Yvonne Rogers - Seeds (Relative Pitch, 2023)

 

By Paul Acquaro

Yvonne Rogers is a pianist living and working out of Brooklyn, NY. She is originally from coastal Maine, educated in Europe, and composer of possibly the most unusual set of music to be released on the Relative Pitch label in a long time. No, it is not because it pushes the listener to the outer edges of sound, rather it is the opposite. Seeds is an accessible recording, by design, that brings together engaging melodies and often minimalist passages with Iago Fernández's spacious drumming and Nadav Erlich's supportive bass playing, and topping it off with the crystalline voice of Emmanuelle Bonnet.

The opening track 'I. Seeds' begins with a repetitive, syncopated phrase from the piano, which is soon augmented by Bonnet's beatific world-less vocals. As the tune continues Rogers and Bonnet's lines diverge, giving space for the atonalities that develop and keeps the music from falling into something too comfortable. The melody is grabbing and the uptempo pulse moves it along, until the second track 'II. Earth,' which finds the voices of the drums and bass more prominent. Rogers revisits bits of the previous main melody and transform them, spinning off new repetitive phrases until reaching the fittingly titled 'III. Slow Song,' which introduces the first hint of lyrics.

Later in the recording, the tracks 'Untitled Situation' and 'Abundance'  are purely instrumental examples of the trio in action. The first builds quickly from a succinct melodic fragment into a dense motivated passage. Then, decomposing, the musical space is opened up again and Rogers melodic lines begin weaving and waving about in the rhythmic winds. 'Abundance' is  upbeat, beginning with Erlich and Fernandez establishing a lithe, moving foundation, over which Rogers places rich, open chords. The album ends with a bit of a departure from the other tracks in the form of (essentially) a pop song – and it is quite good. 'Open Windows' begins slowly with some austere plunks on the piano and bass, gaining momentum when Bonnet enters with words celebrating growing up and taking off through an open window.

Seeds is an auspicious debut, containing many musical possibilities and presenting a fresh, new voice on piano. Listen to and purchase on Bandcamp.

 

 

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Solo Sax

 By Stef Gijssels

It's time again for a solo sax review. Albums have been piling up again since our last overview in September 2022. And due to your humble servant's incredible slowness, some albums have in the meantime already been reviewed by more skilled - and faster - reviewers. Patrick Shiroishi's album was already reviewed here by Irina, Rob Brown by Gregg here, and Camila Nebbia by Jury here. All three come recommended, so it's a good thing they get multiple reviews. 

Patrick Shiroishi - I Was Too Young To Hear Silence (American Dreams, 2023)

My preference in this list of ten is this remarkable and very personal album by Patrick Shiroishi. Recorded in a "cavernous parking structure below a hot pot restaurant in Monterey Park" around 1.30 am in one take, the album has a unique voice, with sparse alto tones reverberating in the empty space. Shiroishi explains "the Japanese concept of 'Ma' or negative space, or the space in between. 'Ma' refers to the notion of negative space as a positive entity, rather than an absence of something else. The pauses between notes are not empty vacuums void of substance, but rather are full and present, valid contributions to a balanced composition'. 

Shiroishi uses this space to maximum effect, as a pause between bursts of sound, as a contrast to give deeper value to his often beautiful phrases, as a moment of reflection on what you just heard, or just to experience the silence. At times there is background noise in the silence (a car? a bus?). It gives the voice of the alto a sense of desolation, not always in a negative way, sometimes as positive solitude, yet also sometimes as shrieks of anguish. 

The single take and the unique sound makes this like a concept album, on which the different songs are all an integrated part of a much larger whole. Shiroishi also wonderfully manages to use his large array of technical skills to serve the ultimate sound he wants to achieve. No sound is cheap, but carefully crafted, balanced and paced, translating his deepfelt emotions into his own aesthetic. 

The vinyl version has already been sold out, but luckily the digital version is still available. 

Don't miss it!

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Josh Sinton - Couloir & Book of Practitioners Vol. 2 (Self-Released, 2024)

As one of our first album reviews for 2024 we can present this double album by Josh Sinton on baritone saxophone. 

The first one, "Couloir" is a set of fifteen short pieces that Sinton describes as 'thinking out loud musically'. He takes the listener to various corners of a very large musical room, with incredible and gentle decisiveness, often surprised himself at what he is showing us, yet the compactness of the pieces, their specific character, ranging from relative playfulness to improvisations with a gravitas that is more suitable for the instrument's sound, make this a wonderful listen. 

The second album is Book W by Steve Lacy, one of his 'Books of Practitioners', and Sinton's sequel to his "Book of Practitioners, Vol. 1" of last year. You can read the review and some more background on Lacy's books here. It's also fun to compare it with John Raskin's take of the same material last year. The pieces are what Lacy intended them to be: exercises for practice, more than artistic endeavours, but as it is, the naturalness and the playfulness that Sinton demonstrates, lift the six pieces to a higher level. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Rob Brown - Oceanic (RogueArt, 2023)

Another solo alto album was released earlier last year by Rob Brown, one of the mainstays of the New York jazz scene for decades. Performing on no less than 140 albums, this is his second solo release, since "Silver Sun Afternoon" from 2003, an album that I've never heard, so a comparison is not possible. 

It's great to hear him play solo. Brown has a very clear and warm tone, and a natural tendency to lyricism in his improvisations, which are also his core trademark here. His playing is relatively straightforward, with limited use of extended techniques or timbral explorations, and he does not need to, because his approach lies elsewhere, in a kind of natural storytelling through music, translating impressions and feelings into sonic narratives, with moments of urgency, calm, excitement or just joy. 

The eight tracks are inspired by the ocean, of which the first four form a suitelike sequence. It's hard to say whether the visual images of the ocean are directly reflected in the music, but the unpredictability, the various faces of the sea, its changing colours, the drifting on the waters, and the ever moving waves are easy to imagine through Brown's art. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Amalie Dahl - Memories (Sonic Transmissions Records, 2023)

Danish saxophonist Amalie Dahl is someone to look out for. She only ended her education at the Jazzdepartment at Norwegian University for Science and Technology in Trondheim in 2021. One year later she already released her first album as a bandleader, “Dafnie”, and now, another year later, her first solo album. 

She is an artist with a daring vision, presenting sounds that are sometimes hard to classify, such as the combined playing and singing on the first track, or the whispered sounds during the intro of the second. Her tone is steady, decisive while at the same time sufficiently fluid and versatile to let the music evolve almost naturally and organically. She is also not afraid to let silence play its role, which is surprising for such a young musician. She is one of those artists who clearly does her own thing, very personal and heartfelt. 

The theme of the album is a play on thoughts around the perception of time of "here and now", and of the memory that follows. "Life consists of a series of moments, a series of here and now, some of which remain as important events and discoveries that help to shape what is to come. Our identity is a sum of memories. These memories and moments can set off chain reactions that inspire and interact with new people in a constant flow". A moment can become a memory to revist time and again. 

The solo album finds its conceptual counterpart on Amund Stenøien Quartet's "Coming to pass", released on the same day by the same label. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Tom Chant - Solo (Hera Corp, 2023)

Irish saxophonist Tom Chant is a musician with many faces and musical genres. I first got to know him in the late '90s with the Cinematic Orchestra, in an earlier musical phase I was in, smooth, rhythmic, hypnotic music for imaginary movies. He also got to know the London free improv scene in the meantime, which has become his more natural habitat. Stuart Broomer reviewed another of his album recently with "A Bright Nowhere" (actually/coincidentally today when I write this). 

On this solo audio cassette, he presents his personal vision the solo genre: the pieces are all around five minutes long, whether on the tree tenor or three alto improvisations. This is really music that it 'in the moment', as you can expect from free improv. Chant explores the possibilities of multiphonics on his horn,  creating amazing sounds, some of which remain stable while others change pitch. The sound is raw and unpolished, direct and unadorned. 

As the liner notes adequately describe: "Like in a Pinter play, sounds are "just there", staring at you; better just take them as they are. They will stop when they are tired, or bored. "

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Camila Nebbia - Una Ofrenda A La Ausencia (Relative Pitch, 2023)

In sixteen relatively short improvisations, Argentinian saxophonist Camila Nebbia demonstrates her art in all its versatility and creativity. I think it's already her third solo album, and it is recommended listening for fans of this kind of musical exposure of personal feelings and sentiments. The quality of her work resides not only in the technical skills on her instrument - which are varied and at times astonishing - but in the self-assured power of her presence, and the courage to reveal herself in such a way with no place to hide. Even if most of the pieces are short, she manages to convey something deep and meaningful, giving herself fully to the music. The title means 'an offering to absence', the paradox for the wealth of her offering us her musical presence. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Audrey Lauro - Sous Un Ciel D'Ecailles (El Negocito, 2022) 

We've praised French altoist Audrey Lauro before on her albums with Giotis Diamandis "Dark Ballads" and here (2021), with Lauroshilau "Live At Padua" (2021), with Rachel Musson and Naoko Saito "点字呼吸の領域 [The Region of Braille Respiration]" (2020), with Giovanni di Domenico on "The Ear Cannot Be Filled With Hearing" (2018). 

Now she treats us to a twenty-four minute long solo album, with a title that roughly translates as "Under a sky of scales". The performance was recorded at la Chapelle du Grand Hospice, one of those well-hidden venues in Brussels, on April 6, 2022.

It is a subtle, sensitive and inventive record, with a sound that resonates in the space of the chapel, the ideal setting for her multiphonic skills. The music is slow and precious, with the occasional burst of power, but mostly disciplined, controlled and free. Every sound appears to be precious and valuable to her, and that's the way we like it. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Adam Pieronczyk - On The Way (Self-Released, 2023)

Without a doubt, Polish saxophonist can be called a virtuoso on his instrument, which he demonstrates to the full on this third solo soprano saxophone album recorded live at a concert in Gdansk in December 2022.  This year is also the 10th anniversary of his solo project, which started with "The Planet Of Eternal Life" (2013), and "Oaxaca Constellation" (2022). 

His music is pure and playful, and his artistry is concentrated in the search of aesthetic beauty rather than in timbral explorations and finding new ways of expression. Maybe the reference that best comes to mind is the poetry of birds: singing without any other pretense than the joy of announcing the day and the pleasure of life itself. Two tracks are little bit slower and at times more melancholy ("Philo" and "Little Beings From The Basswood"), yet never for long, and are equally impressive. 

For once, it's also good to hear the enthusiastic audience during the performance. 

Bruno Parrinha - Da Erosão (4DA Records, 2023) 

Portuguese altoist Bruno Parrinha is - at least to me - best known for his collaborations with his fellow countrymen Ernesto Rodrigues (seven albums together this year!), Sei Miguel and Luis Lopes, but here we find him on his frist solo album. 

Parrinha's tone is warm, soulful, welcoming and sad. The melancholy of his tone is well described in a poem he wrote,  which I let 'deepl' translate into English, which is possibly not the most accurate tool to translate poetry, but I'm sure it somehow captures the spirit. "The erosion of me" is a painful image, and that melancholy sense of things moving away from you captures the sound wel. 

The sound is direct, as if you were standing next to him, listening in to his private expressions of sadness. On some tracks, such as "Condição Eólica", he takes a more adventurous tone, expressing the sound of wind. The last track is an incredible feat of circular breathing, that not only shows his skills at the instrument, but also encapsulates the essence of the album through its kaleidoscopic yet coherent variation.

Music straight from the heart. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Nicolas Stephan - Null (Petit Label, 2023)

'Null' is a relatively short thirty minutes of solo improvisation by French saxophonist Nicolas Stephan. He wanted to strip his instrument of all superfluous things, and let it take the lead, accepting minor mistakes, and follow wherever the moment brings the sound. He plays tenor and straight alto, and at moments also synth and trumpet. His playing is good, warm, intimate, pleasurable, until he adds abrasive background taped sound to challenge his music. It distorts his original intention, and - in my opinion - reduces the quality of his playing. The best track on the album is the third, a moving, beautiful and very tightly controlled improvisation. On the last track, sample music creates the overall sound. I'm somewhat mystified what this adds to the music, but I'll let the reader decide. I'm sure the artist had a clear plan, but it's a missed opportunity. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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John Blum, David Murray, Chad Taylor - The Recursive Tree (Relative Pitch, 2023)

By Nick Metzger

NYC pianist John Blum dropped one of my favorite albums in recent memory with 2020’s “Duplicity”, in a duo with the legendary drummer Jackson Krall. It was a welcome entry in the notoriously scrumptious - yet criminally scant - John Blum back-catalog, and now just a few years removed Relative Pitch releases this flamethrower, finding Blum in a trio with fellow legends and musical provocateurs David Murray and Chad Taylor. Before Duplicity Blum had been quiet on the releases front for the better part of a decade despite being extremely active in the scene, his prior releases being 2009’s solo Who Begat Eye and trio In the Shade of Sun with William Parker and the late Sunny Murray (an album released by Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label). On that note, 2023 also saw the release of a third set of solo pieces titled Nine Rivers which captures a 2013 performance and came out on ESP-Disk earlier this Fall. If you’re a fan of Blum and/or like what you hear here, it’s a must buy. David Murray really needs no introduction, an NYC loft scene cornerstone who is now mentoring a new generation of jazz musicians from the Empire City, he’s played with just about everyone worth mentioning and has over 150 albums to his name. He sounds as fierce as ever here, always willing to push and go the extra distance, his style and tone all his own. And finally Chad Taylor, this generation’s answer to Billy Higgins. Taylor is almost beyond prolific, showing up both where you would and would least expect him to. He’s a marvelous and inventive drummer who brings an extra dimension to any record he’s on. With The Recursive Tree the trio lays down as good a piano-sax-drums album as you're likely to hear anywhere.

On the first track “Fire in the Branches” the trio erupts into motion, teeming with heavy gesticulation and fiery rhetoric. Blum’s playing is characteristically fleet with intricate,lightning-fast right hand runs and crushing chord blows. Murray growls and warbles within the framework set by the piano, filling in space but also constantly pushing to the edges. Taylor is incredible, his sense of swing and endless inventiveness multiplies the open-ended possibilities, making it conceivable for things to turn on a dime. On “Kinetic Crawl” Blum and Taylor establish a rolling rhythm that is in turns brutal and delicate, like lace from steel wire. Murray’s playing ranges from jagged and almost disjointed to smoothly flowing lines that subtly track the aggression in the rhythm. On “Passage” Taylor starts tentatively with an elementary beat that intensifies into a progression of metrical and timbral motions. Murray’s lines whip in and around the continuous eruption of notes from Blum. “Hidden Thorns” feels moody and agitated as the trio’s tentative start explodes into a rolling boogie (for those with the right kind of ears). Murray’s playing is almost vocal here, his runs replete with honks and yowls, situated within the extremely tight trappings of Blum and Taylor’s onslaught.

On “Monk’s Door” something proverbial manifests, as shards of bop scatter light across the proceedings. Much like a broken vase, the object can be discerned from fragments and remainders. “Germination” sizzles with light percussion before heavy piano and tenor surfaces. Though the piano propels the piece, Murray shares a tight and intricate dialogue with Blum throughout that provides lots of illumination and shadow. On the title track the trio play through a series of crescendos – rhythmic foundations serve as launching points for various lyrical (and otherwise) excursions. Murray gets downright ecstatic over some portions as the piano and drums chisel away at infinity. “Creatural” is a brief track where slight gestures are traded before longer stretches of exploration are undertaken. The piece feels conversational and balanced, dropping most of the jagged edges and striving instead for a metered and sustained dialogue. The album closes with “Fractals”, a smoking selection of high-octane free improvisation that makes no apologies for its raw enthusiasm. The trio stretches out and lets the music take them where it wants. Rhythms and melodies released are immediately left behind - it’s about the hunt here, not what’s for dinner. In their fervour everything is uprooted, overturned, inspected, and thrown aside – and the listener is left with substantial bounty.

Obviously, the Unit came to mind when listening to this album (the trio version), not just the instrumentation but also the rhythmic complexity and sudden shifts between intricacy and simplicity, calm seas and maelstrom. Blum was mentored by Taylor, so obviously something rubbed off, but I also hear Tyner, and Waldron, and some left-hand stride going on under all the tumult (as awesomely noted in the Bandcamp tags). The comparison is a testament to how well this group works together, this being their debut recording and you would never guess it. Absolutely brilliant album, listen closely and you will be rewarded.

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Two Recent Duos with Eddie Prévost

By Stuart Broomer

In 2022, Eddie Prévost celebrated his 80 ^th birthday with the series Towards a Bright Nowhere, a series of July concerts at Café Oto that appeared as both a series of four CDs and a documentary. These two CDs document later duo performances from October 2022 to June 2023 with French pianist Marjolaine Charbin, apparently a recent association, and saxophonist John Butcher, a longtime creative partner. Each emphasizes a different dimension of Prévost’s creativity. He’s credited with percussion on the CD with Charbin, which in his case means a bass drum placed flat on the floor and employed as resonator for a variety of small objects and instruments as well as an assortment of cymbals and objects that are not struck but are bowed, creating sustained tones. With Butcher, he’s seated at a conventional drum kit, stretching the drumming practices of modern jazz and free jazz in an otherworldly performance.

Marjolaine Charbin/ Eddie Prévost - The Cry of a Dove Announcing Rain: Two Afternoon Concerts at Café Oto (Matchless, 2023)

Marjolaine Charbin has been releasing recordings for slightly more than a decade in France, but I regret that none of them has come to my attention.

These two afternoon duos from Café Oto reveal a remarkably empathetic partnership, each a single long improvisation, the first from October 2022 running to 30 minutes, the second from January 2023 to 47. Each is a profound dialogue moving freely and meaningfully through a variety of textures. Charbin has a host of approaches to the piano, from prepared piano to extended series of clusters in regular rhythm. If percussion suggests isolated complex sounds, the two find tremendous variety applying compound methodologies. The metallic wails of bowed and scraped cymbals and assorted string techniques applied to the piano harp create passages of evocative long tones, those “cries of a dove” a legitimate description of this music, the cries extending to the material world itself. There are moments in this music that frustrate attribution, like a passage of continuous bass rumbling that might be the product of bass drum or piano but which doesn’t quite precisely surrender its mode of production. Prévost’s work is at once contemplative and moving, in many senses, as well; as is always the case with his music, it is a mode of philosophical action. This is an excellent introduction to Marjolaine Charbin, a pianist likely to become a significant presence in improvised music.

To purchase: https://matchlessrecordings.com/music/cry-dove-announcing-rain

John Butcher/ Eddie Prévost - Unearthed: High Laver Levitations vol 1 (Matchless, 2023) *****

Prévost and John Butcher have been playing together for decades, a partnership that has extended to Butcher’s occasional inclusion in AMM recordings. This duo format of saxophone and drum kit is one of the essential forms of free jazz, from John Coltrane and Rashied Ali’s Interstellar Space to the 50-year collaboration of Evan Parker and Paul Lytton. The special appeal of the format is particularly clear here: it’s the emphasis on fundamentals, saxophone as voice and drum as rhythmic base, a direct invocation of the roots of music. One can go to the Matchless website (the label is one of the great institutions and achievements of improvised music) and read the first page quotation from one of the few great fictional inquiries into modern music, Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus:

He spoke about music in its pre-cultural state, when song had been a howl across several pitches, [when] musical performances must have had a quality something like free recitation; improvisation. But if one closely examined music, and in particular its most recently achieved stage of development, one noticed the secret desire to return to those conditions.

Butcher has been a keen explorer of resonant spaces from mines and caves to vast works of industrial architecture, and there’s something essential about that work, defining musical relations and distances within the physical world. Here Butcher plays soprano and tenor saxophones and Prévost turns to his drum kit in a June 2023 performance at All Hallows Church in High Laver, Essex. Together, the two explore a world of primal expression, intensely emotional, one reaching inward and outward to the essence of human music. It’s implicit from the opening moments of “Tap Root”, in which Prévost’s first drum strokes are joined by Butcher’s isolated plosives and drum-like (they’re absolutely drum-like) blasts, openings to journey. After a speech-like drum solo, Butcher enters with his soprano pressing towards the terrain of a fundamental flute, but with sound burring off into the complexities of a human voice. There follows another drum passage, a fundamentally melodic one, a test of different drums and cymbals rather than sustained rolls. Butcher then enters on tenor, Prevost grows more animated, and Butcher moves from sustained sounds that might suggest large mammals or, as likely, heavy machinery (earthmoving equipment a possibility) to isolated flurries, which in turn give way to almost balladic reflection, occasionally pressing towards delicacy, towards nursery and nocturne. It’s an imaginative journey suggested by Butcher’s previous environmental work and one taken literally by Larry Ochs and Gerald Cleaver on their Song of the Wild Cave (Rogueart) in which the two followed a narrow tunnel to set up and record in a Paleolithinc cave dwelling.

There’s no way that I plan on sustaining that kind of wandering description, here getting to fifteen minutes, on this writing round, into a 78-minute recording filled with moments both monumental and startling, arising throughout three long duets that range from 34 to 15 minutes in length and which sustain the impression of the primal, perhaps emphasized by “Tap Root” and the other titles, “Digging” and “Lament for Old Bones” (around the 25-minute mark, Butcher’s soprano is alternating between the simplest bamboo flute and a penny-whistle). This is both dialogue and ritual, the two often overlapping each other in an invocation of music’s higher powers (Near the conclusion of “Digging”, there’s a muffled and extended soprano saxophone cry so strange as to suggest the intrusion of a primordial ancestor: “Lament for Old Bones” has a late passage that suggests an animal yipping). It’s a great drum performance by Prevost, while Butcher’s saxophone performance may be as powerful, as expansive, as any I’ve heard, one that seems to reach through the most expressionist moments of free jazz to the roots of human culture by means of extraordinarily developed technique. “Unearthed”, indeed. Prepare to be amazed.

To purchase: https://matchlessrecordings.com/music/unearthed

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Ivo Perelman & Nate Wooley - Polarity 2 (Burning Ambulance, 2023)

By Don Phipps

The second installment of duets by tenor saxman Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley, aptly named Polarity 2 (the first being the 2021 Polarity), shows both masters in excellent form on seven spontaneous compositions. Perelman, long a workhorse on the free jazz scene, demonstrates his expressive control of the reed, with biting cat-like meows and full-throated tenor notes. Wooley too creates bubbles and chortles with his trumpet – muted or unmuted, and the precision he brings is remarkable. The result – an adventure within an adventure where each piece covers new ground, a journey of inventive squeals, rumbles, floating lines, and flowering drawls.

Take the second piece, “Two,” where Perelman throttles his reed and pinches squeaks out of his woodwind while Wooley adds his best Lester Bowie-like whines and cries. The third piece, “Three,” is the longest on the album, and displays plenty of virtuosity. Listen to how Perelman controls his breathing in the lower register to earthy effect. And the way the two musicians blend odd harmonic voicings together in a low orbit dialog. About midway through the number, Wooley, followed by Perelman, generate runs like a mad dash toward some distant finish line. Perelman then transitions to a long-pinched note that creates a totally different yet highly creative tangent.

“Four” has Perelman voicing (scat) while Wooley slides and glides all around him. Wooley’s rapid flutter-tonguing is a true highlight of this number and Perelman squeezes the reed hard in response. Later, there’s a drunk call and response that suggests a late-night departure from one’s local dive.

On “Six,” one can hear the purity of Wooley’s tone, how there’s a glow and hue to it, like a gemstone on display. At the end, the piece evolves into a whirling dance. Both musicians never miss – their notes, intonation, and skill blend perfectly.

As Perelman writes on his Facebook: “The seven untitled duets (on Polarity 2) highlight the immediate, intimate, and deeply communicative rapport…” between the two musicians, and the “duets blur the distinction between spontaneous improvisations and instant compositions.”

One wonders just how this is accomplished with such a high degree of skill and synchronicity? Is it hours and hours of practice, pure dedication, or some kind of innate talent that drives them to achieve what to any common person might seem like an impossible climb of some towering mountain? Let’s hope Perelman and Wooley continue these climbs forever!

Polarity 2 can be purchased via Bandcamp

See also Sammy Stein's review of Polarity 2 here

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Peter Brötzmann/Paal Nilssen-Love - Chicken Shit Bingo (Trost, 2024)

By Martin Schray

As is so often the case when a great musician has passed away, new releases appear relatively quickly after his death. They are usually of rather mediocre quality (just think of the albums that came out after Jimi Hendrix’s death), but sometimes they are also exciting, which can be proved by some recently released Cecil Taylor recordings. Before his death in June, Peter Brötzmann had already published a great deal himself and one has rather wondered skeptically what new aspects further recordings could shed light on. But to my surprise one of the first posthumous releases, Chicken Shit Bingo with Paal Nilssen-Love, one of his favorite drummers in recent years does exactly that and shows both musicians from an unusual contemplative side.

The four albums the two have released so far have been live recordings, but in 2015 they took some time in Antwerp to make a studio recording. Brötzmann had bought a contra-alto clarinet and was obviously so enthusiastic about the sound of this instrument that he decided to play almost exclusively instruments of the clarinet family. Only a bass saxophone - sound-wise not far away from the clarinets - is used in a few pieces. For the session Nilssen-Love brought several Korean gongs with him, which he had also not used before. Given the choice of instruments, it’s no wonder that the timbres open up completely new spheres for the collaboration between the two - darker ones, more melancholic, delicate and fragile ones. Brötzmann, who has so often been compared to Albert Ayler, is more reminiscent of Jimmy Giuffre in a piece like “South of No Return“, for example. This is also due to the fact that he rarely uses the high registers, so fascinated does he seem to be with the low notes. It’s as if he plays them and then takes his time to listen to them fading away. His role models are also evident in his melodic writing: Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. This is most evident at the beginning of “Smuddy Water“, a piece on which Brötzmann plays bass clarinet and initially explores the lower registers in a very consequent way. Then, as if from nowhere, he explodes, moving expressively into the higher registers of the instrument, only to return to the depths after a minute and a half. It’s like an echo from the old days, as if he wanted to make sure that he would have been capable to play like this as well.

Eventually, “Ant Eater Hornback Lizard“, the last piece, is an example of how well the interplay with Nilssen-Love works, even if it’s much more subtle than on their previous recordings. Here too, Brötzmann exhales into his instrument, nothing is left of the old fire breather of the early years. Nilssen-Love accompanies him even more restraint, using tambourines, hand drums and the low bass drum. At the end, the piece seems to disappear imperceptibly in a deep void.

Chicken Shit Bingo could be a lost soundtrack to a movie by Akira Kurosawa. And here’s the best news: a second volume of music from the same studio session will be released on vinyl in 2024, along with a CD of live recordings.

Chicken Shit Bingo is available on vinyl, as a CD and as a download.

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Oliver Schwerdt - Sunday Interview

Oliver Schwerdt. Photo by Christian Hüller

1. What is your greatest joy in improvised music?
   
   Since I am not only an improvising artist the unrivaled joy I gain in improvised music sums up to a triadically dimensioned pleasure: while choosing the artists for the next ensemble I already enjoy the music we supposedly are going to realize throughout activating my sonic imagination, while on stage I enjoy the feeling of the vast freedom of speech based on the chosen personal vocabulary and material that needs instantaneously to be activated within the thrill of situational concretization during the actual energized communicating streams of exploring interplay, while experiencing the captured sonic document afterwards I enjoy literally focusing a scenic imagination.
   
   
2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?
   
   Within the most important thing of reliability in the personal style of the collaborators, I admire their ability to react and act with surprisingly and convincing statements and their ability to contribute to a foreground of a solo passage with wisely supportive accompaniment. Sometimes the greatest beauty occurs when guys like Christian Lillinger and Baby Sommer choose a minimalistic way in accompanying or when a guy like Peter Brötzmann steps back to let his co-workers explode in the absence of his line.
   
   
3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?
   
   Frank Zappa, the inventor of Läther : the frappant conceptional i.e. partially humorous edition of multiple musical styles.
   
   
4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?
   
   I am a big fan of resurrection. Without any doubt in terms of necessity I would have to resurrect Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, because there is nothing that can complete the dynamic musicality realized by my vital duo interplay with Lillinger than his lively altissimo. But, in exploiting the phantastique dimension of the question more seriously: Let’s take Peter Kowald, who died in the year I invited Baby Sommer for the first time: I can hear him in a crunchy quartet with an earlier state of Anthony Braxton and Baby Sommer, also I can hear his sort of mystic tone in one of my legendary doubled double bass quintets with Tomasz Stanko, who, as we know, died, in the year I already have been talking to him for a participation in such.
   
   
5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?
   
   I would like to be asked for curating an annual week of improvising workshops presenting the further development of my solo piano work, igniting some more first-time duo-encounters and continuing my larger sound focusing ensemble works without concerning about the financing by myself. These annual weeks should happen twice a year, both in California, Japan and, of course, in Switzerland. 
   
   
6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?
   
   Yes, I do love the B e a t l e s. The sound of the first album of the F o o F i g h t e r s sets me into heaven as well as the music of Michael Haves‘ S u p e r 7 0 0.
   
   
7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
   
   Oh, that’s funny: Since I am king of myself, I can change everything.
   
   
8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?
   
   The trio album with Baby Sommer and Barry Guy called One For My Baby And One More For The Bass .
   
   
9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?
   
   Yes, I do, when I hold the final record in my hands, it’s like listening to the music for the first time. I can’t change anything anymore, so, without any productional thoughts, I can really listen to the music. On average let’s say I listen to every record every five years once or twice.
   
   
10. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?
    
    Probably Kind of Blue. But mostly I choose Alexander von Schlippenbach‘s Twelve Tone Tales and C i r c l e ‘ s Paris-Concert to inspire me when I am preparing an upcoming concert.
    
    
11. What are you listening to at the moment?
    
    Driving the car, Pat Metheny’s American Garage.
    
    
12. What artist outside music inspires you?
    
    Kliff Lanzarote, the girlfriend of Friedrich Kettlitz‘ sister Sirina Lipett-Buff.

(Editors note: text formatting kept as submitted)

Recordings by Oliver Schwerdt reviewed on the Free Jazz Blog:

• Great Sakata Trio - Siren, Sticks & Circus (Euphorium, 2023)
• Great Sakata Quintet - Tornado (Euphorium, 2023)
• Euphorium_Freakestra - Free Acoustic Supergroup (Euphorium Records, 2022)
• Ernst-Ludwig (“Luten“) Petrowsky (1933 – 2023)
• Leimgruber / Turner / Dorner / da Boff / Flesh - Untitled (London Leipzig Luzern) (Euphorium, 2021)
• Oliver Schwerdt, Barry Guy, Baby Sommer – One For My Baby, And One More For The Bass (Euphorium, 2020)
• Big Bad Brötzmann Quintet - Karacho! (Euphorium)
• The New Old Luten Project
• New Old Luten Quintet - Krawall! (Euphorium Records, 2016)
• Axel Dörner, Roger Turner, Ra Ra da Boff – London Leipzig Berlin (Euphorium, 2015)
• New Old Luten Quintet - Tumult! (Euphorium, 2015)

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Alma Tree - Sonic Alchemy Suprema (Carimbo Porta-Jazz, 2024)

By Paul Acquaro

If drummer and legend Rakalam Bob Moses calls you out on social media as one of the "great, extraordinarily creative, visionary drummer/percussionists from all over the globe," it makes sense to heed the call. See it as the universe calling. After all, Moses did play with Pat Metheny, Paul Bley, Steve Swallow, Gary Burton and Dave Liebman, among many others and his percussion work is a defining element on seminal albums of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Fortunately, Lisbon based, listed, drummer Pedro Melo Alves, who made the list, heard the message, got in touch, and also introduced Memphis based Moses to another exceptional percussionist from Barcelona based, Vasco Trilla, and the connection was made, eventually leaping from cyber space to the real world.

First, Trilla and Moses collaborated virtually during the pandemic, sending files of their playing to each other and developing the release Singing Icons (Astral Spirits, 2023). Then, meeting up in 2022, the three percussionists played a series of dates in Portugal, followed by a trip into the studio. Sonic Alchemy Suprema, the result of this spirited meeting, finds the percussionists immersed in a complete sound-world, drawing sometimes on the saxophone playing of João Pedro Brandão, José Soares and Julius Gabriel but mostly drawing from their own vast pools of tones and textures.

The album starts off with the track entitled "Opening," in which a reserved rumble of tom-toms and hand-drums are sliced through by metallic scrapping from cymbals. This leads seamlessly into "One with Infinite Space," where we hear the saxophones playing layered legato harmonies and short melodic declarations. Track 3, "Alma Ra Kalam," shows a different side of the trio, where hand drums provide a more down to earth groove after the spiritual soaring of the previous track. The track builds slowly, a taught energy generated between the hand drums and the drum kit that comes in later to solidify the pulse.

Over the course of the album's generous fifteen tracks, there are duo and trio encounters, some that swing and others that plumb the sonic depths. From time to time, usually at the start of a track, you may even hear Moses exclaim something or sing the drum line he's about to play. Closing track, "Soaring Leaf," is one that again incorporates the horns. This time, the hand drum is underscored with a jittery snare drum and the saxophones and flute flutter like leaves in wind, perhaps even propelled by the woosh of bass drum.

If pressed to say one positive thing about social media, I would offer up Sonic Alchemy Suprema. The album is the lasting evidence of a musical encounter born from a seemingly innocuous post placed in cyberspace, leading to a recording that captures spirit and communication on a deep musical level.

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Satoko Fujii Quartet - After Fifteen Years, Live At Buddy (Self-Released, 2023)

By Stef Gijssels

In July of this year, the Satoko Fujii Quartet reunited for a concert at Buddy in Tokyo, Japan ... 'after fifteen years'. The quartet are Satoko Fujii on piano, Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Takeharu Hayakawa on electric bass and Tatsuya Yoshida on drums. 

The band does not perform new pieces, but brings updates of all their already released material. Fans of Fujii and Tamura will be surprised at the rhythm section of Hayakawa and Yoshida. The former is a real wizard of the electric bass, and he gives the music a very fusion feel at moments, while Yoshida is an incredible powerhouse - but subtle - on the kit. They drive the music forward at breakneck speed, giving it sometimes a more rockish than boppish feel, or something in between. Fujii's compositions are wonderfully complex, with rhythm and tempo changes, long unison lines and brilliantly tight arrangements. Both Fujii and Tamura are in excellent form too. This is music that has a very free feel, but the discipline and mastery of the four musicians shows itself best in the transition between the improvised and arranged moments. 

"Junction" (Vulcan, 2001) is a nice opener, with different levels of momentum and drive, allowing all four musicians to introduce themselves in short improvisations, with especially the piano dealing with the slower movements. It is followed by "Sunset In Havanna" (Bacchus, 2007), a boppish piece that is full of wonderful surprises and ear candy, again with superfast unison lines, more meditative piano moments, starkly contrasted by the rhythmic juggernaut. "An Alligator In Your Wallet" (Angelona, 2005) goes on in the same vein: including playful moments of fun.  

The other tracks on the album are "The Sun in a Moonlight Night" (Vulcan, 2001), "Tatsu Take" (Minerva, 2002), "First Tango" (Zephyros, 2004), and "A Poor Sailor" (Angelona, 2005)

It's not only great to hear a band that is in such great shape, and enjoying the reunion, but it's also a reason to reach back to Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura's earlier work. 

The album exists only in a digital format, but fans will love it. 

Enjoy!

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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Jim & The Schrimps - Ain’t No Saint (Intakt, 2023)

By Lee Rice Epstein

As a jazz drummer hitting high school and college in the ’90s, Jim Black’s playing was a revelation to me. With saxophonists Chris Speed, Andrew D’Angelo, Tim Berne, and Ellery Eskelin, Black helped make jazz sound exciting and modern. And 30 years on, he is still making some of the best, most addictive jazz music around. On his latest for Intakt, recorded and mixed last summer and fall in Berlin, Ain’t No Saint sets a high bar for sheer delight.

A two-horn front line with bass and drums rhythm section is a bit like a homecoming, calling back to earlier groups like Endangered Blood, Human Feel, Yeah No, and Bloodcount. Black’s assembled an international quartet, with tenor saxophonist Julius Gawlik and bassist Felix Henkelhausen from Germany, and Danish alto saxophonist Asger Nissen, young players who cook at a blazing temperature. “The Set-up (for Baikida Carroll)” is a sly opener, simultaneously inviting and deceiving. From there, the band blasts through a tight set of originals. Unlike a typical jazz blowing session, which can overstay their welcome with lengthy, middling solos, The Schrimps play with an excited fervor, not frantic but fierce.

A handful of tracks, like “Snaggs” and “Crashbash,” swing with tight grooves from Henkelhausen and Black and addictive melodies from Nissen and Gawlik. Others showcase airy group improvisations, like “Bellsimmer,” which gradually morphs into a heavy outro, Henkelhausen’s bass pulsing and shoving its way into focus. Ain’t No Saint closes with the two lengthiest songs, “The Once” and “Bowerdfield.” Back to back, they allow the group to end in a slightly more abstract vein than the bulk of the album. On “Bowerdfield,” Gawlik starts in the upper register, with Nissen performing elegant leaps and pirouettes. It’s an intriguingly open-ended conclusion, the group leaving the stage even though they clearly have more to say. Let’s hope we get to hear it soon.

Jim Black & The Schrimps, 2021, live at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz:

Jim Black & The Shrimps - live @ Festungsturm | JAZZWERKSTATT PEITZ from berta.berlin on Vimeo.

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