As fortune would have it, the set was captured and issued on vinyl, Live at Cafe Oto, to set the tone for what was to follow, albeit with a 5 year hiatus before Savage rediscovered her songwriting mojo and, with William Doyle as producer, City Slang issued A Common Turn, the first of her impressive three albums to date. 

At the Union Chapel, on the final night of her sell-out UK tour, Savage drew on all three with the most recent, You and I are Earth as the main focus of her finely honed set, inset with moments of cheerful spontaneity, in dialogue with her audience and her musicians.  

With Savage singing and switching between acoustic and electric guitars, her highly versatile touring band, the trio of drummer Joe Taylor, Peter Darlington on electric bass and Genevieve Dawson on keyboards and guitars, coalesced to bring a brightly uplifting feel to Savage’s repertoire. With impressively balanced sound in the lofty, architecturally imposing Union Chapel, they expanded the musical space to build a sensitive timbre around Savage’s deeply personal songs, elevated by the natural fall of her vocal range.

They were boosted on a couple of pacy numbers by songwriter Cubzoa (aka Jack Wolter) taking up a mean, power guitar and whose enchanting solo set had opened the concert with his high-pitched vocal style reminiscent of early Neil Young.

After the years in the wilderness, grappling with self-doubt and inner and relational challenges, Savage emerged with renewed strength which played out on-stage with a combination of a wicked, self-effacing sense of humour and an emotional connection with her audience. ‘Ask me a question,’ and they flew in from all over the venue. Asked ‘What’s the best gig you went to?’ She said that seeing songwriter / violinist Owen Pallett in a small club in Manchester changed her life.

Savage’s songs chart her personal journey through relationships, through a time when being single was best for her, and now to Ireland where she is based and has found love, as she happily announced. Her new album, You and I are Earth, ‘A love letter to a man and to Ireland’, blends her personal life with the sea, the coast and the landscapes of Donegal. In Talk To Me she resonantly sang, ‘When I cry I taste like the sea.’

Playing the Union Chapel was a ‘bucket list’ dream for Savage, sharing that she was close to tears of emotion just being there. In an interview she had said, ‘I cry three times a day’ and digging to the core of her practice, ‘I think there’s such power in gentleness, and there’s such power in being sensitive and being vulnerable.’ 

Her openness and engagement combined with her vocal poise and the exquisite musical arrangements of her band made this a night to remember.

Anna B Savage has dates in Ireland, then the US and Canada in May.

The post Anna B Savage first appeared on UK Jazz News.

‘I just love this crowd! … See you on the other side,’ declared Sorey, and they were off, with light finger work on Raghavan’s bass strings. Sorey gently rolled mallets then placed a ride cymbal on a snare to foster meditative tension to which Diehl, reading from an electronic score, as was Raghaven, added an undercurrent of rippling washes to work around an absorbing, melodic thread. 

This was the start of a remarkable dialogue of exploration that flipped between pure abstract impressionism and an obliquely sidelong visit to the universe of mainstream jazz, setting invention and re-invention side by side.

Sorey is dedicated to ‘reformulating perceptions of modern Black/Afrodiasporic creative practice.’ With roots in the complexities of avant-garde classical, he was honoured with the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his beautiful, understated Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith . 

Sorey also has, he says, ‘a lifelong connection to the ‘straight-ahead’ and the Great American Songbook which he shares with Diehl, with whom he has collaborated over many years, akin to ‘a brotherly connection’. Raghaven, highly respected and in-demand, has recently joined the trio.

At Cafe Oto in 2023, Sorey’s deeply meditative solo piano set, performed in total darkness was followed by a dynamic percussion improvisation with Pat Thomas at the piano, as noted in the LJF round-up (link below), so the emergence of the evening’s powerful jazz slant was a surprising and rewarding path to engage. 

As the set evolved in its unbroken entirety the analogy that came to mind was that of following the course of a river from its source as it flows through all manner of terrain and landscapes on its winding course to the open sea.

Diehl’s piano shone as he took on the melodic initiatives. Early on there was a glimpse of Horace Silver and, late on, of Ahmad Jamal, and tucked away there was a sense, too, of Bill Evans, admired by Sorey. The ways that the trio slipped effortlessly in to multiple jazzy grooves, with flickers of the blues and soul, and light, latin grooves interspersed with extended, extemporised passages showcased musicianship of the very highest order. 

The technical range was breathtaking and appreciative applause, rare for Cafe Oto audiences, broke out spontaneously, whether for Diehl’s piano equivalent of continuous breathing at the top end of the keyboard, Raghavan’s thoughtfully paced solo, with its echoes of Ron Carter, or Sorey’s syncopated, multi-textured cross rhythms held in place with minimal movements.

Pushing the envelope, at one point Raghavan’s bass strings were stretched to squeal, Sorey scraped sticks on skins, a gesture of physicality, and Diehl reached in to the piano to tamp the wires to quirkily flatten the sound.

Swept along on this unique marathon the audience had been immersed in an inspired musical journey, and all credit to Cafe Oto for making it happen.

Aaron Diehl: piano
Tyshawn Sorey: leader/percussion
Harish Raghavan: bass

The post Tyshawn Sorey Trio first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Tacuma has had awards showered on him, and has played with a host of key figures in left-field and mainstream jazz, soul and rock, including James ‘Blood’ Ulmer, Derek Bailey, David Murray, Jeff Beck, Marc Ribot, and poet Amiri Baraka, and he brought in Tony Kofi to partner him on tributes to Ornette and Coltrane. 

For his return visit to Cafe Oto after ten years he was reunited with Black Top’s Pat Thomas and Orphy Robinson who knew just what drummer Charles Hayward would bring to the party. 

Tacuma, short bearded, with something of the appearance of Pharaoh Sanders, delivered two complementary sets of inspired improvisation, interspersed with thoughtful, reflective episodes. 

The first was in duo with saxophonist Massimo Magee, softly spoken then breaking in to dynamic, pacey passages, to bring Magee’s fluid phrasing in to play with Tacuma’s gently rendered bass lines and power riffs. With his distinctive slap bass and nimble fingering growing in to heavy duty chord work and uplifting runs, there was still room, in both sets, for carefully crafted bass solos.

His connection with Magee had been during Covid, when Tacuma reached out worldwide for material for his Outsiders Festival project and was hugely impressed by Magee’s music and they recorded together on his latest album, Philly Improv Society. 

Taking to the stage for the second set with the Black Top crew, Tacuma asked, ‘Are you ready to have your minds blown?’ And that’s exactly what they did! Thomas, Robinson and Hayward mastered the tensions and spaces which Tacuma set down around brightly fashioned riffs and figures, with Thomas inserting micro-electronics, discords and glistening piano arpeggios, and Robinson putting down dazzling vibraphone runs and light percussion to add polish to Hayward’s emphatic cross rhythms and back beats. 

Hayward’s drumming was extraordinary and blew away Tacuma who, lost for words, laughingly pronounced it ‘Nasty!’ That was a perfect rhythm section. There must be something in the name, as Charles Hayward’s drumming immediately brought to mind Richie Hayward, the late and truly great drummer behind Little Feat – live, he was unmatched, and his namesake was right there.

As an aside, Tacuma shared anecdotes and family history – his wife and his cousin, Denise Ward, who sang a moving gospel verse as an encore, were on the front row – and he told how his 3-month artistic residency, Dirt Road Xperience, in Whiteville, North Carolina in 2022, reconnected him with the hometown of his grandparents, whom he never met. 

Tacuma’s Song, written specially for him by his mentor, Ornette, when Tacuma came to him in need of material and direction, had him sliding along the fretboard and increasing the pace in the first set. Ornette was always writing, he explained, even at meal times and this was ‘easy for him to do.’   

This had been a rare masterclass in funk-jazz improv at close quarters, and a personal and engaging evening throughout much appreciated by the sell-out house.

The post Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Pat Thomas, Orphy Robinson, Charles Hayward and Massimo Magee first appeared on UK Jazz News.

To see and hear The Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners, led by its founder, Luciano Chessa, with its 16 intonarumori at the Wigmore Hall was quite an experience and a fitting finale to the London Contemporary Music Festival, complemented by the world premiere of a piece by Éliane Radigue in the second half. 

Ten years earlier, at Cafe Oto, we witnessed The Grand Futurist Concert of Noises with six intonarumori marking the ill-fated Futurist concert season at London’s Coliseum in 1914 which provoked public outrage. This concert is the first time so many have been assembled in London since 1914 – LINK BELOW.

The original intonarumori were fabricated between 1910 and 1913, with 27 models, each articulating a different sound encapsulated in the 6 families of sound-noise (suono-rumori) conceived by Russolo – Roarer / Burster, Whistler / Hisser, Gurgler, Croaker / Cracker, Rubber, and Hummer / Howler.

The ingeniously designed intonarumori take the form of parallelepipedal wooden boxes, each with a radiating horn attached to amplify sounds generated by operating one or two levers and a wind-up crank linked internally to a smooth or spoked wheel interacting with metal or gut strings and a drumskin. 

The intonarumori are purely acoustic and unamplified yet laid the groundwork for the evolution of contemporary noise music, exemplified by Lou Reed’s milestone Metal Machine Music with its extremes of noise and feedback. The linear notations of Russolo’s revolutionary scores anticipated the use of graphic scores in improvised jazz and contemporary music.

Chessa’s reconstructed intonarumori are based on those fabricated in Milan in 1913 and arose from a commission for a concert in 2009 for the Performa Biennial in New York which included new works composed specially for the Orchestra, several of which were performed at this Wigmore Hall concert. With the 16 intonarumori spread all the way across the stage, the Orchestra comprised students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Chessa at the conductor’s lectern.

The compositions, many of which were receiving UK premieres, ran the rich gamut of possibilities. Pauline Oliveros’ Waking the intonarumori grew from silence to accelerated activity, scraping, whistling, rhythmically clanking and grinding, climaxing with insistent mechanical beats. Paolo Buzzi’s parodic interpretation of D’Annunzio’s poem, La pioggia nel pineto, from 1916 had the massed sounds of gurglers, cracklers and howlers being steered as if a ship through heavy seas, eliciting smiles onstage. 

Then came a surprise. Jennifer Walshe walking from the back of the hall feverishly reciting the Irish language poems of the Irish ‘Guiness’ Dadaists, very much in the spirit of Marinetti’s Futurist sound poems and Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate. The delivery was absolutely captivating, with stunning vocal acrobatics. Walshe later returned to the stage with more riveting, impenetrable, machine gun vocals. Now, as only close followers of Walshe will know, the three poets employed at the Guiness factory turn out to be entirely fictional, part of Walshe’s Aisteach project, the fictional history of the musical and artistic avante-garde in Ireland, a prodigious, imaginative work which invites the defiance of belief! 

Chris Newman’sPeople had all the performers combining anthemic song with the full force of upbeat, swaying, mechanical sound-noise, while Margaret Kammerer, who delights in exploring song in experimental music contexts, used a megaphone, mirroring the cones on the machines, to project, distort and reconvene her vocalisations.

Composer Pablo Ortiz took a bow after his joyously dynamic Futurist Tango and Walshe with Neil Luck, performed dynamically in duet the lengthy Fancy Palaces (written by Walshe with Tony Conrad in 2009) with its ruminations on society’s responses to problems.

Teho Teardo’s Oh! brought out the overlapping sounds of the intonarumori in chaotic, celebratory style. Chessa went solo with a single noise toner and megaphone for specialist noise composer Peter Ablinger’s WEISS WEISSLICH 17s Intonarumori und Rauschen (White Whitish … and White Noise) written for the stroppiciato (rubbing / creasing) sound family. They then concluded with the only remaining fragment of Russolo’s Awakening of a City, with its eerie, elusive atmosphere, a great note on which to end. 

The second half was devoted to the intensely focused and meditative explorations by the trio from Ensemble Klang from the Netherlands – Joey Marijs (percussion), Anton van Houten (trombone) and Erik-Jan de With (baritone sax) – performing Éliane Radigue’s OCCAM DELTA XXIII, a three-way composing collaboration with musician Carol Robinson. The 92 years old composer has worked many times with Robinson and also with Ensemble Klang. Radigue’s scores are conveyed orally and this piece was based on the shared experience of looking out to the North Sea. The stage was set with a frame from which a large gong and two small metal sheets hung with a large cow bell hanging in the foreground. From initial passages of percussion the initiative was passed round the trio dwelling and expanding on extended notes to create an absorbing, dream-like soundscape. Robinson joined the musicians on stage to accept warm applause from the house.

The Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners was supported by Performa, Wigmore Hall and Thaddeus Ropac Gallery.

The post Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners and Ensemble Klang first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano), and Evan Parker (sax) with Paul Lytton (drums), formed a natural bond with Axel Dörner (trumpet) and John Edwards (double bass), perhaps not that surprising as Schlippenbach and Dörner had focused on Monk’s music in the mid-90s with a quintet, Monk’s Casino, while Schlippenbach and Parker performed together in the 60s and were first recorded in the trio format in 1972 which continues to this day. Lytton, who took Paul Lovens’ place a while back, cut his teeth in duo with Parker in 1969, taking up the drum seat in the Evan Parker Trio with Barry Guy on bass in the early 70s. The ultra-versatile Edwards, a frequent collaborator with Parker and so many others, was the perfect bass player to pitch in with this group.  

The first set had the musicians blending in intuitive unison, responding to Schlippenbach’s exploratory peregrinations, and finding space to make tangential excursions, solo and in loose partnerships. 

Dörner’s opening flow, obliquely hitting the high notes, and Lytton’s dynamic drumming set out the stall for this acutely balanced meeting of minds which gave Schlippenbach the platform to plot a mesmerising route through rhythmic and melodic propositions, dropping in flirtations with Monk’s oeuvre, while Parker and Dörner found the openings to pursue avenues in tandem and with solo voices. As John Corbett has noted, ’Schlippenbach … often pulls out a Monk tune during solo performances or in the course of free improvising with others’ and Parker recalled that they dipped in to Monk’s Evidence, based on the changes of the standard Just You, Just Me, and Monk’s Let’s Call This.

Dörner used mutes, held wavering notes, took in and released raw breath, and hinted at Miles’ challenges, while Parker, without a pause, ran the full gamut of registers on tenor, and Lytton added small metal cymbals to drum skins to extend the percussive range.

The second set had something of an abstract feel to it, with Schlippenbach’s dark chords setting an eerily unsettling tone. After reaching in to the piano wires he and Parker traded phrases, Dörner added muted brass and Lytton put in light mallet touches, with Edwards weaving dextrously with bow, fingers and knuckles, to bind it all together. A supercharged conversation between Parker and Dörner drew rare Cafe Oto applause and Edwards’ extended solo before the encore was breathtaking in its invention.

Maybe most rewarding was to find that Schlippenbach was playing extraordinarily well. Watching his spider-like fingering was mesmerising, as he picked out notes, runs and chords with deliberation and sensitivity. No hesitation, just great clarity. And Evan, later, also commented that ‘Alex is playing better than ever.’ That says it all!

Except to add that it was Jackson Burton’s final night as full-time night manager of five years at Cafe Oto for which co-founder, Hamish Dunbar, gave heartfelt thanks. Jackson said afterwards that he’d chosen to bow out on this particularly special night of music, and that he’d still be around!

The post Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker, Paul Lytton Trio with Axel Dörner and John Edwards first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The 2-hour film about Burwell’s life, Burning Bridges, directed by Matt Stephenson, and premiered in 2024, was prefaced by performances from Evan Parker, Sylvia Hallett and David Toop, each of whom had strong connections with Burwell at different stages of his somewhat chaotic life. 

Burwell’s musical roots were in the London Musicians Collective (LMC), where he and Toop were among the founders, and which is where Evan Parker comes in. Online there is a photo of Parker, Toop and Burwell (‘The world’s first fine art drummer,’ as Parker has remarked) playing at the LMC in Gloucester Avenue in the mid-70s (link below).  

Evan Parker initiated proceedings by invoking the very spirit of Bow Gamelan, crashing a large, hanging gong and battering a drum, the sounds reverberating throughout the venue, ending with a piecing whistle in an intense five-minute solo. 

Sylvia Hallett then applied her sensibility to evoking an eerie, roundly melodic soundscape from the spokes and structure of the bicycle wheel positioned vertically. Mixing harp-like sounds with clanky metallic accents, echoes were electronically induced and her performance became a playground of sound.

David Toop, a fittingly shadowy figure in the unlit area of the stage, moved alongside Hallett to introduce barely audible, liminal sounds with scraps of paper being crackled and crumpled. He then took to his battery of flutes while his film, The Old Men of the Shells was projected, with its references to shamans in different cultures, giving Toop licence to briefly shake together a handful of shells.

Finally, all three played together with Parker chattering on soprano sax, Hallett drawing a violin bow through the bicycle wheel and Toop’s flute complementing Parker as they evoked jungle sounds, mimicking bird and animal calls.

The film, which took 4 years to put together, held the attention throughout, with around 30 interviews, rare archive footage, insightful commentary and filming at locations relevant to Burwell’s life story from his creative heyday in London, including a spell as a gravedigger, to his eventual decline in to alcoholism in a squatted building in Hull. 

Those interviewed include Toop, Parker and Hallett, musicians Steve Noble, Steve Beresford and Max Eastley, sculptor and Bow Gamelan collaborator Richard Wilson, Sheila Cobbing who had been married to Burwell, their two sons and many others, each of whom shed light on his life and lifestyle. The film’s title is taken from a page in Burwell’s sketchbook.

Toop referred in the film to the Christmas show at the Roundhouse in 1969 where he and Burwell played all night forming the duo, Rain in the Face, ‘A quick descent in to obscurity,’ as he put it. There is much more, and well worth tracking down the film to hear the rest of the story.

The post Evan Parker, Sylvia Hallett, David Toop first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The spirit of the evening reflected Chrysakis’s statement that ‘Sound – a small animal almost everywhere nowadays – appears recognisable by everyone but equally unknown to anyone.’

The eleven contemporary works (listed below) explored the potential and possibilities offered by woodwind and brass instruments which are rarely the focus of contemporary composition and live performance. 

The featured instruments – four bass clarinets and a contra-bass clarinet, two trombones and three tubas – were taken on journeys that dived in to the liminal, the unfamiliar and the mildly alarming, pushing techniques to the limit, extracting unexpected sounds and tonal ranges from these imposing instruments. 

It was not possible to put a musician’s name to every composition as not all the musicians were introduced by name in this lively pot pourri of performances.  As tuba player Stuart Beard said, before he got to grips with Chrysakis’s Verdant Terrain, ‘The music will speak for itself!’

Jason Alder, originally from Detroit and now based in Amsterdam, set the tone with his navigation of the contra-bass clarinet on Penumbra, flushing out guttural tones, slapping the keys, reaching the lowest bass notes then lightly tonguing on the reed to exhale breaths redolent of gusts over the steppes. On the Denisov piece he contrasted softly played, deep notes with strident, assertive passages. 

In his tour de force, the 1966 Stockhausen Solo, Alder explained how, in 2010, he had adapted for computer this complex work with its many layers of instruction and the requirement for up to six tape operators, by using Max/MSP software. As delays were prompted, samples of Alder’s live playing re-emerged subtly through the speakers above, enabling an intricate solo dialogue to take place.

Chris Cundy, self-taught and inspired to take up the bass clarinet by hearing recordings of Eric Dolphy, gave a sensitive rendition of Dave Smith’s lively, melodically-rooted piece from 1998, pumping the bass notes and swapping registers with ease. Smith, coincidentally, has been a recent visitor to Cafe Oto, for performances of his Albanian Summer suite celebrating his 75 years and also as pianist in the Gavin Bryers Ensemble.

Oraculum, composed for trombone by the formidable George Lewis, a member of AACM with numerous honorary doctorates and awards, and occasional duettist with Evan Parker, was noted for its unusual opening directive, ‘Bovine’! Short, sharp bursts receded in the search for the instrument’s lowest vibrating resonances.

Ed Lucas worked with large score sheets in his meditative interpretation of the Chrysakis trombone piece which had him gliding and stretching to the full and working with the mute on selected passages.

Group works introduced unusual combinations. The bass clarinets of Yoni Silver and Tim Hodgkinson to the left , balanced with the trombonists, Jamie Tweed and Ed Lucas to the right, floated, clattered and coalesced into the marginal zones of Veiling Asterism, expertly guided by Matthew Harding, who similarly steered the two trombones either side of a single tuba through the brassy ebbs and flows of Herbarium.

Equally engaging were the tuba solo works, with Stuart Beard shivering, shuddering and rasping to bring out the richness of his gleaming, gold brass instrument in the evening’s penultimate piece. 

The full ensemble, ranged symmetrically either side of Alder’s towering contra-bass clarinet, was directed by Tim Hodgkinson who smilingly explained that silences were built in to his composition, Chthon, and that these should not be cues for clapping! Group blasts and sustains gave way to a mass exhalation of breath to draw this stimulating evening to its close.

Performers

Jason Alder: bass clarinet and contra-bass clarinet
Stuart Beard: tuba
Chris Cundy: bass clarinet
Callum Davis: tuba
Matthew Harding: conductor
Tim Hodgkinson: bass clarinet
Ed Lucas: trombone
Yoni Silver: bass clarinet
James Tavares: tuba
Jamie Tweed: trombone

Programme

1: Penumbra (solo contra-bass clarinet) by Ana-Maria Avram
2: Veiling Asterism (two trombones and two bass clarinets) by Thanos Chrysakis
3: Oraculum (solo tenor trombone) by George Lewis
4: Tines (solo tuba) by James Keirle
5: Sonata for Clarinet Solo (solo bass clarinet) by Edison Denisov
6: Herbarium (two trombones and tuba) by Thanos Chrysakis

Interval

7: A Shaft of Night (solo tenor trombone) by Thanos Chrysakis
8: Off Peak Single from Symi (solo bass clarinet) by Dave Smith
9: Solo für ein Melodieinstrument mit Rückkopplung (Solo for Melody Instrument and Feedback) (solo bass clarinet) by Karlheinz Stockhausen
10: Verdant Terrain (solo tuba) by Thanos Chrysakis
11: Chthon (full ensemble) by Tim Hodgkinson 

The post Music for trombones, bass clarinets and tubas first appeared on UK Jazz News.

It was a welcome surprise to find Murray booked in to Cafe Oto, and well worth the hour-long delay in the snaking queue outside the venue whilst the trio went through an exacting sound check. Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love are well known to the Dalston audience, through The Thing, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, and Atomic (all reviewed for londonjazznews) and were the perfect complement for Murray’s Cafe Oto debut. 

As the audience settled, Murray, in a neat, dark suit, walked through the room to retrieve his tenor sax and bass clarinet before the trio took to the stage. Murray’s strident blast struck the match to light the fire. Håker Flaten pounded his resoundingly resonant bass and Nilssen-Love flipped from handwork on congas to intensely percussive play on cymbals and skins to set the course for a profoundly inventive and energetic journey.

At the core of Murray’s playing was his natural ability to move from a brightly melodic figure to raw, jagged explosions of notes that would flow with practiced ease and suddenly skid and stutter, honk and squawk to punctuate and rip apart a rhythmic statement. This was, unashamedly, not polite playing as Murray forced out notes and phrasing drawing on Albert Ayler’s affirmative spirit, recalling also Peter Brötzmann’s range and versatility. The thunderous rhythm section reinforced Murray’s unswerving determination as he pinpointed those moments of change fundamental to the trio’s inventive dialogue. 

Murray generously sat back to allow extended solo and duo spells giving Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love full licence to explore the potential of the paper scores which served as starting points for several of the set’s numbers. ‘The paper of the music becomes almost unimportant,’ Murray said in the UKjazznews interview, ‘after you’ve spent hours and hours on the bandstand. The best music is off the page.’

Late on, Murray swapped to bass clarinet. Nilssen-Love, soloing, set up a gentle rhythm with brushes, countered with slowly spat out staccato sparks and oddball sounds from Murray to lead in to a funky, jumpy dance beat and Håker Flaten’s deep bass notes synching with those of the bass clarinet. 

For their encore, with Murray back on sax, after swift deliberation Nilssen-Love led the trio steaming in to a carnival-flavoured sunset with a favourite from his Brazilian portfolio, rounding off an evening which had been filled with bubbles of invention, leaving the audience in no doubt that they had been in the presence of one of the great saxophonists.

The post David Murray, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Paal Nilssen-Love  first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The original Transatlantic Trance Map event had seven musicians at the Hot Tin venue in Faversham and six at Roulette in Brooklyn, New York  improvising together in real time using SonoBus open source software, expertly adapted by post-DJ performer Matt Wright, with whom saxophonist, Evan Parker, has been collaborating in electro-acoustic formats as Trance Map, since 2008. 

Parker, for his part, was primarily responsible for creating the musical architecture of the performance : ‘I made a simple scheme for the concert which set out a sequence of combinations – mostly duos and trios, with the option to accompany and interject as impulse and the evolving context suggested.” 

The sextet of eminent improvisors, reconstituted at Cafe Oto for the occasion, achieved a sensitive balance between the acoustic and electronic processing to create two sets of finely crafted soundscapes with a refreshing and intriguing flow to them. The liminal spaces that evolved took much of their shape from the computer-based input from either side of the stage with Wright, on the left, manipulating turntables, a Mac and an array of table-top equipment and Pat Thomas, on the right, deftly working with 2 phone screens and a controller, where exacting micro-sounds and peripheral electronic scribbles formed a cacoon within which the acoustic musicians interacted with telepathic invention.

Hannah Marshall, switching from bowing to fingerplay, drew out bass lines from her cello to blend with Thomas’s deep bass runs. Parker’s driving sax, going with the flow then understatedly guiding the ensemble, was well matched by Robert Jarvis’s powerful, fluid statements on trombone and those of Alex Ward on clarinets, never one to hold back when the vortex started to swirl.

The contrasts between wafer-thin, feathery sequences and urgent, intricately woven entanglements gave tactile character to the piece and confirmed the strength of the group’s focus. High pitched, electronic birdsong sat alongside low earth rumbles, recalling Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening. Parker’s elegant phrases skipped along the top of many structural layers prefacing shuddering, jumpy crescendos with Ward wailing, and Jarvis blasting, ultimately to wind down to silence, the audience respectfully holding back applause to savour the final moments of trance-like, musical transcendence.

Trance Map at Cafe Oto

Evan Parker: soprano saxophone
Matthew Wright: turntable, live sampling and processing
Robert Jarvis: trombone
Hannah Marshall: cello 
Pat Thomas: live electronics 
Alex Ward: clarinet 

The original recording from 2022 also included trumpeter Peter Evans in Faversham, and in New York the group consisted of Sylvie Courvoisier (piano, keyboard), Mat Maneri (viola), Ikue Mori (laptop live electronics), Sam Pluta (laptop live electronics), Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, bass clarinet, shakuhachi), and Craig Taborn (piano, keyboard, live electronics) 

The post Transatlantic Trance Map – Evan Parker & Matthew Wright with Pat Thomas, Hannah Marshall, Alex Ward and Robert Jarvis first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Bennink is a lynchpin of the European free jazz and improvisation scene rooted in the 1960s. Playing drums as a teenager, he discovered that percussion was his vocation and soon he was playing with leading American jazz musicians on tour, notably Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy whom he and pianist Misha Mengelberg accompanied on the historic Last Date live recording (although it is not Dolphy’s actually final recorded performance). 

Bennink, Mengelberg and Willem Breuker founded the Instant Composers Pool collective in 1967 with its eponymous record label – now with a catalogue of over 60 albums – and the ICP Orchestra, which has often performed, with Bennink at its heart, in Dalston’s Vortex and Cafe Oto. Bennink’s art student days nurtured the Dadaist inclinations in his art, featured on many ICP album covers, and in his music.

One of the most disciplined, imaginative and witty drummers in jazz he has collaborated in a variety of other musical contexts from post-punk to Ethiopian. At Cafe Oto his fellow performers ranged from saxophonist Evan Parker, with whom Bennink and Derek Bailey recorded the iconic Topography of the Lungs in 1970 to Joanna MacGregor, best known as a leading contemporary concert pianist, and harpist Áine O’Dwyer – ‘I never played before in combination with harp!’

Night 1

The opening set had Joanna MacGregor and Bennink maintaining perfect balance as they explored melody and rhythm in tandem, passing the initiative back and forth, and heading off obliquely as the occasion demanded. MacGregor reached in to the piano to dampen the bass note strings and, with characteristic humour, Bennink evoked Tommy Cooper by name with reference to his own headgear. MacGregor was at home with the jazz strands that ran through the set – with the duo improvising loosely around (possibly) Caravan. I heard also that the set with Hannah Marshall and Maggie Nichols went well.

Night 2

The second night featured duos with complementary flavours, the first with Áine O’Dwyer and the second with Evan Parker. Bennink tapped with soft-headed mallets while O’Dwyer plucked out single notes, as they made their first steps into virgin territory. Gradually, the pace increased, a cymbal was crashed and O’Dwyer released graceful, fluid washes. The tom skin was scraped, cymbals brushed lightly, the body of the harp gently caressed and tapped. The poetic dialogue ebbed and flowed, paused only for a neat, solo spot from Bennink.

Parker followed Bennink’s percussive opening rush with gentle figures on his tenor to set a measured, inquisitive tone. Flurries of action led to a loping rhythm with Parker delving deep, recalling Lester Young’s phrasing, and releasing barely audible notes following a straight-down-the line, funky backbeat. Bennink introduced sharp accents, snuffed out when he placed a towel over a tom and intense runs flew from Parker with snatches of Dolphy’s 245 and Coltrane’s Miles’ Mode (Red Planet). Bennink removed hat and chunky pullover to swing with Parker’s hints of ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, rounding off with skilful hands on drum skins.

Parker mentioned later that the muted checked shirt he was wearing was in homage to Breuker, whom he met first time with Bennink in Wuppertal for Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun rehearsals and kindly confirmed his quotes from Dolphy and Coltrane.

Night 3

The final duo sessions were with Bennink’s frequent collaborator, Joris Roelofs, on bass clarinet and Thurston Moore on guitar. Roelof’s reedy vibrations with Bennink’s rolling mallet undercurrents, exchanged for one wood stick and one soft mallet, led to Roelof’s jaunty phrasing in the footsteps of Eric Dolphy, who put the bass clarinet on the map in contemporary jazz in the ’60s. They launched in to an intense interpretation of Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife, crafted from the heart, recalling Dolphy’s version with the Sextet of Orchestra USA. A Misha Mengelberg song, voiced by Bennink, fittingly concluded this powerful set.

With Thurston Moore to his right with guitar on lap, Bennink declared, ‘We have to make some noise!’ From Moore, whose territory takes in the sharp end of extruded sound, scratchings, scrapings and feedback found their way in to the soundscape. Bennink responded to the juddering, rumbling, raw emanations with sticks on sticks, one crashing, hollow thwack, and a spell of determinedly chunky beats mixed with careful brush work. Roelofs was invited back for a trio format improvisation where Moore provided the low-level backdrop to the bass clarinetist’s melodic initiative which had Bennink smiling, and to conclude, Bennink powered away at full throttle with Moore bringing out resonant sounds echoing as if in a cavern.

Bennink remarked, ‘So many people, so many styles,’ and that he’d never collaborated with so many female musicians! An enriching residency which had Bennink thinking on his feet and showing what an accomplished drummer and improvisor he is.

The post Han Bennink first appeared on UK Jazz News.