Bezau Beatz
Bezau Beatz
10-13 August 2023
Bregenzerwald, Austria
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Austria’s Bregenz forest (Bregenzerwald) region has always been popular with visitors due to its proximity to ski hills and hiking/biking trails. But a particular group arrives at the picturesque town of Bezau once a year with another distinct idea. They’re here to participate in Bezau Beatz, an annual music festival in this town of about 2,000 people, roughly 100 kilometers east of Zürich,
Now in its 16th year, Bezau Beatz’s four days of music in 2023 mixed the topical with the traditional, and the exploratory with the (almost) expected. Starting on Thursday evening, and with an emphasis on improvised music, the performances encompassed notated and folk-based sounds, parody, updated Bop, an ad hoc workshopped big band, Free Jazz exploration, electro-acoustic designations and church concerts both sacred and profane.
Subtle POMO parody was wrapped within instrumental sophistication during the following night’s closing set by the Das Kapital trio at the tent-like Remise club situated next to the Bregenzerwald Heritage Railway tracks. As international as the book after which it is named, Das Kapital consists of German saxophonist Daniel Erdmann, French percussionist Edward Perraud and Hasse Poulsen, a Dane who plays amplified acoustic guitar and electric mandolin.
With Poulsen serving as emcee and adding hard string strums as a rhythmic fulcrum, space was made for Erdmann’s blowsy tenor sax expansions and slithery soprano split tones, plus spectacular press rolls, hand percussion, standard-sized and finger cymbal coloration, and drumstick-tossing from the voluble, colorfully dressed Perraud. Ranging through material that included Hans Eisler anthems, 19th Century French revolutionary songs, and parodies of familiar so-called classical compositions, Poulsen complemented Erdmann’s sometime overly melodic turns and Perraud’s showiness with solid Blues licks, percussive raps on his guitar’s wood, and whooshing violin bow pressure on both instruments’ strings.
Another trio with an indisputably distinctive vision performed at Remise the next night. Porto-based Bode Wilson matched improvisations from João Pedro Brandão, who played flute, alto and soprano saxes and pedals, and drummer Marcos Cavalleiros, both Portuguese, with Argentinian bassist Demian Cabaud and real-time visuals from video artist Maria Mónica.
As brief as some of Das Kapital’s tunes were extended, this trio seemed to limit its playing to interpretations of the rear-projected and titled videos. Besides darkened solo spots for each of the three, the more than dozen tunes were as angular or straight as some of the images, or expanded at the same pace as many of Mónica’s in-the-moment created art forms.
Used judiciously, Brandão’s pedal amplifications added an extra buzz to the music, and the flashing images never superseded his saxophone’s ecstatic Free Jazz honks and slurs, or more measured flute peeps. Likewise, Cavalleiros rarely played a backbeat, more often shaking small bells, hand-pumping drum tops or producing tick-tock plops. Cabaud not only expressed himself with walking-bass thumps, col legno rasps or delicate single-string sweeps, but during the final numbers also strummed the Andean charango, and vocalized traditional Spanish lyrics. As finely paced and integrated as the music was, more extended themes and solos would have been welcomed.
Minimalism was not the case with another group in which Cabaud participated: the 19-piece Bezau Beatz Orchestra. It played two extended numbers Saturday afternoon at Peter Figer Kunstschmiede, a metal fabrication workshop converted into an arts space, located slightly distant from Bezau’s main street.
Following three days of rehearsal, the internationally constituted group presented a sonically broiling, yet disciplined concert. Organized by American drummer Billy Martin, the ensemble of five singers, five drummers, three guitarists, three reed players, a bassist, a pianist, and an electric piano player undulated through group crescendos and individual passages directed by Martin’s hand signals.
Adding directions and emphasis by rattling and striking different idiophones and noisemakers, Martin encouraged band members, most of whom had never played together before, to function collectively. For instance, reed-choir motifs were followed by harsh tenor saxophone tongue slaps or gentle flute riffs. Each guitarist in turn interpreted selected textures, sometimes distorted with pedal action. Individually or in unison members of the drum corps inventively used ruffs and other percussion techniques to maintain a flowing pulse.
When they could be heard, the one male and four female singers chirped, barked and hummed rhythmically along with the expositions. Meanwhile, Iseul Kim’s piano stylings were often elevated from comping to FreeBop incisiveness.
A sound as loud and powerful as created by the entire orchestra was projected by just two musicians throughout a Remise set Friday night: German Christian Lillinger, playing all manner of percussion instrumentals, pre-recorded and processed samples, synthesizer and other electronic gizmos; and Austrian Elias Stemeseder using an electrified spinet, synthesizer and additional electronics.
Filling the entire stage with their setup, the two moved among their sound-makers creating a continuum of clips, claps, pops and drones, over which Stemeseder juddered tremolo organ-like chording, or outlined intricate piano-like tone clusters while Lillinger’s individual cymbal chops and drum vibrations revealed a particular theme which sounded frequently among the duo’s repeated buzzes and timbral stops. Confirming that part of their textural creativity was pre-processed, sampled sounds echoed for a couple of minutes after Lillinger and Stemeseder left the stage.
Stemeseder’s keyboard adaptability was highlighted far differently Thursday night at Remise when his harpsichord and synthesizer playing was integrated into German drummer Tilo Weber’s Tesserae trio that also featured fellow German Oliver Potratz on bass. The drummer’s compositions ranged among expected Jazz-like themes, hip-hop shadings and gentler melodicism.
With the bassist sticking to a solid pulse, and like most other festival percussionists, Weber’s strokes being understated, contrast was most distinctive when Weber’s compositions had the keyboardist’s contrapuntal output evolving in tandem with the others’ expositions, but at a much slower pace. With drum rasps and taps leading the way, themes ranging from the playful to the pensive were also distinguished from the norm when the keyboardist added romantic acoustic allusions or parodied roller-rink organ tremors to the expositions. Confirming its links to the tradition by usually recapping the head in concluding sections, bent keyboard notes and spirited splats and clips from the drums also verified individual creativity.
Weber’s compositions and improvisations for Tesserae may have been spikey and suggestive, yet he exhibited an almost antithetical musical personality Friday morning at the venerable hillside Reuthe church, 2.5 kilometres from Bezau. This was an appropriately ecclesiastical setting for Ensemble Du, where his vibraharp playing merged with the soprano voices of Pia Davila and Almut Kühne to express Weber’s musical interpretation of Jewish-Austrian philosopher Martin Buber’s mediations on the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. The German words usually encouraged the singers to lushly harmonize or delicately warble in counterpoint, and were expressed in a more formal manner than other Bezau Beatz concerts.
Still, Weber’s vibe asides and occasional slaps on the one standalone cymbal added enough rhythmic variety to shake off the sheen of academe that otherwise would be present. Moreover, Kühne’s interlude presented her vocal ability in more than classicism as she fragmented wordless syllables while garbling and scatting sound textures.
If Weber’s musical and philosophic work celebrated the sacred side of Bezau Beatz that morning, Thursday’s midnight concert by Norwegian guitarist/vocalist Stian Westerhuus in the town’s ornate early 20th Century St. Jakob’s church could be said to provide the profane.
Performing in almost complete darkness near the altar, and surrounded by a collection of flickering votive candles, Westerhuus mixed folkloric lyrics sung in English in a counter-tenor with dedicated finger picking or bow sawing on his strings, sometimes interjecting sudden unexpected passages of stentorian and strident feedback from a floor-situated mixing board.
This blend of Black Sabbath and Fotheringay upset enough concertgoers so that there was a steady stream of exiting bodies throughout the nearly one-hour set. Those who remained experienced an over-long presentation by a polymath certain of his musical vision, but still struggling to meld his varied influences. With Arcadian lyrics focused on Medieval troubadour concerns about land, tides, weather and courtship, Westerhuus emphasized one distinct musical strand, yet the guitar–effects pedal created near-building-shaking tremolo blasts related more closely to Death Metal than Dante’s courtly love. Perhaps the equivocation between the two strands was realized in his periodic wolf-like howls. Overall though, the program’s fascination lay in his attempt to sonically resolve these contradictions.
Also vocal-and-string focused, but with none of Westerhuus’ abrasive interludes was the German Hilde quartet featuring violinist Julia Brüssel, cellist Emily Wittbrodt, trombonist Maria Trautmann and vocalist Marie Daniels, whose mixture of high-art melodiousness and contemporary improv began the festival performances Thursday afternoon in the lounge of Bezau’s Hotel Post.
Sliding judiciously among love songs, lullabies and wordless pointillism, Daniels’ mostly melodic articulation was alternately cushioned or challenged with mellow formalist accompaniment or unexpected squeaky sul tasto or spiccato runs by the strings. Usually though, it was Trautmann’s trombone flatulence or renal growls that prevented a surfeit of musical sugariness from coating the performance.
Besides congeniality, one key to Bezau Beatz’s continued success and evolution is the juxtaposition of groups, with many improvisational styles in the same festival. Instances of this conceptional contrast were locals The Big Wide Open, featured Saturday morning at Peter Figer Kunstschmiede; the Swiss/Austrian band The True Harry Nulz on opening night, and the Finnish Plop + Juunu which performed at the Remise as the festival’s final set Sunday morning.
Plop + Juunu probably played the most traditional Jazz at Bezau Beatz. Plop is a longstanding trio with alto/soprano saxophonist Mikko Innanen, bassist Ville Herrala and drummer Joonas Riippa, joined by legendary flutist Juhani “Junnu” Aaltonen, 87. Aaltonen’s tangy obbligatos usually bolstered melodies created by Innanen’s speedy soprano sax trills or free-form alto saxophone bites. Meanwhile, with trenchant double bass stops and percussion asides that involved gong resonation and regular shuffles, the set touched on Free Jazz, Cool Jazz and Bebop inferences as the four individually intertwined a particular sound.
Combining Jazz improv, Rock and other sounds, The True Harry Nulz like Plop + Junnu, was also a musical concoction. The septet was a melange of the Swiss group The Great Harry Hillmann, made up of bass clarinetist Nils Fischer, guitarist David Koch, Samuel Huwyler on electric bass and drummer Dominik Mahnig, with Edi Nulz, an Austrian-German band featuring bass clarinetist Siegmar Brecher, guitarist Adam Pajzs and drummer Valentin Schuster.
Despite this ad hoc intermingling, there was no sense of cleavage among the musicians. The common denominator was tethering Rock music brawniness to improvisational freedom without losing the vigor of the first or the discretion of the latter. Rhythmic emphasis from the drummers encompassed taps, clanks and paradiddles as well as rugged backbeats, with interludes characterized by woodblock and conch shell rasps as well as bow-on-cymbal scratches.
Guitar technicians rather than guitar heroes, Pajzs and Koch created vamping expositions as well as dividing for slinky sound definitions. Sympathetically fused for uncomplicated theme projections, the two clarinetists singly or jointly shook out polyphonic snorts, clarion scoops, spiralling trills and slow-boiling expositions. Meanwhile, the steadying drone of Huwyler’s electric bass sutured disparate thrashes, pitches and tempo changes. At times his string buzzes even introduced the narratives.
Probably the festival’s freest music was created by Into The Big Wide Open, another festival-conceived union. A Berlin-based trio: clarinetist Eldar Tsalikov, bassist Felix Henkelhausen, and pianist and live-sampler Valentin Gerhardus, were joined by Austrian drummer Alfred Vogel for this mid-morning set. Gerhardus’ whooshes and live sampling pulsed just below the audible surface as his spiralling piano comping and Tsalikov’s disconnected bites, near-vocalized tones and expressive overtones created floating time-suspension corralled by double bass rhythm.
Vogel was a sympathetic accompanist, often using hand pats and brushes to underscore the creativity. A quarter-century their senior, he was also enthusiastic, at one point launching a cymbal across the floor when fully immersed in the group’s music.
In addition to playing with this group, Vogel is the chief organizer and artistic director of Bezau Beatz, and it’s his enthusiasm and quest for the new that enhances the festival. As the festival evolves, perhaps one day the region will be as well known for exceptional music as the adjacent ski hills and hiking/biking trails.
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