Sonic Geography: Mulhouse, France

For MusicWorks Issue #101
BY KEN WAXMAN

During late August when some streets in Mulhouse, France take on a decidedly other-directed character associated with the Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) festival, it’s likely neither visitors nor locals realize the symbolic roots of the celebration, an integral part of the city since 1983.

Known as France’s Manchester, industry in this city of about 112,000 people in the Haut-Rhin region has been involved with the textile industry since 1746, when four locals founded the city’s first textile printing works. Annexed by France in 1798, Mulhouse was formerly a free republic associated with the Swiss Confederation. In the late 19th and early 20th century Mulhouse’s factories remained world leaders in the manufacture and marketing of printed cloth for both home and apparel, while students from around the world studied at the École nationale superieure des industries textiles.

Over the centuries the city also established enduring links with New Orleans, main port of Louisiana, from where cotton for its textile factories was imported. Isn’t it appropriate then, that one of Europe’s most sophisticated improvised music festivals should have this long-time attachment to the purported cradle of jazz?

Not that there’s any sort of languid Crescent City feel to this city, 30 kilometres northwest of Basel, Switzerland. Its distinctiveness comes from being a French city in close proximity to Germany and Switzerland. Annexed by Germany following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1918) and from 1940-1945, there’s a Teutonic bustle in the streets and a few restaurants where German-styled dishes such as baeckeoffe, meats simmered in wine, markknepfle, sausages with potatoes and spätzle noodles are available. Additionally, there’s that Swiss connection, and not just from visitors. As Adrien Chiquet, JAM’s artistic director notes: “The specificity of Mulhouse is that part of the supposed middle class works in Switzerland and earns a lot of money.”

This money means that Mulhouse is able to support artistic endeavors such as the Musée de l'Impression sur Étoffes (printed textiles) and the Musée National de l'Automobile de Mulhouse, initially located within a textile mill. There’s also La Filature, the theatre/opera house, which is dark throughout August.

In contrast, during JAM, day-time concerts take place in the austere 12th Century Chapelle St. Jean, midtown, and at night at Le Noumatrouff, an expansive rock club in the suburbs, next to the tram terminus. “Even if Le Noumatrouff is not so comfortable, it’s more appropriate for what I want to do,” confides Chiquet. “Free-Music has more to do with punk venues than opera houses.”

Considering that JAM now hosts rock-improv, and electronica as well as acoustic Free Music, proves his point. In 2007, for instance, the rock-influenced Alsacienne duo Donkey Monkey and the Basque punk-improv Billy Boa trio were featured along with improvisers such as computer manipulator Thomas Lehn, saxophonist Evan Parker and pianist Irène Schweizer. The affiliated Jazz en ville/À La Campage concerts earlier in August are more conventional. This reflects the festival’s origins as a standard summer jazz fest, which as recently as 1990 featured boppers such as flugelhornist Art Farmer. The improv concentration occurred two years later when founding artistic director Paul Kanitzer gave up direction of the cultural center to concentrate on JAM.

It’s not as if there are many well-known musicians of any stripe living in the area. Although since the Beatles-era there has been a militant alternative rock scene – witness the airport hanger-like size of Le Noumatrouff – but with larger cities like Basel and Strasbourg, France nearby, committed professional musicians move on. Rather than a musician, probably the most famous Mulhouse native was Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), the French army captain whose trumped-up treason conviction exposed the country’s latent anti-Semitism.

Still, JAM tries to encourage appreciation for music in the area. Over the years concerts have been held on the streets, in bars and shops and in 2006, even at the Bains Municipaux, with a multi-media soiree fluid including videos, dance, and an electro-acoustic group led by Parker.

Off season JAM also co-presents improv-rock and electronica concerts, organizes electronic music workshops and sponsors a year-long series at the Mulhouse conservatory where visiting improvisers work with music students and non-professionals. During the festival young players come from all over – about 30 per cent of them locals, estimates Chiquet – to participate in intensive improvisational workshops, which in 2007 were directed by Parker, pianist Sophie Agnel and guitarist Noël Akchoté. The previous year sound designer Jérôme Noetinger led similar workshops.

Expressing a profound improv ethos, Chiquet sees the expansion of local musical activities as the workshops’ and the festival’s underlying objective “I think that 35 years of creative music in Mulhouse – because of Paul Kanitzer’s activity – has produced a lot of musicians here even if, in the end, they don't play ‘improvised music’ but turn to rock, jazz, singing, electro, etc.” he affirms.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ken Waxman (www.jazzword.com) writes in Toronto and internationally about jazz and improvised music. This is another of his reports on the sonic geography of selected European cities.

July 2, 2008

Jazz à Mulhouse gives a loving French kiss to Improvised music

By Ken Waxman
For CODA Issue 337

Impressive saxophone and reed displays were the focus of the 24th Edition of Jazz à Mulhouse in France in late August. Overall however, most of the 19 performances maintained a constant high quality. This may have something to do with the fact that unlike larger, flashier and more commercial festivals, Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) is an almost folksy showcase for improvisation.

Located less than 20 minutes away by train from Basel, Switzerland, Mulhouse is a mid-sized city of 150,000 in eastern France long known as an industrial textile centre. Low-key, JAM is rather like the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), with better restaurants.

Except for an opening concert by French guitarist Noël Akchoté, which this year was in a crowded downtown club that looks as if its standard fare is pop chansonniers, all other shows take place in two wildly dissimilar venues. The mid-day solo piano series is showcased in the acoustically austere Chapelle St. Jean. Located in mid-town, it’s a 12th Century stone church with vaulted ceilings, bas-reliefs at eye level and two gigantic sun dials, high up on opposite walls facing the stage.

In late afternoon, a JAM-organized free shuttle bus takes the audience out to the suburbs near the streetcar terminus for evening shows at the Noumatrouff, an expansive, hanger-like space that is usually a rock club, complete with grungy washrooms and a beer tent. With a two-hour gap between early-and-late performances, audience members mix, mingle, chat, chow down on their own food or what’s available from a couple of vendors, and sample the local beer.

What follows is a selection of most of the festivals highlights, with mention of a few less-than-stellar performances.

Disappointedly in fact, Akchoté opened the festivities with a nearly listless solo set that skirted shoe-gazing pop jazz. The Swiss Lucien Dubois trio which preceded him, featured a break-dancing drummer, a bass guitarist warbling lachrymose ballads and was only notable for the leader’s reed prowess..

In the piano series, Belgium’s Fred Van Hove and Switzerland’s Irène Schweizer represent the first generation of Euro improvisers and France’s Frédéric Blondy and Sophie Agnel the contemporary ones. With his waves of long white hair Van Hover, 70, resembles a caricature of a 19th Century classical virtuoso and his playing seemed to reflect this. Concentrating on easy-flowing glissandi and heavy-handed echoing timbres he created a waterfall of upwards pitched timbres with dense centres that were then smoothed down into sharp individual notes. Without using the pedals he exposed low frequency percussive rhythms that literally made audience members jump, then concluded with a calmer theme variation.

Harder and faster in execution, Schweizer’s recital exposed a cyclone of sharp note-twisting vamps that slithered between very low and very high pitches with references to classical music appearing and vanishing in seconds, plus slapped keys and subterranean pitches reminiscent of Herbie Nichols. Schweizer’s heightened rhythmic sense came through even when she used mallets to poke at the piano’s innards. With a continuous ostinato, her solo was more jazz-like than Van Hove’s, quoting “Blue Monk” and what sounded like “Prelude to a Kiss”. Despite her 10-finger flourishes, she telescoped variations so that the piece’s head was recapped before the end.

After a vigorous late-night concert the day before with fellow Gallic improvisers cellist Martine Altenburger and saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, Blondy spent the first part of his recital exploring the nooks and crannies of his piano. With a mallet, a small cymbal and other implements he yanked buzzes, squeaks, pings and whistles from the strings. On the keys, he sometimes sounded like a combination of David Tudor and Knuckles O’Toole; on one hand creating high-frequency glissandi and suspended tones, and on the other alluding to “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Mumbling to himself and pulling faces while he played, Blondy’s frenzied key slashes, flying fingers and full forearm smacks led to an encore where his body language seemed to suggest that by nearly smothering the keyboard he could impale himself onto the sharp notes created.

A day earlier Angel, who along with Akchoté and British saxophonist Evan Parker, spent the week guiding and rehearsing separate student ensembles, was calmer than Blondy. More stately and sombre in her presentation than the other three pianists, much of her improvising focused on bottoming ostinatos and ricocheting timbres, as well as voicings that involved the piano’s wood as well as its keys. Paper clips, hard rubber balls and other objects were adhered to the piano strings before she began. During the course of her performance she would pluck a key then immediately stop it with a tool; create a series of lyrical patterns on top of vibrating drones, or wet her fingers with her tongue and apply those fingers to the piano strings. Climatic passages used the pressure of both hands to create throbbing, buzzing notes which worked their way into additional furtive arpeggios.

Masterful saxophone stylists were as well represented as keyboardists. Notable sets included one from British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant – with two unheralded but masterful French Free Jazz practitioners: bassist Benjamin Duboc and sensitive percussionist Didier Lasserre – who could be termed the discovery of the festival for a North American; Swiss soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, whose sparse adaptive unity with French pianist Jacques Demierre and long-time American expatriate in France bassist Barre Philips set a high standard for chamber improv; alto and soprano saxophonist Gauguet; and an utterly time-suspending set from Parker’s long-time British trio of drummer Paul Lytton and bassist Barry Guy augmented by Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández.

With Blondy in full Jerry Lee Lewis-like pounding form and Gauguet, a breath-machine using every variety of extended reed techniques plus altering his sound by pressing his bell against a pant leg or swaddling it in tin foil, it was Altenburger who provided lyrical, yet perfectly in-synch connective passages. More admirable than congenial, the overall impression the trio’s set left was that some levity would improve this impressive chops showcase.

Chant’s pant leg was also put to good use during a few of his bubbling, note-stretching solos as well. But his output of small gestures and concise tones plus the powerful thwacks and plucks of Duboc’s tuning-peg-to-spike and sensitive double-bow exhibitions were subtly overshadowed by Lasserre’s bravura percussion skills. Missing no necessary sonic despite using a miniature kit of one bass drum, one snare and one cymbal, Lasserre unveiled squeaks, pats and silences with his bare hands and a variety of mallets and sticks for a cross section of discordant yet complementary tones. Other praiseworthy percussionists were the expected – Lytton with Parker and long-time Free Jazzer German Paul Lovens in his two appearances – and the unexpected: Japan’s Makoto Sato, with his soft mallets and Butoh dancer cool. Unfortunately Sato was part of the Marteau Rouge trio, whose guitarist and synthesizer player’s droning jams and amp sludge were more appropriate for ProgRock freak-outs circa 1967 then a 2007 jazz festival.

Polyphonically connective, the Leimgruber/Demierre/Phillips set was probably the festival’s most unpremeditatedly visual. It featured the saxophonist slowly disassembling his tenor saxophone and methodically twisting and blowing through different parts; Phillips sawing on his bass’ shoulder with his bow and playing so passionately that the bow’s horsehair streamed; and Demierre’s jack-in-the-box leaps and elbow-on-the keys emphasis. Additionally, the pianist pumped out stubby contrapuntal lines and buzzy soundboard textures, perfect accompaniment for the saxophonist’s pseudo duck calls and animated circular breathing.

Climax of the festival was literally its finale, an intense, nearly 90-minute set by Parker, Guy, Lytton and Fernández. An exercise in controlled brutality, the surges of sound unified during three extended improvisations, which despite the breadth of technique on display found the four operating like a well-coordinated assembly line, with motifs and themes passed from one to another.

This was in sharp contrast to the Charles Gayle trio set that preceded it. Now exclusively playing alto saxophone, Gayle still overblows his characteristic squalls, squeaks and screams, alternately altissimo and with fog-horn-like echoes. But despite excursions to the piano where he seemed to delight in producing dissonant Monkish runs, and donning the slouch hat and clown’s red nose of his “Streets” character as he tried out Stride riffs, something was lacking. Perhaps it was because British drummer Mark Sanders was in the rhythm section along with Gayle’s regular bassist Gerald Benson. The disparity between the bassist’s low-key swipes and the drummer’s harder and thicker tones was obvious. Obviously uncomfortable Gayle’s attempted to solder this disconnect by animatedly barking out command and counting out “Giant Steps” with foot stomps before trading fours with the drummer.

Back to the Parker crew: whether it was the unseasonable heat in the auditorium, the late hour, or the privilege of watching master stylists at work, but most audience members stayed hushed – nearly mesmerized – during the proceeding. Aloof, Lytton busied himself displaying and manipulating various parts of his stripped-down kit; banging small hard objects on top of his cymbals when the mood struck; resonating woody tones other times, and massaging rhythmic surfaces with his palms and a variety of implements. Athletic and limber, Guy appears to have the ability to produce sounds from both the front and back of his bass, no matter where the strings are located. Not only did he slip, strike and slide along his strings, but he also shook the instrument itself, gathered its strings together for massive plucks and multiplied the available textures with two bows vibrating among the strings, plus thwacking on the string set with what appeared to be a drum stick.

Although Spanish, Fernández often applied body English to his arpeggios and chords and moved his arms crab-like across the keyboard. At one point he bounded from the piano bench to trap high-frequency tinkles at the top of the soundboard, then manually manipulated the string’ speaking length. At times he seems to be karate-chopping the keys into submission. This physicality was usually complemented by Guy smacking and tapping his strings at his bass’s southern portion beneath the bridge and Lytton creating a cluster of cymbal reverb.

Initially tongue-slapping and twittering long sweeping lines so that his soprano saxophone sounded like a piccolo, Parker filled his solos with circular breathing, verbalized honks and shouts. Always in control, his nearly endless streams of intense vibrated notes didn’t vary as he remained rooted on one spot while playing.

Other groups that made impressions earlier on, ranged from the gargantuan to the diminutive. In the first category was the 22-piece Lille (France)-based La Pieuvre band, the members of which were lead in a conduction by Oliver Benoit. The many-armed group, (“Octopus” in English) smeared and rappelled through accelerating crescendos, dark, dramatic pauses and a fog of buzzing and blowing. With blustering brass solos and a collective improvisation for its saxophone section, at time the Octopus seemed to suck all oxygen from the room.

Also notable were two duos: Kiff Kiff from Lyon, France and Germans Lehn/Lovens. Trombonist Alain Gibert and his son, bass clarinetist Clément, who are Kiff Kiff, played for the most part airy, “folkloric” tunes – sometimes with words – that brought to mind the original Jimmy Giuffre3. Nevertheless there was nothing effete about the improvisations, since when he wanted to, the older Gibert produced a roistering gutbucket tone, and the younger paid homage to Eric Dolphy in many of his solos. Still among five days of more-or-less “out” music, Kiff Kiff’s lightly rhythmic melodies probably sounded more Mainstream then they are.

No one could confuse the agitated improvising of drummer Paul Lovens and analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn with the Mainstream. A former pianist, Lehn uses his electronic instrument like a keyboard and lunges, swivels and sways as he plays. Divorced from too-clean electronic signals, his old-fashioned synth quacked like Donald Duck, expelled trumpet-like spetrofluctuation, buzzed, clinked and clanked.

Meantime Lovens – who the day before had a busier interaction with French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Anerican-born, German-resident vocalist Lauren Newton in a set that didn’t seem to gel – appeared more relaxed with Lehn and his playing more commanding. A photo of Lehn with his white shirt and narrow black tie, was prominently featured on the JAM program and posters and he wore this nearly traded-marked outfit each time he was on stage. With Lehn, whose input-output interface and triggered pulses were warm and humanistic, Lovens used a combination of single strokes and connective rhythms to cement moods..

The percussionist rubbed his snare top as Lehn plucked chords from his sythn, and hit his attached cymbals vertically and horizontally while sometimes spinning smaller, unattached others. A common trope was scraping a vertical drum stick on the ride cymbal creating a tone as constant as, but less irritating than, chalk on a blackboard. Textures from Lovens’ wood block were often exposed as were thumps from his bass drum. Overall, this unshowy exhibition of sensitive percussion styling was a festival trait he shared with Lytton, Lasserre and Sato.

A focus on music-making, not crowd pandering is what sets apart Jazz à Mulhouse from more commercial festivals Still, there was enough high quality audience-pleasing music to explain the respect it engenders.

January 9, 2008

Irène Schweizer

First Choice: Piano Solo KKL Luzern
Intakt CD 108

Not altering her style one whit despite the location, Irène Schweizer, Switzerland’s pre-eminent improvising pianist, confirms her skills as a player, composer and interpreter on this CD, recorded live at Lucerne’s classical music concert hall whose initials are KKL.

Encompassing child-like fantasias, fortissimo slides and breaks plus internal string manipulated with mallets and toys, Schweizer’s seven pieces range across South African highlife dances, atonal European experimental timbres, and American blues and boogie woogie. During one number she effectively mocks the venue’s high culture pretensions by scratching the high gloss varnish of the building’s walls while reverberating bottleneck guitar-like slides with hand-stopped piano strings.

Commencing with an almost 19½-minute improvisation that introduces splayed waterfalls of notes, repetitive right-handed slurs plus vibrant, polyphonic overtones, she interpolates standard jazz licks and kwela references before concluding with passing chords and echoing string clusters.

With her touch thick and syncopated as often as it’s organic and gently balladic, the pianist’s Thelonious Monk-like cadences on one number foreshadow her jaunty, stride infused version of his “Oska T.” – the set’s only non-original – which concludes the official program. “Jungle Beats II”, her encore, is a jumpy and jocular summation of the proceedings, melding jazz’s rubato freedom with the recurring tremolo of South African dance themes.

In the fourth decade of her musical career, the Swiss pianist proves without dispute that a well appointed concert hall is one proper place to hear her music – should she want to play there.

--Ken Waxman

For Whole Note Vol. 12 #3

November 1, 2006

Joëlle Léandre

At The Le Mans Jazz Festival
Leo CD LR 458/459

Versatile French bassist Joëlle Léandre can always be counted upon to be dependable in her contributions to any improvisation as well as flexible in her choice of musical partners.

Starting in the early 1980s, she has performed in Europe, Asia and North America, with improv masters, innovative Free players from different cultures and younger musicians who need more exposure. Recorded during one five-day period, this two-CD set showcases her playing in five different contexts with new and old collaborators and with predictably impressive results.

Interestingly enough, both duets here are with Americans – New York bassist William Parker and Bay area violinist India Cooke, both of whom she has recorded with in the past. Cooke who has played with originals like trombonist George Lewis and Sun Ra brings a certain willowy lyricism to her meeting. Warm, and broad, her fiddle strokes are expansive; she often constructs mini-themes while Léandre provides the technical ballast. Elsewhere, thick double stopping on the Frenchwoman’s part causes Cooke to pick away chromatically or squeeze out spiccato arco lines.

Often working in double counterpoint, the Parker meeting on the other hand, rebounds from technical to folkloric displays and back again. At points mutual multiphonics intersect polyrhythmically, and then split, with one bassist opting for shrill string glissandi and the other for basso, shuffle-bowed vibrations. Adding the instrumental sounds of a whistle to his string-stroking, Parker’s other improvisations move past Afro-American inferences so that the two together suggest the Pan-Asian textures of a pipa and a dizi.

Even more spectacular are the creation of two European aggregations constituted by players with whom Léandre works individually. The quartet completed by Italian trombonist Sebi Tramontana, Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro and German percussionist Paul Lovens is particularly noteworthy. Beyond Lovens’ unerring yet understated sense of time and Tramontana’s homage to early Jazz with gutbucket slurs, it’s Zingaro’s fiddling that defines the collaboration. More tremolo and definitely more formal than Cooke’s technique, his sweeping portamento, double-stopping and contrapuntal associations encourage the bassist to turn irregular string slaps into pedal- point ostinato. Coupled with Lovens’ pin-pointed cymbal maneuvers and intermittent drum patterns, this polyrhythmic interface ties the disparate parts into one pulsating, staccato affiliation.

Partnering another percussionist – Swiss Mark Nauseef who also plays electronics – and German trumpeter Markus Stockhausen, Léandre responds in a contradictory manner. Although both men have connections to contemporary so-called serious music – as does Léandre – her rubber-band-like vibrations and widely space drones guide the others closer to improvisation. Especially problematic are Stockhausen’s weedy muted notes that seem to reflect Miles Davis’ lyricism without his fire.

To counter this shortcoming, the bassist bows warmly and harmonically underneath his elongated grace notes. Stretching out legato patterns that are echoed by the ping of Nauseef’s gongs and the steady clicking and tapping of his electronics, she gets the brassman to slur plunger tones. Genially mocking his legato output, she uses thick string pops plus contrapuntal double stops and vocalization to turn the group improvisation outward.

Vocalization also figures into the remaining match-up with Léandre performing as part of the long-running Les Diaboliques trio with Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer and Scottish vocalist Maggie Nicols. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be one of the band’s better nights. Although the bassist’s col legno squeaks and wood-rending strokes plus the pianist’s sliding glissandi and deliberately raggy syncopation maintain momentum, it’s the singer’s mumbles, lilts and shrills that command centre stage.

Moving between pseudo-Scottish speaking-in-tongues and lyric soprano warbling, Nicols ranges all over the tunes without ever settling into the sort profound onomatopoeia she sometimes spontaneously creates in full flight. Neither Schweitzer’s theatrical low-frequency runs or Léandre’s sul ponticello swells and accompanying vocalization keeps the singer focused and away from stream-of-consciousness, chicken-clucking dialogue in English, French and Gaelic.

Except for these two tracks – which are isolated at the beginning of disc one and do have the virtue of interesting work from the pianist and bassist – the rest of At The Le Mans Jazz Festival is unreservedly prime Léandre. Any of the other performances speak to her versatility, inventiveness and flexibility.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disc 1: 1. Meeting One 2. Meeting Two 3.Meeting Three 4.Meeting Four 5. Meeting Five Disc 2: 1. Just Now One 2. Just Now Two 3. Just Now Three 4. Just Now Four 5. Just Now Five 6. Just Now Six 7. Just Now Seven 8. Just Now Eight 9. Just Now Nine

Personnel: Les Diaboliques: Irène Schweizer (piano); Joëlle Léandre (bass) and Maggie Nicols (voice) [disc 1, tracks 1, 2]; Joëlle Léandre (bass) and William Parker (bass and whistle) [disc 1 tracks 3-5] India Cooke (violin) and Joëlle Léandre (bass) [disc 2 tracks 1-3] Markus Stockhausen (trumpet); Joëlle Léandre (bass) and Mark Nauseef (percussion and electronics) [disc 2 tracks 4, 5] Sebi Tramontana (trombone); Carlos Zingaro (violin); Joëlle Léandre (bass) and Paul Lovens (drums and percussion) [disc 2 tracks 6-9]

September 13, 2006

IRÈNE SCHWEIZER/OMRI ZIEGELE

Where’s Africa
Intakt CD 098

Take your pick: this is either a return to her swing-bop roots for Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer or the weirdest duo session she’s ever made.

That’s because Schweizer, who has had a commitment to the European avant garde since the late 1960s in the company of such heavy hitters as Danish saxist John Tchicai, French bassist Joëlle Léandre and British bassist Barry Guy, here plays an entire program of jazz and pop standards plus one of her own original.

Stranger still, her partner here is the many years younger, turban-wearing Zürich-based alto saxophonist Omri Ziegele, whose recorded forays with over-the-top, often electrified bands like Billiger Bauer and Noisy Minority, are nothing like the cerebral improvisation in which the pianist specializes. Yet she and the saxist have partnered since the late 1990s. WHERE’S AFRICA not only provides listeners a progress report on the duo, but honors the club – actually called Africana – in Zürich’s old town where in earlier years Schweizer would accompany musical visitors from the United States and South Africa.

So how does the session stack up? Well, it’s quite pleasurable, if you put aside Schweizer’s real life identity as a Swiss musical innovator and imagine you’re listening to a session by pianists Don Ewell or Earl Hines trading licks with altoists Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter or Willie Smith. Even though the tunes include five by cornetist Don Cherry, three by Thelonious Monk and a couple with a South African cast, the note- perfect renditions suggest the sort of pre-modern play-anything ethos you’d get from performers of that era. Added to this is a piece (“Suicide Is Painless”) associated with Bill Evans, an obscure Duke Ellington line and a couple of American Songbook standards.

Frankly though, the hardest to swallow – or hear – performances are the two where the saxman decides to sing: Rogers & Hart’s standard “Isn’t It Romantic” and the traditional South African piece “Ntyilo, Ntyilo” with his own lyrics. Confidence may be everything on stage, but when Ziegele unveils his speak-sing routine that makes Chet Baker’s vocals sound like Frank Sinatra’s, the fact that cork in a saxophone is the same substance used as a stopper in a wine bottle easily comes to mind.

Ignoring or shuddering at those two tracks, you’re left with 13 others in the three and four minute range that subtly signify a night at an ever-so-hip supper club. The musicians play so as to not ruffle the composure of the patrons, but display technical dexterity for the cognoscenti. Rhythmic kwela echoes in the duo’s version of Cherry’s “Togetherness One/Part II”, and in places on the pianist’s original, “Bleu Foncé”, where she sounds like a harder-edged Evans playing “All Blues” confirm this dual identity. As for Ziegele, his drifting tone – that occasionally works its way forward from the 1940s to take on echoes of Cannonball Adderley’s horizontal playing – fits hand-in-glove with Schweizer’s translucent stride-like arpeggios.

A different view of the pianist which may appeal to those who don’t know her earlier work, WHERE’S AFRICA, should be approached with caution and an open mind by her longtime fans.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Golden heart 2. Togetherness One/Part I 3. I’m Gonna Go Fishin’ 4. Monk’s Mood 5. Suicide Is Painless 6. Speak Low 7. Isn’t It Romantic 8. Terrestrial Beings 9.Art Deco 10. Togetherness One/Part II 11.Bleu Foncé 12. Jackying 13. Ask Me Now 14. The Bride 15. Ntyilo, Ntyilo

Personnel: Omri Ziegele (alto saxophone and vocals); Irène Schweizer (piano)

August 22, 2005

KEN HYDER/VLADIMIR MILLER

Counting On Angels
SLAM CD 251

IRENE SCHWEIZER/PIERRE FAVRE
Ulrichsberg
Intakt CD 084

Pity the poor bass player.

Over the past couple of decades improvisers have distanced themselves still further from the so-called jazz scene by playing in different configurations. One of the most common scenarios is jettisoning the bassist of the standard jazz trio and recording with just piano and drums -- the way masters of the Stride piano did in the 1920s.

No one is likely to confuse COUNTING ON ANGELS or ULRICHSBERG for a Willie “The Lion” Smith session, but neither will they mistake one for the other. Adapting distinct roots to the creations at hand, both piano-percussion duos have come up with equally memorable CDs.

Scots drummer Ken Hyder and British-Russia pianist Vladimir Miller had to travel further to create their duo conception however. Although the CD was recorded in London, it reflects their experience playing with local musicians in the former Soviet Union, from Leningrad to Vladivostok and from Arkhangelsk to Tuva. More importantly, both come to this amalgam of stripped down improv and Russian near-classicism honesty.

Brought up in the West, Miller now divides his time between Russia and his home in London. He has worked extensively in Russia, led The Moscow Composers Orchestra on several tours and played with locals like former Ganelin Trio percussionist Vladimir Tarasov. Similarly, after mixing Scottish traditional folk music with jazz in bands like Hoots and Roots with singer Maggie Nicols, Hyder has been a regular visitor to another northern area -- the then U.S.S.R. -- especially Siberia -- since 1990. Besides playing with Miller in different bands, he has also studied throat-singing and local shamanic music.

Both Swiss, pianist Irène Schweizer and drummer Pierre Favre’s association goes back further still -- to 1966 to be exact. Two of the first Swiss players to bring an original perspective to what was then called Free Jazz, each has worked with numberless musicians over the years. Schweizer even recorded a set of bass-drum albums several years ago.

Named for the Austrian festival at which it was recorded, ULRICHSBERG is a continuous live performance without cuts or omissions. Almost from the inaugural notes of the aptly titled “Twin dialogue” -- the first cut -- you can hear the communication in phrasing and polyrhythms that results from each partners knowing the others’ moves intimately. At the same time, since the two don’t often play together -- sometimes for years at a time -- what Favre describes as the “risk” that keeps “living communication” vital, is as present as the skill they express in dual improvising.

As mercurial on this track as elsewhere on the CD, Schweizer concentrates on harsh contrasting dynamics, building up counter themes and counter melodies with both hands as she plays. You never forget that she has 88 keys and two clefs with which to work. High frequency tremolos appear and octaves flash by as she works her way up and down the keyboard. Meanwhile Favre rolls and thunders right beside her. As she moves to a walking bass, honky tonk-like collection of flying polyrhythms, the drummer seems to be staying out of her way but is actually constructing subtle rhythm patterns behind her. The climax finds her displaying characteristic duple time and exaggerated repeated note patterns.

Duple time variations are also put to good effect on “Ulrich, Ulrich, der Wagen bricht!”, which is dedicated to the late German bassist Peter Kowald, who worked with both duo partners. Attacking the keys and soundboard with primordial power, Schweizer produces additional vibrations with nearly every note. Building up the tension, she then gears down to right-handed, adagio tremolos, coloring the delicate skeins with grace notes. In sympathy, Favre murmurs peacefully from wood blocks and cymbals.

The pianist’s pulsating syncopation can appear with pressure as tough as anything Cecil Taylor or McCoy Tyner would create, or, in contrast, be expressed as an understated sprightly air as on “Waltz for Lois”, the set’s encore performance. Highlighting unique swing based on internal logic and feathery left-handed dynamics, at one point it appears as if Schweizer would like to start playing the intro to “House of the Rising Sun”. On this piece, Favre mixes things up with bass drum accents. Elsewhere he uses rebounds and wood-on-wood drumstick nerve beats to meet Schweizer’s speedy glissandos and skittering ployrhythms.

Mallets struck on the sides and rims of his kit provide some of the accompaniment for “Unwritten messages”, as Schweizer metaphorically converts her piano to a chordophone. With harp-like arpeggios she plucks the inside piano strings with her fingers, resonating tones from the soundboard and finally letting the overtones subside to silence.

Perhaps reflecting the more bellicose qualities the Scots and Russians supposedly possess more than the Swiss, the other CD has much less understated and low frequency improvising than ULRICHSBERG.

On the suitably bellicose “Siege of Leningrad”, while Hyder creates quasi-martial snare drum beats from what seems to be the centre of his snare, Miller’s heavy touch builds power chording to flashing arpeggios. Soon he’s laying siege to the 88 keys in quadrants, working his way up the scale emphasizing both single notes and their sympathetic vibrations. Miller operates with the left-handed power of a boogie woogie pianist, while Hyder decorates the siege with cymbal smacks and rim shots.

“Bell-like rebounds and ruffs give an offbeat color to the metronomic forward motion of the piano on “Russian Rivers”, as the pianist sounds a complex up-and-down tempo throughout. With Hyder’s press rolls parying the thrusts of Miller’s coordinated pounding, the pianist showcases a dynamic duplex scale with all its overtones with one hand, and something that veers perilously close to “Chopsticks” with the other.

Not all the aural Slavic landscapes are that bleak however. Every bar doesn’t reflect slurred fingering keyboard fantasia or belligerent and accelerating percussion beats either. Dazzling hard and heavy piano etudes recall half-remembered Tin Pan Alley standards on “Obshennia”, while the playful “Russian Dolls” features high intensity chording played over clockwork-like shuffle rhythm. The later has the touch of pre-modern jazz about it, with broken time signatures and eccentric cadences moving to a grandfather clock-like beat from Hyder. The whole thing is cut off with second hand precision at the end.

Romanticism, that also purportedly inhabits the Russian soul, is dramatically exposed on “Angel’s Son”, the more than 13-minute longest track. Miller tries out a two-handed, quasi-Swing style replete with strummed chords and doubled overtones, then builds up Chopinesque patterns of uneven note clusters. Hyder intermittently strokes his snares and cymbals, and maintains his version of a swinging pulse with rebounds, ratamacues and doubled bass drum entries. Finally the pianist unfolds arpeggios like so many flower pedals, sweeping over the keys with a featherlight touch.

On paper two piano-drums duos may seem similar. On CD, owing to the talent of the four performers, the results are as different as the politics of Russian and Switzerland.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Counting: 1. Hear the Fear in the Dark Forest 2. Angel’s Son 3. Siege of Leningrad 4. Russian Dolls 5. Sayan Flying 6. Russian Rivers 7. Obshennia

Personnel: Counting: Vladimir Miller (piano); Ken Hyder (drums)

Track Listing: Ulrichsberg: 1. Twin dialogue 2. It’s about time 3. Ulrich, Ulrich, der Wagen bricht! (dedicated to Peter Kowald) 4. Unwritten messages 5. Nomades 6. Waltz for Lois

Personnel: Ulrichsberg: Irène Schweizer (piano); Pierre Favre (drums)

April 19, 2004

MANFRED SCHOOF

European Echoes
Atavistic Unheard Music UMS/ALP 232CD

ALEXANDER VON SCHLIPPENBACH
The Living Music
Atavistic Unheard Music UMS/ALP 231CD

Multi-reedman Peter Brötzmann always insists that when pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and trumpeter Manfred Schoof first heard his pioneering free jazz band in the mid-1960s “they just laughed their asses off. At that time they played the Horace Silver-style thing”. But, by the end of the decade as Brötzmann widened his circle to include other experimenters like Dutch drummer Han Bennink and worked with American jazzers like trumpeter Don Cherry and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, his fellow Germans began to come around as well.

They began to come around to such an extent that by 1969 Schlippenbach and Schoof were recording the outside session showcased on these discs, both of which featured international casts, definitely including Brötzmann and Bennink. Since that time the pianist has maintained his free jazz affiliation, most notably in a long-running trio with British saxophonist Evan Parker, who is also on EUROPEAN ECHOES. The trumpeter, on the other hand, sticks more to a mainstream style, when he isn’t writing and playing contemporary classical music.

Recorded first THE LIVING MUSIC was an indirect nod to Julian Beck’s experimental Living Theater group that had recently set up shop in Europe. It was also a smaller-sized version of Schlippenbach’s on-again-off-again-massive Globe Unity Orchestra (GUO), with British trombonist Paul Rutherford and Bennink joining the five Germans players.

In a way it’s those two, as well as Brötzmann, who are most impressive on this session. The trombonist who had already worked with London’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble and GUO and would go on to play throughout Europe, is credited with the invention of trombone multiphonics. Here his avant-gutbucket tone intertwines among the other instruments, stylistically neighing in his way like Tricky Sam Nanton did with Duke Ellington’s band. Using what sound like a regular kit expanded with a marimba, a thumb piano, a massive Oriental gong and who knows what else, Bennink has more percussion on hand than Ellington’s flashy Sony Greer ever had.

Like Greer, he uses it judiciously, however, smashing, banging and thumping enough to bring the discordant darker toned instruments together. At times, though, when the pianist attacks the keyboard with particular ferocity, Bennink become even more bellicose, becoming Sunny Murray to Schlippenbach’s Cecil Taylor.

However, since he began playing professionally almost at the same time as CT, Schlippenbach is more a Thelonious Monk man. As a matter of fact, his introductory solo on “Tower” has a pianistic conception that’s definitely Monk-like. Furthermore, despite Brötz’s overblowing -- no Charlie Rouse he -- and Bennink’s relentless pounding, the pianist’s nearly 11½-minute composition sounds like one of the tunes recorded by those mid-sized Monk ensembles.

Schlippenbach’s cadences and arpeggios are less adventurous elsewhere, especially when Schoof, on cornet, takes the lead. Influenced at that time as much by Ted Curson and other freeboppers as Cherry, the brassman’s “Wave” suggests The Jazz Messengers playing Ornette Coleman. Vying with swinging, foreground percussion, Schoof’s solo is all flourishes, fanfares and note building, facing counterpoint from the saxophone section and Rutherford’s smeared lines. Elsewhere, the British brassman combines with Bennink for exercises in free march time and otherwise -- perhaps aided by Niebergall’s little-heard bass trombone -- stacks up against the buzzing saxophones and relentless percussion with elongated tones that sometimes sound like the braying of animals.

Throughout, Brötzmann is a holy terror, pumping out notes as if from a machine gun and asserting himself more than anyone else. On one occasion he explodes into a cappella multiphonics, then works his way down his horn, tossing out variations on the theme as he goes along. Although as part of the Schoof Quintet and later on with his own band and work with Lacy, Luxembourg-resident Michel Pilz would be quite well known, he’s oddly reticent here. Only on the cornettist’s Stan-Kenton-meets-Don-Cherry arrangement of “Past Time” do his tart clarinet tone make any impression.

On the other hand, nearly every one of the 16 musicians present gets some solo space on EUROPEAN ECHOES, another of Atavistic’s FMP Archive Edition, recorded two months after Schlippenbach’s CD under Schoof nominal leadership.

It seems nominal because a soon a the fist drum beats echo through the studio, by means of the dual percussion of Bennink and Swiss drummer Pierre Favre, it’s obvious that this almost 32-minute composition is going to be some wild ride. Appropriately named, the disc features all the player on the first CD save Pilz plus Parker and German tenorist Gerd Dudek on saxophones; Italian Enrico Rava and Dane Hugh Steinmetz on trumpets; Fred Van Hove from Belgium and Irène Schweizer from Switzerland on pianos; British guitarist Derek Bailey and bassists Peter Kowald from Germany and Arjen Gorter from Holland.

With the examples of controlled chaos that other large ensembles like New York’s The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, GUO and Brötzmann’s “Machine-Gun” band already created, this disc is most valuable providing aural views of important EuroImprovisers early in their career. Diffident Bailey, for instance, creates some wild, almost rock-oriented electric picking here with such vigor that it overwhelms the dual drummers. A far cry from his present persona as a balladeer, Rava produces some brassy, Don Ayler-like shakes. Meanwhile the triple keyboardists seem to be reconstituted as Cecil Taylor triplets, although during the course of the piece, one -- likely Schweizer -- offers up some inside piano harp glisses, along the lines for which she would later be better known.

Another small big band session that may have been on everyone’s mind at the time was John Coltrane’s less-than-five-years-old ASCENSION. Facing off against one another with cymbals and snares, flams, press rolls and march beats, Favre and Bennink are no Rich vs. Roach but suggest Elvin Jones times two. Additionally, some of the piano chording relates more to McCoy Tyner’s work with Trane than Taylor’s. All three trumpeters appear to be trying to see who can squeal the highest in bugle range as the theme is elaborated, though the plucked bass parts -- when they surface from the din -- may be more advanced than what Art Davis and Jimmy Garrison played on ADSCENSION. Dudek, Parker Brötzmann too generate enough screaming split tones to match Trane’s, Archie Shepp’s and Pharoah Sanders’ multiphonics on ASCENSION, often spitting out several bent notes simultaneously. Finally, as musical shards explode all over like bombs at an anarchist rally, the massed ferment builds to a combative crescendo, ending with the sustained single cymbal echo.

Too young or distanced to have experienced the excitement of 1960s’ Free Jazz? These two discs are the next best thing to being there.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: European: 1. European Echoes Part 1 2. European Echoes Part 2

Personnel: European: Manfred Schoof, Enrico Rava, Hugh Steinmetz (trumpets); Paul Rutherford (trombone); Peter Brötzmann, Gerd Dudek (tenor saxophones); Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone); Alexander Von Schlippenbach; Fred Van Hove, Irène Schweizer (pianos); Derek Bailey (guitar); Peter Kowald, Arjen Gorter (basses); Buschi Niebergall (bass and bass trombone); Han Bennink, Pierre Favre (drums)

Track Listing: Living: 1. The living music 2. Into the Staggerin 3. Wave 4. Tower 5. Lollopalooza 6. Past time

Personnel: Living; Manfred Schoof (cornet and flugelhorn); Paul Rutherford (trombone); Peter Brötzmann (tenor and baritone saxophones); Michel Pilz (bass clarinet and baritone saxophone); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano and percussion); J.B. Niebergall (bass and bass trombone); Han Bennink (drums and percussion)

December 16, 2002

IRÈNE SCHWEIZER

Wilde Señoritas and Hexensabbat
Intakt CD 071

Listening intently to Irène Schweizer’s first two solo piano session a quarter century after they were recorded should put to rest the canard that’s she’s the “female Cecil Taylor” once and for all.

Certainly she plays speedy, non-mainstream piano with unmatched ferocity. But that’s how she evolved her conception of a non-impressionistic keyboard style. Besides that, her rhythmic sense and inside-the-piano intrusions seem to have little in common with Taylor’s American sensibility. They’re more in line with what was then contemporary European New music.

More to the point, isn’t it about time to stop describing women in any profession as the “female” anything? Maybe the correct way to view this two-CD set is to hear it as a major statement by the female Irène Schweizer.

WILDE SEÑORITAS and HEXENSABBAT (“Witches’ Sabbath”) released at the height of flowering feminism, had titles that were profoundly symbolic at the time as well. Politically active women cheered the pianist’s musical audacity during the 1976 Berlin concert that makes up the first disc. Schweizer, who had already gone (wo) mano-a-mano with tough improvisers like saxophonists Evan Parker and John Tchicai, was definitely committed to the Women’s Movement, but was an improviser first and foremost. She had already been politically active in a musicians’ co-op, and was no feminist separatist. Most of her playing partners were men, and she admits she was influenced by the harmonies, tonal quality and phrasing of pianist Paul Bley, who it must be admitted often featured compositions by Carla Bley and Annette Peacock.

Behind the keyboard, Schweizer was her own woman however. On the first disc’s title track, for instance, she highlights individual notes as well as pleasant sub themes, leavens the presentation with some repeated European arpeggios and stride piano suggestions. Yet her gospelly chord clusters aren’t there to show off inhuman speed or brute strength.

“Saitengebilde (Last Part to Dudu)”, which translates as “Swing Structure” is even more illustrative. Unlike Taylor, she consecrates part of the tune to distilling sounds from inside the instrument with mallets and balls on the strings, creating some harp-like glissandos. She alternates her distinctive rubato inside-piano-percussion with linear playing on the keys, featuring circular note clusters and plenty of wide intervals in the treble clef. Here, if anyone, she sounds like Thelonious Monk, expanding on the mechanics of one of his own compositions. The swing structure comes in the last five or so minutes as she salutes the late South African alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, by quoting his tune “Angel”. Having seen improvisers like Pukwana and pianist Dollar Brand (now Abdullah Ibrahim), perform their mixture of jazz and Township jive early on in Zürich, she demonstrates here how its beat and song-like quality gave her a difference reference point than American jazz.

A combination of live and studio pieces from 1977, HEXENSABBAT, which like its companion CD was initially released on FMP, but has been out-of-print for about a decade, finds her able to express her individuality in the six shorter pieces in the later part of the disc.

Greeted with (radical feminist-led?) cheers and screams when she appears on stage, the pianist again rotates her presentation between sections of flowering European classicism to periods when it sounds as if she’s panning for gold inside the instrument. At times it appears as if we’re hearing a duet between keyboard expression on one side and crashing cymbals and balls percussively flung onto the copper and steel strings on the other. “Rapunzel... Rapunzel...!” with its double title, is perfect for a tune where she appears to be playing a four-handed duet with herself from either size of the keyboard, and which ends with a speedy syncopated ragtime feel.

These duets take an even more unique form on the shorter “Monkey Woman” and “Baba-Rum”. But here the pairing is for what sounds like a mini-concerto of keyboard moves and clog dancing. Clinks and runs characterize the piano playing, while lid banging or floor stomps take the other roles. Once it even appears as if doorstopper vibrations have been added to the presentation. Earlier, on “Chabis”, she seems to be stretching out glissandos with her right hand while her left plays a sort of eight to the bar boogie woogie.

Folks looking for the roots of Schweizer’s mature style as well as some fine music will easily find it on this set.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Wilde: 1. Wilde Señoritas 2. Saitengebilde (Last Part to Dudu) Hexensabbat: 1. Hexensabbat 2. Rapunzel... Rapunzel...! 3. Chabis 4. Choix mixed 5. Dykes on Bykes 6. Lavender Valse 7. Monkey Woman 8. Baba-Rum

Personnel: Irène Schweizer (piano)

October 28, 2002

CO STREIFF/IRÈNE SCHWEIZER

Twin Lines
Intakt CD 073

A fine, if ultimately frustrating, meeting of two generations of Swiss improvisers, this CD shows that the generation gap is less pronounced among musicians than most people, but still potent.

Performing as a duo for the past half-decade or so, pianist Irène Schweizer and alto saxophonist Co Streiff followed two different paths to get to this point. Streiff, born in 1959, has had experiences in improv, jazz, ethnic, women’s and rock music. Besides teaching and leading her own sextet, she has played with the likes of percussionist Steve Noble, bassist Joëlle Léandre, the band Kadash and some of guitarist Fred Frith’s graphic scores.

Eighteen years older, Schweizer is the grande dame of EuroImprov, having since the 1960s held her own against numerous improv masters from saxophonists John Tchicai and Evan Parker to numerous drummer from Han Bennink to her countryman Pierre Favre. An accomplished solo pianist, Schweizer, who has also served as a role model for aspiring musicians, is part of the band Les Diaboliques with Léandre and singer Maggie Nichols.

These two, who first played together in 1986 -- with Schweizer on drums (!) -- exhibit more congruence now since Streiff is more assured and freer in her conception, while the pianist has relaxed from playing out-and-out energy music to what could be called avant-mainstream. There are times here, in fact, that such multi-faceted, straightahead masters as Hank Jones are brought to mind in her solos.

Despite the fact that all the compositions but two are Streiff’s, the relationship between pianist Lennie Tristano and saxophonist Lee Konitz is also suggested, especially because Schweizer appears to be the senior partner in this outing. The altoist doesn’t play like the highly cerebral Konitz, though. Her harder tone, tendency to slip into the tenor range and outright linearity hint at bopper Phil Woods during one of his many meetings with European pianists or maybe suggest Paul Desmond’s cooler buoyant tone.

That’s what makes this session -- and its title -- disconcerting. Although there’s plenty of counterpoint here and certainly twin lines of improvisation, those lines don’t seem to intersect most of the time.

With tunes ranging from ballads, blues and swingers to ones that appear to reference either South African or Klezmer sounds, the altoist’s strategy is essentially the same. Despite the odd key pop or higher freak note, she seems most comfortable playing in mid-range, pushing the melody forward in a straight line. Meantime the pianist snakes around her, intersecting more by chance than design. Over the course of these 11 shortish tunes, you hear echoes of boogie-woogie, African Township jive, Cagean piano innards intrusions, bop runs, quick tempo changes and a soupçon of ornamentation. The one time the two really sees to break free together is ironically “So oder so”, the longest track on the CD, and the only one written by Schweizer.

As an example of how well two generations of improvisers can play, or as an introduction to Streiff’s feats, the CD is valuable. But with one soloist concentrating on the horizon while the other romps over the rest of the terrain it’s less than a definite statement. Perhaps next time out, they should consider letting loose on fewer, longer compositions or adding other instrumentalists -- as they have done in concert. Talent should win out in the end.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Bea Be Good 2. Her Womb Had A Window 3. They’re Coming Down 4. Fragments For An Old Friend 5. For Sabina 6. Mond Ballade 2 7. Forward To Start Again! 8. Twin Lines 9. So oder so 10. Good Bye, Matthew 11. Five Darks Days

Personnel: Co Streiff (alto saxophone); Irène Schweizer (piano)

January 24, 2002

IRÈNE SCHWEIZER

Chicago Piano Solo
Intakt CD 065

CHICAGO PIANO SOLO is the perfect disc to put on when dealing with misguided friends who insist that so-called avant- jazz doesn't swing. While swing of course, isn't the be all and end all of jazz, the weighty two handed approach Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer favors here will more likely remind folks of pre-modern stylists like Earl Hines or bluesbopper Ray Bryant than certified avant gardists.

Certainly in her many recordings over the years, Schweizer has never downplayed power in her work and has easily held her own with such self-possessed personalities as saxophonists John Tchicai and Evan Parker, drummers Günter Sommer and Han Bennink and the entire London Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Her past solo work may often have been more refined, but she could have felt that it was time to pull out all the stops when playing solo for the first time in Chicago's Empty Bottle, the grungy alt-rock venue where this disc was recorded.

As a matter of fact she's focused right from top, beginning the recital with "So oder so", which despite its Germanic title could be a South Side barrelhouse romp, although it's POMO enough to move forward in a few different tempos. Throughout the CD, Schweizer never lets the listener forget that she's indeed playing a pianoforte, with many graduations of loudness and silence. Usually though, she inverts her touch so the conception is more forte than piano.

"Heilige Johanna (for B.B.)" was probably written for New York keyboardist Borah Bergman. But her way of attacking the nether regions of the piano with her left hand, while turning out decorated, leprechauny runs in an almost harpsichord register almost beat that ambidextrous stylist at his own game. Don Cherry's "Togetherness One (First Movement)" is a hummable, jumping funk tune with sudden melodic stops and starts that literally wouldn't sound out of place in Bryant's repertoire.

Somehow too, for her finale on "Roots" she appears to have grown a third hand, keeping an ostinato bass moving on the bottom, then tossing phrases back and forth from mid-register to top register.

Be aware, though that despite this powerful, blusy attack, she hasn't descended into the ranks of the neo-cons. Despite its title, for instance, the syncopation in "Rag" owes more to one of Thelonious Monk's interludes than Scott Joplin. But even Monk would never reach inside to pluck the piano strings as she does here. As a mater of fact, "Stringfever" is a sly reference to the inside piano exploration she showcases on that track. At times, she resonates the strings like a giant metal harp, and at others claps what sound like finger cymbals or wood blocks for emphasis.

There may be a time in the performances here when she knocks on wood for its sonic properties. But she doesn't have to do so for luck, she's already assembled an exceptional production.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. So oder so 2. To the Bottle 3. Heilige Johanna (for B.B.) 4. Togetherness One (First Movement) 5. Stringfever 6. Circle 7. Hüben ohne Drüben 8. Rag 9. Roots

Personnel: Irène Schweizer (piano)

October 22, 2001

JOHN TCHICAI-IRENE SCHWEIZER

Willi The Pig
Atavistic/Unheard Music Series UMS/ALP 221 CD

An Ameri-centric view of jazz has always been so shortsighted it could be myopic. In 1975, for example, the average American jazzer was assumed to be pondering whether chops-heavy ex-rockers who were leaching into fusion were "major innovators" on the level of Chuck Mangione or Stanley Clarke; while "purists" were finally accepting boppers into the mainstream so they could bask in the final sparks from that once incendiary movement.

Free jazz was supposed to be as dead as John Coltrane or Albert Ayler, banished from the history books, with the few remaining New Thingers either hidden away in academe or buried in recording studios.

Luckily, non-Americans knew this worldview was as befuddled as the U.S.'s Cold War foreign policy. Many jazz experimenters were actually teaching a younger generation of sonic explorers in universities and colleges. Others were playing regularly in Europe and elsewhere, linking their progressive ideas with those of homegrown experimenters in small clubs and jazz festivals that got along without cigarette company sponsorship.

An excellent snapshot of what was really happening in 1975, WILLI THE PIG is one long, gripping blast of unbridled free music. Like the zombies in Night Of The Living Dead, first generation New Thingers like Danish-Congolese saxophonist Tchicai still lived. And this CD proves that the freedom virus was spreading like influenza throughout Europe, with much happier consequences.

Part of two ground zero avant-ensembles -- The New York Contemporary Five and The New York Art Quartet -- a decade before, Tchicai was resident in more hospitable Europe at the time. Appropriately his alto and soprano saxophone solos here showed that freedom music could be tender as well as tough, especially when he tosses phrases back-and-forth with the bassist on "Part 2".

Co-leader, Swiss pianist Schweizer -- remarkably longhaired in the album photo -- was already a free jazz veteran, who had started to distill her own style, with its hint of boogie-woogie and blues from the heady Cecil Taylor elixir. South African drummer Ntshoko was then a constant presence on Continental sessions and the late German bassist Nierbergall had participated in MACHINE GUN, EuroJazz's Emancipation Proclamation seven years before.

Understandably WILLI didn't get the acclaim he deserved when first recorded because it was released in a limited edition of 500 and has never been reissued before now. But from our vantage point the disc can be heard as something that could have been recorded at the Cellar Café in 1965 and or at Tonic this year -- that is to say timeless

As more documents like this appear, it's becoming apparent that jazz's accepted, Ameri-centric chronicle will soon going to have to be rewritten. Not only history, but also listeners' ears will benefit.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Willi The Pig Part 1 2. Willi The Pig Part 2

Personnel: John Tchicai (alto and soprano saxophones, piano); Irène Schweizer (piano); Buschi Nierbergall (bass); Makaya Ntshoko (drums)

September 20, 2000

LES DIABOLIQUES

Live at the Rhinefalls
Intakt CD 059

It seems almost anachronistic to have to say it in the first year of the 21st century, but the members of Les Diaboliques are some of the best improvising musicians on the planet -- regardless of race, height, nationality or gender.

However since male chauvinism and its obverse, separatist feminism, still exist, note that the performers on this CD are all women. A veritable European Community of talents, the band consists of Swiss pianist Schweizer who has been playing "outside" for more than 30 years; French bassist Léandre, acknowledged as one of the virtuosos of instrument in both jazz and so-called new music; and Scottish singer (and tap dancer) Nicols, who matches improv vocal gymnastics with an actor/comedian's split-second timing.

Recorded live, the album approximates a Les Diaboliques concert, without the visuals of course. Thus it allows Nichols to launch a free association monologue about mood swings and mind-altering drugs on "Diverse Moods' Wings" or toss snippets of pop songs with sardonic comments on the lyrics into "Vals Diaboliques III".

The longest and more intense free-for-all is "Almost Straight Ahead", which showcases Nicols vocalizing in words, dialogue, nonsense syllables and breathes (plus a wee bit of Gaelic), recreating and politicizing nursery rhymes and other tunes. It also allows you to note how her taps aren't showoffy, but often supply a needed percussion accent. Even Léandre seems to get into the fun. Besides her limitless instrumental prowess, which minutely slips from mighty, string-bending pizzicato to stratospheric arco cries, seemingly in seconds, she adds secondary vocals, which like her playing modulates from lyric operatic-style soprano to the deepest Satchmo tones.

Meanwhile, as she does throughout the whole disc, Schweizer soldiers on in the background, providing not only steady standard scene-setting accompaniment, but often making pointed musical comments on the words and antics of the other two. Luckily she has "Rheingefallen" all to herself, where she unveils a showcase that jumps from almost formal European romanticism to skittish and playful modern jazz pianisms to straight ahead, Monkish-styled stride.

Devils or angels, these three have put some of their best music on this record.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Mercurial Drama 2. Almost Straight Ahead 3. Rheingefallen 4. Tongue Talking 5. Diverse Moods' Wings 6. Vals Diaboliques III

Personnel: Irène Schweizer (piano); Jöelle Léandre (bass); Maggie Nicols (voice)

August 24, 2000