Music Unlimited 37
Music Unlimited 37
November 10-12, 2o23
Wels, Austria
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Poetry, recitation and songs were featured generously at the 37th Music Unlimited (MU) Festival that took place in Wels, a mid-sized Austrian city about 120 miles west of Vienna in early November. At the same time, lyrical content instrumental expertise was offered with equal emphasis during the festival’s 16 sets.
One of MU’s unexpected surprises was the showcase of prime, intense Free Jazz from the relatively unheralded New York duo of pianist John Blum and tenor/soprano saxophonist Michael Foster, whose improvised set took place midway on the festival’s first evening in the theatre of the Alter Schlachthof, MU’s main venue. Dynamic, energetic and self-possessed to the point of compulsion, Blum’s blunt and chunky percussive key-frailing flowed nearly unabated during the set as Foster used his two horns to offer dramatic expressions that were almost textbook examples of extended reed techniques.
Not that there was anything academic about the duo, especially Blum, whose improvising both that night and the next afternoon left his t-shirt sweat-soaked as if he had just run a marathon. In a way he had, since no part of the piano’s mechanism was ignored. Setting up a rolling pulse, galloping theme explorations shared space with slaps on the piano’s wood, thickened chord progression that echoed from the soundboard, and slithering fingers along the keyboard to hunt, peck and stab out designated patterns. While chiming variations were heard, sonic onslaughts involving multiple chord projections sometimes threatened to overcome the entire process.
Besides duck-call-like snarls, parallel note projections, snorts and split tone squeaks, Foster produced literal spetrofluctuation that trumpeted his response as he made his way among Blum’s thicket of notes. Usually seated on a folding chair, Foster occasionally stood up to mute a saxophone bell against a pant leg for a distinctive tone, or to emphasize tongue stops. Occasionally he also reared back on his knees to vertically squirt out intense soprano saxophone flatulence. While the performance was exhilarating it wasn’t without calmer moments, as Blum positioned the occasional melodic interlude and Foster output yearning trills. Saturday afternoon, a solo recital by Blum at the Landesmusikschule Wels also confirmed his energetic and innovative keyboard skills.
In a way those relaxed moments related to the playing of another New York duo, guitarist Ava Mendoza and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul, MU’s opening performance at the Alter Schlachthof.
The guitarist’s spiky chord progression and occasional buzzing feedback that veered towards Rock, and the violinist’s spiccato runs and strident stops, were also tempered with moderated interludes. Fluke-Mogul adapted homey fiddle decorations that leaned towards folksy C&W runs, while the guitarist’s picking verged on Modern Jazz countervailance. It’s possible that a variant of “Motherless Child” slipped in for a moment during a violin solo as did some Hawaiian-guitar-like vibrations from Mendoza. For the most part though, prestissimo guitar flanges and sul tasto violin scrapes were more prominent than dreamy asides. However by tempering resonating atonality with a touch of down-to-earth horizontal playing, the two confirmed their adaptability and dexterity in many string-based forms.
In contrast, the Europeans who played in duo configurations appeared committed to free-form exploration. Belgian baritone saxophonist/bass clarinetist Hanne De Backer and Austrian bassist Beate Wiesinger for instance, fastened on improvisation, but included organic and generic elaborations.
Presented in an open space within the palatial Bildungshaus Schloẞ Puchberg, the Sunday afternoon concert still flowed with the same Thelma-and-Louise-like energy the U.S. string duo had brought to its set. As Wiesinger concentrated on working her way down the string set with frequent below-the-bridge pops, De Backer responded to these extra overtones with darkened shaking breaths and Blues-inflected higher pitches. At the same time her overblowing of basement growls and strained multiphonics provided space for the bassist to explore timbres in kind. The bassist’s jagged arco rubs and frog-edge bow pummels precisely established her rugged outflow so that De Backer’s banshee-like ghostly screams or alphorn-like reverb fit logically within the program. The end was signaled when a collection of De Backer’s tongue slaps dissolved into breathy smears.
However De Backer fared less well during Saturday’s closing set at the Alter Schlachthof. That’s because her reed interpolations and those of Norwegian alto saxophonist Signe Emmeluth, were nearly inaudible facing the onslaught of the dual electric guitars of Terrie Ex and Andy Moor, and the pounding rhythm of drummer Lukas König, all of whom usually strut their stuff as members of Amsterdam’s potent Post-Punk/Improv band The Ex.
Energetic enough to make most musicians’ playing appear motionless, the two guitarists raced and slid from one edge of the stage to the other, pogoed up and down as they twanged, and rarely stopped jerking and jumping from their first notes. Outputting sheets of shattering sound that continuously emphasized harsh flanges and rhythmic shakes – followed every step of the way by König’s relentless ruffs – their noise-drenched creations went far beyond conventional techniques. Ex banged on his battered guitar’s strings with a drumstick, used a coffee cup as a capo, and stretched a roll of packing tape across the instrument to produce novel sounds. For his part, Moor smacked the back of his instrument with his hands, used a metal ruler as a plectrum, and stabbed chord patterns from almost every location as he scored and seared his string set. Among this and the guitarists’ continuously buzzing amps, the reed players’ drones, clunks and honks were more seen and felt than heard. Still the pressure from their concentrated efforts contributed to the zippy frenetic groove which animated the entire set.
A guitar stylist of a completely different ethos was featured at the Alter Schlachthof earlier that evening. British Art Rock improviser Fred Frith expanded on table-top guitar explorations as his duo with Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva welcomed Fluke-Mogul’s distinctive fiddling and Argentinean cellist Paula Sanchez’s string skills to the program. A pleasant augmentation, the two arco string players’ timbres filled in the middle space between Silva’s limpid tones, and the frequent half-valve delicacy and the craggy clips, stops and strokes Frith extracted from his string set. Additionally he tapped drum-like a small wooden box and a metal plate on top of the guitar strings.
Carefully shaping her portamento expression, the trumpeter’s Harmon-muted mellow motifs were sometimes cushioned by the other strings, with the violinist in particular creating an Arcadian sensibility. Meanwhile the fiddler and cellist augmented the guitarist’s rhythmic smacks and plucks when Fluke-Mogul sawed on the back of her instrument’s tuning pegs and plucked her string horizontally as Sanchez slid her bow across her strings for stripped-down arco inserts.
The full extent of Sanchez’s cello prestidigitation was on display earlier that afternoon when she played a solo set at the Landesmusikschule Wels. Embedding sheets of glass across sections of her strings, she created a distinctive rasp as the bow alternately struck them and the strings themselves.
Her strings-only technique involved percussive glissandi, pedal-point slides and tolling interjections. When a probably sampled arco droning continuum was heard, Sanchez herself created bagpipe chanter-like drones and squeezed string whistles. Resonations from each glass sheet were added to the performance before they were subsequently pulled from the strings and shattered on the stage floor.
New York guitarist Sandy Ewan was MU’s only other solo set which also took place Sunday afternoon. At the Bildungshauss Schloss Puchberg she had ample space and audience attention to demonstrate her intricate melding of samples and electronics expanded from table-top guitar techniques. Making use of resonation and feedback her strokes were as inventive as Frith’s, briefer and more singular.
With the crackle, hiss and voltage variations from electronic pulsating, Ewan was free to introduce various glides, stops and plucks as she played, insert items among the strings, propel terse string stabs with wetted fingers, shake small string-attached balls, vibrate tones from beneath the bridge, and snake a wire in and out of the taunt string set. While the signal processing plus her open-handed slaps on strings and wood confirmed her adventurousness, hints of strums and twangs connected her to regular guitar stylings.
Ewan was also part of the festivals’ largest ensemble, the 14-member Beatnik Manifesto, which convened for the first performance Saturday night at the Alter Schlachthof. Conceived of and directed by Viennese turntablist Dieb13, it featured film clips and slogan commentary created by Dieb with Billy Roisz’s rear-projections behind the group throughout, and vocals by Karolina Preuschl.
The band consisted of guitarists Flo Stoffner and Ewan; bass clarinetists Hans Koch and Susanna Gartmayer; saxophonists Antoine Chessex and Anna Högberg; turntable/electronics manipulator eRikm; bassists Matija Schellander and Elsa Bergmann; and drummers Camille Émaille and Erik Carlsson.
With a pre-recorded recitation by British sound singer Phil Minton also heard, the project aimed to integrate supposed beatnik rules enumerated by Minton with the split-second image rotations, and upfront vocalizing and sometimes near-yodeling in English and German from Preuschl, along with scattershot or round-robin virtuosic turns from the players. However, the on-off voltage sounds blended with inserts as different as Koch’s bass clarinet vibrations, Chessex’s R&B influenced honks, Stoffner’s jazz-influenced picking, and a general emphasis on percussion expression projected by double bass thumps and near-martial drum pumps sometimes moved past polyphony towards miasma.
A more focused sound-and-poetry presentation took place on MU’s final evening at the Alter Schlachthof when El Infierno Musical was dedicated to interpretations of the emotional and unique verse of Argentinean-Jewish poet Alejandra Pizarnik, who committed suicide in 1972 at 36.
Still, her mixture of pensive despondence, passion and psychosis has fascinated the Hispanic world, and that night her words were realized with world-weary insouciance in English and some Spanish by Austrian electronic musician Christof Kurzmann. Improvised music for what was billed El Infierno Musical was provided by a Chicago ensemble: reedists Ken Vandermark and Dave Rempis; cellists Lia Kohl and Katinka Kleijn and drummer Lily Finnegan.
With drums splashing and sounding an understated accompaniment, and the saxes’ flutter-tongued affirmations, it was often Kleijn’s swift string slaps and buzzes that provided jagged commentary on Pizarnik’s imagery. Later on, additional jabs into overt romanticism from harmonized instruments and Kurzmann’s pseudo-crooning came from Rempis’ alto sax vibrations, Vandermark’s tongue-slapping and squeaking clarinet, along with a rhythmic boost from the drummer. In sentiment, the overall impression from the homage and performance was that the poet’s diagnosed melancholy just barely masked her melodiousness.
Saturday night some wordless vocalizing from Turkish singer Cansu Tanrıkulu that infrequently veered into melody was included during the set by the Berlin-based Skultra quintet that performed just after the Frith-Silva group. Its emphasis was more on the unique instrument mix created by leader Nick Dunston, a New Yorker who played double bass, table-top banjo and sampler, Tanrıkulu’s electronics, the keyboard electronics and violin of Japanese Rieko Okuda, Russian Eldar Tsalikov’s clarinet and Brazilian Mariá Portugal’s drums.
Dunston’s distinctive banjo hammering and string slaps created a hitherto unheard timbral mixture which loosened up the performance so that whiney clarinet peeps and air projected without key movements and torqued fiddle stabs seemed perfectly aligned with the ongoing exposition. Only the drummer’s smacks maintained a steady pace, but as the improvisation evolved, she too added idiophone chops.
The pace changed abruptly when Dunston turned to his bass, creating a solid line with widening power pops. This new focus contoured clarion trills, violin squeaks and electronic wiggles to decorate Tanrıkulu’s speaking-in-tongues, which was given added impetus as processed cartoon-like voices leaked into the mix.
A return to banjo-processing by Dunston reintroduced the original theme and competed the circle with the introduction.
Distinctive singing, however was what characterized MU’s final set at the Alter Schlachthof Sunday night. It came from a Swedish band featuring the affecting vocals of Sofia Jernberg, whose material ranged through rhythm, reflection and response with a mixture of ethnic and elucidating sounds. Her associates were baritone saxophonist/flutist Mats Gustafsson, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Kjetil Møster, guitarist Anders Hana and drummer Børge Fjordheim.
Leading with aggressive and gruff vamps from the two saxophonists, Gustafsson soon created even more bellicose multiphonics as Jernberg shouted and screamed wordlessly over ascending bass riffs from the guitarist. As her bel canto vocals moved past melody, the tenor saxophonist manipulated his pedal board to rasp out heavier tones while the drummer added ruffs that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Rock band. Although at points Gustafsson used electronically affiliated flute yips to lighten the mood, the first climax of the set came at mid-point with a ballad that harmonized voice, clarinet and baritone sax. Giving space for each player to expand individual showpieces, there were several subsequent climaxes. Still, no matter how many virtuosic asides were propelled – and there were several – including during the protracted encore, the main point of the set was to follow how the vocalist’s screams, stutters and shrieks linked up with Gustaffson’s aggressive snorts and vamps without weakening either musician’s message.
In terms of both historical and contemporary expression, the most affecting performance arguably appeared midway through MU’s first evening at the Alter Schlachthof. An all-star aggregation of bass clarinetist Gartmayer, drummer Portugal, British bassist John Edwards and the seemingly ageless U.S. tenor saxophonist Joe McPhee, the quartet transcended all boundaries of race, gender and nationality as it worked through a carefully modulated take on Free Music.
With the drummer concentrating on brief sharp pops and rolls, there was space for Edwards’ measured adaptability to shifts in time, tempo and pitch as his marionette-like jerks and string stops moved among zither-like plinks, below-the-bridge buzzing and Theremin-like pitches with resonations created by horizontal and vertical bow work
Meanwhile, the bass clarinetist’s unbroken sonorities emphasized chalumeau register growls, crow-like cawing and double-tongued squeals while sliding up and down the scale. Offering a complementary but contrasting emphasis to McPhee’s playing, Gartmayer joined the saxophonist in creating vamps, but her tremolo cries reflected a different mentality. With a Blues sensibility wedded to his reed process, McPhee’s vocalized shouts, often projected through his horn’s body tube, intensified his emotional projections.
The saxophonist now 84, who performed at the initial MU and many times since, also verbalized a creative credo. “We will make music”, he declared portentously. “Our songs come from people, not tape machines or sampling. When those structure are relics of the past, we’ll still be here creating. We need this music more than ever.”
In a way those sentiments succinctly expressed how, despite unpleasant world realities, the reason innovators continue to make creative music, and why festivals like Music Unlimited continue to exist and thrive.
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