Festival Causa Efeito - Lisbon, Portugal, June 28 - July 1, 2023 (Part 2)

By Guy Peters 

Friday June 30th

João Barradas. Photo by Nuno Martins

Accordionist João Barradas has become one of the most impressive practitioners of the accordion, popping up in the widest variety of contexts, whether it’s classical, contemporary music or modern jazz. A decade ago, he already recorded an album with Sérgio Carolino, and after that he worked with a.o. Greg Osby, Belgium’s Fabrizio Cassol & Aka Moon, Swiss drummer Florian Arbenz, American trumpeter Peter Evans and recently also Carlos Bica. Check out the documentary CONTINUUM to learn more about this remarkable musician, whose command of the instrument, combined with a hunger for new experiences, turned him into one of the most lauded Portuguese musicians of his generation. He was actually supposed to play in duo with bass player Hugo Carvalhais, but at the last moment, this became a solo concert. 

Since it coincided with the release of Solo II - Live at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence , it was perhaps appropriate and an opportunity to show his skills as an improviser. Immediately, it became clear that Barradas wasn’t there to impress with lightning-fast virtuosity. You can find footage of him as a 12 year-old performing complex material at breakneck speed, but now he used chromatic and MIDI accordions to tell a much more personal story. The MIDI model enabled him to explore different sound registers, sometimes having more in common with a glockenspiel or pocket-sized carillon than an actual accordeon. What followed felt like a strikingly personal trip through the mental and musical space Barradas inhabits.

For each piece, he switched accordions (he brought three models), made use of various extended techniques and the possibilities of stereo sound. Both starkly repetitive/minimalist and lushly imagined, he betrayed an intensely personal relationship with his instrument(s). Whether it was dense and dark with a droning foundation or allowing more melody and color, you could never pinpoint him on any genre or influence. From classical masters to folk-infused strains to idiosyncratic artists like Pauline Oliveros, it’s somehow all there, and it makes you wonder how he would approach music by Clifton Chenier. Perhaps some other time. This set felt like a calling card, with the abstract meeting the concrete, showing you the unfamiliar (an accordion sounding like a Wurlitzer piano) or making the familiar (Ellington’s “Single Petal of a Rose” and Miles Davis’ “Solar”) entirely new. He’s that kind of guy and it makes you wonder what the hell he’ll be doing in, say, a decade or so.

*

The Selva. Photo by Nuno Martins

Over the course of four albums, The Selva - Ricardo Jacinto (cello, electronics), Gonçalo Almeida (bass, electronics) and Nuno Morão (drums, percussion) - has grown into a powerful unit that effortlessly navigates between styles and atmospheres. Camar​ã​o​-​Girafa , their fourth and most recent album, is perhaps the peak of their exceptional chemistry so far, a relentless and ominous trip to a netherworld where form and freedom are kept in a tight balance. The trio delivered a performance of that album’s material, in chronological sequence. The exceptional sound quality and atmospheric lights only strengthened the overall experience. 

 
One of the many striking things about the band is that the members, despite their individual qualities as musicians, rarely opt for obvious displays of technical superiority. Imagination, control and exploration in depth are obviously more of a concern than technique, and so their music develops at its own pace, with three sculptors of sound completely attuned to each other, letting acoustic and electronic elements, the pure and the manipulated coexist. So what you get are eerie vibes, with growling, distorted effects, conjuring a stark ritualism that at some point had more in common with the grandeur of Swans and the direction of a festival like Roadburn, than one for improvised music. But it works, because the elements of freedom and discovery remain at the trio’s core.

They moved through a monochromatic landscape with melancholy nooks and thunderous peaks, alternated with massive Neu!-like motorik grooves, Eastern vibes and demonic chamber music. The interplay was alternately free and tight as hell, the band occasionally turning into a slightly deranged percussion trio, with Jacinto laying down the cello strings up, and switching back to a total trance, with manic intensity and metronome drumming for bobbing audience heads. The concert was nothing less than a masterclass in tension and release, and by the time they returned to more restrained territory for their final part, you’d become totally wrapped up by their heavy-but-intricate merger of fearless sound exploration and sweeping chamber-rock.

* 

Susana Santos Silva and Carlos Bica. Photo by Nuno Martins

 

Susana Santos Silva and Carlos Bica belong to different generations and perhaps also scenes. The past few years have witnessed Santos Silva expanding her range with a productivity to match, putting out albums with a.o. Fire! Orchestra, Fred Frith, Kaja Draksler, Child Of Illusion, as well as some solo music, totalling more than a dozen (!) releases in a year and a half. Those who have kept up with her, have probably also noticed that her music has only become bolder and more personal. Working with Anthony Braxton further confirmed the status of this exceptional trumpet player, who has become one of Portugal’s leading improvisers. Also during this duo with Bica, it took her just a few moments to impress with her sound and presence. She displayed her technique with aplomb, effortlessly switching from conventional to extended techniques and back, never losing sight of the flow of the music.

It also helped that the two musicians worked with a few compositions, or at least outlines used as a platform, that highlighted their personal strengths. Bica’s rootsy, transparent lines and impeccable sound never cease to impress and when he bows forward, intimately embracing the bass in that typical posture of his, you know you’re in for a lyrical, heartfelt treat, with often hymn-like elegance circling simple motifs. Bica didn’t shy away from muscularity - with the bow, he created some extraordinarily powerful moments - but never sounded like a loose cannon. Santos Silva reacted with control, invention and restraint, switching from dirty smears to unfettered beauty and back, occasionally even singing through the trumpet. And if you thought they were just following the muse, in a fingersnap they joined each other for a quick, explosive run. A beautiful concert that combined warmth and lyrical introspection with abstraction and fickleness.

*

MOVE. Photo by Nuno Martins

 

The final concert of the day took place at the festival’s outdoor bar. The ideal location for trio MOVE, who dedicated their performance to the late Peter Brötzmann and did it in the only proper way: full blast. Like many of Brötzmann’s groups, MOVE could have naysayers accuse them of brutish violence and non-stop aggression, but that would be a one-sided view. The band consists of musicians that are way too committed to acts of freedom and spontaneity. Gibson’s control over extended techniques is just off the charts and within this band, he gets and demands the opportunity to use all the fluttering, quacks and impossibly shrill sounds he’s capable of. But of course there is also the hectic dancing, the manic physicality of his approach that is the result of his inner music, but also the presence of his colleagues.

In no time, drummer João Valinho has turned into one of the most visible and dependable voices of the Lisbon scene, with a dexterity that is matched by quick-fire responses and explosiveness. Put a guy like Felipe Zenicola next to him and you’re off for a combustible ride. Zenicola is a master of free playing, but must have roots in feverish rock & roll as well. His crawling lines are occasionally immensely heavy, as if coming from some living beast, with a sound that even reminds you of the late, crushing Harvey Milk, and always filled with a throbbing, dark funk. He could have been a member of Talking Heads, if they’d been raised on occult exorcisms. So what you get are ominous grooves, often with a cramping, convulsive unpredictability.

Valinho is capable of dropping sudden bombs, just like Steve Noble, Paal Nilssen-Love and Han Bennink can, but just as well deviates from the well-known path with concise accelerations and detours, never missing the mark where the three meet for one of those joint explosions. On soprano, Gibson used a fat vibrato that even reminded you of Sidney Bechet (albeit on a death trip), and when he used both soprano and tenor, of course it made you think of Roland Kirk. In this context, it became something exciting, a frenzied and overpowering mass of sound and energy. BAM!

Saturday July 1st

Isabel Rato Quinteto. Photo by Nuno Martins

 

 During the roundtable discussion a few days earlier, mainly the negative side effects of codifying jazz were touched upon (it hinders progress, risks to become a conservative narrative for a conservative agenda, etc.), but if there’s one argument why you could turn it into a static thing, it’s jazz education. You can use it as a starting point, to explain, to make sure you’re all on the same page. The pedagogical concert by the Isabel Rato Quinteto aimed at an all ages audience and was a combination of performance and jazz history class. Singer/pianist Rato, vocalist João David Almeida, saxophone player João Capinha, bass player João Custódio and drummer Alexandre Alves did a good job of making an audience feel the joy, the challenges and unique character of jazz.

They did it in a chronological fashion, starting from its New Orleans roots with “Basin Street Blues”, talking about the blues and inviting the audience to sing along. An hour is of course too short to cover a century of evolution, so they mentioned some highlights from the first half century (Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, swing, Charlie Parker, bebop) to end up at free jazz and the civil rights movement, and finally making a brief jump to current Portuguese jazz. Stylistically, it diverged from the rest of the program, for obvious reasons, but it was a warm and entertaining concert that delivered what it was expected to: enthusiasm for (and some insight into) this endlessly fascinating genre.

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One Small Step. Photo by Nuno Martins

It was a pity that not more people stuck around for the next concert, as it was another playful and creative addition to the program. One Small Step is the trio of bass player Roger Arntzen, Hardanger fiddle player/vocalist Vegar Vårdal and tap dancer (!) Janne Eraker. Now, the whole tap dancing thing may suggest a kind of old school, Cabaret-styled vibe, but it could hardly be further from the truth in this case. Combining spontaneously improvised music that is obviously rooted in Scandinavian folklore with imaginative dancing is perhaps not unique. But it is if the dancer you’re talking about is actually performing as a musician as well. You could already hear this on their 2022 album Gol Variations, but you need to see it take place in front of you to truly experience the band’s merger of music and tap dance.

All three musicians walked up barefoot, while Eraker started drawing circles with her foot on a little stage partly covered with sand. Vårdal used his fiddle in unconventional ways, while Arntzen applied clothespins to his strings and before you knew it, they were involved in a web of percussion that gradually gained more color, intensity and volume. If you closed your eyes, you were listening to a drummer with brushes. Perhaps even a guy like Han Bennink, because Eraker’s feet created the kind of swing, drive and sudden explosions the drummer is capable of. It was trance-like and exciting, the dancer kicking the floor while Vårdal joined her with uncanny throat sounds and dance moves and Arntzen laying down a nice groove.

Eraker amplified and modified her dancing in several ways, using a container of water, stepping on bubble wrap and switching to a pair of traditional tap dancing shoes for that old school sound. It was energetic, colorful, theatrical and a sight to behold. The best thing about it all, was that it also made sense in a musical way. You saw and heard three musicians performing, with the difference that one of them was also a dancer. An arresting performance, I’ve never really seen anything like it.

*

Oswald and Zeuthen. Photo by Nuno Martins

For many, it was also the first time they saw young Margaux Oswald . The pianist of French-Filipina origin was born in Switzerland, but currently resides in Copenhagen. She made her entrance on the international platform only a few years ago, but is destined to become a household name. After a solo album on Clean Feed (Dysphotic Zone, 2022), she recently released a duo album (Magnetite) with Danish veteran Jesper Zeuthen, who has been around since the late sixties, played with Don Cherry at a young age and later mainly with other Danish musicians such as Pierre Dørge, Jakob Bro and Carsten Dahl. Throughout his career, Zeuthen has been somewhat under-recorded (at least his own projects), so perhaps this new duo might attract some attention.

And what a remarkable duo it is. Oswald is a proponent of the don’t hold back anything -school, gifted with a dazzling technique and thriving on the tension created by covering the entire range of the ivory in front of her. There seems to be no middle ground, as each little, hushed detail is alternated by a thunderous reply, and each cluster in the piano’s middle range can be expected to be torn apart by growling thunder in the low register and/or escapes to the extreme right of the tuned drums. Zeuthen, on the other hand, is more of a minimalist, armed with a stark, unadorned sound that feels rigid and emotional at the same time. Even blindfolded, you would hear this is an experienced player for whom every note counts. If anything, hearing him was a revelation.

The combination of these two voices was something special. Oswald hammered away with undiminished intensity, acting as a kind of missing like between Keith Tippett and Charlemagne Palestine, with endless arpeggios, huge intervals and maximalist eruptions. It was a performance of huge contrasts, with two entirely different kinds of fierceness trying to find some common ground, Oswald letting the music rain down incessantly, like a great-granddaughter of Art Tatum and Cecil Taylor. And while it’s quite an event to witness a pianist with such a personality and preference for grandeur, there’s still the context to deal with. Put another musician of that temperament next to her and the music will be strangled in no time. With Zeuthen, the contrast in approach was quite fascinating, yet you couldn’t shed the impression that the performance could have used more oxygen and equilibrium.

* 

Agnel, Edwards and Noble. Photo by Nuno Martins

 When something magical happens, you see it in people’s eyes. They always give it away, are aligned with their smiles, expression of surprise or bafflement. You could see it after the concert by Sophie Agnel , John Edwards and Steve Noble, the undisputed highlight of this festival. The trio released two albums on Clean Feed - Meteo in 2013, Aqisseq in 2018 - yet you can never be prepared for a concert like this. It felt like being dragged behind a truck, like being picked up by a tornado and put down again 40 minutes later on the other side of the venue. It felt like seeing true masters of the art at work, with boundless energy, inspiration and unstoppable collective dynamics. And putting it into words proves to be a daunting task, because wordless connection is at the heart of it.

It already started restless, with Noble mirroring Agnel’s angular approach with brushes that sounded as loud as other drummers’ regular sticks. Immediately, you could feel the gigantic thrust of this golden rhythm section, one of the few that could keep up with a force of nature like Peter Brötzmann. Probably also one of the few that can match Agnel every step of the way, and inspires her to display the full range of her capabilities. Agnel’s command of technique is impressive, but her restraint and toucher in the quieter parts are equally as impressive. However, while there were some moments of gentle introspection, the largest part of the concert felt like standing in a shooting booth at a fair.

Edwards is one of the most physical of bass players, armed with a huge sound he squeezes from the neck of that bass, while regularly turning it into a percussion instrument, and Noble always by his side with endless fills, sudden blasts, stubborn repetitions. It allowed Agnel to attack the piano with her forearm, dive into its belly to manipulate, play dizzying runs, dense clusters, squeeze in the occasional sly melody hinting at some cinematic universe. Wood was struck, metal resonated, it was music by and for callused hands. A glorious racket, a sound laboratory, a well of ideas executed with fervor, imagination and stunning agility. And perhaps the most unusual thing of it all was that Agnel retained that classy elegance throughout. It wasn’t brutish violence. It was improvised music played by true masters of the art on an exceptional day; it was the most classic of all jazz line-ups, the piano trio, getting an unforgettable makeover. 

Luis Vicente Trio + Malaby. Photo by Nuno Martins

It was probably a good thing that the Luís Vicente Trio and Tony Malaby played a bit later at a different location (the outdoors bar), so you could empty your head first. Not that the final band of the festival wasn’t interesting. The trio already played a bunch of well-received concerts on the back of its album Chanting in the Name of (2021), which was perhaps a bit of a breakthrough for the leader, who usually works within the context of completely free improvised music and moved a bit closer to the fire music tradition with a handful of compositions that allowed for maximum freedom. With bass player Gonçalo Almeida and drummer Pedro Melo Alves, he uses two of the most versatile musicians of the scene, two personalities that can push both him and his compositions to another level. For this collaboration with Malaby, Vicente didn’t stick with the album material, but wrote some new compositions instead.

The addition of a saxophonist (on soprano and tenor) and the use of some swirling unison lines immediately took you back to the Ornette Coleman quartet and other similar bands, even though these guys also took the music in their own, vital direction. Apparently, they had to deal with bad sound on stage and it obviously bothered them. Nevertheless, the quartet played a strong set. Almeida was ultra-active, with a combination of determination and aggression, Melo Alves danced all over the place, occasionally even with irrepressible swing. Vicente and Malaby traded ideas back and forth, involved in call & response games, easily switching to jubilant lines when needed. It was loose and energetic, the ideal finale for a jazz festival that showed the genre is still doing fine in the early 21st century. You just need to know where to look for it. 

See: Part 1 

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Festival Causa Efeito - Lisbon, Portugal, June 28 - July 1, 2023 (Part 1)

By Guy Peters

Throughout 2023, Lisbon’s NOVA University celebrates its 50th birthday with a wide range of activities, from exhibitions, conferences and debates dealing with current topics (gender equality, the challenges of chatGPT, sustainability, etc.) to a jazz festival aligned with the university’s research for the future. Pro-rector Clara Rowland, head of the festivities’ Cultural Program, approached Pedro Costa (Clean Feed) to assemble a program - aimed at the general audience, as well as international critics and curators - that might offer some clues about where jazz is heading in 2023.

The result was a four day festival - Causa Efeito - with a strong focus on Portuguese jazz, presenting some of the forward-thinking practitioners of the local scene, as well as some foreign artists with ties to the label, several of whom presented a brand new album. Would the event live up the university’s culture of innovation?

Wednesday June 28th

To kick things off in a proper way, a roundtable discussion (‘Jazz - que presente?’) was organized to focus on three general topics: the current state of jazz (is it dead and if not, what does it mean?), the act of publishing music in the early 21st century, and the presence of women in jazz. While the first two subjects offered some interesting insights into the many ways jazz can be approached, as well as some regional differences (Pedro Costa and singer Beatriz Nunes offering a Portuguese perspective, music critic Stewart Smith adding his two cents about the Scottish/UK scene, yours truly about Belgium), is was the third topic that led to the liveliest discussion.

Nunes, who besides her artistic practice is also an academic researcher, was well-prepared and armed with statistics about female presence - or more accurately: absence - in the field of jazz (festivals in particular), and made a passionate call for change. While the need for and importance of change was obvious for all involved, the tempo at which it can be made, was another matter. In any case, the past few years have seen a much-needed acceleration in some areas and more awareness overall, and while change at the very fundamentals (society as a whole, music education,...) takes time, it shouldn’t stop anyone from actually doing something. And the festival? Seven out of thirteen concerts featured women. 

Sérgio Carolino. Photo by Nuno Martins.

Costa also tried to show that nowadays, jazz involves a broader range of instruments. Throughout the festival, less common instruments such as accordion, pedal steel guitar and feet (more about that later) would make an appearance, but the first one to make an impression was tubist Sérgio Carolino with his self-made lusophonein a beautiful room of an old college. Carolino is a major figure for his main instrument in Portugal, being the principal tuba player in the Porto Symphony Orchestra Casa da Música for over twenty years. He is also experienced as an improviser, appearing on Clean Feed since its earlier days, while in 2022 he released the solo album Below 0. 

 
The colossal lusophone ‘Lucifer’, designed by Carolino from different parts of old tuba models, and looking like a piece of futurist antique straight out of a China Miéville novel, has some relations in avant-garde jazz - think of Sam Rivers’ Tuba Trio with Joseph Daley or Peter Jacquemyn’s lower-brass celebration Fundament -, but perhaps also some connection to a guy like Colin Stetson, mainly because of the use of electronics/effects. Carolino started with a thunderous steamboat roar, to take you for a ride through an imaginative universe full of dolphin whistles and submarine sonar pulses. The effects occasionally sounded ambient-like, but suggested something far more iridescent.

While the first part of his program served as a fine taster, it was the longer second part that turned his brief 30 minute-performance into an excellent festival opener. In it, he moved from dense and urgent 70’s flick pumping (think: The Taking Of Pelham 123) with uncanny turntablist scratch sounds to something more minimalist, en route playing with trombone-like resonances and majestic calls announcing a new Battle of Helm’s Deep. While that all might sound grandiose-on-steroids, there was actually no macho posturing or miked-up braggadocio. On the contrary: Carolino slowed down, sang, slapped his gigantic bell, let his droney sounds dissolve until there was nothing but an eerie echo left. A consistent half hour that made a convincing case for the presence of the tuba in modern jazz.

*

Carlos Bica ‘Playing with Beethoven’. Photo by Nuno Martins.

The remainder of the concerts would be held in a modern auditorium that apparently is never used for concerts, but that despite its too large size became an excellent location for most of the festival concerts. The largest attended of them all was the one by Carlos Bica ‘Playing with Beethoven’ . The Portuguese bass player has been living in Berlin for years, but obviously has a large and loyal following in his home country. Understandably so, because the man’s stylistic range is as wide as his sound is impressive. While he first made a name for himself beside a variety of vocalists in the fields of fado and jazz (Maria João, Carlos Do Carmo, Camané, etc.), Bica was also one of the musicians that paved the way for the emergence of a new wave of Portuguese jazz that coincided with the founding of labels like Clean Feed and Creative Sources at the start of the millennium.

For his latest release, Bica surrounded himself with a stellar band, featuring saxophonist Daniel Erdmann, accordionist João Barradas and DJ Illvibe (Vincent von Schlippenbach, son of Alexander). Soon, it would become clear it was the kind of concert any festival would love to conclude its opening night with. It built on the enormous legacy of romantic composer Beethoven with imagination and intricacy, it was jazz with an unlikely combination of instruments, and it managed to combine adventurousness with accessibility. From the start, it avoided becoming a stodgy, overly serious affair, with transparent structures, a fine alternation of light-footed pieces and melancholy introspection, and moments of sheer beauty, spun from Erdmann’s juicy sound, Bica’s warm, wooden tone, Barradas’ subdued virtuosity and Illvibe’s role as the quartet’s wild card.

The music moved from the gracefully cinematic to the darkly propulsive, managed to groove without a drummer and to gently disintegrate with Illvibe as the ever-creative sound collagist. It jabbed with staccato movements and droned smoothly, merged serene chamber music with brief moments of Carl Stalling-lunacy. “Tiny Change” was a quirky reworking of Tom Waits’ “Small Change” and a bit later Barradas was given a solo spot for a magnificent work-out, “Für Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven”. The sweeping “Per Aspera Ad Astra” found the band at its closest to elegant classical music, while Illvibe’s solo piece was a colorful, layered masterstroke displaying an uncanny sense of timing and control. And if the tormented “Julie” was an unsparing punch in the gut, the closing “Lucky” was the ideal playful lullaby to send everybody into the Lisbon night. 

 

Thursday June 29th

Guitarist Luís Lopes has to be one of the most idiosyncratic proponents of Portuguese jazz, an undefinable phenomenon active in the wildest margins of improvised music (his feedback-drenched noise solos) or there where improvised music meets jazz, rock and the avant-garde. Few of his projects have that all-over-the-place quality of Abyss Mirrors, for which he raised a line-up that tickles the imagination. With Maria da Rocha (violin), Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Helena Espvall (cello), Bruno Parrinha and Yedo Gibson (saxes), Felipe Zenicola (electric bass), Jari Marjamäki and Travassos (electronics), Flak and himself (guitars), he assembled a tentet that feels like a walking contradiction, a clash of sound worlds, genres, backgrounds, personalities and temperaments. 

Luís Lopes Abyss Mirrors. Photo by Nuno Martins.

Their concert became that hard-to-define thing where improvisation and alienating sounds are constantly fighting over dominance, but never stop filling your mind with impressions. My little notebook contained almost six pages of scribbled text, most of it adjectives and exclamation marks, as the concert became an exercise in density and dynamics, the half circle of musicians constantly shape-shifting, sometimes with conduction by Lopes, into alternately feverish, chaotic and baffling areas. One moment, they almost reminded you of Miles Davis’ darkest fusion excesses, with Zenicola’s slithering bass pulsing like a throbbing wound. The next, they dove headfirst into contemporary avant-garde, with Lopes’ barbed-wire guitar an ultra-sensual extension of himself.

It was weird and angular, Gibson danced his peyote-infused dance as only he can, with a humongous heart and an irregular beat, simultaneously displaying that dazzling command over extended techniques, almost threatening with violence, while the electronics pair maintained an incessant subsonic rumble and mind-bending freakery, and Parrinha suddenly crying out emotionally, recalling the late Pharoah Sanders. The string trio served as a counterpoint foil in this psychotic see-saw, this convoluted fanfare that at its fiercest moments created a demonic intensity, a throbbing rumble with machine gun ra-ta-tats and shamanic howls. It became a kind of tribal folk trance that made you wonder where the hell it was going and if it didn’t go on for too long.

The band was spurred on by this friction. And perhaps it should be like that. Putting all the pieces of the puzzle into their right places and finding well-rounded closure would mean the death of this collective. Their damaged beauty or, perhaps more accurately, the beauty of their damage, is exactly what sets them apart, what baffles you and makes you feel as uncomfortable as some of them clearly felt by the end of their performance. Unease was at the heart of this concert, but despite all its labyrinthine excess, its denseness, its refusal to compromise and choose a clear direction, it became a trueevent, almost something to be complicit in as a witness. You get up and the ground below your feet turns wobbly. That kind of sensation.

*

José Lencastre, Hernâni Faustino and Susan Alcorn. Photo by Nuno Martins.

On August 4 of 2022, Susan Alcorn, José Lencastre and Hernâni Faustino gathered at Lisbon’s Namouche studio for a recording session. They shared pastries, tuned up and “(...) started playing without a word about what we would do” (Alcorn). The result is the addictive daydream of Manifesto and the concert was perhaps even better. Thirty seconds into their performance and you were already lost in another world, in which everything is turned upside-down. It was not the sinister one of Abyss Mirrors, but a different kind of atmospheric, cinematic one, with Alcorn’s pedal steel guitar a kind of weeping, twangy counterpart to Faustino’s restless bass.

The intensely entangled bond between those two instruments became one of the most beautiful of the entire festival, the two instruments interacting frivolously, like two playing dogs running after each other, unexpectedly changed course, with hopping intervals and mirroring swirling lines, agile and beautiful at the same time, Alcorn and Faustino sharing spidery runs, while Lencastre was given free reign to explore the upper register and find suitable replies. It was music that often became glowing, Alcorn intensely massaging the strings with the bar in her left hand, conjuring derailed dreams one moment, and aggressively rubbing the next, even using the bar as a percussion stick. She even made the pedal steel guitar sound like a banjo at a certain moment, with dizzying arpeggios.

Faustino, meanwhile, was an inspired discussion partner, joining Alcorn every step of the way, with fluidity and depth to his playing. For years, he has been one of those anchors of the Lisbon scene, modest and always serving the music. He still does that, is that, but it seems that there is an expressive self-assurance to his playing nowadays that is truly impressive. The man has stepped forward and become an absolute master of the instrument, quick-thinking and equally strong with and without the bow. Of course, that also implies that Lencastre gets free reign with colleagues like these. On both alto and tenor he explored a wide range of possibilities, from furious sputtering accents to more meditative approaches, getting wings while his colleagues exchanged looks of understanding and pure joy.

It was a striking performance that peaked at the end, when Alcorn briefly nodded to her country & western roots with something that reminded you of Patsy Cline or Hank Williams and next explored the high register with Lencastre, with Faustino for a change in the role of solo commenter, before he joined her again to climb up and down some ladders. Closure after all. Simply gorgeous.

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Peter Brötzmann Tribute (Day 3 of 3)

Peter Brötzmann. Photo (c) Cristina Marx.

 The final day of our tribute to saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. See day one here and day two here.

Peter Brotzmann/Paal Nilssen-Love Sweetsweat (Smalltown Superjazz, 2008)

As a listener, as someone with deep love for free jazz and improvisation, I owe a lot to Peter Brotzmann and his recordings. In fact I have been a fan of his music for a long time and as an avid collector of physical objects, I came to own a lot of his stuff. To cut a long story short, since a respectable amount of words has been written and published about his work, I realized over the years that apart from his well deserved place in European free jazz and improvisation, two aspects of his choices stand out for me.

First that, even someone like him with an almost mythical status he was really open to work, play and interact with much younger musicians. Secondly, that he was much better (or, at least, this is how I enjoyed his music) in small groupings, especially duos and trios. Combining the aforementioned two (leaving outside the legendary duo with Han Bennink), I choose his later period duo with Norwegian drummer/percussionist, one of the best around, Paal Nilssen-Love. I was lucky to catch them live in 2013 and their sound still resonates in my mind.

In this release, a live recording from 2006, their first together if I’m not wrong, Brotz breaks almost every rule that has to do with the authority of the “big name” or the “soloist” in jazz tradition. Even though his playing is fierce, aggressive and full of energy, as always, he is deeply involved in listening his fellow player-traveler (remember that he always was a soldier of the road), leaving so much room for Nilssen-Love to present his spectrum of ideas in free jazz drumming. Recorded by another great, Frode Gjerstad, the listener gets to feel, clocking in more than an hour, the pathos of the duo, their relentless attack on their instruments. I came to love the tarogato through Brotz’s playing and he clearly transformed it from a Hungarian folk instrument into a woodwind to channel energy into the air.

I believe that it is very difficult, even impossible to reinvent yourself artistically. Peter Brotzmann achieved that –a measure of openness and greatness- making the Brotzmann/Love sax and drums duo one of the most important in free jazz. The music lives forever. 

- Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang — The Damage is Done (Not Two, 2009) 

Joining Brötzmann in this quartet are McPhee on trumpet and alto saxophone, Kessler on double-bass, and Zerang on drums. The formation played over several years and had recorded two previous albums: Tales Out of Time (hatOLOGY, 2004) and Guts (Okka Disk, 2006). (Part of their performance at Montreuil, France in 2009 is also featured in the Soldier of the Road Brötzmann documentary (Bernard Josse, 2011)). This 2-CD album consists of two sets in their entirety recorded in the up-close confines of the Alchemia club, Krakow, in 2008.

The band might be considered another subset of the Chicago Tentet, yet like all the groups in which Brötzmann featured it has its own personality, a meeting of voices that produces a distinctive blend. The album is also further evidence of McPhee’s remarkably versatile musical temperament, a facility to attune himself to any surroundings and both fit in and stand out. Here, he underscores, matches, and challenges Brötzmann in an at times intoxicating rapport. This can be heard on the opening title track, a lengthy sojourn where for periods it sounds as if they’re locked in combat during a succession of fiery statements and rejoinders. Elsewhere, they share tranquil reflections, and the piece builds to its conclusion with a merger of quivering saxophones, rapidly bowed bass, and totemic drums. In contrast, ‘Alchemia Souls” is a colourful bricolage in the process of construction, ultimately transformed into rough-hewn refrains.

The names of the four pieces that make up the second set form a longer description, ‘A Temporary Trip / With Charon / On The Acheron / Into The Hades’, illustrated in Brötzmann’s cover artwork. The reference to Greek mythology is retrospective yet there is a sense of a journey of sorts, if not along a river to the underworld then through waters whose currents move between calm and turbulent. Throughout, there’s an astonishing level of intuitive intelligence. All four musicians are able to grasp even small changes in direction and adjust the balance of the narrative flow. We proceed from spare, tentative phrases and Zerang’s roiling percussion, through blaring horns over Arabic beats, then plaintive mourning, and a gradual descent into the maelstrom where wild proclamations ring out. Hades itself is a place of anguish, but despair eventually turns to bitter resolution and a suggestion of hope as Brötzmann announces one of his dignified, touchstone melodies; joined by McPhee they both rise before fading into silence.

Brötzmann’s music embraced lofty ideas, unrepentant in their scale. Alone or with his collaborators he gave voice to the exultation and loss in our lives, and for that we should be grateful.

The quartet from Instants Chavirés in 2009:

- Colin Green

Brötzmann , Adasiewicz, Edwards, Noble - Mental Shake (Otoroku, 2014)

I saw Brötzmann perform with vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz at the 2011 Vision Festival and was blown away. I had never heard such a combination before and the buoyant textures of the vibraphone and intensity of the saxophone left a lasting impression. On Mental Shake, a recording from London's Cafe OTO, free jazz stalwarts bassist John Edwards and percussionist Steve Noble add robust support to Broetzmann and Adasiewicz's sound. In this first time meeting, Noble and Edwards' support is infallible, their contribution on equal footing with the other two and allows the vibraphone to become even more of a harmonic element and for the saxophone to travel even farther afield. Presented as one long improvisation across both sides of the LP, the music waxes and wanes with unexpected melodiousness and breathtaking intensity.  

 

 

- Paul Acquaro

 

Ears Are Filled With Wonder - Peter Brötzmann & Heather Leigh

 

Brötzmann's duo with pedal steel guitarist Leigh provided a new context for him to explore some very exciting new timbres and tones in extended improvisations. There are long stretches where I felt, giddily, that I had absolutely no idea where they would go next. In retrospect, there are indications Brötzmann was maybe not able to hold notes as long or roar as gutturally as before. It's hard to know what's there and what's being imposed. What's beyond a doubt is the albums Brötzmann recorded with Leigh (including a recent trio with Lonberg-Holm) are riveting; they capture Brötzmann in fine form, with as many fresh ideas as when he first arrived on the scene, nearly 60 years ago. Rest well, maestro. 

- Lee Rice Epstein

Peter Brötzmann - I Surrender Dear (Trost, 2019) 

I Surrender Dear is the last solo album of Brötzmann, reflecting his great love for jazz standards. But Brötzmann did not attempt to surrender to straight-ahead improvisations on iconic chord changes, and obviously, he rarely sounds sentimental or nostalgic, or, in his words, was playing “nice music for the people”, still, he sounds intensely emotional and surprisingly peaceful and compassionate. This album captures his complex and wise perspective of jazz and blues legacy and jazz as a living tradition. Jazz for him was an art that can not be codified into strict principles but a revolutionary art that keeps questioning the past and the present, challenging and subverting simple convictions. Brötzmann’s playing in recent years gravitated into lyricism and he often said that he likes to play ballads. Needless to say, his own kind of ballads, sober, painful and thoughtful ballads, and he always was investigating and struggled with the melodic themes of these angry, melancholic ballads with his tough, uncompromising voice. Even when he plays standards like “Lady Sings The Blues” or “Lover Come Back To Me” (sticking only to the tenor sax), it is still free music (Brötzmann never liked the term free jazz). But freedom for Brötzmann was always about the attitude, the same attitude that inspired Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey, or Don Cherry, and not an academic theory. And Brötzmann's reflections on these standards (and one theme of J.S. Bach tell a lot of intimate, sincere and tender stories

- Eyal Hareuveni

 

Catching Ghosts Brötzmann / Bekkas / Drake (2023)

Catching Ghosts is, I think, the last non-posthumous album of his to have ever been released and it showcases yet another adventure into unknown lands for him to embark in, accompanied by Hamid Drake's expert and always tasteful drumming and Majid Bekkas' soaring vocals and guembri, a beautiful West African instrument whose sound is somewhere in between a double bass and an oud, rhythmic and melodic at the same time, its interplay with the drums the highlight of the album.

Read the full review of Catching Ghosts.

- William Rossi

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Peter Brötzmann / Majid Bekkas / Hamid Drake - Catching Ghosts (ACT, 2023)

 By William Rossi

It feels so wrong and so weird to speak of Brötzmann in the past tense; he was one of those people whose presence in the music scene I always took for granted, thinking he would always be there somehow, but Brötzmann himself never made that same mistake and never took himself for granted: he never stopped growing, exploring and experimenting, even in his old age he kept challenging the listener and, most importantly, himself. 

One can't help but form a mental image of the man who brought us such fiery, loud and disruptive records as Machine Gun but something that's always been overlooked is just how versatile he could be. His playing was not just fire and brimstone, he was also capable of creating delicate, beautiful and fragile pieces of music, something he's demonstrated time and time again on some of his solo recordings and his artistic partnership with Heather Leigh, one of the highlights of the later part of his career.

Catching Ghosts is, I think, the last non-posthumous album of his to have ever been released and it showcases yet another adventure into unknown lands for him to embark in, accompanied by Hamid Drake's expert and always tasteful drumming and Majid Bekkas' soaring vocals and guembri, a beautiful West African instrument whose sound is somewhere in between a double bass and an oud, rhythmic and melodic at the same time, its interplay with the drums the highlight of the album. 

 

Together the trio tackles songs from the Gnawa musical tradition, turning them into jams for Brötzmann to solo over. He never over-does it and never steals the scene, never forgetting the songs at the core of the improvisation and working in service of them first and foremost. The music is driving, energetic and spiritual and the trio is in constant lockstep, never stumbling or skipping a beat; it's one of those records where you can almost picture the musicians on stage performing while listening to it, making you feel like you're in the audience and giving you the same energy and electricity you would feel had you been there.

Brötzmann's ability to always keep you on your toes, never knowing what he might do next is the thing I'll miss the most about him. He wasn't a free jazz musician, a free improvisation musician or an avant-garde musician, he just played music, in its totality, with no regards for labels or genre tropes but with a deep knowledge and respect for the people who laid the groundwork before him. 

I remember an interview in which he talked about his love for the blues, having listened to it since he was a child, but he wasn't simply enamoured with the 12 bars, rather "the person behind them", their musical voice and identity. We have lost a giant, but his voice has inspired many people and will continue to do so, that's what makes "the greats" the greats, and this album is a great listen and a fitting farewell from a man with uncompromising vision and relentless passion for music as a whole. 

Released on CD by ACT. 

 

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Peter Brötzmann Tribute (Day 2 of 3)

Peter Brötzmann. Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Day two of our tribute to saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. See day one here.

Peter Brötzmann, Toshinori Kondo, William Parker, Hamid Drake — Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 1 & No. 2 (FMP, 1998 & 1999) 

These two albums, divided into six parts, were taken from performances by the Die Like a Dog quartet over 7, 8, and 9 November 1997 during the 30^th Total Music Meeting at the Theater im Podewil in Berlin.

Just four years after the quartet’s debut it’s clear that things had moved on. There remains the combustible electro-acoustic mix of processed trumpet and reeds – at their peaks like a couple of dogs howling at the moon – swirling about the rooted, earthy patterns of Parker and Drake whose mesmeric pulse is shot through with African rhythms, providing not just momentum but the weave that binds the quartet together.

Yet there’s also greater diversity, time given to open out Kondo’s ricocheting lines and appreciate their melodic invention and grace: delicate, air-blown, ephemeral. Brötzmann’s dense accumulations contrast with his exploitation of nuances in tone and more song-like tendencies that were to come to the fore in later years. There’s genuine subtlety in the way he and Kondo linger over phrases in quieter passages, like calls and echoes across water, framed by the tracery of bass and drums.

Such are the variations in temper and intensity across the mammoth 45 minute ‘Part 1”, and the perfectly calibrated ensembles of ‘Part 2’, that they feel akin to tragic dramas – ancient stories are being told, furious and lyrical, which still resonate down the ages. All this is assisted by a vivid recording capturing the timbral tang of liquified trumpet set against scabrous blasts on tenor, sculpted bass figurations, and the flickering light of Drake’s percussion.

The second CD ranges over similar terrain, sinewy and savage. ‘Part 5” has the tread of a sombre procession, full of wails and lamentations, and the concluding ‘Part 6’ is an incandescent conflagration; after which there is nowhere left to go.

The later Hairy Bones quartet, with Massimo Pupillo and Paal Nilssen-Love replacing Parker and Drake, had a different though equally valid dynamic, but for music that seemed to unite so many strands – old and new, Western and non-Western – these discs are a testament to one of the most exhilarating (and emotionally draining) groups in the history of jazz, at the height of its powers.

- Colin Green

 

Peter Brötzmann -The Chicago Octet/Tentet (Okka Disc, 1998)  

A crucial release that broke ground for a major phase of Brötzmann's music, the Chicago Tentet. The lineup is mind-blowing, and the music completely knocked me sideways the first time I heard it. With compositions by Brötzmann, Gustafsson, Vandermark, Bishop, Lonberg-Holm, Drake, and Zerang, the range of Brötzmann's vision has, arguably, rarely reached the highs of this set. Considering the huge number of albums he recorded and contributed to, that feels like a bold statement, but, I'll defend it forever. The Chicago Octet/Tentet box broke several molds, including one that seemingly held Brötzmann himself. 

- Lee Rice Epstein

The Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet - Stone/Water (Okka Disc, 2000)

If pressed to recommend a single Chicago Tentet album this is the one I would choose. It may not be their best release but it’s definitely among them - and it’s also pretty concise, comparatively. There is so much action in the album’s 40 minutes that it’s like getting 10 lbs of skronk in a 5 lb sack - it’s bursting at the seams with inventiveness, contrast, and power. And again, what a lineup. Joining our hero on reeds are Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, with Jeb Bishop on trombone, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and violin, William Parker and Kent Kessler on bass, Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake on drums, and the great Toshinori Kondo on trumpet and electronics. Wild group chorus howls, growling free blown frenzies, and other collective insanities are interspersed among the racing, grunting strings. Stark peels of electric trumpet reverberate in silences so sudden they are as jarring as the blowouts. Tremendous emissions that flow from peak to valley and back again, as hinted at in the album title. Kondo is given plenty of room to stretch out and do his thing. Swirling electronic interference shrouds his candid lamentations, the reeds barking and nipping at his heels, lashing and flickering like flame. Things coalesce occasionally, and there is a segment where a steady/slight rhythm develops, which prompts a terrific set of solos from the horns. But this is short lived, and the floodgates cannot be held back for long. The Tentet is one of Brötzmann’s most important groups, the makeup and technical proficiency of the ensemble and the fire with which they played is not likely to be matched. Incredible music. 

- Nick Metzger

Peter Brötzmann, William Parker, Hamid Drake - Never Too Late But Always Too Early (Eremite, 2003) (originally published Coda, 2003)

Homages to the late Peter Kowald grow more numerous, but few will match the searing, visceral pull of this two CD set etched by some of his closest friends & associates in Montreal's Casa Del Popolo in 2001 & dedicated to Kowald after his death in 2002. Peter Brötzmann is a specter of grim emotion & raw energy, whether he's playing tarogato, tenor, or a clarinet in A. He is one of the great existential improvisers of free jazz, in that his intensity does not seem to move toward transcendence but instead speaks of expanding passion. It is because of Brötzmann's emotional register that this epitaph in advance to Kowald is so fitting. Pain, loss, distance seem so central to the saxophonist's expression --witness the tenor dirge of part 4 of "Never Run, But Go" which seems to refer directly to 'taps'-- that the specific subject only awaits naming. William Parker & Hamid Drake support, structure & alleviate Brötzmann's testimony, adding & sustaining pulsing patterns that invoke African & Afro-Cuban ceremony. On the first segment of the title piece Brötzmann launches a bass clarinet solo in which human cries are seemingly muffled in the instrument's woolly depths until they break out into screams in the middle register. Parker & Drake seem to ground & share in this witnessing, until Parker begins an extended & especially powerful bowed solo. 

- Stuart Broomer

Sonore - Only the Devil has No Dreams (Jazzwerkstatt, 2007)

 Sonore's Only the Devil Has No Dreams was captured at the Philharmonie in Berlin on September 27, 2006 for Jazzwerkstatt's inaugural concert. The trio of uncompromising woodwindists, Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, produce music that is equal measure brutal and tender, and on this date, they perform it all. From the opening moments of the recording the intent is clear: Brötzmann's penetrating call and the persistent rhythm of a baritone sax lay the groundwork for an explosive start. Later, more lyrical lines intertwine, like on "First Feedback" and "Two Birds in a Feather" (which quietly flows, moans, and meanders). The final title track builds from the tender to the brutal and back in a patient, telepathic way.

- Paul Acquaro

Funny Rat/s 2 Peter Brötzmann & Shoji Hano (Kootown Records, 2008)

 Over the years Peter Brötzmann made regular trips to Japan, though many of his collaborations with Japanese musicians were actually recorded in Europe. We do have however, three duo albums with drummer Shoji Hano made during Brötzmann’s visits, of which this is the second recorded in 2007 at Candy, Chiba in the intimate acoustic of a small club.

Saxophone and drums are a staple format in free jazz and there are many fine examples in Brötzmann’s discography. This one stands out as an especially empathetic meeting, perhaps reflecting the strong lineage the combination has in Japan. There’s an incision and a precision to Hano’s playing, with an emphasis on cross-rhythms and pacing rather than metre. Hano is pulled into Brötzmann’s creative orbit, matching his different moods and emotional temperatures, from full-throttle agglomerations to simple, tender ballads. ‘A Jiggle Snaps the Lock’, ‘An Essential Dream’, and ‘Special Delivery’, with Brötzmann on gnarled tárogató, tenor, and ear-scouring alto respectively, display the epic sweep and extremes of dark and light that typified so much of his mature work, what he once referred to as the love and desperation he found in Ayler’s music.

Not all the exchanges take place in a tumescent fever. ‘Frog Fuck’ features the emberous glow of Brötzmann’s clarinet as it moves through pools of introspection, punctuated by occasional squalls and balanced by Hano’s whispered counterpoint with brushes.

All three of the duo’s recordings are strongly recommended. Here they are going hell-for-leather at the same venue the following year:

 

- Colin Green

 

 

 

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Peter Brötzmann Tribute (Day 1 of 3)

Peter Brötzmann. Photo by Peter Gannushkin

 He was the most aggressive, uncompromising, radical, avant-garde jazz musician of European free jazz (even if he did not like the term). And he was so loud that he inspired people to create a verb for his saxophone style ( to brötz, which refers to the relentless way of playing the saxophone with all the power he had). Perhaps the most amazing thing about him was that you never walked out of one of his concerts the same way you walked in. Maybe that's what makes a truly great musician - that they change their listeners, again and again. Peter Brötzmann has always tried not to live up to expectations. That also includes occasional failure. On June 22, this icon of improvised music passed away, and he has left a real void in the musical landscape. The Free Jazz Collective bows to this great musician by reviewing our favorite albums.

 - Martin Schray

Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968; Cien Fuegos, 2018)

No one who has heard the beginning of this album will ever forget it. Machine Gun ’s 45-second intro represents one of jazz’s most distinctive listening experiences. In many cases even rough music tends to wear out over the years, becoming nicer and more listenable the more you hear it. With Machine Gun , this guiding principle is suspended, because the music has lost none of its destructive power. Until today it’s against most listening habits, jazz conventions and marketing strategies: Even 55 years after its first release, Machine Gun is an overwhelming, brutal, sometimes hardly endurable record. The horns roar without ceasing, we hear the purest form of energy, the frequencies of the saxophone have mutated into a percussion drill. Played loud, this must have been the sound of the trumpets and trombones that brought down the walls of Jericho. For lovers of traditional jazz, it’s the devil incarnate. And anyone who listens to this album knows why. It’s one of the few records that can still set a room on fire today, possibly only comparable to Jimi Hendrix’s version of “Star Spangled Banner“.

Even though Brötzmann later denied a political dimension of the recording, he did tell Downbeat Magazine on the occasion of the record’s 50th anniversary something else: “There is no contradiction between creation and destruction. I never thought music was a healing force of the universe. (...) We wanted to change things; we needed a new start. In Germany, we all grew up with the same thing: Never again. But in the government, all the same old Nazis were still there. We were angry. We wanted to do something.“ However, the album is not only a musical and political statement. Machine Gun was also a milestone in terms of production. Until today, many think that there was a concert in the “Lila Eule“ in Bremen, the place where the album was recorded. But in fact, the musicians had traveled to use the club as a studio. At that time, uncommercial recording facilities were far from being as available as they are today, and the musicians - by the way, the crème de la crème of European free jazz - used the opportunity to record two days there. The album is one of the beginnings of a wave of self-releases and the formation of independent labels in the field of avant-garde and free jazz in Europe. A landmark - in many ways.

 - Martin Schray

Peter Brötzmann Sextet/Quartet - Nipples (Calig, 1969); More Nipples (Avatistic, 2003)

These albums are touchstones for the lot of us fanatics I imagine. It’s perhaps one of the greatest sessions of freely improvised sound ever put to tape. Powerfully inspired music played with absolute urgency and intensity by a single-serving lineup that only managed to produce this one session (luckily for us). On these albums Brötzmann is joined by fellow legends Evan Parker, Derek Bailey (on the sextet pieces) along with Fred Van Hove, Han Bennink, and the legendary Globe Unity Orchestra co-founder Buschi Niebergall on bass. The music, as you well know, is a fierce and thorny affair. So many assertions and questions, dances, disagreements, misdirection - all in the name of good old catharsis. The band ties itself into stiff knots of tension, periodically wiping the slate clean through the sheer power of their playing, breaking through walls of gridlock into more enlightened spaces. While the quartet tracks can’t quite match the magic of the sextet offerings, they are also delightfully prickly affairs from the Brötz/Van Hove/Bennink trio plus Niebergall. One other element that’s easy to forget in these days of easy living where most any and all music is available instantly is that the original LP used to be rare as hens teeth, being out of print for ~30 years. Thankfully that isn’t the case any longer and we’re all able to have our eardrums regularly exfoliated by these masters. It’s definitely one of Brötzmann’s early career highlights, and while it’s not quite as monumental as Machine Gun what it does deliver is a more nuanced version of his archetype. 

- Nick Metzger

Peter Brötzmann, Fred Van Hove, and Han Bennink plus Mangelsdorff  - Live in Berlin '71 (FMP, 1971, 1991)

An early live recording from FMP with the early Brötzmann trio augmented by the great Albert Mangelsdorff. The concerts from August 28th and 29th, 1971, were originally released across three LPs, Elements (FMP 0030), Couscouss de la Mauresque (FMP 0040), and The End (FMP 0050). The single release, now known as Live In Berlin '71, should rank extremely high on anybody's list of best FMP albums. Relatively early in each players' development, it's nevertheless one of the finest albums of improvised music. Brötzmann sounds super raw and intense, yet there's a very clear sense of what he's trying to do and where he might be going. Over the decades that followed, you can hear these ideas recapitulate in fascinating ways that we've only just begun to process. 

- Lee Rice Epstein

Schwarzwaldfahrt - Peter Brötzmann & Han Bennink (FMP, 1977; Trost, 2022)

 Arguably, one of the most important documents in either artist's careers (and in the history of improvised music). It's been reissued twice, first in an expanded release from Atavistic, and more recently in an updated book, with additional photographs and new text from David Keenan. Schwarzwaldfahrt is both a holy grail and a rosetta stone, a wooly beast and a precious gemstone. It may be the album I've returned to most in my ongoing project of better understanding the music of Brötzmann and Bennink.

- Lee Rice Epstein

Peter Brötzmann, Harry Miller, Louis Moholo- Opened, But Hardly Touched (FMP, 1981; Cien Fuegos 2014)

Brötzmann’s preference for the trio format dates back to his early days, when he recorded his debut in 1967 and to his insane super group with drummer Han Bennink and pianist Fred Van Hove, which ended abruptly due to constant friction between the three (something that might happen when alpha dogs clash into each other, as Brötzmann would put it). The years that followed showed Brötzmann meandering between different groups, but he was not really satisfied until 1979, when he found he found perfect partners in two musicians who changed his way idea of playing by connecting their South African roots with his music . Brötzmann was very happy with Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Mofolo (drums) since he thought that he was musically in a cul de sac and the two offered him a perspective off the beaten tracks. Unfortunately, the trio didn’t last as long as he has wished (because of Miller’s tragic and untimely death). However, the experience of playing especially with Louis Moholo was crucial for him and renewed or better deepened his appreciation of African-American drumming, as he told my friend Ernst Nebhuth after a concert in Dachau. You only need to listen to the first piece, “Eine kleine Nachtmarie“, and you know what he means. Moholo’s percussion sounds as if a heavy rain is coming down on a sheet of corrugated metal, Miller counters it with abstract arco shapes, and Brötzmann’s long, unusually elegant lines show him from a whole new side. The title piece is also a study in patience. The sprawling arcs of tension create a different warmth and depth of interaction not known from Brötzmann’s other trios. Even if the old fire breather shines through here and there, Brötzmann reveals himself as an elegiac melodist, who draws from Albert Ayler as well as from Ben Webster and obviously from the blues. He is technically much more accomplished, his way of playing is more open. There are only two albums by this trio. Opened, But Hardly Touched combines two live recordings from 1980, and not only me would have liked to see where their way might have led them.

-  Martin Schray

Last Exit- Last Exit (Enemy, 1986)

For me Last Exit was an initial spark, it’s the band through which I was ultimately won over to free jazz (and with whom I first came across Peter Brötzmann). In 1986, the project was put together by bassist Bill Laswell, who was one of the hippest producers in the music business at the time (Material, Herbie Hancock, then later Mick Jagger, PIL, Motörhead, etc.). Similar to rock, Last Exit was a free-jazz supergroup that would give the genre an unexpected infusion of blood. Laswell called it “collision music“, he wanted to unleash four musical alpha dogs to let the sparks fly. And on their debut Brötzmann, Laswell, Sonny Sharrock (guitar) and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums) let them fly. There had never been anything like that before, nor really since. For Brötzmann, the main attraction of the whole thing was that he found something completely new for him here. In the mid-1980s, he realized that total freedom can be restrictive in itself, so he looked for an alternative to traditional free jazz (a bit similar to his collaboration with Oxbox in 2018). Last Exit’s approach was to start from spontaneously created, rough and tough forms - blues (“Catch As Catch Can“ could be a Cream riff before it completely spills out), hard rock, or New York No Funk that dissolves into a collective improvisational mess before the musicians are recaptured and the music gets some structure again (“Pig Freedom“). Even if a lot of the music was improvised, the basis always reminded of the song format. Laswell and Ronald Shannon Jackson provided the almost classical rhythmic framework, pushing Brötzmann and Sharrock mercilessly, who responded with squealing, shrill notes, shrieks and brutal noise. With Last Exit there was no pardon, it was always pure intensity. But what was more, it showed Brötzmann how well his sound fits in such a context. The band existed from 1986 to the early 1990s, Sharrock’s death in 1994 was the reason for the breakup.

- Martin Schray

 

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Yaron Deutsch - Live in New York (Self-Released, 2023)

 

By Eyal Hareuveni

Israeli guitarist Yaron Deutsch focuses on contemporary music and juggles with a busy international career. He is a professor at the University of Music Basel, a guitar tutor at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses, the curator of the International Festival for Contemporary Chamber Music in Tel Aviv, Tzlil Meudcan (updated tone in Hebrew), and founder and artistic director of the chamber quartet Nikel. But, surprisingly, some of his formative influences as a musician who plays new music on an electric guitar are raw and bigger-than-life live rock albums like U2's Under Blood Red Sky (Island, 1983), Neil Young’s Weld (Reprise, 1991) and Rush's Exit...Stage Left (Anthem, 1981).

When listening to Live in New York City, his second solo album recorded at Mary Flagler Cary Hall during the TIME:SPANS festival in New York in August 2022, it begins to make sense. Deutsch describes this album as his humble take and contribution to the genre of live recorded albums which was one of the most captivating formats accompanying him in his youth as a music lover. He presents five of his favorite pieces for electric guitar.

This electric guitar recital begins with a roaring version of Italian composer Fausto Romitelli's "Trash TV Trance” (2002), employing Hendrix-ian techniques of sculpting feedback and distortion into an inspired, psychedelic noisy texture. Deutsch follows with Israeli Composer Avshalom Ariel’s short and delicate but technically demanding “All the Boys Forgot About You” (2018) which requires the mounting of a mic on the guitar's headstock so it allows the listener to experience the sound coming from both sides of the string. Italian composer Pierluigi Billone’s “Sorgo Y” (2012) was written for “the left hand of Deutsch” and dedicated to him and is part of a cycle of Billone’s “Sorgo” homage compositions to contemporary composer Luigi Nono and guitarist Jeff Beck. Clearly, this extended composition challenges any interpreter as the left hand of the guitarist must embodies also the role and the articulations of the right hand, but Deutsch offers an enigmatic interpretation of it, with sudden yet precise surges of energy, with great focus on detail.

This performance is concluded with two recent compositions. Australian composer Lisa Illean's most beautiful and hypnotic “Tiding” (2021) for the solo electric guitar was originally commissioned by London Sinfonietta and premiered by guitarist Huw Davies. This composition belongs to a collection of pieces dealing with elemental patterns. It is subtle and seductive in its tone but stresses a tension between the vast and the intimate. The last piece is a world premiere of Deutsch’s close associate, Viennese composer Klaus Lang’s “chanson lointaine et douce” (2021), written after an “‘unforgettable road trip” of Deutsch and Lang, “together crossing thousands of kilometers in the heart of Europe”. This thoughtful composition sounds like it is based on a not-so-sweet ancient, medieval song, ornamented by mysterious layers of the 21st-century effects-laden electric guitar, beautifully performed like all pieces of this brilliant and insightful recital.

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