Peter Brötzmann

Alarm
Atavistic ALP257CD

Brötzmann/Mangelsdorff/Sommer
Pica Pica
Atavistic ALP258CD

Two more valuable CD reissues of Wuppertal, Germany-based saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s work for FMP in the 1980s once again show his versatility. One disk offers proof positive that the hard-driving reedist can easily hold up his side in an all-star trio configuration, while the other shows how he helps spark aural fireworks in a nonet situation.

Ironically the aptly-named Alarm almost ended up being more than a fanciful “blast from the past”. This Hamburg radio gig with a multi-national cast of nine Free Jazzers had to be interrupted after the 40 odd minutes captured on the disc were recorded because a phoned-in bomb threat meant that the audience, technicians and musicians had to quickly evacuate the hall.

Lacking the extra-musical drama of the other date, Pica Pica is just as incendiary, with Brötzmann playing tenor, baritone and alto saxophones and tarogato as one part of a little-recorded trio. His front-line partner is veteran trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, then in the most experimental phase of his long career, but the real surprise is the presence of Günter “Baby” Sommer on traps set and horn. Like Han Bennink of the Netherlands –

Brotz’s usual percussion partner – Sommer is an all-around drum master. Unlike Bennink, he resides in East Berlin, on the other side of the then-existing wall, so he was just starting to interact with non-East Block players.

You couldn’t tell that from this session. Sommer’s tambourine shuddering cymbal raps, intense cross sticking and triplet flams and rattles add heaving tension to the tunes, which take on new dimensions when he releases the beat. As the trombonist and reedist bluster away on two long improvisations and the short title track, Sommer contributes blunt polyrhythms, using sticks, brushes, palms and fists to provide vivid brush strokes of aural color. The jokey and jittery “Pica, Pica” makes the greatest use of the drummer’s faux parade-drill timing. But his harsh ruffs and bulldozer-like press rolls are in evidence throughout.

Rotating among his horns like a mini-reed section Brötzmann spins from steady air raid siren glossolalia on alto to inchoate, near bagpipe-like timbres on tarogato and slurry and smeary reed undulations on baritone. His characteristic stratospheric glottal punctuation is often evident, as are his mouse-squeaking altissimo tones. Once, when he seems to be soloing on two different horns, it becomes apparent that the secondary timbres are from Sommer’s horn.

Articulating chromatic grace notes and whinnying plunger tones, Mangelsdorff’s triple-tongued slurs make common cause with the saxophonist’s staccato phrasing. Often accompanying as well as soloing, his pedal-point lilt sneaks in a common Bop riff at the end of “Wie Du Mir, So Ich Dir Noch Lange Nicht” to keep the proceedings on track as the piece downshifts to muted harmony.

Triple the brass, reed and rhythm on Pica Pica, and you approximate the cacophonous polyphony that arises during Alarm’s extended title track. Surprise at this explosion is a moot – but definitely not a mute – point when you consider the other players. The rhythm section is made up of German Free Jazz big band leader Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano plus two European-domiciled South African expatriates, bassist Harry Miller and drummer Louis Moholo. Brass was Japanese trumpeter Toshinori Kondo – who would reunite with Brötz for the Die Like A Dog band in the 1990s – and two trombonists: modern gutbucket stylist, East German Johannes Bauer, and British trombonist Alan Tomlinson, who was also a member of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Joining Brötzmann on reeds is Willem Breuker from the Netherlands, then (1981) closer to his Free Jazz roots than his later composerly stance; plus American tenor saxophonist Frank Wright, a first generation New Thinger then part of the burgeoning Yank jazzmen-in-Europe-Diaspora.

Driven by the dense and unyielding rhythm section – that in Miller’s case also encompasses shuffle-bowing tremolo and stretched sul ponticello jetes – the massed band exposes the robust theme, variations of which are utilized by the horn section as linking motifs that connect the solos. And what solos they are.

Von Schlippenbach is at his most manic, turning high-intensity pummeling into a metronomic fantasia of exaggerated note clusters and patterns. Kondo contributes half-valve squeezes and brassy slurs, while the stop-time dual trombone theatrics include guttural, spittle-encrusted blasts and metal-scraping concussive expansion.

Not that the reedists are outdone. Except for an off-kilter, a capella raggedy march – is it a mess call or a mail call? – the majority of the saxophone timbres undulate almost physically. Parlando and flutter tonguing, each of three saxmen at times gets involved in double counterpoint with an individual brass player until hyper-fast piano motifs push the tune forward. Slip-sliding, roller-coaster-like coils and twists are expressed by both horn families, as are snorting, basement-level expositions and shrill altissimo timbres. Eventually the high-level pan-tonality gives way to conclusive slurs.

While it’s difficult to isolate individual soloist, there’s no doubt that it’s Wright who sings the jivey lyrics to his own brief “Jerry Sacem”. A rhythmic blues, the undemanding melody and Moholo’s backbeat easily speed the audience outside the studio without anyone being panicked about the purported bomb threat.

Luckily this part of the concert was preserved. It, along with the other CD fills in some gaps in European Free Jazz history. But both are exhilarating listening as well.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alarm: 1. Alarm Part 1 2. Alarm Part 2 3. Jerry Sacem

Personnel: Alarm: Toshinori Kondo (trumpet); Johannes Bauer and Alan Tomlinson (trombones); Willem Breuker (alto and tenor saxophones); Peter Brötzmann (tenor and alto saxophone); Frank Wright (tenor saxophone); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

Track Listing: Pica: 1. Instant Tears 2. Wie Du Mir, So Ich Dir Noch Lange Nicht 3. Pica, Pica

Personnel: Pica: Albert Mangelsdorff (trombones); Peter Brötzmann (tenor, baritone and alto saxophones and tarogato) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums and horn)

November 14, 2006

Albert Mangelsdorff

Triplicity
Skip SKP 9052-2

Joe Fiedler

Plays the Music of Albert Mangelsdorff

Clean Feed CF 049CD

Generally credited as the first European trombonist who by the 1960s had talents that were equal to or superior to American jazzers, Frankfurt native Albert Mangelsdorff (1928-2005) evolved from being a top-ranked bopper to flirting with the avant garde and fusion in the 1970s, The result by the time of his death, was a matchless amalgam of all those styles in his playing.

Although acknowledged as a major stylist as early as 1962, when he recorded with the Modern Jazz Quartet’s pianist John Lewis, this CD by New York trombonist Joe Fiedler is the first recorder tribute the German master of multiphonics. It’s no macabre cash-in either. For Fiedler, whose experience encompasses bands as disparate as Latin- Jazz group Timbalaye, pianist Andrew Hill’s sextet and Philip Johnson’s Fast and Bulbous, recorded the just-released session in November 2003.

Serendipitously, a set of never-before available tracks by a Mangelsdorff’s 1979 trio appears. Backed by veteran Swiss drummer Pierre Favre, known for his work with pianist Irène Schweizer; and Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, who now combines traditional folk music and improv; it’s the same configuration as Fiedler’s trio. The trombonist and his associates – bassist John Herbert, who also plays in Hill’s band and drummer Mark Ferber, who has worked with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith – are probably even younger than the Triplicity trio was in 1979. Yet a side-to-side comparison of the two CDs causes neither to suffer.

Ironically, it’s Fiedler, on the aptly-titled “Do Your Own Thing” and the exposition of “Mayday Hymn”, who plays the sort of unaccompanied, multiphonic extravaganza that the older trombonist perfected after his solo display at a 1972 Munich festival. On the first tune, Fiedler reveals grunting split tones, extended with passing vibrations while maintaining a polyrhythmic beat. Preceding the drummer’s and bassist’s entry with patterned hand drumming and sul ponticello strokes, on “Mayday Hymn”, the boneman unveils polyphonic excesses and subterranean growls, letting his abrasive grace notes flow into every sound crevice.

“Zores Mores” even goes further than Mangelsdorff could have imagined. Sounding as if his notes have been shoved through a sequencer – and highlighting with tremolo and legato – Fiedler appears to be playing in double counterpoint with himself. Many other tracks are free-bop lines par excellence, floating on Herbert’s stalwart walking and Ferber’s cadenced cymbal smacks and ratamacues. Combined with the trombonist’s sputtering textures, many of these compositions morph into finger-snappers.

Fiedler’s experience performing with Afro-Cuban stars such as Tito Puente and Nestor Torres also serves him well here, as he adds a Latin tinge to “Now Jazz Ramwong”, an Asiatic tinged piece Mangelsdorff wrote after a tour of the Far East. On top of Ferber’s cross-handed paradiddles, the brassman’s internalized rhythms intensify his blustery tones.

Moving from the honorer to the honoree, what strikes you most about Triplicity is how the trombonist mixes traditional roots with advanced techniques without calling undue attention to himself. And the bassist and drummer follow right along.

Take “Subconscious Skylark” for instance, where his note replication initially fastens on double counterpoint with Andersen. Then when the bassist turns to sul tasto bowing, Mangelsdorff introduces spittle-encrusted prestissimo tone rows, and then triple- tongued triplets and squeals. Favre contributes flashing polyrhythmic rustles as the bassist counters with rasgueado-like rhythms. Layering his pitchsliding solo with one curved triplet after another, the trombonist revels in brassy falsetto buzzes and vibrating triple tonguing. As cross patterns roll from the drum top, Mangelsdorff proffers a final recap of trills and plunger emphasis.

These techniques can also be put to use on more atmospheric numbers like “Green Shadows into Blue” or the raucous “Outhouse” – both written by the bassist. Nearly a nocturne, the first piece features Favre’s press rolls filling the space behind Andersen’s blunt slaps that flamboyantly stretch the strings, eventually revealing flamenco patterning. Confining himself initially to rubato romantic trills, the trombonist ends with a flurry of triple buzzed and tongued notes.

An odd blowsy, bluesy romp from someone identified with the glacial Scandinavian sound, “Outhouse” finds the bass man alternating between flat-picking claw-hammer licks and an extensive walking solo à la Scott LaFaro. Favre’s ruffs toughen the backbeat and among Mangelsdorff’s waterfall of sounds are buzzy chromatic triplets and quadruple-tongued grace notes. Elsewhere his split-tone response is such that without overdubbing the trombonist limns two parallel lines – vibrated, pedal-point tremolos alternated with higher-pitched brays.

However it’s with the 14-minute plus “Warbling Warbler” that Mangelsdorff really exhibits his skills. Based on birdsong which he recorded and listened to at various speeds, the piece is alive with presto and lento variations. As andante capillary tones echo past the slide into sine wave reverb and single-note extensions, he purrs triplets, occasionally hitting freak high-pitched notes – but not enough to create atonality. Meantime Andersen’s speedily keeps steady time, while Favre’s pummelling rolls and ratcheting cymbals add the necessary coloration. Introducing an assortment of cross-handed ruffs and flams, the percussionist joins with the andante walking bass lines to provide ballast behind the trombonist’s aviary-like triple tonguing and heavily vibrated growls. Considering the coda is a cistern-deep exhalation, perhaps some of the warblers were of eagle size or larger.

Triplicity is another reminder of the late German trombonist’s power, while Plays the Music of Albert Mangelsdorff is a fitting memorial to a master stylist.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Triplicity: 1. Triplicity 2. Soulbird 3. Warbling Warbler 4. Outhouse 5. Virgin Green of Spring 6. Green Shadows into Blue 7. Subconscious Skylark 8. Brief Impressions of Brighton 9. Perpetual Lineations 10. Ancore Ex Tempore

Personnel: Triplicity: Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone); Arild Andersen (bass); Pierre Favre (drums)

Track Listing: Plays: 1. Wheat Song 2. Rip Off 3. Now Jazz Ramwong 4. An Ant Steps on an Elephant’s Toe 5. Mayday Hymn 6. Lapwing 7. Zores Mores 8. Wart G’Schwind 9. Do Your Own Thing

Personnel: Plays: Joe Fiedler (trombone); John Herbert (bass); Mark Ferber (drums)

November 12, 2006

JOE FIEDLER TRIO

Plays the Music of Albert Mangelsdorff
Clean Feed CF 049CD

ALBERT MANGELSDORFF

Triplicity

Skip SKP 9052-2

By Ken Waxman

Generally credited as the first European trombonist who by the 1960s had talents that were equal to or superior to American jazzers, Frankfurt native Albert Mangelsdorff (1928-2005) evolved from being a top-ranked bopper to flirting with the avant garde and fusion in the 1970s, The result by the time of his death, was a matchless amalgam of all those styles in his playing.

Although acknowledged as a major stylist as early as 1962, when he recorded with the Modern Jazz Quartet’s pianist John Lewis, this CD by New York trombonist Joe Fiedler is the first recorder tribute the German master of multiphonics. It’s no macabre cash-in either. For Fiedler, whose experience encompasses bands as disparate as Latin- Jazz group Timbalaye, pianist Andrew Hill’s sextet and Philip Johnson’s Fast and Bulbous, recorded the just-released session in November 2003.

Serendipitously, a set of never-before available tracks by a Mangelsdorff’s 1979 trio appears. Backed by veteran Swiss drummer Pierre Favre, known for his work with pianist Irène Schweizer; and Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, who now combines traditional folk music and improv; it’s the same configuration as Fiedler’s trio. The trombonist and his associates – bassist John Herbert, who also plays in Hill’s band and drummer Mark Ferber, who has worked with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith – are probably even younger than the TRIPLICITY trio was in 1979. Yet a side-to-side comparison of the two CDs causes neither to suffer.

Ironically, it’s Fiedler, on the aptly-titled “Do Your Own Thing” and the exposition of “Mayday Hymn”, who plays the sort of unaccompanied, multiphonic extravaganza that the older trombonist perfected after his solo display at a 1972 Munich festival. On the first tune, Fiedler reveals grunting split tones, extended with passing vibrations while maintaining a polyrhythmic beat. Preceding the drummer’s and bassist’s entry with patterned hand drumming and sul ponticello strokes, on “Mayday Hymn”, the boneman unveils polyphonic excesses and subterranean growls, letting his abrasive grace notes flow into every sound crevice.

“Zores Mores” even goes further than Mangelsdorff could have imagined. Sounding as if his notes have been shoved through a sequencer – and highlighting with tremolo and legato – Fiedler appears to be playing in double counterpoint with himself. Many other tracks are free-bop lines par excellence, floating on Herbert’s stalwart walking and Ferber’s cadenced cymbal smacks and ratamacues. Combined with the trombonist’s sputtering textures, many of these compositions morph into finger-snappers.

Fiedler’s experience performing with Afro-Cuban stars such as Tito Puente and Nestor Torres also serves him well here, as he adds a Latin tinge to “Now Jazz Ramwong”, an Asiatic tinged piece Mangelsdorff wrote after a tour of the Far East. On top of Ferber’s cross-handed paradiddles, the brassman’s internalized rhythms intensify his blustery tones.

Moving from the honorer to the honoree, what strikes you most about TRIPLICITY is how the trombonist mixes traditional roots with advanced techniques without calling undue attention to himself. And the bassist and drummer follow right along.

Take “Subconscious Skylark” for instance, where his note replication initially fastens on double counterpoint with Andersen. Then when the bassist turns to sul tasto bowing, Mangelsdorff introduces spittle-encrusted prestissimo tone rows, and then triple- tongued triplets and squeals. Favre contributes flashing polyrhythmic rustles as the bassist counters with rasgueado-like rhythms. Layering his pitchsliding solo with one curved triplet after another, the trombonist revels in brassy falsetto buzzes and vibrating triple tonguing. As cross patterns roll from the drum top, Mangelsdorff proffers a final recap of trills and plunger emphasis.

These techniques can also be put to use on more atmospheric numbers like “Green Shadows into Blue” or the raucous “Outhouse” – both written by the bassist. Nearly a nocturne, the first piece features Favre’s press rolls filling the space behind Andersen’s blunt slaps that flamboyantly stretch the strings, eventually revealing flamenco patterning. Confining himself initially to rubato romantic trills, the trombonist ends with a flurry of triple buzzed and tongued notes.

An odd blowsy, bluesy romp from someone identified with the glacial Scandinavian sound, “Outhouse” finds the bass man alternating between flat-picking claw-hammer licks and an extensive walking solo à la Scott LaFaro. Favre’s ruffs toughen the backbeat and among Mangelsdorff’s waterfall of sounds are buzzy chromatic triplets and quadruple-tongued grace notes. Elsewhere his split-tone response is such that without overdubbing the trombonist limns two parallel lines – vibrated, pedal-point tremolos alternated with higher-pitched brays.

However it’s with the 14-minute plus “Warbling Warbler” that Mangelsdorff really exhibits his skills. Based on birdsong which he recorded and listened to at various speeds, the piece is alive with presto and lento variations. As andante capillary tones echo past the slide into sine wave reverb and single-note extensions, he purrs triplets, occasionally hitting freak high-pitched notes – but not enough to create atonality. Meantime Andersen’s speedily keeps steady time, while Favre’s pummelling rolls and ratcheting cymbals add the necessary coloration. Introducing an assortment of cross-handed ruffs and flams, the percussionist joins with the andante walking bass lines to provide ballast behind the trombonist’s aviary-like triple tonguing and heavily vibrated growls. Considering the coda is a cistern-deep exhalation, perhaps some of the warblers were of eagle size or larger.

TRIPLICITY is another reminder of the late German trombonist’s power, while PLAYS THE MUSIC OF ALBERT MANGELSDORFF is a fitting memorial to a master stylist.

Track Listing: Triplicity: 1. Triplicity 2. Soulbird 3. Warbling Warbler 4. Outhouse 5. Virgin Green of Spring 6. Green Shadows into Blue 7. Subconscious Skylark 8. Brief Impressions of Brighton 9. Perpetual Lineations 10. Ancore Ex Tempore

Personnel: Triplicity: Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone); Arild Andersen (bass); Pierre Favre (drums)

Track Listing: Plays: 1. Wheat Song 2. Rip Off 3. Now Jazz Ramwong 4. An Ant Steps on an Elephant’s Toe 5. Mayday Hymn 6. Lapwing 7. Zores Mores 8. Wart G’Schwind 9. Do Your Own Thing

Personnel: Plays: Joe Fiedler (trombone); John Herbert (bass); Mark Ferber (drums)

September 25, 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

GLOBE UNITY ORCHESTRA

Globe Unity ’67 & ‘70
Atavistic Unheard Music UMS/ALP 223 CD

Souvenirs of a time when “globe unity” meant more than the convergence of commercial or military interests, this CD of never-before-released tracks feature a small army of Euro improvisers luxuriating in the freedom promulgated by John Coltrane’s ASCENSION and The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra.

Formed in late 1966, following a Berlin Jazz Festival commission for founder/pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, the Globe Unity Orchestra (GUO) evolved over the years from this wild-and-wooly Energy ensemble to one that joined other European large groups in a concern for compositions. Besides, many might find that these two pieces, initially taped for German radio, more exciting than what came from the band afterwards.

The more than 34-minute, 1967 performance, for instance, finds the less than a year old, 19-piece GUO taking full advantage of the era’s heady musical freedom. Roaring up and down the score is a literal who’s who of (in-the-main) German free jazzers, some of whom like saxophonist Peter Brötzmann -- here playing alto of all things -- bassist Peter Kowald and vibist Karl Berger (as an organizer/teacher) went on to greater and more varied expression. Some like reedman Willem Breuker, trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff and brassman Manfred Schoof turned to more conventional playing. A few musicians have since died and others have been lost in the mists of time.

In a composition made up of many climaxes, ending on an extended Wagnerian flourish, and which practically knocks over the listener with its sheer power, von Schlippenbach seems to be the leader only by osmosis. It’s pretty much every man for himself, spurred and taunted by a massed rhythm section of three percussionists, two bassists, a vibist, a tubaist and the pianist smashing a gong when the spirit moves him.

Especially impressive are Schoof soaring into the ozone layer with his cornet and high D trumpet, and Breuker puffing out some deep-dish baritone saxophone blats. Halfway through as well, Gunter Hampel’s flute and Willy Lietzmann’s tuba join for a minuet that suggests a rhinoceros sashaying with a crow. Additionally, the pianist sounds best two thirds of the way through, when he unleashes some space boogie-woogie, rather than at other places where he still seems in thrall to Cecil Taylor.

However with such a large aggregation and so many short solo peeping out of the dense musical mass, at times it’s hard to ascribe proper praise where it’s due. Is it Gerd Dudek or Heinz Sauer who takes the hairy-chested, Coltranesque tenor saxophone solo at the beginning; and does Hampel or Kris Wanders contribute bass clarinet bottom elsewhere? With everyone trying to contribute his two marks worth, identification become difficult.

Three years later, with the band members’ hair and beards grown even longer and wilder, the Germans are joined by Czech, Polish, French, Dutch and a whole contingent of British musicians -- most prominently saxophonist Evan Parker, guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Han Bennink. With the section swelled by U.K. trombonists Malcolm Griffiths and Paul Rutherford, the almost 18-minute piece is more brassy and thanks to Dutchman Bennink and his German opposite number Paul Lovens, more percussive. Interestingly enough, though, except for some minor guitar feedback at the top and a small circuit of protracted saxophone excavating in the middle -- which could come from any one of the five saxophonists -- neither Bailey nor Parker seems to showcase any part of what would soon become an instantly identifiable persona. Instead the -- at times -- nine brasses assert themselves more than the other instruments.

Cleaner than many live recordings, but not sonically perfect, the disc boosts the GUO’s slim discography and offers a fresh and memorable look at the band in its formative, most experimental, years.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Globe Unity ’67 2. Globe Unity ‘70

Personnel: ’67: Manfred Schoof (cornet, high D trumpet); Jürg Grau, Claude Deron (trumpet); Jiggs Wigham, Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone); Willy Lietzmann (tuba); Gunter Hampel (bass clarinet, flute); Peter Brötzmann (alto saxophone); Kris

Wanders (alto saxophone, bass clarinet); Gerd Dudek, tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet); Heinz Sauer (tenor and soprano saxophones); Willem Breuker baritone saxophone, clarinet); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano, bells, gong, tam-tam); Karlhanns Berger (vibraphone); Buschi Niebergall, Peter Kowald (bass); Jacki Liebezeit, drums, tympani); Mani Neumeier, Sven-Åke Johansson (drums)

Personnel: ’70: Kenny Wheeler (trumpet, flugelhorn); Schoof (trumpet, flugelhorn, high D trumpet); Tomas Stanko, Bernard Vitet (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths, Mangelsdorff, (trombone); Paul Rutherford (trombone, tenor horn); Niebergall (bass trombone, bass); Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); Michel Pilz (flute, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone); Dudek, tenor and soprano saxophones, flute); Sauer (alto, tenor and soprano saxophones); Brötzmann, tenor and baritone saxophones); von Schlippenbach (piano, percussion); Derek Bailey (guitar); Kowald (bass, tuba); Arjen Gorter (bass, electric bass); Paul Lovens (drums, percussion); Han Bennink, drums, shellhorn, dhung, gachi)

December 3, 2001