artacts20

As always though, music was the main focus of AA, with perhaps the most energizing performance being the climactic set by the UK’s 4 Blokes, which concluded the festival on a high note. It performed sounds associated with legendary South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, who could not attend. With skill and sensitivity, Mark Sanders took the ailing drummer’s place with the other “blokes”: pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist John Edwards, and alto and soprano saxophonist Jason Yarde. Energetically moving through a series of themes that reflected Kwela, groove, free music and devotional rhythms, the combo had as its base the clip-clops, back beats or shuffles from Sanders, and Edwards’ thumping string pops, walks and pressurized bowing. Concurrently Yarde, on both horns, infrequently put a sweet balladic sheen on some episodes, but more commonly moved between pressurized squeaking split tones and clarion multiphonics. When he wasn’t feeding chord changes to the soloists, Hawkins’ playing was equally divided. He produced flowery Chopinesque forays to meet Yarde’s decorative slurs, or used flat-palmed power or Church of England-like flourishes to march the rhythmic pacing forward. Able to roll theme and variations together into a concentrated foot-tapping narrative at faster and faster paces, the four created a festival resolution that was energetic but easygoing.

Another quartet which created the same sort of pivoting links was a continental group that played the second set on opening night. Consisting of local clarinetist Paed Conca, Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius, and two Swedes — alto saxophonist Anna Högberg and bassist Elsa Bergman, the group created its own take on Free Jazz, mixing stop time and swing with urbanity. The members made maximum use of the contrapuntal intervals propelled by Conca’s dipsy-doodle shrills and Högberg’s intense slurps and smears, sometimes realized by unscrewing the mouthpiece and blowing straight onto the neck of her instrument. Along with these reed distinctions were Bergman’s buzzing arco underpinnings or swaying spiccato thrusts used to best effect during challenges between the others’ harsh or sweet reed tones. As well, there was Sartorius’ sophisticated percussion patterning, with dry taps and melodic counter-rhythms predominating.

Playing full drum kit, Uruk percussionist Zerang was also part of a trio that closed Friday night’s proceedings with fellow Chicagoan Dave Rempis playing alto and tenor saxophones, and Graz-based Elisabeth Harnik on piano. Rempis, who had created a brief solo concert of stabbing but controlled improvisations at the Captured Memories photo opening, effectively matched his tough smears and slurs to Harnik’s pianism, which touched on sprightly bebop as well as more expected modern notated traditions. Allying himself with one or the other’s output, Zerang produced choppy yet controlled accompaniment. Making use of piano string stops, slides and foot-pedal extended strums, Harnik’s piano preparations brought out slap tongue and key percussion asides from the saxophonist, just as her cross-handed pressure and glissandi encouraged his dry heaves. Technically adept as well as adventurous, some of her most notable moments came as Harnik snaked her fingers across the keyboard, or added hammering with the other elbow and extended forearm as if having decided that facing hard accents from Rempis and Zerang wasn’t properly expressed with a single elbow smack.

Exploring the same sort of parameters, but in a divergent manner was the trio of Viennese violinist Irene Kepl and two Britons, alto saxophonist Colin Webster and bassist Edwards, when they played at the AG just before Uruk. To celebrate AA20, Kepl composed and presented Laut Schweigen, a multimedia project for an octet of musicians and a vocal choir that was premiered on the final evening of AA. Enthusiastically received, the work was too dense and sonically varicolored to be dissected after a single hearing. As a free improviser with Edwards and Webster however, the violinist’s command of col legno and spiccato sweeps locked in with the bassist slithering up and down the bull fiddle’s neck with slaps and buzzing plucks, and the saxophonist’s uncoupled shaking slurs. As Kepl’s rasps across the strings intensified, so did Webster’s flutter-tonguing and Edwards’ parallel pumps, leading up to a frenetic foot-tapping interlude that was half hoedown and half hip-hop. While the program was multiphonic, it was also polyphonic enough to allow the narrative lead to circulate among the three. That meant that below-the-bridge pops and near-the-tuning pegs scrapes from Edwards were as frequent and audible as sul tasto sweeps from the violinist and split tone and tongue smears from the saxophonist.