Ulrich Gumpert-Günter Baby Sommer

La Paloma
Intakt CD 198

Jesper Løvdal/Günter Baby Sommer

Jesper Løvdal/Günter Baby Sommer

ILK 188 CD

Having reached the age of 69 and with the GDR just a memory for many people, Dresden-born Günter Baby Sommer has acceded to his proper status as one of the most inventive percussionists in Europe. The disappearance of East Germany has also meant that Sommer is able to fulfill the demands for him to play with other improvisers, no matter the country in which they’re based. These duo CDs for instance, find him on one hand in the company of Berlin pianist Ulrich Gumpert, 67, with whom he has been collaborating since the early 1970s – most notably as part of the Zentralquartett – and on the other trading licks with Copenhagen-based multi-reedist Jesper Løvdal, who was born in 1969, long after Sommer had turned pro.

Each session is notable on its own. La Paloma as a meeting between two old friends running through 11 standards as they would at a no-pressure house party. Meanwhile the eponymously tilted other disc shows that the unstoppable Saxon can hold his own in the fast company of a well-schooled (in Denmark and New York) musician more than a quarter-century younger than he.

Gumpert, a composer and interpreter with a deft hand at creating Gospel-oriented melodies, as well as loving parodies of Teutonic classics, has lead a variety of configurations over the years, including his Workshop Band, which has been a training ground for three generations of German jazzers. On this CD, with root material ranging from Blues and Schlager to marches and Jazz-Funk, it often appears as if the laser is spinning among tracks by Red Garland, Bert Kaempfert, Don Pullen, Sammy Price, and a Bavarian marching band. Nonetheless the pianist and drummer come up with the proper and original responses to one another’s improvisations for each tune. For instance, Sommer creates cooperative drum breaks like his namesake Baby Dodds on “Fritze Blues”; clip-clops as if he’s playing a cocktail-style drum kit on the title tune, a tango composed in 1863; and turns to overt swing on his own arrangement of Manfred Schoof’s “Like Don”, while Gumpert lightly double-times the exposition. All along, rhythmic arpeggios and tremolo pacing from the pianist mixed with bass drum accents and a shuffle beat demonstrate that if they wished, Gumpert and Sommer could have been the (East) German equivalent of the Ramsey Lewis trio. Even so there are more profound illuminations of their combined talents on other tunes.

A severe “Lament for J.B.” is a dramatic saloon songs in the “Angel Eyes” mode, yet Gumpert’s passing blues glissandi and Sommer’s press rolls and cymbal clangs toughen and extend the melody past cliché. Impressively elsewhere, low-frequency shading and harmonic overtones from the piano plus harder drum pressures further transform a couple of Prussian folk-like songs into something more. The traditional “Es fiel ein Reif” for example, with its theme introduced with precise key strokes and proper military drum paradiddles is spun into a complex improvisation due to Gumpert’s double-timed dynamics and kinetic glissandi, with the febrile climax broken up by Sommer with mercurial drum beats.

Avoiding traditional melodies in the main, the 11 instant compositions on the Løvdal/Sommer date allow the reedist, who has recorded with the likes of drummer Jeff Ballard and trumpeter Cuong Vu, to display his prowess on tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet, flute and pennywhistle. Additionally, on the jolly and jaunty “Maultrommel”, Sommer reveals a hitherto unheralded skill in jaw-harp improvisation, plucking in tandem with Løvdal’s humming and blowing flute lines. The only nod to the tradition comes on the aptly named “Billy Strayhorn”. Here Løvdal on tenor saxophone constructs his solo with breathy glissandi as if he was Ben Webster playing the dedicatee’s “Chelsea Bridge” as the drummer provides gong-like reverb behind him. In many cases however Løvdal’s virtuosity appears to be of the expected variety. His flute peeping references aviary notes, and his baritone sax snorts and slurs are suitably subterranean, for instance. Meantime the drummer ranges through woody castanet and clave-like shakes as well as more conventional pops and drags as he plays.

More substantial than his work on other horns are Løvdal’s forays on clarinet and tenor saxophone. The most descriptive instance of his straight wooden reed power is on “First Movement” where he moves from long-lined coloratura trills with wide-bore echoes to strained glottal punctuation, while the drummer scrubs his drum tops and subsequently accompanies the clarinetist using staccato rattles from what sound like wooden gourds, a bell tree and unlathed cymbals. As Løvdal moves through swallows, snorts, reed bites and squeaks, culminating in a face-off between melody and multiphonics, Sommer is there with balanced ruffs and pitter-pattering.

“Second Movement” plus the two following tracks are a tripartite showcase for Løvdal’s tenor saxophone. As the reedist transforms himself into a Scandinavian Sonny Rollins, elongating and exaggerating the broken-octave exposition, while emotionally running the scales with melody slurs, reed bites, triple-tonguing and virtual call-and-response pulsing, the drummer remains unruffled. Sommer keeps this trio of tracks moving with bravura brush work and inverted sticking, encompassing perfectly timed rebounds, bounces and flams.

Whether it’s with new associates or old ones, on these CDs Sommer easily demonstrates how to organically advance a satisfying program.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Jesper: 1. Real Tartare 2. First Movement 3. Maultrommel 4. Voice from Beneath 5. Billy Strayhorn 6. Bird Call 7. Story 8. Flight of the Flutes 9. Second Movement 10. Let’s Continue 11. Goodbye

Personnel: Jesper: Jesper Løvdal (tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet, flute and pennywhistle) and Günter Baby Sommer (drums and jaw’s harp)

Track Listing: Paloma: 1. Gamme 2. Two for funk 3. Lovesong for KA 4. Fritze Blues 5. Indian Love Call 6. Like Don 7. Preußische Elegie 8. Shuffle to WH 9. Es fiel ein Reif 10. Lament for J.B. 11. La Paloma

Personnel: Paloma: Ulrich Gumpert (piano) and Günter Baby Sommer (drums and percussion)

August 21, 2012

JazzWerkstatt

Berlin-New York Festival
By Ken Waxman

Berlin came to Brooklyn with a bang on the weekend of November 26 to 28, with eight different bands from the German capital played at the Irondale Cultural Center. Much of that bang – not to mention ruffs, rolls and rebounds – came from Günter Baby Sommer, Michael Griener and Christian Lillinger – three of Germany`s top percussionists, each featured with several bands. At the same time terrific Teutonic technique wasn`t restricted to drummers. The festival exposed New Yorkers to a cross-section of Berlin`s best improvised music from elder jazz statesmen and innovative younger players alike, who record in the main for the JazzWerkstatt label.

One electrifyingly stylist was alto saxophonist Henrik Walsdorf playing in a trio alongside bassist Jonas Westergaad and Lillinger. With a harsh tone that was as renal as it was razor-sharp, the saxophonist bit off great raw note chunks and chewed them over before regurgitating them as shredded split tones. He often did this while in a wrestler’s squat, his legs splayed and his torso bent at a 45 degree angle from the floor. Lillinger, whose rockabilly quiff and frequently frenzied motions make Hyperactive Kid – the name of his own trio – fittingly descriptive, draped his body over his kit, while smacking snares and toms with brushes and sticks, shaking a bell tree and occasionally yowling through a megaphone to complement Walsdorff’s vocal grunts. Picking his strings at the bridge or thumping them, Westergaad bemusedly kept the beat going.

Inventive as well as impulsive, Walsdorff turned from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll on the final tune, first honking a Charlie Parker blues in straight time and then evolving into a version of “Everything Happens to Me” that replicated a cool jazz tone for a point before concluding with fortissimo reed biting.

Sommer, Lillinger’s mentor, demonstrated the rhythmic ingenuity that allowed an East German like him to play with accomplished Western free jazzers long before reunification. Not only did Sommer and his cohort of many decades, pianist Ulrich Gumpert, demonstrate live the extrasensory teamwork captured on their recent excellent duo disc Das Donnernde Leben on Intakt, but he also helped pilot Der Moment, a trio with the younger bassist Johannes Fink and the even younger trombonist Gerhard Gschlössl.

Gumpert and Sommer’s set was as far ranging as the music they have individually and mutually played in careers of over 40 years. The pianist slid some Monkisms into the turnaround of a funky blues; a medieval German air was tweaked into modernity when the drummer’s martial rhythms met the pianist’s rolling cascades; a dedication to Don Cherry came complete with an Ornette Colman-like dancing rhythm; and an anti-war song by East German dissident Wolf Biermann was simultaneously celebrated and deconstructed as Gumpert’s rolling staccato chords joined Sommer’s hard-handed parade ground beat and police-whistle shrilling.

Slinky slides, capillary whinnies, tremolo flutter-tonguing and elephant-like snorts characterized Gschlössl’s solos with Der Moment, Meanwhile Sommer ranged widely, here emphasizing a beat with an upturned elbow, there leaping in front of his bass drum to solidly hit it; frequently shaking maracas and waving his drum sticks in the air; and at one point pounding his toms with faux American Indian war party beats. Ending with a gospelish original with embellishments provided by Gschlössl’s plunger work, the performance encompassed Saxony marches, 52nd Street styled swing and a Bavarian take on the new thing.

With an identical instrumental make-up and just as spectacular in performance was Squakk: trombonist Christof Thewes, bassist Jan Roder and drummer Griener. Squakk’s set featured demarcated crescendos and finales, and overall was tighter then Der Moment’s. Like Gschlössl’s, Thewes’ ‘bone work included gutbucket guffaws, rugged cup-muted blasts and tailgate-styled chortles. Thewes was also capable of fluent smoothness when blowing legato timbres from an open horn. Low-key, Roder’s rounded tones and delicate finger-picking provided perfect accompaniment, though he didn’t eschew walking. Seconding the others, while forging a unique rhythmic path, Griener offered up rolls, drags and ratamacues, sometimes buzzing staccato abrasions from drums rims and sides.

All of Squakk was integrated into the Gumpert Workshop band, whose series of suites climaxed the JazzWerkstatt festival. Thewes’ composition “The End of Dow Jones” was more provocative in title than execution, but it did give space to tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff’s smears and shouts; slippery altissimo runs from Walsdorf; and harmonized riffs from the alto saxophone or clarinet of Michael Thieke. More substantial as an arrangement was “Worlds Apart”, written by trumpeter Paul Brody, who the day previously with his Sadawi quintet used the rhythmic talents of Roder, Grenier, Michael Winograd’s liquid clarinet airs and Brandon Seabrook’s note-shredding guitar licks to link improv, Klezmer and Balkan music with an overlay of ferocious rock. Brody’s Workshop piece took advantage of the colors available from the octet, succeeding with a polyphonic invention rather than a string of solos.

But the festival’s ultimate sound was reserved for compositions by band leader Gumpert, who with Sommer – and clarinettist Rolf Kühn, whose otherwise young Trio-O featuring Lillinger, forged a path blending 1950s cool jazz with contemporary sounds the evening before – confirmed that the facility for creating worthwhile jazz, forged in opposition before many of the improve tyros featured in the festival were born, is still fully functioning.

Gumpert’s bravura recital successively touched on Teutonic marches, primitive blues and sophisticated layers of jazz from many eras, while in true workshop fashion, he utilized each musician’s strengths. As the pianist economically comped and key-clipped, his mostly linear arrangements contrasted Thewes’ laughing brays with Brody’s pure tone; or tongue-slapping clarinet from Thieke with frenetic, reed-biting intensity from Walsdorff, then succeeded by an episode of subterranean flutter-tonguing from Kempendorff. With Grenier proving himself as adapt at time keeping as free time and Roder moving from to walking to intricate spiccato with the same facility, the pianist’s alternating impressionistic harmonies or kinetic patterning pushed the band to multi-faceted crescendos and magisterial sonic climaxes. Overall these sounds were as distinctive and notable as most of the music played during the festival itself.

-- For All About Jazz New York January 2011

January 8, 2011

Ulrich Gumpert/Günter Baby Sommer

Das Donnernde Leben
Intakt CD 169

Long-time confreres and one-half of Zentralquatet, the most accomplish jazz band to arise from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – not that there was much competition – pianist Ulrich Gumpert and percussionist Günter Baby Sommer occasionally perform as a duo. Both sly composers as well as notable improvisers, this duo work, which was first recorded by FMP in 1973, reveals an unique facet of the men’s music.

Das Donnernde Leben’s 11 tracks sturdily confirm that truism. For it’s here that Gumpert, whose larger band arrangements feature an original take on the advances of activist composers like Charles Mingus; and Sommer, whose percussion prestidigitation is such that he’s worked with avatars as different as American pianist Cecil Taylor and French multi-reedist Sylvain Kassap, express several more identities. Firstly the two committed Free Musicians reveal tactics and trick that play up their ties to the on-going jazz tradition, which in Gumpert’s case stretches back through Taylor to Bobby Timmons, Ahmed Jamal and Earl Hines; and in Sommer’s from Art Blakey and Max Roach to his namesake “Baby” Dodds.

Secondly the out-and-out Germanicism which the two highlight when quoting Teutonic hymns and folk songs with Zentralquatet and elsewhere is augmented here as they improvise on three compositions by 74-year-old dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann. A protégé of composer Hanns Eisler, Biermann’s tenure in East Germany was marked by denunciation as “class traitor” and being banned from performing after he declared that the GDR was as non-progressive as West Germany. Gumpert and Sommer publicly supported him even after he ran afoul of the East German government.

While a couple of Biermann’s tunes appear included for extra-musical solidarity, “Soldat, Soldat” is given the full improvised treatment. Taking off from simple marital drum beats and piano chording, the two first transform the piece into a Jazz march with high-pitched, slippery note clusters from Gumpert, which then becomes a Prussian capriccio as the pianist ranges over the keyboard. Meanwhile the drummer piles on ruffs and rebounds along with a few police whistle shrills.

“Blues für P.K.” honoring Peter Kowald, the late Wuppertal-based bassist who often traveled behind the then Iron Curtain to play with Gumpert and Sommer, shows their hearts are in the right place(s). However, that composition and “Funk for Two” are little more than swinging bagatelles. Although, especially on the later, when Gumpert works himself into cascading tremolo clusters and blues-note studded key strokes while Sommer lays on the back-beat, their efforts probably could get them a gig on Chicago’s South Side.

More generic to the date’s proposition are compositions such as Gumpert’s “Von C bis C”, Sommer’s “Inside Outside Shout” and others that were spontaneously created that day. “Inside Outside Shout” for instance is a perpetual motion demonstration of reverberating cymbals, roughly plumbed snares and drum-top friction, occasionally interrupted by internal string plinks and portamento piano runs just as hard and heavy as Sommer’s presentation. “Von C bis C” is awash in exaggerated keyboard patterning, high-frequency octave jumps and frenzied cross tones from Gumpert, who also uses by double-counterpoint runs to connect to the drummer’s wood-block whaps and invented sticking.

Summation of all their musical gifts is found on tunes such as “Free of All”. Leaping between layered piano chords and outlined single key exposure, Gumpert’s intermezzo leaves enough room for Sommer to express himself with resonating cymbals, whirligig whooshes, shaking maracas and marbles rolled on drum tops.

Another upside of German reunification and GDR musicians’ subsequent expanded fame is the availability of first-class discs like this one.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Locker vom Hocker 2. Von C bis C 3. Blues für P.K. 4. Ermutigung 5. Free for Two 6. Inside Outside Shout 7. Funk for Two 8. Kami-Fusen 9. Soldat, Soldat 10. Free of All 11.Das kann doch nicht alles gewesen sein

Personnel: Ulrich Gumpert (piano) and Günter Baby Sommer (drums and percussion)

June 28, 2010

Berlin’s European Jazz Jamboree Offers a Unique Take on American-based Jazz

By Ken Waxman

Like one of those novels of speculative fiction that posit a scenario in which the South wins the American Civil War; or perhaps like a variant of Superman Comic’s Bizzaro planet where everything is the reverse of earth, 2009’s European Jazz Jamboree (EEJ) offered an alternate view of jazz history. Here the music was essentially in the tradition, but, in the main, interpreted by Europeans rather than Americans.

This led to some spectacular performances taking place during the series of concerts in selected Berlin venues during mid-September. But as Superman found when he visited the Bizarro world, altered history can sometimes be disconcerting. Similarly some of the EJJ combinations failed to live up to their expected promise(s). In a further Bizarro-like irony, some of the fest’s best sounds came from aggregations whose music had very little to do with the EJJ’s stated theme.

Arguably the most profound exercise in extrasensory perception and creation involved two Swiss: saxophonist Urs Leimgruber and pianist Jacques Demierre, plus American-in France bassist Barre Phillips. Presented at an Institute Français concert on Kurfürstenamm, the trio music was as abstract as it was breath-taking. Also notable on the EJJ’s first evening was a foyer set at the Kino Babylon, in the city’s Mitte area, which matched reedist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky – one of the founders of East German Free Jazz – with youngish drummer Michael Griener in a duo called The Salmon.

Griener also drummed in the Workshop Band of Petrowsky’s long-time associate, pianist Ulrich Gumpert, which in an auditorium concert at the Kino, successfully recast the work of one of the pianist’s mentors, American bassist Charles Mingus. Consisting in the main of classic Mingus compositions, the program allowed members of Gumpert’s eight-piece aggregation to add distinctive sonic flourishes while expanding the bassist’s familiar lines.

Contrasting Views of Charles Mingus’ Works

With tunes such as “Boogie Stop Shuffle” anchored by subterranean rumbles from Ben Abarbanel-Wolff’s baritone saxophone, these low pitches set the pace more so than the piano’s chromatic chording or the in-the-pocket rhythms from Griener and bassist Jan Roder, who plays more freely in other circumstances. While the arrangements of classics such as “Good bye Pork Pie Hat” and “Fables of Faubus” took full advantage of the harmonies and counterpoint available from three saxophones – Christian Weidner and Henrik Walsdorff were the others – the outstanding individual soloist was trombonist Christof Thewes. He was equally impressive constructing sophisticated Lawrence Brown-style obbligatos or letting loose with plunger-pressured, near-gutbucket growls.

The performance coalesced into high intensity on the final number with churning rhythmic power encompassing Roder’s thumping bass, Griener’s brush-propelled pulses and the pianist molding single note clusters into portamento runs and pseudo honky-tonk clanking. Following an episode of pumping and popping horn vamps, the rhythm section members traded fours then twos, with Roder scraping his instrument’s wood and Griener smacking his drum tops bare-handed. As the climax exploding every which way beneath a triplet-laden solo from trumpeter Martin Klingeberg, the group was nudged back into straight time by churning piano chords.

Using unusual quartet voicing that united tenor saxophone (Daniel Erdmann), alto saxophone, clarinet and alto clarinet (Michael Thieke), bass (Johannes Fink) and drums (Heinrich Köbberling), the band Dok Wallach, set up in the Kino lobby the next night, with its distinct version of Mingus material that had been composed earlier or later than the tunes tackled by the Workshop Band.

Running one piece into another almost without pause – a strategy also used with varying success at other points by Monk’s Casino and Silke Eberhard/Aki Takase’s Ornette Coleman Anthology duo – the four managed to suggest Mingus’ links not only to advanced mainstream jazz, but to the R&B and Latin traditions that nurtured it. Done this way, the tunes also pinpointed how the bassist’s advanced voicing foreshadowed Free Jazz, which would continue to draw on Mingus’ musical evolution.

Tunes such as “Hobo Ho” and “Weird Nightmare” benefited from Erdmann’s heavily breathed tongue stops and honks on the one hand, and Thieke’s running changes with dissonant and atonal cries on alto clarinet on the other. Some of the most interesting counterpoint appeared when Thieke and Fink adopted a contrapuntal Eric Dolphy vs Mingus dialogue with the other two laying out. Spicatto, Fink whipped tautly pinched strings with his bow, as the alto clarinetist blew undifferentiated air, warbled and tongue-stopped. Later Köbberling would clobber his snares and toms to match sustaining timbres from Fink’s strings, while Erdmann moved to strident bird calls and resounding tongue-slaps to maintain the proper solemnity when duetting with Thieke. Throughout the set there were examples of intuitive call-and-response patterns developed into thematic reed interface, as well as sharp rubato passages that bounced among the four as melodies and improvisations were conflated into generic unity.

Focus on Ornette and Dolphy

Eliminating expected rhythm section incursions, Swiss alto saxophonist Eberhard’s Potsa Lotsa, had saluted Mingus’ favorite saxophonist – Dolphy – in the same location the day previously using only horns – her own alto saxophone, Patrick Braun’s tenor saxophone, Nikolaus Neuser’s trumpet and Gerhard Gschlössl’s trombone. Rather than being limited by the instrumentation, this layered polyphony added new tinctures to Dolphy’s best-known music, which sadly had been created in less than half a decade.

The compositions were re-harmonized canon-like with trumpet grace notes at the top and Braun’s deeper sax tones providing the ostinato glue holding together the undulating improvisations. Distinctive touches included Gschlössl adding downcast moans to a reading of “Out to Lunch”, which otherwise bounced along on rubber-mute fanning from the brass; and blustery vibrations from the saxophones in broken octaves, as they worked through pieces from Dolphy’s storied Five Spot-recorded LPs.

Re-interpreting another’s material to make it your own was also demonstrated during two sold out sets later in the week at Charlottenburg’s Jazzwerkstatt + Klassik Shop and Café by the Eberhard/Takase duo. Playing alto saxophone and clarinet, the reedist now takes more liberties with the Coleman material than she did in the past. So does the pianist, whose advantage is that Coleman rarely played with keyboards. At the club, Takase’s hard-driving bounces, bustles and bangs both on the internal strings and the key themselves – not to mention her pointed and clever techniques – a appended a sense of surprise to the idiosyncratic compositions. Perhaps relieved to share leadership chores, Takase’s improvising was more relaxed and better focused than what she offered the night before with her Fats Waller-tribute combo.

Essentially, Coleman tunes such as “Blues Connection” and “The Face of the Bass”, which already reference tonality, were wedded to an accompaniment that highlighted stride’s unison arpeggios and the double pumps and moderato, bluesy chording. Feeding the saxophonist kinetic runs and walking bass lines, Eberhard in turn became liberated enough in many instances to expose glossolalia and hardened flutter-tonguing. For instance, pieces like “Una Muy Bonita” and “Beauty is a Rare Thing” provided a study in contrasts. The later joined behind-the-beat boogie-woogie-like runs with saxophone triple-tonguing; while the former mixed Eberhard’s altissimo cries and note-bending with Takase humming in time with her playing as single notes ranged all over the keyboard. At points Takase even smashed the keys with sharpened elbows. While there was a curiously unfinished quality to some numbers – as if the two had yet to agree on a definitive performance strategy – interpolations of other Coleman lines and sympathetic double counterpoint during both sets – plus two encores – confirmed the duo’s future.

The night’s most unusual timbres were fished from the strings during one tune when Takase manipulated a wire through the piano’s wound internal set. Meanwhile Eberhard’s only bow to New music invention was a single clarinet cadence respired onto the piano strings. As individual as her saxophone playing, this woodwind brought out more legato soloing from Eberhard. Moderato and trilling in execution, she evidently reserved tone-splitting, peeping and pressured vibratos for the saxophone.

Rudi Mahall meets Fats and Monk

One person very familiar with extended technique such as those while utilizing the properties of a legit woodwind is bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall. His straightforward and joyous inventiveness was the most satisfying – and purely musical – portion of the Fats Waller program the night before. More naturalistic, his improvising smarts two nights previously as part of Monk’s Casino locked in with the game plan developed by trumpeter Axel Dörner, drummer Uli Jennessen, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and bassist Roder to restructure Monk’s over-familiar oeuvre so that the sonic edifice could be appreciated on its own. Both shows took place in the Kino’s auditorium.

Role-playing appeared to dominate Takase’s Waller project, with drummer Paul Lovens channeling Baby Dodds two-beat rhythms; trombonist Nils Wogram’s wah-wah wails wavering between the styles of Kid Ory and Tricky Sam Nanton; and Takase wedding the sophistication of Duke Ellington’s touch to Waller’s boisterous pounding. American banjoist/guitarist/singer Eugene Chadbourne’s shtick is an acquired taste, and while his girth is now approaching that of Waller’s, his humor – like some of Takese’s keyboard interpolations – occasionally seemed no more than monochrome reflections of Waller’s multi-colored performance and personality. The overall impression given by Chadbourne’s vocalizing was that he couldn’t decide whether to treat the songs – which Waller himself often burlesqued – as parodies or to sing them straight. It was the same with Takase’s soloing. Given her head, as on “Honeysuckle Rose”, she constructed a fantasia with cross-handed jumps, chromatic chording and staccato, forte rebounds. But by exposing this blindingly swift technique and expanded range, she almost reduced the Waller tribute to a series of well-remembered heads without extension.

That’s why the work of Mahall – who played Gene “Honeybear” Sedric to Takese’s Waller – was so refreshing. Someone who is not averse to spicing up his solos with a bit of Charleston-like leg wobbling or Elvis-like hip-shaking, he’s never anyone else than his own man whether the musical subject at hand is Waller, Monk or spiky Free Jazz originals. Like Waller in his prime, Mahall always looks like he’s having fun at the same time as he continues to output superior improvisations. His stance could be seen as a more profound celebration of the tradition characterized by the EEJ than Chadbourne suddenly donning a blonde wig, and mimicking Marilyn Monroe or Bob Dylan while he sang. Another question was why the entire combo felt nostalgia like “Way Down South Where the Blues Were Born”, “I Like Oysters” and “Just a Gigolo” had to be played more-or-less straight.

Pick Your Favorite Monk Number

Monk himself recorded “Just a Gigolo”. But luckily von Schlippenbach, whose pianistic approach suggests gravitas rather than gaiety, eschewed that particular number with Monk’s Casino. Instead, like Eberhard/Takase with the Coleman tunes, this quintet’s increased familiarity with the material, through microscopic examination of it, meant that no whiff of imitation hung in the air.

Although the quintet still appears to be cramming an overwhelming number of Monkish heads into its performance, this sprightly flip-through-the-pages-of-the-fakebook approach allows for interpolations of other tunes and motifs as the set unrolls – just the way Monk would have done it. While von Schlippenbach may have been playing some of these tunes for 50 years, he never attempted to imitate Monk’s style either. With an expansive reach, and a tendency for double-gaited piano cadences, glissandi, key clips and kinetic waterfalls of notes, von Schlippenbach utilized the entire keyboard; Monk concentrated on a few select phrases and particular note clusters.

Meanwhile, Dörner played in an understated, Miles Davis-like fashion at selected spots and elsewhere wailed plunger-expanded blues lines. A master of minimalist brass exploration in other situations, Dörner subtly united every peep and cluck so that they eventually combined and mated with Mahall’s preference for broader-based, irregularly vibrated thrills. As for the bass clarinetist, he was his quirky self; at one juncture it sounded as if he was playing “Lady Be Good” apropos nothing. Another time Mahall’s diaphanous timbres contrasted tellingly with the double bassist’s scrubs and swipes.

Drummer Jennessen, following the Monkish cannon, confined himself for the most part to time-keeping with pops, rebounds, rolls and flams. However Roder’s rock-solid plucking was the locus of the band’s one vaudevillian trope, as one band member after another deserted the stage during his solo. Following some raucous backstage vamping from the horns, the others returned, with tremolo note-burbling from the trumpeter and sibilant tongue-stops from Mahall.

More Monk, some Steve Lacy and the Duke

Other homages expressed during the week came from American pianist Dave Burrell’s solo salute to Monk and Duke Ellington and Celebration Wayne Shorter by a quintet featuring saxophonist Wolfgang Schmidtke, both at the Kino auditorium; plus Swiss soprano saxophonist Jürg Wickihalder’s solo homage to Steve Lacy at the Instiute Français. Professionally played, Schmidtke’s by-the-book sounds ranged from Hard Bop to Free Bop, but never seemed to inhabit this subject’s music the way other performers in the EJJ did with their choices. Making his Berlin debut, Wickihalder celebrated not only Lacy, but the late saxophonist’s mentors Ellington and Monk. Combining half-echoed glissandi, lyrical asides, mountainous piles of splayed notes and reverberating duck quacks, Wickihalder managed to touch on Lacy’s many musical identities. Taking the improvisations one step further, at junctures Wickihalder up-ended his horn, blew into the saxophone bell, and rasped timbres by applying the reed to the side of his mouth. Viewing his expression cumulatively, with this showcase Wickihalder confirmed that he should be carefully followed musically in the future.

A veteran Free Jazzman first prominent in the 1960s, Burrell, sporty in peaked cap and leather coat, ran through an understated series of tunes which expressed the links between Monk and Ellington with side excursions into the compositions of James P. Johnson, an admitted influence on both. Moving among rags, stride piano, a bluesy “Blue Monk” and a hyper-sophisticated “Prelude to a Kiss”, Burrell managed at various time to suggest parlor piano noodling, supper club accompaniment and formal grand piano recitals. Segueing from one tune to another, he would sometimes alter a familiar theme with a walking bass undertow, rag a melody unexpectedly or conversely inject a flourish of lyrical prettiness into otherwise primeval interpretations.

Inevitably it seemed, Burrell touched on the neo-con’s rallying cry, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got that Swing”, but the only official bow to the Swing Era was clarinetist Rolf Kühn’s second set at the Kino auditorium. That was when he and the NDR Big Band, conducted by Jörg Achim Keller, saluted Benny Goodman’s 100th Birthday.

Age is no Impediment to Good Jazz

Old enough at 80 to have actually played with Goodman during his American sojourn in the 1950s and 1960s, the Leipzig-born Kühn gamely ran through an expected set of Swing classics. Notable was a three-clarinet arrangement of “Just Friends” and a point when guitarist Ronny Graupe, from Kühn’s Tri-O, was added to the band to limn the guitar part of some Goodman-associated tunes. Nonetheless, Graupe ended up approximating Wes Montgomery’s poppier big band efforts rather than Charlie Christian’s work with Goodman. A final “Swing Swing Swing” featuring both Keller and Tri-O’s Christian Lillinger on drums was rhythmically exciting, but ultimately exhausting.

Someone who has continues to explore new musical areas even as he ages; Kühn appeared to enjoy the interaction in his initial EJJ appearance that night, playing with his Tri-O sideman, each slightly more than one-quarter his age. An additional guest was his baby brother Joachim Kühn, 65, who added his own variation of hard single notes and romantic flourishes to the music. Considering that reedist Kühn’s angled twittering melded impressively with Graupe’s flashing guitar lines, clanking bass licks from Fink –who also played in Dok Wallach – and Lillinger’s stacked drum beats, there were points at which the pianism seems superfluous. Visually striking with his leonine head of hair, the blurred fingering Joachim Kühn exhibited often translated into dynamic chord layering and pumping pedal portamento. Yet it seemed divorced from how the rest of the players stuck to connective moderato lines.

The situation was further complicated when trumpeter Matthias Schriefl – complete with a Beatle bob and wide trousers imprinted with a spider-web motif – joined the combo. Initially playing muted trumpet, he harmonically complemented Kühn’s clarinet. Passing chords and backwards moving vamps from the rhythm section distinguished the sextet’s finale. But while Rolf Kühn’s feather light vamps extended the interlude, Schriefl gathered all his strength to fire off triplet-laden refrains.

Too Many Ideas for A Segmented Orchestration

Trying to push too many ideas into a foreshortened concept – plus the showiness of another trumpeter’s playing – was what ultimately weakened the performance of The Earth is A Drum by Jürgen Scheele and the Independent Jazz Orchestra. This was advertised as a suite dedicated to the memory of pocket trumpeter and pioneering American World musician Don Cherry.

Positioned at the Kino auditorium to be a festival highlight, Scheele’s composition bristled with concepts. Unfortunately, while combing the contributions of a mainstream jazz big band, a string quartet, additional Third World percussion via drummer Dudu Tucci and two star soloists – British tenor saxophonist Alan Skidmore and Danish trumpeter Jens Winther – may have seemed visionary years ago, this type of cross-cultural mixing has become commonplace, even clichéd.

For a start, many of the suite’s parts played seemed singularly undigested. The standard big-band arrangements swung, but swung towards bombast, complete with screaming brass triplets, in a way that could be honoring Stan Kenton’s so-called Progressive Jazz more so than Cherry organic compositions. This impression was further reinforced when Tucci turned from triangle-bashing, guiro scraping, maracas shaking and triangle pinging to pound Latin rhythms from his conga drums. More distressingly, the strings brought mostly 19th Century romantic tonalities to the show, complete with mournful cello sounds and unheard pizzicato plucks. If the first violinist’s weeping arco solo was thought of as original as well as technically perfect, someone was ignorant of the advances in string writing brought to jazz language by many Europeans during the past couple of decades. At points it also sounded as if there was a vocalized or pre-recorded ostinato vibrating the “Om” phrase in the background. In the 21st Century this brought back uncomfortable memories of Flower Power.

As for the soloists, Skidmore was impressive in spots when given enough space to push a style influenced by mid-period John Coltrane into more elastic Free playing. Probably the concert’s highpoint came when he was able to open up emotionally into a reed-biting frenzy which also goosed the drummers to work harder. The lingering impression left was of Skidmore exposing longer and longer note patterns, while the big band members riffed contrapuntally, collectively and almost wildly behind him.

Winther was another matter. Dressed in a shocking red smoking jacket and silk trousers and sporting a hairstyle that made him resemble the male half of Abba, the subdued timbres and low-key whimpers from his often muted trumpet suggested Miles Davis of the 1960s and 1970s rather than Cherry. Winther is a respected composer and veteran of aggregations such as the Danish Radio Big Band, German Radio big bands such as NDR, WDR and SDR plus the Århus Symphony Orchestra. But his unruffled, highly technical professionalism was the antithesis of the instinctive music Cherry helped create, first with Ornette Coleman in the United States, then on his own in Europe.

Play That Funky Music White Boy

Another ensemble which stuck out like a sore thumb in a gathering full of snapping fingers was American pianist Uri Caine’s Bedrock Trio plus vocalist Barbara Walker. This was the concluding act at the Kino auditorium, two nights before the Independent Jazz Orchestra had the same spot on the bill.

Combining thumbs and fingers, the operative body part during Caine’s set was hand-clapping. Playing piano, electric piano and Nord for additional electronic beats, and backed by flanged electric bass runs from Tim Lefebvre and the stolid back beat from drummer Zach Danziger’s over-sized kit, affable Caine appeared to be revisiting his Philadelphia youth. That was a time where the sweet soul sounds of Gamble & Huff reined supreme and where sidemen for the duo’s Philly International label played nightclub gigs with jazzers like Caine. This impression was further cemented by the vocals of Walker, an R&B belter and friend of the pianist’s from Philadelphia.

Appearing in Berlin for the first time, Walker’s impressive diction and light voice touched on scat but concentrated on gospel-tinged laments of lost love. Handclapping and wandering around the stage, Walker frequently insisted that she wanted to “testify”. With her phrasing and powerful range the singer meshed well with Caine’s extended staccato and agitato runs, the bassist’s heavy thumb pops and the drummer’s thumping. Anything but portentous, Walker came across impressively as an old school R&B stylist. But her performance was somewhat jarring in the context of a European Jazz Jamboree.

Staccato in his solos on either keyboard, Caine’s pulsating glissandi, dazzling fingering and high-frequency runs were notable as commentaries on the soul-jazz tradition; as were Lefebvre’s sliding runs. The set confirmed that the pianist refuses to be pigeonholed into any one role. Perhaps though, as someone who has saluted Wagner, Mozart, Tin Pan Alley and Herbie Hancock with equal seriousness, in this context, Caine may have been better off exposing a project that was closer to either of the first two letters of EJJ than the last.

Profound Art of the Duo

Tellingly though, some of the festival’s most profound improvising came from two small groups divorced from any attempts at homage. Ironically, both also featured musicians – Leimgruber-Demierre-Phillips’ bassist Barre Phillips (born 1934) and The Salmon’s reedist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (born 1933) – who are literally old enough to have heard much jazz history first hand.

However, neither had any desire to re-create this history, at least as a salute to any existing style. Secure in his identity, Petrowsky played both alto saxophone and clarinet as he worked out new strategies for the sort of Free Jazz that has been his raison d’être since the 1960s. That night in the Kino’s foyer he spat out multiphonics, triple-tongued, pitch-slid, cried, gasped and trilled. For his part, drummer Griener slid items such as a cow bell, a wood block, a vintage knife and a metal comb on and off his drum tops to amplify his contribution, while both detuning and spanking the metrical melody.

Mid-way through the set, playing alto saxophone in tenor register, Petrowsky spluttered out what was essentially a low-pitched blues line, as the drummer backed him with nerve beats, rim shots and tick-tock rhythms. Introducing speaking-in-tongues glossolalia – a variant of which singer Walker may have heard in her home town – the saxophonist also mixed Be-Bop references along with flutter tonguing. Fatter and wilder, his tone remained supple and metrically free – though connectively parallel to the drummer’s ruffs and pops – no matter how long he soloed. Another surprise was his individualized phrasing on clarinet. With a lazy tone replete with wooly, mid-range slips like a more formal Jimmy Giuffre, his textures consisted of chest tone and single breaths. He methodically built up clusters from tiny dabs then broke the results down again.

One Perfect Trio Interaction

Petrowsky’s soloing may have breached the limits of reed experimentation, but Leimgruber’s provided a graduate level aural essay on tenor and soprano saxophone inventiveness. Fortuitously his associates – Phillips and pianist Demierre –, whose collective performance followed Wickihalder solo set at the Institute Français, were as dexterous and inventive using their instruments as he was drawing unexpected textures from his.

Accelerating from a sparse, minimal exposition of small gestures such as the bassist lightly bouncing his bow on one string, solitary notes squeezed from the saxophone, and the pianist, forearm resting on the keys, extracting singular note patterns, the group improvisation unfolded in stages until it commanded full audience attention.

Gently vibrating the soprano saxophone, Leimgruber’s split tones seemed to resonate back inside his horn. Blowing thin columns of air, he altered his embouchure to produce different tones as Phillips rasped his bass strings and Demierre jabbed at the piano keys. Eventually the pianist’s low-frequency and low-pitched clicks thickened into broader runs as Leimgruber switched to tenor, concurrently disassembling it into components, which he strummed and shook at will. Unfastening the gooseneck from the body tube he forced staccato phrases through it, ratcheted the saxophone’s curved neck against the instrument’s bow and bell, ultimately producing harsh, almost static timbres.

As the tempo picked up, Phillips turned to sul ponticello squeaks and Demierre to strummed cadenzas, as reed textures bounced between police-whistle squeaks and basso-profundo rumbles expressed in honks, hawks, spits and tongue flutters. Suddenly the intensity that had been building up over the past few minutes was palpable and almost incendiary, as the three reached a crescendo of pounding piano chords, scrubbed bass lines plus serrated split tones and cackles from the saxophonist.

Equivalent tension-release was exhibited and experienced in the trio’s subsequent improvisation with Demierre more prominent, pushing kinetic patterns from the foot petals and slashing harmonies from the piano’s inner harp.

When the set was over, audience members concluded that they had witnessed a significant expression of no-holds-barred improvisation. This is a judgment that could also be applied to most of the EJJ’s notable performances.

Only in its second year, it’s apparent that the Jamboree is on its way to become an important addition to the musical calendar of Germany’s capital city. With a few nips and tucks, 2010’s edition could solidify the reputation for quality improvisation that was fortified with this year’s program.

November 16, 2009

Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band

Suites
Jazz Werkstatt JW 054

Looking for a personalized unbeatable definition of post-modern music? How about wanting to experience the compositions and arrangements of someone who has taken the mid-sized band concepts of Charles Mingus into the 21st Century? Guess what, the same person typifies both. It’s Berlin-based pianist/composer Ulrich Gumpert. Suites by his Workshop Band – note the echo of Mingus’ Jazz Workshop – is yet another exciting example of his talent.

For years a member and chief composer of Zentralquartett, the former East Germany’s most accomplished small group, Gumpert had been simultaneously writing and recording with a top-flight 12-piece Workshop Band. Suites however highlights the 63-year-old Gumpert’s accommodation with the generation of improvisers that followed his own, plus recognition of the economies of scale. The now eight-piece Workshop Band is populated by some of the most accomplished young Berlin-based improvisers including reedist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, who works with bassist Sirone; drummer Michael Grenier who plays with saxophonist – and Zentralquartett member – Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky; Monks Casino bassist Jan Roder; and reedist Michael Thieke, part of the well-regarded Clarinet Trio.

Abarbanel-Wolff’s post-Aylerian cries and multiphonics supply the POMO fillip to the bulky Volkslieder melodies on which “Aus Teutschen Landen” is based. Taking a page from the sort of anthemic deconstruction favored by Carla Bley, the Thuringia-born pianist’s arrangement alternates straight renditions of the folk tunes with splashy solo deconstruction – in this case hard and heavy irregular diaphragm smears from the saxophonist. Added to the extended exposition are flute peeps, secondary stops and tonguing from other horns plus whinnying wah-wahs from trombonist Christof Thewes – who is part of another trio with Roder and Grenier. Overall the result sound like what would have happened if John Coltrane and Rashied Ali were duetting in front of an open window above a street on which a lederhosen-wearing brass band was marching past.

These tramping feet motifs are extended still further throughout the rest of the suite, which also makes allusions to specific periods in musical history. When call-and-response choruses, first just from Thieke’s clarinet and Martin Klingeberg’s trumpet, and then parceled out among members of the whole octet kick in, the overtones exposed could come from brass bands, classic jazz combos or even New music ensembles. Grenier doesn’t stint in exercising the wood block and sizzle cymbals; Arabanel-Wolff provides discursive squeals and flutter-tongued squeaks, while Hendrik Walsdorff’s alto punctuation lurches forward with honks and altissimo cries. Roder either advances timbres with crab-like spiccato, as if he was playing minimalist chamber music, or slaps his bass strings à la Pops Foster.

Eventually “Kommt, Ihr G’Spielen” neatly wraps all the sonic allusions up with sky-high brass triplets cutting through cumulative blaring measures plus broken-octave expositions. The trumpeter’s rubato breaks and jazzy shakes eventually creep from mid-range to a stop-time climax that also brings in the other horns.

The other suites here are just as impressive, especially the tripartite “Sinfonietta”, which glides moderato and andante from its dodecaphonic origins to a warmer and more dramatic interface. By mid-point the composition opens up into showcases for both Abarbanel-Wolff’s slash-and-burn reed overblowing and Thewes’ gutbucket and grainy chromatic cries – which are closer to Roswell Rudd than Gumpert’s Zentralquartett, confrere Conrad Bauer. Eventually the pianist’s own cadenzas signal a thematic shift which downsizes the band’s reverberating echoes and inaugurates hushed chords so that Roder’s contrapuntal string striations can be heard slowly transforming into moderato, Paul Chambers-like plucks, carefully designed so as not to upset the andante broken-octave line. A finale perfectly balances rutting horn trills and kettle-drum-like rolls which would sound at home in any Bavarian symphony.

No matter the ensemble size, it appears that Gumpert has the compositions and arrangements to produce memorable music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Aus Teutschen Landen: 1. Es Fiel Ein Reif In Der Frühlingsnatcht 2. Tanz Mir Nicht Mit Meiner Jungfer Käthen 3. A) Der Maie Der Maie B) Es Sass Ein Schneeweiss’ Vögelein 4. Kommt, Ihr G’Spielen Sinfonietta: 5. Part I 6. Part II 7. Part III H-M Suite: 8. Part I 9. Part II 3. Tango

Personnel: Martin Klingeberg (trumpet); Christof Thewes (trombone); Michael Thieke (alto saxophone and clarinet); Henrik Walsdorff (alto saxophone); Ben Abarbanel-Wolff ( tenor saxophone and flute); Ulrich Gumpert (piano); Jan Roder (bass) and Michael Griener (drums)

July 13, 2009

Ulrich Gumpert

Workshop Band
Jazzwerkstatt JW 070-01/070-02

Zentralquartett

Auf der Elbe schwimmt ein rosa Krokodil

Intakt CD 142

Maybe it could have been called The Great Unknown. Certainly the American focus of improvised music until the last century’s last couple of decades meant that some of the most exciting sounds extant were unknown and literally unheard by many people who should have known better.

Case in point: East German pianist/composer/arranger Ulrich Gumpert. During the 1970s, as these two exceptional sessions demonstrate, with his small group Synopsis – later renamed Zentralquartett – and his Workshop Band, the Berlin-based pianist was making music that was in many cases superior and definitely equal to any American sounds. Unfortunately Gumpert and his associates labored under a double whammy. Not only were they playing in Europe – which for Yank jazzbos of the time was no more than a destination for out-of-work American legends – but they doing so in the Eastern Block when the Berlin Wall and the Cold War were still part of everyday life.

While it may have been little compensation for his and his bands’ isolation, residing in what then was the other side of the Iron Curtain, meant that earlier than many others, Gumpert and his band mates were able to develop a unique style colored by Teutonic folk music as much as modern jazz. Throughout the three CDs here – recorded in 1974, 1978 and 1979 – especially in the later large ensemble sets, the influence of Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk and especially Charles Mingus is evident. But so too are sonic memories related to the Prussian marches, Germanic hymns. pumping dance tunes and pastoral folk ditties that were part of everyday pre-and-post-war East Germany.

Organizationally, another parallel is noticeable, in particular on Auf der Elbe schwimmt ein rosa Krokodil, the earliest session. Like pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, contrasting icons of the ICP Orchestra, Gumpert here is the cool theorizer and conceptualist, while self-described Saxon percussionist Günter “Baby” Sommer animates the proceedings, as well as disrupting them as often as he can.

A tune like “Mehr aus teutschen landen” on the quartet CD for instance, begins with reflective passing chords from Gumpert, but is soon splintered asunder by Sommer’s insistence on activating a jungle-rhythm-affiliated beat. When that interpolation is superseded by a syncopated folk melody, that riff is equally subsumed by emboldened spectrofluctuation and Aylerian screeches from saxophonist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and capillary tremolo braying from trombonist Conrad Bauer. Eventually, as the drummer bluntly mix-mastering the beat you’re not sure whether you’re hearing a cha cha, a tango, a polka or a beer-hall anthem. Rallying with kinetic dynamics, Gumpert rescues the tune from tumbling into serious musical kitsch before the finale, but not before Sommer beats out a burlesque march rhythm.

Musical bags of tricks are opened up and scattered through the track on the 16½-minute “Krisis eines krokodils”, a group instant composition, as well. For instance, plunger trombone neighs and reverberating cymbal patterns are only countered by Gumpert’s formalistic chording of “Chopsticks” – albeit “Chopsticks” with key fanning and presto soundboard echoes – until the mock processional theme is further disrupted by growls and slurs from Bauer plus aviary squeals and wide, granulated atonal cries from Petrowsky. Sommer’s irregular beat-mongering and Gumpert’s keyboard pitter-patting eventually reach a tandem concordance, the better to accompany unexpected harmonic blending from the horns, as gorgeous as if it was being sung by two choristers. Unison recapping of the initial theme ends the piece on a high note, although Bauer can’t resist a pen-ultimate snort or Sommer a conclusive roll.

Four and five years later an additional four voices give Gumpert and the others supplementary textures and colors that are utilized with brio in live performances. Especially valuable is the thumping and walking bottom provided by bassist Klaus Koch (1936-2000), who for a time replaced Bauer in Synopsis. Overall though, the solos, compositions and band performance on both volumes of the collection are of such high standard that’s it’s difficult to rank any single track as more exceptional than others.

That said, a piece like “Aus Baby’s Wunderhorn /‘N Tango Für Gitti” on the first CD proves that Sommer – who composed the tune – was as familiar with musical mash-ups as the pianist. Here bell-ringing from the drummer and feverish piano slaps define the theme after a full-orchestra introduction is conveyed on wavering and hocketing chords. Evolving chromatically with stop-time episodes, the tune later makes room for irregular vibrato and altissimo timbres from Petrowsky. Further on, an unaccompanied broken-octave romp from Bauer introduces the tango that sounds more Arabic than Argentinean and is refined under swelling peeps and split tones from the reeds.

Massed contrapuntal vamps from different orchestral sections characterize “Auf Der Elbe Schwimmt Ein Rosa”, as well. Swarming along on polyphonic piano key sweeps and Klaus’ walking bass, the track’s pulse is measured and chromatic at the same time. Humorously, Swing Era-novelty bands appear to be saluted in some of the solos to the same extent as Mingus’ and Monk’s large group extensions. Tenor saxophonist Iri Anonow for instance, builds solos from stop-time “nyah-nyah”s, plus cries, whistles and irregular bar jumps when he plays. Meantime, whoever plays the alto saxophone line advances it mercurially and declaratory; Heinz Becker’s trumpeting is suitably clean and legato; while the drums clink and clank; and piano chording turn from stately to splintering. With the layered textures concentrated in the composition’s final, super-speedy variant, the repeated tutti riffs are finally cut off by a Count Basie-like plink from Gumpert.

It’s more of the same on the Workshop Band’s second CD, recorded one year later, with Helmut Forsthoff in for Antonow. The ensemble’s eighth member is alto and tenor saxophonist Manfred Hering, though the supposition is that the alto solos are by Petrowsky.

Sardonically original, some pieces on the disc manage to shoehorn Germanic marches as often as big band swing into the performances. More interesting are “Blau Blusen Blues” and “Hilferuf einer Schneck”. The later manages to find room for atmospheric cymbal echoes, gong resonation and yodeling from Sommer – who composed the tune – with Ziggy Elman-like lead trumpeting plus barnyard sonic approximations from the brass and harsh split-tone cries and tongue slaps from the reeds. As the trumpeter and trombonist whiz by with arching triplet slurs, Sommer smacks and drags beats from his kit and Gumpert dynamically fans the keys so that the resulting portamento link chromatically prods the piece forward. Following staccatissimo horn action, pitched well above normal range, the reeds continuous repeat a distinct and newer leitmotif as the pianist softens his touch for a climatic summation.

“Blau Blusen Blues” is a Bauer-composed blues where Basie-like keyboard comping, Koch’s walking bass and typically boppish ching-ching cymbal pulses from Sommer confirm its links to the tradition. For contrast however, on top of inchoate pulses from the horns, Gumpert transforms metronomic tinkles to downward stair-step runs and Petrowsky extends his biting multiphonics with chirps and glottal punctuation. Stop-time, the circling horns then reach a crescendo of connected timbres with Mingus-influenced orchestral vamps and flutters. A glissando from the pianist wraps up the performance.

Too many listeners missed out on these first-class discs first time out. Those that didn’t will want to hear them again. Everyone benefits.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 070-01: 1. Marsch Marsch 2. Königskindisch 3a. Aus Baby’s Wunderhorn 3b ‘N Tango Für Gitti 4. Auf Der Elbe Schwimmt Ein Rosa Krokodil 5 Jubilee Suite 070-02: 1. Hahnenkopf 2. Septettfragment 3.Blau Blusen Blues 4. Echos von Karolinenhof 5. Hilferuf einer Schneck

Personnel: Heinz Becker (trumpet and flugelhorn); Conrad Bauer (trombone); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (soprano and alto saxophones and clarinet); Manfred Hering (alto and tenor saxophones); Iri Antonow [070-01] or Helmut Forsthoff [070-02]) (tenor saxophone; Ulrich Gumpert (piano); Klaus Koch (bass) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums)

Track Listing: Auf: 1. Krisis eines krokodils 2. Zweisam 3. Auf der Elbe schwimmt ein rosa krokodil 4. Petting zu “Take IV” 5. Take IV 6. Mehr aus teutschen landen

Personnel: Auf: Conrad Bauer (trombone); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (alto saxophone, clarinet and flutes); Ulrich Gumpert (piano) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums, percussion and mouth-harp)

January 7, 2009

Zentralquartett

Auf der Elbe schwimmt ein rosa Krokodil
Intakt CD 142

Ulrich Gumpert

Workshop Band

Jazzwerkstatt JW 070-01/070-02

Maybe it could have been called The Great Unknown. Certainly the American focus of improvised music until the last century’s last couple of decades meant that some of the most exciting sounds extant were unknown and literally unheard by many people who should have known better.

Case in point: East German pianist/composer/arranger Ulrich Gumpert. During the 1970s, as these two exceptional sessions demonstrate, with his small group Synopsis – later renamed Zentralquartett – and his Workshop Band, the Berlin-based pianist was making music that was in many cases superior and definitely equal to any American sounds. Unfortunately Gumpert and his associates labored under a double whammy. Not only were they playing in Europe – which for Yank jazzbos of the time was no more than a destination for out-of-work American legends – but they doing so in the Eastern Block when the Berlin Wall and the Cold War were still part of everyday life.

While it may have been little compensation for his and his bands’ isolation, residing in what then was the other side of the Iron Curtain, meant that earlier than many others, Gumpert and his band mates were able to develop a unique style colored by Teutonic folk music as much as modern jazz. Throughout the three CDs here – recorded in 1974, 1978 and 1979 – especially in the later large ensemble sets, the influence of Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk and especially Charles Mingus is evident. But so too are sonic memories related to the Prussian marches, Germanic hymns. pumping dance tunes and pastoral folk ditties that were part of everyday pre-and-post-war East Germany.

Organizationally, another parallel is noticeable, in particular on Auf der Elbe schwimmt ein rosa Krokodil, the earliest session. Like pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, contrasting icons of the ICP Orchestra, Gumpert here is the cool theorizer and conceptualist, while self-described Saxon percussionist Günter “Baby” Sommer animates the proceedings, as well as disrupting them as often as he can.

A tune like “Mehr aus teutschen landen” on the quartet CD for instance, begins with reflective passing chords from Gumpert, but is soon splintered asunder by Sommer’s insistence on activating a jungle-rhythm-affiliated beat. When that interpolation is superseded by a syncopated folk melody, that riff is equally subsumed by emboldened spectrofluctuation and Aylerian screeches from saxophonist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and capillary tremolo braying from trombonist Conrad Bauer. Eventually, as the drummer bluntly mix-mastering the beat you’re not sure whether you’re hearing a cha cha, a tango, a polka or a beer-hall anthem. Rallying with kinetic dynamics, Gumpert rescues the tune from tumbling into serious musical kitsch before the finale, but not before Sommer beats out a burlesque march rhythm.

Musical bags of tricks are opened up and scattered through the track on the 16½-minute “Krisis eines krokodils”, a group instant composition, as well. For instance, plunger trombone neighs and reverberating cymbal patterns are only countered by Gumpert’s formalistic chording of “Chopsticks” – albeit “Chopsticks” with key fanning and presto soundboard echoes – until the mock processional theme is further disrupted by growls and slurs from Bauer plus aviary squeals and wide, granulated atonal cries from Petrowsky. Sommer’s irregular beat-mongering and Gumpert’s keyboard pitter-patting eventually reach a tandem concordance, the better to accompany unexpected harmonic blending from the horns, as gorgeous as if it was being sung by two choristers. Unison recapping of the initial theme ends the piece on a high note, although Bauer can’t resist a pen-ultimate snort or Sommer a conclusive roll.

Four and five years later an additional four voices give Gumpert and the others supplementary textures and colors that are utilized with brio in live performances. Especially valuable is the thumping and walking bottom provided by bassist Klaus Koch (1936-2000), who for a time replaced Bauer in Synopsis. Overall though, the solos, compositions and band performance on both volumes of the collection are of such high standard that’s it’s difficult to rank any single track as more exceptional than others.

That said, a piece like “Aus Baby’s Wunderhorn /‘N Tango Für Gitti” on the first CD proves that Sommer – who composed the tune – was as familiar with musical mash-ups as the pianist. Here bell-ringing from the drummer and feverish piano slaps define the theme after a full-orchestra introduction is conveyed on wavering and hocketing chords. Evolving chromatically with stop-time episodes, the tune later makes room for irregular vibrato and altissimo timbres from Petrowsky. Further on, an unaccompanied broken-octave romp from Bauer introduces the tango that sounds more Arabic than Argentinean and is refined under swelling peeps and split tones from the reeds.

Massed contrapuntal vamps from different orchestral sections characterize “Auf Der Elbe Schwimmt Ein Rosa”, as well. Swarming along on polyphonic piano key sweeps and Klaus’ walking bass, the track’s pulse is measured and chromatic at the same time. Humorously, Swing Era-novelty bands appear to be saluted in some of the solos to the same extent as Mingus’ and Monk’s large group extensions. Tenor saxophonist Iri Anonow for instance, builds solos from stop-time “nyah-nyah”s, plus cries, whistles and irregular bar jumps when he plays. Meantime, whoever plays the alto saxophone line advances it mercurially and declaratory; Heinz Becker’s trumpeting is suitably clean and legato; while the drums clink and clank; and piano chording turn from stately to splintering. With the layered textures concentrated in the composition’s final, super-speedy variant, the repeated tutti riffs are finally cut off by a Count Basie-like plink from Gumpert.

It’s more of the same on the Workshop Band’s second CD, recorded one year later, with Helmut Forsthoff in for Antonow. The ensemble’s eighth member is alto and tenor saxophonist Manfred Hering, though the supposition is that the alto solos are by Petrowsky.

Sardonically original, some pieces on the disc manage to shoehorn Germanic marches as often as big band swing into the performances. More interesting are “Blau Blusen Blues” and “Hilferuf einer Schneck”. The later manages to find room for atmospheric cymbal echoes, gong resonation and yodeling from Sommer – who composed the tune – with Ziggy Elman-like lead trumpeting plus barnyard sonic approximations from the brass and harsh split-tone cries and tongue slaps from the reeds. As the trumpeter and trombonist whiz by with arching triplet slurs, Sommer smacks and drags beats from his kit and Gumpert dynamically fans the keys so that the resulting portamento link chromatically prods the piece forward. Following staccatissimo horn action, pitched well above normal range, the reeds continuous repeat a distinct and newer leitmotif as the pianist softens his touch for a climatic summation.

“Blau Blusen Blues” is a Bauer-composed blues where Basie-like keyboard comping, Koch’s walking bass and typically boppish ching-ching cymbal pulses from Sommer confirm its links to the tradition. For contrast however, on top of inchoate pulses from the horns, Gumpert transforms metronomic tinkles to downward stair-step runs and Petrowsky extends his biting multiphonics with chirps and glottal punctuation. Stop-time, the circling horns then reach a crescendo of connected timbres with Mingus-influenced orchestral vamps and flutters. A glissando from the pianist wraps up the performance.

Too many listeners missed out on these first-class discs first time out. Those that didn’t will want to hear them again. Everyone benefits.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 070-01: 1. Marsch Marsch 2. Königskindisch 3a. Aus Baby’s Wunderhorn 3b ‘N Tango Für Gitti 4. Auf Der Elbe Schwimmt Ein Rosa Krokodil 5 Jubilee Suite 070-02: 1. Hahnenkopf 2. Septettfragment 3.Blau Blusen Blues 4. Echos von Karolinenhof 5. Hilferuf einer Schneck

Personnel: Heinz Becker (trumpet and flugelhorn); Conrad Bauer (trombone); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (soprano and alto saxophones and clarinet); Manfred Hering (alto and tenor saxophones); Iri Antonow [070-01] or Helmut Forsthoff [070-02]) (tenor saxophone; Ulrich Gumpert (piano); Klaus Koch (bass) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums)

Track Listing: Auf: 1. Krisis eines krokodils 2. Zweisam 3. Auf der Elbe schwimmt ein rosa krokodil 4. Petting zu “Take IV” 5. Take IV 6. Mehr aus teutschen landen

Personnel: Auf: Conrad Bauer (trombone); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (alto saxophone, clarinet and flutes); Ulrich Gumpert (piano) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums, percussion and mouth-harp)

January 7, 2009

Zentralquartett

11 songs - Aus teutschen landen
Intakt

By Ken Waxman
May 30, 2006

Probably the most innovative band to arise from the German Democratic Republic – that is the former East Germany – members of Zentralquartett dealt with unique circumstances before the Berlin Wall fell. Although operating in a pseudo-Stalinist culture that promoted so-called Socialist Realism, the band had government support as often as repression, since jazz was as seen as both anti-racist and as a slap at nationalism with its Nazi-era echoes.

Today the musicians – pianist Ulrich Gumpert, drummer Gunter “Baby” Sommer, reedist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and trombonist Conrad Bauer – are merely four more veteran German improvisers, with a bit of outsider cred. Yet this exceptional, fast-moving CD confirms that these Easterners still think – and play – differently than their more prosperous West German associates.

Musicologist Mike Heffley has written that since East Germans were less guilt-ridden about German history, a Teutonic strain – a variation of East German blues – plus old Germanic hymns were used as a basis for improvisation, a genre that was ignored and self-suppressed by West Germans. Distinctively, 11 songs - Aus teutschen landen is firmly in that inimitable tradition.

In fact, the volkslider that form the basis of these outstanding improvisations have melodies that go as far back as the 15th Century and were mostly collected in the mid-19th century from folk sources as part of German self-realization. On one level, consecrating an entire disc to these tunes is the equivalent of a modern American jazz band releasing a CD totally made up of Stephen Foster’s ante-bellum plantation songs. Of course knowing the sarcastic tendencies of Zentralquartett – note its mocking, pseudo-official name – it’s very likely that the members’ faces were anything but straight as they played these hoary ditties that are aus teutschen landen or “from German lands”.

Considering that these tunes were initially adopted and adapted by such self-consciously Germanic artists as Bach, Heine, Goethe and Brahms confirms their historic and kitsch potential. But Zentralquartett – like Thelonious Monk among others – is able to transmogrify the compositions into impressive improv – pulling the stuffings out of them without negating their underlying folkloric charm.

Much of this alchemy relates to the arrangements of Gumpert, who does such a bang-up job, that he manages to slip two of his own originals into the mix without the casual listener noticing. One, “Der alte thüringer”, is the lead track, and its hocketing development from simple folk ballad to cacophonous cartoon music mocks and celebrates what follows it perfectly. Beginning with a simple chord progression, the fanciful theme comes in-and-out-of focus as the pianist sounds high-frequency staccato arpeggios; the alto saxophonist assays contrapuntal split tones; the trombonist puffs out plunger expansions; and the drummer highlights rebounds, ruffs and a final press roll.

Transformation also affects 16th Century ditties like “Dat du min leevsten büst” and “Der maie, der maie”. The former takes on a drunken Second Line, marching band flavor courtesy of a rubato expansion of the melody from Bauer with splayed low notes and double tonguing – plus gospel-like chords from the pianist and contrapuntal effects from Petrowsky. As for the later, a round from 1550, it features Native Indian-style drumming mixed with a martial beat, as the vocalizing horns produce slithering textures that encompass broken octave counterlines. The tune concludes with trilling reed sighs plus pussy cat yowling and growling from the trombonist.

Zentralquartett can make a peasant dance tune from 16th Century sound like early Dixieland with barnyard and jungle effects that are helped immeasurably by Bauer’s smeary gutbucket approximations; or it can take a folk melody originally arranged by Brahms and transform it into an Ellington-styled ballad with Petrowsky’s smooth sax obbligatos replicating Johnny Hodges’ mellow tone. One hoary volkslider undergoes so much of a logical conversion that before Sommer uses it to demonstrate his skills rattling wooden bones and drum stick nerve beats, it appears to demonstrate how an oomph-pah-pah band would sound if its members were conversant with Albert Ayler’s mile-wide multiphonics.

Gumpert gets his showcase on “Kommt, ihr G'spielen”, an ancient Thuringian summer song, which he treats as if it is a close cousin of “Round Midnight” and “Mood Indigo”. Making references to the Monkish and Ducal cannons, his sensitive, yet bravura interpretation stretches the melody to bursting. Midway through, he proceeds to rupture it with gospelish chording. Expanded with a vigorous, almost rock’n’roll beat, his penetrating re-orchestration is complemented by Sommer’s ruffs and flams and Petrowsky’s buzz-saw saxophone split tones, leaving Bauer to double-tongue the original melody.

Capitalism’s insistence on survival of the fittest has replaced state support as the model for artists in the former East Germany, with Gumpert and Petrowsky now mostly confined to playing locally, Sommer to teaching gigs and European tours and only Bauer an international jazz festival fixture.

Almost without argument, 11 songs - Aus teutschen landen proves that Zentralquartett’s mixture of humor, bop, free-playing and Teutonic roots is without parallel. But does the globalized European Union – and its international music scene, jazz and improv divisions – still have a place for old-time, irreverent players like these? We can only hope so.

May 30, 2006

Northern Sun, Southern Moon, Europe’s Reinvention of Jazz

By Mike Heffley
Yale University Press

By Ken Waxman
July 23, 2005

Gifted with an imaginative thesis – the migration of innovative free music from the African-American community of the United States and its adoption and mutation by Europeans – Mike Heffley’s book encompasses interviews, analysis, musicology and philosophical concepts. Unfortunately, the academic emphasis makes some of it a hard slog for the lay reader. Often non-linear, as benefits a book on Free Jazz, the narrative is so discursive at points that it resembles those John Coltrane solos where the variations so outdistanced the theme as to almost make the head an afterthought.

Heffley, who has a PhD in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, has over the past quarter-century worked as a writer and editor – his previous (1996) book was The Music of Anthony Braxton – as an educator, teaching both music and creative writing, and as an improvising trombonist, most prominently with Braxton.

Northern Sun, Southern Moon is the first comprehensive English language study of what Heffley terms Euro Jazz’s Emanzipation; the period after 1960s when local jazz musicians went beyond the previously paramount American influence to shake off centuries of Western music conventions and create unique sounds. As French, bassist Didier Levallet says: “With the advent of free jazz the breakdown of forms believed to be eternal opened the door to all possibilities … the lesson the ‘new music’ taught us was to finally become ourselves”. Taking his cues from psychiatry and sociology as well as musicology, Heffley describes the change as empowerment or more theatrically “kill the fathers”.

Although the book’s subtitle is Europe’s Reinvention of Jazz, the author’s attention is more focused. While he devotes some space to innovations in the rest of Europe, including the former Eastern Bloc, his concentration is on Germany, both its western, and – most definitely before the fall of the Berlin Wall – its eastern section. Described by some as a Utopia of Free Jazz, Germany was where entire Outside Music festivals flourished while even individual concerts were sparsely attended elsewhere in Europe.

A series of socio-political considerations were responsible for this situation, explains Heffley, who intertwines the growth of the seminal Free Jazz label FMP plus mini-portraits of about a dozen or so pioneering Free Jazzers to make his point. According to his thesis – which is buttressed or diverted by secondary information, so frequently do multiple footnotes decorate these pages – Germany, at least since J.S. Bach, has been the centre of Europe, and thus of contemporary serious music.

Brushing off the assertion that one Free Jazz centre, Germany’s Ruhr Valley region, was with its agricultural economy and peasant population “something like the American South”, he’s on firmer ground when he points out that African-American saxophone and brass traditions that fed directly to jazz – and gave German musicians a base against which to rebel – itself grew out of the brass bands prominent in the U.S. before the beginning of the 20th century. Fascinatingly, the loudest and most accomplished players then were of German origin, he states.

After the Second World War, when Nazi xenophobia tainted previously glorified Teutonic music associations, the German tradition of self-criticism dating back to Goethe found an outlet in improvised sounds. Simultaneously a strain of anti-Americanism, which reached a pitch in the 1968 leftist student uprising throughout the continent, and especially in Germany, solidified this focus on distinctive Free Jazz.

These manifestations took different forms, as his profiles attest. German trombone master Albert Mangelsdorff, for instance, started off as a mainstreamer, and after a free flirtation, has returned to his roots. Pianist Joachim Kühn, whose church musician associated upbringing in Leipzig historically links him to Bach, mixes a strain of romanticism into his work – an outgrowth of a long residency in France. His earliest recorded work bordered on free form and he is the only pianist to have recorded in duo with Free Jazz avatar saxophonist Ornette Coleman. But – and Heffley’s linkages between Bach and Coleman gives weight to this – it’s likely the Texas saxophonist valued Kühn for his non-Free Jazz conception. Certainly most of his other work has bounced among modern New music, jazz-rock and contemporary jazz with so-called classical inferences. Interestingly enough, both Mangelsdorff and Kühn achieved American fame long before any of the others profiled here.

More generic to the tome are the careers of saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and pianist/band leader Alexander von Schlippenbach, who are among the founding fathers of West German Free Jazz. Schlippenbach, like vibist/reedist Günter Hampel, who also figures in the tale, was one of the German hard boppers converted to free sounds in the 1960s; and who has stayed true to them ever since. Spiritual and philosophical, his Globe Unity Orchestra, which has existed on-and-off for three decades, was a non-hierarchical, collective big band dedicated to the universality of Free Music, matching organized arrangements with the talents of Europe’s top improvisers.

With influences ranging from pan-Germanism and other ethnic sounds, contemporary classical echoes and standard jazz – as a pianist Schlippenbach was impressed by Oscar Peterson as well as Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor – the band’s performances and records were as often frustrating as triumphant. Mostly now the pianist concentrates on trio work with British saxophonist Evan Parker among others.

Referring to Brötzmann, Parker has said “… the music [is an] expression of a way of life. On-stage, off-stage, it’s all one thing: an intensity of experience which has to be communicated. Peter embodies that...”

If anyone symbolically couples what the author calls “the barbaric spirit of the Northern forests” that flourished in German pre-history with the unbridled freedom of avant jazz, than it’s the Wuppertal-based saxophonist. Growing up in what was then a small town removed from the action, Brötzmann’s involvement in leftist politics and the Fluxus art movement helped him evolve “a sound so big and dirty that one note implied within it all the notes in the octave”. His first LPs, Machine Gun and For Adolphe Sax, defined his – and many other Continental improvisers’ – go-for-broke, try-anything aesthetic, which in a multitude of settings from solo to big band with fellow international players, he’s maintained until today.

The heart and most fascinating part of the book however, is shaped around telling the back-story of the members of East Berlin’s Zentral Quartet: pianist Ulrich Gumpert, self-described Saxon drummer Gunter “Baby” Sommer, saxophonist Ernst-Ludwig Petrovsky and trombonist Konrad Bauer, who started as a rock singer with a large youth audience which, incredibly, he brought along with him to free music.

Facing a pseudo-Stalinist culture that supported so-called socialist realism like sanctioned Gebraunchmusik or “useful music” over free expression, their situation was much different than that of Free Jazzers in prosperous West Germany. Paradoxically this led to government support as often a repression, since jazz was as often seen as reflecting a cry against racism and decadence, with its Nazi era echoes. Fittingly, Heffley explores the pre-free roots of East German jazz in comprehensive details, mentioning almost-forgotten gigs, LPs, band leaders, art, literary and threatre influences and visionary soloists.

“East Germans were not only less worried about being seen as imitators of Americans, they were also less guilt-ridden about their own German history,” he writes. When translated into free music, this added a Teutonic strain – a variation of East German blues – “Afro-Slavic soulmating” plus a use of old Germanic hymns as a basis for improvisation – that had been ignored and self-suppressed by West Germans. With visits by Western players and East-West collaborations more common, regular concerts broadcast on the state-supported radio networks and series of East German LPs on FMP available, East German musicians’ profiles rose. Acclaim and steady work, first in Eastern Bloc countries, then West Germany and the rest of Europe eventually appeared.

Although theoretical Gumpert states “for me there is no such thing as GDR [German Democratic Republic i.e. East Germany] jazz” the situation for free jazzers in the GDR changed with unification. With Western commerce in all its manifestations replacing state support, Gumpert and Petrovsky, the later of whom said ironically before the fall of the Berlin wall that jazz musicians “didn’t have enough problems”, are now often mere jobbing musicians, the later concertizing with his pop-jazz-gospel singing wife. Sommer has a teaching position and often tours, whereas Bauer is a festival fixture throughout Europe and North America.

“It does seem clear that Petrovsky and Gumpert enjoyed relatively more fulfillment than frustration of their gifts in the GDR, that Sommer and Bauer were more chafers at the bit, and that the latter are having an easier time of it now that the bit is removed”, Heffley notes.

Leaving aside this important reportage and analysis, the rest of Northern Sun, Southern Moon, links to earlier sections and becomes progressively more theoretical and academic. Seemingly intent on wrapping every musical current into the volume, Heffley uses German bassist Peter Kowald’s many international musical alliances as the lead-in to a necessarily cursory discussion of non-Western improv and its links to earlier Western music. “It seemed to me that the more people try to make something that is new to them, the further back they go into the depths of time, to the old, in their own sphere”, he writes. This theory however, sounds like it could be the basis for an entire other volume of work.

Like Petrovsky and Gumpert in their milieu, it appears that the author has “relatively more fulfillment than frustration of [his] gifts” when writing about the GDR than the twists and turns of Free Jazz as part of the global commercial music business.

Additionally a thickset of charts, graphs and tables begins haunting the pages around this time. Earlier on, and in these sections, his discursive detours into historical, social, political and cultural contexts of the music slows down the narrative, and as the chapters unroll the non-specialist begins to feel guilty for not possessing a thorough knowledge of the theories of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin among many others. Especially in the expository, rather than the descriptive sections, Heffley sometimes falls prey to cumbersome overwriting. For instance, one obtruding run-on sentence is 138 words [!] in length. Furthermore words like “hetarchy”, “individuation” and “liberatory” aren’t in most persons’ vocabularies. Conversely, although at times they distract from the narrative, Heffley’s minute analysis of important Free Jazz sessions adds to the significance of this volume.

At his best – when dealing with German free music – Heffley has produced a ground-breaking and insightful volume. Non-specialists may wish however, that there wasn’t so much rococo decoration around its solid core.

July 25, 2005

BAUER/GUMPERT/PETROWASKY/SOMMER

Zentralquartett
Intakt CD 069

Saying this is an outstanding disc by an all star group of East German improvisers may sound like faint praise to the American-centred jazz world. But in truth, just as the music long ago became a universal language, so its major practitioners are no longer born under The Star Spangled Banner.

East German jazz may still sound like an oxymoron, when the average Westerner identifies the former German Democratic Republic with the Berlin wall and a bleak and isolated neo-Stalinist regime. But implicit in the former Socialist state was government support for conservatories and small clubs that gave musicians of all stripes a place to play.

Over the years as well, East German improvisers like these gravitated towards the free music that allowed them to play without symbolically having American models standing on their shoulders. Anyone hearing this disc, initially recorded in 1990, will concede that more than a decade ago, each man had forged a unique, individual style that takes second place to no other practitioner. Not only that, but the tunes speed along with the sort of rhythm that would give them clear sailing on an autobahn or a place in the books of any post-bopper or soul-jazzman like Cannonball Adderley.

Long time EuroImprov followers will no doubt recognize trombonist Conrad Bauer for the time he spent in the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the unique Doppelmoppel quartet he leads with another trombonist and two guitarists. Percussionist Günter Sommer has, over the years, partnered such folk as American trumpeter Leo Smith, Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer and German bassist Peter Kowald. Oldest of the bunch -- born in 1933 -- reedist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky put in decades of experience with George Gruntz's Concert Jazz Band and the Globe Unity Orchestra. All three also worked extensively in groups led by the band's fourth member, pianist/composer Ulrich Gumpert.

Judging from Gumpert's writing, somehow a classically-trained German born in Jena in 1945 has managed to internalize the blues notes and gospel feeling that's supposed to be an American's birthright. Among his non-Teutonic playing partners have been British drummer Tony Oxley and American saxophonist Steve Lacy.

At the same time, the bouncy, swinging melodies that make up most of this disc could be termed avant garde by only the most hidebound neo con. More than just heads to blow on, these tunes have definite beginnings, ends and middles, challenging the soloists while they have fun playing them.

Bauer's "Sitz-und Auf Stück" for instance, has a theme that sounds like a lost Thelonious Monk number, and which contrasts long-limbed trombone smears with conga drumming, bird whistles and kazoo sounds from Sommer. At one point Petrowsky brings out his airy classical flute, but mostly he sticks to an aviary-high saxophone tone that appears to be one part Charlie Parker to two parts Ornette Coleman. On Gumpert's out-and-out rocker "Der alte Göttinger", however, the saxophonist produces some Earl Bostic-style intonation, while Bauer's blats and snorts extends 1960s New Thing slide rules, and the pianist pumps out a steady shuffle rhythm.

On "Hit Piece No. 8" the four come out with a rollicking foot tapper that sounds as if all it needs is a vocal from Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson to literally live up to the title. Gumpert's asides constantly shift from gospel lines to blues riffs to pounding stride excursions, keeping the beat moving along with Sommer as the two horns explore the upper registers before unveiling some double time riffing.

"Advent" is more of the same, combining all the best elements of the Bo Diddley beat, Ray Charles' gospelish blues and take-no-prisoners energy music, while "Synoposis" lets the pianist explore his free side with darting right handed keyboard feints, repetitions and a piledriver attack.

Finally, the entente between the sacred and the profane reaches its apogee on the appropriately titled "Hymnus 3", where Gumpert's quasi-impressionistic intro soon morph into him pumping out churchy chords as Bauer's revival meeting 'bone blasts are partnered by Petrowsky's altissimo saxophone flights.

East German jazz should never sound like an odd or lesser description after hearing this CD. Find out for yourself.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Synopsis 2. Advent 3. Hit Piece No. 8 4. Sitz-und Auf Stück 5. Der alte Göttinger 6. Ohne Illusion 7. Fischlandlied 8. Hymnus 3 9. Der Angenehme diser Welt

Personnel: Conrad Bauer (trombone); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (alto saxophone, clarinet, flute); Ulrich Gumpert (piano); Günter Sommer (drums, percussion)

October 8, 2001