It is due for release, in the sleeve pictured, on February 21, and will be available on Bandcamp).

Read More

Lea Bertucci – Resonant Field (NNA, 2019) ****

By Nick Ostrum

Lea Bertucci, the young sound-sculptor and saxophonist based in New York, has seen her popularity explode over the years, at least as much as one could expect for someone working on the droning fringes where experimental jazz and soundscapes meet. Her recent output has been favorably regarded both on FJB (brief reviews here and here) and beyond it. This very album, in fact, has recently listed as one of the top 10 jazz albums of 2019 by the New York Times. And, for good reason.

Resonant Field is a partially solo effort (though with some help from Robbie Lee, James Ilgenfritz, and the Tigue percussion collective) recorded in an abandoned grain elevator in Silo City, Buffalo during the summer of 2017. The building is as much an instrument as it is a locale. Even more than other site-specific projects such as that capture in The Cave (Larry Ochs and Gerald Cleaver) or even a lot of Deep Listening work, this album is not simply about tracking an echo, or experiment with timbres in unique spaces. Instead, this album is about projecting sounds, and layering tone upon resonance in entrancing sonic loops. It is also so much more than that.

It is an exploration of polyphony and the reflexivity of sound and space. It plays with ideas of note creation and deterioration that conceptually resemble Nate Wooley’s Syllables project but focus less on the process of generating a note than on the ways those notes are warped, yet sustained as they circulate and interact with the silo. In the process, she creates not only oddly synthetic sounding ambiance (the mixing process certainly adds to this), but also a natural, almost primordial feeling of space and solitude that stretches time in the same way Bertucci piles and manipulates microtones. She plays the room as much as she plays her sax.

It is this combination of physicality (the silo, the acoustic instrumentation, the echoes and reverberation) and numinous atmospherics that makes it so compelling and perplexing. I am hesitant to read too much socio-religious theory into this, but I cannot shake the idea that Mircea Eliade’s concept of the eternal return - the repetition of rites and practices that allows one to step back into mythic-historical time, however briefly – provides an entrepot to unlocking this album. Resonant Field quite consciously involves the return to a time and place that had been lost to progress and, in its imagined state, is already becoming a quasi-mythic memory. It involves ritualized performance that bends perceptions of time and transports the listener to this reimagined and reinvented space, the contours of which are mapped and determined by a performance meant to realize the hitherto forgotten – or maybe now simply newly envisioned - potentialities of the environment. There is an element of communion with an imagined past, here. The silo never could have sounded like this when it was active. It never could have sounded like this had it not been left to decay. It never could have sounded like this in any other time or in any other interaction. And Resonant Field never could have sounded like this in any other place.

Resonant Field is available on vinyl and as a download:

Read More

The Radical Trumpet of Mazen Kerbaj

By Eyal Hareuveni

Lebanese, Berlin-based experimental trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj is a man of many gifts. He is a brilliant, non-conformist comic book artist, graphic designer, highly inventive improviser, and founder of the experimental Lebanese label Al-Maslakh and the Irtijal festival, who keeps expanding the sonic spectrum of the trumpet. Now, 14 years after Kerbaj released his debut solo album, Brt Vrt Zrt Krt (Al Maslakh, 2005), he returns with two solo albums of the prepared trumpet that further cement his position as a serial trumpet disrupter.

Mazen Kerbaj – Solo Trumpet Vol. 2.1 No Cuts, No Overdubs, No Use of Electronics (Discrepant, 2019) ***½

This is the ‘acoustic’ version of the solo trumpet, meaning what you hear is what it is, with no cuts, overdubs or electronics. This album was recorded over two days in Berlin on November and December 2016 and is dedicated to Kerbaj’s close comrade, fellow-Lebanese guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, who plays with him in the “A” Trio, Karkhana group and the Johnny Kafta Anti-Vegetarian Orchestra.

The sounds and other sonic assaults that you may hear on this album reflect Kerbaj’s sober attitude towards the trumpet. He sees this instrument as no more than an assemblage of various metal objects that serve as random means to transfer air and breaths and generate weird series squawks, cackles, howls and squeals, often mutated while using objects attached to the trumpet mouthpiece or bell. Kerbaj sounds like he is enjoying rebelling against the common phonetics and syntax of the trumpet and its brass instruments legacy.

The nine pieces highlight Kerbaj’s singular arsenal of sounds that flirts with raw, abstract noises, krautrock and industrial sounds of alien mutants who may live underwater, or as the British Discrepant label prefers to imagine it: like a restful humpback whale puffing on a hookah pipe at the ocean’s deep end. But Kerbaj is not only a mad yet restful scientist of the futurist trumpet. He has developed a radical mastery of the trumpet and idiosyncratic extended techniques and vocabulary and he knows how to paint arresting soundscapes, sketch tense cinematic narratives, and tell disturbed sonic stories, always spiced with fine doses of dark humor. His ideas may ignite tortured nightmares but also enrich and open your consciousness to magnificent the universe of out-of-this-universe sounds. The last piece is dedicated to the late Dutch composer and inventor of experimental instruments Michel Waisvisz.

Mazen Kerbaj – Solo Trumpet Vol. 2.2 Cuts, Overdubs, Use of Electronics (Discrepant, 2019) ****

Vol. 2.2 suggests the ‘electric’ twin version of the solo trumpet project. Kerbaj adds effects, loop pedals, overdubs and even a crackle synthesizer. The five pieces were recorded in various locations, beginning in 2014 and concluding on December 2018. Discrepant promises that the notion of being transported to a mutant underwater alien community is still effective but the restful whales enter now their meditative happy hour but keep flirting with new unorthodox undercurrents.

Kerbaj knows how to create a deceiving aesthetics where nothing that may tickle even the most experienced ears is what you wish it would be or the manner it should sound. But if you are still here you are probably ready for this revelatory trip and eager to meet again the beast from the deep. And this beast is guaranteed to hypnotize you with its perverted dance moves (“Dance Music For Lazy People”, “I’ll Be A Digital Bitch For You”), evocative, polyphonic grooves (“Just The Three Of Us”) and seductive drones (“I Always Dreamt To Be A Guitar Player”, “Dancing With Myself”) before disappearing into darkest oceanic sink holes.

All pieces are delivered with a provocative sense of invention and healthy irony. You may subscribe to the label advice and return again and again to these albums searching for the doped up seal stranded in a phantom island, appearing and disappearing as the music dictates it to.

Read More

Gorilla Mask - Brain Drain (Clean Feed, 2019) ****

By Martin Schray

When The Thing announced a long break in March last year it was sad news for fans like me. But actually it was a miracle that the band have kept up their concept at such a high quality level for 20 years. The question remained which other bands could fill the gap left by The Thing. Of course there is Dave Rempis’s trios Ballister (with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Paal Nilssen-Love) and Kuzu (with Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon), whose sheer energy could always have matched with the Scandinavian powerhouse. Fire!, Mats Gustafsson’s other free rock project with Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin, are another candidate that comes to mind, as well as DKV (Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler and Ken Vandermark), the last one certainly the “jazziest“ trio of all the ones mentioned. However, if you’re looking for a less obvious alternative, you might check out Gorilla Mask.

The band is part of the busy Echtzeit music scene in Berlin. Canadian expat Peter Van Huffel (alto and baritone saxophones) has formed Gorilla Mask with Roland Fidezius (electric bass) and Rudi Fischerlehner (drums, percussion) in 2010 and from the very beginning they have been working the no man's land between punk, avant-garde jazz and prog rock. Brain Drain ist their fourth album, after Howl! (Between The Lines), Bite My Blues and Iron Lung (both on Clean Feed).

If you listen to a new track like “Caught In A Helicopter Blade“ it seems logical to compare them with The Thing, yet it does them justice only on the surface. Gorilla Mask are less muscular, therefore they are rather rooted in modern jazz. On their former albums they often opened their tracks with heads that are rhythmically in unison, while they are slightly askew as far as the melody is concerned. Rhythm and melody have remained an integral part of their music on Brain Drain, but in a different, less foreseeable way. Especially Fidezius’s effect-laden, playful bass reminds me of King Crimson (often he treats the bass like a guitar) and Fischerlehner's intricate drumming is both propulsive and sonorous. On “Rampage“, the album’s opener, this is paired with a fiery Ornette-Coleman-like alto head. Then, out of the blue, Peter Van Huffel just drops out after the introduction in order to leave the field for Fidezius’s fuzz-bass solo. Surprise, subtlety, unconventionality and quieter moments define their approach. The best example on the album is “Drum Song”, which is dominated by Fischerlehner’s jungle rhythms. His rather abstract and puzzling grooves prepare a dense net in which Van Duffel and Fidezius create intense drones and floating surfaces before they sink the piece in a maelstrom. Van Huffel’s electrified saxes used for “Caught In A Helicopter Blade” and the title track and the overdubs in “Hoser“ (a real rocker, by the way) show another key element of the Gorilla Mask sound: the extensive use a lot of effects (Fidezius has an impressive arsenal at hand, too) and extended materials (Fischerlehner’s sticks, gongs, chains etc.), are responsible for a rich and varied sound palette.

Brain Drain is a very good album but if you have the chance you should see the band live. Their rampant improvisations are even more developed and lush than on the album, in a weird way they reminded me of Grateful Dead. In concert the compositions are rather used as a framework in which the improvisations are able to escalate marvelously.

Brain Drain is available on vinyl, as a CD and as a download.

You can listen to the album here:



You can buy it from the label.

Read More

Velvet renaissance in the golden city - Alernativa Festival (Part 2 of 2)

Alternativa Festival hutné hudby,
Festival of dense music, MeetFactory, Prague
October 26 and November 1-3, 2019

Christian Weber, electric bass, Joke Lanz, electronics. Photo: Anna Baštýřová

By Philipp Schmickl

Espacia

During the three days that preceded the festival, your author was enjoying the life and ambience in the Mesopotamia of Prague, met the persons responsible for the festival and the MeetFactory and, with his heart beating for joy, researched the political transformations that – scented with a flowery hope – are taking place in Prague: In 2018 Zdeněk Hřib from the pirate party took office in the town hall. Then the festival began.

What follows is not a simple description of the concerts but their contextualization with the space where they took place, in short: a concertualization. The space is constituted by the relation between the physical circumstances (shapes, colors, sizes, materials) and the people present as well as by the music that serves as an emulsifier between the three equivalent parts. Over the course of three days, the per se sober space underwent a series of (actually physically impossible) deformations that can only be described through the most subjective perceptions of your correspondent which traverse strobo-flashing clouds and fine, rose-transparent, serpentesquely moving curtains. Citations from the program in italics.

The first band, Scattered Purgatory, transcended the main hall with a musical-ritualistic folk-styled psychedelic drone metal performance. In front of the stage, between the musicians and the audience, a one-meter-taiwanese-chinese marionette – like a possessed staccato-shaman – painted the floor and its puppeteer, who was dressed in "traditional" clothes, in white. This generated an hypnotic force that seized the audience for the entire duration of the performance. At the end of this Taoist ritual of redeeming innocent souls, a small fire broke out on stage: a tissue was torched by a flare from hell. After that, in the theatre hall, Peter Orins was endeavoring to air and open the space upwardly. His slow and concentrated drum solo created space for thinking in the air pockets between the sounds within the widely phrased music. Afterwards came JD Zazie (electronics and turntables), who expanded the space of the main hall like a colorfully painted accordion (inside) and installed another iron girder along the half-circle of a horizon vibrating brightly and darkly. Pause. After the break, the space was slowed down completely by Polish band Księżyc. Two women – the singers of the group –, very much alike the Bateleur (I) of the Tarot de Marseille, were standing behind tables burdened with glass bowls, mirrors and alchemistic artifacts. The ensemble played a two-hour medieval soothsaying-concert that was at the same time familiar to your polyglot reporter forever committed to the truth, as well as completely incomprehensible. The night culminated in an ethereal obscuration of the theatre hall that was played by the young Czech band Lebanon: Barrels, napalm. Standard ambient noise surface sheet metal voice satanic ass bleach. Bombs. In cases of acute fatigue, apply disco. It was loud and fun but too prepared to really carry away the audience. So we stayed for another beer.

On the second day, around midday, the seven members of the band Butcher's Cleaver arrived for the second rehearsal like seven freshly showered golems: Joke Lanz, turntables; Pasi Mäkelä, guitar and voice; Peter Orins, drums; Philipp Quehenberger, synthesizer; Jasper Stadhouders, guitar and electric bass; Petr Vrba, trumpet and electronics; and Christian Weber, electric bass. The bright floor was being swept and, as the bitumen outside was still wet from the rain the night before, the golems left a black watery line on the shiny cement that lead from the entry through the café to the main hall, where they were to play the last concert on the third night. The cleaning lady was indulgently leaning on her mop, watching the mob with nonchalance. The afternoon was gloomy, almost no trains were passing by, the motorway was silently murmuring on the other side, covering all frequencies; the frequency of the ambulances also remained constant. In the evening, the first concert took place in the theatre hall: Philipp Quehenberger, Jasper Stadhouders and Tomáš Procházka (guitar). Sometimes it is not easy when musicians meet and improvise for first time on stage. They filled the space with the surface of dark waters. Quehenberger and Procházka wanted to dive and disappear in order to investigate the psychedelic depths but every time they went underwater, Stadhouders rang his alarm and woke them from dreaming and brought them back to the surface. Your author would have appreciated to descend with the two divers who never ceased to pull downward – I hung myself with all my concentration on the keys and strings in order to disappear completely in the space. The second concert in the theatre hall was performed by Christian Weber (double bass, this time) and Joke Lanz, who, au contraire to the first group, have had a long-lasting collaboration. They created a detached and easygoing performance with a lot of humor so that the space became a permeable site where the atmosphere of the room could trespass the skins and flow into the bodies of the audience members. The listeners coalesced with the wooden planks they were sitting on, with the black curtains they were leaning on, with the Czech beer and slivovica they were carrying in their gestalt. Before the Weber-Lanz-concert, Rashad Becker performed in the main hall, like Valerio Tricoli (who played the last concert of the evening): solo electronics in the widest sense. Both demonstrated their mastery and the beauty of electronic and electro-acoustic sound; through their music they proved the existence of the space, the room, that we all are really here. They penciled over the contours of the hall with white Chinese ink, the glass and the lamps seemed polished, walls and pillars newly painted in black, the light was clear and the darkness could be shifted with the palm of the hand. The penultimate concert was performed by the KRK large group: George Cremasci, double bass; Matthew Ostrowski, electronics; Renata Raková, clarinet; Michaela Turcerová, saxophone; and Burkhard Beins, percussion. They stretched the space fata-morganically clear towards the distant which induced an atmosphere of departure like listening to an Alban Berg string quartet from small speakers on a grey midday in an empty kitchen, drinking strong beer out of a wine glass.

On the third day, your strolling correspondent made a trip to the tourist town and visited streets, towers, hills and trees he knew from the past. Nostalgia did not arise, but in the face of the masses of tourists I was overwhelmed by a weltschmerz that was fatal. Dizzy dizzy(ly) I followed the shape of a person that seemed highly familiar, however, I could not reach her without accelerating my pace. I chased the shape traversing the Staroměstské náměstí and hastened into a narrow and almost deserted alley where I finally slowed down. I had lost the bizarre and and well-known gestalt. The street was empty. And in this emptiness, in this hole in the general hubbub, my memory found space: it was the Golem, the genuine Golem. And as I looked up, I saw him on the roof of a building on the other side of the street, he stopped for a second, waved imperceptibly and disappeared.

The third evening in the MeetFactory started with Paregorik, a young Czech noise-electronic musician who filled the space with transparent electronic pressure that moved the audience closer and closer together until they felt like (in parenthesis), a list of names, separated by commas in between two lines that are bending concavely. The trio Ruinu, consisting of Jan Klamm, guitar, Patrik Pelikán, saxophone, and Ondřej Parus, drums, kept up the pressure, but in inbetween the instruments valves opened up through which the pressure could escape with loud squeaks like air leaving a balloon. After this, it took a while for the space to shrink back to its urform. It was still a little shaky when Thomas Ankersmit started his extensive sonic study of electronic music [which] incorporates Serge Modular feedback and random sine wave generators, a contact mic and tape speed variation. He found dimensions in the space that reached far out through the black walls of the main hall, but were only perceptible within the room. Your author sat right in front of the musician and became a witness of a hitherto ignored phenomenon. The highs of the music produced a feedback inside the ears whereas at the same time the deep murmuring of two people in the back of the space was audible: it was like listening to one voice coming from the inside and one voice coming from the outside of the body. The whole set possessed a classic beauty , that one has to master in order not to be struck dead by kitsch. Then came the conclusion of the festival with the band Butcher's Cleaver:Kombinace rituálního redukcionismu s orgiastickou hravostí, ru šivých pschedelick ých groovů s provokující komunikací, ponerého pomalého tempa s frenetickými útoky nebo armosférických zvukowých ploch s nepředvídatelným hlukem . It was big fun. After three rehearsals the band had a really good sound, a few tricks and some discipline. The space was laughing and really: jistí si můžeme být pouze absencí ticha.

Read More

Q&A with Philipp Schmickl of THEORAL

THEORAL nos 1 - 14. Photo from theoral website.

By Paul Acquaro with Philipp Schmickl

This weekend the Free Jazz Blog featured the writing of  Philipp Schmickl, who has been running the publication THEORAL from his home in Nickelsdorf, Austria. To cap off his coverage of the Alternative Festival, we conducted a short Q&A by email, discussing growing up in the small town of Nickelsdorf, the influence that the Konfrontationen Festival has had, and his work running the THEORAL.

Paul: Could you elaborate a little on your background? Nicklelsdorf is known to some as the home of the Konfrontationen festival, but could you describe growing up in Nickelsdorf otherwise?

Philipp: Nickelsdorf lies in a rural (and poor) area at the eastern border of Austria to Hungary. It used to be the end of "the West" until 1989. Beyond the Iron Curtain was the territory of the Eastern Bloc. The village today counts 1.800 inhabitants; it was a bit less when I was young. The fields, the small forests and the river (which was straightened in the 1970s as far as the borderline) served me as a model for the landscapes described in the numerous novels I read as a youngster.

As a kid, my grandfather took me to see the fence that was dividing the meadows, and he showed me the towers with the armed soldiers watching over the plain. He said that if I crossed that fence, they would shoot me.

When the Iron Curtain fell, the Austrian government sent soldiers to patrol the border. I was controlled from time to time on my way home from the train station and even when they heard my tongue, I was obliged to show my ID. I witnessed conflicts with soldiers in the restaurant of the Jazzgalerie (where the Konfrontationen take place) and elsewhere and I began to understand some mechanisms of prostitution.

Nickelsdorf was and is a quite usual east-Austrian village except for the Jazzgalerie and everything that developed around it. Christof Kurzmann for example said, that from its beginnings, the Jazzgalerie was a place were not only music was happening (much more than in Vienna at that time) but also international politics were debated. It was and is a window to another world. This place influenced my growing up considerably. I got access to music and literature and I started working/helping at the Konfrontationen festival where seeing and talking to so many people from all over the world who were gathering around the music, opened up my mind. There I learned more than in the schools I was going to.

How did you get into improvised music? What were some of your formative listening experiences?

I was around 14. On a Saturday night, some friends and I were at the Jazzgalerie and we went downstairs to check out the concert that was going on in the basement club. I remember standing there unable to move because I was mesmerized by the bass but my friends tore me back upstairs. (I don't remember exactly and I cannot verify right now if it was a bass, it could have been a cello as well; the drummer was Doug Hammond for sure, because he gave us his autograph on our t-shirts after the concert).

Fascinated with the cosmopolitanism, I volunteered at the festival and started attending every club concert throughout the year. That's how I got more and more into the music. Simultaneously I was borrowing records and books from Hans Falb. I could take them home where I would study them in my room. The club concerts always took place on a Saturday, once or twice a month. After school, already in the afternoon I went to the Jazzgalerie, got a newspaper and a book and went downstairs to read and listen to the soundchecks. This was a perfect world – sometimes. I was listening and learning. I liked to observe the people arriving, greeting each other, getting their first drink at the bar, speaking English and very often I was surprised by the music because it was really different (not only to the soundcheck).

Early formative listening experiences I only had in live performances. Some that I remember right now – next time I may tell you others – I had with Franz Hautzinger, Marilyn Crispell, Machine for Making Sense (Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley, Chris Mann, Stevie Wishart) and Tristan Honsinger. The latter once stayed after the Konfrontationen festival for some weeks at the Jazzgalerie. It was summer holidays and I saw him almost every day. But he wasn't playing, he was just there.

Very early I started travelling to other festivals in Austria and in my 20s I regularly traveled via Marseille (where I attended the MIMI festival on the beautiful Îles du Frioule) to Morocco where I also tried to learn about music. Later I went to many other festivals in Europe, Lebanon, Mexico and my understanding of the scene grew more and more. I found the social and political always inseparable from the music.

Aside from improvised music, what other genres of music, and art generally, interest you?

I don't care so much about the genre. It's more about the attitude that comes through in the music. I think you very often can discern if the decision why the music is made is rather based on artistic questions or rather on questions of career. Sometimes the latter can be really good and the former really boring, but usually the targeting of artistic questions is more interesting to me (or the approach of "art-prière" put forward by the German/Mexican artist Mathias Goeritz).

I listen to Ancient music as well as to Mexican popular music as well as to the Viennese school around Arnold Schönberg as well as to Samba and Maracutú, etc, etc.

I love reading novels and going to the cinema. It is a pity, that many good films use disturbing or just bad sound and music, I have to say. I would love to see more dance pieces but the dance scene I feel a little bit difficult to access.

Can you tell us a little bit about THEORAL, for example, when did you start it and what was your inspiration?

What is your approach to putting together an edition of THEORAL? What inspires, or suggests themes?

The first issue of THEORAL came out on April 1, 2011. Two years earlier, I published together with Hans Falb from the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf the book tell no lies claim no easy victories / L'improvisation ne s'improvise pas for the 30^th anniversary of the Konfrontationen. For this I conducted two interviews with Joëlle Léandre, which taught me a lot about the strength of the spoken word. At the same time I was studying oral history as a methodology in anthropology. In 2010, I graduated in socio-cultural anthropology and as I could not find any interesting jobs – in fact, any job – so I decided to do my own thing. I contacted my accomplice Karin Weinhandl and ever since she's been in charge of layout and illustration.

The first issue included interviews with Marco Eneidi and my most important teacher at university, Andre Gingrich. We had no model for THEORAL, just a subtitle: oral music histories and interesting interviews. It was an inexperienced product of what we thought is good. Publishing the first issue I already had the next ones in mind. I thought, I may make a living out of it but quite soon I realized that this was not going to happen. So I got jobs in galleries and restaurants to secure a living and continued to publish one or two books a year without compromising.

The basic idea was to ask artists the questions that I posed myself about how I wanted to live my life. And then, of course, I investigated the mechanisms of how the music comes to acoustic life and where inspirations come from and how decisions are made. I was never interested in talking about the latest album or tour and if, then only as a means to explain larger concepts like attitudes, techniques, structures, politics, etc. One of the reasons why we published conversations with musicians (and other artists) from all over the world, is that I was searching for universals in personal expression. What is the thread made of that sews together people who are trying to live their life in a creative way – if there is one.

The guiding methodology is to consider the interview – the conversation – as an improvised concert. Each speaker has his/her own agenda, his/her own questions, feelings and experiences, etc. I mostly rely on my knowledge, spontaneity and instinct (in short: intuition) in order to ask the "right" questions at the "right" time. Now and then I prepare one or two special questions in advance.

Throughout some years I recorded many interviews, a lot of them are not published. So when I think of putting together a new edition, I either combine a new interview with one of the already recorded ones, or I have a certain idea about what I want to do and I start from scratch. Maybe I should target a publication with a collection of (parts of) older interviews as well – I have a lot in French and Spanish as well but this is another story. Who I choose depends on personal taste and timing. There are so many who I did not ask yet.

The Oral has had 15 editions, are there any issues that you recall something special about?

The new edition is always my favorite.

If I look at all the issues, each one has its color, its memories of recording, transcribing and editing, of discussing the illustrations with Karin, a release party with certain concerts, my personal memories are tied to the books, almost into the colors of the covers.

As I understand it, your are shifting your focus a bit, what are your plans, what is the future of THEORAL?

It was crucial to write the article On Being A Medium. Bright gatekeeping in a dark era for THEORAL NO. 14. I tried to find as many different facets of "the medium" as I could and then began to elaborate on each aspect. (It may be considered as the beginning of a larger work). This subsequently led to the change of the THEORAL subtitle into: bright medium for uncynical voices.

Over the last nine years, we have been a medium in the brightest sense. We have generated a lot of honest material. I think, it is perfectly possible to write an Aesthetics of Improvisation under contemporary socio-political conditions based on what we have published in 15 editions on over 1,200 pages.

Recently I listened to a radio show focusing on the new opera Orlando of Olga Neuwirth that had its première at the opera house in Vienna. And what the great composer had to say about music did not differ much and was sometimes even less interesting as what the artists have said in THEORAL. "Everything" cannot be said and we would never aspire to that; but what has been said in THEORAL, covers a wide range of what is important in music. It may be time for taking a break and evaluation.
Although I already have an idea for THEORAL NO. 16, I think, it's time to shift the focus to writing. And as the economic censor is growing its scissors day by day, I have been looking for an ally in the next project. I found the department for jazz and popular music studies at the art university in Graz, Austria, where I am going to present my PhD project very soon, hoping to be finally accepted. The doctorate will be a monograph on the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf and the Konfrontationen festival at the border. I am thankful for indications where to obtain stipends for this kind of enterprise.

--

THEORAL no. 15, featuring Didi Kern und Philipp Quehenberger will be released on Feb 7th. The text is in German and  contains a CD. [more here]

Previous versions of THEORAL are also available, no. 14 featured Tristan Honsiger and Joel Grip. [read more]

Read More

Velvet renaissance in the golden city - Alternativa Festival (Part 1 of 2)

Velvet renaissance in the golden city.
Alternativa Festival hutné hudby,
Festival of dense music, MeetFactory, Prague
October 26 and November 1-3, 2019
A benevolent account

By Philipp Schmickl

Wer hätte das Recht, mehr über Prag zu schreiben, als was er auf einem Spaziergang sieht? Es gibt zu viele Kenner, zu viele Prag-Gelehrte die auch vom Schreibfach sind. Prag ist eine Fakultät, eine Wissenschaft und fast eine Weltanschauung.

Joseph Roth

Mesopotamia

At the Western banks of the Vltava river the district of Smíchov stretches towards the South like a sea horse swimming in the direction of Plzeň. In its belly the road traffic and the rail traffic meet and form one vibrating rope. A bit under the navel of the fine creature, right between the motorway and the rail tracks, like in the fertile land between Euphrates and Tigris, the main building of our account is located: the MeetFactory. It is a huge light-green three-storey-railway-mansion , that looks a little shabby from the outside and has two melting red cars hanging from its facade – an installation by David Cerný, one of the founders of the MeetFactory (the name stands for the place as well as for the organization). The motorway, which flows into a tunnel a little south of the MeetFactory, sounds like a canalized waterfall; the rails, which by day and night lead the way for sooty suburban trains as well as for heavy freight trains dreaming deeply in the railway-rhythm, lie to the forefront of the building like a striped carpet one is not allowed to walk on.

The arriving traveller gets off the tram vis-à-vis the MeetFactory. He was advised not to take the shortcut a.k.a. direct route over the fence and the rails but to follow the loop over the bridge, just ten minutes. Going uphill, changing slowly, the way is fringed with a rusty crash barrier and wild staghorn sumac trees growing out of the cracks in the bitumen that are absorbing one's look with a greyish shimmer. After crossing the bridge, on the other side of the tracks, more brownfield plants like blackthorns, acacias, wild roses with falling yellow-green leaves and red fruits are governing the side of the path. Rusty, suffering wagons and other machines – discharged due to their depression – are peeking through the autumn-colored brushwood. Magpies are impatiently throwing walnuts on the asphalt and from time to time a shaky student driver practices how to go backwards with the car. The sound of sirens is always around, emitted by yellow ambulances continuously racing over the bridge.

A little more than ten years ago the walls of the MeetFactory were empty and bare of everything valuable or useful. It was a structure of cement in a no man's land between motorway and rail tracks. After the first renovations the organizers started implementing their program of contemporary theatre, fine arts (including residencies) and music. The music, meanwhile, is mostly rock, metal and dance parties. At the beginning, the place was wild and raw but over the years its interior changed to a sort of industrial chique. The events take place in the main hall, which feels like any other rock stage. To its opposite there is the theatre hall, a smaller space. Its comforting and intimate density convinced your modest reporter immediately upon entering. The café in the bright and lofty foyer and the spacious gallery open at 1 pm and are freely accessible. Now and then young people come by, presumably from the residency programs; they converse in the art-pidgin-English that is so colorful in accents, they see the exhibitions, explain works of art of the exhibition and have a seat on the red chairs at the black tables in order to have one of the delicious coffees, and some, how bizarre, have red wine. If there is no concert or theatre piece in the evening, the place closes at 8 pm.

҉

I owe my invitation to the festival and my accommodation in an apartment in the building annexed to the MeetFactory to Petr Vrba, one of the main curators of the festival. Two days before the festival we agreed upon meeting two tram stations north of the MeetFactory at the Smíchovské Nádraží, the southern regional train station and navel of the sea horse. The sky is a grey block under which reddish-brown buildings loom like gigantic meteorites, trams and buses prevail in the street. Petr proposed to get together in the train station pub Oaza, so I am waiting there. It has the generosity of a noble coffee house, a lot of space and light, few but large tables, wide industrial windows and a veritable feeling of journeying to the wide world, or at least to another country in its air. On the walls there are portraits of Ivan Martin Jirous, also known as Magor, the maniac. This former regular customer of Oaza published numerous volumes of poetry, he was an art historian and mastermind of the dissident rock group The Plastic People of the Universe. Because of his activities in the 1970s and 80s he went to prison for longer periods several times [1] .

The pub is legendary, Petr says, but the whole area around the train station is soon going to be torn down. It is the property of the Sekyra-Group, a developer-group, that is working steadily, also bureaucratically, on collecting all approvals and permissions to demolish the plot of land in order to plant high-price apartment buildings and shopping malls there, like they already did in other parts of Prague. Given this situation, last year, Michal Kindernay and Vedula Guhová made an installation with the sounds of the brownfields, the rails and voices of the residents of Smíchov, that may soon have to abandon the neighborhood.

Alternativa

The 45-year-old Petr Vrba is a musician, organizer and curator [2] . Over the last years he has worked for bigger and smaller festivals in Czech republic and organized concert series where he was responsible for the program. Before he became part of the Alternativa festival, he curated the vs. Interpretation festival in 2016 [3] . It helps a lot to be part of the scene, he says, when it comes to selecting musicians and/or bands for the program as well as for the communication. In consequence of his travels and direct contact with the world of musicians and improvisers, he knows much more than many sedentary/non-traveling organizers and he can count on with most musicians' basic trust in what he proposes, even if it seems a little bit unusual sometimes. Unlike the year before, Petr Vrba himself is going to perform this year on stage.

His colleague Roman Odjinud, around ten years younger, runs the (off)space Punctum where they continuously organize concerts, cinema, workshops, etc. On their website they characterize the venue as follows: "Punctum is a community project residing in Prague's Žižkov district. A home base for various creative and educational activities. Its purpose is to connect people from different subcultures and backgrounds in order to create new impulses for collaboration and communication. We work with non-profit organisations, students and other individuals that support the local alternative scene. The output being concerts, workshops, discussions, theatre performances, author's readings and yoga classes." The district of Žižkov ascends east of the centre and appears to be well-bourgeois and, as a matter of fact, is very beautiful. Changing uphill, going slowly, the Krásova leads to the television tower to which crawling babies are affixed, another art installation by David Cerný. To the punks from Punctum this is an incredibly unimportant fact. Cerný's reputation in the free scene is, to put it very carefully, not good. Keep on moving up the hill now, to the right hand there is the residential building Krásova number 27. If the front gate is closed, you ring at Punctum. You pass a corridor and arrive in the backyard where a staircase leads to a terrace at the level of a mezzanine. Passing one or two doors one enters the concert space which gives the impression of a rehearsal room for dancers without a mirror. The wooden boards on the floor are brushed in light green pastel and the high white walls are partly covered with black curtains. Another door leads to the kitchen/bar where they cook vegan food for the staff. On the ceiling someone painted: Petr Vrbas private free jazz club.

҉

For 27 years the Alternativa has been organized as one of several events by the non-profit-organization Unijazz. The festival was very important in the 1990s, in the years after the Sametová revoluce, because the music that could be presented then was really alternative [4] . After some years, according to Vrba and Odjinud from their audience-point-of-view, the course of the program lead towards a "paying-the-debts-attitude", which means that many of the invited musicians, who had not been allowed to play in the Czech republic because of the political situation before the Velvet revolution, already had already passed their zenith and were musically not that interesting anymore. The Alternativa was developing towards being a festival for the older generation.

Roman Odjinud started working for Unijazz/Alternativa some years ago as a stagehand. After various other occupations he is now part of the curator team, together with Vrba. When they started working together two years ago, they formulated several objectives in order to bring a young audience to the festival and even more, to motivate them to taste more experimental forms of music. The most important aspects of their visions are:

• The festival should take place in only one venue. (Hitherto it was spread over several places in the city over a longer period of time).
• It must be accessible for young local musicians. (Until 2018, a "small Alternativa" took place where local groups were competing for a place on the stage of the main festival. This was abolished.)
• As there is no big audience for this kind of music, the work for the festival (which, by the way, is not paid well at all) has to be seen as a marathon and not as a sprint, says Vrba, who mentions the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels explicitly as an example. The goal is to establish trust in the curatorial sense of the organizers among the younger music fans in order to introduce them to music that is little known or even unknown to them.
• On the weekend that precedes the festival, local guest-curators are invited to positively take advantage of the structures of the Alternativa in order to widen the musical spectrum of the festival.
• The festival gets a certain dramaturgy.

---

[1] https://dissidenten.eu/laender/tschechien/biografien/ivan-martin-jirous/

[2] These "artist-organizers", to coin a term, are keeping alive experimental and improvised music, be it in Prague, Vienna, Mexico City, Sydney, Beirut and other parts of the world in between festivals.

[3] https://www.vsinterpretation.org/en/2016/program; November 23, 2019

[4] A list of all festival programs: http://alternativa-festival.cz/about-the-festival

__________________________

Philipp Schmickl
Philipp Schmickl was born in Vienna and raised on the austro-hungarian border in Nickelsdorf. He had his first lessons in music, literature and politics at the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf. Later he studied anthropology and founded the series THEORAL – oral music histories and interesting interviews. The subtitle changed in the meantime to bright medium for uncynical voices. He fills his blog THEFUCKLE from time to time with festival reviews, poetry, field recordings and articles about music and love. At the moment he is looking for stipends to finance his PhD at the art university in Graz. The plan is to write a monography about the Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf.

Read More