Daniel Erdmann-Samuel Rohrer

How to Catch a Cloud
Intakt CD 194

Mikko Innanen & Innkvisitio

Clustrophy

TUM CD 025

One of the German improvisers who reached Jazz maturity in this century, Wolfsburg-born saxophonist Daniel Erdmann, who now lives in Reims, France, has been involved in appealing projects with fellow reedists like Rudi Mahall and Gebhard Ullmann as well as impressing with his own Das Kapital quartet. But it’s apparent from these recent CDs that his creativity is strongly linked to his companions and circumstances. While the programs of Clustrophy and How to Catch a Cloud present well-played contemporary Jazz, the extra spark of inspiration apparent on Das Kapital for instance appears lacking.

Operating on this side of Jazz-Fusion, the mostly Finnish Innkvisitio band lead by Lapinjärvi-born multi-reedist Mikko Innanen creates 11 dense, rhythmic tracks heavily dependent on the sonic identities that arise from Seppo Kantonen’s synthesizer and the solo and unison blowing of the reed players, who include Sweden’s Fredrik Ljungkvist, a charter members of the Atomic quartet, along with Erdmann and Innanen. Apparently taking its clues from the Roots-Pop gestalt that characterizes the contemporary sounds of guitarists like Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, Erdmann’s quartet with Swiss drummer Samuel Rohrer on the other CD is almost unalterably low-key and folksy. Rounding out the band are German guitarist Frank Möbus, with whom the sax man has been working for over a decade; plus French cellist Vincent Courtois, who has worked with the likes of reedist Louis Sclavis.

Since the program on his elaborately packaged CD in the main consists of Innanen’s compositions and arrangements, one can’t fault the other sax players, who have expressed more profound statements elsewhere. Throughout, the majority of the performances appear to balance on that narrow line between the sort of Punk-Jazz that Tim Berne and others were playing with original ferocity in the late 1970s, and the kind of Jazz-R&B the Ray Charles band and the various soloists who graduated from it purveyed a little earlier. The interface is anything but subtle. When slower tunes are showcased, they appear as close cousins to power ballads, with many of the harmonies and even individual licks sounding overly composed.

For instance “757” moves along with a rhythm that sounds closer to the Mar-Keys than the Modern Jazz Quartet. Considering that drummer Joonas Riippa, who supplies the heavy backbeats and Kantonen, who sticks to organ-like notes from his synth, both performed with ex-Tower of Power saxist Lenny Pickett, the similarities could be expected. Goosed along with percussion whaps, Innanen’s screaming alto solo relates mostly to ex-JB Pee Wee Ellis despite some earlier near-lyrical horn harmonies. There even appears to be some sampled cries added among the Hi-Life styled beat. Similar references creep up on the title track, with Kantonen exposing his inner Jimmy Smith through supple keyboard pulsing and bass pedal thumping; Erdmann coming on with a snorting tenor sax solo firmly in the Ray Charles-band Don Wilkerson school; plus a finale of vamping saxes that only lacks Charles’ voice. Much better is “The Grey Adler Returns Again” with thick baritone sax snorts, vamps and reed bites from Innanen and Erdmann in counterpoint to Ljungkvist’s staccato flutter tonguing and whistling – backed by ruffs and paradiddles from the drummer.

Even moodier interludes such as “Ardennes at Dawn” and “A Panoramic View from the Top Floor” seem more like track separators than profound statements, although the former does have corkscrew intensity expressed by a triple clarinet front line. Lamentably the latter, with overwhelming pulsations from Kantonen before he outputs a mellotron-styled solo, does update ProgRock – if the world has been waiting for another instance of that.

A similar question arises with How to Catch a Cloud, since strings and sax sessions which draw on so-called Classical, Pop and Rock as well as Jazz are exceedingly common. Considering his name is above the title as well, it’s evident that Erdmann must take credit or blame for at least 50% of what transpired on this all-acoustic CD. With nearly all the tracks composed by either of the co-leaders, it seems ironic that the one group improv, that is the title tune, probably communicates best at what the four were aiming. With unsentimental romanticism expressed through Erdmann’s intense vibrato, Courtois’ solid scrubs and Möbus’ decorating licks, the mood is imaginative if a bit prosaic.

With the guitarist’s laid-back C&W-styled twanging often in the spotlight, a wearying flatness infests many of the other tunes, with only the cellist’s spiccato rambles waking things up on Rohrer’s “In the Valley” and the saxman’s flutter tonguing doing the same on his own “M39 - Route to Bishkek”. King Curtis-styled reed yaks plus tremolo pacing from Courtois and some Spanish-styled, Möbus flat-picking characterize the drummer-composed “Broken Tails” – is it he who suffers from American roots music envy? However Möbus’ chiming fingering and the drummer’s rolls and ruffs at least add a little life to the tune.

In short, while there’s nothing offensively wrong about either CD, neither is there anything impressively right. Erdmann, Ljungkvist and Möbus, at very least, have all created knock-out sessions elsewhere and likely will do so again. The hope is that the others, Fins, French and Swiss will another time also rise to the occasion.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Clustrophy: 1. Earth’s Second Moon 2. Vraa-Tender 3. Clustrophy 4. A Panoramic View from the Top Floor 5. Underground 6. The Grey Adler Returns Again 7. Ardennes at Dawn 8. Jantaraboon II 9. Detto the Magician 10. 757 11. Jam Afane

Personnel: Clustrophy: Mikko Innanen (alto, baritone and soprano saxophones, Indian wooden clarinet, percussion, whistles, toy instruments [except 9]); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor and sopranino saxophones, clarinet [except 1, 5, 9]); Daniel Erdmann (tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, toy clarinet [except 1, 5, 9]); Seppo Kantonen (synthesizers ([except 5]) and Joonas Riippa (drums, percussion, pocket trumpet [except 5, 9])

Track Listing: How: 1. Still Awake but Already Dreaming 2. 5463 3. Les melons de Cavaillon 4. Broken Tails 5. How to Catch a Cloud 6. In the Valley 7. M39 - Route to Bishkek 8. One Old Soul 9. No River but Trees

Personnel: How: Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone); Frank Möbus (guitar); Vincent Courtois (cello) and Samuel Rohrer (drums)

May 1, 2012

Mikko Innanen & Innkvisitio

Clustrophy
TUM CD 025

Daniel Erdmann-Samuel Rohrer

How to Catch a Cloud

Intakt CD 194

One of the German improvisers who reached Jazz maturity in this century, Wolfsburg-born saxophonist Daniel Erdmann, who now lives in Reims, France, has been involved in appealing projects with fellow reedists like Rudi Mahall and Gebhard Ullmann as well as impressing with his own Das Kapital quartet. But it’s apparent from these recent CDs that his creativity is strongly linked to his companions and circumstances. While the programs of Clustrophy and How to Catch a Cloud present well-played contemporary Jazz, the extra spark of inspiration apparent on Das Kapital for instance appears lacking.

Operating on this side of Jazz-Fusion, the mostly Finnish Innkvisitio band lead by Lapinjärvi-born multi-reedist Mikko Innanen creates 11 dense, rhythmic tracks heavily dependent on the sonic identities that arise from Seppo Kantonen’s synthesizer and the solo and unison blowing of the reed players, who include Sweden’s Fredrik Ljungkvist, a charter members of the Atomic quartet, along with Erdmann and Innanen. Apparently taking its clues from the Roots-Pop gestalt that characterizes the contemporary sounds of guitarists like Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, Erdmann’s quartet with Swiss drummer Samuel Rohrer on the other CD is almost unalterably low-key and folksy. Rounding out the band are German guitarist Frank Möbus, with whom the sax man has been working for over a decade; plus French cellist Vincent Courtois, who has worked with the likes of reedist Louis Sclavis.

Since the program on his elaborately packaged CD in the main consists of Innanen’s compositions and arrangements, one can’t fault the other sax players, who have expressed more profound statements elsewhere. Throughout, the majority of the performances appear to balance on that narrow line between the sort of Punk-Jazz that Tim Berne and others were playing with original ferocity in the late 1970s, and the kind of Jazz-R&B the Ray Charles band and the various soloists who graduated from it purveyed a little earlier. The interface is anything but subtle. When slower tunes are showcased, they appear as close cousins to power ballads, with many of the harmonies and even individual licks sounding overly composed.

For instance “757” moves along with a rhythm that sounds closer to the Mar-Keys than the Modern Jazz Quartet. Considering that drummer Joonas Riippa, who supplies the heavy backbeats and Kantonen, who sticks to organ-like notes from his synth, both performed with ex-Tower of Power saxist Lenny Pickett, the similarities could be expected. Goosed along with percussion whaps, Innanen’s screaming alto solo relates mostly to ex-JB Pee Wee Ellis despite some earlier near-lyrical horn harmonies. There even appears to be some sampled cries added among the Hi-Life styled beat. Similar references creep up on the title track, with Kantonen exposing his inner Jimmy Smith through supple keyboard pulsing and bass pedal thumping; Erdmann coming on with a snorting tenor sax solo firmly in the Ray Charles-band Don Wilkerson school; plus a finale of vamping saxes that only lacks Charles’ voice. Much better is “The Grey Adler Returns Again” with thick baritone sax snorts, vamps and reed bites from Innanen and Erdmann in counterpoint to Ljungkvist’s staccato flutter tonguing and whistling – backed by ruffs and paradiddles from the drummer.

Even moodier interludes such as “Ardennes at Dawn” and “A Panoramic View from the Top Floor” seem more like track separators than profound statements, although the former does have corkscrew intensity expressed by a triple clarinet front line. Lamentably the latter, with overwhelming pulsations from Kantonen before he outputs a mellotron-styled solo, does update ProgRock – if the world has been waiting for another instance of that.

A similar question arises with How to Catch a Cloud, since strings and sax sessions which draw on so-called Classical, Pop and Rock as well as Jazz are exceedingly common. Considering his name is above the title as well, it’s evident that Erdmann must take credit or blame for at least 50% of what transpired on this all-acoustic CD. With nearly all the tracks composed by either of the co-leaders, it seems ironic that the one group improv, that is the title tune, probably communicates best at what the four were aiming. With unsentimental romanticism expressed through Erdmann’s intense vibrato, Courtois’ solid scrubs and Möbus’ decorating licks, the mood is imaginative if a bit prosaic.

With the guitarist’s laid-back C&W-styled twanging often in the spotlight, a wearying flatness infests many of the other tunes, with only the cellist’s spiccato rambles waking things up on Rohrer’s “In the Valley” and the saxman’s flutter tonguing doing the same on his own “M39 - Route to Bishkek”. King Curtis-styled reed yaks plus tremolo pacing from Courtois and some Spanish-styled, Möbus flat-picking characterize the drummer-composed “Broken Tails” – is it he who suffers from American roots music envy? However Möbus’ chiming fingering and the drummer’s rolls and ruffs at least add a little life to the tune.

In short, while there’s nothing offensively wrong about either CD, neither is there anything impressively right. Erdmann, Ljungkvist and Möbus, at very least, have all created knock-out sessions elsewhere and likely will do so again. The hope is that the others, Fins, French and Swiss will another time also rise to the occasion.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Clustrophy: 1. Earth’s Second Moon 2. Vraa-Tender 3. Clustrophy 4. A Panoramic View from the Top Floor 5. Underground 6. The Grey Adler Returns Again 7. Ardennes at Dawn 8. Jantaraboon II 9. Detto the Magician 10. 757 11. Jam Afane

Personnel: Clustrophy: Mikko Innanen (alto, baritone and soprano saxophones, Indian wooden clarinet, percussion, whistles, toy instruments [except 9]); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor and sopranino saxophones, clarinet [except 1, 5, 9]); Daniel Erdmann (tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, toy clarinet [except 1, 5, 9]); Seppo Kantonen (synthesizers ([except 5]) and Joonas Riippa (drums, percussion, pocket trumpet [except 5, 9])

Track Listing: How: 1. Still Awake but Already Dreaming 2. 5463 3. Les melons de Cavaillon 4. Broken Tails 5. How to Catch a Cloud 6. In the Valley 7. M39 - Route to Bishkek 8. One Old Soul 9. No River but Trees

Personnel: How: Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone); Frank Möbus (guitar); Vincent Courtois (cello) and Samuel Rohrer (drums)

May 1, 2012

Tá lam 11

Mingus!
Jazz Werkstatt JW 105

Joel Futterman

Remembering Dolphy

JDF Music JDF 7

Putting together a tribute album to any major improviser is pointless unless the appreciator brings something new to the honoree’s music. That’s the particular appeal of these sessions. Joel Futterman’s solo piano salute to multi-reedman Eric Dolphy forces you to hear some of the reedist’s best-known compositions with fresh ears. Similar creativity is exhibited by Tá lam’s leader, bass clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Gebhard Ullmann, with his arrangements of nine of bassist Charles Mingus’ tunes. By reconfiguring the compositions for an ensemble Mingus never imagined – 10-reeds and one accordion, and pointedly not including a bass player – Ullman too gives these familiar pieces new sonic life.

Swiss accordionist Hans Hassler’s quivering textures alongside the accumulated timbres from these German reed specialists is appropriately unique as well. Not only do the squeeze-box fills provide the continuum by taking the role of the otherwise absent rhythm section; but its reedy pitches also emphasize the link between this hand-pumped instrument and the other reeds.

Ullmann, whose regular playing associates include Americans such as bassist Joe Fonda and trombonist Steve Swell has put together a first-class ensemble with Tá lam. Most of its members also have their own group; and many have put in time with other innovative band leaders like pianist Ulrich Gumpert. Two, clarinetist Michael Thieke and clarinetist/ alto saxophonist Benjamin Weidekamp, provide arrangements as well.

Because of the instrumental make-up there’s more layering of vibrated sheets of sound than Mingus used. Furthermore, with many of the charts based on parallel and echoing lines from the harmonized horns, there’s a lyrical Europeanized – and certainly not African-American blend – on many of these tracks. For instance “Jelly Roll” features accordion shivers and stacked reed parts contrapuntally intersecting. When the quasi-Dixieland melody does kick in, it’s advanced with pedal-point snorts from the lowest register of Daniel Erdmann’s and Vladimir Karparov’s tenor saxophones, with one of the three clarinetists mixing tongue slaps and harsh glissandi with Hassler’s contrapuntal air pumping. When the theme is recapped by the unison reeds, abrasive shrilling from one clarinetist ensures the melody doesn’t become too unchallenging.

Bagpipe-like trilling from Hassler also helps move Tá lam’s version of “Fables of Faubus” from Arkansas to Europe. Layering different polyrhythms from menacing low-pitched saxophones alongside corrosive chromatic lines makes the tune’s satiric point by inference, rather than trumpeting the obvious. After all, bigotry knows no boundaries and its 21st Century European appearance is clocked in different strategies and accents. As the malleable treatment is stretched without breaking, glossolalia and reed bites replace rote recapitulation. Rippling irregular cries from the highest-pitched reeds – clarinets and soprano saxophones – eventually reveal the familiar melody conveyed with a combination of glissandi and irregular split tones.

Although nearly every one of the ensemble’s members has proven himself as a high-class saxophone soloist elsewhere, the solos are unselfconsciously brief. This is another manner in which Mingus differs from neo-con recreations where reedists individually try to equal Booker Ervin’s, say, or John Handy’s original exciting lines. Instead harmonies and reed vibrations are centrestage, with the results more like the World Saxophone Quartet or ROVA writ large than anything else. Even Ullman doesn’t showcase himself.

Playing solo, there’s no way Futterman could have been similarly self-effacing on Remembering Dolphy. But as a pianist he avoids any obvious comparisons. Also, unlike Dolphy, whose death at 36 in 1964 meant that his conception was as a Freebopper at its most advanced, Futterman is a more experimental conceptualizer, associated with saxophonists such as Kidd Jordan, who take improvisation into more experimental realms. At the same time this CD isn’t out-and-out abstract. As a post-modernist, Futterman’s walking bass work is more reminiscent of Earl Hines or boogie-woogie stylists than anything post-1945. Therefore no matter how splintered and staccato his broken chording becomes during narrative variations, the steadily paced syncopation keeps grounded rhythm on show.

For instance “Miss Ann” almost gains a ragtime interface at the top, as Futterman skitters across the keys, creating a bouncing steeplechase of passing tones and chords. As his chord formation varies from paced and processional to kinetic syncopation, the theme formation stays mid-range throughout, dropping into the bass register at certain times for added stimulation. By the finale as he makes the piano keys seem as malleable as plasticine, Futterman appears to have two lines moving concurrently. One is super staccato and the other decorates the first with sudden feints, pumps and flicks. Used frequently throughout, this skill often suggests that he’s extemporizing an original, often tremolo melody to complement the Dolphy line on which he’s improvising. That is most obvious on “Potsa Lotsa”.

Futterman has other tricks up his sleeve – or more properly in his fingers – as well. “Les”, a lesser-known Dolphy line become bravura and funky, hinting at more conventional standards as he plays. Building on the theme and letting it flow, the keyboardist contrasts highly syncopated rubato choruses, low-frequency deep-in-the piano-innards rumbles and splintered strokes on the external keyboard. When it comes to pianist Mal Waldron’s “Fire Waltz”, famously played by Dolphy with its composer at the Five Spot, Futterman takes fewer liberties and refers more to the theme, as benefits a tune created by a pianist thoroughly grounded in Bop. Futterman’s descending metronomic cadences manage to capture Waldron’s roots as well as his subsequent experimentation. This is no duplicate treatment though; when recapping the head, Futterman turns it inside out as he celebrates it.

Influential Jazzmen from earlier times deserve to be honored. Both Ullman and Futerrman have shown how it can be done without insulting their memory with rote imitation.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Mingus: 1. Canon 2. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting/Boogie Stop Shuffle 3. Fables of Faubus 4. Eclipse 5. Jelly Roll 6. Self-Portrait in Three Colors 7. Nostalgia in Times Square 8. Reincarnation of A Lovebird

Personnel: Mingus: Juergun Kupke (clarinet); Michael Thieke (clarinet and alto clarinet); Joachim Litty and Heiner Reinhart (bass clarinet); Gebhard Ullmann (bass clarinet and soprano saxophone); Hinrich Beermann (soprano saxophone); Volker Schlott (alto and soprano saxophone); Benjamin Weidekamp (alto saxophone and clarinet); Daniel Erdmann and Vladimir Karparov (tenor saxophone) and Hans Hassler (accordion)

Track Listing: Dolphy: 1. Potsa Lotsa 2. Les 3. Out to Dinner part one 4. In The Blues 5. Serene 6. Miss Ann 7. Fire Waltz 8. 17 West 9. Out to Dinner part two

Personnel: Dolphy: Joel Futterman (piano)

February 15, 2012

Das Kapital

Ballads & Barricades
Quark 004

Dok Wallach

Live in Lisbon

Jazzwerkstatt JW 076

Creating an individual identity within the oeuvre of another musician is always a challenge – especially if the subject is world famous. The Das Kapital trio and the Dok Wallach quartet – both featuring German tenor saxophonist Daniel Erdmann – evolve strategies to manage this transformative feat. Tellingly, the individual game plans are as different as the bands’ make up and the composers featured.

Despite its parodistic name, Das Kapital aims to revive the serious musical credential of German composer Hanns Eisler (18988-1962) with Ballads & Barricades. A committed Marxist and collaborator with playwright Bertolt Brecht, Eisler was exiled from the United States to East Germany in the late 1940s after being accused of being “the Karl Marx of music”. The composer, who had similar run-ins with the Nazis and the East German government, was a polymath. He’s definitely the only person nominated for two Oscars for his Hollywood film music, who also composed another country’s national anthem: East Germany’s Auferstanden aus Ruinen. A student of Arnold Schönberg, Eisler wrote pure music as well as agit-prop material, which Erdmann, who studied in the late 1990s at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, must have realized.

Although as combative and opinioned as Eisler, American bassist Charles Mingus (1922-1979), the subject of Live in Lisbon, never wrote for Hollywood or anyone’s national anthem, though he was pretty good at agit-prop performances in his time. However the all-German, Berlin-based Dok Wallace band – named for the bassist’s psychologist confidant – eschews Mingus’ verbal forays to re-examine his longer compositions.

Instrumentation is much different on each CD as well. Erdmann’s associates Ballads & Barricades are Paris-based, Danish guitarist Hasse Poulsen, who has worked with clarinetist Louis Sclavis; and drummer Edward Perraud, another Parisian, who is a member of Hubbub and other bands. Besides Erdmann, Live in Lisbon also features multi-woodwind player Michael Thieke, whose associations range from Free Bop bands to outright experimental units. Drummer Heinrich Köbberling has worked with everyone from pianist Aki Takase to guitarist Ben Monder, while bassist Johannes Fink is in the bands Viergruppe Gschlössl and clarinetist Rolf Kühn’s Tri-o.

Dok Wallace has a tougher job since so many of Mingus’ compositions are common in the jazz repertoire. However the quartet overcomes familiarity by concentrating on some of the bassist’s lesser-known pieces, as well as grouping a few into a series of montages, rather like a medley of Mingus hits. Although there are times during the performance when it sounds like the Lisbon audience may feel it’s participating in a session of “name that tune”, the band’s sophisticated approach means that über-familiar lines such as “Haitian Fight Song”, “Tijuana Table Dance” or “Boogie Stop Shuffle” don’t overpower the other arrangements.

That’s in spite of the fact that nearly every piece from Mingus’ justly-famous 1959 session appear on “Ah Um Montage”. Yet with Erdmann emphasizing the foghorn-like qualities of his saxophone with smears and spetrofluctuation, while Thieke scatters timbres and bites his reed, the contrapuntal harmonies work. Sensitive and secure enough to provide the backdrop, the drummer merely scrapes taps and drags, while Fink bounces and walks.

More upfront is “Tijuana Moods Montage” with the four alternately concentrating and splitting apart the melodies with double-stopping bass lines, fluttering tongue vibrations and hand-patted drum pressure. At points Erdmann’s deep-throated squeals and roughed-up breaths are backed only by bass and drums; elsewhere while his output remains straight-lined, Thieke tongue slaps and reveals split tones, deconstructing the familiar riffs without losing their essence. Eventually the side-slipping obbligatos from the horns match up with pulls and picks from bassist Fink, so that other themes are interpolated into the mix.

On the other CD, Eisler’s work presents its own challenges. Unlike Mingus’ stylistic consistency – once he discovered his mature persona about 1956 – the German composer’s tunes skip all over the place from marches to schmaltz, to parodies and to anthems. Luckily – for the non-East German or music scholar – the melodies are unfamiliar enough to not evoke certain associations when performed. Only “Die Morosoldaten” performed by folksinger Pete Seeger as “Peat Bog Soldiers” may stir left-wing memories. However Das Kapital’s version undercuts the politics with press rolls and bass drum pops from Perraud, strangled banjo-like twangs from Poulsen and Erdmann’s false fingering encompassing snorts and split tones.

Putting aside that the bossa nova-like treatment of “An den Deutschen Mond” making it sound uncomfortably like the Guess Who’s “She Coming Home (Undone)”, the “Volga Boatman”-like pulses or faux jollity of some of the other tunes leave you wondering what was serious and what was burlesque when the pieces were originally composed. Still the Kapitalists also prove themselves capable of heart-felt balladic work on “Marie weine nicht”, using irregularly emphasized strumming from the guitarist, a backbeat from the drummer and the saxophonist’s self-contained, low-frequency air floats to add color and emphasis.

More pertinently, a trio of pieces outlines the band’s approach. Staccato, with clanking guitar lines and speedy drum beats, “Das Wonderland” evolves contrapuntally as Erdmann unveils tongue stops and irregular vibratos. When the piece accelerates to staccatissimo and agitato, the saxman bellows in forward motion while Poulsen responds with sharp snaps and delayed chiming. Cutting across Erdmann’s exaggerated vibrato, the guitarist eventually supports the reedman’s final altissimo slurs.

“Landschaft des Exils” – the performance of which undercuts its title – is a jolly waltz borne on rolling drum beats, ukulele-like guitar pings and a thick tenor saxophone line. Here, as Poulsen sprays curlicue licks and Perraud sounds a shuffle beat, Erdmann plays a connective obbligato. The there’s “Solidaritäslied”, where Perraud’s backbeat undulates from martial to dance rhythm and back again, and where many spectral colors are exposed in guitar-saxophone counterpoint. At one point Erdmann thickly and jocularly burlesques Perraud’s changing rhythms, then finally splinters the melody apart with altissimo squeals.

Successfully answering the question of how to reanimate musically familiar material in distinctive ways is the achievement of both Das Kapital and Dok Wallach. Plus each CD confirms aspects of Erdmann’s burgeoning talents.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ballads: 1. An den Deutschen Mond 2. Ohne Kapitalisten des Gartens 3. Vom Sprengen des Gartens 4. Die Morosoldaten 5. Auf der Flutch 6. An der kleinen Radioapparat 7. Lied von der Moldau 8. Das Wonderland 9. Hotelzimmer 1942 10. Landschaft des Exils 11. Elegie 1939 12. Solidaritäslied 13. Mutter Beimlein 14. Einheitsfrontlied 15. Marie weine nicht

Personnel: Ballads: Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone); Hasse Poulsen (guitar) and Edward Perraud (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Tijuana Moods Montage 2. Hobo Ho 3. Eclipse 4. Ah Um Montage 5. Pithecanthropus Erectus 6. Self Portrait in Three Colors 7. Meditations on Integration

Personnel: Live: Michael Thieke (alto saxophone, clarinet and alto clarinet); Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone); Johannes Fink (bass) and Heinrich Köbberling (drums)

January 1, 2010

Dok Wallach

Live in Lisbon
Jazzwerkstatt JW 076

Das Kapital

Ballads & Barricades

Quark 004

Creating an individual identity within the oeuvre of another musician is always a challenge – especially if the subject is world famous. The Das Kapital trio and the Dok Wallach quartet – both featuring German tenor saxophonist Daniel Erdmann – evolve strategies to manage this transformative feat. Tellingly, the individual game plans are as different as the bands’ make up and the composers featured.

Despite its parodistic name, Das Kapital aims to revive the serious musical credential of German composer Hanns Eisler (18988-1962) with Ballads & Barricades. A committed Marxist and collaborator with playwright Bertolt Brecht, Eisler was exiled from the United States to East Germany in the late 1940s after being accused of being “the Karl Marx of music”. The composer, who had similar run-ins with the Nazis and the East German government, was a polymath. He’s definitely the only person nominated for two Oscars for his Hollywood film music, who also composed another country’s national anthem: East Germany’s Auferstanden aus Ruinen. A student of Arnold Schönberg, Eisler wrote pure music as well as agit-prop material, which Erdmann, who studied in the late 1990s at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, must have realized.

Although as combative and opinioned as Eisler, American bassist Charles Mingus (1922-1979), the subject of Live in Lisbon, never wrote for Hollywood or anyone’s national anthem, though he was pretty good at agit-prop performances in his time. However the all-German, Berlin-based Dok Wallace band – named for the bassist’s psychologist confidant – eschews Mingus’ verbal forays to re-examine his longer compositions.

Instrumentation is much different on each CD as well. Erdmann’s associates Ballads & Barricades are Paris-based, Danish guitarist Hasse Poulsen, who has worked with clarinetist Louis Sclavis; and drummer Edward Perraud, another Parisian, who is a member of Hubbub and other bands. Besides Erdmann, Live in Lisbon also features multi-woodwind player Michael Thieke, whose associations range from Free Bop bands to outright experimental units. Drummer Heinrich Köbberling has worked with everyone from pianist Aki Takase to guitarist Ben Monder, while bassist Johannes Fink is in the bands Viergruppe Gschlössl and clarinetist Rolf Kühn’s Tri-o.

Dok Wallace has a tougher job since so many of Mingus’ compositions are common in the jazz repertoire. However the quartet overcomes familiarity by concentrating on some of the bassist’s lesser-known pieces, as well as grouping a few into a series of montages, rather like a medley of Mingus hits. Although there are times during the performance when it sounds like the Lisbon audience may feel it’s participating in a session of “name that tune”, the band’s sophisticated approach means that über-familiar lines such as “Haitian Fight Song”, “Tijuana Table Dance” or “Boogie Stop Shuffle” don’t overpower the other arrangements.

That’s in spite of the fact that nearly every piece from Mingus’ justly-famous 1959 session appear on “Ah Um Montage”. Yet with Erdmann emphasizing the foghorn-like qualities of his saxophone with smears and spetrofluctuation, while Thieke scatters timbres and bites his reed, the contrapuntal harmonies work. Sensitive and secure enough to provide the backdrop, the drummer merely scrapes taps and drags, while Fink bounces and walks.

More upfront is “Tijuana Moods Montage” with the four alternately concentrating and splitting apart the melodies with double-stopping bass lines, fluttering tongue vibrations and hand-patted drum pressure. At points Erdmann’s deep-throated squeals and roughed-up breaths are backed only by bass and drums; elsewhere while his output remains straight-lined, Thieke tongue slaps and reveals split tones, deconstructing the familiar riffs without losing their essence. Eventually the side-slipping obbligatos from the horns match up with pulls and picks from bassist Fink, so that other themes are interpolated into the mix.

On the other CD, Eisler’s work presents its own challenges. Unlike Mingus’ stylistic consistency – once he discovered his mature persona about 1956 – the German composer’s tunes skip all over the place from marches to schmaltz, to parodies and to anthems. Luckily – for the non-East German or music scholar – the melodies are unfamiliar enough to not evoke certain associations when performed. Only “Die Morosoldaten” performed by folksinger Pete Seeger as “Peat Bog Soldiers” may stir left-wing memories. However Das Kapital’s version undercuts the politics with press rolls and bass drum pops from Perraud, strangled banjo-like twangs from Poulsen and Erdmann’s false fingering encompassing snorts and split tones.

Putting aside that the bossa nova-like treatment of “An den Deutschen Mond” making it sound uncomfortably like the Guess Who’s “She Coming Home (Undone)”, the “Volga Boatman”-like pulses or faux jollity of some of the other tunes leave you wondering what was serious and what was burlesque when the pieces were originally composed. Still the Kapitalists also prove themselves capable of heart-felt balladic work on “Marie weine nicht”, using irregularly emphasized strumming from the guitarist, a backbeat from the drummer and the saxophonist’s self-contained, low-frequency air floats to add color and emphasis.

More pertinently, a trio of pieces outlines the band’s approach. Staccato, with clanking guitar lines and speedy drum beats, “Das Wonderland” evolves contrapuntally as Erdmann unveils tongue stops and irregular vibratos. When the piece accelerates to staccatissimo and agitato, the saxman bellows in forward motion while Poulsen responds with sharp snaps and delayed chiming. Cutting across Erdmann’s exaggerated vibrato, the guitarist eventually supports the reedman’s final altissimo slurs.

“Landschaft des Exils” – the performance of which undercuts its title – is a jolly waltz borne on rolling drum beats, ukulele-like guitar pings and a thick tenor saxophone line. Here, as Poulsen sprays curlicue licks and Perraud sounds a shuffle beat, Erdmann plays a connective obbligato. The there’s “Solidaritäslied”, where Perraud’s backbeat undulates from martial to dance rhythm and back again, and where many spectral colors are exposed in guitar-saxophone counterpoint. At one point Erdmann thickly and jocularly burlesques Perraud’s changing rhythms, then finally splinters the melody apart with altissimo squeals.

Successfully answering the question of how to reanimate musically familiar material in distinctive ways is the achievement of both Das Kapital and Dok Wallach. Plus each CD confirms aspects of Erdmann’s burgeoning talents.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ballads: 1. An den Deutschen Mond 2. Ohne Kapitalisten des Gartens 3. Vom Sprengen des Gartens 4. Die Morosoldaten 5. Auf der Flutch 6. An der kleinen Radioapparat 7. Lied von der Moldau 8. Das Wonderland 9. Hotelzimmer 1942 10. Landschaft des Exils 11. Elegie 1939 12. Solidaritäslied 13. Mutter Beimlein 14. Einheitsfrontlied 15. Marie weine nicht

Personnel: Ballads: Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone); Hasse Poulsen (guitar) and Edward Perraud (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Tijuana Moods Montage 2. Hobo Ho 3. Eclipse 4. Ah Um Montage 5. Pithecanthropus Erectus 6. Self Portrait in Three Colors 7. Meditations on Integration

Personnel: Live: Michael Thieke (alto saxophone, clarinet and alto clarinet); Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone); Johannes Fink (bass) and Heinrich Köbberling (drums)

January 1, 2010

Lucio Capece & Mika Vainio

Trahnie
Editions eMEGO 098

Daniel Erdmann/Oliver Steidle

Lenina

Jazz Werkstatt JW 050

Electronic-acoustic interface has become a familiar arrow to be frequently extracted from an improvising musician’s sonic quiver. Over the past few years in fact, sessions often depend as much on voltage and feedback as breath and finger movements. Yet to create a memorable performance, technical sophistication and compositional inspiration must be blended with dial-twisting – as these fine CDs demonstrate.

Both start from a different premise. Trahnie’s 11 tracks are the result of a couple of years of intuitive and detailed experimentation in Berlin between Argentinean reedist Lucio Capece, an all-out improviser, and Finnish sound processor Mika Vainio, one-half of the band Pansonic, which is rooted in electronica and industrial pop music. That the two players correlate so well here should be more of surprise where Vainio is involved, since his usual collaborators are noise icons such as guitarist Keiji Haino and the band Sunn O)))). On the other hand, besides his all-acoustic work, Capece has a history of partnering megawatt experimenters including electric harpist Rhodri Davies and no-input mixing board expert Toshimaru Nakamura.

Also created in Berlin – but in two days, not two years – is Lenina. Its 19 track are inspired by – not reflective of – the futuristic classic Brave New World, written in 1932 by British novelist Aldus Huxley (1894-1963). Using snippets of English dialogue from a radio play based on the novel plus the overtones and textures created by the quartet of instruments each musician plays, Nürnberg-born percussionist Oliver Steidle and Reims-based saxophonist Daniel Erdmann generate a truly original work. This CD is a suite of tunes that reflects the players’ idiosyncratic sonic more than Huxley’s cautionary futurism or any subsequent literary interpretation. Part of the shifting gestalt of young Berlin-based musicians, Erdmann and Steidle have worked with such players as bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall and guitarist Frank Möbus.

More jazz-like than the other CD, there are portions of Lenina where saxophone honking and trills plus bass drum thumps and snare shuffles define the interface. At those junctures, Erdmann double- and triple-tongues harsh cross tones and flattement, while Steidle exposes flams, bounces and strokes as well as prominent triplet rhythms, nerve beats and rim shots.

Scattered throughout the tracks, especially on “A Gramme in Time”, are snippets of the portentous actors pontificating on humanity’s free will and Soma – Huxley’s invented combination of amphetamines and anti-depressants. But true to the duo’s POMO world view the dialogue is first heard unaltered, then reconstituted as reed pops and drum smacks overlay the verbal sound, which is subsequently mixed with signal-processed reverb and delay. Alternately, tape flanges and pitch impediments are used as background for acoustic improvisation, although the reed lines quickly become as abstract as the background.

“Whip, Whip, The Whip” is an anomaly in more than title, however, since the tune seems lifted from a Broadway love ballad. Furthermore “East”, the concluding track, is divided between Steidle pulsating czardas-like melodies on accordion and Erdmann exhaling a response in nursery-rhyme styling. Meanwhile “Free, Free!” matches fluttering and growling oscillations, near-vocal Walkman interjections and the saxophonist’s unexpected variations on the theme.

What also should be made of “Let’s Go on Soma Holiday” which balances a toy keyboard’s skating-ring-like plinks; a video game-like shuffling pulse, backwards-running tape flanges and a layer of Latin dance music? All this is additionally appended to harsh and hocketing saxophone vibrations.

If Lenina is a variant on a traditional story-telling though, then Trahnie is very much a nouveau roman in the existential French tradition. Not only is it not programmatic, but even when playing fully acoustically, Capece’s reed timbres never approximate those of Erdmann – which are far from mainstream anyhow – or most other saxophonist’s.

. Characteristic of the action is the variant expressed on “Ahuyenta Temores” and echoed elsewhere. Here the saxophone’s nephritic growling is linked to a legato electronic drone, quieting as ring-modulator-like quivers become more noticeable. As the intermittent, metallic buzz thickly move into overdrive, so does the echoing reed reverb – until the mix is nearly opaque.

Capece circular breathes at points and wheezes elsewhere, as if he was playing a bagpipe. Sometimes his watery tongue-slaps intensify only to be met with crackling oscillations that swell to room-filling timbres making acoustic and electronic pulses undifferentiated. Meanwhile Vanio’s strategies encompass on-and-off buzzing patches that rapidly mutate to band-saw-like clunks; clicking, clanking and scrubbing whines that partition into differentiated yet affiliated drones; and patched loops that waver, distend, distort and finally divide.

Delicate and detail-oriented plus disturbing and debilitating at the same time, “Escapes” may sum up the entire project. That is especially after Capace’s mixer-fed saxophone tones stabilize into absolute processing matched with cohesive and convoluted loops. However the finale strips the electronics back to expose unaltered acoustic breaths being pushed through the saxophone.

Approaching duo electro-acoustic improvising from different angles, both these sessions have much to offer.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trahnie: 1. Ujellus 2. Juurake 3. Escapes 4. Hondonada 5. Valontuo 6. Hobojungle 7.Ahuyenta Temores 8. Sahalaitainen 9. Tolmavuo 10. Sigilo 11. Mañana

Personnel: Trahnie: Lucio Capece (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, preparations, mixer-sax feedback and Sruti box) and Mika Vainio (electronics and treatments, guitar and cymbal)

Track Listing: Lenina: 1. Theatre of the Mind 2. Community Identity Stability 3. Alpha Double Plus Semi-Morons 4. A Gramme in Time 5. Bokanovsky’s Progress 6. Foredey! 7. Linda 8. A Mild Electric Shock 9. Mr. Savage 10. Or Samoa? 11. Mustapha Mond 12. Let’s Go on Soma Holiday 13. A Man Who Dreams Fewer Things Than There Are in Heaven and Earth 14. Whip, Whip, The Whip 15. Free Free! 16. The Right to Be Unhappy 17. Linda’s Death 18. The Great Ford 19. East

Personnel: Lenina: Daniel Erdmann (tenor and soprano saxophones, electronics, Walkman and keyboard) and Oliver Steidle (drum, percussion, accordion and chaos pad)

November 22, 2009

Daniel Erdmann/Oliver Steidle

Lenina
Jazz Werkstatt JW 050

Lucio Capece & Mika Vainio

Trahnie

Editions eMEGO 098

Electronic-acoustic interface has become a familiar arrow to be frequently extracted from an improvising musician’s sonic quiver. Over the past few years in fact, sessions often depend as much on voltage and feedback as breath and finger movements. Yet to create a memorable performance, technical sophistication and compositional inspiration must be blended with dial-twisting – as these fine CDs demonstrate.

Both start from a different premise. Trahnie’s 11 tracks are the result of a couple of years of intuitive and detailed experimentation in Berlin between Argentinean reedist Lucio Capece, an all-out improviser, and Finnish sound processor Mika Vainio, one-half of the band Pansonic, which is rooted in electronica and industrial pop music. That the two players correlate so well here should be more of surprise where Vainio is involved, since his usual collaborators are noise icons such as guitarist Keiji Haino and the band Sunn O)))). On the other hand, besides his all-acoustic work, Capece has a history of partnering megawatt experimenters including electric harpist Rhodri Davies and no-input mixing board expert Toshimaru Nakamura.

Also created in Berlin – but in two days, not two years – is Lenina. Its 19 track are inspired by – not reflective of – the futuristic classic Brave New World, written in 1932 by British novelist Aldus Huxley (1894-1963). Using snippets of English dialogue from a radio play based on the novel plus the overtones and textures created by the quartet of instruments each musician plays, Nürnberg-born percussionist Oliver Steidle and Reims-based saxophonist Daniel Erdmann generate a truly original work. This CD is a suite of tunes that reflects the players’ idiosyncratic sonic more than Huxley’s cautionary futurism or any subsequent literary interpretation. Part of the shifting gestalt of young Berlin-based musicians, Erdmann and Steidle have worked with such players as bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall and guitarist Frank Möbus.

More jazz-like than the other CD, there are portions of Lenina where saxophone honking and trills plus bass drum thumps and snare shuffles define the interface. At those junctures, Erdmann double- and triple-tongues harsh cross tones and flattement, while Steidle exposes flams, bounces and strokes as well as prominent triplet rhythms, nerve beats and rim shots.

Scattered throughout the tracks, especially on “A Gramme in Time”, are snippets of the portentous actors pontificating on humanity’s free will and Soma – Huxley’s invented combination of amphetamines and anti-depressants. But true to the duo’s POMO world view the dialogue is first heard unaltered, then reconstituted as reed pops and drum smacks overlay the verbal sound, which is subsequently mixed with signal-processed reverb and delay. Alternately, tape flanges and pitch impediments are used as background for acoustic improvisation, although the reed lines quickly become as abstract as the background.

“Whip, Whip, The Whip” is an anomaly in more than title, however, since the tune seems lifted from a Broadway love ballad. Furthermore “East”, the concluding track, is divided between Steidle pulsating czardas-like melodies on accordion and Erdmann exhaling a response in nursery-rhyme styling. Meanwhile “Free, Free!” matches fluttering and growling oscillations, near-vocal Walkman interjections and the saxophonist’s unexpected variations on the theme.

What also should be made of “Let’s Go on Soma Holiday” which balances a toy keyboard’s skating-ring-like plinks; a video game-like shuffling pulse, backwards-running tape flanges and a layer of Latin dance music? All this is additionally appended to harsh and hocketing saxophone vibrations.

If Lenina is a variant on a traditional story-telling though, then Trahnie is very much a nouveau roman in the existential French tradition. Not only is it not programmatic, but even when playing fully acoustically, Capece’s reed timbres never approximate those of Erdmann – which are far from mainstream anyhow – or most other saxophonist’s.

. Characteristic of the action is the variant expressed on “Ahuyenta Temores” and echoed elsewhere. Here the saxophone’s nephritic growling is linked to a legato electronic drone, quieting as ring-modulator-like quivers become more noticeable. As the intermittent, metallic buzz thickly move into overdrive, so does the echoing reed reverb – until the mix is nearly opaque.

Capece circular breathes at points and wheezes elsewhere, as if he was playing a bagpipe. Sometimes his watery tongue-slaps intensify only to be met with crackling oscillations that swell to room-filling timbres making acoustic and electronic pulses undifferentiated. Meanwhile Vanio’s strategies encompass on-and-off buzzing patches that rapidly mutate to band-saw-like clunks; clicking, clanking and scrubbing whines that partition into differentiated yet affiliated drones; and patched loops that waver, distend, distort and finally divide.

Delicate and detail-oriented plus disturbing and debilitating at the same time, “Escapes” may sum up the entire project. That is especially after Capace’s mixer-fed saxophone tones stabilize into absolute processing matched with cohesive and convoluted loops. However the finale strips the electronics back to expose unaltered acoustic breaths being pushed through the saxophone.

Approaching duo electro-acoustic improvising from different angles, both these sessions have much to offer.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trahnie: 1. Ujellus 2. Juurake 3. Escapes 4. Hondonada 5. Valontuo 6. Hobojungle 7.Ahuyenta Temores 8. Sahalaitainen 9. Tolmavuo 10. Sigilo 11. Mañana

Personnel: Trahnie: Lucio Capece (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, preparations, mixer-sax feedback and Sruti box) and Mika Vainio (electronics and treatments, guitar and cymbal)

Track Listing: Lenina: 1. Theatre of the Mind 2. Community Identity Stability 3. Alpha Double Plus Semi-Morons 4. A Gramme in Time 5. Bokanovsky’s Progress 6. Foredey! 7. Linda 8. A Mild Electric Shock 9. Mr. Savage 10. Or Samoa? 11. Mustapha Mond 12. Let’s Go on Soma Holiday 13. A Man Who Dreams Fewer Things Than There Are in Heaven and Earth 14. Whip, Whip, The Whip 15. Free Free! 16. The Right to Be Unhappy 17. Linda’s Death 18. The Great Ford 19. East

Personnel: Lenina: Daniel Erdmann (tenor and soprano saxophones, electronics, Walkman and keyboard) and Oliver Steidle (drum, percussion, accordion and chaos pad)

November 22, 2009

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