Musikverein Hellijewald

Call Me Cake
Gligg Records 003

Libre(s) Ensemble

Libre(s) Ensemble

IMR 003

Molding a seven-piece group to possess the flexibility of a small band while utilizing supplementary timbres available from a bigger ensemble is the aim of these discs. Each follows a different path to reach its goals which determines how much these sessions can be appreciated.

The mostly German Musikverein Hellijewald situates itself in the channel where Jazz improvising overlaps with Free Music on seven compositions by trombonist Christof Thewes, known for his work with pianist Ulrich Gumpert. Besides his flutter-tongued yet unobtrusive brass work, his sound vehicle here is divided among two reeds, three strings and a drummer. Libre Ensemble’s main man, drummer Bruno Tocanne leads his mostly French band through 10 tunes that ingests the percussive flavors of Rock music and ethnic percussion, while keeping Free Jazz and Swing as main courses. Tocanne, whose earlier discs have included a salute to Syd Barrett, as well as straight-ahead Jazz with Canadian bassist Michael Bates, is also as self-effacing as Thewes. While he may be Libre(s) Ensemble’s artistic director, he only co-wrote one of the CD’s 10 tracks. Four were composed by trumpeter Rémi Gaudillat; three by guitarist Philippe Gordiani; one by a non-band member and one is a group improv.

Similarly, although Gaudillat and Gordiani are long-time Tocanne associates, the CD only contains so many guitar and brass solos because each man has a doppelganger – trumpeter and flugelhornist Fred Roudet and guitarist Fred Meyer. To emphasize further liberation, the first two tracks on the CD swell the band to an octet, adding and featuring bass clarinetist Elodie Pasquier, who is in another Lyon-based trio with percussionist Arnaud Laprêt. This material also depends on flutter tonguing from the trumpets, thick guitar riffs and layered reed counterpoint with bass clarinet lines and snorting saxophone vibratos from Damien Sabatier. Especially notable is “Bruno Rubato”, composed by the drummer plus pianist Sophia Domancich. Here slanted guitar chords avoid Jazz textures to contrast with Tocanne’s Boppish paradiddles. Overall the piece is humorous and high spirited; Sabatier’s alto lines are suitably intense, while Pasquier’s moderato, woody textures are simultaneously chalumeau and fortissimo.

Another stand out for the septet formation is Gordiani’s “Dans la coupe de Tiresias”. With the guitarists producing a rasgueado ostinato and the percussionists’ rhythm that could come from batás and dumbeks, the horn-harmonized theme is further decorated with baroque touches from the trumpets. Standing out is a vamp that squirms beneath fleet-fingered guitar licks. In the meantime the session’s centrepiece is the four-part Suite for Libre Ensemble, with three of the four sections composed by Gaudillat and the remaining one – “Free for Ornette” – a group improv. Among the overlapping capillary cries, nasal split tones from the saxophonist and continuous rumbles, pops and ruffs from the percussionists is a simple folksy narrative. Sounding at times like “Red River Valley”, string interpretations run from slurred fingering to vibrated fuzztones.

Without a guitar, fuzztones and splayed licks are at a minimum on Call Me Cake, although the skills of German mandolinist Martin Schmidt and New York-based cellist Tomas Ulrich are such that inferences from many members of the string family make their way into the compositions. More common strategies are emphasized on pieces such as “Stranger In A Strange Land”, where gruff plunger trombone lines mix it up with underlying slurps from Hartmut Osswald’s baritone saxophone until the cello adds a more lyrical construct to the previous broken-octave interface. Later mandolin strums and a walking line from bassist Jan Oestreich plus distinctive press rolls from drummer Dirk-Peter Kölsch provide enough momentum to allow Schmidt to express himself with clunking, clawhammer strokes, mated with similar descending slurs from Thewes and intercut with staccato tongue stops from Osswald.

Individualistic expression doesn’t end there however. With Berlin-based bass clarinettist Rudi Mahall in the front line, Thewes and the band have a reed chameleon who can invest his every appearance with the same fervor, whether he’s turning out polyphonic swoops that bring Eric Dolphy to mind on the first track, or seemingly channeling the dancing trills that one would expect from a Barney Bigard when melodic fare such as “Eine Problematische, Weil Eingebildete Taube Auf Dem Dach” or “Medium Me Up, Bebobby” arrive. The former with its walloping melody that seems to want to be “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” is advanced with contralto tonguing from Mahall, with Thewes’ contrapuntally sputtering in the trombone’s highest range, and is wrapped with a folksy fiddle-like run from the cellist. The latter features the front-line stuttering the choruses as if it was part of an updated Dixieland jam session. Schmidt’s strong plectrum rhythms could relate to Freddy Guy’s banjo-playing with Duke Ellington’s Jungle Band, while Thewes’ tailgate slurring and capillary guffaws exposes his inner Kid Ory. Bouncing along and recapping simple sequences over and over again. Mahall brings sophisticated sweeping clarinet trills to the arrangement.

Using all the colors available from an expanded – but not bloated – line-up, plus fusing slices of other musics onto a Jazz-Improv base, both these Continental ensembles create noteworthy discs.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Cake: 1. Ein Widerwärtiger Dompfaff 2. Esscake From New York 3. Stranger In A Strange Land 4. Eine Problematische, Weil Eingebildete Taube Auf Dem Dach 5. Bildstock Bleibt Rot 6. Honulullu Neutrum Speciale 7. Medium Me Up, Bebobby

Personnel: Cake: Christof Thewes (trombone); Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Hartmut Osswald (tenor and baritone saxophones); Martin Schmidt (mandolin); Tomas Ulrich (cello); Jan Oestreich (bass) and Dirk-Peter Kölsch (drums)

Track Listing: Ensemble: 1. La Foley* 2. Bruno Rubato* |Suite for Libre Ensemble: 3. Q.L 4. No Way 5. Free for Ornette 6. La révolte des Canuts | 7. Le Chant des Marais 8. Free KC to Gawa 9. Dans la coupe de Tiresias 10. Crépuscule avec Nelly

Personnel: Ensemble: Fred Roudet (trumpet and flugelhorn); Rémi Gaudillat (trumpet); Elodie Pasquier (clarinet and bass clarinet)*; Damien Sabatier (soprano, alto and baritone saxophones), Philippe Gordiani and Fred Meyer (guitars); Bruno Tocanne (drums) and Arnaud Laprêt (percussion)

January 30, 2012

Adam Linson Systems Quartet

Figures and Grounds
psi 11.05

Moving simultaneously forwards and sideways, bassist Adam Linson extends his electro-acoustic experiments here with real-time interactive computer music systems which amplify the timbres of a live quartet of improvisers. Besides the sounds generated by the Los Angles-born, London-based bassist are those emanating from three inimitable stylists, two from Berlin: Axel Dörner on trumpet and electronics and Rudi Mahall on bass clarinet; plus veteran British percussionist Paul Lytton, who has long lived in Aachen, Germany. The results are as captivating as they are original.

Someone who electrified his kit for a period in 1970s and 1980s, Lytton’s playing is now all-acoustic, but characterized by the variety of percussive add-ons and techniques. His familiarity with processing, as well as his participation in many of saxophonist Evan Parker’s electro-acoustic ensembles means he can contend with any sonic impulse, whether created live or the result of time-delay, sound sampling or tone layering. Long-time partners in the band Die Enttäuschung and many others, Dörner and Mahall follow different paths. The trumpeter, one of the pioneers of microtonal improvising, here extends his brass palate with his own electronic interface while the bass clarinettist’s distinctive solos are strictly acoustic.

Often the textural extensions, melding and blending are such that there appears to be no perceptible transition from one sound to another. Techniques and evolving vectors mean that sound like electronic pitch or tone sequences are rarely instrumentally specific. At points they could result from horn expression or in some extreme cases from bass-string manipulations. The processes are taken to logical extremes on “Swamp Delta to the Sky” and “Invisible Mornings”, the CD’s two 20-minute-plus showpieces, with the former somewhat meditative and the latter substantially more abrasive.

Not that sonic friction doesn’t play a large part in “Swamp Delta to the Sky” as well. This is, especially true when Mahall’s hard sound pops and deliberate flattement are taken into account. At the same time vibrating clarinet squawks and trumpet flutter-tonguing, are, at least in the exposition, muted by calculated cymbal clangs. Electronic flanges mixed with consistent static from Linson’s signal processing are barely perceptibly beneath the quartet members’ acoustic movements most of the time. Later on though, high-pitched oscillations fade in-and-out of hearing until superseded by clarinet trills and/or trumpet grace notes. By the time a processed calliope-like tone signals the finale, gravelly brass notes and reed peeps have so permeated the resonation so that resulting echoes and smears are unattributable.

Distinguishable from other tracks by synthesized Sun Ra-like outer-space warbles and, processed solo sequences, “Invisible Mornings” stentorian and aggressive highlights promote contributions from individual instruments. Moving upwards from chalumeau to staccato shrills, Mahall’s chirps are matched by Dörner’s shaking triplets after a fashion, until the two streams of air blown through metal tubes become more percussive. Meanwhile Lytton’s clip-clops and rolls also transform from aggressive beats to mere coloring. Eventually the sound clusters split enough to demonstrate how individually circular-breathed reed lines and the hiss of jerky electronic actions can combine in a polytonal interaction.

Linson’s timbral understanding and application appears to be sophisticated with each succeeding CD. Considering that even this CD is more than three years old (2008), one is anxious to hear his most up-to-date developments.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Swamp Delta to the Sky 2. City Dissolved in Light 3. Invisible Mornings

Personnel: Axel Dörner (trumpet and electronics); Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Adam Linson (bass and electronics) and Paul Lytton (drums and percussion)

October 20, 2011

Soko Steidle

Maximale Langweile
Jazz Werkstatt JW 102

Aggressively arranged and often brushing against atonality, the eight tracks on Maximale Langweile clearly prove that a coterie of committed improvisers can generate all the excitement needed for high-class Free Jazz. That`s because this quartet of Berlin’s top Jazzers is nearly inexhaustible in their playing and arranging ideas.

Named for drummer Oliver Steidle, who plays in a variety of other ensembles including Der Rote Bereich with bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall – also featured here – and pianist Aki Takase’s trio with Jan Roder, who is Soko Steidle’s bassist, the group by design or osmosis is as dependent on Steidle’s percussion skills as any edition of Art Blakey’s Messengers. At the same time with the bass clarinet of Mahall, who is also part of Die Enttäuschung; and the alto saxophone of Henrik Walsdorff, who powers a good many bands himself, it’s as if Soko Steidle has two versions of Eric Dolphy on board using one of the late American’s paramount instruments. Neither man is in any way a Dolphy-clone. But the contrapuntal harmonies they achieve boost the significant texture mixing to a higher plane.

The skills of Roder, also featured in Die Enttäuschung, shouldn’t be downplayed either. Except for the odd col legno foray, he’s content to hug the background. There his percussive pacing helps glue reed explosions onto the musical body politic, especially when Steidle frequently shuns time-keeping for individual sound motions.

“Schweizer Delikatessen” for example, is based on a series of andante stops at the beginning and end from Roder that are subtly blended with intense, but economical timbres from Mahall, preceding his shift to chalumeau smears. Walsdorff’s diaphragm vibratos attempt to harmonize with the other reedist, only later to join him in double counterpoint encompassing open-ended runs and high-pitched squeaks. Each complements the others’ textures in a twinning of chiming tone extensions and tongue stops, as Steidle limpidly cuffs small cymbals and pops drum tops.

Rim shot shuffles and side rubs from the drummer plus sul tasto and col legno strokes from the bassist serve as the nucleus for “Jenseits Der Besitzstandswahrung”. Although Mahall and Walsdorff begin by spewing wounded animal-like squeals through their horns, the groupthink among the four is so profound that within a few measures, the tune evolves to quadruple counterpoint. Tom-tom bounces and cymbal clattering then open up the final variants with the alto saxophonist following a circuitous and high-pitched path and the bass clarinetist masticating guttural tones.

Still, the demonstrated echoes and original use of Soko Steidle’s influences is distinctively demonstrated on the penultimate “Die Tödliche Doris”, a salute to the 1980s Berlin-based performance art and music group. As Steidle ranges over his kit rattling drum rims and other hardware, the reeds peep in lockstep as if they are replicating Mingus’ “Bird Calls”, elasticizing the theme. Roder’s harmonious strokes suggest a more restrained interface, an idea reinforced when Walsdorff appears to slip a quote from “’Round Midnight” into the proceedings. Ratcheting top-of-snare friction and nerve beats from the drummer roughen the performance, as does Roder’s circular bowing. The piece ends in a flurry of contrapuntal reed lines, the altoist’s mostly contralto, and Mahall’s chalumeau.

One English translation of “maximale langeweile” gives it as “maximum boredom”. If there ever was something which was actually the opposite of what it is called, then it’s this CD.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Maximale Langweile 2. Ragga Muffin 3. Full Heinz 4. Schweizer Delikatessen 5. Jenseits Der Besitzstandswahrung 6. Kalle Radschinsky’s Dilemma 7. Die Tödliche Doris 8. Da Ist Doch So Trommel - Din

Personnel: Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Henrik Walsdorff (alto sax); Jan Roder (bass) and Oliver Steidle (drums)

August 11, 2011

Der Rote Bereich

7
Intakt CD 182

X_Brame

Penche Un Peu Vers L’Angle

Amor Fati FATUM 019

Guitar, drums and a reed instrument as a trio may suggest different sounds to different audiences. But the attraction of improvised music is that two trios can employ almost exactly the same instrumentation and not resemble by one iota one another’s conception. Case in point: Germany’s Der Rote Bereich and France’s X_Brame. Although some may explain the bands’ contradictory sonic qualities by geographic differences, the concept behind the sounds of these trios relates to conviction not nationalism. Each approach is equally valid.

Mostly the progeny of Nuremberg guitarist Frank Möbus, Der Rote Bereich – or Red Zone – is a rough and ready aggregation whose often ferocious tunes harken back to Fusion’s beginning. Certainly the guitarist prefers the company of other Rock-influenced players such as bassist Carlos Bica and drummer Jim Black. On the other hand, bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, Möbus’ Rote Bereich associate since the beginning, while expelling the appropriate fire and power during his solos on 7 doesn’t play a horn favored by any Jazz-Fusionists. Mahall is also equally at home working with anything from Monk tunes to Third Stream chamber music with musicians as different as pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and drummer Bartlomiej Oles. Der Rote Bereich’s new drummer Oliver Steidle also negotiates a fine line among influences. He has worked with players as disparate as saxophonist/electronics manipulator Daniel Erdmann and tradition-oriented pianist Aki Takase.

On the other side of the divide – or German-French border – from Der Rote Bereich’s exuberant and fortissimo textures are the minimalist and near-solipsistic timbres of a trio unquestioningly committed to lower-case music. Although guitarist Jean-Sébastien Mariage is involved with some noisier projects, he’s best-known for his work with the subtly microtonal Hubbub band. Guiding light, alto and soprano saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet is usually found on sessions featuring fellow reductionists such as pianist Sophie Agnel, percussionist Lê Quan Ninh and cellist Martine Altenburger; while Bordeaux-based drummer Mathias Pontevia is most frequently involved in similar low-key experiments with companions such as clarinetist Benjamin Bondonneau or saxophonist Heddy Boubaker.

Microscopic guitar licks, drum top slides and scrapes plus extended tongue slaps and whistles characterize most of the trio’s work on Penche Un Peu Vers L’Angle – Slope Slightly Towards the Edge. Except for certain interludes, as on “Tazuki” when the broken chord connection moves towards forte with amp-echoing buzzes, repetitive bass drum whacks and mouthpiece tongue stops and clicks, the three-part invention demonstrates how subtly ideas can be expressed linearly. Gauguet does so with flat-line reed glissandi, propelled without key movements, ultimately using staccato air respiration encompassing partials and ghost notes to encourage string twangs and drum top swats towards a defining conclusion.

More of the same, the final section of “Tsuri” showcases sonic afterimages created acoustically the same way other do with software. Here long-lined crackling and spluttering ghost notes are constructed out of speedy, agitated reed multiphonics, Pontevia’s irregular drags and ruffs and Mariage’s disconnected finger-picking licks. Overall, the contrapuntal interaction is mercurial, toned-down and gloomy with distorted split tones, widely spaced stretches of reverberating strings and extended drum top vibrations eventually reaching a mid-point crescendo of slurred fingering, metal-inflected reed-biting and wood-crackling imitations from the percussionist. Once this climax is reached the musical structure incrementally fades to image echoing.

There are plenty of echoing reverberations on 7, but in contrast most of them are related to Möbus’ tremolo twangs and muscular rasgueado, causing Mahall to sluice fortissimo reed bites that leap to altissimo and dip to chalumeau. All the while Steidle scatters rolls, drags and ruffs, while maintain a bonding backbeat. It is tracks such as “Banker’s burning bakeries” and “Bremser” that are most illustrative of this strategy

On the former, swathes of strained, nephritic split tones from Mahall are contrapuntally stacked up against oscillated and warped guitar licks, which manage to sustain an organ-like drone. As the drummer’s rough cross sticking and ragged shuffle beats push the clarinetist towards squeaky, false-register altissimo and Möbus to knob-twisting phaser action, the staccatissimo pinnacle is reached, with the sound then descending to amp drones and staccato reed blasts.“Bremser” is more typical, of the session however since it includes the sort of herky-jerky head present on many of the CD’s 10 tracks. Here however Steidle’s multiphonic nerve beats plus short stroked cymbals expose more than the standard Jazz-Rock rhythms. Mahall and Möbus respond in kind with respectively lower pitched buzzes and circular cross picking.

Also unlike standard Jazz Rockers – but light years away from the microtonal ethos of X_Brame – the trio is capable of treating sincerely a dramatic intermezzo such as “Ramallah”. Consisting in equal parts of rubbed drum tops and chain shakes; strident clarinet cries; and slack-key guitar harmonies; the parallel exposition showcases tenderness without losing chromatic motion.

Two similarly constituted trios expose the chasm that can exist even when three similar instruments are coordinated. Penche Un Peu Vers L’Angle is suitable for those who understand that cerebral pleasures can sometimes be extracted from grating, extended understatements. Conversely, 7 is for those who prefer their sonic ideas pounded quickly rather than gradually developed. And Rudi Mahall proves that Heavy Metal bass clarinet playing exists – and can be riveting.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Penche: 1. Tazuki 2. Tsuri 3. Hishi

Personnel: Penche: Bertrand Gauguet (alto and soprano saxophones); Jean-Sébastien Mariage (guitar) and Mathias Pontevia (horizontal drums)

Track Listing: 7: 1. Polit Pilot 2. Paulie and Christopher (out in the woods) 3. Tier/bla/tot 4. Winterlos 5. Bremser 6. ASH 7. Rumba brutal 8. Banker’s burning bakeries 9. Die Deutschen 10. Ramallah

Personnel: 7: Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Frank Möbus (guitar) and Oliver Steidle (drums)

April 28, 2011

G9 Gipfel

Berlin
Jazzwerkstatt JW 080

Taking advantage of the multiplicity of colors, as well as the flexibility available from nine balanced instruments, trombonist Gerhard Gschlössl demonstrates his skills as a composer and arranger with this significant CD. Providing nourishment from all orchestral food groups – brass, reeds and strings – the layered performances are lively and cohesive as well as offering ample solo space.

Besides the Stuttgart-born, Berlin based Gschlössl – who self-effacingly avoids the making the 10 compositions mere trombone showcases – the rest of the band is composed of many of the German capital’s most accomplished players who often work together in interlocking ensembles. For instance bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, bassist Johannes Fink and drummer Christian Lillinger are members of Vierergupper Gschlössl with the trombonist. Mahall, trumpeter Axel Dörner and pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach make up Monk’s Casino. Guitarist John Schröder is in Der Rote Bereich with Mahall, while alto saxophonist Wanja Slavin’s band features Lillinger. Tenor saxophonist Tobias Delius leads his own bands and is part of Amsterdam’s ICP Orchestra.

On the evidence here, G9 Gipfel has no hesitation on unabashedly drawing upon the long-standing big band tradition. This is made most obvious on Gschlössl’s composition “Dem DT. Jazz”. Based around key the pianist’s key clipping plus double-tongued flutters and trills from Slavin and Delius, the piece reaches its zenith as Mahall’s biting contralto runs reach Eric Dolphy-like freneticism, an impression reinforced by the theme with its linkage to compositions like Charles Mingus’ “The Clown”. Need more evidence? Among the horn parts arrayed in circus-styled, stop-time harmonies and Fink’s slap bass on “Hartz 9”, there’s a point during Schröder’s fleet solo studded with delay and frails, that a semi-quote from “Night in Tunisia” is heard.

Nonetheless G9 Gipfel also maintains the trombonist’s Europeanized vision that in the past led to the creation of the Jazz Kollektiv Berlin. Duplication of American Jazz or American Jazz themes isn’t on the agenda. Instead full range is given to the ensembles own composers, with Gschlössl, represented by five tunes; Fink by two, including “Hartz 9”; Mahall with “Rumba Brutal” – which contrasts metronomic piano runs, rickety-tick drumming and Schröder’s super-fleet trebly fills and snaps; and two others from Dörner. “Aufsicht”, one of the trumpeter’s pieces, takes the form of a contrapuntal round where timbres are parceled out among careening piano chords, drum paradiddles, irregular sax vibrations, trombone slurs and trumpet blasts.

As a composer, Gschlössl manages to blend this-side-of-atonal Klangfarbenmelodies with first-class spunky swing whose emphasized patterns and contrasting themes excite both viscerally and cerebrally. “Television World” for instance climaxes with a cross-pulsed duet between the trombonist and Dörner, preceded by ornamental triplets from the trumpeter and followed by a sliding, singing and slurring Gschlössl solo. Strummed guitar interludes, riffing reeds, drums ruffs from Lillinger plus von Schlippenbach’s contrasting dynamics frame the brass work.

Dörner, who is usually acclaimed for his microtonal explorations, channel the spirit of early open-horned stylists like Roy Eldridge during the solo which ends “Ganztonleiter”, another Gschlössl line. This follows the trumpeter’s earlier use of growls and flutter-tonguing. Other features of this superior Swing-band styled swinger are the bright and speedy comments outlined by the other horn players behind Mahall’s snorts, reed-bites and chalumeau vibrations plus Slavin’s fleet recapping of the initial theme.

Leading a nonet that is actually a coalition of other band leaders means that large swaths of talent and experience were available for Gschlössl’s use here. But the achievement that is Berlin also confirms his talents as band leader, composer and soloist.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Trotz, Geil 2. Rumba Brutal 3. Ganztonleiter 4. Aufsicht 5. Dem DT. Jazz 6. Absicht 7. Television World 8. Das Thema 9. Drei 10. Hartz 9

Personnel: Axel Dörner (trumpet); Gerhard Gschlössl (trombone); Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Wanja Slavin (alto saxophone); Tobias Delius (tenor saxophone); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano); John Schröder (guitar); Johannes Fink (bass) and Christian Lillinger (drums)

April 3, 2011

Heinrich Köbberling

Sonnenschirm
Jazz Werkstatt JW 093

Owen Howard

Drum Lore

BJU Records BJUR 017

Harris Eisenstadt

Woodblock Prints

No Business NBLP 18

Tom Rainey Trio

Pool School

Clean Feed CF 185 CD

Extended Play: Drummers as leaders and composers

By Ken Waxman

Constantly the brunt of other musicians’ jokes for their supposed fixation on rhythm, over the years drummers have actually proven themselves as organized band leaders and sophisticated tunesmiths. Edmonton-born, Brooklyn-based percussionist Owen Howard strikes a blow for his stick-wielding brethren with Drum Lore BJU Records BJUR 017 as he leads a sextet through compositions by 11 different drummers. including himself. His notable CD, along with others by drummer/leaders, demonstrates these players’ overall improvisational and compositional smarts.

Howard proves his percussion adaptability with strategies ranging from understated paradiddles and pops backing muted trombone and slurry bass clarinet on Shelly Manne’s “Flip”, to cross pounded bounces and clattering opposite sticking that adds an undercurrent of gravitas to Alan Ferber’s trombone ostinato and call-and-response patterns from the three saxophonists on Ed Blackwell’s “Togo”. He’s even more impressive guiding the slinky polyrhythms of Jack DeJohnette’s “Zoot Suite”, as clattering cymbals and popping bass drum subtly shifts tempos from andante to moderato as the layered horn riffs expand in scrappy, cascading counterpoint. The drummer’s own Roundabout vibrates with shifting pulses as alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher’s refracting flutter-tonguing alters the melody already trilled by soprano saxophonist Adam Kolker. Howard’s blunt rebounds and splashing cymbals keep things moving until pianist Frank Carlberg’s wide-spaced comping signals the finale.

Howard’s CD shows jazz percussionist’s compositional versatility, while the six compositions on Woodblock Prints No Business NBLP 18 presents a singular vision by another drummer, Toronto native-turned Brooklynite Harris Eisenstadt. Program music based on celebrating the art of Japanese wood bock prints, this chamber-improv is played by a brass-heavy nonet. What isn’t expected is that Mark Taylor’s French horn and Jay Rozen’s tuba are frequently lead voices, with the burbling timbre crepuscule of Sara Schoenbeck’s bassoon often used for its unique tincture. Most demonstrative of Eisenstadt’s skills as a colorist is “Hokusai”, energized by his bell-tree shaking and tambourine smacks. Meanwhile hoarse, stuttering, bassoon patterns deconstruct the slow-gliding theme alongside Jonathan Goldberger’s guitar licks. Following Michael McGinnis’ squealing clarinet trills backed by the drummer’s ruffs and drags, Rozen’s extended tremolo line shepherds the variants towards Eisenstadt’s conclusive cymbal shimmies. Similarly on “The Floating World”, the narrative is defined as much by waddling tuba slurps plus diffuse French horn brays as liquid clarinet runs and pumping unison horns. The tubaist’s penultimate snort dissolve into pitch-sliding polytones as the drummer outlays shuffles, ruffs and bell-pings.

Less upfront as a performer, but responsible for all compositions on Sonnenschirm Jazz Werkstatt JW 093 is Heinrich Köbberling, a professor of percussion at Germany’s Leipzig University. He’s content using his cross strokes, opposite sticking, drags and rebounds to keep the session moderato, but with infectious, flowing rhythms. Rather than taking solos, Köbberling’s compositions and accompaniment give full reign to bassist Paul Imm, piano/accordionist Tino Derado and especially bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall. An unflappable tone explorer, Mahall adds sonic vitality to the often-jaunty tunes. “Zahlen Bitte” is a particular example of the reedman’s skills. Here his coloratura slides and tongue-stuttering face chiming piano lines. Circling around one another, all the textures then join to complete the melody. Meanwhile the drummer rolls and pumps in the background. Built on light-fingered piano harmonies, “Konbanwa” is another standout as the repeated theme variants are expressed sequentially by lyrical reed voicing and cascading piano chords.

Completely antithetical to the preceding discs is Pool School Clean Feed CF 185 CD is the first disc under the leadership of busy New York percussionist Tom Rainey. Consisting of 12 instant compositions, the CD depends as much on the inventiveness of guitarist Mary Halvorson and tenor and soprano saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock as Rainey’s drum dexterity. Yet as low-key and unforced as Rainey’s rhythms are, it’s their unruffled surge which keeps the dozen tracks moving. “More Mesa” for instance is taken agitato and moderato, with Laubrock’s pressurized vibrations as intense as the angled crunching runs from Halvorson. Yet the piece’s atmospheric identity is maintained through Rainey’s rim shot accents, hi-hat strokes and cymbal slaps. The drummer’s swirling cauldron of broken-octave rebounds and solid ruffs also create a subversive swing rhythm by the finale of “Semi Bozo”. Earlier, his ratcheting clicks and drum-top pops, the guitarist’s disconnected chording and slurred fingering plus the saxophonist’s rasping, low-pitched warbles appear to evolve in parallel rather than connective lines, until Rainey’s inverted sticking pushes them into harmonic concordance.

As these sessions prove, giving a sophisticated drummer freedom to innovate, results in much more than a rhythmic free-for-all.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #2

October 12, 2010

Global Unity Arrives in Montreal

Suoni per il Popolo festival report
By Ken Waxman

A willingness to book profound improvisers ignored by the commercial pseudo-Jazz behemoth that takes places later in the summer is what sets Montreal’s annual Suoni per il Popolo (SPIP) apart from other local festivals. For its 10th anniversary in late June, SPIP scored a major coup with the Canadian premiere of the all-star Globe Unity Orchestra (GUO) on the second of a three-night event.

Not only was the entire 11-piece ensemble featured for two sold-out shows at La Sala Rosa, a former social club on, St. Laurent Boulevard, the city’s storied Main, but on the first and third nights, the smaller Casa Del Popolo club, on the opposite side of the street was packed as it played host to three GUO break-out ensembles. All in all, the GUO put on an exceptional performance that confirmed the elevated regard in which the group has been held since it was organized by German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach in 1966. Notable as well were the two club sets on the final night by a trio made up of von Schlippenbach, German bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall and drummer Paul Lytton the subsequent night. However Casa Del Popolo performances by two differently constituted GUO ensembles the first night appeared more introductory than exemplary when, despite flashes of instrumental luminosity, an unconscionable raggedness seemed to permeate both sets.

In Montreal the GUO consisted of veteran Free Improvisers and notable younger players. Both von Schlippenbach and tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek have been members from the beginning, while British tenor saxophonist Evan Parker and German drummer Paul Lovens joined in 1970. Experienced hands such as Lytton and German trombonist Johannes Bauer now tour with the band as well, while the remaining chairs are filled by younger European improvisers. They included French trumpeter/flugelhornist Jean-Luc Cappozzo plus a quartet of Germans, trumpeter Axel Dörner, trombonist Christof Thewes, alto saxophonist Henrik Walsdorff and Mahall.

Among the reeds it was Mahall who made the greatest impression. Gangly and energetic, his forceful improvising is often seconded by facial mugging, bandy-legged twisting and foot stomps. It’s as if the Tin Woodman was possessed by the spirit of James Brown. With the GUO, the bass clarinetist’s sometimes altissimo and often biting cries contrasted in broken octave cohesion with the more stolid improvisations from the tenor saxophonists. The soloist who most reflected the Jazz continuum, Dudek’s strained contrapuntal forays appeared to be heavily influenced by John Coltrane.

There were points in fact when Lytton’s and Lovens’ interaction reached such a boiling point of explosive cross beats when working with Dudek that the results resembled Trane’s final abstract work with Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali. Playing in tandem much of the time, the GUO percussionists also had moments of adroitness and finesse. Both rattle as often as they smack, use additional cymbals, wood blocks and other add-ons as part of their standard kit. They are as apt to hit the hi-hat and drum rims as the snare and bass drums.

Unique Solo Strategies

As the GUO’s unusually constituted rhythm section chugged along, soloists developed strategies to meld with it and with other horns. Leaving the drastic shifts from fortissimo to folkloric to Mahall, Parker’s contributions ranged from mid-range placidity, with divided timbres sensitively breathed, to snorts, honks, stutters, tongue slaps and key percussion. Even then, these advanced techniques such as Cappozzo’s rubato high notes or Lovens’ minute cymbal shrugs complemented others’ playing. Parker’s concentrated reed vibrations plus von Schlippenbach plucking and stopping the piano’s internal strings and Lovens’ response frequently created trio episodes in the midst of the large ensemble.

Cappozzo’s bear-sized hands often hid the panache of a prodigiously experienced brass man able to intimately maneuver either of his instruments. Although he took the first trumpet role at times, with fortissimo triplets rising out of a tutti, he was equally canny as a soloist. Holding his horn in one hand, he used the other as either a hand mute or for finger movements that pulled brass ripples from his bell without valve movement.

Meanwhile Dörner, who elsewhere confines himself to minimalist timbres, rarely showed that side. Instead his slide trumpet vamped alongside the other horns creating a skewed polyphony just this side of Dixieland. At one point he contrapuntally blasted grace notes alongside Mahall who responded with a nursery-rhyme variant. Another time Dörner cleanly articulated an expanded flourish, backed by a dual trombone obbligato. Bauer and Thewes had fun themselves, participating in the call-and-response runs and stepping forward for solos that ranged from chancy minimalist air expansion to hearty plunger blasts using cup or Harmon mutes. Bauer’s updated gutbucket smears were particularly effective.

Proving that the vocabulary of a large group doesn’t have to be limited by the past but can proffer intricately linked textures while leaving space for individualistic soloists, the GUO’s sounds that were both magisterial and lively.

Exquisite Essays in the Art of the Trio

Despite using a concert grand piano at the Sala Rosa, the intricacies of von Schlippenbach’s dynamic pulsing and inventive asides were often drowned by the massed exuberance of the GUO. A well-tuned upright gave him enough space the next night at the Casa Del Popolo however.

Over the course of two sets, the pianist, Mahall and Lytton interpreted mostly Thelonious Monk tunes their own way. The three added angularity to Monk’s already pointed melodies, gliding from one to the other without pause, highlighting links to earlier Jazz styles, while never negating Monk’s distinctiveness or their own.

Most notable was how core sounds were defined and presented in an unconventional group, with bass clarinet as the only horn and no bass player. Characteristically Mahall – like saxophonist Charlie Rouse with Monk – was von Schlippenbach’s chief foil. As comfortable in the chalumeau range as coloratura, Mahall’s highly rhythmic yet lyrical passages injected unselfconscious swing into his solos. Moreover his lines also revealed a mastery of stop-time runs. As he rappelled from the highest to the lowest pitches of his instrument at points he appeared at points to be playing call-and-response with himself. His portamento trills and stretched chords deflated to segregated puffs and split tones and contrasted nicely with to von Schlipplenbach’s dynamic range which encompassed hunt-and-peck percussiveness and supple extended glissandi.

Extended with wire brushes, knitting needles, wood blocks and unattached cymbals, Lytton’s kit provided the perfect back-up. Self-assured, he contributed a drum solo with woodblock thumps, clatter bump and clip-clops when the pianist segued into “Played Twice” – taken more staccato and much more joyously than Monk did. Elsewhere whapped cymbals and constant hi-hat shakes and pops buttressed the bass clarinetist’s harsh fortissimo growls, extended split tones and flutter tonguing.

Here as elsewhere, the pianist’s metronomic note clusters dissolved into concentrated slaps and cross-handed pumps. At the same time von Schlipplenbach often extended the melodies with novel techniques. These encompassed such tricks as: modified ragtime-styling, allowing Lytton to pop his snares and pumps his bass drum; arpeggio-laden spidery cadences that introduced ever-widening split tones quacks, and altissimo peeps from Mahall; and kinetic energy that made it sound as if he were replicating a piano roll. At points using knitting needles to provide a contrasting pattern or daintily rubbings his drum tops with his palms, Lytton’s most capricious percussion use came as the pianist segued into “Just a Gigolo”, which Monk also favored. Until Mahall completely obliterated the theme with chalumeau brays, the drummer used triangle pings and airborne ratcheting plus soft mallets on his floor tom to dislocate the time sense. Von Schlipplenbach’s abrupt introduction of a secondary, mid-tempo Monk line, directed the improvisation back to moderato as effectively as Mahall’s unexpected marshalling of a rolling blues line into the trio’s encore number lead to the reedist trading fours with the percussionist – and a satisfying conclusion to the evening.

Two times Four Musicians isn’t always Two Quartets

If only the first night’s sounds had been as dazzling as those on the other two. While improvised music thrives on spontaneity, neither ad-hoc quartet set at the Casa added up to more than the sum of its parts. Chances to contrast the styles of two sets of major innovators playing the same instrument – Dörner and Cappozzo plus Parker and Dudek – were available, although the same situation existed the second night with the entire GUO.

When it came to Parker/Dudek, what were most instructive were the strategies employed when the two saxophonists plus Dörner and trombonist Thewes weren’t involved in broken-octave harmonies. On their own, both saxophonists exhibited equal episodes of reed bites plus tongue slaps rather than melodiousness. On the other hand, the trombonist, with gnarly slurring and timbral spikiness, and the slide-trumpeter, with pointillist puffs and mangled note patterns, followed completely antithetical tactics.

During the other quartet set earlier in the evening, Cappozzo demonstrated his complete control of the horn, creating tongue stops and flat-line air with the same facility with which mellow slurs were isolated and produced from the side of his mouth. Bauer’s trombone work involved capillary quacks and disconnected mumbles forced through his bell, meeting Walsdorff’s split tones. Together the players provided irrefutable evidence of the brass background of all three horns. Sounding like a marching band gone berserk, this identity was confirmed while Lovens rhythmically slapped his unattached cymbals. When he wasn’t doing that, the percussionist countered the gurgles, brays, sputters and tongue flutters of the horns in varied fashion. Rarely keeping a constant beat, he instead divided his rhythms, devoting as much time to slapping his hi-hat with a drumstick or maneuvering a cloth and unattached cymbals on and off drum tops as he did pounding a backbeat.

While the sounds on this evening weren’t as spectacular as the ones heard on subsequent nights, that so many major European improvised stylists could be observed close-up made every one of these SPIP concerts essential listening. As the city’s other so-called Jazz festival increasingly anchors itself to programming irrelevant pop-styled music, SPIP becomes Montreal’s only essential summer festival for adventurous music.

July 23, 2010

Mahall/Dörner/Roder/Jennessen

Die Enttäuschung5
Intakt CD166

An amorphous designation at best, FreeBop is often used to characterize musicians who work in a freer idiom but haven’t completely abandoned many of the strictures of contemporary modern jazz. Berlin-based Die Enttäuschung – the Disappointment – does this and much more. As its members demonstrate on this CD, the quartet is versatile enough to meld the explorations of Free Music, the dense rhythms of Hard Bop and impressive tonal blends reminiscent of West Coast Jazz. Free Cool anyone?

More notably this package is filtered through the band’s collective tonal sensibilities, making the 14 originals presented here not only memorable, but also beholden to no other vision than their own collectively.

Besides providing the engine for the Monk’s Casino band which adds pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach to the quartet, each Enttäuschung member operates in different comfort zones elsewhere. Trumpeter Axel Dörner for instance, makes it point to stretch the boundaries of brass timbres in the company of fellow experimenters such as saxophonist John Butcher. Bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall is a valued part of other bands including Günter Adler, Soto Steidle, Vierergruppe Gschlöss and Aki Takase’s Fats Waller project. Drummer Uli Jennessen – who composed five tunes on this CD, as did Mahall – is also in the band LAX. Meanwhile bassist Jan Roder plays with the Squakk trio and the Real Latinos.

You can hear this last influence – Free Latin Jazz perhaps – in the groove Roder and Jennessen lay down on Mahall’s “Rumba Brutal”. Indicating with the title that this is no dance hall party tune, the theme is conveyed by contrapuntal horn lines, not percussion beats. With the drummer’s crisp and blunt ruffs encompassing clatter and cross-sticking, Dörner contributes plunger extensions, and Mahall’s ratcheting runs dip into the reed’s lowest register for mid-range lines which somehow suggests “Makin’ Whoopee”. The multi-tone finale finds the two horns in lockstep, attempting, it seems, to sound every note of the scale.

This blending is present throughout. Nonetheless the sonic variety available through flexible juxtapositions is most obvious on Jennessen’s “Uotenniw” – with its Hard-Bop echoes – and Dörner’s “Tinnef” – which leans towards West Coast Jazz. On the later parallelism is expressed with bass clarinet lowing and trumpet fluttering on top of Roder’s walking bass line. As the brassman’s long notes hocket and splinter into capillary extension, the reedist uses vibrated tones that offer broken-octave convergence with the trumpet line. Jennessen’s ratamacues, rebounds and rim shots simmer in the background as both horns recap the head with upended flourishes.

In contrast, “Uotenniw” rides on Art Blakey-like introductory press rolls from Jennessen and burnished grace notes from Dörner. As the trumpeter uses moderato coloration to extend the narrative, Mahall seizes the theme and re-harmonizes it more atonally and a half-step lower in pitch. While all this is going on, Roder pumps his strings and the drummer continues his rolls. Eventually the resolution involves chromatic harmonies.

As committed as they are to complete the program logically without dangling discord and inappropriate intonation, the four ensure that no one mistakes Die Enttäuschung for a junior Jazz Messengers or an updated Gerry Milligan Quartet, no matter how lyrical any composition may be or how harmonized its execution.

Most instructive is Dörner’s solo on his own “Tatächlich”. Swift, staccato and sharp, the exposition advances decisively throughout, although the composer leaves room for his own throat-clearing growls and antipodal glissandi. As Roder bows spiccato tones and Jennessen rattles and rebounds, Mahall’s connective lines suggest other partnerships like John Coltrane and Mils Davis or Eric Dolphy and Ted Curson. This is especially noticeable during an interlude of tempo cutting. First Mahall’s solo is strengthened by Dörner blowing ornamental clusters beside it, then when the trumpeter methodically smoothes out another variation, the reed man’s response is a cadenza of trills and the odd tongue slap.

Well on the road to joining earlier celebrated German exports to the improv world, Die Enttäuschung continues to defy the English translation of its name with every release.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Rocket in the Pocket 2. Tja 3. Uotenniw 4. Wiener Schnitzel 5. Salty Dog 6. For Quarts Only 7. Tinnef 8. Tu es nicht 9. Nasses Handtuch 10. Tatächlich 11. Rumba Brutal 12. Hopfen 13. Schienenersatzverkehr 14. Bruno

Personnel: Axel Dörner (trumpet); Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Jan Roder (bass) and Uli Jennessen (drums)

January 21, 2010

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

By Ken Waxman

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

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

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

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

Contrasting Views of Charles Mingus’ Works

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

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

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

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

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

Focus on Ornette and Dolphy

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

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

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

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

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

Rudi Mahall meets Fats and Monk

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

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

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

Pick Your Favorite Monk Number

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

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

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

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

More Monk, some Steve Lacy and the Duke

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

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

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

Age is no Impediment to Good Jazz

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

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

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

Too Many Ideas for A Segmented Orchestration

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

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

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

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

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

Play That Funky Music White Boy

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

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

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

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

Profound Art of the Duo

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

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

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

One Perfect Trio Interaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 16, 2009

Jan Roder

Double Bass
Jazzwerkstatt JW 037

Aki Takase & The Good Boys

Live at Willisau Jazz Festival

Jazz Werkstatt JW 049

Alexander Von Schlippenbach

Friulian Sketches

psi 08.07

TOOT

Two

Another Timbre At14

Extended Play: Alexander Von Schlippenbach and his band mates

By Ken Waxman

One European jazz pacesetter since the late 1960s, German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s groups showcase different aspects of his broad interests. Together for over 35 years, his trio with saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens features improvisers attuned to each other’s thinking. Predating that, The Globe Unity Orchestra herds outstanding Continental soloists into cooperative big band arrangements. His Monk’s Casino quintet – filled out by German players about 25 years younger than Schlippenbach, 71 – offers a unique take on Thelonious Monk’s oeuvre. Its members also score on individual projects, like these CDs.

Able to display the quirky kernel of Monk’s moods elsewhere, on

Friulian Sketches psi 08.07, Von Schlippenbach personalizes jazz chamber music, seconded by Amerian cellist Tristan Honsinger and Italian clarinetist Daniele D’Agaro, The 20 inventions are airy and pleasant, and never do the bel canto flourishes trump innate creativity. For example on “Capriccio” skewed Monkian tropes give way to broken-octave chording and strummed cadenzas from the pianist – both formalist and funky. In contrast the cellist’s tremolo squeaks open up into multi-string exhibitionism, while D’Agaro’s reed quivers with lyrical currents.

Moderato throughout, tunes are frequently jolted by the clarinetist’s high-pitched glissandi or liquid portamento. Take “Antifonia” where D’Agaro’s tones are matched by the pianist’s organic patterning plus a stop-time interlude from Honsinger. Altering their instruments’ tessitura as they play, the three keep the restrained sounds from becoming simplistic by including rhythmic plunks from cello strings and key fanning from the piano.

Simplicity doesn’t enter the equation on TOOT’s Two Another Timbre At14. Here the Bebop chops trumpeter Axel Dörner exhibits in Monk’s Casino are transmogrified into disembodied brass sound pulses, the better to meld with the quivering wave forms and undercurrents from Thomas Lehn’s synthesizer and the cries, retches and mumbles which make up the unconventional oralization of British vocalist Phil Minton.

Minton’s style of anti-singing, which encompasses duck quacks, yodeling, basso growls and strangled yelps, reduces vocal expression to its most basic. So does the trumpeter, whose expression mostly consists of flat-line air forced through the horn’s body tube, reductionist breaths and circumscribed grace notes. Abstract on their own, Lehn’s sound envelopes hold the improvisations together with pulsating signals and electric-piano-like sprinkles.

Evolving chromatically or contrapuntally, Toot’s soundworld is pointillist, but not cynosure. Despite Minton’s strident throat extensions, his gibberish sprouting is put into context when mated with the others’ outpourings. Purring timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes from the synthesizer create a connective undercurrent, while Dörner’s excursions into muted grace notes confirm the in-the-moment status of the improvisations.

Even more instantaneous is Aki and The Good Boys’ Live at Willisau Jazz Festival Jazz Werkstatt JW 049. One “good boy” prominent on this CD by Aki Takase – the Japanese-born, Berlin-based pianist – is bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, who shares the front line in Monk’s Casino with Dörner. Serendipitously enough, Takase is Von Schlippenbach’s wife. Looser than the other CDs’ programs, Live cannily subvert American jazz and German folksongs. Takase’s compositions are harmonically and melodically sophisticated. They also have sufficient space for her keyboard forays ranging from high-frequency tinkling, to metronomic pulsing. Added are flutter-tongued, altissimo and vamping exchanges between Mahall and Amsterdam-based reedist Tobias Delius. Scattered among the tunes are four Mahall-composed miniatures which lighten the mood and extend the color palate. “Dreimal Durch” for instance, conflates an uneven pulse, spidery piano arpeggios and unison horn trills.

The bass clarinetist’s reed bites, spetrofluctuation and tongue slaps help define Takase compositions such as “Todays Ulysses” which also showcases her metronomic patterning and contrasting dynamics. Here, Mahall scooping concentric notes from his horn’s bottom causes Delius to unleash responsive honks and slurs.

In contrast to these exercises in group interaction, bassist Jan Roder – whose solid rhythm is the rock on which Monk’s Casino rests – goes it alone on Double Bass Jazzwerkstatt 037, unveiling multiple strategies as his modulated plucks alternate with metronomic inventions plus abrasive bow scratches. “Naŭ” captures slaps, pulls and thumps. “Ses” deals with staccato, strident and subterranean double-stopping – one texture resembles pooch barks, another is airily melodic. Then there’s “Kvar”, which uses crumpled paper placed among the strings to create rattling noises that upticks to sul ponticello creaks. The piece concludes with adagio note clusters executed with guitar-like facility.

Each musician excels as a stylist on his own. Toronto can experience them together as Monk’s Casino at the Church of the Reeder as [art of the TD Canada Trust Jazz Festival on June 26.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #9

June 1, 2009

Alexander Von Schlippenbach

Friulian Sketches
psi 08.07

TOOT

Two

Another Timbre At14

Jan Roder

Double Bass

Jazzwerkstatt JW 037

Aki Takase & The Good Boys

Live at Willisau Jazz Festival

Jazz Werkstatt JW 049

Extended Play: Alexander Von Schlippenbach and his band mates

By Ken Waxman

One European jazz pacesetter since the late 1960s, German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s groups showcase different aspects of his broad interests. Together for over 35 years, his trio with saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens features improvisers attuned to each other’s thinking. Predating that, The Globe Unity Orchestra herds outstanding Continental soloists into cooperative big band arrangements. His Monk’s Casino quintet – filled out by German players about 25 years younger than Schlippenbach, 71 – offers a unique take on Thelonious Monk’s oeuvre. Its members also score on individual projects, like these CDs.

Able to display the quirky kernel of Monk’s moods elsewhere, on

Friulian Sketches psi 08.07, Von Schlippenbach personalizes jazz chamber music, seconded by Amerian cellist Tristan Honsinger and Italian clarinetist Daniele D’Agaro, The 20 inventions are airy and pleasant, and never do the bel canto flourishes trump innate creativity. For example on “Capriccio” skewed Monkian tropes give way to broken-octave chording and strummed cadenzas from the pianist – both formalist and funky. In contrast the cellist’s tremolo squeaks open up into multi-string exhibitionism, while D’Agaro’s reed quivers with lyrical currents.

Moderato throughout, tunes are frequently jolted by the clarinetist’s high-pitched glissandi or liquid portamento. Take “Antifonia” where D’Agaro’s tones are matched by the pianist’s organic patterning plus a stop-time interlude from Honsinger. Altering their instruments’ tessitura as they play, the three keep the restrained sounds from becoming simplistic by including rhythmic plunks from cello strings and key fanning from the piano.

Simplicity doesn’t enter the equation on TOOT’s Two Another Timbre At14. Here the Bebop chops trumpeter Axel Dörner exhibits in Monk’s Casino are transmogrified into disembodied brass sound pulses, the better to meld with the quivering wave forms and undercurrents from Thomas Lehn’s synthesizer and the cries, retches and mumbles which make up the unconventional oralization of British vocalist Phil Minton.

Minton’s style of anti-singing, which encompasses duck quacks, yodeling, basso growls and strangled yelps, reduces vocal expression to its most basic. So does the trumpeter, whose expression mostly consists of flat-line air forced through the horn’s body tube, reductionist breaths and circumscribed grace notes. Abstract on their own, Lehn’s sound envelopes hold the improvisations together with pulsating signals and electric-piano-like sprinkles.

Evolving chromatically or contrapuntally, Toot’s soundworld is pointillist, but not cynosure. Despite Minton’s strident throat extensions, his gibberish sprouting is put into context when mated with the others’ outpourings. Purring timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes from the synthesizer create a connective undercurrent, while Dörner’s excursions into muted grace notes confirm the in-the-moment status of the improvisations.

Even more instantaneous is Aki and The Good Boys’ Live at Willisau Jazz Festival Jazz Werkstatt JW 049. One “good boy” prominent on this CD by Aki Takase – the Japanese-born, Berlin-based pianist – is bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, who shares the front line in Monk’s Casino with Dörner. Serendipitously enough, Takase is Von Schlippenbach’s wife. Looser than the other CDs’ programs, Live cannily subvert American jazz and German folksongs. Takase’s compositions are harmonically and melodically sophisticated. They also have sufficient space for her keyboard forays ranging from high-frequency tinkling, to metronomic pulsing. Added are flutter-tongued, altissimo and vamping exchanges between Mahall and Amsterdam-based reedist Tobias Delius. Scattered among the tunes are four Mahall-composed miniatures which lighten the mood and extend the color palate. “Dreimal Durch” for instance, conflates an uneven pulse, spidery piano arpeggios and unison horn trills.

The bass clarinetist’s reed bites, spetrofluctuation and tongue slaps help define Takase compositions such as “Todays Ulysses” which also showcases her metronomic patterning and contrasting dynamics. Here, Mahall scooping concentric notes from his horn’s bottom causes Delius to unleash responsive honks and slurs.

In contrast to these exercises in group interaction, bassist Jan Roder – whose solid rhythm is the rock on which Monk’s Casino rests – goes it alone on Double Bass Jazzwerkstatt 037, unveiling multiple strategies as his modulated plucks alternate with metronomic inventions plus abrasive bow scratches. “Naŭ” captures slaps, pulls and thumps. “Ses” deals with staccato, strident and subterranean double-stopping – one texture resembles pooch barks, another is airily melodic. Then there’s “Kvar”, which uses crumpled paper placed among the strings to create rattling noises that upticks to sul ponticello creaks. The piece concludes with adagio note clusters executed with guitar-like facility.

Each musician excels as a stylist on his own. Toronto can experience them together as Monk’s Casino at the Church of the Reeder as [art of the TD Canada Trust Jazz Festival on June 26.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #9

June 1, 2009

Aki Takase & The Good Boys

Live at Willisau Jazz Festival
Jazz Werkstatt JW 049

Alexander Von Schlippenbach

Friulian Sketches

psi 08.07

TOOT

Two

Another Timbre At14

Jan Roder

Double Bass

Jazzwerkstatt JW 037

Extended Play: Alexander Von Schlippenbach and his band mates

By Ken Waxman

One European jazz pacesetter since the late 1960s, German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s groups showcase different aspects of his broad interests. Together for over 35 years, his trio with saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens features improvisers attuned to each other’s thinking. Predating that, The Globe Unity Orchestra herds outstanding Continental soloists into cooperative big band arrangements. His Monk’s Casino quintet – filled out by German players about 25 years younger than Schlippenbach, 71 – offers a unique take on Thelonious Monk’s oeuvre. Its members also score on individual projects, like these CDs.

Able to display the quirky kernel of Monk’s moods elsewhere, on

Friulian Sketches psi 08.07, Von Schlippenbach personalizes jazz chamber music, seconded by Amerian cellist Tristan Honsinger and Italian clarinetist Daniele D’Agaro, The 20 inventions are airy and pleasant, and never do the bel canto flourishes trump innate creativity. For example on “Capriccio” skewed Monkian tropes give way to broken-octave chording and strummed cadenzas from the pianist – both formalist and funky. In contrast the cellist’s tremolo squeaks open up into multi-string exhibitionism, while D’Agaro’s reed quivers with lyrical currents.

Moderato throughout, tunes are frequently jolted by the clarinetist’s high-pitched glissandi or liquid portamento. Take “Antifonia” where D’Agaro’s tones are matched by the pianist’s organic patterning plus a stop-time interlude from Honsinger. Altering their instruments’ tessitura as they play, the three keep the restrained sounds from becoming simplistic by including rhythmic plunks from cello strings and key fanning from the piano.

Simplicity doesn’t enter the equation on TOOT’s Two Another Timbre At14. Here the Bebop chops trumpeter Axel Dörner exhibits in Monk’s Casino are transmogrified into disembodied brass sound pulses, the better to meld with the quivering wave forms and undercurrents from Thomas Lehn’s synthesizer and the cries, retches and mumbles which make up the unconventional oralization of British vocalist Phil Minton.

Minton’s style of anti-singing, which encompasses duck quacks, yodeling, basso growls and strangled yelps, reduces vocal expression to its most basic. So does the trumpeter, whose expression mostly consists of flat-line air forced through the horn’s body tube, reductionist breaths and circumscribed grace notes. Abstract on their own, Lehn’s sound envelopes hold the improvisations together with pulsating signals and electric-piano-like sprinkles.

Evolving chromatically or contrapuntally, Toot’s soundworld is pointillist, but not cynosure. Despite Minton’s strident throat extensions, his gibberish sprouting is put into context when mated with the others’ outpourings. Purring timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes from the synthesizer create a connective undercurrent, while Dörner’s excursions into muted grace notes confirm the in-the-moment status of the improvisations.

Even more instantaneous is Aki and The Good Boys’ Live at Willisau Jazz Festival Jazz Werkstatt JW 049. One “good boy” prominent on this CD by Aki Takase – the Japanese-born, Berlin-based pianist – is bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, who shares the front line in Monk’s Casino with Dörner. Serendipitously enough, Takase is Von Schlippenbach’s wife. Looser than the other CDs’ programs, Live cannily subvert American jazz and German folksongs. Takase’s compositions are harmonically and melodically sophisticated. They also have sufficient space for her keyboard forays ranging from high-frequency tinkling, to metronomic pulsing. Added are flutter-tongued, altissimo and vamping exchanges between Mahall and Amsterdam-based reedist Tobias Delius. Scattered among the tunes are four Mahall-composed miniatures which lighten the mood and extend the color palate. “Dreimal Durch” for instance, conflates an uneven pulse, spidery piano arpeggios and unison horn trills.

The bass clarinetist’s reed bites, spetrofluctuation and tongue slaps help define Takase compositions such as “Todays Ulysses” which also showcases her metronomic patterning and contrasting dynamics. Here, Mahall scooping concentric notes from his horn’s bottom causes Delius to unleash responsive honks and slurs.

In contrast to these exercises in group interaction, bassist Jan Roder – whose solid rhythm is the rock on which Monk’s Casino rests – goes it alone on Double Bass Jazzwerkstatt 037, unveiling multiple strategies as his modulated plucks alternate with metronomic inventions plus abrasive bow scratches. “Naŭ” captures slaps, pulls and thumps. “Ses” deals with staccato, strident and subterranean double-stopping – one texture resembles pooch barks, another is airily melodic. Then there’s “Kvar”, which uses crumpled paper placed among the strings to create rattling noises that upticks to sul ponticello creaks. The piece concludes with adagio note clusters executed with guitar-like facility.

Each musician excels as a stylist on his own. Toronto can experience them together as Monk’s Casino at the Church of the Reeder as [art of the TD Canada Trust Jazz Festival on June 26.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #9

June 1, 2009

TOOT

Two
Another Timbre At14

Jan Roder

Double Bass

Jazzwerkstatt JW 037

Aki Takase & The Good Boys

Live at Willisau Jazz Festival

Jazz Werkstatt JW 049

Alexander Von Schlippenbach

Friulian Sketches

psi 08.07

Extended Play: Alexander Von Schlippenbach and his band mates

By Ken Waxman

One European jazz pacesetter since the late 1960s, German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s groups showcase different aspects of his broad interests. Together for over 35 years, his trio with saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens features improvisers attuned to each other’s thinking. Predating that, The Globe Unity Orchestra herds outstanding Continental soloists into cooperative big band arrangements. His Monk’s Casino quintet – filled out by German players about 25 years younger than Schlippenbach, 71 – offers a unique take on Thelonious Monk’s oeuvre. Its members also score on individual projects, like these CDs.

Able to display the quirky kernel of Monk’s moods elsewhere, on

Friulian Sketches psi 08.07, Von Schlippenbach personalizes jazz chamber music, seconded by Amerian cellist Tristan Honsinger and Italian clarinetist Daniele D’Agaro, The 20 inventions are airy and pleasant, and never do the bel canto flourishes trump innate creativity. For example on “Capriccio” skewed Monkian tropes give way to broken-octave chording and strummed cadenzas from the pianist – both formalist and funky. In contrast the cellist’s tremolo squeaks open up into multi-string exhibitionism, while D’Agaro’s reed quivers with lyrical currents.

Moderato throughout, tunes are frequently jolted by the clarinetist’s high-pitched glissandi or liquid portamento. Take “Antifonia” where D’Agaro’s tones are matched by the pianist’s organic patterning plus a stop-time interlude from Honsinger. Altering their instruments’ tessitura as they play, the three keep the restrained sounds from becoming simplistic by including rhythmic plunks from cello strings and key fanning from the piano.

Simplicity doesn’t enter the equation on TOOT’s Two Another Timbre At14. Here the Bebop chops trumpeter Axel Dörner exhibits in Monk’s Casino are transmogrified into disembodied brass sound pulses, the better to meld with the quivering wave forms and undercurrents from Thomas Lehn’s synthesizer and the cries, retches and mumbles which make up the unconventional oralization of British vocalist Phil Minton.

Minton’s style of anti-singing, which encompasses duck quacks, yodeling, basso growls and strangled yelps, reduces vocal expression to its most basic. So does the trumpeter, whose expression mostly consists of flat-line air forced through the horn’s body tube, reductionist breaths and circumscribed grace notes. Abstract on their own, Lehn’s sound envelopes hold the improvisations together with pulsating signals and electric-piano-like sprinkles.

Evolving chromatically or contrapuntally, Toot’s soundworld is pointillist, but not cynosure. Despite Minton’s strident throat extensions, his gibberish sprouting is put into context when mated with the others’ outpourings. Purring timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes from the synthesizer create a connective undercurrent, while Dörner’s excursions into muted grace notes confirm the in-the-moment status of the improvisations.

Even more instantaneous is Aki and The Good Boys’ Live at Willisau Jazz Festival Jazz Werkstatt JW 049. One “good boy” prominent on this CD by Aki Takase – the Japanese-born, Berlin-based pianist – is bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, who shares the front line in Monk’s Casino with Dörner. Serendipitously enough, Takase is Von Schlippenbach’s wife. Looser than the other CDs’ programs, Live cannily subvert American jazz and German folksongs. Takase’s compositions are harmonically and melodically sophisticated. They also have sufficient space for her keyboard forays ranging from high-frequency tinkling, to metronomic pulsing. Added are flutter-tongued, altissimo and vamping exchanges between Mahall and Amsterdam-based reedist Tobias Delius. Scattered among the tunes are four Mahall-composed miniatures which lighten the mood and extend the color palate. “Dreimal Durch” for instance, conflates an uneven pulse, spidery piano arpeggios and unison horn trills.

The bass clarinetist’s reed bites, spetrofluctuation and tongue slaps help define Takase compositions such as “Todays Ulysses” which also showcases her metronomic patterning and contrasting dynamics. Here, Mahall scooping concentric notes from his horn’s bottom causes Delius to unleash responsive honks and slurs.

In contrast to these exercises in group interaction, bassist Jan Roder – whose solid rhythm is the rock on which Monk’s Casino rests – goes it alone on Double Bass Jazzwerkstatt 037, unveiling multiple strategies as his modulated plucks alternate with metronomic inventions plus abrasive bow scratches. “Naŭ” captures slaps, pulls and thumps. “Ses” deals with staccato, strident and subterranean double-stopping – one texture resembles pooch barks, another is airily melodic. Then there’s “Kvar”, which uses crumpled paper placed among the strings to create rattling noises that upticks to sul ponticello creaks. The piece concludes with adagio note clusters executed with guitar-like facility.

Each musician excels as a stylist on his own. Toronto can experience them together as Monk’s Casino at the Church of the Reeder as [art of the TD Canada Trust Jazz Festival on June 26.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #9

June 1, 2009

Jazz Brugge

Brugge, Belgium
October 2-October 5, 2008

Pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s German quartet rolled through a set of Thelonious Monk compositions; Sardinians, saxophonist Sandro Satta and keyboardist Antonello Salis liberally quoted Charles Mingus lines during their incendiary set; Berlin-based pianist Aki Takase and saxophonist Silke Eberhard recast Ornette Coleman’s tunes; and the French Trio de Clarinettes ended its set with harmonies reminiscent of Duke Ellington’s writing for his reed section.

All these sounds and many more were highlighted during the fourth edition of Jazz Brugge, which takes place every second year in this tourist-favored Belgium city, about 88 kilometres from Brussels. But sonic homage and musical interpolations were only notable when part of a broader interpretation of improvised music. Other players in this four-day festival came from Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland and Belgium. With strains of rock, New music and folklore informing the jazz presented at the festival’s three sonically impressive venues, music at the most notable concerts was completely unique or added to the tradition. The less-than-memorable sets were mired in past achievements or unworkable formulae

Aided by its intimate surroundings, noon-time concerts in the Groening Museum were a model of realized inspiration. Satta and Salis’ duo was particularly remarkable, especially when Salis attacked the piano keys and strings, partially answering the question: What would Cecil Taylor sound like if he was Sardinian?

Salis was no more Taylor, then Satta was Taylor’s saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, but this longstanding partnership created an individual sound. Conveyed on waves of pedal-pressure and low-slung glissandi from the pianist and the saxophonist’s open tone, which melded the delicacy of Paul Desmond and Earl Bostic’s wide vibrato with the split tones, altissimo squeaks and key slaps associated with Free Jazz, selections were as dense as they were lyrical. Salis’ piano produced minuet-reminiscent arpeggios as well as staccato honky-tonk striding. With Satta often cunningly manipulating blues nuances, both abstracted further timbres from their island heritage. Stretching the accordion bellows or hammering at its keypad, Salis foot-stamped and vocalized pseudo-Mediterranean shanties to emphasize further individuality.

Sicilian percussionist Francesco Branciamore showcased his version of tradition- extension a two days later with trombonist and tubaist Giancarlo Schiaffini and France’s Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet and flugelhorn. Cappozzo, whose capabilities range from producing Gabriel-like triplets to breathing hand-muted mellow lines, worked in unison or contrapuntally with Schiaffini. Meantime the low-brass playing Roman moved beyond pedal-point accompaniment to unleash with the same facility, tailgate trombone braying gurgling, vocalized tuba lowing and shrill mouthpiece-only tootles. Branciamore advanced rhythm with wet finger tips slid across drum tops, hand-stopped cymbals, and wrapped up the performance with a Second Line-like backbeat. But that was after the percussionist shifted to the vibraharp for a four-mallet display of repetitive boppish beats, cushioned by Schiaffini’s feather-light tuba blares.

The reeds missing from this performance were present in earlier museum concerts from France’s Le Trio de Clarinettes and the duo of France’s Louis Sclavis on clarinets and soprano saxophone and Italian Francesco Bearzatti on tenor saxophone and clarinet.

Between them, Sylvain Kassap, Armand Angster and Jean-Marc Foltz played clarinets, bass clarinets and contrabass clarinets, frequently in triple counterpoint, other times with one producing a slurping ostinato as the others decorated his lines in lower-case accompaniment. Using circular breathing Foltz, for instance, created dual counter tones with himself. Meanwhile Kassap turned coughing and wheezing into his bass clarinet into shimmering echoes separated by chromatic honks. By the finale, the three moved from key-tapping and microtonal inferences to a replication – lead by Angster’s bass clarinet – of the sort of trio harmonies Ellington favored.

Similarly expressive, Bearzatti and Sclavis maintained a rhythmic cohesiveness as they introduced any number of ornamentations, running from jerky spittle-encrusted vibrations to blaring flutter-tonguing. On soprano saxophone Sclavis favored a flashy Sidney Bechet-style lyricism, while Bearzatti’s clarinet solos included jazzy, mid-range glissandi. Most impressive was a duet which joined shaky mouthpiece quacks as if from a chanter and basso pedal-point drones as if from bellows, to suggest insistent bagpipe-like undulations.

The duo’s performance was better realized than that of Sclavis’ Big Slam Napoli in the Concertgebouw, which matched the two reedists with a rhythm section and rapper Dgiz, who, despite hip-hopping from one side of the stage to the other, easily confirmed that rap-jazz admixtures are best left to performers from North America.

Similarly, French bassist Henri Texier’s sextet, while pumped full of Jazz Messengers-like energy resulting from a front line of trombone, baritone and alto saxophone, mired itself in crunching funk. Relatively faceless in execution, except for the profoundly resonating solos of the leader, the presentation lost its mooring when the band’s drummer was given free rein to unleash the sort of showy pounding firmly moored in Hard Rock.

Branciamore’s percussion facility was more germane to improvised music as were the work of three drummers associated with both bands involving British bassist Barry Guy. Swede Raymond Strid and Briton Paul Lytton guided the 10-piece Barry Guy New Orchestra (BGNO) without beat bluster, while earlier in the evening in the Concertgebouw’s Kamermuziekzaal, Spaniard Ramón López unveiled a similar low-key strategy playing with Agusti Fernández, BGNO’s Barcelona-based pianist, and Guy. Turning the classic jazz piano trio on its head, López’s Iberian rhythms, often expressed with vibrated bells, a sound tree, a triangle and ratchets, defined the tunes. Meanwhile Guy used a short stick plus his bow to hew unexpected stressed chords from his strings as well as plucking animated arpeggios. With Catalan-styled voicing periodically demanding he stretch crab-like across the keys, Fernández outlined clipped and insistent chording to steer the pieces astride the jazz tradition.

Filled out with a EU impov whose’s who – baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and tubaist Per Åke Holmlander from Sweden, German trombonist Johannes Bauer, British saxophonist Evan Parker, Swiss clarinetist Hans Koch and one American – trumpeter Herb Robertson – the BGNO was an object lesson in showcasing individual improvisations within a notated score. Conducting as he played, Guy sometimes directed the reed and horn sections to cross pollinate each other’s cumulative vamps in canon fashion. Then it was his own forceful string twangs, Fernández’s targeted slides and pumps plus vibrating cymbal color and unexpected tutti crescendos that provided the performance’s bonding musical glue.

Interjecting individual theme variations were, among others, Parker’s flutter tonguing and chirping tenor saxophone, Koch’s wispy scene-setting bass clarinet puffs and blistering triplets from Robertson. Throbbing on top of a configuration of bass clarinet, tuba and baritone saxophone, the piece reached its climax following diminishing drum beats and hunting-horn-like yodels from the trombone. Heraldic trumpet tattoos and low-pitched piano lines signaled tension release and conclusion.

One reason the BGNO performance was satisfying was because players created variations on a previously recorded Guy orchestration. Mutating familiarized themes in another fashion was less notably expressed by Von Schlippenbach’s Monk’s Casino band and Takase and Eberhard’s Ornette Coleman Anthology set. Although bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall fused exuberant altissimo and split tone playing with the ability to duck walk across the stage; and trumpeter Axel Dörner fused triplest and a blues tonality in his solos impresssiverly, overall the Von Schlippenbach four crammed too many 78-rpm-length Monk themes into the set that would have lost focus if not for the powerful walking bass of Jan Roder. Similarly the Takase/Eberhard duo substituted Coleman’s innate quirkiness for readings that straightjacketed the alto man’s tunes into standard head-variation-solo-recap formula. It felt as if the two bands presented the Classic Comics or Reader’s Digest version of advanced jazz.

All and all though, Jazz Brugge’s pluses overwhelmed its minuses, setting up high expectations for 2010’s fest.

-- Ken Waxman

-- MusicWorks Issue #103

March 28, 2009

Alexander Von Schlippenbach-Globe Unity Orchestra

Globe Unity - 40 Years
Intakt CD 133

Schlippenbach Trio

Gold Is Where You Find It

Intakt CD 143

More than 70 years old, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach is one more proof of Steve Lacy’s adage that “free jazz keeps you young”. A professional musician since 1962, Berlin-based Schlippenbach has maintained his level of creativity in various contexts, most prominently in the trans-European Globe Unity Orchestra (GUO) and his trio with saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens.

Consistency may be another attribute of quality as well as metaphoric youthfulness, since these CDs – one celebrating the GUO’s 40th birthday and the other recorded in the year of the Schlippenbach Trio (ST)’s 35th anniversary – confirm that the pianist and his associates are still on top of their game(s).

Taking them one by one, death and disagreements have taken their toll on the GUO’s personnel, but the 15-piece aggregation – sans bass player like the ST – holds to the high standards set by its predecessors. Mixing older compositions with newer pieces, such as the pianist-composed title track, solo space is given to every band member, who range from GU veterans such as trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and multi-reedist Gerd Dudek to newbies such as American trombonist Jeb Bishop and French trumpeter/flugelhornist Jean-Luc Capozzo.

Some of tracks are practically bagatelles, with the real meat in the more lengthy explorations. Still there is period charm in the rhythmic punctuation, complete with screaming high-note trumpet lines – likely from Capozzo – that enliven “Bavarian Calypso”’s cacophonous polyphony. Plus “Nodago”, a reflective showcase for Wheeler, who composed it, proves that the old Woody Herman-Stan Kenton-style big band backing can be legit. Nonetheless, the late British trombonist Paul Rutherford manages to counter nostalgia here with a burbling multiphonic solo that contrasts contralto and basso tones.

A close cousin to the calypso is Steve Lacy’s “The Dumps”. Thelonious Monk-like in its interpretation it features oomph-pah-pah brass, slithering reed timbres and high-frequency rolling chording from Schlippenbach. Here Dudek expels a continuously breathed circular soprano saxophone solo with more grit than Parker brings to similar outputs. Bishop’s slippery slide positions and tongued pressure layer the backing along with Capozzo’s mouse squeaks and behind-the-beat grace notes, which are given further impetus by Lovens’ cymbal spanks and rim shots. In contrast, Dörner’s concluding knitted capillary tones appear to leech sound as much from metal stress and throat scraping as from what is pushed through the bell.

Another showcase, Wilem Breuker’s “Out of Burtons Songbooks”, from 1973, makes obvious the GU’s early style-spanning. The processional piano introduction could have been lifted from a chamber recital, while Schlippenbach’s subsequent exchanges with Dudek outline the sort of interdependent dissonance that seems a lot closer to Joe Henderson’s and Herbie Hancock’s work for Blue Note, then contemporary European experimentation. In-the-moment interface is thus left to Bishop and bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall’s whack-a-mole-like duet, where smears, vibratos and trills in all registers are immediately answered and intensified.

Still the GU’s 21st Century identity is made clearest on the pianist’s title composition. Fabricating the piece from drum pops, brass plunger tones, slurred reed chirps, zig-zag trumpeting and irregular triplets from the piano, serendipitously its resolution involves members of the ST. Schlippenbach is appropriately staccato and cross-handed in his playing; Lovens wallops cracks, drags and crashes his percussion; while Parker unleashes hummingbird-swift sliding, slurping and triple tonguing. Trombonist George Lewis’ side-to-side slurs and doubled tongue flutters extend the line still further.

Gold Is Where You Find It’s title tune provides an equivalently definitive description of the 21st Century ST. Coupled with the subsequent “K. SP”, it exposes the trio strategy of tick-tock wooden drags and positioned licks plus cymbal pops from Lovens; echoing strummed piano chords plus bowed, twanged and stopped prepared piano strings from Schlippenbach; and squeezed irregular note clusters and unstated squeaks and breaths form Parker.

Like the GU, the trio improvisations obliquely refer to antecedents as well as the future. For instance, there’s a section on “Three in One”, when Schlippenbach’s key-clipping is so obviously Monk-like – the American pianist is an admitted influence – that Parker’s continuously uncoiling chirps and split-tone asides start to resemble the tenor saxophone styling of Johnny Griffin. Meanwhile the pianist circles through a variety of chord and cluster coloration as cascading high-energy feints and fills share space with wriggling note clusters and off-handed patterns.

“Cloudburst” – not the Lambert-Hendricks & Ross vocal showcase – in instead a moody nocturne where circumspect tenor saxophone timbres meet rebounds, pops and temperate cymbal lacerations, with the tune accelerating in andante increments, until it climaxes in kinetic cadenzas from Schlippenbach as well as tough saxophone cadences from Parker.

Finally there’s “Z.D.W.A.”, the impressive group improvisation that begins this recital. Balanced on Lovens’ distinctive locution of rolls and rebounds plus irregular cymbal shattering, the pianist expresses himself in different styles and tempos. Moving from dreamy romanticism to rolling stride in his solos, bass pedal pressure and chord clusters gradually give way to playful double-timing. Similarly Parker’s tongue-slapping and tone-scraping attain his characteristic line-and-pattern extensions before downshifting with the others to cumulative silence.

Extrapolating Parker’s composition title “Three in One”, the Schlippenbach Trio has maintained its power over many years by sympathetically amalgamating each other’s skills. What’s more, even with a constantly shifting cast, the Globe Unity has performed a similar task. Perhaps then it’s this organizational flair, along with his choice of compositions, and situations that welcome new ideas, which accounts for the pianist’s musical youthfulness.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Globe: 1. Globe Unity forty years 2. Out of Burtons Songbooks 3.Bavarian Calypso 4. Nodago 5. The Dumps 6. The Forge

Personnel: Globe: Axel Dörner (trumpet); Jean-Luc Capozzo, Manfred Schoof and Kenny Wheeler (trumpet and flugelhorn); George Lewis, Paul Rutherford, Johannes Bauer and Jeb Bishop (trombone); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (clarinet, alto saxophone and flute); Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); Gerd Dudek (soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute); Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano) and Paul Lovens and Paul Lytton (drums).

Track Listing: Gold: 1. Z.D.W.A. 2. Slightly Flapping 3. Amorpha 4.Gold is Where you Find it 5. K. SP 6. Monkey’s Fist 7. Lekko 8.Cloudburst 9. Three in One 10. The Bells of St. K.

Personnel: Gold: Evan Parker (tenor saxophone); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano) and Paul Lovens (drums).

November 25, 2008

Dörner-Mahall-Roder-Jennessen

Die Enttäuschung
Intakt CD 125

Known for its repertoire performance of Thelonious Monk tunes, the Berlin-based Die Enttäuschung quartet showcases its own compositions on this notable CD. Along the way the band proves that rhythmic excitement can be mated with serpentine melodies and unusual improvisational forays.

Trumpeter Axel Dörner, whose style usually probes the outer limits of raspy noise and microtonal vibrations, here surprisingly adopts a muted, tongue-fluttering output that erects polytonal pointillism along with bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall. For his part, the reedist matches low-pitched renal snorts or squeaking altissimo smears with Dörner’s output in such a way Booker Little. Should one horn player explode into pitch-sliding expansions in his instrument’s highest range, then the other decorates that foray with a soothing obbligato, keeping the end product as grounded as any Monk line.

Although, except for the odd reverberation, bassist Jan Roder, stays too far in the background, inventive drummer Uli Jennessen makes up for this. Using both his palms and sticks, backbeat ruffs, blunt bounces and Latinesque wood block concussions vary the beat with unexpected patterning.

A caveat: while the 17 shortish tracks on this CD may show off the members of Die Enttäuschung’s individual compositional versatility, fewer, longer numbers would give them all scope for more illuminating and extensive improvisations. More than piano-less Monk interpreters, the German band shows that it’s capable of music as inventive – if not yet as timeless – as that of its American mentor.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 336

December 4, 2007

OLES/MAHALL/TIBERIAN/OLES

Contemporary Quartet
Not Two MW 744-2

Using so-called classical themes as a basis for improvisation isn’t a new idea. John Kirby’s Sextet did so in the early 1940s and flautist Moe Koffman and the Modern Jazz Quartet got plenty of mileage out of re-interpreting Bach.

But using these themes as more than a jumping off point for unconnected soloing had to wait until a group of musicians exists that is as comfortable working on the improv side of the fence as the legit side. It also helped when some contemporary composers got over their snobbish distaste for so-called jazz music.

This sea change has been particularly evident in Europe, and that’s one of the reasons this CD is so special. Two young Polish players, plus a slightly older German clarinetist and a Romanian pianist, take nine pieces by contemporary Polish composers and transform them using the techniques and freedom of improv. Most notably, they don’t “jazz the classics”, but metamorphose the existing notation into organically legitimate new pieces. Drummer Bartlomiej Brat Oles, who arranged all the tracks, also throws in a couple of his own tunes here that naturally fuse with the other sounds.

Oles and his twin brother, bassist Marcin Oles, provide the Janus-headed hope for contemporary Polish jazz establishing itself as memorable and original. Not only have the two played with local heroes like saxists Mikolaj Trzaska and Adam Pieronczyk, but also with outsiders like American reedist David Murray, German bass clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann and the two foreigners featured here. “Brat”, by the way doesn’t mean what it seems to for English speakers; it means “brother” in Polish.

Accustomed to similar musical fusion, reedist Rudi Mahall is an inspired addition. He plays contemporary music with European orchestras and improvises often with Japanese pianist Aki Takase and guitarist Frank Möbus. Pianist Mircea Tiberian is one of the most active Romanian jazzers, having played with Americans including guitarist Larry Coryell and bassist Ed Schuller, as well as Poland’s best-known musical export, trumpeter Tomas Stanko.

Composers represented here are Paris-based Marzena Komsta; Krakow’s late Stefan Kisielewski; the late Witold Lutostawski, who taught in Sweden and United States; the late composer/pianist Grazyna Bacewicz, a neoclassicist with international stature; and most notably, composer/academic/conductor Krzysztof Penderecki, five of whose representative pieces are interpreted on the CD.

Although Penderecki was open minded enough to be involved in a similar jazz-classical fusion with American trumpeter Don Cherry and Stanko in 1971, it’s likely he never imagined his “Sonata III from Sonata for violin & piano 1953” as a drum showcase. But, as Bartlomiej Oles expresses it here, the sonata now includes shakes and rattles from various percussion instruments, cymbal and cowbell accents, nerve beat wooden stick sounds, tambourine shivers and straight rolls and flams from snares and toms. Other interpolations include abrasive ponticello bass lines that eventually morph into walking bass, key clipping from the pianist and exaggerated clown horn beeps that become a jaunty squealed countermelody arising from Mahall’s reed.

All this follows Tiberian’s oh-so-correct voicing of the theme on “Sonata I from Sonata for violin & piano 1953’ that only gradually features variations on the theme. Later the pianist’s low frequency linear playing turns to snaking cadenzas on “Sonata II from Sonata for violin & piano 1953”. On the same piece, Mahall carefully accents slurred single notes then note clusters, ending his solo with a gravelly siren-like tone, while Maricin Oles’ bass work includes extensive tremolo bowing and powerful Mingus-like pizzicato swoops.

Penderecki’s “Per Slava from Per Slava for cello solo 1986” is transformed into another bass showcase, with Oles’ shuffle bowing and grating arco lines evolving from scratches and bird-like squeaks to a legato melody. Mahall flutter tongues and key pops add color, eventually introducing trilling low notes following the pianist’s consonant chording and Brat’s boppy cymbal accents and bass drum thumps. With Marcin almost subliminally knitting the strands together from the bass clef, Tiberian sounds out a pastoral, double-timed line as Bartlomiej hits most parts of his kit without overpowering the other players. Coda is made up of unison floating bass clarinet and arco bass tones.

Bartlomiej’s restraint is confirmed on his own compositions, both of which are more notable for group contributions than drum fireworks. On “Seven Hands for contemporary quartet 2002” -- which musician is missing a limb, by the way? -- the steady clattering of rim shots, cymbal shimmers and press rolls merely adds to the quasi night club ambiance. Marcin alternates between walking bass lines, slides and shuffles, as Mahall emphasizes a slinky note pattern from the darkest part of his reed until shrill, but carefully modulated glissandos are heard. Standout here is the pianist, with a tough-touch keyboard fantasia. Working in vein that joins Wynton Kelley with McCoy Tyner, he emphasizes the changes with both hands, then decelerates into comping.

“April for contemporary quartet 2001,” Brat’s other tune, is more of the same with Tiberian’s playing ranging from 10-finger crescendos to speedy arpeggios to an ostinato of striding cadenzas. Meanwhile Mahall’s slurred double tonguing gives way to metallic spetrofluctuation and trilled vibrations.

With the pianist’s formalism including echoes of impressionistic jazz technicians like Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, and the reedist’s extended technique on hand to bring out every nuance -- and more -- of the compositions, this experiment in genre shifting works without exposing fissures.

Exemplary improvisers and organizers, CONTEMPORARY QUARTET is another example of why Marcin and Bartlomiej Oles’ names may soon lose their unfamiliarity for non-Polish jazz fans.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Prelude from Prelude for clarinet solo 1987 2. Duet from Suita for oboe & piano 1954 3. Langueur from Langueur for piano 1990 4. Sonata I from Sonata for violin & piano 1953 5. Sonata II from Sonata for violin & piano 1953 6. Sonata III from Sonata for violin & piano 1953 7. Foggy from Sonatina for oboe & piano 1955 8. April for contemporary quartet 2001 9. Per Slava from Per Slava for cello solo 1986 10. Seven Hands for contemporary quartet 2002 11. Bucolique no IV from Bucoliques for piano 1952

Personnel: Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet); Mircea Tiberian (piano); Marcin Oles (bass); Bartlomiej Brat Oles (drums)

May 17, 2004

KEN VANDERMARK

Furniture Music
Okka Disk OD 12046

ALESSANDRO BOSETTI/GREGOR HOTZ/KAI FAGASCHINKSI/RUDI MAHALL
Berlin Reeds
Absinth Records 001

EVAN PARKER/GEORGE HASLAM /JOHN EDWARDS
Parker - Haslam - Edwards
SLAM CD314

BERTRAND DENZLER/HANS KOCH
Asymétries
Ambiance Magnétiques AM 112 CD

Woodwind players galore in solo or duo settings are featured on these CDs, which not only replicate the stratagems reedists evolve to cope with such concentrated playing, but confirm the divisions between Continental and Anglo-Saxon interpreters.

On show are seven reed blowers: one American, one Italian, two Britons, two Germans and three Swiss. The horns used include almost all the members of the saxophone family: soprano, alto, tenor baritone and bass; plus clarinet, bass clarinet and Hungarian tarogato. Oh, and on two tracks, a British bassist makes an appearance.

Taken together, the results seem to show that the English speakers, no matter how experimental, are still trying for a consistent musical statement, while the continental Europeans are moving into the realm of pure sound.

You can’t chalk this difference up to age either. Chicago’s Ken Vandermark, whose almost-66½ minute, 18-track solo session using four different horns is the most audacious disc, is around the same age as a couple of the players on BERLIN REEDS and younger than the others on that CD and ASYMÉTRIES, whose playing is ostensibly further-out than his. Moreover British saxophonist Evan Parker, whose solo experiments began around the time some of the junior woodwind players here had their lips on a pacifier, rather than a reed, creates one of the most concordant extended solos of all.

FURNITURE MUSIC is the first solo CD from Vandermark, who has already successfully forged a group identity with his own bands, and been praised for his contributions in groups ranging from Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tenet to duos with saxmen such as Joe McPhee and Mars Williams. Here he solos on clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone, and that may be part of the difficulty. Very few musicians are inventive on four different horns, and exposing himself alone magnifies Vandermark’s shortcomings on each. Even someone like Sonny Stitt, who was an exceptional blower on alto, tenor and baritone saxophone never attempted solo work on any of his axes.

On tenor, his most familiar horn, Vandermark has his elliptical sounds down pat, but seems to do little more than chirp altissimo multiphonics and push out swollen notes in pedal point from deep within his horn’s body. Even his version of the country blues is cut off before it reaches critical mass.

He’s a bit better off on clarinet and bass clarinet, the other reeds that have been in his arsenal for a while. On clarinet, his most impressive moments come on “Melodica” and “Leaves”. The former, dedicated to McPhee, finds him reverberating whole notes in the unruffled contralto register. Melodic enough, it could probably celebrate the other reedist more appropriately, though, if the resulting sound was faster and livelier.

The later tune, honoring filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, claims to be crosscutting images and sounds from two of the Italian director’s films. Here nose breaths, chirping split tones, tongue pressure and the hiss of colored air are what Vandermark hears as approximations of cinematic techniques. Yet rather than reflecting Antonioni’s hyper realism, the end result is more like that of a Hollywood-oriented American Indie flick, at least when compared to the outright radical aural cinema of Kai Fagaschinski on the BERLIN REEDS set.

Reverberations within the body tube and tongue slapping percussion characterize Vandermark’s work on bass clarinet. On “Indeterminate Action”, for instance -- tellingly dedicated to composer John Cage -- he appears to be applying any extended techniques he may have neglected on other tracks, including altissimo screeches, semi-snorts, irregular vibratos, internal growls in false registers and propelled ghost notes.

His most impressive achievement -- coincidentally the longest track on the CD -- is “Color Fields to Darkness”. Here he manages to produce a ghostly doppelgänger reedist, with one producing strident squeals and the other a foghorn tone that deepens and elongates as he plays. All this is followed by tongue slaps and twittering vibratos.

These two pieces are more exploratory than the first two tracks on BERLIN REEDS by Rudi Mahall. The Nürnberg, Germany-born bass clarinetist, who has worked with musicians such as trumpeter Axel Dörner and pianist Aki Takase, performs what could be termed standard EuroImprov on these tracks dedicated to his guinea pig [!]. Unruffled and legato, the first piece is mostly concerned with circular trills and bass echoes, not expanding until the very end into freak high-pitched squeaks, reed buzzes and a few microscopically examined wild-boar snorts. With echoing tone and reverberating bass tones the second is more of the same.

Back in Chicago, Vandermark seems most comfortable with the baritone, his newest horn. On the bouncy “Lines”, it’s almost as if he’s one-quarter of the Four Brothers, creating a chugging, foot-tapping melodic sound, almost like 1950s Jimmy Giuffre. Other tunes show off arching split tones, glissandos that give him sympathetic echoes within horn’s body tube and phrases held so long that they break apart into reed tweets and low-pitched tongue slaps. Built around unvarying lower level multiphonics, “(brüllt)”, again manages to push more than one timbre from his bell, and these join and split apart amoebae-like before turning to unrelentless honks.

He’s honorable in his efforts. But by dedicating all his improvisation, Vandermark has set himself up for sometimes unflattering comparisons to other woodwind players. Furthermore, by packing 18 tunes into 73 minutes, he may have bitten off more than he can chew, which can be quite painful with a reed instrument.

The Chicagoan’s shortcomings are put into bolder relief when compared to the solo and duo creations of Britons Parker on soprano and tenor saxophones and George Haslam on baritone saxophone and tarogato -- a sort of Hungarian wooden soprano saxophone -- on PARKER-EDWARDS-HASLAM. Bassist John Edwards is the odd man out here.

Largely self-taught, Haslam has worked extensively in Eastern Europe and South America and in many different types of music. He brings a melodious tinge to his solo playing. On baritone his dynamic sense is paramount with the lines mostly smooth and legato. Coming across like a hipper Gerry Mulligan, his rhythm always swings on an even keel. Of course, Mulligan may have been shocked by Haslam’s sometimes irregular vibrato, rhythmic tongue slaps and an ending which moves up from traditional baritone bottom-feeding tones to a bit of overblowing, side slipping and split tones.

Uniquely Magyar, the tarogato has an elastic tone that seems to add a resonant buzz to every note played, More experimental with it than his larger horn, Haslam applies spetrofluctuation, circular breathing and double timing to shake loose new avenues for his improvisations.

Wooden soprano and Vandermark’s clarinet output has to bow to the solo methodology developed and perfected by Parker and exhibited on the CD, however. Here overblowing and circular breathing allow him to slur out two very different tones, one in mid-range and the other high-pitched. Soon, with glissandos, he’s producing continuous squeak and sympathetic overtones, then smearing out a bagpipe-style irregular vibratos with high-pitched chirps on top. Like a conveyer belt of notes, he plays on and on, appearing to be triple tonguing so that there are echoing vibrations for every previous echoing vibration, and ending with a coda of one long smeared tone. At more than three times the length of any Vandermark track, his solo is also more synchronous, pointed and in context, easily related to the ongoing improv tradition.

Those who wonder where reed exploration can go post-Parker, are directed to BERLIN REEDS, made up of four, 3-inch CDs packaged in an oversized cardboard sleeve. In terms of higher-pitched woodwinds, Italian Alessandro Bosetti on soprano saxophone and feedback and German clarinetist Fagaschinski may have definite answers to that question.

Bosetti, 30, who has worked with fellow soprano saxophone excavators like France’s Michel Doneda and Boston’s Bhob Rainey, and been part of the band Phosphor with aural explorers like trumpeter Dörner and inside piano specialist Andrea Neumann, states that he’s “developed an instrumental language that incorporates extended techniques, noises, and a strong influence from electronic music”. There are times on his more than 18-minute solo track here, in fact, that the electro-acoustic suggestions seem to involve more than feedback.

Beginning with the rotating injection of pure air moving through the horn’s body tube, skids and stops then imply electronic static. Almost continuous, his tone soon gets noticeably thinner and more diffuse, taking on the oscillation of an electric guitar. With lips formed into a Bronx cheer and watery spit tones predominating, his metallic timbre almost reaches dog whistle territory. Interrupted only for the odd breath, you can hear undulating wind sounds and the clinks of keys being depressed. Soon even these give way to reed hisses, reed kisses and growling breaths amplified by key manipulation. It’s a performance that sounds more like more sibilant larynx than sax licks.

Fagaschinski, 29, a German clarinetist who has also played with Dörner and in a duo with computer manipulator Christof Kurzmann, is as radical in his presentation as his politics. On “I’m afraid of Americans too”, he’s the most reductionist of any of the extant soloists, and ironically, one whose work is reminiscent of American Rainey’s. He’s also someone who will send you scrambling for your headphones, since his almost 15½-minute solo alternates up-to-60-second pauses with tiny breaths and tongue noises plus echoing whistles. Most of the time he appears to be wheezing colored air through the instrument’s body, with even that oxygen sometimes dissolving into stillness. Fascinating in his audacity, in comparison, it’s as if he and Vandermark are playing two completely different woodwinds, rather than the same instrument.

Almost the same thing could be said about “Weggebracht!”, bass clarinetist Mahall’s final solo piece. Firmly placing himself in the ranks of Teutonic body tube travelers he screeches out extended, mountain-top high, resonating tones that then liquefy into singular, tart note spits and gritty, reed-biting double tones. All this takes place in the altissimo range and ends with a final high-pitched honk.

Zürich-born, Berlin-resident Gregor Hotz is an organizer in that city’s music scene as well as a bass saxophonist. Someone who has also played with Dörner, Mahall, Neumann and fellow Swiss reedist Hans Koch, his sax sound on “Friendly Fire” is as far removed from the mainstream and semi-mainstream conceptions of Vandermark and Haslam as their sax conception is from the 1920s and 1930s work of jazz’s first -- and for a time only -- bass saxophonist, Adrian Rollini.

Offering up a chamber music recital of prolonged exhalation, Hotz’s strategy is to start from a certain point and suspire until no more air can be expelled. He keeps repeating that trope as his vibrato gets more intense. Inserting respiratory pauses of up to 60 seconds, at times he sounds out deep-sea tones that resemble tuba blats. Avoiding that traditional low tone most of the time, though, he also bests the Anglo Saxons by frequently creating echoing, dissonant timbres and multi-tones. Coda is a heavy, snorting vibrato of few notes that transforms the sax into a percussive drone machine.

Doubling the pleasure and fun, ASYMÉTRIES joins tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist Koch with Swiss countryman Bertrand Denzler on tenor saxophone for a four track, less-than-38-minute, reed recital. Koch who is best known for his ongoing trio with cellist Martin Schütz and drummer Fredy Studer, and Denzler, who is part of the otherwise all-French HUBBUB band, have been working as a duo since 1999.

EuroImprovisers par excellence, between their squeaks, whistles, warbles, small animal peeps, flattement, reed-biting, rumbles, irregular vibrations and Bronx cheer approximations, the two are often able to create three -- or more -- distinct sounds from only two horns.

Most descriptive of their talents, the almost 17-minute first track finds them off-handedly -- or perhaps just using the thumb rest -- showcasing reed prestidigitation without Anglo-Saxon braggadocio. Building on percussive key pops, understated tongue slaps and shakes, they create sounds that aurally mirror ghostly wind whistles, radio signals, the shuffling of cards and oscillating sine waves. Individual instrument identification is put aside, although among the tiny nursing piglet squeals, it seems that one man is expelling a watery underlying tone, while the other builds up multiple breaths that reconstitute themselves into percussion-like licks. Only on a couple of other tracks can you distinguish the woody tone of the bass clarinet, its identity is more subsumed than in Mahall’s or Vandermark’s improvisations.

Elsewhere, bassist John Edwards, who has also duetted with reedists like Paul Dunmall and John Butcher, is on hand to second Haslam on baritone and Parker on both soprano and tenor on their sax face off on the Slam disc. Unlike the Swiss, the Englishmen limit themselves to straight staccato lines with irregular vibrations, tossing phrases and notes back-and-forth. Chirping, Parker flaunts his circular breathing as Haslam’s baritone pedal point provides the undercurrent. At the same time the soprano saxist makes sure that he relates as much to Edwards’ string tugging as the baritone’s gritty slurs. Later on, the baritonist slides out some idiosyncratic constructions and Parker providing the pepping ostinato that reflects them. With Edwards’ bass bottom suggesting a third saxophone, the two real reedists turn to flutter tonguing and slurs, with Haslam more ornamental in his exhalation. Finally the two confront one another for a robust miasma of pliant reed timbres, circling around and uniting for a medley of honks, in congruent but contrasted high pitches. Unlike Koch and Denzler there’s never any doubt as to which sax is playing or who is playing it.

Every one of these sessions is valuable for reed fanciers, although some experiments are more accomplished than others. The duos confirm their talents, the Berlin collection highlights new reed researchers and Vandermark once he learns to edit himself, shows on his first effort that he can probably soon expose more elevated solo work.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Furniture: 1. Resistance [for Evan Parker]* 2. Horizontal Weight [for Peter Brötzmann]# 3. So Is This [for Michael Snow]+ 4. Lines [for Lennie Tristano]& 5. Immediate Action [for Jackson Pollock]& 6. Panels [for Piet Mondrian and Erik Satie]*7. Color Fields to Darkness [for Mark Rothko]+ 8. Would a Proud Man Rather Break Than Bend [for Mississippi Fred MacDowell]& 9. Beck and Fall [for Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman]# 10. Melodica [for Joe McPhee]*11. Indeterminate Action [for John Cage]+ 12. Leaves [for Michelangelo Antonioni]*13. (brüllt) after Jaap Blonk # Live: 14. Panels [live]15. Immediate Action [live]16. Horizontal Weight [live]17. Color Fields to Darkness [live]18. Would a Proud Man Rather Break Than Bend [live]

Personnel: Furniture: Ken Vandermark (clarinet*, bass clarinet+, tenor saxophone&, baritone saxophone#)

Track Listing: Berlin: CD 1: 1. Unplayed saxophone CD 2: 1. Friendly fire CD 3: 1. I’m afraid of Americans too 2. No body can leave its skin CD 4: 1. Mein meerschweinchen kann das nicht 2. Mein meerschweinchen will das nicht 3. Weggebracht!

Personnel: Berlin: CD 1: Alessandro Bosetti (soprano saxophone, feedback); CD 2: Gregor Hotz (bass saxophone); CD 3: Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet); CD 4: Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet)

Track Listing: Parker: 1. Solo for baritone saxophone 2. Solo for tarogato 3. Solo for soprano saxophone 4. Solo for double bass 5. Duet for saxophone and bass 6. Trio for two saxophones and bass

Personnel: Parker: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); George Haslam (baritone saxophone, tarogato); John Edwards (bass)

Track Listing: Asymétries: 1. Asymétries 1 2. Asymétries 2 3. Asymétries 3 4. Asymétries 4

Personnel: Asymétries: Bertrand Denzler (tenor saxophone); Hans Koch (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet)

October 20, 2003