A century ago, the French author Marcel Proust popularised a parlor game that consisted of asking a number of questions to determine the character and personality of a person. You can find the full questionnaire here, which was often used by newspapers and magazines to interview celebrities.
We thought it was an interesting idea to adapt the questionnaire to interview musicians in a fast and direct way, with positive questions only, and a little shorter.
We will be asking the following questions.
What is your greatest joy in improvised music?
What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?
Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?
If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?
What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?
Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Which of your albums are you most proud of?
Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?
Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?
What are you listening to at the moment?
What artist outside music inspires you?
As a courtesy to the musicians, we will list a number of their albums that we reviewed recently, with links to find them back easily on our blog.
SOG is a quartet by trumpeter Lina Allemano, bassist Matthias Bauer,
percussionist Rudi Fischerlehner and pianist Uwe Oberg - in other words:
three excellent members of the Berlin Echtzeit cosmos are augmented by the
most prominent musician of the very lively Wiesbaden scene (Oberg). What is
more, SOG is the German word for “eddying“ or “maelstrom“ and this is
exactly what the quartet’s music is like. The four pieces “El Remolino“,
“Il Vortice“, Le Tourbillon“ and “Malstrom“ all mean the same thing in
different languages. This is why at least the three major pieces are
structured alike (“Malstrom“ is only a very short encore). As a listener
there’s no way to escape the magic, the energy and the sheer beauty this
music develops over the course of almost 60 minutes.
“El Remolino“, the opening track, is the perfect example of the band’s idea
for this project. It’s reminiscent of a typical Cecil Taylor piece from the
2000s. Before the wind instrument kicks in, the rhythm section leads up to
it. Oberg uses delicate Taylor-like clusters, Fischerlehner plays the Tony
Oxley/Paul Lovens part with strong emphasis on snare, cymbals and extended
materials, Bauer drives forward unobtrusively, yet uncompromisingly. When
Allemano’s trumpet finally begins, it blends smoothly into this structure,
its tone pointed and clear. Here and there she sounds like a military
trumpeter in a free jazz band. But the fact that the band has its own
concept becomes clear already in the duel between Oberg and her, because
here the pianist deviates from any Taylorian influences and goes his own
way. If the listeners think they might be able to focus less, the music
pulls them back in - as in a maelstrom. Out of nowhere the sound of
Allemano’s trumpet changes, one thinks she literally tears the notes apart.
Oberg responds with prepared sounds reminiscent of a spinet. From this
moment on, both instruments float feather-light above the bass and drums,
and Bauer and Fischerlehner realize that they only have to be supportive
here. In these first ten minutes the piece is as if from a single mould,
it’s a prime example of European free jazz - only to disintegrate
completely (which it does not, of course)! The drums lose their pulse, the
same goes for the bass. The trumpet meanders in nowhere, the piano sets
very sporadic notes. Bass and drums scratch around on their instruments. It
seems as if the musicians leer at each other to see who will lead the
improvisation back to the beginning. In the end, it’s all of them together,
through intensity and volume. Powerful chords, sharp, bowed bass lines and
pointed trumpet runs are all it takes. Fischerlehner, interestingly, stays
completely out of it here, which adds to the energy level. By the end of
the piece, the band is actually back to free jazz, but with different
timbres. Fischerlehner’s drums are darker, more driving (this is where it
comes into play that he’s also at home in the rock realm), Oberg plays
flashy, high notes, while Bauer and Allemano again try to tear the piece
apart sonically. In terms of structure and energy control, “El Remolino“ is
certainly one of the best pieces I’ve heard this year, and “Il Vortice“ and
“Le Tourbillon“ are in no way inferior to it.
All in all, SOG is a great band and a great album. Whenever I come across
Uwe Oberg, I think that I constantly underestimate his way of playing, the
same goes for Matthias Bauer (I have to make amends here). Then again, I’m
a big fan of Rudi Fischerlehner, whose restrained but incredibly versatile
style of playing has always fascinated me. However, what Lina Allemano does
on this album, is outstanding. The way she plays with varied sound colours
and textures makes the difference that this album is not just very good,
but outstanding.
This overview has been simmering here for a while, with the possibly too ambitious goal to inform our readers on all new solo percussion albums, while at the same time taking the time to listen to them all, and do some other listening in between. We recently reviewed Devin Gray's "Most Definitely", and that's the only solo percussion album we reviewed for quite a while. As can be expected, we have the full spectrum of solo percussion albums - from jazz to modern music, from drums to melodic percussion, from acoustic to electronically altered percussion. Listening to solo percussion albums requires some special attention and attention span as well.
Andrew Cyrille - Music Delivery/Percussion (Intakt, 2023)
Master drummer Andrew Cyrille's first album as a leader was a solo record: "What About" from 1969. His second solo album "The Loop" dates from 1978. It is a real treat to listeners to now have his third solo album in his very long and successful career. Most of the eleven tracks are his own compositions, although he also presents us his percussion version of Amina Claudine Meyers' "Jumping In The Sugar Bowl" and John Carter's "Enter From The East". Cyrille offers us tracks in 7/4 and 6/8 and other odd meters, performed on a variety of instruments, presenting the level of variation that is needed to keep things interesting and refreshing. "I wanted to have a variety of percussion instruments in the compositions. So I was thinking of melodies that could be played with tambourines, bells, cymbals, crotales, gongs, and mallets," he writes in the liner notes.
Cyrille emphasises the melodic aspect of his art. This is not always obvious to hear at first listen, but keep up the effort and keep listening. There are moments of fun, of small side-stories, with more dramatic excursions and a wonderful sense of fluidity. No wonder he's still so good after so many decades of musicianship. Magic at work!
Hamid Drake – Dedications (Corbett vs Dempsey, 2022)
I think that no other drummer features in so many of our reviews as Hamid Drake, and possibly rightly so (I tried to count them, then gave up). We all like his technical skills, his incredible sense of rhythm - why does his drums always seems to dance? - his spirituality and especially his understanding of other musicians. Now, for the first time in his long career, he offers us a solo percussion album, with all pieces dedicated to some of his favourite artists: "A dedication in spirit to all those who have influenced, helped, opened, nurtured, shown love for, and cared for me along the way."
The liner notes mention that John Corbett "began petitioning Drake to record an unaccompanied session twenty years ago", which - as a result of the pandemic - started to get real form. A prepared studio recording did not satisfy the drummer, and in 2021 he tried again, now without any preparation, letting the music flow.
Obviously, it can only produce what is already there, in the incredible mental track record of rhythms and techniques and loose ideas that get shape here in the creative moment of performing. At times I had to laugh out loud just because of the incredible fun of listening to his playing. And it's not that his music is 'fun': it's just so incredibly complex, intricate, compelling and played with such ease and spontaneity. I remember that Ken Vandermark mentions in the liner notes to one of their collaborative albums (I think 'Spaceways Inc - Version Soul'), that he asked Drake to play a reggae rhythm, upon which Drake replied "which one?" of the few dozen that he knew. This is what you get here too. A jubilant demonstration of percussive delight.
Sofia Borges - Trips & Findings (4DA Records, 2022)
Sofia Borges is a Portuguese percussionist residing in Berlin, who considers herself a sound artist, equally comfortable in free improvisation, jazz, modern music as in theatre and dance.
On her first solo album - a double CD - she presents four lengthy compositions, clocking between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. She describes each track briefly in the liner notes, so I won't repeat this here. Suffice to give her summary: "It shows four sketches from my travel notebook: what I observe and forget, what I discover, lose and find again, what I listen to, what I touch, and what strikes me. Each of these pages expresses different facets of my work".
She performs on percussion, drums, amplified objects, toys, field recording and electronics. The advantage of the length of the compositions is the possibility to develop the music, to make it evolve and progress like on a musical journey, and the variety of instruments allow her to create encounters, surprises, changes and twists on the path she has taken with the composition.
Especially on the second track, the percussive sound is so electronically altered that the main sound becomes noise, and field recordings and actual performance merge into a broader sonic landscape.
Her art becomes even more unusual on the second CD, on which toys - sounding like chimes or little bells - are like fresh rain drops on a dark road. The music is dense, fascinating to follow and to submerge yourself in.
This is as far away from jazz as possible - with the exception of the improvisation - but worth listening to. You could call her a creative spontaneous noisemaker. She generates her own universe, with her own musical vision and voice, and I can only recommend it.
We know Ramon Prats primarily from his collaborations with Spanish free improv luminaries such as Agustí Fernández and Albert Cirera or European ones such as Axel Dörner.
The album is rich and fully acoustic, some of the purest recordings of percussion that you can hear, without premeditation, without concepts or ideas, but spontaneous movement of transitions between beats, possibly surprising the artist himself at times, who lets his instrument take the lead.
Vasco Trilla - A Constellation of Anomaly (Thanatosis, 2023)
The liner notes specify: "Russian flat bells bowed and played with vibrating objects, a timpani full of wind-up music boxes and spiced up by a transducer speaker, an old zither hit as a drum with two snare drums as resonators, Iranian round bells mixed with gamelan strips, styrofoam and triangles....". This intro just to give you an idea on what to expect from Vasco Trilla's creative exploration of percussive sounds and possibilities. Like no other percussionist, he understands the challenge to unleash the narrative power of his tools, instead of just being a subservient rhythmic indicator.
"Opaque Ephiphanies" is dark like a doomsday soundtrack with many layers of dense sound, while "We Are Such Stuff The Foams Are Made Of" has a more organic and natural texture, and "The Shaking Hand That Leaves A Mark" (both 1 & 2) have a fresh chime-like quality. "Chronocycle Graph" is mysterious with its repetitive theme. Despite the variation in instruments, approaches and moods, the album is still coherent.
Trilla is an expert musical explorer, who returns from his long journey in the broad universe of sound, to tell us the stories of everything he encountered, things we have never heard of, and which he is eager to share with us, and that we are listening to, full of wonder and anticipation for what is coming.
Taiko Saito - Tears Of A Cloud (Trouble In The East, 2023)
Taiko Saito plays marimba and vibraphone. Known from her recent collaboration with Satoko Fujii on "Futari" (2020). Both instruments allow for melodies and harmonic development, in contrast with drums. This makes the album more accessible by definition, yet Saito's playing is also excellent: technically strong, musically creative, full of variation of aesthetic beauty, yet also unassuming and humble. The music dominates, not the pyrotechnics.
Martin Daigle is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist involved in audio-visual and electro-acoustic art creation, performance, and research. On this album he performs two compositions, one from Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and one from Sylvain Pohu. The drum sounds are all electronically changed to design sonic landscapes. The first composition, 'La Rage', is broken down into thirty small segments, each with their own character and mode of delivery, resulting in a suite-like structure, and with drums that are sometimes played in a straightforward acoustic mode, although you never know how the sounds will be altered next. The second composition is more linear, slowly developing as a more panoramic soundscape.
This will not be to everyone's taste, but that should not deter you from giving it a try. There are lots of new things to enjoy on the album.
Yorgos Dimitriadis - 14 20 22 (Trouble In The East Records, 2023)
Only a few weeks ago we reviewed an album - "Being Five" - with Greek drummer Yorgos Dimitriadis, and a few years ago his other solo percussion album "Kopfkino". Next to percussion, he also uses electronics and field recordings, including voice, to generate soundscapes that go beyond what you would expect from a solo percussion album. With the exception of "Kyria Aliki", most pieces are slow and move forward in a linear, almost panoramic fashion. The overall mood is somber and full of drama.
You can appreciate the artist for his singular vision and the coherence of the album.
Vasco Trilla & Ra Kalam Bob Moses - Singing Icons (Astral Spirits, 2023)
Not really a solo percussion album, but a duo percussion album by two master percussionists, Vasco Trilla and Ra Kalam Bob Moses. Or let me correct this too. Both musicians created a solo album - Trilla in Barcelona, Ra Kalam Bob Moses in Boston - during the pandemic, which they then polished and refined into one single album.
Trilla plays drums, timpani, flat bells, clock chimes, vibrators, magnetic tape and assorted instruments, and Moses drums, bass, native flute, congas, dumbek, melodica, vocals and metallic instruments.
They treat us to sixteen compositions/improvisations, more than 85 minutes long, that generate long drone-like soundscapes, dense and intense, richly ornated with percussive effects and dramatic cymbals. Luckily, some tracks have recognisable and high power drumming, such as "Universal Bounce", while others, such as "Whales Slow Dancing" are on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Not for the faint of heart, but a worthwhile journey.
Giacomo Salis & Paolo Sanna - Acoustic Studies For Sardinian Bells (Falt, 2023)
This I like. We reviewed Sardinian percussionists Giacomo Salis and Paolo Sanna only once so far, with their collaboration with Jeph Jerman on "Kio Ge". I think they must have released over a dozen albums together, as if they are inseparable.
Both musicians collected fifteen different kinds of Sardinian cow bells, only to investigate all the possible sounds they could get out of them. This may sound like a purely experimental endeavour, but luckily they use their findings to create music that can stand on its own, with sounds that develop, intensify, become denser or more light-textured, that stretch into drone-like sounds, or otherwise crackle and sparkle. The whole albums is only twenty-four minutes long.
Denis Fournier - Je Suis Caché Sous Ma Peau (Vent du Sud, 2023)
We know French drummer Denis Fournier from his collaborations on The Brigde Session's "Escape Lane" and his collaboration with JC Jones on "Whatever It Takes To Make A Sound". His previous solo album "La Voix Des Tambours / The Voices Of The Drums" already dates from 2015.
On this album he brings thirteen pieces, improvised and composed, of straightforward acoustic drumming. There are pieces where he starts quite simply, but then he starts adding beats, shifting the rhythms and the accentuation, until you've lost the technicality of what he does, only to admire the sounds he produces. On some tracks he starts reading poetry, in the kind of priestly declamation that I've become allergic to, but I know some people like this, so everyone his or her choice. At other times ("Je sais que la paix n’existe pas") he sings , like a tribal incantation, which I still like more, but could also do without. He also plays piano on two short pieces.
In all honesty, he is at his best when he's just drumming, inventive, rich, unassuming.
The CD also comes with a DVD filmed by a crew who followed him for two years from the process of creation till the recording of the album.
On "Ring", American percussionist Justin DeHart presents the complete solo percussion works of John Bergamo, a modern classical composer and his mentor. He plays on vibraphone, marimba, timpani, drums and other percussion instruments, which leads to a great variety in the overall sound. The compositions themselves vary from the extremely short - 24 seconds - to thirteen minutes.
Considering that this is also not my preferred genre, the music is serious, cerebral, full of drama and with little to enjoy. That is possibly more the result of the compositions than because of the quality delivery by DeHart.
The Ames Room is a trio of alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet, bassist
Clayton Thomas and drummer Will Guthrie. The first of their recordings that
I heard was Bird Dies (on Clean Feed), a remarkable recording for
any year but one that found its way to this site’s top ten of 2011. It’s
nasty, brutish, not particularly short, and it sounds like music that might
clean a drain, blow out a dam or crush a writer’s block. There’s a period
review that includes the following, a tribute to the music’s savage
economy:
This is among the most consistently intense performances I can recall
hearing, consistent in the sense that a sauce might be, intense in the
sense of a beating. The single track—yes, “Bird Dies”—is 46 minutes long
and it begins with Guionnet chewing up and spitting out short phrases,
varying them incrementally, repeating the same process with another phrase
and doing it with the efficiency and timbre (and sometimes the pitch range)
of a circular saw or woodchipper, while Clayton pumps out an insistent
pulse and Guthrie creates an endless rebar knit-work of shifting and broken
drum rhythms. The phrases and the rhythms change and sometimes the sound
thins out—Guthrie goes down to a light rattle or moves around his kit or
mounts a particularly violent barrage, Guionnet reduces the line to one or
two squawks and actually stops playing for about forty seconds around the
half-hour mark whether to regroup or highlight Clayton playing a scale in
polyrythmic lockstep with Guthrie. However, the sense of a single
extraordinary utterance remains, exhausting and also liberating, its time
experienced both insistently and microscopically. (https://cleanfeed-records.com/tag/the-ames-room/)
There’s a certain confusion at the current source for this. I’m roughly
5,739 kilometers from home, can’t dig through the archive and the only
other online source echoes this one. According to the source, I wrote the
review, and it was published in The Wire, a periodical that I
respect but for which I have never written. If I didn’t write this, my
apologies to whomever did. It’s an accurate enough description for me to
hope it was me.
'In Paris' is a live recording from “'Atelier Tampon Nomad', Chez
France Vitet, Paris, France” on 13 December 2014. running 64 minutes, in
four segments, functionally titled “On the One”, “On the Two”, “On the
Three”, and “On the Four”. It begins with Guionnet blasting short, taut,
dissonant phrases against Guthrie’s raw drum turmoil and Thomas’s
near-inaudible (it might be my portable equipment) lower register beats. My
first exposure to Guionnet’s highly varied music came with the quintet
Hubbub, a beautiful cerebral ambient minimalism. The Ames Room similarly
approaches ambient music, but it’s infernal, comparable to the early free
jazz intensity of alto saxophonists Charles Tyler (with Albert Ayler),
Marshall Allen and Danny Davis (with Sun Ra) and Roscoe Mitchell on the
first version of “Nonaah” (1976). Contemporary practitioners who might be
compared are alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokis and guitarist Brandon
Seabrook. Here, Ames Room provides a cleansing, even a scourging, reducing
the elements of their performance to a radical, essential
minimalism, not just as essence but necessary too.
In his wonderful new book Pick Up The Pieces - Excursions in Seventies
Music, John Corbett writes that it’s “a common conception of the function of
music is that it is to communicate with others, that it comes from an urge
to express so that fellow humans can feel what the musician feels.This
impulse is familiar. And no doubt in the main it is true: people make music
for each other. We recognize the magnetic way that music calls forth a
community.“ But this is not the only way to understand music or to interpret
its motivation. It may be conceivable - especially for musicians recording a
solo album without an audience - that you don’t want to engage in immediate
conversation with listeners (in this case this happens only after the
release), but that you want to explore the location, the musical material,
or your personal state of mind. It’s certainly a different kind of intimacy
than the one Corbett describes; depending on your interpretation, you can
call it self-referential or, as in the case of John Butcher’s new album The
Very Fabric, curious and adventurous or meditative.
The British reedist has possibly been the most consequent sound explorer in
freely improvised music in the last 30 years. He has recorded music in the
most various places like a giant gazometer, a hollowed-out Japanese
mountain, an underground reservoir, a Victorian mausoleum and a massive
World War II oil tank. Now, The Very Fabric is the result of a session in
the Brønshøj Vandtårn, an almost 100-year old concrete water tower, located
in the suburbs of Copenhagen. Its characteristic is a large, lingering
reverberation. In the liner notes Butcher says that “some sounds seem to
float away as if through liquid, others acquire a shifting haze, and some
just prefer to sit around.“
In detail, this means: “Shimmers of Connect 1-3“, the trilogy that opens
the album, begins like an even darker version of Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin
Peaks, only to rely completely on the single saxophone note again and
again, trailing it. A sharp vibrato, well-placed crescendi and circular
breathing support and structure this approach. The tones seem to creep into
the cracks of the walls. Butcher also uses various saxophones (tenor and
soprano) and once even a flute for his sound exploration, to better gauge
the space. Also important is the fact that he takes time for pauses and
very long notes. This is especially evident in “Sympathetic Magic
(concrete)“, a piece that resembles a slow-motion version of György
Ligeti’s “Lux Aeterna“. The piece doesn’t even sound like created by a
saxophone, it sounds like electronic music. But The Very Fabric has melodic
moments as well (“Elusive Sidestep“), foghorn sounds and minimal music
riffs (“Signs and Symptoms“), at one point it seems as if Butcher has
birdcalls rising through the tower, then right after that you think you
hear distant fireworks (“Far Flung“). The Very Fabric is a cornucopia - not
only sonically, but also musically.
To come back to John Corbett, who I quoted at the beginning: John Butcher
does communicate - with the walls, the concrete, the various angles and
hidden corners, the sounds themselves that he produces. Here he rests
completely in himself, relying also on his masterful playing technique. The
excellent mastering of the recording supports Butcher’s quest to find what
actually defines the place: its very fabric. The sound of his instruments
penetrates the tower like a laser beam, like cosmic noise the universe or
like the wind a forest before a thunderstorm. In the process, the water
tower absorbs Butcher’s music, but it doesn’t chug it, it returns it,
reinventing it.
The Very Fabric is a fascinating album that definitely has transcendental
and psychedelic qualities. Heard in a concentrated way it’s definitely a
gem.
The Very Fabric is available as a limited CD (300 only) and as a download.
Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen has many faces ... and many voices. Most readers will know him best from his band "Angles" (extrovert, exuberant, infectious):
Next to these, he also has a few dozen albums with some of the best musicians in free improvisation and jazz: Agusti Fernandez, Rafal Mazur, Vasco Trilla, Zlatko Kaucic, Burkhard Beins, Steve Noble, Ernesto Rodrigues, Keith Rowe ...
For this excellent album, we find him in a duo format with French pianist Sophie Agnel, still recently reviewed on our blog for her albums "Animals" and Gargorium" (2023), and before for "La Pierre Tachée" (2022), "Marguerite d'Or Pâle" (2016), "Aqissieq" (2018), "Meteo" (2013), performing also with a number of like-minded artists: John Butcher, Steve Noble, Daunik Lazro, John Edwards, Satoko Fujii, Benjamin Duboc, Christine Wodrascka ...
On "Detour Tunnels Of Light", they serve us four improvised pieces, open-textured and fragile. Both artists have redefined the sound of their instruments, and possibly also of the concept of music. Agnel uses all aspects of her instrument, standing next to it, making strings resonate, vibrate, pluck, twang, or other sounds that are delightfully unfamiliar. The interaction with Küchen's sopranino works well. His voice is rasping, hoarse, often plaintive and sad, with lots of bended notes, creating a human-like inflection to his sound.
All four tracks clock at a little longer than eight minutes, and their combined voice remains coherent throughout, and only on the second track - not without reason called 'The Gould Passage' - her piano actually sounds at moments like it's originally intended to. Together they explore the limits of musicality, the foggy place where ambient sound and lyricism merge, where surprise and vision converge, probing and softly creating at the same time.
Their musical universe is at once introspective and expressive, calm, controlled, precise, tender and sad. The tone of despair that characterises Küchen's solo albums is not really present here, but it's not cheerful either. You can only let these two artists guide you, take you along on their journey, to enjoy the wonder and soothing quality of their fragile sonic texture, the experience of new sounds, articulating equally new feelings and aesthetics.
We can only hope they continue their explorative journey together.
The history of popular music and jazz is full of so-called lost albums:
recording projects that never saw the light of day (or possibly only as
bootlegs), discontinued either by the artist or the record company, or
languishing in the archives. Examples of this may be the tapes that are
supposedly still preserved by FMP founder Jost Gebers, who recorded almost
all live performances of the Total Music Meetings he organized from 1968 to
1999 and of which only parts have been released, or Prince’s legendary
vault. On the other hand, in many cases it quickly becomes clear why some
recordings have just not been released. Whether almost everything that was
recorded by Jimi Hendrix should have been released on vinyl or CD
posthumously can be doubted. With John Coltrane, however, the situation is
more complicated. In addition to less relevant albums, real masterpieces
appeared after he had died, e.g. Cosmic Music (1968, with Pharoah Sanders),
Interstellar Space (1974, his duo with Rashied Ali) or Stellar Regions
(1994, with his last quartet). There have also been qualitatively different
reissues in recent years, such as
Offering - Live at Temple University (Impulse!, 2014),
Both Directions At Once - The Lost Album (Impulse!, 2018), Blue World (Impulse!, 2019) and
A Love Supreme - Live in Seattle
(Impulse!, 2021). And now, there’s Evenings at the Village Gate, a live
recording from 1961.
In said year, Coltrane set out to assemble a new band which could realize
his musical ideas. According to Coltrane biographer Ashley Khan’s liner
notes, he had tried out a number of sidemen and band ideas in the second
half of 1960 and finally settled on a lineup that included McCoy Tyner on
piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. Eric Dolphy, who
could play flute, alto saxophone and bass clarinet, also joined the band.
He had often rehearsed with Coltrane, the two shared similar musical
ideas. “He had a broadening effect on us. We're playing things that are
freer than before“, Coltrane said about him. The quintet then performed
several nights at New York’s Village Gate, an up-and-coming club in the
East Village. To test the club’s new sound system, a recording was made
that was long thought lost and only recently discovered in the vast sound
archives of the New York Public Library. For the present album, these
recordings have been sonically reprocessed.
At the turn of the decade, after Coltrane had left Miles Davis’s band, he
did quite well musically and commercially, especially with his My Favorite
Things album. The title track in particular, a popular melody from a
musical, was extraordinarily successful in its radio version. It was also
Coltrane’s first published recording with the soprano saxophone. The
saxophonist’s arrangement for the longer version has often been considered a
radical subversion of a popular song of the Great American Songbook, because
his playing is based on scales as an integration of Eastern idioms; it
points in the direction of modality, whereby Coltrane was to shape the jazz
of the future. However, not everybody liked that. A whole wave of reviews,
especially in Downbeat magazine and other publications, harshly attacked
him, even calling his sound “anti-jazz“, “nihilistic“, or simply
“nonsense“, as the liner notes point out. In doing so, they failed to
recognize how far ahead of its time Coltrane’s new sound was. And exactly
the development of this sound can be traced on Evenings at the Village
Gate, therein lies the quality of the recordings.
The album itself includes five tracks and, above all, it becomes clear what
pioneers for the new jazz (and therefore also, by extension, free jazz)
Coltrane and Dolphy were. The two set off to unbelievable flights of fancy,
the band shimmies along the harmonic and melodic structures of these jazz
classics, but breaks and expands them constantly, just to find back to the
main motif.
The best examples of this are “My Favorite Things“ and “Greensleeves“. In
the former, Dolphy begins with a long flute solo. The piece is initially
recognizable only by its basic harmonic structure, it takes Dolphy more
than two minutes to pick up the head. Then he stretches it out by using every
trick in the book, sprawling out in evey direction. He overblows notes,
swallows them or smears them. Coltrane gives him more than six minutes
before he intervenes, continuing to spin Dolphy’s trills on the saxophone
before picking up the melody of the track. The solo he develops from this,
however, is sheer madness. In true roller coaster rides he chases the
registers up and down, gets lost in trills, picks up the melody again and
again briefly, only to rise again into undreamed-of spheres. It’s a mixture
of angelic chant and hell ride. The band proceeds similarly in
“Greensleeves“, which is also based on an easily accessible folk melody.
However, the structure and timbre are somewhat different, as Dolby plays
bass clarinet here. Initially, McCoy Tyner’s piano part takes center stage,
with the horns keeping a distinguished low profile. The pianist also uses
the theme only as a starting point to improvise over it mainly with
powerful chord progressions. How Dolphy then gives the actually cheerful
folk piece a somber atmosphere with his entry is another surprise. Again,
Coltrane takes over the closing part and, as in “My Favorite Things“, he
creeps in on Dolphy’s solo elegantly, ignoring the melody at first. What is
more, he pushes the limits of his instrument, almost blowing it up.
Between these two pieces there is “When Lights Are Low“, a composition by
Benny Carter, which was previously only heard by Coltrane in a recording by
the Miles Davis Quintet (Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet, Prestige,
1957), on which Dolphy shines with a bass clarinet solo, and “Impressions“,
which Coltrane was to release only two years later on the album of the same
name. But the highlight of the album is undoubtedly “Africa“, to this day
the only live recording of the piece that Coltrane had recorded in the
studio shortly before and that was to appear a little later on Africa/Brass,
his debut for Impulse!. The live version here, however, is longer and
wilder, while at the same time more spartan in its instrumentation than the
large-scale orchestrated studio version. Additionally, Coltrane experiments
with two basses here, Art Davis takes over this part. It’s also the only
piece on the album where Coltrane plays tenor saxophone. In addition to the
large scales on “My Favorite Things“, for example, he also plays long
melodic lines and punctuations in the low register here. Workman and Davis
take turns playing arco and pizzicato, and Elvin Jones almost drops out to
give the two the opportunity for an extended duet, then himself spreading
out huge syncopated rhythms in a solo of his own a bit later. Finally, the
theme of the piece is taken up and Coltrane and Dolphy engage in a duel as
the climax to close the piece, once again exemplifying how both push each
other in their improvisations.
Evenings At The Village Gate is undoubtedly musically terrific, but there
is also a shortcoming in that the recording cannot match studio recordings
or even later live recordings such as Live at the Village Vanguard or Live at
Birdland in terms of sound. The sound engineer, 24-year-old Rich Alderson,
placed his recording equipment next to the drums, which is why Workman’s
bass is sometimes really drowned out (with the exception of the solo in
“Africa“). Unfortunately, one can often only guess how decisively he drives
the two horns together with Jones and Tyler. The same is unfortunately true
for McCoy Tyner’s piano, it’s often far in the background as on “My Favorite
Things“, for example, although not as much as the bass.
All in all, Evenings At The Village Gate gives an insight into the moving,
but unfortunately short, musical relationship between John Coltrane and
Eric Dolphy. Their collaboration was documented on Afrika/Brass, Olé
Coltrane and Live At The Village Vanguard. All three albums were made
between May and December 1961. Now, with Evenings At The Village Gate, a new
exciting chapter is added to this short but formative history of modern
jazz.
Evenings At The Village Gate is available on double vinyl (in different
versions), as a double CD and as a download on the usual streaming
platforms.
Trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, who I first heard in 1986 with the Lounge
Lizards and the Jazz Passengers, has been struggling with congestive heart
failure and, according to friends, “is beginning the process of home
palliative/hospice care.” A fundraiser has begun to help “this phase of
Curtis’ life be one of comfort and dignity.” All proceeds will go to
Curtis’ kids, Saadiah and Elisheba, to help pay for Curtis’ care
Curtis played with the Big Apple Circus early on, a famous incubator for
the 80s/90s downtown scene. He cut a swath through the irony of the
Knitting Factory scene by being one of the genuinely nicest people on the
planet. His trombone playing has been ebullient, filled with humor, play,
warmth, and story. He’s worked extensively with folks like Henry
Threadgill, Bill Frisell, Don Byron, Charlie Hunter, and Marc Ribot. He’s a
long-time member of the Jazz Passengers, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music
Orchestra, and Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra. He’s
recorded with Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Sheryl Crow, Iron and Wine, Lou
Reed, Bobby Previte et many al.
If you’d like to contribute to Curtis’ fundraiser,
go here
.
Ghent is a good-time town where the beer is potent and the candy is shaped
like a human nose. In 2019, four sons of this city started making
improvised music together. Now their thirty-minute debut EP is offering
listeners a good time, for a short time. A fun-and-frolics spirit oozes
from each of the five tracks on The Engine like raspberry syrup
bursting through the purple-sugar crust of a
cuberdon.
Belgian quartet The Green Mean Machine features Werend Van Den Bossche on
alto saxophone and Warre Van de Putte on tenor, with Zjef Van Steenbergen
on double bass and Marcos Della Rocha operating the drumkit. They scamper
across loose compositions with big spaces for leeway and liberties. The
album mixes classical and folk vocabularies with elements from jazz and
rock.
‘Omèr’ is the album’s only track written by Van de Putte. Saxes welcome the
listener with fluttering long-note phrases before a funky bassline and
dancey drumbeat gatecrash the party. Late in the piece, soft and scurrying
etude-like phrases open up a muted moment of sleek improvised interactions.
It feels like a pinkie-promise for happy feet and hot foreheads at the
group’s live shows.
All four other tracks on the record were composed by Werend Van Den
Bossche. ‘Kinderliedje’ makes a loud, Ayler-ish start. Percussion launches
a breathtaking volley of firecrackers and pop rockets throughout. The
meanest machinery is found on ‘Mutamal’, with its rocky beat revving and
its temperature rising before sweet-sad saxophones cool things down and
bring the album to a halt.
The Engine leaves listeners with a delicious aftertaste of irony,
high jinks and good cheer. It’s a debut release characterized by
playfulness and power, with free improvisation never far from the surface.
Like the nose-shaped candies from The Green Mean Machine’s home city, it
offers a good time for a short time. Pop it in. Take a bite. You just might
like it.
The album is available for streaming and digital download here.
Philippe Lauzier & Carlo Costa - Interspace (Inexhaustible Editions/Tour De Bras, 2023)
By Stef Gijssels
Italian drummer and New York resident Carlo Costa's music has been described on our blog as "quiet and intense", and as time progresses, both the quietness and the intensity seem to increase. In Canadian bass clarinetist Philippe Lauzier, he found a perfect partner for this musical vision. Lauzier's playing is sober and austere: single notes are sustained before they evaporate in thin air, or are contrasted with one single deeper tone. Costa uses a variety of undefined percussion and objects to accentuate, to colour and to interact. Like zen art, the empty space around the music plays a critical role, more as a foundation than as a backdrop.
The first four tracks form one long suite, "Sincronia Vaga", on which each player had received a number of "short motives, single notes and noise cells" to use within a given time frame. Over the years, Costa has moved away from traditional notation, using a variety of graphic scores, symbols, written directions and cue methods to merge and juxtapose composed elements with improvisation. This music was created during the Covid-19 pandemic, recorded separately, and integrated afterwards with some minor edits. The advantage of the moments of silence is that it facilitates the integration of sound bits more easily, even if there are some surprises once in a while. It sounds amazingly coherent in any case.
The last track, "Soft Routine", was penned by Lauzier, and is a little over fifteen minutes long. The composition is built around "two harmonic sequences of different lengths that dephase in counterpoint for a while before returning to the starting point". Lauzier's sound on bass clarinet is stretched and sustained by the use of synthesiser, offering shifting multiphonic mesmerising tones, against which resonating bells, rocks, woodblocks and drum head rubbing are set against. The result is - again - a zen-like atmosphere of moving calm, of sonic purity, of balanced clarity.
This is no longer jazz, of course, but that does not matter. It requires listeners with open ears and who appreciate the value of sparsity.
Carlo Costa & John McCowen - Pianissimo Etc (Tripticks Tapes, 2023)
On "Pianissimo Etc", Carlo Costa forms a duo with John McCowen on contrabass clarinet. In three tracks totalling a little more than 35 minutes, we are treated to a totally different kind of music than with Lauzier. The music is denser, more nervous, more ominous too, with subdued tones trying to move forward without being able to. The instruments create a collective noise, vibrating, oscillating, full of multiphonics, resulting in tense and unnerving music. Costa's percussion has become the source of long, stretched tones, rather than the crystal-clear bell tones on 'Interspace', and many additional sounds are hard to identify or relate to a particular instrument. It's only on the last track that McCowen really uses the full depth of his contrabass clarinet, creating an atmosphere that sounds even darker and more despondent.
The wonder of music is that one musician can have different, yet equally rewarding, musical voices or even visions. Whereas "Interspace" uses minimalism to create an environment of clarity, calm and peace, "Pianissimo Etc" uses almost the same instruments, also with minimal variations to create an environment of darkness, nervousness and pending doom.
Both approaches are valuable, and I can only recommend listeners to give both a try.
