Big Ears Festival Day 1, Thursday, 03/26/2026

By Sarah “Flake” Grosser

With canceled visas, flight delays, and legendarily long airport security queues due to understaffing, it’s a miracle that everyone made it to Big Ears this year. Fans began speculating whether this would be the last time notorious plane-hater and headliner John Zorn would ever set foot on a plane again in his life. Instead, the seventy-two year old opted to skip the chaos entirely, asking guitarist Matt Hollenberg to drive him from New York City to Knoxville instead. Matt later played in Saturday’s Cobra, alongside drum icon Dave Lombardo (Slayer), and many others.

Once again in 2026, the streets of downtown Gay Street were abundant with avant-garde superstars left and right. One could not go fifty meters without running into the likes of Nels Cline buying a new red shirt for “Lovers,” Laurie Anderson on her way to the Lou Reed Guitar Drones, or David Byrne on his famous fold-up bicycle that he apparently takes everywhere.

The staff at local restaurants also get into the spirit sporting band-shirts, while buskers line the main drag – some are more talented than others. No shade to the melodica chick, the steel drum guy, or the speedy drummer practising his blast beats, but the dude channeling Prince kinda owned it this year. Plus there was a cosplay convention in town, so add a few furries and a guy dressed as Gumby to the mix. 

A recurring theme at Big Ears is that of FOMO, and this year was no exception. For every band you see there’s ten you miss out on. Beyond that, there are movies, artist talks, art exhibits, record/merch fairs, and that’s all before breakfast! Meals are foregone in favour of pop-up shows, some of which end up being the best sets of the weekend. At least when festival goers do have a free moment, downtown Knoxville offers plenty of tasty food options and fine microbreweries to refuel and plan for the next show.

This year, I was joined frequently by my favourite festival buddy, drummer and fellow jazz-enthusiast Greg Saunier, whose taste in music is remarkably similar to mine. For many of the shows we enjoyed together, he has written some additional summaries that I have included in this article, starting from Day 2.

Brian Marsella and Sae Hashimoto. Photo by cstewart

Brian Marsella and Sae Hashimoto
Regas Square

Brian and Sae open their set with "The Brilliant Questions That Children Ask," as the sun gently glows through the back windows at the small Regas Square venue. All the seats are filled and a sprinkling of extras stand in the back. The combination of vibraphone and piano makes for an intimate, intricate introduction to the festival, for those with a palette for flittering, flickering soft melodious pieces.The waltzing time signature is relaxing.

Sae announces that Big Ears is one of their favourite places to play and they are both so happy to be there. Brian prepares the piano and they launch into their new album's title track "Tunnel Vision." It's a lot more percussive in reality than on the recording. The two are artistically a great match, as they can keep up with each other as they speed through so many notes. The vibraphone sounds very warm, almost like a marimba. The wind is picking up outside and the queue signage is wobbling around, like it's enjoying the performance.

Just one year ago at Big Ears, Nels Cline announced onstage that Brian was not joining them as he had just become a father. Today, said child and their extended family were in the venue to witness the debut performance of this album that was recorded while Sae was pregnant. Life is sweet.

Brian is on fire, and after a particularly complicated run across the piano keys, a guy behind me lets out an exasperated sigh, "Phew." He is impressed. So are the rest of us.

Deerhoof. Phto by Taryn Ferro

Deerhoof
Mill & Mine

The Mill & Mine is chock-a-block and the crowd is bouncin'. Proper Deerhoof fans can be spotted in masks, as the band requests that everyone mask at indoor shows to help prevent the spread of Covid. The beats are infectious. Someone yells out to bass player/singer Satomi Matsuzaki that they love her dress. "Country Style!" she replies, with a lil' hoedown that flicks the fringing around. At the risk of sounding cliché, it's impressive that a band that's been together for so long remains so undeniably fresh and tight. Drummer Greg Saunier has the audience in the palm of his hand with a super pianissimo drum solo song introduction. It's the perfect segue into a more downtempo piece after their cover of Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue." The crowd and band are one as the music plays and the audience sways. Yes, they get the party started. But tender moments are likewise appreciated. They don't miss, and bring something for everyone. Infinitely likeable, and just really good music.

Satomi dedicates their bunny song “Gore in Rut” to Easter and hops up and down making bunny ears with her hands. The aging Big Ears crowd doesn't exactly pogo along, but they make an effort. A young lad in the audience is using his hands to conduct along to one of the sassier time signature songs, "Scarcity Is Manufactured." Their appeal transcends generations; sure, the older fans don’t have the knees for moshing anymore, but there are plenty of younger fans who are hip to the Hoof.

Ches Smith's Clone Row. Photo by A Ogle.

Ches Smith's Clone Row
The Standard

Meanwhile, over at The Standard, Liberty Ellman and Mary Halvorson are battling it out on dueling guitars, as Ches Smith leads the way on drums and vibraphone. I only caught the last moments of this set but the mellow vibe seemed to be a hit as the medium-sized venue was quite populated, even up in the VIP balcony area.

I'm not sure how Ches and bass player Nick Dunston are communicating those alien rhythms to each other but apparently it's a prerequisite that both mouths hang open to receive and transmit signals. Whatever it is, it's working.

Super pianissimo is the flavor of the drummers' day as Ches's solo also featured some hand-pattered feathery ghost notes. Things pick up towards the tail end of the set with Mary psycho-noodlin' to some futuristic grooves with fun time signatures that get people dancing! Everyone goes, "Woooo!"

Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick
First Presbyterian Sanctuary

What better setting for a harp than a nice big church? Paired with an angelic voice, and choral samples on pads, the real-life version of the duo's album Tragic Magic resonates better and more tingly than their perfect studio recordings. The easy compositions are simple lullabies executed with grace, poise, and delicacy. It's such a shame when anyone sneezes from the famous Knoxville pollen, or drops their phone on the wooden church floor. When everything is finally silent, the magic is revealed. It's also a good thing that the wristband scanning machines beep in tune with the music, so that it was only slightly disruptive. Thankfully, Julianna is able to drown it out with some angelic layered vocal effects.

As a female, I can say that this music is relentlessly girly in the best, most empowering way – divine feminine positivity. I swear if one more person drops their phone I will stab them…

Mary explains how Tragic Magic was recorded on historic instruments normally kept behind glass at a Paris museum. The song title "Waking Up the Sleeping Princess" was taken from a comment about how these instruments are princesses and by playing them, Mary is waking them up from a long slumber. I am usually wary of loop pedals, but Mary knows what she is doing and the harp just works brilliantly through it.

Ryan Clackner (above) & Tyshawn Sorey (below, right). Photo by Taryn Ferro

Ryan Clackner & Tyshawn Sorey
The Standard

 What a unique sound! This new duo stews slow-cooked doom jazz, simmered for hours in a crockpot. Good shit takes time, and for the glacial crescendos this focussed pair have no fear in dragging it out. Patience is a requirement. In fact, I overheard the guy behind me tell his partner, "Just give it a minute…"

These two are so into the realm they've created at the intersection between drone metal and free jazz; Ryan behind his Wayfarer shades, Tyshawn squinting in permanent stankface throughout. This is all about feeling. The Standard is not completely full, maybe because this one is pretty obscure, but most likely because this set clashes with Pat Metheny. The basic jazz guitar fan would have headed to see Pat, but for the dedicated avant-garde supporters here, they are rewarded with a different kind of passion – deep, original, and pretty darn cool.

 Chávez / Ismaily / Saunier. Photo by Jess Maples

Chávez / Ismaily / Saunier
The Standard

To be fair, the size of the crowd forming a line to get in would probably surprise its three band members most of all. Although there's no queue outside the venue, the inside has a determined snake from the door curtain and around the foyer. Pretty far out for an improv trio comprised only of drums (Greg Saunier), Moog/bass (Shahzad Ismaily), and some super abstract turntables (Maria Chávez). Perhaps it's the novelty, as this trio has only performed a handful of times.

The event staff informs me and other media attendees that we can only take photos during the first three songs. She obviously doesn't know that there will only be one "song" tonight.

The curtain is drawn open and the snake slides on in. It's abnormally packed and a typically quiet affair for Big Ears alumnus Shahzad Ismaily who gently "oohs" into the mic over crackling record static – it's like listening to a rotating earth. Meanwhile, Greg is contorting and spasming, performing wild eccentric movements over the kit, but with super soft results. The hi-hat bounces but no sound is emitted. Maria nonchalantly flings a record onto the floor as Shahzad dials in the lightest whoof of a resonant bass frequency. One patron leaves in total disgust, smashing his can in the trash as he departs. The rest of the audience remain transfixed and silent. A humble groove evolves but soon makes way for swooshes of melody. It's surprisingly earnest and heartfelt. Maria adds some more of her signature crackles, this time like radio static. And then all of a sudden, flutes!

I love that this festival dares to showcase art of this persuasion. It's refreshing to see these artists entrusted with the space to be extremely avant-garde. What's more is the audience who are in for a penny, in for a pound. What a special thing it is for the programmers, the artists, and the audience to all come together and say, "I trust you."

It's getting late and after an absurdly loud, but very thorough Chakra cleansing of Shahzad's Moog, most of us will be primed and ready to warble off to bed to catch what brief sleep is available before tomorrow's events start.

Overheard at the end, "Well, that was bizarre.

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Around, about and present … Three archival releases point to the continuing relevance of Derek Bailey’s work …

By Stuart Broomer

Right around the 20th anniversary of Derek Bailey’s passing on December 25, 2005, three recordings appeared (or in one case reappeared) that share some kinship with Limescale (Inctus, available as download), that brilliant late career recording that must be regarded as among Bailey’s most significant works (it received special attention in Ben Watson’s Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation [Verso, London 2004], p.370-373). The band was a quintet consisting of Bailey on guitar, Tony Bevan on bass saxophone, Alex Ward on clarinet, and the radical duo of THF Drenching (Stuart Calton), playing Dictaphones, and Sonic Pleasure (Marie-Angelique Bueler), on bricks. Though Bevan and Ward were regular Bailey collaborators, the young duo with strange, assumed names and equally strange instruments emphasized an expansive radicalism in Bailey’s late music, including Domestic Jungle (scatterArchive), his home recordings with late-night London underground radio. Limescale is work of collective genius, a language of myriad scrapes, whirrs, jingles and blasts in which the simultaneous sounds of the five musicians seem to emerge collectively and almost anonymously. It’s among the highest achievements of free improvisation.

Rex Casswell, THF Drenching, Martin Klapper, Sonic Pleasure – ARGOT (scatterArchive, 2025) 

When I encountered “Drenching” and “Pleasure” on this recording, their names seemed new to me, having forgotten their presence on Limescale. My familiarity with English guitarist Rex Casswell was largely based on a couple of brilliant CDs by a trio called Bark! released on Evan Parker’s psi label. ARGOT is a brief but brilliant recording, a single track just 23 minutes long, a brevity encouraged by scatterArchive’s format of downloads only, so that music of the first rank doesn’t have to fill out an LP or CD. It documents a performance from December 4, 2005, at Klub Argot, Copenhagen, though the word “argot” might well cover the special language of the unorthodox instruments. Martin Klapper is heard playing toys, amplified objects, electronics and tapes of numerous recordings.

I was soon reminded that improvisers practiced in close listening (with an occasional and similarly skilled not listening) can produce wholly engaging, formally (and anarchically) satisfying, genuinely social music with the unlikeliest of means, with Casswell the sole quartet member playing a conventional musical instrument. As on Limescale, their instruments are, as defined on the recording’s Bandcamp page, Dictaphone (“a small handheld device for manipulating sounds recorded onto magnetic tape. see ‘tape scratching’”) and brick (“a percussion instrument made of pieces of stone struck or scraped with metal sticks”).

The resultant work has a variety of unexpected sounds and textures, from squeeze toys and buzzers to possible airport announcements, some possessing their own compound unidentifiability. The musicians are intensely engaged in collective invention, constantly interacting to create continuous phrases that shift amongst the four members, their sonic bits spontaneously aligning and reacting, creating a shimmering, shifting field of sounds that possesses both rhythmic complexity and undercurrents of meaning just beyond recognition. Even Casswell’s guitar is barely distinctive amongst the sounds. Argot is a genuinely liberating experience, consistently renewing itself, highly recommended.

Derek Bailey + Tony Bevan River Monsters (scatterArchive, 2025) 

Equally germane to the special character of Limescale is the presence of Tony Bevan, heard exclusively there playing bass saxophone, an instrument that might be the best suited of all acoustic devices to represent the primordial roars of the largest and most ferocious of dinosaurs. Bailey and Bevan played extensively together, and River Monsters , released on the 20th anniversary of Bailey’s passing, gathers their duets over an 11-year period between 1988 and 1999. It’s a mix of live performance, studio and home recordings, and is sufficiently personal to include one of Bailey’s cassette “letters”, in which his spoken reflections are accompanied by continuous guitar playing. This one, to Bevan, on the subject of saxophones and their players, includes a discussion of Charlie Parker that includes a perfectly idiomatic insertion of “Scrapple from the Apple”. The sound quality varies from session to session, but the music has a distinct and sometimes extraordinary quality, even benefitting from the interactions of loud and complex sounds in relatively small spaces. The oldest track (each track or series is identified solely by its date), is from 1988, from one of the Company concert series that Bailey curated. It’s heroic, rapid-fire, improvisation with Bevan playing tenor and the two musicians already revealing the intense listening and response skills that will characterize all their work together. The latest tracks, from October 1999, might also be the subtlest, Bevan sometimes underplaying the special sonic heft that his bass saxophone will reach elsewhere, the two musicians at times developing spectacular rhythmic interaction. Bevan is also capable of microscopic details and surprisingly subtle shifts in timbre given the scale of his instrument.

A series of three pieces (tracks 5 to 7) from January 1998, recorded by Bevan, possess a ferocity that exceeds that of Peter Brotzmann or Mats Gustafsson, the wonder being the way in which Bailey’s compounding, detailed, clanging abrasions fuse into a singular roar with Bevan’s titanic blasts, creating a stream of sound that might suggest Armageddon with empathy. A series of recordings by Toby Hrycek-Robinson at Moat Studios from July 1998 might have the best technical balance of these recordings, matching Bailey’s metallic bursts and abstracted clangs to Bevan’s intensely vocalic roars and runs. It’s music that seethes life, in some ways not unlike the raw spirit of Albert Ayler’s 1964 trio recordings. There are moments in the concluding track in which the two achieve a special level of coordination, their phrases somehow suggesting chaos, but doing it so happily that it simultaneously invokes the reckless joy that could permeate early jazz, especially when it involved the roar of Adrian Rollini’s bass saxophone.

Henry Kaiser - Domo Arigato Derek Sensei (Balance Point Acoustics, 2025) 

Around the time of that 20th anniversary of Bailey’s death, a few copies of a 2006 tribute to Bailey appeared for sale on the Balance Point Acoustics website. The work remains available as a download. It’s of genuine interest, not least of all for the detailed immersion in Bailey’s principles and practices that the homage usually represents in these then fresh tributes, but it can also reach back another 30 years into Kaiser’s formative past. It begins with Kaiser speaking about Bailey and the tribute project, self- accompanying himself on guitar, a la Bailey, throughout. From there follows an extraordinary range of unpredictable, exploratory music, drifting from Asian instruments to highly developed electronica and a certain edginess worthy of Bailey himself.

“Gamera Tai Reptilicus 2005” has Kaiser playing electric guitar and joined by the startling wail of Kiku Day’s shakuhachi. “Continue On” begins as a spoken dialogue between Kaiser and Henry Kuntz, founder of the journal Bells , an early advocate for free jazz and improvised music, the spoken dialogue leading to a musical one with Kuntz playing tenor saxophone. “Improvisation 102a”, from 1978, finds Kaiser playing with trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, while “102x” has Kaiser matching long electric slides with percussionist Andrea Centazzo. “Just Be a SCUBA diver” is another dialogue, this one with Damon Smith playing bass and Kaiser ukulele as they discuss Bailey’s art. Longest and perhaps strangest of the tracks is the 13-minute “Book Review”, initially a highly developed guitar solo by Kaiser that segues into a self-accompanied spoken critique of Ben Watson’s aforementioned Bailey tome.

There’s also the brilliant, constantly shifting music of “The Metalanguage Trio” (2006), the trio of Kaiser, Larry Ochs on sopranino saxophone and Greg Goodman on voice and piano. After a couple of minutes of brilliant interactivity, it devolves into brief and comic reminiscences of Bailey: honest, direct and spontaneous. “The Night of Departure”, from 1996, is a strikingly bright acoustic guitar solo. “Tokyo Trio For Aida” (1979), is energized collective improvisation with Kaiser, bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and tenor saxophonist Mototeru Takagi.

“Pre-Vou” (1996) has alto saxophonist John Oswald and Kaiser exchanging strange, wandering glissandi in instrumental voices that can fuse identities. The concluding “Kavichandran Salp'uri” (1993) is sublimely beautiful and mysterious. It has Sang-won Park singing and playing changgo, an hourglass-shaped drum with two different pitches, with Kaiser and Derek Bailey both playing subtly empathetic electric guitars, an ideal conclusion to a near optimally global homage to a man who defined his own, insistently immediate, sonic world, one in which human speech might happily coincide with spontaneously improvised music.

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Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe: Obituary for Hans Falb (1954–2025)

Hans Falb. Photo by Elvira Faltermeier.

By Philipp Schmickl
(translated by Friederike Kulcsar, read German original)

Hans Falb, who passed away on 26 December 2025, was an extremely generous person, and he strove all his life to realise his vision of a better world. Using his café restaurant, the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf, as his platform, he achieved this goal through music and friendship (and, of course, with the help of good food and wine). Hans, better known as Hauna, was a complex character and sometimes not so easy to get along with – whatever you did together could take unexpected twists and turns, for the most part compassionate turns; and he knew how to put things off until the timing was surprisingly good. Over the years and decades, the many club concerts and festivals Hans organised with his friends in this manner not only created and influenced numerous networks of friendships that stretched across national and geographical boundaries, but also enabled listeners to forge a close bond with music, an improvised music that mainly but not only refers to jazz; encouraging attentiveness in a laid-back environment, nurturing a form of concentration that sets in when a concert begins: a collective listening that unites musicians and audience.

First, a few numbers: the Jazzgalerie – by which I now mean Hans and his friends – organised 48 three- to four-day festivals virtually without pay: the Nickelsdorfer Avant-Jazztage in 1978, the Konfrontationen from 1980 to 2025, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Homage to Sun Ra in 2012, and The New Gardens of Harlem/Homage to Joe McPhee in 2015. About 500 club concerts took place between 1976 and 2007, with occasional gigs in the following years. From the late 1970s to the 2000s, the music programme was curated by Hans in collaboration with Reinhard Stöger (aka Grölli). Then he took over, though he would accept the suggestions of his friends, sometimes wholeheartedly, sometimes reluctantly.

Soon after the two-day opening celebration of the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf with still rather mainstream music in November 1976, the Jazzgalerie turned more and more towards the European and Afro-American jazz avant-garde and within a short period emerged as one of the major clubs on the continent, perhaps even beyond, for what was referred to at the time as “progressive” music – all funded for the most part by revenues from the Café Restaurant Falb. [1]

In an interview I conducted with Hans in 2013 he said, “After the 1984 festival I felt a bit exhausted and thought I’ve done a lot already, that someday I would change my life too …” Inspired by Clifford Thornton, Julius Hemphill’s album Dogon A.D. and Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil , he travelled via Lyon to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, at the end of 1984 and explored Western Africa for three or four months. His stories about these journeys kept returning again and again, about crossing borders, sometimes legally, sometimes clandestinely, sometimes punished with a day in prison, before being brought back to the same place he had started out. He also loved telling how once the village children stole his toothpaste to paint their faces white. Or when in the Rwenzori Mountains, if you saw people sleeping by the roadside with their heads pointing downhill instead of their feet (which was usual) it was a dead giveaway that you were in a schnapps-distilling region. Getting back to the quote from above about him wanting to change his life­­, Hans said, “… but I didn’t succeed”, a conclusion he came to soon after he returned home in the spring of 1985. “And the musicians are glad I didn’t.”

In the 40 years between this extended African trip and his journey to the hereafter, Hans Falb with the Jazzgalerie created a space that was permeated with music and a great love for the arts; a space that was inspired by the spirit of friendship and characterised by a cosmopolitan open-mindedness. I remember that in the Jazzgalerie music magazines such as Wire, Spex, Skug, Jazzlive,Jazz Podium, freiStil or Neue Zeitschrift für Musik lay side by side with various daily newspapers and the Falter, the Swiss WOZ, konkret, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Lettre International; there was a large atlas, which was consulted regularly, and books about whisky, wine, and hiking trails. With its club concerts and festivals the Jazzgalerie also brought “the world to our home”, as Grölli put it. This home in the Austrian periphery, the Jazzgalerie, which Hans shared with his many friends[2], was as unlikely a place as Fitzcarraldo’s dream of an opera house in the Peruvian rain forest. Perhaps this music world, “the world” Reinhard speaks of, was so enthusiastic about the Jazzgalerie, because it was run by a man who did a lot of things – here again Fitzcarraldo – “like a cow jumping over the church roof”. At the end of the film Fitz sells the colonial landowner the ship that he hauled in vain over the mountains on the isthmus and slips his captain the bundle of money he received demanding that he bring him not only a tailcoat, a red velvet chair, and “the best cigar in the world” but also the very opera orchestra that had made a guest appearance in Manaus to play on his ship. Applauded from the shore, the music drifts over the water, while Fitzcarraldo in tails stands proudly on the ship, smoking next to the orchestra ­­­­‑ like Hans, who very often was onstagelistening to “his” concerts, smoking, but never in tails.

The Konfrontationen with its combinations of tone colours and shades of language was an outstanding festival. [3] Inspired by Hans’s ideas of a better world, the Jazzgalerie and the music played and improvised there opened and shaped a space of expanded possibilities and anarchic structures directed against the dominant hierarchies. Hans conceived the festivals so that everyone felt at ease, as he put it, while they “got something complex poured into their hearts” (from the same interview). Over time the festival took on a life of its own. What we call diversity today was understood as unityfrom the very beginning: unity of arts, unity of place, and unity of people. Anti- and postcolonial thought embraced the sound of modernism ; minimalist textures from the Vienna-Berlin axis were rung in and out by church bells; and my personal highlight on festival afternoons: the sound of the schnitzel mallet and the piano tuner amid the mixture of languages. In the Jazzgalerie and at the festivals, sensibility and intellect have always inspired one another just as music inspires friendship and vice versa. In conjunction with playing and listening, eating and drinking, dancing and kissing. 

Hamid Drake and Hans Falb. Photo by Elvira Faltermeier

Usually open deep into the night, the Jazzgalerie was not only a door to the world and to different music communities, but has also always been a place of safety for friends and strangers, for the newly arrived, for us young people or those who felt a bit misunderstood by their folks. If you didn’t want to go home, you could sit with Hauna at the bar, listen to music and then sleep over in the club. Those in need of money could work, eat and drink there. It was a safe space for marginalised people in particular, which became even more apparent in 2015 when 300,000 refugees crossed the border at Nickelsdorf, and for some of the few who stayed in the village the Jazzgalerie became the place where they weren’t treated paternalistically but could work as equal human beings in the kitchen or serving guests. One of them, Ali, said on the day before Hans’s funeral, “Hauna had a warm heart.” I think that in his café restaurant in the European periphery he practised the hospitality I knew from the stories of his journeys in Western and later Central Africa.

Such places have but a small chance of economic survival, as the insolvencies and eventually the loss of the restaurant demonstrated. The first big insolvency in 2007/2008 also affected the festival. However, the end of the Konfrontationen was prevented by the dense, transcontinental network of music and friendship, and the association Impro 2000 was re-organised. This resulted in the organisational separation of restaurant and musical activities. Due to the first corona lockdowns in March 2020, and Hans reaching retirement age, the Jazzgalerie restaurant was closed but remained his living room where he met his friends and where he ate and drank. It remained his office where he made his phone calls, wrote an e-mail every now and then, and where he could listen and re-listen to the records and CDs that people sent to him. It was the place where he had put together the music programmes with his friends since 1976 and later single-handedly. In June 2025 he had to vacate his living room, as there were new tenants and plans for the restaurant. Being already very weak, he moved into the two rooms adjoining the restaurant, which up to then had served him as bedroom and archive (the festival office). He refused to move out completely. He also refused any medical aid. Despite the adverse circumstances – he believed you have to adapt to such changes, but not without complaining about the music in the yard – he always talked about his difficulties as if they were adventure stories. Hans never saw himself as a victim of the economic and socio-political changes, but always as an adventurer. No matter how much his situation deteriorated, he recognised and lived the poetry of his life. In Lyon, on November 28, 1984, just before his flight to Ouagadougou, looking at the reflections of the advertisements in the Rhône or Saône, he wrote in his travel diary: “CARDENAL comes to my mind, and if I had to bear witness to my time, I would say: it was barbaric and primitive, but poetic.”

As in Grimms’ fairy tale Hans in Luck, Hans Falb had got a lump of gold in 1976: the restaurant offered wealth and promising perspectives. But step by step he traded away this wealth with its perspectives; unlike in the fairy tale, the wealth Hans traded away turned into friendship and music – a music that in turn can never be recaptured. Hans liked to quote Eric Dolphy, who is reported to have said, “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air.” Hans Falb in Luck successfully traded away all material wealth. At the end of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm it says, “With a light heart and free from every burden he kept going until he was at home with his mother.”

Photo by Elvira Faltermeier

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[1] Fatty George (clarinet), Al Fats Edwards (vocals), Rudi Wilfer (piano) and Karl Prosenik (drums) played the opening concert. Initially, in the years following, performers included Abdulla Ibrahim/Dollar Brand, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Sven-Åke Johansson, Clifford Thornton, Amina Claudine Myers, the World Saxophone Quartet, larger and smaller ensembles of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarmen, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton and Don Moye, Peter Brötzmann, Frank Wright, Michele Rosewoman, Maria Böhmberger, Akira Sakata, Sun Ra with an eleven-piece Arkestra, Andrew Cyrille’s Maono, Max Roach, Dieter Kaufmann, Dieter Glawischnig/Neighbours, Peter Kowald, and H. C. Artmann. As Hans Falb wrote in a letter to Roscoe Mitchell (found in the Jazzgalerie archive), a four-day portrait of the AACM composers Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abramas, and Leo Smith was planned for the Konfrontationen 1984. But in the end, only Mitchell and Braxton came.

[2] These friends also included many Austrian musicians, for whom the Jazzgalerie provided impetus and let them think bigger and determine their own musics and careers, for instance Christian Fennesz and Franz Hautzinger, who both come from the Nickelsdorf region, Susanna Gartmayer, Christof Kurzmann, Didi Kern, and many more.

[3] For an attempt at describing the Konfrontationen see the text On Ghosts and Colours : https://thefuckle.wordpress.com/2019/07/12/uber-geister-und-farben-vierzig-jahre-konfrontationen/ 

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Philipp Schmickl is a scholar working in the fields of improvisation and festival studies. He received his PhD from the Institute for Jazz and Popular Music Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with a dissertation on the Konfrontationen festival organized by the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf, Austria. He is founder and editor of the oral music histories book series THEORAL (currently dormant).

 

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Alan Niblock, John Butcher, Mark Sanders - Tectonic Plates (577 Records, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels

How often can you listen to the same music of free improvisation before you can almost anticipate what's coming? The answer is: a lot! And maybe that's the great fun of improvised music: its total unpredictability and inventiveness. We are in the company of three masters: Alan Niblock as the 'leader' on double bass, John Butcher on saxophones and Mark Sanders on drums and percussion.

It is clear from the title that the trio will offer some seismic music, and actually all five tracks make references to tectonic plates, the geological gigantic slabs of stone that slowly move against each other with friction, themselves floating on a semi-fluid asthenosphere below them, and occasionally leading to earth quakes and volcanic eruptions, and basically to all the mountains we know. The image is accurate: the music is inherently slow, precise, crisp, intense and organic, gradually moving forward together until the whole piece erupts in a sonic volcano - brutal, raw, harsh, powerful - only to fall back on its defaults position of minute progress. The first and longest track is called "Mountains", a wonderfully balanced piece full of fascinating duo and trio interactions. Despite its length, the tension is maintained throughout. 

The second track, "Divergent Plate Boundaries (DPB)" refers to the opposite effect, when tectonic plates do not collide to create mountains, but rather when they move apart, creating gaps filled by magma that cools to form new crust. It starts with faint whistling sounds from the sax, minuscule sounds from bass and drums, barely audible, resulting in a strange effect of almost natural ambient sounds, until the bowed bass starts producing some volume, encouraging the other instruments to equally raise their voice. The interaction remains cautious, prudent even, avoiding collision, gradually growing together into a more joyful interplay. 

I will not try to describe each piece: the effort is futile considering the abstract and indescribable nature of the trio's sounds, but trust me that it is great throughout, fresh and intense, creative and captivating. For readers interested in the geological foundations of this music, here are some Wikipedia links to the other titles: "Mantel Plume", "Olympus Mons" and "Faultline", and I leave it to you to make the links between the titles and the music itself. 

I have listened every night to this album, several times even, for more than a month, neglecting so much other music that is coming our way - apologies for this - but it is worth it. That's what 'captivating' means, literally, to have become imprisoned by totally free music. What a paradox!

The album was recorded live at The Black Box, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Olaf Rupp - Berlin Eiskeller (scatterArchive, 2026)

By Martin Schray

The “Eiskeller” (German for ice cellar) is a tranquil area in Berlin’s Hakenfelde district (which is part of the Spandau borough), and it’s considered the coldest place in the city. Due to its special valley location in the Spandau Forest, cold air masses accumulate there, leading to extremely low temperatures in winter. The name comes from its former use as a natural ice storage facility. During the days of the Berlin Wall, the three farmsteads in Eiskeller, surrounded by GDR territory, were connected to West Berlin only by a four-meter-wide and 800-meter-long corridor. The place was almost isolated.

Olaf Rupp’s new album Berlin Eiskeller is also about isolation, albeit not geographical but musical. “When recording, I wanted to listen deeply to the modulations created by saturation effects in the amplifier itself: octaves, difference tones, ring modulator effects, and all that purring, creaking, and gurgling that is always smiled at a little arrogantly in the genteel world of musical aristocracy,” says the guitarist. The result is music that defies categorization - there are no rock patterns, it lacks even the slightest hint of “jazz“, and the occasional sprinkling of melodies and flageolets makes it too accessible for brutal noise music. Even new classical music doesn’t fit into any pigeonhole. That’s why his music is also somehow isolated.

But Rupp isn’t interested in pigeonholing anyway. He studied linguistics (English and Spanish) and is a certified translator. Currently, he’s reading Marcel Proust. If you string together the titles of the first seven pieces, they form a sentence from “À la recherche du temps perdu” (In Search of Lost Time): les murs, aussi bien/ ceux du salon / de la salle à manger / de la cuisine que / celui de la cage de l'escalier /embrassaient la pièce / la séparaient du / reste du monde , which in English means “The walls, both those of the living room, dining room, and kitchen, as well as those of the stairwell, embraced the room and separated it from the rest of the world.” It’s plain to see that the isolation topic is picked up here as well. “The way the adjoining rooms ‘embrace’ your own always carries with it the threatening idea of walls closing in on you, leaving you unable to breathe.” But the music is not claustrophobic; on the contrary, it has something liberating about it. Rupp’s style consists of many nimble notes in atonal runs, and the clusters he plays are more reminiscent of the style of Cecil Taylor. As with the great pianist, Rupp also seems to have harmonic core elements, basic chords and arpeggios, groups of notes that form horizontal and vertical axes, each characterized by stark extremes in pitch, as in the first track, “Les murs, aussi bien”. These modules and interval relationships, the aforementioned octaves and difference tones, merge with structural formations to create cells and characteristic motifs: Rupp can break down and reassemble these basic building blocks, creating great tension and density, not unlike James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness-technique.

But that’s not all. In the title track, which closes the album, all these elements are given plenty of time and space. The ring modulator effects and flageolets complement each other and float feather-light through the room. Rupp shifts from almost gently dabbed open chords and harmonics to bizarre little flourishes. The effect is that the brittleness of the music has toned down in favor of a pointillistic, psychedelic touch - as if Jimi Hendrix were floating through space and experimenting with electronics. Being highly abstract and demanding music (but by no means off-putting) Rupp’s playing is utterly captivating.

Berlin Eiskeller develops a strange, magical pull, giving us 72 wonderful minutes to revel in sound.

The album is available as a download. You can buy and listen to it on the scatterArchive website.

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The Suggestive Sounds of Paula and Pablo

By Paul Acquaro

Paula Shocron - Tarot Sonoro (self-released, 2025)

Argentinian pianist Paula Shocron's Tarot Sonoro is, as the name clearly states, a presentation of the tarot as tones, and one that is at times as mystical and open for interpretation as the fortune teller's toolset itself. The tarot, a fertile source of inspiration, works a bit like a structured daydream—its images giving just enough symbolic material to pretend there’s something mystical at play while you’re making up your own story. Each card is like a gentle nudge toward reflection, or here, towards a sound.

 

Shocron captures it in the liner notes, entitled MANIFESTO, which can be read on her Bandcamp page:

 

The tarot as a sensitive oracle, music as a divine channel.

Vibration as a universal language, intuition as inner listening.

The Major Arcana as travelers of time and sound.

In the melody of the present, the rhythm of transformation.

 

The music is quiet, contemplative, just Shocron's gentle, breathing work at the piano adorned and augmented here and there with percussive and textural elements. Starting with 'El Loco', the first of 22 short pieces representing the 22 major cards - known as the Major Arcana - which apparently are linked to major life events, the journey begins. It begins with a tinkling of the keys, a bit off an off-key warble to the notes of the atonal melody. This leads to 'El Mago,' which begins with more gravitas, deep down the left=hand side of the keys. Single notes lead upwards, spacious and deliberate, to be joined by percussive clink and clatter and eventually taking a mysterious bend. 'La Sacerdozita' is build around a cycle of chords that brushes up again electronic whispers. Each piece has a unique approach, but all are united by generous space and classical underpinnings. Some are more uptempo like 'La Torre,' which cycles about with a hopeful lilt and others like 'La Luna' are apparitions in the mist, while the track 'La Muerte' is a primal soundscape. 

 

Dark, contemplative, mysterious, Tarot Sonoro is a trip through the subconscious and deserves a quiet listen to experience it's gentle impact. 

 

In addition to the recording, there is a set of tarot cards, illustrated by Sandra Ureta Marín. You can see these at Shocron's website.

 

Pablo Diaz - otro ritmo (Archivo Veintidós, 2025)

Speaking of soundscapes, Pablo Diaz, Paula's partner in the SLD Trio, which made a tremendous impression on me about 10 years ago, has taken his work with solo percussion into unusual territories in the intervening years. In recent years, he released the collection of purely acoustic percussion, Planos De Estratificación, on Sello Postal (2024) and Son Esos Ecos on scatterArchive (2025), a project rooted in field recordings and percussion, and at the tail end of the year, Otro Ritmo, where he explored cymbal resonance in creating drones and melodies. 

 

Checking out the latter, Otro Ritmo, is a fascinating and focused affair. The opening and title track begins with the faint sounds of birds and what you could hear as percussve cricket chirps. Working through the textures are gentle drones and elongated tones. The next track, 'es una estructura' is more insistent with its cadence interrupted and then augmented by droning tones.

 

The ambiance of the recording is key to the recording. Birds appear throughout, as does the crunch of foot steps on gravel and what seems like church bells on the track 'fragil.' Then, there are the various tones that could be made through the cymbals and/or electronics. The mystery of the sounds and textures only adds to the captivating sonic pictures. Otro Ritmo is an immersive experience for the patient listener.

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Tashi Dorji - Low Clouds Hang, This Land Is on Fire (Drag City, 2026)

 

By William Rossi

All art reflects the times it was created in and all art is by extension political. This isn't a novel concept, it's art critique 101, really. So what do we really mean when we say that a work of art is politically charged? Colloquially we use the term to describe something whose explicit intent is to comment on, reflect or challenge the status quo it was made under. Tashi Dorji's music has always been (colloquially) political, an instrument that gives voice to his radical and anarchist ideals wielded with revolutionary fervor, and it's precisely the kind of music we need right now.

Somewhat uncharacteristically for him, though, this album (his third on Drag City) is a quiet album made up of fragile, open melodies, delicate volume swells and shimmering harmonics coated in a thick dust of amplifier hiss and all-encompassing reverb. If one were to try, this album could be pigeonholed in the periphery of what we consider Ambient, but the music never allows you to fully drift off: the improvisations are complex and multi-faceted, there's always an unexpected note, a surprising turn and the hint of the aforementioned fervor keeping the audience engaged and consistently dragging the tracks forward. 

 

In the same way, the sound itself that Dorji conjures out of his guitar keeps the listener on their toes. The clean and spanky amp is always on the verge of breakup, the massive reverb always a hair away from feedback, it's a balancing act that doesn't let go and makes you hold your breath for when, if ever, the balance will break. Wrangling this almost self-sustaining behemoth of sound is as instrumental to the music as the note choice is, and one informs the other. It's high praise but there's something very Jimi Hendrix about that.

The tension broiling under the surface of the whole album finally gets released on "Black Flag Anthems" with its clusters of dissonance, a fully driven amp and a furious pick attack that scrapes and grinds the guitar strings in a continuous crescendo, everything we've come to expect from Dorji's playing. What follows these bursts of rage is not nihilism, but hope. Despite how somber the music is and in the face of the times it was recorded in, this is a very hopeful, aspirational album, a rallying cry for people to come together and support each other, a spit in the face of the oligarchs and tyrants that rule us. While this beautiful music can be a refuge from the ugliness of the world I think it's important to highlight that this is not a refuge meant to pacify, it's meant to inspire action.

Dorji's work has been reviewed extensively on this site over the years and he's been extremely prolific, be it with his collaborations with Tyler Damon, his work in Kuzu, Manas or his brand new collaboration with Audrey Chen. It's great to see how surprising his music can still be and I hope we'll keep discussing it for many more years to come. 

 

Available on vinyl and digitally on Bandcamp or from Drag City, a second pressing has just come out so you have no choice but to get it. 

 

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Irreversible Entanglements- Future Present Past (Impulse!, 2026)

By Martin Schray

After Protect Your Light, Future Present Past is Irreversible Entanglements’s second album on Impulse! and let’s cut to the chase: Even if it may lack the radicalism and freshness of Open The Gates and Who Sent You, Future Present Past is an outstanding album! While the free jazz moments have given way to somewhat more accessible spiritual jazz elements and Afro-Caribbean and African influences, the urgency of the music is still fully palpable. How could this project not position itself amidst the current political and cultural discourse in the U.S.? Here, too, the themes are oppression, historical trauma, and collective emancipation; the slave trade, rapid industrialization, and the hope for a better future. At the same time, you hear a technically mature band pursuing a clear concept and aiming to reach a wider audience. The band itself describes this as a moment in which “five musicians transform into billions”, thereby calling for a musical embodiment of global solidarity and the collective experience of resistance.

The band itself is often described as a free-jazz collective (even if there’s less free jazz that is still true) and still consists of poet and singer Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother), trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Tcheser Holmes. Here, however, the album gains even more depth through guest appearances by New York vocal artist MOTHERBOARD (Kyle Kidd) and Helado Negro, a singer with Ecuadorian roots. At the same time, this underscores the connection to other, similar projects such as the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, as Future Present Past increasingly combines a percussive approach with vocals.

But what also sets this album apart from its predecessors is the more obvious influence of Charles Mingus's music. In the relentlessly driving “Panamanian Fight Song”, Irreversible Entanglements bring together all the sonic worlds explored on the album into a single piece. It’s certainly no coincidence that the title of the piece evokes Mingus’s famous “Haitian Fight Song”. Both pieces begin with a bass solo, both build to a crescendo, and both intensify before fully unfolding. But it’s primarily through the vocals and the track’s brevity that Irreversible Entanglements give the track its own direction. Mingus’s influence is also evident on “Keep Going” and “The Messenger”; brief, episodic interludes of trumpet and saxophone both support the driving, ostinato bass and the Fender Rhodes, and at the same time, with wild free-jazz interludes, they also shake up the structure of the tracks, while Moor Mother encourages her brothers and sisters to confidently continue on their path. In the penultimate track, “The Spirit Moves,” black self-empowerment is invoked against a backdrop of African rhythms as a simple, steady beat emerges from the supposed chaos: “a rhythm of us marching toward victory/no more trouble/move all the troubles away.” Here it also becomes clear that this is music that is aware of traditions, honors them, is anchored in the here and now, yet also points toward the future. Future Present Past.

Future Present Pastis available on vinyl, as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it on the usual streaming devices. Since it’s a major, you can buy it at your favorite record store.

Check out “The Messenger“ here:

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100 Jahre MILES DAVIS PANGEA

Oh, this one is an unexpected treat... the centennial celebrations of Miles Davis are happening all over, but I would surmise that very few are as free as this one! Bringing together a stellar group of European experimental musicians, the Pangea (1976) inspired set is fiery and fierce as well as fluid and fluctuating. With two analog synths augmenting a crack group under the direction of (fittingly) trumpeter Axel Dörner, the group takes the extreme to the extremes. The Apr 1, 2026 recording comes from the Dialograum Kreuzung an St. Helena in Bonn, Germany under the ageis of the In Situ Art Society präsentiert Aufbruch ins Unerhörte: 100 Jahre MILES DAVIS PANGEA.

The group is: 

Axel Dörner (DE) – Trompete, Elektronik, Leitung 

Marthe Lea (NO) – Saxophon 

Thomas Lehn (DE/AT) – Analog Synthesizer 

Richard Scott (UK/DE) – Analog Synthesizer 

Joe Williamson (CA/SE) – Kontrabass 

Tony Buck (AU/DE) – Schlagzeug 

  

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Marilyn Crispell/Anders Jormin–Memento (ECM, 2026)

By Kenneth Blanchard

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t like rock music. I do remember precisely when I began to hear jazz. I was watching a performance by bassist Red Mitchell and pianist Bill Mays on public television. They produced a CD with the same or roughly the same music: Two of a Mind (1983). Something about the bass/piano brought about the subtle shift in mental processing that is the essence of jazz. I would experience that same shift several more times as I developed a taste for more adventurous music.

Pianist Marilyn Crispell describes such an experience as the turning point in her musical career. Hearing John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme for the 1st time sent her on her way stardom on the stage of free jazz. She spent 10 years with the Anthony Braxton quartet and was a frequent collaborator with Gerry Hemingway. On Memento she reunites with double bass player Anders Jormin. I can recommend his collaboration with his percussionist brother, Christian Jormin and all-around horn master Mats Gustafsson: Opus Apus.

Crispell opens “For the Children,” with a soft, elegant melody. Jormin comes in so subtly that I am not quite sure where the ringing of the keyboard is replaced by the bow and strings. After a few moments, the interlocutors trade places and Jormin’s base rides on Crispell’s pensive but passionate piano. Near the end, the bow is replaced by his fingered notes that rise like hills in the distance. The piece is exquisite.

The second entry, aptly titled “Dialogue” continues the thoughtful empathy that is expressed throughout the recording. The two musicians leave just enough space between notes that each word, phrase, and exchange is clearly articulated.

“Beach at Newquay” was an unexpected delight. Jormin imitates the cry of gulls so authentically that it took me a moment to realize that they weren’t really at the beach. Crispell’s lines, by contrast, present an almost visual impression: glittering light on waves.

This is music for a cool, gray morning, a cup of coffee in both hands, and any body of water that stretches over the horizon. In the afternoon, put on Brahm’s Cello Sonata No. 1. Trust me.

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