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Showing posts with label Book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Guillaume Belhomme - Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography And Discography (Wolke Press, 2023)


By Paul Acquaro

A couple of years ago, the French publisher Lenka Lente published a slim biography on the ever influential and somewhat enigmatic Eric Dolphy, and at the end of 2023, an English version appeared from the German Wolke Press. At 112 pages, the book is like an energy bar of biographies, packing all of the calories in an easily accessible packet. Rich with information, Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography And Discography provides a thorough and concise overview of the musicians life and development, but this also comes with a gentle warning: the translation could use a little more work.

Sentence structure aside for the moment, what Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography And Discography does really well, and with an absolute economy of words, is present well developed sketch of a gentle musical giant. Dolphy (at least to me) was always a bit of a mystery because the avant-garde aspect of his playing was so well integrated into whatever structure or setting he was in. My first recording of his was the oft published Conversations, recorded in 1963, and as I found out from the book, a part of a session organized by Alan Douglas that also yielded the title Iron Man. However, as I also learned through the book, Dolphy's ability to color so well inside and outside the lines was both his USP, as well what perhaps has kept him a bit mysterious. Further revealed throughout the book is how this approach was very much tied to his reserved and rather adaptable personality. So, along with requisite recording dates and personnel listings, the book makes gentle connections between Dolphy the person and Dolphy the musician, suggesting that with his untimely and avoidable early death from diabetes, that the artist had not yet achieved the music that he was likely capable of creating - obvious when someone passes away in their mid-30s, but poignant nevertheless to read and ponder anew. Additionally, Dolphy's work and connection with Coltrane and Mingus are equally explored and detailed. The book has chapters of about three to four pages, each one, as the title expresses, it is more a sketch of the life and times of Dolphy, with an account of all the known sessions he took part in.

Now to turn to that tiny elephant in the room, the translation. Perhaps, I am a bit over sensitized to language, as a residue of my professional activities perhaps (Quick note, I am also aware that I could be much better with my own writing!), but what I want to simply convey is that some sentences and passages can be a bit confounding as they resolve into a certain poetry. Not a deal breaker, just a gentle warning. 

Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography And Discography is an excellent book for both the Dolphy-aware and the Dolphy-curious. While it may not cover previously unknown bombshell insights into the inner workings of the saxophonist who was, for his time, Out There and Out to Lunch, it does provide a really nice grounding in his life story and development of as a musician. I've personally found myself returning to the aforementioned recordings, as well as the newly discovered and released Evenings at the Village Gate with John Coltrane from 1961 with a renewed inquisitiveness.


Thursday, September 21, 2023

Clifford Allen - Singularity Codex - Matthew Shipp on RogueArt (RogueArt, 2023)

 By Lee Rice Epstein

It’s a real special time for appreciators of jazz and improvised music, with many recently published tomes, biographies and autobiographies of greats like Sonny Rollins and Henry Threadgill, compendiums of The Cricket and FMP Records, deep explorations of regional collectives like the Williamsburg loft scene. But there’s a kind of book, I’ll say outright to start off, that we simply need more of, which is the kind of slim and sprightly—yet thematically and informationally dense and rich—book Clifford Allen has written on pianist Matthew Shipp: Singularity Codex - Matthew Shipp on RogueArt.

“Sprightly yet thematically dense and rich” is a phrase one could equally apply to Shipp’s piano playing, and one of the key features of Singularity Codex , Allen’s first book, is how well it manages to expand the story of downtown New York music, specifically Lower East Side music. Shipp’s life and art intersect with the stories of dozens of artists and writers who populated or cycled through the Lower East Side, including Michael Bisio, Rob Brown, Whit Dickey, Mat Maneri, Jemeel Moondoc, Joe Morris, Yuko Otomo, William Parker, and David S. Ware. As one of the finest writers about modern jazz and improvised music, Allen has a particularly masterful way of bringing together personal reflections, engaging writing about improvised music, and research with first-person interviews. The result is something of an oral history of Shipp’s time in New York, from his arrival through the production of 25 titles for French label RogueArt.

As described in the book, these titles (some still pending release) comprise a group of work, nearing its completion. Unlike Shipp’s releases on other labels, the works produced with label founder Michel Dorbon are, as Shipp explains in the acknowledgements, “a distinct body of work within the arc of my bigger body of work—one emanation of Shipp.” Allen traces the development of this body, from Shipp’s pre-RogueArt days playing with Moondoc, Ware, and Parker in various groups, to the emergence of his quartet Declared Enemy, which kicked off the French label (though it was ultimately destined to be release number four). Allen moves between researched sections—richly drawn portraits of a vibrant scene in constant motion—and extended interviews with many of Shipp’s long-time collaborators, first Parker, Brown, Dickey, and Morris, and later Otomo, Dorbon, and Jim Clouse, the owner/engineer of Park West Studios, where Shipp recorded all his RogueArt titles (and many more).

The final section, a runthrough of all the recordings, from Declared Enemy’s 2006 debut Salute to 100001 Stars - A Tribute To Jean Genet to as-yet-unreleased duos with Steve Swell and Kirk Knuffke, a final RogueArt solo album, and what will be Ivo Perleman’s first album for the label, and Shipp’s last one, a tidy alpha-omega of sorts, particularly given the huge number of records they’ve made together. It seems, in its own way, just right. As does the final section of Allen’s book, where he reprints in full the liner notes to The Reward, written by the late poet Steve Dalachinsky. It’s a beautiful dual tribute to Shipp and Dalachinsky, two artists whose close bond is reflected on by everybody throughout the entire book.

One final note. In 2019, the French label RogueArt released Symbolic Reality , the first album in nearly 20 years from Shipp’s string trio, with William Parker and Mat Maneri. It was something of a reunion and also something of a rekindling, in its way. Somehow, for me, it represents a key landmark in the RogueArt catalog, just as the earlier albums did with hatART/hatOLOGY. In fact, I’ve only heard about 10 or 12 of the albums discussed in the book. If I heard zero, or only one or two, I would find it just as valuable and engaging; Allen’s writing is about Shipp and, naturally, about much more than Shipp—it is about music, art, and culture, and about the fires still ablaze, obscured by what, from a distance, may appear to be mere embers.

Available from RogueArt

https://roguart.com/product/singularity-codex-matthew-shipp-on-rogueart/222

Monday, May 8, 2023

Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards - Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023)

By Gary Chapin

About two-thirds of the way into his memoir, Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music, Henry Threadgill let’s us know:

There is an expectation that an artist’s autobiography will function as a primer, providing “explanations” of the art. But this book is not a listening guide. If anything, it is an extended defiance of that expectation. If it’s meant to teach you anything about my music, it starts with the lesson that you need to relinquish that desire for transparency. Music is about listening. Nothing I can say can mean anything once you start to listen. (p 259)

And I thought, “Dang!” Because, while I wasn’t expecting a primer or “explanations,” the experience of reading the book did not mean “nothing” to me when I listened to the music. Threadgill’s life and stories were helping me get closer to the music, providing a new perspective or context for the music, or a new entry point. I’ve been listening to Threadgill since 1988, maybe I needed a new entry point to remind me how much joy is there. (I notice, as I get older, I need that reminder about a lot of things.) Still, Threadgill’s questioning (or denial) of the relationship between his words and his music fascinated me.

Regardless, it’s important to say, in and of itself Easily Slip Into Another World, is a wonder of a book. I have read far more than my fair share of music biographies and memoirs, especially of avant musicians, and this is easily the best. Yes. I’ll repeat. The best. Easily.

The most important reason for this is that Threadgill (with Edwards) is an amazingly good storyteller—the type of storyteller who could tell a story about anything and have you in the palm of their hand. Every music bio has that section at the beginning about ancestors and childhood. I suppose it’s necessary, but it almost always leaves me impatient. (“Okay, okay, Bach’s dad was a bagpiper. Can we get to the Cantatas?”) Threadgill, from the first sentence, draws you in with stories of Peyton Robinson, his great-grandfather. Each story has that urgency of “So there I was …” (even if Threadgill wasn’t actually there). It’s a superpower, this kind of storytelling, to use words to leave you desperate to know, “What happens next? How’s it going to end?”

Incidents of neighborhood racism in Threadgill’s late ‘50s/early ‘60s Chicago leave us angry and uneasy. Brief encounters with Sun Ra and his band leave us envious. The section on his time in Vietnam is genuinely harrowing, edge-of-your-seat stuff. I can imagine the movie made from just that chapter. When he returns to Chicago afterwards, Threadgill pursues different relationships, educational opportunities, friendships, and musical experiments.

He is of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), but, because of his time away, not enmeshed in it. He takes us through the formation and story of Air, the Sextett, Zooid, etc. Certain relationships stuck out to me, I’m not always sure why—such as that with guitarist Brandon Ross. It’s not prominent in terms of the word count given to it, but it feels meaningful.

As we watch him assemble and disassemble different ensembles over time, looking for his sound (not THE ONE sound, but the sound he needs at that moment), you can see his fascination with the mixture of timbres (something I heard Threadgill comment on in the ‘90s). Whether it’s a phalanx of basses, or the stringreedbrass mixture of the Sextet, or the accordion on Song Out of My Trees, you can see his fascination with the sounds of instruments and their players, and their place in his writing. For example, he’s had a bunch of cellists and a bunch of tuba players over the years, but I can always tell when it’s a Threadgill cello or a Threadgill tuba.

In the way of great storytellers, the language here is nonviolent, never engaging in the gossip of so much music-oriented writing. It also never seems to gloss over things that someone like Ellington would in his autobiography. He talks about the drugs, racism, and divorces because they happened. They were part of the context. But I never feel as if I’m a voyeur. It’s an extraordinary balance he achieves.

Easily Slip Into Another World doesn’t bring us up to the minute, but it gets pretty darn close. He talks of his relationship with Pi Recordings and its blessings. It wasn’t his Pulitzer that made Threadgill into an elder statesman of “this kind of music,” but it helped. The story of his relationship with the Indian state of Goa—first missing a chance to play there, then playing there, then getting lost in the jungle and … nevermind, I won’t spoil it—is one of the most beautiful and endearing of the book.

I suppose Threadgill is right, and the book doesn’t provide transparency in the sense of answers about his music—although his explanation of the Zooid approach to harmony is wonderful “inside baseball”—but it does help you approach the music with good questions. My experience of this book (as important as my evaluation or analysis) was one of rapt enjoyment, and also fascination. I know it’s the second time I’ve used that word, but it’s genuinely true that one quality of great music to me is that it is fascinating. Among all its other qualities, Henry Threadgill’s music is fascinating to me. This book is fascinating. The two fascinations amplify each other.

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Richard Koloda - Holy Ghost: The Life & Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler (Jawbone Press, 2022)

By Lee Rice Epstein

His name is Albert Ayler. His influence on modern and free jazz, globally, can possibly not be overstated. Probably the most obvious influences are seen in saxophonists like Amado, Brötzmann, Gayle, Gustafsson, Mateen, Murray, Rasmussen, Rempis, Vandermark, Ware, and Zorn, and guitarists like Chadbourne, Eisenberg, Lopes, Ribot, and Sharrock. His life, however, remains somewhat blurred by a mythology that has grown, and warped, fed by well-intentioned supposition and poetic embellishment.

What Koloda has accomplished is a major milestone in our collective study and understanding of Ayler’s life and music: this is the first substantial, detailed, and heavily researched volume to be published in English. To date, Franck Médioni’s oral history Albert Ayler: Témoignages Sur Un Holy Ghost has not yet been translated from French. Recently, Peter Niklas Wilson’s Spirits Rejoice: Albert Ayler und seine Botschaft did finally get translated from German to English in 2022, and it’s a welcome companion to Koloda’s book. Yet, Holy Ghost is, one hopes, just the beginning of what’s to come. For starters, nothing quite matches the in-depth research that brings Ayler’s life story into relief.

Over decades, Koloda befriended and interviews dozens of primary sources. Most notable, undeniably, are Ayler’s family, especially his brother Donald. As anyone who knows Ayler’s music would understand, this is probably as close as we can get to hearing from Albert himself; Donald performed with Ayler, wrote several of the key compositions that comprised the sound and style of the quartet and quintet, and remained close with his brother throughout his entire life. Through the words of family, friends, and fellow musicians, the fuzziness of the Ayler mythology gradually fades, and, like fog clearing to reveal a walking path, leaves behind it a truer story of, well, just a man. Granted, a man with radical ideas of jazz composition and improvisation, but a man nonetheless.

Among the early myths that disperse is the idea that Ayler arrived in New York unknown and more or less fully formed. Koloda writes a substanial amount of detail about Ayler’s time in the army, including several anecdotes about gigs and memories from other musicians whom he sat in with. He seemed to have left a strong impression on everyone, so that by the time he arrived in New York, there were already people who knew of and talked about this new saxophonist on the scene.

We also learn a lot more about Cleveland, about Donald and his path to the trumpet and to playing with Albert. And, crucially, Koloda spends multiple chapters with a number of players and writers retracing a detailed path Albert took from early blowing sessions to his landmark trio, to the transformative quintet that helped realize his grand vision: Albert and Donald on horns, Michel Samson on violin, first Mutawef Shaheed and Lewis Worrell on bass with Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, later replaced by Bill Folwell and Beaver Harris on the European tour. To me, this is the quintessential Ayler period, even more valuable than the 1964 sessions with Don Cherry, Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray. By the 1966 quintet—heard on Slug’s Saloon, Holy Ghost: Rare and Unissued Recordings, and the recent ezz-thetics reissues Lost Performances 1966 Revisited, La Cave Live Cleveland 1966 Revisited, and Berlin, Lörrach, Paris & Stockholm Revisited—Ayler had put together a beast of a band, everyone tuned into the collective churn and universal hum. All the classics, “Bells,” “Ghosts,” “Our Prayer,” “Truth Is Marching In,” “Prophet,” “Spirits Rejoice,” get multiple readings, turned inside out, and even pass through one another, snippets of themes recurring in the midst of other themes, echoing in solos, rising just enough to hint before getting dropped for other themes and ideas. This group’s facility with the universal concepts demonstrates a deep commitment to Ayler’s vision. And yet, Koloda doesn’t allow himself, or the reader, to lapse into a rhapsodic trance reliving these moments. The chapter that kicks off this middle section, “La Cave,” opens with Sunny Murray learning he’d been fired from Ayler’s band upon seeing his replacement onstage. As the chapter goes on, Charles Tyler quits the band, Samson and/or Donald Ayler struggle with the music, and Ayler experiences intense visions of UFOs. On the eve of the European tour, everything is slightly fractured and cracks in the band, and in Ayler himself, are clearly showing. And yet, as Koloda documents, the press has, by this time, turned in favor of Ayler. His music and his band’s performances get positive reviews in every city, some critics having given poor reviews in the past reconsider their position.

Later, in his chapters on Albert’s relationship with Mary Parks, Koloda quotes from and picks up a crucial point made by Val Wilmer: that a great deal of the pushback against Mary was rooted in sexism, criticism of her role in Ayler’s late-stage music a sort of cover for men’s bias. Following last year’s incredible Revelations, these chapters build on that set’s demonstration of the late group’s strength. Listening to those concerts while reading and re-reading these chapters brings the past to thrilling life, but it also casts Ayler’s relationship with Parks in complex light. Ayler had not properly divorced his wife and had left his child to be with Parks, and she held a power over him that heavily influenced his later, lesser albums. Throughout, Koloda recounts Ayler’s increasingly disturbed mental state.

In the end, there are no easy answers, there is no neatly tied bow to bring it all together. There is, however, Albert Ayler, with all his brilliance, self-mythologizing, depression, and desperation. He believed in his role as Coltrane’s successor, he seemed destined to struggle in his lifelong mission to spread spirituality through his music. As with many recent releases, Koloda’s book tells Ayler’s story through Albert, Donald, and the many musicians they shared both stage and studio with, and through their voices, becomes an indispensable part of Ayler’s legacy.

Order directly from Jawbone Press

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Brötzmann / Bennink - Schwarzwaldfahrt (Trost, 2022)


By Eyal Hareuveni

Schwarzwaldfahrt (Black or Dark Forest Ride in German) is an iconic and seminal free jazz meets free improvisation of Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink, originally released by FMP in 1977. Brötzmann and Bennink already played together in the legendary trio with pianist Fred Van Hove, and this was their second recording as a duo (Ein halber hund kann nicht pinkeln, FMP, 1977, was recorded about two months earlier), out of six duo albums (the last one is In Amherst 2006, BRÖ, 2008, not including assorted tracks in compilations and other ad-hoc formats up until recently), and is part of their long-term, close music bond.

Schwarzwaldfahrt is still special due to the unique manner that it was deceived and recorded. Brötzmann and Bennink recorded the album in three days in June 1977, completely in the open air, at the mythic and gloomy German Black Forest, using a vintage Japanese, portable reel-to-reel Stellavox recorder. Bennink and Brötzmann were duetting with the birds, playing in the water, drumming on great natural xylophones made of logs and catching the sounds of airplanes strafing the skies. Their instruments list included e-flat clarinet, b-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, birdcalls, viola, banjo, cymbals, wood, trees, sand, land, water and air.

The re-release of this album - as a 120-page black and white photo book plus a disc - proves that these titans of free music, are Still Quite Popular After All These Years, if I would borrow the title of another duo album of theirs (BRÖ, 2004). Brötzmann supervised this re-release of the original recordings (a previous re-release of the album was issued in 2005 as an expanded double album by the now-defunct Atavistic label, produced by John Corbett), and he and Bennink contributed photos of themselves from this recording adventure. Scottish writer David Keenan (the partner of pedal steel player Heather Leigh, a recent collaborator of Brötzmann, who recorded with him five albums since 2015), contributed a poetic introduction.

Keenan claims that Brötzmann and Bennink became the mirror of the Dark Forest in a quest for timelessness. They decided to play in the forest after they were invited in 1976 by Joachim-Ernst Berendt to play in Free Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden, and then made their first exploration of the forest. “It sounded like music, like lamenting music, far off, or hopeful cries, in the distance, perhaps”. Berendt funded the recording trip. They were given a freezing, modest guest house, Gasthos Hirschen, (“Home, Sweet Home” in the book, and snow was falling during the time of the recording), and an old car to carry their instruments and recording equipment, but by day, “they sang the songs of the birds”, playing “like kids do, or lovers”.

Schwarzwaldfahrt is a great album, and still radiates an inspiring urgency and a unique sense of rare musical bond and resourceful invention. Brötzmann and Bennink play in a totally free and playful mode that can be replicated anywhere else. As Keenan writes, this is amusic of “endless expansion, and every improvisation is a sounding of a particular time and space, a song, once st in space, that goes on singing”. The many photos expand the listening experience from many angles, taking photos of each other, of their lodgings, of their ritual communions, and of their route into, and out of the forest. A timeless treasure.

More info here.

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Sammy Stein - The Wonder of Jazz (Independent Publishing Network, 2022)

By Lee Rice Epstein

Caveats to apply: Sammy Stein is a contributor to this blog and a friend, and I am quoted and mentioned once each. Given those, you can imagine I heartily endorse The Wonder of Jazz and Stein’s writing, generally, but, as well, given the same, I think it’s worth talking specifically about why Stein is so good and why this book, now, is quite important to the broader conversation about capital-j Jazz, which free, improvised, and avant-garde music we cover here is strongly associated with.

The overall structure of the book is something of a set-up, knock-down approach, although that oversimplifies that Stein seems to be getting at, which is something like, given all the history behind us, now that we’re here, where are we heading? The “we” royally includes artists both established and up-and-coming, critics, club owners, fans, and casual listeners. While the historical chapters are brisk, they function more like background for the later chapters, which cover a lot of the key topics Stein has been investigating and pursuing for several years now, notably women in jazz, financial sustainability and market influences, and the educator/elder-player relationship, both as mentor and bully.

It’s these topics that separate Stein from other writers on jazz, broadly speaking. She has a way of bridging the past and present that demonstrates how little has changed in some areas. In two brief sections on exploitation, she addresses ways musicians can be exploited by agents and clubs, and how writers can be exploited by publications. As ever, there’s both a look back and questions about how to move forward. What one gets from reading Stein is someone who asks the questions, who doesn’t shy from prompting conversations, but she isn’t insistent on having one final answer. The fluidity of the music seems to inform the multi-perspectival nature of all her writing. The Wonder of Jazz is a book to share with friends, to chat about over drinks, and to revisit, for the sheer enjoyment of Stein’s love for jazz and all its associated sub-genres. For the readers of this blog, there are extensive quotes from Peter Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson, as well as Stein’s ever-present warmth and genuine curiosity about this music, and yes, wonder.

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Phil Freeman - Ugly Beauty (Zero Books, 2022)



As I began writing this review, I was about half-way through Phil Freeman's Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century. I had been picking it up and putting it down for a week or so, which is no fault of the author, rather I blame my computer-mediated attention deficit disorder. The thing is, Ugly Beauty is perfect for this approach to reading. The stories, anecdotes and encounters with musicians, choice quotes woven in from longer interviews, and smartly detailed tangents linking the musicians, the gigs, and the music are served well in short richly detailed chapters.

It is clear from the start that Freeman has listened to a wide and varied assortment of music and has done a painstaking job of keeping the details of the recordings, encounters, and concert dates straight. A sampling of artists are profiled in each chapter, but the subjects of the chapter are embedded in various networks. The enumerations of who has played with who, releasing this or that album, paints a picture of artistic development of both the artists and the scene they come from. Each artist/scene is treated to a similar presentation and by the end of each neatly structured chapter, you may, like me, find yourself popping off immediately to search your collection or check Spotify for one or more of the recordings you've just read about.

Freeman begins with the mainstream musicians, capturing several in the mid-point of their careers, including JD Allen, Ethan Iverson, Wayne Escoffery, Jason Moran and Orrin Evans. In Part II, he moves into the somewhat more experimental players, the ones who are reshaping 'jazz' and blending genres, like pianist Vijay Iyer, whose music straddles mainstream and avant-garde, as well as other fan favorites like Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Linda May Han Oh, Nicole Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey. Throughout, the writing is crisp and smart. For example, an anecdote leads to Iyer through a concert from the Art Ensemble of Chicago and various offshoots. These connections, be they through people, places, or events, serve as path markers.  

That is what this book does best, connecting the dots, giving shape to what jazz is today, though what it actually looks like, is fuzzier than ever before. Freeman starts with his nodes, offering a somewhat solid taxonomy, with each "part" of the book exploring a branch of the jazz family tree. To improve on that metaphor, I would recommend thinking of a giant Mangrove tree. In addition to what is on the page, the more the reader fills in the interconnections, the more this slim book fills in. Hell, this is the type of stuff we used to do teasing every piece of possible information out of LP liner notes.

In addition to the aforementioned topics, Freeman dedicates a chapter to spiritual jazz, rooting the work of Shabaka Hutchings, Yazz Ahmed, Makaya McCravan, Kamasi Washington, and Darius Jones (among others) loosely to the forebears: Albert Ayler, John and Alice Coltrane, and the general spiritual movement in the 60s and 70s. Then, he moves on to a set players of a specific instrument, the trumpet. He also notes that each player in this part, Ambrose Akinmusire, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Kenyon Harold, Theo Crocker and Marquis Hill also incorporate hip-hop into their music. In the final part, and maybe what it was all leading up to anyway, the work of Jamie Branch, James Brandon Lewis, Matana Roberts, Kassa Overall, Moor Mother and Luke Stewart is connected through its raw and uncompromising genre-bending urgency.

This book will likely sit near to the Penguin Guide to Jazz by Brian Morton and Richard Cook on my shelf, whose thin pages of tiny font I once poured over religiously, seeking connections, trying to understand what I needed to know to 'know Jazz.' Here we follow Freeman doing the same. Ugly Beauty is less of a reference and more of a living history, where he's putting what these musicians are doing right now, into the context of, well, jazz in the 21st century. 

Sunday, March 20, 2022

FMP: The Living Music - Interview with Markus Müller

An Interview with Markus Müller about the book FMP: The Living Music, reviewed here.

By Martin Schray and Paul Acquaro

Mr. Müller, the FMP exhibitions in Munich in 2017 and in Berlin in 2018 were a wonderfully created and fantastic look back at the wok of FMP. How and when did the decision to also do a book come about?

Funny enough it was just the other way around: I wanted to work on an FMP book for the longest time, but never having really published a book without an exhibition driving that kind of effort, I never made it across the initial, the essential first threshold. Okwui Enwezor simply had enough of me just talking about it and asked me to realize an exhibition on FMP at Haus der Kunst, the accompanying catalog, that was his rational, would take care of my book idea, period. After Okwui was, as I would say, forced to leave the Haus, the funding for the book was in administrative hibernation.

You mention in the introduction that Machine Gun may have been the first recording you heard from FMP. At the time did you think about the label being somewhat special or were you just listening to an album?

Yes, it was something special. Maybe for all the wrong reasons though. I was very much into what was called Heavy Metal and Blues. I oscillated, I am not ashamed to say, between “Kiss Alive!” and Hound Dog Taylor, electric Blues. We are talking 1975, so one year before the Ramones debut. And I just connected immediately to Machine Gun because over the intense hyper-energy-level it exuded. This thing was just so on fire and it still is. It was clear that I had to follow up on this, hear more, learn more about this.

Was there something about FMP that interested you the most? The concerts, the festivals, the recordings, or possibly something else?

I grew up in the Ruhrgebiet so it was records before concerts, Berlin was not only 600 km away, there was also this border…later on I got almost addicted to listening to the live experience, no not almost I got addicted, especially to the experience of being able to listen to a set of musicians repeatedly, a.k.a. the Workshop Freie Musik-configuration, so I got addicted up to a point where I couldn’t afford to travel to listen to FMP-related musics anymore and had to realize that writing about this stuff will not pay the rent…thus I had to get my first job at the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum in Hagen.

Especially during the so-called cooperative period, there were sometimes tensions at FMP because Peter Brötzmann came from a political background at the beginning, while Alexander von Schlippenbach was rather apolitical. Despite Brötzmann's influence, would you say that the political became less and less important for FMP over the years?

I strongly do believe that everything that FMP has done was political and it is political till this day. FMP has been an example for self-empowerment, so for me the political has multiple implications and this example of self-empowerment is central for my understanding of what politics can do. And yes there were tensions but fascinating enough these guys still play together every once in a while and I think there is also a lesson to be learned from that.

FMP was very present in West Germany, especially in the late 1970s and the 1980s, because the label could - as you say - set accents. You briefly mention that there was also a discussion that FMP fuelled displacement struggles. What exactly is meant by that, and to what extent would you agree?

I think that Jost Gebers for example, always wanted to include, to present musics that are contemporary and relevant, no matter where they came from. This necessarily had to be in sharp contrast with the intrinsic interest of any musician in an economy that makes it almost impossible to make a living by “just” playing your music. You always want to be the one who gets the gig, especially in your “own cooperative”. This let to internal conflicts. If you are outside of the FMP-bubble the sheer massiveness and number of FMP-related events, presentations, and publications condemns the outsider to think: “Why always them, why always FMP?”. And as the economic situation was and is limited by definition, more FMP was perceived to mean there is less for others. The Kölner Stadtgarten is the prime example of an initiative that was begun, I believe, very well knowing the FMP-example but also in stark delimitation to FMP and thus managed to out-live FMP as it took necessary steps that in some ways even reached further than FMP did. The lesson being: real-estate is real.

One chapter that is certainly important, because there is a focus on a rather underrepresented aspect, is the chapter on FMP and women. You say (quite rightly) that FMP as an organization has never been feminist, but proportionately has given many women opportunities to present themselves. Was anything else beyond that even possible at that time?

Yes, that is a very good question and I believe you are pointing in the right direction. I just think that as a white privileged male today one always has to acknowledge that these privileges are part of what I would call systemic racism and systemic misogyny. One has to raise these questions and yes, I am pro-Quota.

In this context, do you think a chapter on sexual diversity would have been useful? Cecil Taylor and Irène Schweizer, for example, never made a secret of this.

Absolutely! And I believe Christian Broecking outstanding and exemplary biography of Irène Schweizer does an excellent job in this regard. And it should be done and it has to be done. Having said that, I hope there will be more studies, books, research focused on FMP, and other initiatives like FMP covering this specific question and then some. My book is far from trying to be definitive, there was only so much that I could do. I wanted to introduce FMP in a way that makes it possible to understand that this is an important history. If others pick this up and do more and better in the future: all power to them!

One chapter deals exclusively with FMP and border crossings. Could FMP perhaps be described as the first real example of globalization in jazz?

I am not sure about that, the question makes me think immediately of Joe Zawinul, Joe Harriott, Django Reinhardt, Gábor Szabó etc. etc. I also believe that AACM did similar things, integrating dance, performance, and also painting, visual arts and I think that I believe that the arts always intermixed with Fluxus being the one moment were things really crystallized and Fluxus was definitely global. And that is, in part, were FMP is coming from. Plus, let us be clear, when you live in a village, and Wuppertal, sorry, was a village compared to Manhattan, and you have Brötzmann, Kowald, Carl, and Reichel on the one hand and Pina Pausch on the other hand, how could these folks miss each other, they had to collaborate at one point.

Some chapters, such as FMP and the GDR, also live on almost unbelievable anecdotes. Were there also some that you had to leave out because they simply didn't fit in, but that would have been well worth telling?

Yes, when you work on something for such a long time, people begin to tell you stories because they know that you will not publish them, I think this is a matter of simple trust. And in some cases, for example in all questions of publishing stuff about FMP finances, I cleared that. And on the other hand I was never asked not to write something or to delete something. In other words, I am sure there are things not in the book that are worth telling but this whole brick is also about reduction and commensurability.

Olaf Rupp said in an interview that Jost Gebers has achieved incredible things for improvised music. Many people (including himself) had complained about FMP in the 90s because they thought they were not very open to new musicians. Today, he sees it differently: it was good not to change a successful model. But more importantly, he said, everyone has benefited indirectly from the FMP structures, that the FMP existed, mainly because of its structures. Many musicians forget this and lightly brush it aside today. Do you see it that way as well?

I think I kind of answered that already. One of the problems with a success story like FMP is that those who feel they are outside the loop always want in, always want more. Hell, the ones who were in the loop always wanted more, they felt they were not getting enough. This dilemma cannot be solved, with limited funding for example, come limited possibilities of presentation and representation. I, on the other hand, think that it is very remarkable indeed how much diversity there was inside of that FMP fold.

Regarding the years 2000 to 2009, you only refer to an essay by Wolf Kampmann, which rather reflects Jost Gebers' view. Why not let Helma Schleif, who took over the FMP after Gebers' withdrawal, have her say as well (even if only with a reference)?

In this specific case there are not only different views but there was also a lawsuit up to the Supreme Court of Appeal. Jost Gebers has won all these hearings and has rightfully cancelled the licence agreement with Helma Schleif due to the ongoing violation of the initial contract. This is the factual side of the affair and I really had no interest in repeating things that are easily available online etc. Once you are in court together, niceties usually end.

I think it was a mistake on both parts to hope that FMP could somehow go on and continue as if the world had not changed fundamentally. Gebers has received the first institutional funding for FMP only in 1989. After 1989 things changed dramatically and in the funding of the arts in general, worlds were turned upside down.

Having said that, I think that the years 2000 (and TMM Compact 2000 with Olaf Rupp by the way, is in the book) to 2009 produced a couple of great concerts but also failed to add a new chapter to the FMP legacy and I am happy if someone proofs me wrong here.

It is remarkable that Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet started in 1998 and ended in 2013, maybe that was a bit like the AACM going to New York and then eventually to Paris etc. What does it mean that one of the most costly (and successful) FMP-related endeavours happened while FMP changed stewardship and when they played Berlin, twice I think, they played Jazzfest Berlin 1999, I can’t remember where they played in 2012?

Do you think something like FMP would be possible again today? Or have the social and production possibilities simply changed so much today that it would no longer be possible?

I think Berlin has an Improv Scene that outnumbers the FMP years in terms of number of players and numbers of concerts by far. There is also a brand new young audience that is very diversified and most significant difference to the “classic FMP years”, there are a lot more women in the audience today.

Maybe an obvious final question: Do you have something like favorite albums in the FMP catalog?

Yes. I give you a couple, but be sure, tomorrow I would give you ten more…

Schlippenbach Trio: Elf Bagatellen; Hans Reichel: Coco Bolo Nights; Brötzmann Trio feat. Albert Mangelsdorff: FMP 0030/40/50; Peter Kowald: Duos Europe - America – Japan and Was Da Ist; Leo Smith/Peter Kowald/ Günter Sommer: Touch The Earth – Break the Shells; COWWS beginning with : 2 Quintette and then Seite A Seite A and Grooves’n’Loops; Irène Schweizer with Joëlle Léandre: Cordial Gratin, King Ãœbü Orchestrü: Music is Music is, Stabbins Tibbett Moholo: Tern; Heiner Goebbels/Alfred 23 Harth: Vom Sprengen des Gartens, Cecil Taylor: In Berlin ’88, Minton/Butcher/Hirt: Two Concerts

Thank you very much for the interview, Mr Müller.

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Markus Müller – FMP: The Living Music (Wolke, 2022) *****


By Paul Acquaro

In 2017, my wife and I visited Munich's Haus der Kunst, an imposing concrete building set on the edge of the English Garden, and next to the Eisbachwelle, the mission to see the FMP exhibition. We did not have much time on the vacation, so we skipped documenta 14 in Kassel, even though it only happens every five years, making instead a beeline for Bavaria. We did make one stop by an acquaintance who worked in the music department of a store a short walk to the Haus der Kunst. He reported that he had taken to bringing his lunch to the museum to better absorb the exhibition. It made sense. There was a lot to see in one go. It turned out that the exhibit made its way to Berlin's Akademie der Kunst in Tiergarten. This time, while on a different visit and due to a snowstorm cancelling flights at JFK, I was able to make repeat visits, however, it still felt like I had not taken it all in.

What was it about the exhibit that was so overwhelming? The walls of framed LP covers? The plethora of listening stations? The choice selection of Total Music Meetings and Workshop Freie Musik concerts projected on the white walls? Or perhaps the concert series that brought together (and back together again) an international cast of musicians who had helped make FMP a legend? (See FJB's coverage of the exhibits and concerts here, and here). While it may be hard to pinpoint exactly what, a thread that connected it all was the careful curation of Markus Müller, the author of FMP: The Living Music, a hefty tome that serves as both the ultimate museum catalog for the exhibitions and a must have chronical of the work and history of FMP for anyone interested in the development of free jazz and avant-garde in Europe and beyond.

The near 400-page coffee table sized book is rich with reproductions of the documents detailing FMPs contracts, organizational structures, yearly statements, and more. There are the LP and CD covers and event posters, in which the visual work of Peter Brötzmann and Jost Gebers (both with a background in graphic design) resulted a highly identifiable aesthetic. Also bountiful is the iconic black and white photography of Dagmar Gebers and photography of the events in Munich and Berlin from Cristina Marx, Maximilliam Gueter, and Uwe Weber. Images of the main players like Peter Kowald, Brötzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Hans Reichel, Sven-Ã…ke Johansson, Cecil Taylor, Brötzmann and Gebers, mix with the recent ones of Brötzmann, Schlippenbach, Johannson, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Kelji Heino, Toshinori Kondo and many more (listing all the names is a problematic task!). In a sense, the imagery is worth the price of the book alone, a visual history of FMP, but Mueller's text adds so much rich explanation and context that the book’s real value far outstrips its (actually quite decent) retail cost.

Müller's passion for FMP, from the music to the personalities to the contours of how its history fits with the history of cold war Germany, comes through clearly in the text. The structure is well conceived and in a sense, follows the sections of the museum exhibitions (a download of the program Munich is available as of this writing, here). The sections cover a general introduction to FMP to a detailed history of the now highly collectible LPs (average price for an original FMP is about 50 Euros, even the CDs go for 20 Euros for elusive new old stock); the relationship that FMP made with East German's who were so close and yet so far just across a wall (the Bauer brothers, Gunter "Baby" Sommers, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, and Amiga Records, all play a prominent role here); the role of woman in a predominately male-dominated scene; and of course the later relationship with Cecil Taylor which resulted in the coveted "Cecil Taylor in Berlin '88" which can be scored for a mere 700 to 800 Euros (or $125 digital with the book separately available). See the FJB review of the digital release here.

Müller's text starts at the beginning. FMP began as a protest of the status-quo when Brötzmann did not agree to the Berliner Jazztage's (now Jazzfest Berlin) request that his group wear black business suits. Gebers and Brötzmann instead organized the first Total Music Meeting. Staged opposite the festival in 1968 at the nearby Quartier von Quasimodo, the sweaty set of concerts featured the Peter Brötzmann Group, the Donata Höffer Group (with Gebers who was a bass player at the time), The Globe Unity Orchestra, The Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Gunter Hampel’s Time is Now, Manfred Schoof Quintet, and pulled in some after-hours players from the festival. Photos show Pharoah Sanders and Sonny Sharrock kicking it up, and a young John McLaughlin with Hampel. Following this, things took off for Gebers and Brötzmann, connecting with the self-empowerment Zeitgeist, they began to issue recordings, the first being European Echoes from trumpeter Manfred Schoof and organizing further events. The tale of the first Workshop Frei (then entitled "Three Days of Living Music and Minimal Art") at the Akademie der Kunst in West Berlin is told a few different times, as sort of an early inflection point. The concert, which featured Schlippenbach and Alexis Korner playing amongst art, ended prematurely due to the artwork being vandalized by excited concert goers. Gebers had thought it meant the end of the relationship between the nascent FMP and the generous Akademie der Kunst (AdK), but it turned out he was wrong and the institute became a fixture of location and funding for the event for many years. The book dedicates a section to the Workshop Freie Musik and the special edition box set that was originally released in 1978 (FOR EXAMPLE: Workshop Freie Musik 1969​-​1978, downloadable here with PDF of the booklet)

Where Müller's text really shines is in going beyond the myths and history and gathering the recollections and feelings of the people involved. An important aspect of FMP is that its reputation and influence far outstrip the funding and resources it had, and his interviews and quotes capture the energy and sweat that went into keeping it going. In fact, there are three distinct moments of organization for FMP, beginning with the duo of Gebers and Brötzmann, to the few years in the early 1970s when it became a collective with Schlippenbach, Kowald, Gebers, and Detlef Schoenberg, to when it settled with Gebers in charge in 1976 and he, along with his wife Dagmar and a single employee, Dieter Hahne, rode the tides and produced the recordings, concerts, and festivals that make up the bulk of FMP's legacy, all the while the Josts putting their own money from their day jobs into the endeavor. Key quotes from Hahne, Dagmar Gebers, Brötzmann and others attest to the focus and tireless dedication of Gebers to the organization.

The impact of cultural and political movements and realities also both shaped and supported FMP. Born in the divided city of Berlin and (first) wrapping up a decade after the Berlin Wall came down, FMP benefitted from the cultural support that was available, and in turn gave back much more, to Berlin, Germany and beyond. The chapter about the relationship with East Germany is fascinating. Gebers established relationships with the state-run Amiga recording company and made connections with East German musicians, offering chances for them to play in the West and sharing publishing of recordings with Amiga. There are anecdotes about East German musicians defecting after a show where they had been given permission to play in the West, and the worry that Gebers had (but never materialized!) about it. Out of this relationship came the double album SNAPSHOT/JAZZ NOW - JAZZ AUS DER DDR a double LP showcasing the music of players like Petrowsky, Conrad and Johannes Bauer, Manfred Schulze, Ulrich Gumpert, and others. This one is available for download along with the excellent booklet. Also check out one of my favorites, 'Round About Mittweida by the Conrad Bauer Quartett (later Doppelmoppel).

Müller also addresses the importance of woman in FMP, as the free music scene was as male-dominated as most avant-garde art movements at the time. A chapter highlights the various collaborations with women musicians starting with singer Maggie Nichols and pianist/singer Donata Höffer at the 1968 Total Music Meeting, to the many performances and recordings with pianist Irene Schweizer, and eventually the Feminist Improvising Group (FIG) in 1979 and which later became the European Women's Improvising Group (starting in 1983). Interestingly, it seems that performances by FIG drew a lot of criticism, though it treaded on similar grounds to music and slap-stick humor that other male groups drew praise for doing. A later arrival to the FMP fold was bassist Joëlle Léandre, who can be heard in collaboration with clarinetist/accordionist Rüdiger Carl on one of FMP's highly enjoyable CD releases Blue Goo Park.

It would be an unforgiveable oversight not to mention Cecil Taylor's 13-CD Boxset again. It is simply that famous. Mueller quotes Dagmar Gebers being delightfully surprised by how the boxset's reputation had traveled world-wide, while Gebers talks about the frustrations, and ultimately the success, of working with Taylor. The pianist recorded, aside from the box set that documented his month-long residency in Berlin, fourteen other CDs for FMP, all available on Bandcamp, like Nailed with Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Tony Oxley, and two from the Feel Trio with William Parker and Tony Oxley. FMP: The Living Music also features an essay by music critic Diedrich Diederichsen on the technical development and context of Taylor's work in Europe and offers a somewhat behind the scenes look into how his music made in Berlin came together. There are also a number of Dagmar Geber's photos chronicling the process.

What Müller accomplishes wonderfully with this book is not only an encapsulation of the exhibitions in 2017 and 2018, but more so, delivers a fleshed-out reflection on the development of a scrappy DIY endeavor from West Berlin whose festivals, recordings, and general aesthetics are still being felt. For example, there are still efforts to keeping the music alive, such as Trost Records in Vienna re-releasing FMP albums on its Cien Fuegos label; Corbett vs Dempsey in Chicago’s high quality CD re-releases; and Gebers himself has been scouring his archives for digital releases. Additionally, current festivals such as the A L’arme! Festival in Berlin, it has been argued, are keeping the traditions of the TMM alive, while adapting to the times.

FMP: The Living Music is an impressive volume. Reading it was a pleasure - though practically it was not always the most comfortable book to try to hold and read. I came to think of it as a page turner whose pages were hard to turn, but once you reconcile the physicality, be prepared for a thoughtful and thorough digestion of FMP and the people who made it happen.

- 39 Euro, direct from Trost and other book dealers.    

- Available in the US through Corbett vs Dempsey.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

echtzeit@30: echtzeitmusik berlin: self-defining a scene

 

By Keith Prosk

The 2011 416-page book, echtzeitmusik berlin: self-defining a scene , whose 10th anniversary we are using as an excuse to feature the music associated with the term, is edited by Burkhard Beins, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, and Andrea Neumann and contains chapters on the history of the scene, the diverse theoretical and practical approaches in it, and critical perspectives on it from the editors, Toshimaru Nakamura, Rhodri Davies, Annette Krebs, Robin Hayward, Ignaz Schick, Lucio Capece, Werner Dafeldecker, Axel Dörner, Olaf Rupp and dozens of other practitioners. If it illuminates any throughline beyond geography, it is the breadth of people, perspectives, approaches, sound practices, and sound results and a consequent uneasiness in using a single term, echtzeitmusik, to encapsulate it.

It also exhibits a heightened self-awareness throughout the network of people. Players approach their practices critically, asking questions of ethics, what it means, how it means, and its relation to the collective and other aspects of life with real effects on their methodologies and thus real effects on their sound results. The critical compendium of the book stems from a series of 2007 roundtables called Labor Diskurs which itself stems from a 2007 discussion list called 27 Questions for a Start… from Trio Sowari (Beins, Bertrand Denzler, Phil Durrant). Some of these questions are: to what degree is this kind of music experimental; to what degree is this kind of music improvised; can this music help to stop global warming; is it easier to play than not to play; is failure one of our main sources for progress; do we listen differently to an improvisation than to a composition; does a recording turn an open process into a completed piece of work; is it possible to have a non-hierarchical group interaction. Transcriptions ofLabor Diskurs and the full list of 27 Questions for a Start with context and responses from a few people each have their own chapter.

As much as anything in the sound result or real-time responsiveness or common denominator in methods or even the location of Berlin, this kind of constant critical questioning might characterize what can be called echtzeitmusik. While common across experimental music, maybe in the constellation of other things it helps to define it. It surely makes the music more interesting.

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Marc Ribot — Unstrung: Rants and Stories of a Noise Guitarist (Akashic Books, 2021)

By Gary Chapin, Matthew Banash, and Anthony Simon

Three of us had a conversation about Marc Ribot’s new book. We started with the question, “Why’d you pick up the book?”

Gary : I got excited about the book — and pre-ordered it — not just because Marc Ribot is one of my favorite guitarists but because I know he’s a very smart guy, very funny, and has a way with words. I interviewed Marc once, around 1990, and that is still one of the most fun conversations I remember from my aborted “jazz journalist” career. I was not bothered that this isn’t “just” a music book. The music pieces are great (and I’ll go into detail later, depending on what you all say), but the non-music essays, the short stories, the vignettes and screenplay treatments, sort of “rhymed” with what I love about Marc’s music: wit, intelligence, passion, and resistance.

Matt : Full disclosure — I can be a literary snob (and music snob, too) and enjoyed this book for its structure, technique and content. Ribot is a fascinating, talented artist, and that’s what drew me to this work initially.

Anthony : I actually didn’t know about Unstrung until Gary proposed a collaborative review of it. I had previously read just a little in the way of Ribot’s articles and interviews over my years of following his music, and became intrigued at the notion of reading and writing about his book. I was not prepared for his writing to be so hilarious, wildly creative, and deeply affective. Many times, even as I felt a pull to enter the flow of reading fine writing, I also wanted to slow down and linger over particular passages and turns-of-phrase, to savor them.

Gary : Yes, the man has a way with words. A few pieces really stuck out to me, but the Henry Grimes appreciation, for me, was completely eye opening. I knew about Grimes as a bassist, but the idea that he also was responsible for this collection of poetry, really struck me. I haven’t bought the book of poems ($100 on Amazon), but I did get his biography ($9.99 on Kindle). What was interesting to me was how the connection between the musician and the words in Grimes is mirrored by the connection between the musician and the words in Ribot. These early chapters are easier to grok because they are about music — the connection is explicit — but the later stuff? The words and the guitar playing come from the same head. What’s the connection?

Matt : After letting the book digest for a few days I think of all the sections blurring together. The connection for the “author,” let's call Ribot, is connection. Everything bleeds, runs, merges and morphs together in perception and memory.

Anthony : Like Matt, I get the feeling that all the pieces in the book, though wildly diverse, somehow blend and cohere. For me, the connection is more “felt” than “understood.” Part I offers pieces I appreciate for their perspectives on musicians and moments in music history, the art of making music and the life of the artist. Part II seems to turn a corner to matters more personal to the author, but also less conceptual, somehow -- more experiential. From trying to grok a rooster’s “strange scream...of abandoned rage,” to the touching piece written to his daughter about disassembling the bed in which she spent “the chrysalis of adolescence.” Then in Parts III & IV, there’s fewer obvious places to hang my hat of rational understanding, and I’m left to notice my emotional reactions to pieces — shock, surprise, laughter, confusion. For instance, the screenplay piece about a train ride from New Jersey to NYC that, due to a tragic lack of sandwiches, results in cannibalism — to be shot “real-time one-take,” ha!

Gary : Here’s the thing: for so much of the music we read and write about on FJB, my mind almost always comes up with a story, either specific images or “the feeling” of a story, narrative movement. Sometimes I actually ask myself, if this music were a soundtrack, what would be happening on the screen? In Unstrung, Marc gives us stories directly, and I find myself making the connection in the other direction. I know that thinking of one medium in terms of another medium is a mugs game, but knowing that Marc Ribot, whose music has meant so much to me all my adult life, wrote a story like “For Mauritzio” means something to me. It’s three scant pages of blistering fable about an abused kid that I actually made copies of and gave to my two daughters, one of whom cares for foster kids and the other is a child protective services caseworker. I’m not saying it’s a better story because of the music — the story stands on its own — but that dimension adds to my experience of the book. Part IV (I call it “the fables section”) is great and I’ve re-read just that section a few times.

Matt : Gary you just articulated how art, and in this case, “For Mauritzio,” works for me. I really enjoy the shorter fiction pieces, especially “It Was Almost Like Paris” and “Putting Your Arms Around a Memory.” To make a broad generalization, “Punks” and “Outsiders” are true Romantics in the literary and aesthetic sense. Real emotions and thoughts are at the core of what they create. Ribot is a perfect, fascinating example of that for me. This book was an epiphany in that respect. It has inspired me to dig into his solo stuff, search for Frantz Casseus and feel connected.

Anthony : Right there with you guys. I’m actually a social worker by profession, and I had notes on “For Mauritzio'' as well. So many children face abuse, or neglect, or the wounds of other adversities -- and the ways they find to survive embody both tragedy and triumph. And more broadly speaking, of the ways that we all get through soul-crushing experiences, music is surely among the most universal. To this point, “Lies and Distortion,” the book’s first piece (and some gut-punchingly good writing), offers insight into the ways music is used to cope, to heal, to forget: “... the truth about playing really loud is this: on a really good night, nothing hurts — not howling volume, not airless rooms at sauna temperatures, not bleeding calluses, not a fever of 103, not a bottle in the head, not a recent divorce. Nothing much. Not till later.” Getting back to what Gary said about relating to music via narrative — wise folks have taught me that our minds rarely cease constructing stories about our experience. Whether it’s about a song we hear, the person in front of us at the checkout line, or the image staring back at us in the mirror — for me, it comes down to whether a particular story is liberating or imprisoning. In Unstrung, we get them all. 

Monday, October 4, 2021

Guillaume Tarche - Steve Lacy - Unfinished (Lenka Lente, 2021)

By Stef Gijssels

What a pleasure to browse through this book on Steve Lacy. In over 460 pages it gives testimonials - and even essays - by musicians who worked with Lacy in various capacities in his life. It's written in various languages: primarily English (70% according to the publisher), French (25%) and Italian (5%). Next to testimonials it offers some interesting pictures, factoids, sheet music and even an overview of all albums that interpret music by Lacy. 

The texts and testimonials, sometimes short, some very long are by Steve Adams, Irene Aebi, Guillaume Belhomme, Etienne Brunet, Frank Carlberg, Kent Carter, Andrea Centazzo, Allan Chase, Alvin Curran, Martin Davidson, Jean Derome, Jorrit Dijkstra, Jean-Marc Foussat, Christoph Gallio, Ben Goldberg, Guillermo Gregorio, Phillip Johnston, Peter Katz, Suzanna Klintcharova, Gilles Laheurte, Vincent Lainé, Pablo Ledesma, Urs Leimgruber, Dave Liebman, James Lindbloom, Giancarlo nino Locatelli, Michala Marcus, Gianni Mimmo, Uwe Oberg, Roberto Ottaviano, Evan Parker, Jacques Ponzio, Jon Raskin, P.-L. Renou, Patrice Roussel, Bill Shoemaker, Josh Sinton, Bruno Tocanne, Jason Weiss, Elsa Wolliaston and Seymour Wright.

The book is not intended to be read in one go, but it's a great publication for some short reading bouts every day, full of personal anecdotes, little stories but also insights into Lacy the composer, the soprano player, the songwriter, and also the person, his dedication and vision on music. 

With humble honesty German pianist Uwe Oberg's first paragraph reflects what was also my first impression of Lacy: "I didn't catch the spirit of their music. I found Lacy's playing cool and reserved, austere, maybe not fast enough. Too little drama, not enough dynamics. And merely soprano saxophone. I was 23 and had never heard someone play like Lacy". Obviously that changed quickly, and he gives interesting views of what it means to play Lacy on the piano, how structure, themes and improvisation so unique to the saxophonist remain intact yet open possibilities for interpreters. He writes about Lacy Pool, his own tribute band, ending his text with the words: "I love to play Lacy because of the intrinsic logic of his music, the beauty of his lines, the vibrant radiance of his sound, his awareness for tradition, his eagerness to experience new things. And of course the unconditional freedom his music exudes". Oberg, like me, is no longer 23, and our tastes have clearly changed in the same direction. 

Canadian saxophonist Jean Derôme explains how he went to a music summer camp in France as a 22-year old, where Lacy was one of the teachers, and receiving Lacy's note books for the day with his handwritten music, each item dedicated to another artist, with a picture attached. The young Derôme ran to the nearest copy shop to copy the books, as a basis to start imitating his great example. Today, Derôme has his own Lacy project, called "Somebody Special", which released an album two years ago with Lacy compositions and songs. 

Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra tells about how he received lessons from Lacy in Boston, and how the master started playing "raindrop sounds" on his horn, while watching the rain outside. Dijkstra asked why he played these particular pitches. "He answered, a bit mysteriously, 'because they sound like the rain'. I'm not sure if he had another secret theoretical explanation, but I immediately agreed that this scale ressembled the melancholic, droopy feeling of being in a rainstorm." Dijkstra revels in Lacy's compositional talent ("not just nice tunes with a cool harmony, or vehicles for blowing"), offering deep insights in some Lacy compositions such as "Existence". He also mentions that when he visited Lacy's widow, the singer Irene Aebi, she gave him scans of the 50-odd composition notebooks that Lacy penned. All the originals are now available for consultation at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 

In a very long essay, French producer Vincent Lainé gives a deep analysis of Lacy's music (unfortunately for many of our readers it is in French) in which he mentions an interview with Lacy by Philippe Carles, "qui lui demande à quoi il pense quand il joue - un paysage, une femme ou des accords - le saxophoniste répond: "Non, je ne pense jamais ni aux accords, ni au changements d'accords. Jamais à ce genre de choses. En fait, je ne pense pas en quoi que ce soit. J'essaye seulement de suivre la musique, de rester avec elle, de ne pas la perdre de vue. Si vous la perdez, vous êtes dans le pétrin, vous en faites des gâchis, mais si vous ne la perdez pas, c'est parfait" ("who asks him what he thinks of when he plays - a landscape, a woman or chords - the saxophonist replies: "No, I never think of chords or chord changes. Never of that sort of thing. I don't think about anything at all. I'm just trying to follow the music, to stay with it, not to lose sight of it. If you lose it, you're in trouble, you mess it up, but if you don't lose her, that's perfect"). 

He also mentions the incredible amount of time Lacy spent on refining his music: "Le premier morceau composé du cycle Tao est 'The Way', en 1967. 'The Breath' suivra en 1969 et les autres l'année suivante. Le cycle est enregistré en intégralité en 1971, mais sans paroles, comme l'indique sans ambages la pochette de l'album Wordless. Ce n'est qu'en 1979 qu'il est enregistré en version vocale, soit '20 ans pour lire six poèmes'. ("The first piece of the Tao cycle is 'The Way', composed in 1967. 'The Breath' is from 1969 and the other ones the following year. The cycle is recorded in its entirety in 1971, but without lyrics, as indicated in the liner notes of the album Wordless. It is only in 1979 that it is recorded in vocal version, or to put it differently, it took him '20 years to read six poems')

Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber writes: "Steve was not only a musician, he was a real artist and creator. He had a totally open mind toward any form of music, visuals, film, literature, dance. His definition of jazz: "We want to play like that, never mind the others, we want to play our own way - it's partisan music - we are the partisans of music"". 

Italian percussionist Andrea Centazzo mentions that "in this horrible pandemic 2020, sitting at home without gigs, I had the opportunity to go over about 300 tapes (!!!) which I had in storage without labels, being a total disaster at archiving my work. And suprise! I found some recordings left over from the duo and trio sessions! Once again, restoring the sound, I got enough material to release my seventh album with Steve, entitled Scraps". Who knows what more will turn up from other sources. 

It's impossible even to capture the wealth of information and the depth of the insights you receive here from many people who knew Lacy personally or who dug deep into his music, his philosophy, his admiration for Monk, and so much more. One of the fun aspect of this book is the enthusiasm with which it is written, as well as the creative angles used by some musicians to capture Lacy's essence. One nice example is Giancarlo nino Locatelli who writes a number of short poetic lines about Lacy, mentioning his last words to visitors at the hospital: 'Drop the bullshit and keep the tempo'. 

The few examples given above demonstrate that Lacy's legacy is still very much alive, and will continue to inspire and offer ingredients for today's music. 

You can order directly from the publishing company

A must-have for all fans of modern music. 

This is not the first book written about Steve Lacy.  Jason Weiss published "Steve Lacy: Conversations" in 2006, a collection of 34 articles and texts written about Lacy during his life. 

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Christian Broecking - This Uncontainable Feeling of Freedom: Irène Schweizer - European Jazz and the Politics of Improvisation (Broecking Verlag, 2021)

By Martin Schray

For her 75th birthday, the music department of the Lucerne University and the Broecking Verlag published a comprehensive biography of jazz pianist Irène Schweizer. Now, five years later, the English version of the book has been released, translated by trombonist Jeb Bishop.

In this detailed biography Schweizer is honored not only as a central figure in the development of European free jazz, but also as a committed pioneer for the equality of women in art and society. In her early years, for example, she stood up for the artistic and economic autonomy of artists and fought against discrimination against people on the basis of gender, origin or sexual orientation. The German critic Christian Broecking, who sadly passed away this year, has created an elaborate, diligent work with lots of case studies. What is more, the book consists of many interviews with Schweizer and over 60 contemporary witnesses, which turn out to be insightful as to her life's work.

Chronologically, the biography begins with Schweizer’s youth. She grew up in a pub owner’s family in Schaffhausen and after her first attempts on the accordion she discovered the piano and joined the Crazy Stokers, a Dixieland band, at the age of 16. In 1957, that alone was a sensation. Shortly after that she landed in the top ranks at the Zurich Amateur Jazz Festival playing soul jazz and hardbop. The prize was a man’s shirt and a pack of cigarettes - no one could imagine that a woman would be able to win the first prize. 

A little later, Schweizer attended a language school in Great Britain, where she immersed herself in the London jazz scene (mainly Ronnie Scott’s club), before returning to Zurich. At the "Africana" jazz club she met drummer Mani Neumeier and bassist Uli Trepte, who also formed her first trio. When the two men converted to rock music in 1968 and formed the underground band Guru Guru, Schweizer’s long-time collaboration with drummer Pierre Favre began. Their music sounded increasingly wild and free, which earned the pianist invitations to the Total Music Meeting in Berlin - the annual pilgrimage site for free jazz fans. As a woman, however, she was on her own and had to assert herself against the male alpha dogs, which resulted in her more playful, sensitive style. Since that time Schweizer has been a regular guest on the avant-garde stages in Berlin, Willisau, Chicago and New York, she has played with Don Cherry, Louis Moholo, Hamid Drake, Andrew Cyrille and George Lewis, her solo performances show her as a leading pianist of European jazz. In the last years of her career, she was finally deemed worthy of playing in the temples of high culture, a late triumph.

As in his interview collections Christian Broecking is more interested in sociocultural conditions than musical investigations, often touching on issues of material survival or gender politics: Irène Schweizer had to work part-time as a secretary for a long time to make ends meet, and she came out as a lesbian at an early age.

Broecking’s biography is diligently and thoroughly researched, it is at its best when it tells anecdotes. One chapter addresses the chronic underpayment of jazz musicians, one deals with "Knitting as Provocation." Time and again, the author inserts digressions to explain a fact even more explicitly and places it in a social context. As a result of Schweizer’s consistent advocacy against apartheid (she has had very good connections to the South African expats in London) and for women's rights, she was part of the so-called Fichen scandal, in which she was surveilled by the Swiss secret service. 

Nevertheless, the pianist continued to be active in the feminist and lesbian scene. She has kept on provoking and challenging, mostly in a musical way with the Feminist Improvising Group FIG, the European Women's Improvising Group EWIG, the Swiss-French-English trio Les Diaboliques and the organization of the first women’s jazz festival in Switzerland. All in all: Anyone who wants to be comprehensively informed about the life of the “grande dame“ of Swiss jazz can’t go wrong with this book.

Sunday, February 7, 2021

Cisco Bradley - Universal Tonality (Duke University Press, 2021)

By Lee Rice Epstein

Like Graham Locke writing about Anthony Braxton in the 1990s, Cisco Bradley’s biography of William Parker arrives as the artist seems to be entering yet another unprecedented phase of his career. Yet, Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker is a timely and dynamic picture of the great artist’s travels, to date. Bradley’s book charts a past that also provides many clues and contextual narratives that tell us much about where Parker may be heading. As an unintended companion to the recently released set, which itself contains a combination of biographical and folkloric reflections, the two work together to illuminate and challenge much of our current accepted conceptions of creative music, Black music, and the artistic mission. Like many contributors (and, surely, readers), I’m a longtime fan of William Parker’s music, which, like sedimentary layers, continues to build upon itself in new shades, textures, and depths. Bradley’s book—which I recommend as highly as Locke’s seminal Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music —is the kind of scholarship that invites a reader to engage with fundamental and complex ideas about art, its purpose, and the roles of an audience. Like Locke, Bradley pulls off the feat of bringing the artist and his music to life, a cliché, of course, but there’s no better phrase for it. While reading Universal Tonality, I was constantly dipping in and out of the text to play a recording or look online for photos or additional materials.

Instead of rehashing the book or presenting some version of my own findings, what I really wanted to do was talk with Bradley about some of the ideas that were rattling around after I finished the book. We didn’t come close to covering everything, but what I hope we may have accomplished is opening up the door for anybody who is interested in Parker and his music to jump in, as well as for other writers and researchers to move forward with their projects. All quoted portions that follow come from two conversations I had with Bradley in January of this year.

“There are numerous books to still be written. I don’t know if a definitive book has been written on the loft scene. It’s not a criticism, there’s just a lot left to be written… There’s a lot to be written on the downtown scene.” One topic we kept returning to was how many stories there are to be told. And for those deeply interested in the loft scene and creative music of free improvisation, the second section, “Early Work,” contains about 100 pages with chapters each on Parker’s playing on the loft scene, especially with Jemeel Moondoc’s Ensemble Muntu, the music he made with Centering Dance Music Ensemble and his wife Patricia Nicholson, and his time spent with Cecil Taylor.

Throughout the second section and into the third section (“Toward the Universal,” primarily focused on In Order To Survive, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, William Parker Quartet, and Raining On the Moon, among his other groups), you get a sense of how Parker’s sense of self is reflected in his earliest interactions: “I always think of something Steve Swell said, ‘William never really had a careerist moment, he’s still very dedicated to making sure the community is functioning.’ He’s not one of those people with ego or attitude. First of all, there’s his monumental body of work, he tours all over the world, he’s played in 50 countries or something, and he’s gotten a huge amount of respect. But at the same time, let’s say from the jazz establishment in the United States, he’s barely on their radar.”

In many ways, for me, the crucial section of the book is what would most likely be considered the traditional biographical portion, section one, titled “Origins.” Truly, the section opens contra tradition, with the chapter “Enslavement and Resistance: From West Africa to the Carolinas to Harlem.” Beginning briefly with the Harlem Renaissance, Bradley traces Parker’s family to the seventh-century Kingdom of Nri, located east of the Niger River.

Bradley explained: “Part of it is, William spoke so much about his family and about his history. I don’t think I’ve spoken to someone who has a memory like him. And he talked about his earliest events in his life, his parents, his brother, and so forth. He has an impeccable memory. ‘I read this book when I was 12,’ and not only does he remember the book, he’ll say, ‘This is what I was thinking when I started reading it.’

“He’s aware of his own consciousness. He talked so much about the things he experienced, his connection to history, that I felt giving it a deep context was necessary… There were some surprises in there. The fact that he was descended from a free Black family in pre-Civil War North Carolina. I stumbled into that in the record. He talks about Native Americans a lot in his work, and what I find stunning is, in his own history, it’s right there. The fact that one of his ancestors escaped slavery and took refuge among the Lumbee Indians in central North Carolina. There’s this incredible parallel with his own artistic vision and some of the themes of his work. And I thought, 'We have to go all the way back.’ Given the limited resources I can turn to, ‘Let’s go back as far as we can.’”

These reflections of Parker’s artistic vision and the mission of his music, the communication of tradition, which often re-emerges through a refracted lens, like the radical settings on Parker’s Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield project. Given how much of Parker’s music is steeped in historical exploration—including some on his latest set, like the stirring Manzanar session—the book feels very much in tune with Parker, the researcher and storyteller.

“He had a very clear idea of the narrative he wanted for the book. I can’t overstate that, he really had a story that he wanted to tell. When we sat down, those stories came out pretty quickly, especially chapters 2 and 3. We didn’t get to talking about his music until after the first three or four interviews I did with him. He really wanted to talk about growing up and a lot of the early influences on him, just as a human being, as a poet, as a young person.

“He was talking about Amiri Baraka’s poetry, he was talking about Stan Brakhage’s films. William consider’s Brakhage to be his single greatest influence. The French New Wave, some of the films I outline in chapter 3, kind of blew his mind. He was thinking about not only the experimental visual things they were doing, sometimes with sound sometimes not, it threw open his mind to other ways of existence. Imagining what the greater world was to a child growing up in deep poverty in the projects in the South Bronx.”

Reading these chapters, then pressing play on, say, “Alphaville” from the “Live At Yoshi’s” quartet session of the Wood Flute Songs set, you begin to get a sense of how long Parker’s been working through the ideas he first encountered 60 years ago.

“In a way, William Parker’s a historian. He’s telling stories through his music. Until I sat down, I didn’t realize how many tributes he had done. He’s a proactive historical figure, he’s out there defining himself, defining his own narrative. His music is Black music, and it’s also other things. He says in the beginning of his career, he identified most closely with the Black music spiritual school. [Eventually he said,] I’m not going to be limited by any categories, but I’m also going to embrace these categories.”

It’s a traditional biography structure to lay down a person’s history and allow it to build towards the later sections. But, in Parker’s case, so much of his music reflects backwards that reading these early chapters felt revelatory. "Early key interviews I did were with Patricia Nicholson, and the other two crucial ones were with Matthew Shipp and Cooper-Moore. They were the first two people William suggested I reach out to. They helpd me understand William Parker, the evolution of the human being. I’m only seeing William Parker the bass legend, the established figure. They knew him when he was the new guy on the scene. And honestly, the interview with his daughter Miriam. She has an obviously special relationship, as his daughter, but she can also speak to the evolving person he is, from when she was little to today.”

Of course, hearing Bradley talk at length about his process, how he strived to be open to what he heard from Parker and others, to really listening. "This went through a peer review process with the publisher. There were three external reviewers. And I really tried to make sure that William’s voice was the strongest voice in the text. And it was to the point where, in an earlier draft, someone said that William’s voice was stronger than the author’s voice. And I pulled that back to where his voice carries the narrative.”

This ended up being, I think, one of the more important aspects of our conversations about the book. Because, and of course it already occurred to me, we would be two white people who write about jazz, a historically Black art form, discussing a work of biography about a prominent Black artist from the South Bronx, whose music extends a through line that binds Duke Ellington to Cecil Taylor. I’ve written about the knottiness of this before, so it felt necessary that we talk about it, and Bradley—who at one point simply said, “We need to have more conversations like this”—was keen to do so, as well. It was a sincere and open conversation, and in that respect, I’ll present what Bradley said to me as plainly as possible here:

“The question I asked repeatedly is, am I able to do this without causing damage to the way he is portrayed? How might I misconstrue him? I think a lot of white writers, it’s easy, subconsciously sometimes, it’s quite easy to warp the narrative a little bit. Whether that’s making the narrative about white people or not being aware of the assumptions one is making as a writer.

“Fill the narrative with as many Black voices as possible, that was something I tried to do. Because most bureaucratic documents and a lot of historical resources out there are written by white people, who are maybe misunderstanding what they’re seeing. It’s a judgement call, really. You try to do the best you can; you see racism in the documents, all over the place. And how do you pick through that? You do the best you can. [You let] Black voices define the concepts as much as possible. What is William Parker’s conception of what freedom is, for example, and not make assumptions about what that might be. I tried to make sure he is defining those terms and concepts and ideas. Because he thinks a lot about those things. His work has a lot to do with that.

“I’ve tried to be humble about my approach to it, and I look forward to my Black colleagues being critical about what I’ve said. As a white writer, I can’t make that judgement. I can make certain judgements as a trained historian, but there’s a large chunk of things I don’t think I can say. I thought of myself as a guide, the person who gathers all of this together and puts it forward.”

We agreed this is, we hope, the first of many books to be written about Parker, about the loft scene, and about the scene that’s emerged in New York with his support. To continue his work amplifying voices, Bradley is getting ready to launch the Free Jazz Oral History project. It’s a broad and ongoing project, begun in 2016 with the goal of “interviewing all the people involved in the scene up to 1980. I’ve been trying to document people’s stories in a very in-depth level.” If you haven’t looked into them, there are already a number of more traditional oral history projects, dedicated to jazz in general, to British jazz, and to other regional voices. But the focus on the loft scene and the creative explosion of free jazz in the 1970s is crucial: “I’ve been trying to be systematic about it. I should say a lot of the people I’m talking to right now are between 70 and 85, and we’re going to lose them in the future. And other people are doing projects too, to document those voices and their philosophies, their life stories. I’ve been gradually making my way through, I’ve done about 50 interviews. This is the kind of crucial stuff we need, to be documenting these histories, preferably in the words of the people who created that music.” And this is probably the most important aspect of Universal Tonality, how many voices are there, on the page, including Parker’s. It’s his story, most of all, but now it’s also ours, as the audience, as the experiencers, as the ones who’ll carry it forward.

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