Hayden Chisholm: To Bee Ritual at Neu St. Alban Church, Cologne

Photos by Lucie Schulze

By Matty Bannond

As sunlight weakened on the first day of autumn, visitors to this carefully curated event slipped their hands into a red-tartan sack full of plastic rings and dipped wooden wands into a pot of locally sourced honey. Symbolic gifts and gestures were the central focus of the evening. Each ceremonial act invited deeper contemplation of how shared experiences bind societies together.

That reflective impulse was stirred by collective experiences and multi-layered stimuli. Many of those factors are fixed for each episode of the interdisciplinary Ritual series in north-west Germany, but each event culminates in a one-off concert. On September 1, saxophonist Hayden Chisholm and sound designer Robert Nacken transformed the interior of the Neu St. Alban church into an imagined beehive. Visual artist Natalia Manta added video projections.

First, however, guests got packed off for a twenty-minute plod around Cologne’s municipal gardens. Talking was verboten. Instead, walkers were encouraged to listen deeply and perceive how their footfall intersected with noises from screeching parakeets, grumbling freight trains or crackling leaf litter. They then scribbled notes onto postcards and hung them on a display outside the church.

Inside, Chisholm cradled his saxophone on a low stage in front of a set design where orange and purple light transformed sheets of foil into cragged ridges resembling a mountain face. The New Zealander had attached a feather from his homeland to his horn. He sat beside an accordion-like instrument called a shruti box. Traditional Māori wind instruments including kōauaus and pūtōrinos rested on his lap and hung around his neck.

A dozen or so figures shuffled into a circle at the back of the church and started singing. The Ritual choir welcomes all volunteers, regardless of experience or music-reading ability. They kicked off the concert with a short, spectral composition by local musician Dariya Maminova. Chisholm added whistly calls while simultaneously coaxing a low-note drone from the shruti box with his right hand.

For most of the concert, Chisholm cycled through his hardware to send sheets of sound swirling across the incense-scented interior of the church. Twice he chanted a Latin-language excerpt from Virgil's Georgics that referenced beekeeping. Nacken’s manipulated recordings of bee activity fizzed and bubbled, while Manta’s visuals swam from geometric patterns to clumps of crawling bee bodies.

 

Chisholm descended from the stage towards the end of the evening and paced around the pentagon-shaped space playing buzzy, waggle-dance lines on his saxophone. His route took him past ceramic objects designed by Manta specifically for the occasion, as well as a small box containing a group of gently humming real-life bees from Hannah Liebig’s nearby apiary.

Those footsteps recalled the earlier sound-walk, closing the distance between performer and audience. The event’s conceptual framework encouraged attendees to view the beehive as a world of sounds and images that represent key facets of collective life: Rigid physical and social structures, mutual dependence, and vulnerability in the face of environmental change. Strikingly, bees’ movements often appear chaotic—but hives are coherent places. Bees lean into their work. They embrace their rituals. They listen to each other. And that listening holds their world together.

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NotTwo - Part Two (1/1)

By Paul Acquaro 

Earlier this Spring, a post on Facebook announced the end of physical media for the venerable NotTwo label, then based on Warsaw, Poland. It came as a bit of shock and the comments that followed showed just how important the label was to many listeners. The message was also a bit cryptic, it was unclear if the label itself was shutting down entirely. This summer, we learned, happily, that there while there was indeed big change at label, as it now finds itself on the West Coast of the United States in the care of long-time label assistant Cezary Lerski, it is still very much alive. Please see the interview below to learn more about the transition.

One Voice and Two Truths 

To kick off the re-launch of the label in its new digital-only guise, Lerski has released two excellent compilation albums curated from the label's deep back-catalog, One Voice focuses on solo performances and Two Truths on duos. Scan the names on the track listings and one is struck by the prominence of the artists, for example Simon Rose, Ken Vandermark, Barry Guy, Peter Brötzmann, Joëlle Léandre, Anthony Braxton ... and that's just a random pick.  

One Voice starts off with the intense blast of baritone saxophone from Simon Rose on the track 'Boxhanger'. It begins with such intensity that one wonders how it could develop further, yet it does with speed and precision. The track 'Dekooning' from saxophonist Ken Vandermark stands in contrast to the opener: restrained and melodic, its intensity is more conventionally jazz focused. For something completely different, bassist Marcin Oles' version of Ornette Coleman's 'Una Muy Bonita' presents at once an entirely recognizable tune that on one instrument captures the rhythm, melody and spirit of the tune.

Two Truths is also a rich collection of duo performances that one may never have gotten to - after all, while having everything online and available all at once makes it possible to access, actually accessing it becomes a whole other problem. Starting with 'Productive Cough' from saxophonist Peter Broetzmann and percussion Joerg Fischer, there are obviously treasures within just waiting to be (re)discovered. This one begins with a no-holds-barred intro from the uncompromising saxophonist before Fischer comes crashing in. Eight minutes of heart-pumping free improvisation follows. On 'Conversation 1' from bassist Joelle Leandre and vocalist Lauren Netwon, the duo crisscrosses each others sonic paths, wrapping around each other until the distinction of bass and voice is futile. In another unconventional blending, woodwindist Anthony Braxton and bassist Chris Dahlgren offer 'Penumbra for woodwind(s) & bass(es) 1+1'. It is a low-register pummeling that uses electronics to grind the two instruments together. 

These two hand-curated compilations show some of the true bounty from NotTwo's back catalog. Each recording comes with detailed liner notes and links back to the source recordings, making entering this rabbit hole ever more enticing. 

***

An Interview with Cezary Lerski:

Paul Acquaro: NotTwo has been around for more than 30 years, founded by Marek Winiarski. You spent many years working there — what first drew you to the organization?

Cezary Lerski: It goes back to the early 2000s, right around when iTunes first launched. I was producing a compilation showcasing the best of new Polish jazz at the start of the millennium, and I reached out to Marek by email to ask about featuring a track from his catalog. He said yes — Simple Acoustic Trio, who later became internationally known as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio through their run on ECM, got a spot on that 2-CD compilation.

That first contact grew into something more personal. At the time, the whole model of music distribution was shifting online, and Marek — despite never really warming to the Internet himself, he genuinely avoided it, social media included — recognized that the label needed to embrace that shift if it wanted to reach beyond Poland. I think I was simply the right guy in the right place at the right time. I became, informally, "the Internet guy," and before long I was running all of Not Two's online sales, handling customers, distributors, and the whole digital side. I think it was a real relief for Marek — it let him step back from that and focus on what he cared about most, the editorial and artistic direction of the label.

PA: As I understand it, you had an important operational role in the label, were you involved with the musical direction and release choices too?

CL: Honestly, that's always been Marek's domain. The musical direction, the release choices — that's him.

Where I did have a real role was as a kind of gatekeeper. As "the Internet guy," I was the first line for the enormous volume of submissions the label got from artists wanting to release on Not Two. So I was the one who had to tell a lot of well-meaning dentists that no, we weren't going to put out their girlfriend's reissue of the Ella Fitzgerald songbook (ha, ha). But when something genuinely caught my ear, I'd push it forward and send it to Marek with my recommendation. That's actually how I recall Szilárd Mezei first came to Marek's attention — and today we have ten of his albums in the catalog.

PA: Did you ever think that you would be in charge of the label?

CL: No. Honestly, that thought never crossed my mind. I saw my role only as handling the online side, sales, distribution — while Marek was always the label. His ear, his taste, his editorial vision built Not Two, you can't just inherit that by osmosis. Taking over wasn't a plan; it was more like being handed the keys to a car you'd only ever been the passenger in.

PA: Moving to California is a major change for both yourself and the label, how did this come about?

CL: That's actually always been a bit of a misconception — I didn't move to California for the label, I've lived here since the 1994 Northridge earthquake, with a few years back in New York City in between. California's been home for a long time; if anything, the label followed me, not the other way around.

For Not Two, though, it really was a seismic shift — pun very much intended. We cut the ties to a lot of what had supported the label in Europe: the local fan base that had grown up around Marek and the label over decades, the brick-and-mortar distribution network, the festival circuit connections. All of that infrastructure that took almost thirty years to build in Poland and across Europe — we're now starting, from scratch, to build something equivalent here. It's early days. That's part of why the online side has become so critical; without that European backbone, digital distribution isn't just an add-on anymore, it's the lifeline while we figure out what comes next.

PA: Do you think it will have an impact on the label? If so, in what way?

CL: I think it already has, and I think it will keep having one. The most obvious shift is that we're now positioned to build a real foothold in the US — a market Not Two never had strong roots in before, despite the catalog being world-class. Free jazz and avant-garde have a dedicated, if scattered, audience here, and being physically present, able to go to shows, meet musicians, build relationships in person rather than only by email, changes the nature of those connections.

There's also the practical side — being US-based makes it easier to work with American artists, US distributors, and frankly, US customers who'd rather not deal with international shipping and customs. And going digital-first out of necessity has turned out to be an advantage too; the label isn't tied to a warehouse or a single postal system anymore.

PA: What is your vision for the NotTwo going forward?

CL: The short version: stay true to what made the label matter in the first place — Marek's ear, that "free" part of free jazz, the refusal to follow trends or chase what's commercially safe — while building the infrastructure so that vision can actually reach people wherever they are, not just where it's easy to ship a CD.

Concretely, that means a few things. Getting the digital side fully modern — proper distribution, a website and catalog system that does the music justice, so someone discovering the label today has as good an entry point as someone who walked into a record shop in Kraków twenty five years ago. On the physical side, I have to be honest — economics simply won't let us keep releasing everything on CD the way Marek did for all those years years. Digital will be the default going forward, with Bandcamp being our primary platform. But for special projects, the door is very much open — especially if we can move away from standard CD runs toward small-batch, on-demand, limited editions, whether that's CDs, vinyl, or even cassettes. It's a different model than the old one, but it lets us keep tangible formats alive for the releases that deserve them, without the economics sinking the label. It also means growing the US presence in a real way — not replacing the European roots, but adding to them, so the label has two homes instead of one. And it means keeping the catalog itself honest, so thirty years from now Not Two still means something specific when you see the name on a release.

PA: Can you give us a tease of any upcoming recordings?
CL: OK, I can tease a little. Fair warning though: this isn't necessarily going to be your grandmother's free jazz anymore. I'm getting a steady stream of submissions from artists working at the edges of avant-garde, pulling in influences from Krautrock, rave, psychedelia, trance — it's a strange and wonderful mix, and some of it is genuinely unlike anything currently in the catalog.

A few personal notes, since you asked: I've got a real thing for cello right now, and I think you'll hear that creeping into upcoming releases. And unlike Marek, I actually enjoy guitar too — so don't be surprised if it gets a bit more room on Not Two going forward.

What genuinely astonishes me is how many artists from all over the world are reaching out — practically every day — names most people, myself included, have never heard before. And the quality is often stunning. At the same time, I want to be clear: we're not abandoning the family. We have relationships with over 800 musicians already in the Not Two catalog, and it's always an honor when they come back to us with a new project.

And I'll close with this: we've put together a compilation series pulling together the best of our roughly 350 releases, organized by format — “One Voice” is entirely solo performances, “Two Truths” is duets, and the series continues from there with larger and larger groupings. Each one draws across the whole history of the label, so you might hear something from the late 1990s sitting right next to something recorded 25 years later. The idea is simple: instead of asking someone to dive into hundreds of albums cold, we're saying, here's a curated front door — start here, find what speaks to you, and then go explore the deep end of the catalog on your own terms. 

 

Explore the NotTwo catalog at https://nottworecords.org/ 

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Believe - Nature's God (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Dan Sorrells

A favorite from last year was Spirits of the Dead Are Watching, the debut of Believe, the Sydney-based quartet of Peter Farrar (saxophone), Novak Manojlovic (piano), Clayton Thomas (bass), and Laurence Pike (drums). Believe arrived as a mature working group, having largely negotiated their aesthetic off-tape. There's much care in their improvisations, which convey a particular reverence for the heightened space that opens when people play music together. All of the musicians doubled on small percussion instruments, and even when it got intense, the music had a ceremonial air, the band unafraid of rhythm and repetition, staying with fertile moments and drawing them out like silken filaments. That introduction was often a work of tension or calling-to-attention, and their follow-up, Nature's God —culled from the same 2023 recording sessions—feels more contemplative. It initially did not grab me in the same way, but I'm in its grip now. That first encounter was a victim of my own lack of care.

Listening to Nature's God, one of the first things I noticed—or rather, one of the things that allowed much to escape notice during my initial distracted listen—is the sparse appearance of Farrar's saxophone. On the opening title track, he doesn't pick it up at all. The music develops from hushed notes with a sly and simmering urgency, Pike and Manojlovic goading each other along, the whole thing less a dramatic revelation than the dawning realization that the looming intensity of its namesake is always already present. Setting the saxophone down in favor of percussion reduces the instrumental contrast and further heightens the feeling of a collective sound, particularly in combination with Thomas's often percussive bass playing, striking the strings with mallets or its body with his hands. "Braided River" is a prayer, as beautiful and coherent a thing as free improvisation can produce, the saxophone arising and Thomas and Farrar so close in tone and intent that they're indeed braided into a new, quavering timbre.

With the exception of the almost jazzy centerpiece "First Name Of A Flower" (which works itself into a fairly swinging groove by its midpoint), the pieces on Nature's God further underscore the ritualistic leanings that made Believe's debut so interesting. Small changes accrue but the music remains whole, like an undulating shape. Sometimes this takes the form of repetitive motifs or textures, as in Farrar's long tones and Manojlovic's delicate figures in the aforementioned "Braided River." At other times it is expressed in more explicit rhythm, such as the steadfast beat driving "Earth Does Not Need Us," the axis of a polyrhythmic swirl.

Closing piece "Owls" is daybreak, that transition when the owls have settled and are handing the world back to the day dwellers. Again, no saxophone. The shimmering piano notes hang like dewdrops in a web, and every note, whatever the source, is allowed its full measure. At one point a flare of feedback breaks through, and for some reason I think of sunlight rising through dripping trees, of the moment a ray first strikes your eye and, although it is all so beautiful, you have to look away.

Also, check out the band in full flight on Clayton Thomas's YouTube page: 

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Two sides of Irene Aranda

By Eyal Hareuveni

Spanish, Berlin-based Irene Aranda is primarily a classically trained pianist and self-taught in free jazz and free improvisation hyper-pianist who employs the piano as a sonic environment, using preparations and extended techniques to uncover enigmatic textures and resonances.

Irene Aranda - MAY (Relative Pitch, 2026)

 MAY features Aranda in a trio with Spanish sax player Don Malfon (aka Alfonso Muñoz) and Japanese-born vocal (and visual) artist Ami Yamasaki in a studio recording from Berlin in January 2026. The eight free improvised pieces are titled as wishes that begin with “May the games begin”, go through “May you have many more meaning in Urdu”, and end with “May you all hate free jazz” (apparently, with the most free jazz playing by Aranda here).

This unconventional trio take their respective singular sonic palettes of Malfon, Aranda, and Yamasaki to the extreme, obviously, with an array of highly personal extended techniques - breathing (with mutes and objects, in the case of Malfon), echolocation vocals (Yamasaki), and playing (or pounding) inside the piano (Aranda). Each piece visits a distinct, intense, and deeply visceral, immersive territory, shaped by radical, urgent, and Dadaist approaches to breath, space, vibration, or sound at all, often on the verge of chaos. The trio keeps searching for friction and compatibility of its strong-minded musical personalities. Occasionally, the trio’s dark humour and Yamasaki’s sensual, lyrical, and often pixie-like (wordless) voice introduce a more accessible vein into the uncompromising sonic collisions. There is no end to the inventive, inimitable dynamics of this trio or to its unpredictable, captivating lexicon.

Prepare for the most physical, wildest possible ride yet a highly rewarding one where even the most discerning listeners may find themselves caught off guard.

The Dark Deniers - Tales of Freedom (Self-Released, 2026)

Aranda leaves the piano aside and is the mastermind, conductor, vocalist and bandleader of The Dark Deniers ensemble, a Berlin-based experimental octet featuring trumpeters Germán García and Brad Henkel, alto sax player Grgur Savić, baritone sax player Pablo Muñoz, trombonist Gerhard Gschlößl, guitarist Christian Kühn, and drummer Martial Frenzel. The Dark Deniers mix dramatic poetic texts (of John Masefield, Maya Angelou, John Donne, Lord Byron, Antonio Machado, Alfonsina Storni, Anne Bradstreet, Paul Éluard, Gilbert Chesterton, and Dylan Thomas), focusing on mortality, resistance, existential collapse, time, and transformation, with Butch Morris’ conduction principle, free jazz, avant-rock, metal, and free improvisation.

The Dark Deniers’ debut album, Tales of Freedom, was recorded live at Studio Zentri Fuge in Berlin in May 2026. Aranda is a capable, evocative and passionate vocalist and a commanding leader who leads this organism-like, powerful ensemble through ten pieces, beginning with the ritualist, pagan-like prayer (or provocation): “We are The Dark Deniers. Let us summon Death from a summer woman”, and soon lets this poetic phrase bloom into a funky storm. This ensemble sounds as if it searches for a primordial, pre-cosmic state of raw sound, as expressed in the aptly titled “Vocifera”, with Aranda’s effective growling vocals.

Throughout Tales of Freedom, Aranda uses the poetic texts, the language (the English, Spanish, and French ones), and the ensemble’s complex sonic palettes as material she can shape, mould, and invent anew as impossible yet intricate, organic structures, with a touching, thought-provoking, and often subversive pathos. The Dark Deniers, like the trio with Malfon and Yamasaki, also embrace chaos, but in a different approach. Aranda shapes the sonic architectures and literary texts from chaos and sheer visceral freedom, and vice versa, always flirting joyfully with fiery, explosive dynamics, danger and risk-taking, or as Aranda puts it: “play with death the way that children play with fire”.

Any round with Aranda’s music is bound to take listeners on the most unpredictable yet deeply immersive wild ride, inspire and equip us all with enough invigorating food for resisting thoughts, until, one day, Aranda and The Dark Deniers will rule the world.

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Marty Ehrlich - Open Air: The Complete Saxophone Quartet Compositions of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head Records, 2026) *****

By Gary Chapin

For the dedicated fans of wind player, composer, and teacher Julius Hemphill, the last two years are shaping up to be an extraordinary era of listening and tribute. Hemphill passed away in 1995 and though he never fell away from the community’s eye, we seem, currently, to be paying much more attention. For a good bit of that,it seems we have Marty Ehrlich to thank. Ehrlich worked with Hemphill and his music over the decades, showing that connection clearly in his own body of work. In 2022 New World released The Boyé Multi-National Crusade For Harmony (reviewed here), a 7 disc set of unreleased archival Hemphill recordings, curated by Ehrlich.

Now we are presented with Open Air: The Complete Saxophone Quartet Compositions of Julius Hemphill . We don’t need to ask which quartet we’re talking about. Hemphill’s work (along with Oliver Lake, David Murray, and Hamiet Bluett) as a co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet did not createthe sax quartet, but did so much to map its possibilities and implications that it’s hard to imagine how the sax quartet got along before their work.

But there’s more. Two thirds of the music Hemphill wrote for sax quartet was recorded by the WSQ, but one third of the music here (14 or so tracks) was discovered in Hemphill’s papers after his death. Ehrlich discovered these while doing archive work with Hemphill’s publisher. It’s somewhat amazing to encounter, 30 years after Hemphill’s death, 14 new pieces for saxophone quartet. It’s like suddenly discovering 14 new Goldberg Variations.

(And, no, I do not agree that this is an overwrought analogy. Here’s a bias check for you: there are times when I’m listening to Hemphill’s quartets and I’m completely taken over. In the reverie or ecstasy or elation of those moments, I have been known to think things like, “When God said, let there be music, this is exactly what he was talking about!” I’m not saying I can argue a rational basis for that view, just that sometimes you can look to your elation for a truer kind of truth.)

Ehrlich forms a clutch of saxophonists—Allan Chase, Rob Debellis, Brian Landrus, Andy Laster, Jeff Lederer, Lisa Parrott, and Jason Robinson—into a few quartets, recording the whole body of work over a number of months in 2025.

The listening is exactly as one would hope. With faithful, passionate, and fascinated renditions of the tunes by musicians who love them, and infused with improvisation that leads to revelation. For example, the WSQ piece, “Revue,” is perhaps the best known sax quartet piece out there, and listening, I can’t help but expect the solo from the WSQ’s second album to come after the statement of the head. It’s a dumb expectation, of course, but Brian Landrus’s solo takes me by surprise and winds along a path that returns to the tune by a way I’ve never been before. The harmonies and ensemble playing of this choir of sax angels can be heart stopping, but the solo on top of those are just as amazing.

Ehrlich has shown—particularly on The Hard Blues by his Julius Hemphill Sextet—that he can render the master’s work with skill and authenticity. It’s important because this music is not just interesting and brilliant. It is hard, bluesy, and culturally real as anything you can imagine. It is exactly this mixture of “Stax funk and ‘out’ sensibilities” (to use Tim Berne’s phrase), mixed with an intellectual playfulness, that made Hemphill the composer that he was and keeps me obsessed with his oeuvre thirty years after he’s gone. In case I have to say it, 5 stars.

Other release...

Circle the Heart - Marty Ehrlich and Julius Hemphill (Relative Pitch, 2026)

Circle the Heart also explores the saxophone choir space (a duo is a subset of a choir, right?) and gives us insight into the musical collaboration of Hemphill and Ehrlich. The set is a discovered recording of a glorious 1982 concert. Of six tunes, all are Ehrlich compositions save the last, and, in an odd way, this seems only to confirm the shared DNA between the two. Besides, the intrigue is in the improv. The two are so in tune with each other that it’s not enough to call their duo a conversation, so much as a telepathic bonding. Again, I may be over-egging the metaphor, but it really is that good. 

 

Dogon A.D. - Julius Hemphill (New World Records)

Dogon A.D. may be the most cited gateway drug to outmusic of any record out there. The 1972 masterpiece—with its title track in an insanely addictive 11—was re-released in 2011 by International Phonograph. FJB reviewed it here, giving it five stars and listing it as one of the top 20 free jazz recs of all time. That New World is re-releasing it—remastered and co-produced by the ubiquitous Ehrlich—is only good news. I just thought I’d bring it to your attention.

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Gustavo Coritñas - The Drum Also Sings (Desafio Candente Records, 2026)

By Hrayr Attarian

Chicago-based drummer and composer Gustavo Coritñas is a restless experimenter. His music often includes Latin American folk influences, sociopolitical awareness, and thrilling spontaneity. On The Drum Also Sings, Cortiñas joins forces with two other unique and stylistically very different drummers, Dave King and Isaiah Spencer, to explore the drum kit's lyricism.

For instance, the three-part group improvisation, “Dialogue with the Ancestors” features a definite spirituality. Its chant-like refrains and fiery yet haunting rhythms build an exalted homage to the gods of the past and the primal world itself. Here too, the contrasting styles of the three drummers add another captivating dimension to the piece. King’s exuberant percussion with touches of whimsy, heard on the right, complements Spencer’s darkly hued thundering beats on the left. While Cortiñas, in between his bandmates, adds a contemplative, almost meditative aspect to the collective drumming. Despite the individuality of each musician, the result is delightfully cohesive, stimulating yet never jarring.

The theme of transcendent mysticism runs through the entire album. On “Etinel skotol t'ixt'unel” Mayan spoken word artist Angelina Suyul recites her own poem in her ancestral tongue. A paen to the eternal and the integration of humanity within the universe, Suyul’s performance moves with the hypnotic cadence of her words. Their meaning is almost instinctively understood even before reading the Spanish and English translations.

Chilean vocalist La Paula Herrera delivers Cortiñas’ song “Tu Resiliencia Es Resistencia” with emotional resonance. Her sublime artistry and eloquence amplify the hopefulness and the poignancy of the lyrics. Meanwhile, the intimacy of her voice and the fluidity of her singing enchant and mesmerize.

On “Añay Pachamama” Argentinian musician Maryta de Humahuaca interprets her compatriot, María Farfán Caparros’ ode in the Quechua language. The track glorifies the natural world in a pantheistic tone. The title translates to “Gratitude Mother Earth”, and de Humahuaca imbues it with an appropriate balance of the sacred and the primal. It is simultaneously a joyous and somber religious ceremony.

This conceptual framework continues with vocalist and clarinetist Anget Bat Dawid, who transforms “Psalm 23” into a powerful, impassioned plea. Her thrillingly dissonant clarinet and her bluesy shouts make this biblical verse into a life-affirming protest anthem. It also serves as the perfect conclusion for this intriguing and provocative work.

On the surface, a recording made up primarily of drumming, with little other instrumentation, may sound daunting. Coritñas, however, has made it evocative enough to entrance his audience. Far from mainstream,   The Drum Also Sings   stirs open-minded listeners to their core.

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Summer Bummer 2026

By Paul Acquaro 

 

For a few years, I have had this funny vision of Antwerp’s Summer Bummer festival taking place on a beach near a body of water. I had sunshine, seagull calls and good vibes in this fantasy. In reality, the venue, a rock club called Trix, is located on a busy road amongst high-rise apartment buildings just outside of downtown Antwerp. So, no seagulls, no beach and even the sun was being fickle. It troubled me, what could be the source for this misconception? The only part I had right was the ‘good vibes’. From the moment the first band started up in the darkened main hall on Friday afternoon to the closing tones of a bass-clarinet and electronics show on the intimate cafe stage late Saturday night, there was always something to hear, records to dig, people to talk shop with, and art to make — hardly leaving time to lament the waning days of the summer.

Within the compact time-frame, starting late afternoon and ending around midnight on Friday and Saturday, festival organizers Koen Vandenhout and Christel Kumpen ran a tight program. Concerts were lined-up one after the other with a short break built-in to give the 200+ audience a chance to eat some dinner without developing FOMO. Plus, the sets ping-ponged from the main hall side to the cafe side, so there was always a chance to hit the bar if desired. Between the two halls, merch tables were arranged on all sides, making it dangerous to the wallet to traverse the venue. Parent organization of the festival Sound in Motion’s own Dropa-Disc label was present, as well as a record dealer with a selection of rare taste and local radio station Radio Centraal. If one purchased a t-shirt, or happened to have an extra one on hand, he or she (more likely than not: he) could head into the screen printing workshop and make their own with a festival design. Additionally, set in an adjacent room, musicians Cath Roberts and Tullis Rennie invited festival goers to record and manipulate sounds in a laboratory of their own design. When the weather was cooperative, one could visit the courtyard to procure some homemade food.  

Alexander von Schlippenbach and Paal Nilssen-Love

The Sound In Motion website has the tagline, “Adventurous Music and Things”, and since we have got the things part out of the way, let us talk adventurous music. Not just a free-jazz festival, Summer Bummer’s scope this year included several avant-noise and electronics acts along with some of the most exciting musicians working (primarily) in Europe today. There was something for everyone, for example the ear-bleedingly loud Integral, a quartet comprised of Julien Desprez (guitar), Claire Gapenne (electronics and vocals), Christine Abelnour (sax) and Lukas Koenig (drums) that went from beguiling to battering, to the opening act, Kabas Sun Dogs, a Belgian band who had invited Canadian saxophonist Karen Ng and guitarist Jonathan Horne for a slowly unfolding exploration of both understatement and spirited groove. 

  

Rodrigo Amado, Joelle Leandre and Gerald Cleaver

Highlights festooned the program, including a first time duo of drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and the legendary pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach as well as new trio formed by Rodrigo Amado with bassist Joelle Leandre and drummer Gerald Cleaver. In the duo’s extended set, Schlippenbach performed a chain of melodic ideas and Thelonius Monk song snippets that Nilssen-Love challenged with closely attuned force and precision. After a cautious opening, the trio of Amado, Leandre and Cleaver edged their way into the set, gathering momentum and finding common ground, letting Amado release his powerful tenor, Leandre impress with speed and expressiveness, and Cleaver move seamlessly between texture and forceful pulse.   

 

Daughter, Daughter

The formidable quartet of Daughter, Daughter, comprised of Camila Nebbia and Amalie Dahl (saxophones), Elizabeth Coudoux (cello) and Sun Mi Hong (drums), performed a blend of composition and free-jazz improvisation showcasing both individual contributions as well as whole group interactions. The Berlin formation Das B, featuring Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Magda Mayas (piano), Tony Buck (drums) and Mike Majkowski (bass) was given the designation as a “super group“ in the program and their set did not refute this. Ostensibly deconstructing John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, the quartet engaged in an exploratory and expansive sound collage complete with a trumpet played via surgical tubing and prepared piano that made the acoustic sound electric. Arguably one of the strongest shows of the festival. 

Das B

Additionally, percussionist and singer Maria Portugal presented her EROSÃO Septet (Lotte Anker and Angelika Niescier on saxes, Matthias Müller and Moritz Wesp on trombones, Carl Ludwig Hübsch on tuba and Reza Askari on bass), which performed a set of mid-tempo songs, both self-penned and from Brazilian composers, laced with some spicy improvisations. The next day, Portugal appeared in an exceptional duo with pianist Marta Warelis. As opposed to the septet, in which the music was a presented in more traditional structures, the songs themselves were de-composed and integrated organically with the ideas flowing from the pianist whose gentle and spacious playing grew progressively more ferocious.  

 

Marta Warelis and Maria Portugal

Rounding out the program were two bass clarinet focused sets and several quite noisy ones. Representing the louder side, in addition to the aforementioned Integral, were New Best Friends (featuring Ng and Horne along with bassist Aaron Lumley and drummer Nasim L-P Navarro), the duo of Laurentiu Cotac and Diana Miron, and Mopcut with Desprez, Koenig and electronicist/vocalist Audrey Chen. Of these three, New Best Friends balanced their clamorous impulses best with a flowing set of improvisations. Bookending the festival were two bass clarinet sets. On the first day, John McCowen explored the extended tonalities of the acoustic contra-bass clarinet, exploiting the instrument’s multiphonic capabilities. Closing the festival, Hanna De Backer, in collaboration with the electronics of Yves De Mey, extended her instrument’s sonic possibilities to the outer realms. 

 

Overall, a musically adventurous and enjoyable festival, and although quite satisfied, I was still bothered by one thing: my imaginary festival on a beach. So, after some detective work, I believe I finally pinpointed the source of my whimsical misconception. In 2019, Rodrigo Amado's The Attic released the album Summer Bummer, recorded at the festival in 2018 and whose cover is an image of three cut-out figures sitting on a beach under a cloudless blue sky, looking out at the ocean. I didn’t know I was so impressionable!

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Ava Mendoza - Alive Alone, Alive Together (Burning Ambulance Music, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Guitar in jazz. A strange beast, with which we had some issues coming to terms for a long time. In "traditional" jazz (with all the limitations of that adjective, but you get it), it passed us by almost unnoticed. Sure, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian et al: legends to whom we bow, but, to be honest, they slipped away without leaving any deep or meaningful trace. We’re sorry, respectfully sorry: our fault. Far more interesting is the contribution of guitars in Miles' electric turn, while the super virtuoso sounds of the likes of Pat Metheny or John Scofield left us emotionally inert. As soon as the instrument becomes edgy and menacing, it begins to win us over, Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer first, then Arto Lindsay, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Bill Orcutt, Keiji Haino are the names. The sharper, the better. In our own actual Valhalla, that sees Derek Bailey as the Supreme Odin, recently entered (becoming a sick obsession) Masayuki Takayanagi, a guilty belated epiphany of ours, and guitars as improper weapons take us with the guard down, unable to offer any resistance. 

The current free/improv scene is quite a golden vein, offering guitars for every taste, just head over to the dedicated section of our forum and you could dig in a six-string bonanza until your hands bleed. With Ava Mendoza, whatever the line-up on the field (alone, collaborations, groups), the turntable spins by itself and the moment to quit declaring our boundless love for her, as we did in previous reviews, is still far away. The reason? Very simple: it could be in disguise of country, metal or noise but she's got THE blues. We're obviously talking about the dirty, kind-of-black, hooch-flavored one that inhabits the rosters of Fat Possum and In The Red Records, the spleen of Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the fury of Nick Cave's, pre-Gucci loafers, Birthday Party, the desperation of Alan Vega's solo albums or the hyper saturated textures of Mick Collins’ bands. Did you say Attitude? Ava not only has it, but she proved, with the astonishing Mama Killa project, to be able to cross the Shadow Line, to venture into the Heart of Darkness, coming back to tell all about it. Natural. Gifted. 

The new album, recorded live in Antwerp, Madison, Chicago and Firenze, features the Brooklyn-based musician reinterpreting seven songs from her "New Spell" and "Circular Train" records, along with a new composition, "Mama Cocha”. The recipe is the one we know and love: fuzz, harmonic progressions, solos and distortions are the facets of a virtuosic prism that's never self-referential or an end in itself, but always in service of the Ultimate Ideal: the Blues. The "togetherness" side of the work sees Ava joined by Maestro Hamid Drake, adding his sparse yet extraordinary polyrhythms on four tracks, demonstrating once more, that, as Voltaire said, "les grands esprits se rencontrent." Another solid hit from Phil Freeman's label, whose production portfolio is beginning to take on a truly interesting and relevant profile: long may the Ambulance burn. 

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Angles 4 and Martin Küchen - Liner Notes

These are liner notes by Stef Gijssels for two recent albums by Swedish saxophonist and composer Martin Küchen, first with Angles 4, second for his solo album. 

Angles 4 - (Relative Pitch, 2026)

Listening to Angles 4 here and now, in 2026, feels like a warm homecoming. The album is filled with the grand themes that have resonated throughout the various ensembles over the years, from the Martin Küchen Trio and Angles 6 to Angles 9 and All Included. The quartet knows this material by heart, having performed these compositions for decades. I would almost call them their personal standards: they sound deeply familiar, yet they retain the same power and vigour as they must have had at their very first performances—perhaps now with even greater maturity, intensity and fierceness.

The smaller quartet format gives the musicians more room to explore, express and expand, particularly across the relatively long tracks, most of which run for seven or eight minutes. There is a sense of space in the arrangements, but never a loss of urgency.

The music digs deep into the history of jazz, drawing on the spirit of Mingus and Coltrane, while at times reaching even further back into the history of sound itself—and into the collective emotions of people living through dire times: war, oppression and other horrors. Here, music becomes both a source of comfort and a force of liberation.

Whatever the size of the ensemble, this music remains as infectious as ever.

Listen and download from Bandcamp

 

Martin Küchen - Chase The Demons Out (Thanatosis, 2026)

Brutal sounds. Heart-rending, bleak. Gut-wrenching and abrasive. Sorrowful, dark, mournful, ominous. One musician generating a torrent of expression through three instruments played at once: sopranino saxophone, two horizontal hand drums, along with cymbals, metal plates, and bowls.

We know Martin Küchen from his work with the Angles ensemble—music that unfolds in epic arcs, sweeping themes that speak to a collective emotional space. This is the opposite. Here the music is stripped down to brutal poetry: visceral, concise, unadorned. Short, explosive statements. Limited means used to build intense dramatic pressure. Küchen’s anger at the state of the world is well known, and here it finds direct form in pounding drums and the wailing saxophone. Sound bursts collide and fracture, channeling raw fury.

The opening track, “Chase The Demons Out,” reflects a world drifting toward totalitarianism. Its title echoes a phrase from 1970s Chinese state media calling to “sweep away all demons”—to eliminate those who think differently. The theme feels disturbingly current as war again ravages the Middle East, where rockets, aircraft, and attack drones serve the ambitions of those in power.

The second piece, “Mach kein Krach” (“stop making noise”), recalls Küchen’s father telling him to quiet down as a child—something his son clearly had no intention of doing. The message is the opposite of silence: make your voice heard. Refuse passivity. Rebel, resist, speak up. Make noise.

The third piece, “Mit Ach und Krach,” uses a German expression describing something achieved with great difficulty—through blood, sweat, and tears. Speaking out and resisting the present state of affairs demands exactly that kind of effort.

Taken together, the three brief pieces form a suite: anger at the world, inner rebellion, and the search for the energy to act.

Every saxophone cry, every drum strike carries elemental emotion—horror, pain, rejection, fear—pushed forward by outrage, anger, disgust, and indignation. These forces build toward movement: to resist, to act, to stand together. It will take effort. It will take blood, sweat, and tears.

Once again, Küchen shows his artistic clarity. The music is raw, brutal, uncompromising—and authentic.
The world needs this."


Listen and download from Bandcamp

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Cecil Taylor Unit- Live at the Kimo Theater Albuquerque 1979 (Black Editions Archive, 2026) *****

By Stuart Broomer

There’s nothing so startling as the appearance of a vintage concert tape, in this case some 47 years old, that might illumine your view of a musician’s oeuvre, even a slight shift in focus counting for much. Such is the case with the release of Cecil Taylor’s performance from a New Mexico concert in 1979. Part of the concert was lost, but on the evidence heard here, Taylor was at the helm of one of the finest groups he would ever lead, a relatively unusual quintet that consisted of alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons (with Andrew Cyrille, one of Taylor’s greatest collaborators), drummer Jerome Cooper and two string players, the violinist Ramsay Ameen and Alan Silva, here playing cello as well as his usual bass.

Among extant releases, the two-LP set bears some resemblance, at least in personnel, to It Is in the Brewing Luminous, recorded in 1980 at New York’s Fat Tuesday’s, which had the additional inclusion of drummer Sunny Murray in the band and Alan Silva playing bass, exclusively. His cello playing here is an essential element, especially for the way in which it combines with Ameen’s violin. In a sense, the Albuquerque quintet is a larger band than the New York sextet, in terms of what the opening up of the soundscape makes possible.

Perhaps the most notable thing about the Albuquerque recording is the level of subtle and evolving detail achieved by the quintet and its capture in the extraordinary recording job done by Mike Wolff, who was regularly responsible for recording the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. The University of New Mexico’s Steinway was also borrowed for the performance, giving Taylor a piano appropriate to his special energies. The unusual clarity with which Ameen is heard here gives the performance some of its special significance, particularly in the way that his contribution combines with Silva’s cello in a virtual string section. Jerome Cooper, too, is less polyrhythmic, less aggressive than his predecessor, Andrew Cyrille, who had been the perfect complement in the trio with Taylor and Lyons.

What is highlighted here is the omni-directionality of Taylor’s music, from his thorough absorption of Western “classical” music as well as the jazz tradition and the general legacy of African music in America. Here those elements are present both individually and in Taylor’s special syntheses, those combined and foregrounded strings every bit as African as they are European.

Side C is given over to one of Taylor’s trance rituals, a summoning of spirits -- equivalent perhaps to speaking in tongues -- inspired and unknowable language accompanied by incidental phrases from the instruments, random sounds and Taylor’s piano musings, now enacted directly on the instrument’s strings, all an essential component of the complexity and mystery of Taylor’s far-reaching art.

The music that continues on side D is particularly spacious, opening up with Cooper’s spare percussion and the lyrical motifs of Ameen, Lyons and Taylor, evolving and flowering, still spacious yet dense with high speed content – some of Taylor’s most brilliant moments on record, the other instruments lifted skyward, until it concludes with Taylor’s gravelly equivalent of speaking in tongues, the very practice akin to the untranslatability of Taylor’s complex, contrapuntal, poly-vocal band music and the extrapolating lines and abstract organizing figures with which he guides the music from his piano keyboard.

Live at the KiMo Theater is a special event, reasserting an especially creative and relatively neglected period in Taylor’s career. 

Live at the KiMo Theater will be released on October 16th, but you can listen to a track and pre-order now.

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