Harriet Tubman – Araminta (Sunnyside, 2017) ***½

By Chris Haines

Harriet Tubman is the trio of Brandon Ross (guitar), Melvin Gibbs (bass) and J.T. Lewis (drums). They are named after the famous American abolitionist Araminta Ross who took the names from her mother and her husband to form the adopted moniker. This is only their fourth release in nearly twenty years and on Araminta they are augmented by trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith to good effect.

The album opens with ‘The Spiral Path To The Throne’ where Gibbs’ distorted beast of a bass is the first thing we hear before Ross’ guitar and Smith’s trumpet enter creating a soundscape that seems to reverberate with the essence of early seventies Miles Davis and David Sylvian’s Gone to Earth period. ‘Blacktal Fractal’ with its syncopated dub-like bass and rhythm is also another highlight with the trumpet and guitar complementing each other as perfect partners, soaring high together at the beginning before reverting to a more traditional soloist and accompanying role which never quite settles with its edgy interjections. ‘Ne Ander’ features the fantastic sound of Ross’ guitar, which sounds like it’s being strangulated. Over the top of Gibbs’ bass monster sound, Ross seems to choke the life out of his guitar with every note played, a giddy whirlpool of sound, with a strong rock beat provided by Lewis that nails it all together, before Smith’s trumpet takes over from the guitar that sounds like it’s passed out only moments before. Whilst ‘Real Cool Killers’ is reminiscent of the self-titled album by Levin, Torn & White a few years back – delayed and looped guitar parts, strong rhythmic drumming (a mechanical type shuffle) and a strong bass presence.

Overall Araminta is an interesting album that pulls on varied and different influences whilst bringing it altogether under the Harriet Tubman sound. With the wealth of experience gathered together from these musicians, including the weight of past and other musical affiliations, Harriet Tubman seems to contain a freshness for them, a possible tabula rasa or blank canvas that becomes its own creative entity. Including Leo Smith on this one is also a great addition and gives this album something extra. Smith’s trumpet gives the group not only another layer of sound but also an important instrumental focal point that seems to galvanise the other parts, pulling them together to create a greater musical and structural cohesion, which is enjoyable and worth a listen.

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Straytone, Nakamura, Masubuchi, Tokunaga - A Crescent and Moonflowers (Meenna, 2016) ****

By Nicola Negri

Straytone – modular synthesizer
Takashi Masubuchi – guitar
Masahide Tokunaga – alto saxophone
Yui Nakamura – voice (track 2)

Ftarri is a record shop and performance space located in Tokyo – linked to the Improvised Music From Japan imprint that documented the local free improvisation scene since the early 2000s – that today, through its own Hitorri, Ftarri and Meenna labels, continues to present both established figures as well as younger newcomers to the scene, as this record attests.

A refreshing take on free improvisation from four young musicians active in the Tokyo area, A Crescent & Moonflowers documents the complete performance – two sets lasting about thirty minutes each – that took place at Ftarri on 5 June 2016.

The record begins with restrained guitar arpeggios floating above the synth’s low volume ambience, a distant saxophone buzzing in the background, slowly developing a loosely sketched improvisational dialogue that highlights chance encounters and collisions of different musical worlds – the blues sensibility of Masubuchi’s guitar, the experimental noise nature of Straytone’s synth, the ultra-minimal style of Tokunaga’s sax. There’s a certain simplicity in the proceedings, the music sounding somehow inevitable – the sign of a well-assorted group of improvisers – but this doesn’t translate to predictability. There’s enough variety in the musicians’ carefully calibrated contributions, seemingly casual intersections and distinctive voices, to constantly keep the listener alert and waiting for the next development.

Masubuchi’s delicate lyricism keeps the performance on a relaxed mood, heightened and contrasted by Straytone’s menacing sci-fi electronics, while Tokunaga’s measured textural work adds a deeper dimension to the overall ambience. The addition of Nakamura on the second set doesn’t alter the ensemble’s balance, reinforcing the alien soundscape with whispered incantations and guttural rumbles.

The different scenarios depicted by the ensemble, and the somewhat familiar yet disorienting general atmosphere, make of A Crescent & Moonflowers a captivating experience, growing in complexity at each listen – a glimpse of the new Japanese scene that promises even more exciting developments.

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Barcode Quartet - Live in Brasil (Grazer Etikett, 2016) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

Barcode Quartet is a free-improvising quartet that features musicians with no or little background in jazz. Barcode Quartet matches three Graz-based Austrians – pianist Elisabeth Harnik (known from the DEK Trio with Ken Vandermark and her collaborations with another Chicagoan sax player Dave Rempis, and French double bass master Joëlle Léandre), vocalist Annette Giesriegl, and drummer and electronics musician Josef Klammer with London-based violinist Alison Blunt, who collaborates with Harnik in the interdisciplinary project “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose …”- Hommage á Gertrude Stein, and is a frequent collaborator with drummer Mark Sanders. Klammer suggested the title for this border-crossing quartet, thinking of it as an ironic protest by a group that defies any attempt to label or codify its music.

Blunt is a classically trained violinist who played in chamber ensemble and orchestras who took up improvisation following repeated wrist injuries. Harnik studied classical piano and composition and even performed as a jazz singer before shifting her focus to free improvisation. Giesriegl also studied jazz singing but focuses on free-improvisation and is known for her overtone and throat singing and Indian vocalizing techniques. Klammer is busy working with sound art, radio plays, and theater projects, expanding his drum drum-set with electronics and sound samples.

Live in Brasil is the sophomore album of the quartet, following You’re It (Slam Productions, 2012), which was also recorded live on August 2015 at Jazz na Fábrica Festival in São Paulo and the following day at Quintavant-Audio Rebel in Rio de Janeiro, distributed only in digital format. The live setting and the extended, improvised format enable the four musicians to operate freely on the spectrum between the spontaneous and intuitive, composition in real-time and what slowly blossoms as nuanced compositions. All while experimenting and incorporating the highly singular herstories/histories of the four musicians.

The opening, 35-minutes “Tranquilo”, present the quartet in its most eccentric, inventive and imaginative mode while maintaining a balanced and emphatic interplay. Harnik's percussive motifs on the piano keys and strings extend the subtle, colorful percussive work of Klammer, both cement the erratic atmosphere of this piece. Giesriegl's wordless vocalizations and suggestive phrasing offer a dadaist narrative, full of sudden dramatic twists, intensified and sometimes even contrasted by Blunt's playing. Somehow all the chaotic, dense playing is channeled into a powerful momentum, gravitating towards an ecstatic conclusion. The following “Gig Rec” begins with the fractured, rhythmic run of Klammer, soon abstracted with even faster rhythmic gestures of Giesriegl, Harnik and Blunt, all employ extended vocal, bowing and hammering techniques. But later this piece adopts a contemplative and abstract mode that highlight the evocative and passionate delivery of Giesriegl and the inventive, free-spirited playing of Blunt. The São Paulo performance concludes with a short, playful encore, “Our Toys”.

The last piece, “Audio Rebel’s Dog” deepens the wild, chaotic vein of opening piece. The distinct eccentric and unstable nature of this improvisation still makes some sense. Obviously, mysterious, unorthodox and non-linear kind of sense, but somehow all the weird-sounding ideas fit this unique puzzle. The violin of Blunt that quotes folk motifs, the operatic-theatrical delivery of Giesriegl and the percussive sparks and the sprints on the piano keys of Harnik and the sparse drumming and strange noises of Klammer all connect, collide, disperse and connect again, immediately and organically. All together suggest a rich, multifaceted sonic picture that never exhausts you from deciphering its myriad elements.

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Wacław Zimpel – LAM (Instant Classic, 2016) ****½

By Eric McDowell

Polish composer and clarinetist Wacław Zimpel is a hungry listener. Ranging time and space, his musical diet has fueled a variety of intercontinental collaborations and explorations, from his work with Carnatic music virtuosos, Saagara, to his tenure in Ken Vandermark’s Resonance Ensemble, from Music of the Yemenite Jews to his resurrection of the medieval music of Hildegard of Bingen. With LAM, Zimpel returns to territory he first prospected on last February’s Lines—the world of the American Minimalists.

This time Zimpel ditches the solo/overdub approach, for his own part sticking to the usual suspects—Bb, alto, and bass clarinets; tárogató—while inviting the contributions of pianist Krzystztof Dys from the Stone Fog quartet and Slalom drummer Hubert Zemler, plus significant post-production and electronics by mooryc. While the expanded lineup may suggest a kind of blossoming from the earlier solo album, the compositions on LAM are actually older than those on Lines. Still, Zimpel’s approach is relatively consistent across both albums, emphasizing hypnotic repetition, careful layering and escalation, and effect over means—meaning when the music demands it, Zimpel will patiently play a simple figure over and over or even sit out for minutes at a time.

Adding up to a cohesive 50-minute suite, the album’s three pieces are broken into even smaller tracks, signposting structural turning points and highlighting Zimpel’s compositional approach. On the prefatory “LAM 1 (Part One),” Dys deploys slow decaying chords to set a solemn mood before shifting up into the measured ostinato around which “LAM 1 (Part Two)” is built. Only then do Zemler and Zimpel step onto the stage, the former with a throbbing mallet groove, the latter intoning gently on bass clarinet. The success of the piece hangs not on any show-stopping bravura but on mesmeric repetition and the way that subtle embellishments on the pattern surface and accumulate like overtones around a drone. It’s these nuances and the organic escalation of the music that suggests the benefits of working with live musicians over mechanical looping and studio overdubs. Yet it should also be mentioned that mooryc’s postproduction effects, though at times difficult to pinpoint, are obviously indispensible to the overall sound.

While “LAM 2” (at under 11 minutes the album’s shortest piece) resets the somber atmosphere with spare piano and plaintive clarinet, the 25-minute “LAM 3” makes the most dynamic use of Zimpel’s slow-build premise. In “LAM 3 (Part One),” interlocking polyrhythms create a dizzying spiral—an uptempo ostinato in Dys’s left hand, a drawn-out arpeggio in his right; Zemler’s endlessly cycling martial snare. Ten minutes later, with the groove tunneling deep, Zimpel launches into a searing solo that perfectly balances emotional lyricism with technical wizardry. “LAM 3 (Part Three)” and “LAM 3 (Part Four)” spend the rest of the album descending from the heights of “LAM 3 (Part Two),” first with a slightly buried piano solo and finally with a return to LAM’s opening melancholy. Sadder still is the silence that falls at the end of the album.

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More Guitar: John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner

John Abercrombie - Up and Coming (ECM, 2017) ***½

By Paul Acquaro

John Abercrombie is a master of dynamics, his masterful use of quiet introductions and spacious melodies hightens the impact of every note and modulation. Abercrombie began laying out his musical vision in his late 70's/early 80's quartet, whose recordings were re-released as a box set a few years ago by ECM, and most of his recent efforts follow suit in terms of hushed tones and lyrical playing. On Up and Coming, Abercrombie has assembled what seems to be his choice instrumentation with players Marc Copland on piano, Drew Gress on double bass, and Joey Baron on drums.

This ensemble of musical veterans knows how to work the subtlety of Abercrombie's music, effortlessly building the dynamics and tension. The quiet of the opening track 'Joy', is followed by the hushed intensity of 'Flipside', driven by Baron's insistent but light percussive push. Copland's comping is sparse and perfect, dropping bright chord tones into the guitarist's solo. When the two come together, their interplay is masterfully timed. On the later track 'Silver Circle', Abercrombie lets some of the more intense aspects of his playing come out. As artfully crafted as the other tunes, but also a welcome contrast to the lusher moments.

Ralph Towner - My Foolish Heart (ECM, 2017) ****

An absolute highlight of last month for me was catching a solo set of guitarist Ralph Towner at a rare appearance in NYC. The guitarist, known for his work with the band Oregon, has had a long and fruitful recording career with ECM, including two duo recordings with John Abercrombie, Sargasso Sea (1976) and Five Years Later (1982). My Foolish Heart is an intimate solo recording - his first in over a decade - and showcases his compositions and playing with the pristine sound and production that the label is famous for.

Towner's playing is a perfect blend of sophistication and irreverence to genre. Not really jazz, certainly not free jazz, and not classical either, his compositions live comfortable between and outside of categorization. On the opener 'Pilgrim', a gentle counterpoint melody flows fluidly from his fretboard, the inviting melody is followed by more tense phrases, interspersed with improvised lines. The title track 'My Foolish Heart', a tribute to pianist Bill Evans, is rendered in a heartfelt arrangement that makes an astounding use of the guitar, Towner's six strings sound as rife with musical possibilities as if it were a piano. In concert with the piano theme, mention should be made of the Towner penned tune 'Blue As in Bley', a tribute to the influential pianist who passed away last year. It is a sumptuous flamenco-tinged song that oozes emotion.

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A video of Towner and Abercrombie from the 1970s - please note, this has nothing to do with either of these recordings, per se.

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Solo Guitar: Shane Parish and Ross Hammond

Shane Parish - Undertaker Please Drive Slow (Tzadik, 2016) ****

By Paul Acquaro

North Carolina's Shane Parish is the guitar half of the 'math-rock' duo Ahleuchatistas. The heady group plays extremely tight and calculated songs; however, on this solo acoustic guitar effort, parish lets the numbers go and embraces the deep musical heritage of Appalachia.

The album kicks off with 'Ain't No Grave', and the short unadorned piece leaves no emotional stone unturned – while it's mostly trepidation, some hope rides in between the strings. The vignette 'Trouble Will Soon Be Over' seem to offer some muted, expectant, joy of relief. 'Judgement' may have the most memorable refrain on the whole album, and Parish's use of dynamics, beyond the fretboard sounds, along with gut-felt phrasing, is haunting. 

The late night sounds of his guitar - hushed acoustics and dark timbres - lays the groundwork for the introspective interpretations of these old folk songs where death, loss, love and judgement are constants.

Ross Hammond - Follow Your Heart (Prescott, 2017) ****

California's Ross Hammond, from what I know, has always played from the gut. His jazz efforts culminated in the wonderful Humanity Suite a few years ago, which channeled his deep rooted Americana through free improvisation. Since then, Hammond has been  focusing attention on the acoustic guitar, releasing several solo and duo recordings. Follow you Heart is a beautifully recorded solo guitar album that channels a certain spiritual and Appalachian music feel.

Recorded at St. Paul’s Church in Sacramento, CA, the clarity of the recording - both in sound and spirit - is visceral. The album begins with the slow boiling 'Sinner Man' – a slide up the neck and then a pause ... a statement, a deep breath ... and then it begins in earnest: dark blues drenched intervals and open droning notes cradling a suspenseful melody. Other tunes, like the parenthetical title track 'Of Course We Will (Follow Your Heart)' germinated from a conversation between the guitarist and his young daughter, and it's open ended melody teems wistfully with hope, pride and determination.

Follow you heart is a beautiful recording available in vinyl, CD, and download. 

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Paul Steinbeck - Message to Our Folks (University of Chicago Press, 2017) ****

By David Menestres

Message to Our Folks is the new book from Paul Steinbeck, an assistant professor of music theory at Washington University. As the title implies, the book is a dedicated study of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the still revolutionary group formed in the late 1960s, originally under the moniker of the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble before taking the name Art Ensemble of Chicago after the group moved to Paris in 1969.

Message to Our Folks is split into nine main chapters plus a conclusion. Three of the chapters are dedicated to detailed analyses of three of the more than fifty releases by the Art Ensemble: A Jackson in Your House (BYG Actuel, 1969), Live at Mandell Hall (Delmark Records, 1972) and Live from the Jazz Showcase (a concert video recorded in 1981, released on VHS by Rhapsody Films in 1990). These recordings are available on Steinbeck’s website, a nice approach that makes it easy for the reader to access these recordings if they don’t already own them.

The book contains a wealth of information and original interviews. It is a very easy read, well written and clear throughout. Starting with preliminary background information on the five main performers in the AEC, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Famoudou Don Moye, & Malachi Favors Maghostut, as well as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), which gave birth to many groups including the Art Ensemble, Steinbeck does an excellent job charting the birth and growth of the Art Ensemble from Chicago to Paris and beyond. The work is extensively footnoted. The first chapter is twenty-five pages and contains two hundred and forty footnotes, though few of the footnotes contain supplement information, they are almost exclusively just the work and page cited.

There is a thorough discussion throughout the book of the importance of the collective organization the members developed and how it changed over time. It is this organization, the democratizing of decision making, the pooling of resources, and the dedication to the collective that enabled the Art Ensemble to work and grow for decades. Despite this collective mindset, the musicians never gave up their individual autonomy. The supremacy of the individual to be able to express themselves through music, costume, make up, theatrics, or any other means, while still working within the group, is a large part of why the Art Ensemble has stayed consistently creative for so long.

The chapters dedicated to musical analyses are lush with detail. Through transcriptions, diagrams, and highly detailed writing, Steinbeck conveys the depth and creativity that goes into each Art Ensemble performance. The illustrations in these chapters are extensive. These three chapters alone are worth the price of the book.

As an object, the book is very nice. Blue cloth covered boards (that fun industrial cloth that seems like it would be used to carpet a patio but is mainly for libraries that will remove the jacket). The jacket design is simple and elegant. A photo of the Art Ensemble from 1987, showing Jarman, Moye, & Favors in face paint, Bowie in his lab coat, and Mitchell in a suit, adorns the front of the jacket with a simple title and author on the spine, and the obligatory blurbage from people like Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis on the back.

My only real complaint about the book is one I’ve seen echoed by other writers. Steinbeck does an excellent job covering the AEC from its inception through the end of their contract with ECM in 1985. Unfortunately, everything that comes after is dealt with quickly and perfunctory, breezing through the DIW years into the PI Recordings of the early ‘00s. You blink once and before you know it, Bowie and Favors are dead, Jarman has left to pursue his Buddhist priesthood eventually coming back to the group, and then you blink again and the book ends. While these years might have seen a decline in Art Ensemble activity when compared to the group’s hyperactive earlier years, they are worthy of being discussed in as much detail as the rest of their career.

Despite this, Message to Our Folks is an essential read for anyone interested in the Art Ensemble of Chicago or creative music. There has never been a group as dedicated to pushing the boundaries of their vision as the AEC was and continues to be (a version of the band with Roscoe Mitchell, Don Moye, Hugh Ragin, and Junius Paul is currently touring). A recommended read for all.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo25125876.html

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Angles 9 - Disappeared Behind the Sun + Equality & Death/Pacemaker

Angles 9 – Disappeared Behind the Sun (Clean Feed, 2017) ****½
Angles 9 - Equality & Death/Pacemaker EP (Omlott, 2016) ***

By Troy Dostert

Given the tumultuous global circumstances in which we live, groups like Angles 9 aren’t just valuable: they’re a necessity.  Since its first incarnation in 2008 (with Every Woman Is a Tree), the band has sought not only to provide engaging, spirited, fiery music—it has done so while trying to call attention to the plight of those confronting the modern horrors of warfare, genocide, and political repression.  One can certainly appreciate the group’s output on its musical merits alone; but for those of us sympathetic with the deeper message of the group’s political stance, its music is thereby rendered all the more powerful and vital.

On these records the band once again performs as a nonet, with the same personnel who appeared on 2014’s outstanding Injuries: Alexander Zethson (piano), Andreas Werliin (drums), Eirik Hegdal (baritone sax), Goran Kajfes (cornet), Johan Berthling (bass), Magnus Broo (trumpet), Martin Küchen (alto and tenor sax), Mats Aleklint (trombone), and Mattias Ståhl (vibes).  The Clean Feed release, Disappeared Behind the Sun (the title a reference to victims of political terror arrested without trial), offers five tracks in the customary Angles style, with incendiary horns developing simple but highly infectious melodic themes over danceable rhythmic foundations.

The group’s long-standing Balkan folk influence is especially noticeable on the record’s opener, “Equality & Death,” which roars out of the gate with Küchen’s bleating sax and a steady 4/4 snare beat from Werliin propelling the track inexorably forward, while the rest of the band surges with the help of a steady vamp by the rhythm section.  The second cut, “Ardor,” opens like a mid-60s Blue Note track, with an engaging piano ostinato supporting an emotional solo from Broo, until the band joins in with another Eastern European-inspired theme and a loose, funky rhythmic backdrop.  The remaining tracks all maintain the band’s intensity and sense of purpose, with “Pacemaker” a riveting 5-minute onslaught built around a bluesy-sounding riff interspersed with periodic cacophony from the horns, while the record’s title track and “Love, Flee Thy House” are a bit more expansive, with longer solo opportunities and moments to break the pulse of the music a bit, giving the group’s poignant melodies even more room to emerge.  While the musicianship is very strong throughout, it’s worth emphasizing that Angles 9 really derives its impact from its emotional punch and undeniable sense of conviction; it’s a gripping and moving record from start to finish.

The Omlott EP, comprising two of the pieces on Disappeared Behind the Sun, “Equality & Death” and “Pacemaker,” won’t be of much value to those who want to have all the music from this recording session.  I suppose those who appreciate the good ol’ days of 7” vinyl records may derive some satisfaction from owning a copy, but most fans of the group will want the Clean Feed release, as all five tracks are essential listening.

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Shitney - Earth Core (Ilk Music, 2017) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

What is Shitney? The female rulers of Sun Ra’s Saturn colony? Rebel refugees from the eighties synth-pop? Goddesses gibberish trash talk? Hyperactive tone geologists that will blow your head while drilling into the core of this planet? Witty feminist criticism of masculine-muscular free jazz? Most likely, all together and much more. When you think that you may grasp what Shitney is all about, Shitney will spin your ears and head again, leaving you dazed and confused, still laughing.

Shitney (you guessed right, originally titled Shitney Spears) brings together three of the finest ladies from the Copenhagen busy alternative and jazz scene, somehow all are on the fringe of musical normality, in their own special ways - Estonian sax player Maria Faust, leader of the groups Jazz Catastrophe and Sacrum Facere, described as one who believed she could one day become Alice Cooper when other girls went all coocoo with boys; Danish keyboards-guitar-electronics player Karine Amsler, from the group Television Pickup, portrayed as one who secretly built her first mini guitar when other girls played with the dolls; and Swedish vocalist Qarin Wikström, from the group Kostcirklen, who wrote her first political song and dressed up as a liquorice candy for her kindergarten party when other girls tried on mom’s high heels.

Shitney began working on 2015, experimenting and improvising with electro-acoustic ideas. Earth Core is the trio's debut album and each of the ten eccentric-poetic titles suggests a distinct sonic environment, an imagined excavation of metals and chemical substances, physical laws and paradoxes, an unpredictable mix of the concrete and abstract. “Compressed Tightly Together, Forced to Vibrate as Mean” indeed sounds like tons of sonic information compressed into a concise-chaotic journey, constantly moving fast-forward, while “Lemon Yellow Sintered Micro Crystals” soars gently in hazy ethereal space and “Towards Oxygen” dissipates into distant samples of abstract noises. “Black Oxide Coat in Air” sound like an extraterrestrial transmission of a wicked ritual while “Carbon – Sulfur - Situ Ruttu” offers mutated chants of an Estonian proverb “situ ruttu, karu tuleb!” (meaning: shit fast, the bear is coming!). “Siderophile Elements”, the only extended piece, is a 13-minute free-associative improvisation that blends wild, distorted-sounding guitar, atmospheric synth drones, tortured sax samples, and tempting female vocals into a surprisingly peaceful, kaleidoscopic trip. This colorful journey ends with “Graphite; Black, Diamond; Clear”, a hyperactive song for some futuristic computer game, using innocent eighties synth samples.

If there is some justice on this Earth, Shitney should headline festivals near your home.

Earth Core is distributed also in a limited edition, 50 pieces of heart-shaped, pink soaps with a dead wasp inside (with a download code), produced in Estonia. The wasps were hand-collected by the soap producer's family, and Shitney declares that it does know whether if the wasps' stingers were removed not.

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Misha Mengelberg (1935 - 2017)

ICP Orchestra, (le) poisson rouge, March 31, 2011 © Peter Gannushkin

By Martin Schray

On Friday, March 3rd the great Dutch pianist, band leader, comedian, neo-dadaist and chain smoker Misha Mengelberg passed away. Although it was to be expected since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s some years ago, it is still sad because Mengelberg was one of the pioneers of the European free jazz scene, especially its Dutch branch. In 1967 he founded the Instant Composers Pool, an organization which promoted avant-garde Dutch jazz performances and recordings, with Han Bennink and Willem Breuker, and the ICP Orchestra, apart from Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra and Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra the longest-established European free jazz big band, also with his congenial partner Bennink.

At least the ICP Orchestra would carry on without him, that was his plan when it was clear that his Alzheimer’s symptoms grew more acute. Mengelberg always had ways to withdraw himself from the band: "I can add something to what the others do, or I can leave it out. It's not essential for me to play at all, unless I want to fuck it up, or to make them do something else" - a typical Mengelberg quotation.

My personal favorites have always been his duo albums with Han Bennink, like einepartietischtennis, Coincidents or Bennink Mengelberg (all on ICP) - all exuberant examples of enthusiasm, humor and and a deep understanding of jazz history combined with expressive free outbreaks. Their most important motivation seemed to be the suspension of all conventional musical rules, yet behind this seeming anarchy there was a deep sense for precision and discipline based on a real respect and an extraordinary ability to listen and react to each other. Even after 40 years these classic recordings have not lost their fascination.

Eugene Chadboure said about this duo: "One of my favorite things is that something very serious and very funny is going on at the same time. It totally confuses the audience - they don't know if you're trying to be funny or serious, when in fact you're both." True words.

Now Misha Mengelberg has lost his fight against Alzheimer’s disease. He’ll be missed by all in the jazz community.

Here's an excerpt from the Mengelberg/Bennink duo before a gig with the ICP Orchestra which says more than all I can write:

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