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Thursday, November 21, 2024

Ivo Perelman Interview

Photo by Peter Gannushkin
By Sammy Stein

Ivo Perelman is established as a long-time favourite of free-thinking musicians for his technical ability, and musicality – which empower him to play freely to the extent he pushes most of the rules regarding tonality and musical contrasts to the extreme, yet provides cohesion and placement of elements within his sound that reveal the true nature of the patterns to which his music adheres. What Perelman is very good at also is listening, which is why his multiple recordings with chosen collaborators work on different levels. For many, music of such a ‘free’ nature as Perelman plays is difficult to fathom so FJC decided a deep interview and perhaps clarification from Perelman, who is currently one of the greatest exponents of the art was in order.

Twelve albums this year – what has made this year so productive?

The reason for twelve CD releases this year is a combination of things. The creativity, the need to express myself, the ebb and flow at different times, and so on. This year I felt particularly moved and stimulated by the resurgence of techniques – new paths to explore from the technical point of view like timing, altissimo register, low register, in other words, the basics of saxophone playing. These compulsions to explore and re-explore renewed themselves and I was eager to put them to the test in a real situation when I was recording in New York at Park West Studios (In Prospect Park South, Brooklyn). All the parameters are well known to me, and I feel comfortable there. I recorded with a combination of musicians I had worked with in the past, as this is an excellent way to re-examine my relationship with music technique in these particular duos and also several new musicians – new in the sense I had never worked with them before and was not familiar with their playing. This gave me another chance to test and verify if I was going in the right direction in my practice.

As a footnote, the world is currently going through a dramatic situation – political, social, bio-physical, and climate-wise– and this affects artists because we clearly understand where we, as humankind, are going and what we are maybe approaching. The need to speak through music is ineffable and words cannot address these issues properly, so I found myself looking for possible dates in the studio. Several labels had kept recordings in their cans in the vaults waiting to release them, so I felt it good to release these. That is why twelve CDs this year.

You have collaborated with many musicians. What ticks your boxes when considering a musician to work with?

I wish I had a formula when listening to somebody’s music to determine the degree of compatibility and success I could have with them but there is no such formula. It is mainly instinctive appreciation. Of course, right away I might think, ‘Well, this person comes from a similar background as me,’ be it classical or jazz. If jazz, then I have to ask myself ‘What kind of jazz?’ The same can be said of the person’s technical ability to execute and perform. I form an instinctive opinion. Mind you, too much technique can be as non-productive as not enough. What matters is a person’s ability to convey their inner vision and their voice. That is way more important than technique, knowledge, amassed languages, or how much history of jazz, classical, or world music this person has. To sum it up, it is a mixture of some analytical rationale but mainly it is instinct. I would say ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of the time when I have listened to someone and made a decision, I was right. In many encounters, I was pleasantly surprised to find that what I thought was compatibility was extreme congeniality. This part of the music-making business makes me very happy – because it works.

Finally, on this question the main ingredient of a person’s palette of talents I look for when deciding to record with whoever is spontaneity. That is the most important thing over anything else I have talked to you about. It’s hard to determine to a high degree what the person’s ability to react spontaneously with me is going to be. Sometimes a person is playing with other people and there might be facts that impede them from reacting spontaneously. It might be something that happened the night before, the surroundings in the studio – it is a very subjective matter. That said, I can usually tell how spontaneous a musician I am listening to is likely to be. So, spontaneity is the number one ingredient I am looking for in a musician before we finally get to do a recording.

What is it I try to hear in a musical partnership? A musician who can convey their inner voice with fluidity using whatever technical, psychological, or existential apparatus he or she has that will enable the musicians to come across coherently. What I mean by ‘coherently’ is something I can codify (or decodify). It doesn't have to be ‘coherent, structured’ music. Music is like anything–it can be rational, or irrational. It can follow the chaos theory, or a predictable mathematical pattern and all that involves.

Anything to add on spontaneity?

Here’s an interesting thought regarding spontaneity. With some musicians, the less spontaneous they are, the more prefabricated, pre-tested, and tried licks and lines they will play. That's not a 100 percent rule that works at all times. Some great musicians can be very spontaneous but for reasons that escape my understanding, they prefer to stick to a rigid protocol of recreating lines or similar lines that constitute the jazz vernacular, or that of mainstream jazz, which is a beautiful language that I love and grew up listening to. Some musicians are like this. Other musicians, however, the more spontaneous they are the less they need or prefer to resort to licks and line study, and they prefer to give way to their imagination and let the music dictate what will be said next. So, they will preview a musical line and in a split-second recreate a line on their instruments.

Do you ever collaborate with someone you have not played with before?

Sometimes I do it, but it is a risk. Some boxes have to be ticked so I know we have a good chance of communicating. If I know they are reputable and he or she works with many of my usual cohorts, then I will take the maximum risk and that excites me. It is my favourite challenge. It is like meeting someone for the first time. You are on your toes and very alert, and usually the music-making benefits immensely.

Playing live is different, I guess, from recording. Where is your favourite venue?

It was The Knitting Factory on Houston Street in New York. It is no more as it moved to another location (Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn). Anyhow, it was a genuine, underground place that started to gain a reputation for being an authentic meeting spot for up-and-coming creative musicians. Many of the well-established acts that exist today cut their teeth there. That's where I met many of the great people I play with. I once met Paul Bley outside the Knitting Factory while waiting for a show and had a great conversation with him. At the time, I was talking with this guy, whose name I didn’t know but he had great insight on so many beautiful topics –philosophy and others and we talked for over an hour. At the end of our conversation, he said, ‘Well, thank you very much, my name is Paul Bley,’ and I said ‘What? Paul Bley the pianist?’ I invited him to come the next day to a recording session I was having in Manhattan and he showed up, sat at a piano, and improvised a piece and that was that. So I have great memories of the Knitting Factory.

Another great venue is the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. I had great gigs there, though I only played there a couple of times. They have a restaurant, they treat you well, feed you before the gig, and draw incredible crowds that appreciate the music. Not to mention that I saw so many great musicians there – Charles Gayle, and Matthew Shipp – one of the first times I saw Matt Shipp live was back in the 1990s there – so many great memories. Usually, if a venue treats you right, you can feel it in the air and when the public shows up, knows you, and respects you, magic is created.

You are originally from Brazil – do you know what the music industry is like there? What made you move to the US?

I left Brazil some 43 years ago searching to deepen my understanding of music. I was playing semi-professionally in New Orleans style back then and trying to absorb as much as I could from what was available. There was no internet, and today young musicians can learn quite a bit by searching for apps and long-distance schooling, but back then, there was this almost mysterious aura about jazz. How to learn it was my question. I was slowing down solos, notating them, trying to emulate my favourite players– like Wayne Shorter and Paul Desmond but it seemed the only way to truly experience jazz was by living in the United States, making it a wholly immersive experience –a life experience. I had a friend who had a scholarship to Berklee College, and I applied, got accepted, and left Brazil. I have been away from Brazil for so many years that I am not really familiar with the music industry there. But it seems that the few major recording labels left there are interested in what they call ‘vocal music.’ Other music like classical, jazz, and other instrumental music – even Brazilian music like choro is not really fostered. The big Brazilian bucks are in the major pop industry – the major singers – and they have excellent pop music to this day. Besides all that, it is pretty much like in the US. There’s a blossoming market surrounding Internet platforms, with artists taking matters into their own hands, releasing their projects, and getting by like that. It’s been a challenging time, but the main thing is to get your message across, find your audience, and take it from there.

We have discussed music and free jazz a lot and you have said free jazz is the closest to classical music in your opinion. Some might disagree but could you expand on this thought, so people understand what you mean?

They are extremes of the same axis - they are diametrically opposed to one another and very different, completely different, so that is why they are the same thing. Let me explain. The responsibility you have when writing music for the classical world is huge because you have all the time in the world to analyse and reflect on what you did. One hundred percent. You can wake up in the middle of the night and write more or erase everything. Free jazz is the exact opposite. You don’t have the luxury of undoing what you just did, whether live or in the studio. Both languages require a huge reservoir of knowledge and technical means. It is definitely not for budding musicians, students, or wannabes. If you are a composer, you have to be born a composer. You hone your skills through intense studies and the same goes for free jazz musicians. Imagine playing your instrument in a context where anything and everything is allowed and possible and only dictated by your will, and most likely comes from this spontaneous compartment in your mental apparatus. That requires a lot of responsibility. Because of that, I think they are diametrically opposed, and yet completely different, which makes them the same thing, the exact opposites, the reverse of the reverse. I understand why some people will not understand or get it but free jazz at its most effective presentation, played by the most respected prominent artists, has the same structure, and solidity of development of ideas as classical music at its best. If we are talking about great composers – those born with that gift, that have the same spontaneity, although the music is pre-thought and pre-composed, it has a flow that gives the impression that they are playing for the first time with total honesty. I guess that explains it.

You play a lot in the altissimo register – why is this?

I can understand why you ask me why I play so much in the altissimo register but that’s not how I see it. I play what’s available to me technically. If I may, let me explain. Ever since I was a boy, when I started my music studies, playing classical guitar, then electric guitar before I moved to clarinet, trombone, piano, and other instruments, I always had an affinity with the high register. This was especially true when I was studying and playing rock with bands. All those high-screaming guitar solos talked to me, so I have had an affinity for those sounds ever since. Then when I started winging it a little bit and studying singing I learned that I could sing in falsetto. You cannot fake it.

So when I began studying the saxophone I naturally geared towards and listened to musicians who could play the altissimo registers. I tried to perfect this obsessively using different techniques and some I had to develop to achieve my goals. So, I feel my altissimo has an articulated nature that differs from other musicians. This is very seductive to me because I want to play the altissimo with the same control as I play other registers –being in tune, steady-toned, and the tone has that full body– I don’t want to thin out in the altissimo.

It takes a lot of work daily because the muscles involved are many and you have to keep practicing daily in order to always be ready. As with so many professional musicians, I don’t have that much time to practice but I go for that as one of my hierarchies of practice methods. Altissimo is there every day. Even if I don’t have time to practice anything else, I will practice my altissimo – it is a challenge. So I sound different from other players in that regard. So therefore you don’t hear altissimo as much in other sax players’ playing, although this is changing. The new generation seems to be evolving towards that. So, when you ask me why I play in altissimo so much, it is not that I play a lot in altissimo, it is that most sax players don’t play there enough. I understand your question, but I play there because it is under my fingers, it is inside my head. I hear it and find it a valuable way to express drama, contrast, and reach the musical phrasing I feel. I hope that explains.

You release on your own label as well as established labels – are there advantages and disadvantages?

I enjoy recording music and releasing it on a multitude of labels and also on my label, especially recently. I have beefed up my need to produce recordings. The advantages and disadvantages are that if I have produced the music I am in control of everything from scratch, from the cover design to the date of release. Not that labels don’t do a good job, they do but it is just more fun. You get closer to your ‘child,’ your recording and it is another avenue for self-expression. A disadvantage is most labels have a solid structure and that is what they do – they don’t have to practice the saxophone and think about other things because the business is their main goal, so they make the phone calls, promote, and call the writers but for sure labels make sure that their product is widely available wherever possible – digital and even physical outlets. There are few physical outlets available for this kind of music – or any music for that matter.

You are known for approaching particular writers to review your music ( and I include many of the FJC journalists here). Why might this be and what do you think a writer needs to be able to critique music properly?

I have over the years got to know several jazz critics through their writing and thoughts. I kind of got close to them in a way and one starts to understand their philosophical, if I may, point of view in life and their understanding of life and music. It is hard to be a critic because art is a highly subjective experience, and it is hard to transfer that to words and then to another human being’s understanding, and what the text says will not necessarily agree with the listener’s perception of the music. It is a healthy exercise in the idiosyncratic human values. Most of the time I don’t agree with critics, not because the review is good or bad but because it is such a personal experience of what I felt and what it felt like to perform in the studio with other musicians, and afterward. That is something else. I believe art is a vehicle for daily transformation so your perception of how it feels changes from moment to moment, so it is very difficult to write and be a critic. I highly respect them for sticking their neck out and trying to do that because it is helpful for the music industry to have writers convey their impressions because that helps spread artists’ inner vision. I have got to know some wonderful writers. They comprise a smaller group within an already small group. Those are folks that I have read, and they always keep me perplexed either because their vision coincides with mine – which is amazing – or because their views do not coincide with mine, but I learn a great deal. That is even more amazing because it is a transformative tool, and I welcome the views where a writer thinks that it does not make sense or whatever. That is a very deep subject, Sammy.

Ok, so a lighter question. What next for Ivo Perelman musically?

I have reached a phase where I am at the end of a cycle of re-investigating the fundamentals of music: sound production, the language I hear in my head, fundamentals of the language that others have professed. What I am focussing on now - and I can see this will be the major goal for the next few years– is deepening my understanding of my primary instrument, which is my own body which plays the instrument I play which is the saxophone. I have been studying the Alexandra Technique for over 25 years now and have been intensifying that study because I can tell that the time has come to go to the next level. It was created by F M Alexander – a Tasmanian who moved to London in the last century and established a centre for teaching the technique he devised. He was a Shakespeare recital actor who lost his voice when he was performing. Doctors could not help him, so he took a sabbatical to try to understand and self-study to see what he was doing. He did this in front of mirrors because the problem – the hoarseness in his voice– only came about when he recited. He came up with an ingenious technique of conscious control of oneself. That is exciting. It is not specifically music, but it is the mechanism that operates music that is my own body. (Ivo later told me he is coming over to the UK in October to record with John Butcher. Ivo describes Butcher as a ‘multi-faceted musician with an original, elegant, yet powerful sax voice. He collaborated with Matthew Shipp, among many other major artists, which is a further testament to his versatile in-the-moment highly sophisticated skills.’ This should make an interesting recording.

Ivo never fails to intrigue and surprise – we can only wonder where his next musical path will take him.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Music Unlimited Festival #38, Wels, Austria, Nov. 8-10

By Eyal Hareuveni

This year’s edition of the festival was curated by Ken Vandermark, one of the unofficial mayors of the Music Unlimited community throughout the years, who said that this festival is the most important festival for him. The festival ran under the slogan: The Future In Both Directions and devised by Vandermark (together with the director of the festival Wolfgang Wasserbauer) around the essential dynamic between innovative improvisers from the past and present, and how this interplay will affect the future, with many musicians associated with the Catalytic Sound musician cooperative. John Corbett (of the Corbett vs Dempsey gallery and label, who mentored young Vandermark already in the late eighties) expanded on this idea and found common similarities in the way great improvisers tested the relevance of their now - Charlie Parker who named his tune “Now’s the Time” was different from the now of Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, or the implied now in Ornette’s Tomorrow is the Question, and, again, different from Joe McPhee’s Pieces of Time or Derek Bailey and Tony Coe’s Time, or The Ex’s History Is What’s Happening, or Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come. Vandermark brought from Chicago the huge artwork of Dan Grzeca and Richard Hull, Trojan Horse Exquisite Corpse, and reminded us all that culture often functions as a trojan horse. Vandermark quoted The Ex’ always-relevant song “Listen to the Painters” which corresponded with Grzeca and Hull’s suggestive artwork and our troubling times:

“We need poets, we need painters 

We need poets, we need painters

We need poetry and paintings…

Narrow minds are weapons made for mass destruction

File them under giant ass seduction

Sheep with crazy leaders, heading for disaster

Courting jesters who take themselves for masters…”

The festival also celebrated a photo exhibition of Belgian gifted photographer Geert Vandepoele, Let the Free be Free.


1st Night, Nov. 8

The opening performance featured an ad-hoc quartet in its only second performance yet (the first one was in the Music Unlimited edition of 2002 as Skins & Strings with Vandermark as a guest) featuring two master drummers - Dutch Han Bennink and American Hamid Drake with The Ex guitarists - Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor. Bennink, now 82 years old but energetic as ever, plays with Hessels as a duo and collaborated many times with The Ex, directed this noisy commotion with a perfect sense of timing and great humor, cutting the improvisations when they went too far, charmed the audience when he sang a ballad dedicated to the late Misha Mengelberg and enjoyed the playful dynamics with Drake, who later on thanked him for “opening the door” for a younger generation of drummers. The performance lost momentum when Hessels’ finger was cut and covered his ancient Guild guitar with blood, But Hessels did not give up and kept playing with a drum stick, screwdriver and a plastic cover on the guitar strings.

The second set was by the duo of American trumpeter Nate Wooley and British Drummer Paul Lytton, two associates of Vandermark, who already released three duo albums. Both Wooley and Lytton explored unconventional techniques for the trumpet and the drum set, taking the concept of “cleaning the creative slate”, and often their masterful, introspective and thoughtful performance sounded like a poetic, abstract dialog of sonic magicians sketching fragmented, mysterious themes. Surprisingly, this set gravitated into the uplifting, anthem melody of South African trumpeter Mongezi Feza’s "You Aint Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me".

The set was of the Belgian trio g a b b r o - baritone sax and bass clarinet Hanne de Backer, pianist Andreas Bral and drummer Raf Vertessen - and focused on slow-cooking dynamics that highlighted De Backer's gift to tell imaginative, complex stories with infectious energy, humor and elegance, adding wordless vocals and wooden recorder that added a folky, cinematic dimension to the delicate stories. Bral and Vertessen, who played in the last album of g a b b r o, The moon appears when the water is still (Self-Released, 2022) documenting a walk on the Belgian coastline in the company of a camel, embraced beautifully her enchanting musical stories,

The fourth set featured the quartet of Japanese Otomo Yoshihide on turntables and electric guitar and Sachiko M on sine-waves, German Axel Dörner on a trumpet augmented with electronics and Austrian percussionist Martin Brandlmayr (of Radian), who has been working since 2005. These idiosyncratic, fearless improvisers offered the creative and attentive manner of sculpting subtle sounds into suggestive textures throughout the deconstruction and reconstruction of the sonic palette and the musical histories of the trumpet, the electric guitar and the turntables, but mostly impressed with Brandlmayr’s unique approach to time, timing, and texture. This quartet insists that meaningful and sensual music can be made with noises. It may be unsettling as it frees itself from common aesthetics, but resistance draws its greatest strength from the quiet in a time of disquieting events.

The first night ended with a powerful set of DKV, the longest-running band of Vandermark with double bass player Kent Kessler and drummer Hamid Drake, celebrating this year its thirtieth anniversary, and its third performance at the festival (its first performance at the festival was documented in Live In Wels & Chicago, Okka, Disk, 1999). The masterful performance reaffirmed the charismatic, commanding presence of DKV, the telepathic dynamics and the profound rapport of Vandermark, Kessler and Drake, singing and dancing through melodic themes and moving as one massive, propulsive rhythmic unit from one cathartic climax to another.


2nd Day, Nov. 9

The afternoon performances were held at the Landesmusikschule, close to the festival HQ, and offered three free improvising duos. The first one was also the first meeting of Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik (who plays with Vandermark in the DEK trio with drummer Didi Kern) with American guitarist Joe Morris and was focused on deep listening, introspective exchange of ideas, The dynamics were immediate and flowed organically and both Harnik and Morris always served its free-associative stream of ideas, even when it was totally free. The second set was also a first meeting between British veteran vocal artist Maggie Nichols, a frequent guest of the festival, and American-Korean electronics player Bonnie Han Jones, a member of the Catalytic Sound cooperative, in her first appearance at the festival. Again, the musical chemistry was immediate and respectful, and Jones ornamented beautifully Nichols’ musing about free improvisation (“mistakes take us somewhere”) and against the war in Gaza. Surprisingly, and at first, without appreciating the irony, Nichols’ encore was the traditional Scottish folk song “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean”, which obviously, delighted the audience and Han Jones. The last set featured a classic drum and sax format - with the great Han Bennink and the young but already great Danish alto sax player Mette Rasmussen, who have played together before. Rasmussen was in her most jazzy mode and Bennik entertained his antics, including telling a joke about a drummer bewitched into a frog. It was a joyful, uplifting set, full of passion, humor and risk-taking.

The evening began with a performance of the trio Arashi - Japanese alto sax player-clarinetist-vocalist Akira Sakata, Swedish double bass player Johan Berthling and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, equipped with four gongs, a day before beginning a Japanese tour. Arashi - 嵐 - means storm in Japanese (the trio is titled after a legendary album by the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, in which Sakata played, with the butoh dance group Dairakudakan Frasco, 1977) and the free improvised set of the trio was structured like a stormy ritual, beginning with a meditative and restrained piece, then exploring a perfect, cathartic storm, leading to Sakata reciting with a commanding emotional power a famous Japanese anti-war poem by Shuntarō Tanikawa, “死んだ男の残したものは” (What the dead man left behind, to which Tōru Takemitsu composed music. Thanks for Eckhart Derschmidt for the translation), and finishing with a contemplative, majestic-ritualist encore that sounded as purifying the space from any sympathy for aggressors anywhere and in any time.

The second set featured an American Mid-West quartet, the Oceanic Beloved - soprano sax player Marcus Elliot, vibes player Victor Vieira-Branco, legendary double bass player Jaribu Shahid and drummer Ben Hall, who founded this quartet. This quartet expands the legacy of AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and St. Louis’ Black Artists Group. This quartet offered its own conversational, economic and reserved form of raw and lyrical free jazz, or as Hall calls it “Trunk Rattle Jazz”, explored through patient, slow-shifting variations.

In between sets, and outside the festival hall - Vandermark and Hessels introduced outside, in the freezing cold, their new duo album This Is Not A Holiday, with Hessels’ partner Emma Fischer improvising a painting.

Vandermark introduced Gush - Swedish reed player Mats Gustafsson and pianist-vocalist Sten Sandell (drummer Raymond Strid had to cancel due to excruciating back pains) who has been working since 1988 - by saying that seeing a performance of the trio in the mid-nineties in Chicago was a “mind-altering” experience that changed what he thought improvised music

could be and how it could be made, and later opened for him a long-running collaboration with Gustafsson. The set featured Gustafsson in his most vulnerable, emotional and lyrical playing - on tenor and baritone saxes and flute, crying and moaning in an Ayler-ian mode, but wisely contrasted with ironic, subtle comments of Sandell and his poetic wordless vocalizations, that emphasized the profound, unpredictable dynamics of Gush.

This night ended with one Circus, Paal Nilssen-Love’s new “Dance band”, featuring vocalist Juliana Venter, trumpeter Thomas Johansson, alto sax player Signe Emmeluth, accordionist Kalle Moberg and electric bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen, augmented by The Ex’ guitarists - Hessels, Moor and Arnold de Boer. And if you thought that Nilssen-Love’s level of energy was already insane during the set of Arashi you have seen nothing yet. He played faster and louder, pushing Circus forward with irresistible, earth-shaking force. Circus allows all musicians to do whatever they want at any given time but this band already settled on an inclusive mode that embraces elements from West Africa, Brazilian and Ethiopian music, free jazz, punk and spoken word and tap dancing, which keeps its anarchistic chaos with humor and rhythmic power. The Ex’ guitarists already performed with Circus in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis (and an album that captured this performance is due out in March 2025) but in this performance, the expanded Circus did a wild, noisy cover of a song of an obscure Scottish punk band Stretchheads turned by Venter into a call for freedom for all, and, obviously, for Free Palestine!. This set reached stratospheric, ecstatic territories, and forced all to dance, if only in the seats (and as MC Guy Peters suggested, moving the hips a few centimeters in each direction is considered legitimate dance).


3rd and Last Day, Nov. 10

The afternoon performances moved to the picturesque space of Bildunghasu Schloss and offered three more duets, accompanied by an improvised painting of Emma Fischer. The first one was the first meeting of Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk with Austrian bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer, both regular guests of the festival. Blonk told dramatic, wordless stories and Gartmayer chose to serve his expressive storytelling by resonating cleverly his dadaist vocal gestures and adding a sparse rhythmic pulse. The second set featured the one and only Joe McPhee reading insightful and amusing poems about music, and playing the tenor sax, accompanied by Vandermark on tenor sax (both have been collaborating since Vandermark invited McPhee to play in Chicago, resulting in the album A Meeting in Chicago, Okka Disk, 1998. Check McPhee reading his poems on Musings of a Bahamian Son: Poems and Other Words by Joe McPhee, Corbett Vs Dempsey, 2024). McPhee told life lessons of Ornette Coleman who was once asked by trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr.: in what key would like us to play, and the master answered: the only keys I have are the keys in my pocket. McPhee finished this inspiring set with the poem “Fuck Free Jazz”, with McPhee asking the audience to suspend belief and imagine him reading it in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson: …Over sixty years is a long time, fuck free jazz, time for new shit. This afternoon concluded with another “dance band” - the duo of Chicagoan sound artist Damon Locks with Austrian drummer Didi Kern (who plays with Vandermark in the DEK trio). Kern immediately locked Locks’ spontaneously combined beats, words and samples in tight, electrifying grooves and kept feeding Locks with incisive rhythmic ideas that allowed Locks to dance - literally - with his imaginative ideas.

The evening performance began with an ad-hoc sextet with improvisers selected by Vandermark - baritone sax player Hanne De Backer, alto sax player Mette Rasmussen, double bass players Norwegian Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and American Luke Stewart, Brazilian drummer Mariá Portugal and sound artist Damon Locks. The music was propelled by the powerhouse rhythm section of Portugal, Håker Flaten and Stewart, allowing De Backer, Rasmussen and Locks to add melodic layers and dance with soar over the rhythmic drive, but it climaxed with all locked into a Brazilian groove powered by Portugal and conducted playfully by Rasmussen and De Backer.

The second set offered a new quartet of Austrian electronics player-vocalist Christof Kurzmann with Danish sax hero Lotte Anker, with whom Kurzmann played in a duo format before, American drummer Tim Daisy, who plays with Kurzmann in Vandermark’s Made to Break quartet, and Argentinian cellist Paula Sanchez acting as an agent provocateur in this quartet. This was the second performance of the quartet before heading to a studio recording of its material. Kurzmann always knows how to capture the distressing spirit of the times with wise poetic references, and thoughtful improvisations, and in this set, he recited a poem about the “dangerous time” we are living in, then he and Portugal chanted - in English and Portuguese - “For No One Is A Slave” (referencing Goethe’s saying: No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so) and finishing this inspired, moving set with a cover of Robert Wyatt’s iconic song “Dondestan” (“Palestine is a country / or at least used to be…”).

The next set featured Vandermark’s Edition Redux quartet featuring young Chicagoans - keyboard player Erez Dessel Keyboard, tuba and electronics player Beth McDonald and drummer Lily Finnegan. This quartet offered Vandermark’s recent methods for composing

for improvisers, combining ideas from free and experimental jazz, post-rock, dub, funk, contemporary music and electronics, all channeled into complex unpredictable and layered textures. Vandermark’s compositions for Edition Redux cleverly balanced between precise and well-coordinated notated reading of the charts and powerful, rhythmic free improvisations.

The festival concluded - almost - with a performance of its home “dance band”, The Ex - Hessels, Moor, de Boer and drummer-vocalist Katherina Bornefeld, celebrating its 45th anniversary in its 14th visit to the festival. MC Guy Peters, who is now busy writing the biography of The Ex, told some necessary facts about this influential band. Hessels’ battered Guild guitar is called in Ethiopia Lucy, after the female skeleton of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis, considered to be about 3.2 million years old, and de Boer, who has played with The Ex 650 performances is still “the new guy”. This time, there was plenty of space to dance and enjoy the much-awaited new songs of Th Ex’ upcoming album (only two were released as a single - “Great!” and “The Evidence”), and the celebration became happier and crazier when sax players - Mats Gustafsson, Hanne De Backer and Ken Vandermark, all with baritone saxes, and Mette Rasmussen on alto sax, joined the celebration and jumped and danced on stage (in Guy Peters definition of dancing). No better conclusion for an inspiring, life-affirming festival and its unique spirit and strong and supportive community.

But it really ended with s short, wild session of drummer Mariá Portugal and cellist Paula Sanchez, located within the audience. Waiting now for the next year's edition of the festival.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

The Art of Marta Warelis

 By Stef Gijssels

Over the past years, Polish pianist Marta Warelis has really made a name for herself, and not surprisingly, she is in high demand for collaborations with forward-thinking musicians. Het style is gentle, lyrical, elliptical. She does not need many notes to tell a story. She is also a wonderful sound colorist, adding another dimension when accompanying others. We select two albums on which she plays a key role this year. Other albums that she participates in this year are "Hammer, Roll and Leaf" with Sakina Abdou and Toma Gouband, "Spontaneous Live Series 014" with Florian Stoffner & Rudi Fischerlehner, "Koniec" with Sebastiaan Janssen, Hubert Kostkiewicz, Ken Vandermark, "Escape" with Andy Moor. Too much to review in one article. So more reviews to come ...

Marta Warelis, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten - Sun Lit Starlings (Weird Cry Records, 2023)


Warelis' style and inherent quality is easiest to assess on this duo album with Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, because it pushes her to the lead voice, and it suits her perfectly. 

Her piano sounds flow like a fresh mountain river, gurgling, dancing and leaping, changing course every so often without changing direction, surprising and coherent. Ingebrigt Håker Flaten is the perfect companion for this journey. He's an incredibly good listener and he follows the piano keys as he's playing the instrument himself. 

Warelis is lyrical, a pleasure to hear, and indeed, she does not need many notes to tell an intimate story, it all comes so naturally and organically that it's almost uncanny. The long last piece on this album is exceptional, with a beautiful theme that she builds the whole improvisation on, expanding, changing the intensity, the power and the pitch, playing with it, and taking it for long breakneck speed runs on her keyboard. 

The album is not long, around thirty minutes or so, yet it's excellent. It was recorded at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam on two separate occasions: August 2021 and June 2022. I wish they had recorded more because this really deserves some further exploration. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp

Klein, Rosaly, Warelis - Tendresse (Relative Pitch Records, 2024)


On this trio album she performs with Tobias Klein on bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, and Frank Rosaly on drums and percussion, and she demonstrates her art in spades. The three musicians have been playing together for a few years, because they all reside in Amsterdam at the moment, as expats from Poland, Germany and the USA.

The album's title "Tendresse" ("tenderness" in English), is an appropriate description of the music. They explore their music with gentle diligence, giving space to the others, communicating with soft gestures, unobtrusive and subdued, yet with a lot of character and style. 

All three musicians are in excellent shape. Klein often takes the lead voice; Rosaly is a master of precision, creating both tension and relief through his thoughtful playing, and Warelis is happy in all roles, in her wonderful chime-like piano sound or resorting to more percussive work or stretched tones inside her instrument. The musicians give each other a lot of space. There are moments when the percussion is the only instrument for a while, or there are interactions between Klein and Rosaly and it's even hard to assess whether Warelis is still part of the process, yet surprisingly, their open improvisations always come back together fluently and smoothly. 

Tender and creative music.

Listen and download from Bandcamp


Watch a short video of one of her recent performances: 

Monday, November 18, 2024

The Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura & Tatsuya Yoshida Axis

By Eyal Hareuveni

Readers of the blog do not need any introduction to the work of partners in music and life - prolific Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. Equally prolific Japanese drummer-bandleader-label owner Tatsuya Yoshida is known for his Ruins-related projects and countless prog-fusion-experimental-polyrhythmic jazz that he leads, his collaborations with Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, Keiji Haino, Otomo Yoshihide and John Zorn, his great love to the French prog-zehul band Magma or his ability to condense all the discography of YES into a few minutes medley.

Amanojaku 天邪鬼 - Bishamonten 毘沙門天 (Libra/Magaibutsu, 2024)

Amanojaku (天邪鬼, which can be translated as an antagonistic demon in Japanese folklore) is a new trio of pianist Satoko Fujii, who adds a frightening “death voice” on one piece, her partner, trumpeter-percussionist Natsuki Tamura, and drummer-vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida. Bishamonten 毘沙門天 (Vaisravana, the (guardian god of Buddhism) is the debut album of this trio - released only on Bandcamp as an apéritif before an official album, which was formed during the Covid-19 pandemic, initially as a free improvising band “with a Japanese taste”, but developed into a band that juggles between improvised and composed parts.

The album was recorded live at Tokyo’s Shibuya Koen-dori Classics and Kichijoji Mandala in June and February 2024. Tamura conceptualized the trio's irreverent approach by saying that his songs are “like farts” and Fujii and Yoshida gladly embraced his eccentric vision for Amanojaku. There is certainly an exotic and mysterious Japanese flavor to this band with its hyperactive, hyper-fast, and subversive ritualistic veins, that restlessly keep swinging between the intense and roaring to the lyrical and emotional poles, often within the same pieces. But miraculously, Amanojaku succeeds in choreographing the strong-minded personalities of Fujii, Tamura and Yoshida into wild but balanced, possessed-by-friendly demons dances (and other godly collisions), and making its powerful sound much bigger than that of a trio that plays only acoustic instruments. It ends with the enigmatic, quiet incantations of “Bonnoh”.


Kira Kira - Live (Alister Spence Music, 2024)

Kira Kira extends the ongoing collaboration of Fujii and Tamura with Australian pianist-composer Alister Spence (including duos with Fujii, with Fujii Orchestra Kobe and in the Scottish sax player Raymond MacDonald’s International Big Band). The first incarnation of Kira Kira, documented on Bright Force (Libra, 2018), added drummer Ittetsu Takemura (who plays in Fujii Tokyo Trio). Live, recorded live during a tour of Kira Kira at Shibuya Koen-dori Classics and Jazz Inn Lovely in Nagoya in January 2024, replaced Takemura with Yoshida, who recorded and mixed the music.

Spence plays in Kira Kira the vintage Fender Rhodes with effects pedals and preparations. Fujii also adds preparations to her piano. The atmosphere is more spacious, still hyperactive and dramatic with a vibe of anything-could-happen-anytime but with enough room for distinct, improvised solo roles. Spence’s Fender Rhodes colors the music with fusion flavors and intensifies Fujii piano playing while Tamura and Yoshida push to more energetic edges. Yoshida’s “Vertical Rainbow” highlights his boundless energy and sounds that he is all over the drum set, never letting the music lose its manic, polyrhythmic force. Fujii’s “Bolognaise” shifts from the eccentric-ironic, fragmented and restless commotion, articulated best by Tamura and Yoshida's wordless gibberish, to the contemplative and lyrical, delivered beautifully in Fujii and Tamura's reserved solos, and ends with a powerful coda. Spence’s “Green Energy” begins in a ghostly-mysterious, resonant spirit that patiently spirals and widens its wave-like attacks. Tamura’s “Cat Parade” (he is well known feline lover) is the most playful and uplifting piece here with its propulsive grooves. The album ends with the free improvised “Kite” that cements the strong, collective sound and grooves of Kira Kira.


Satoko Fujii Quartet - Dog Days of Summer (Libra, 2024)

Dog Days of Summer follows the Bandcamp-only, live album of Fujii Quartet - with Tamura, Yoshida and electric bass player Takeharu Hayakawa (a long-time member of reed player Kazutoki Umezu’s Doctor Umezi Band and Kiki Band), After Fifteen Years, Live At Buddy , recorded at Tokyo’s Buddy in July 2023. This quartet, known also as the Vulcan Quartet after its debut album and its bombastic dynamics, released four albums between 2001 and 2007, and surprisingly, became again a working band.

The live album focused on Fujii’s old book of compositions for the quartet. Dog Days of Summer was recorded nine months later at Orpheus Recording Studios in Tokyo in April 2024 and features seven new compositions of Fujii for the now wiser and more experienced quartet that do not attempt to replicate the earlier, fusion-rock dynamics of the quartet. The quartet still has direct, energetic dynamics and still collides the aggressive, powerhouse rhythm section of Yoshida and Hayakawa, with his effects-laden fuzzy bass, and the more understated but no less powerful melodic veins of Fujii and Tamura, but now the quartet plays Fujii’s complex compositions in a more disciplined and tight manner that leaves more room for the strong personalities of the four musicians. Fujii lets Hayakawa become the backbone of the quartet with his muscular yet precise playing (listen to his beautiful solo on the title piece) but wisely choreographs and balances the kinetic rhythm section with the subtle, lyrical solos of her and Tamura, both sound more jazz-oriented than ever. One of the most justified reunions of this century.

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Jason Kao Hwang - Sunday Interview

Photo by Peter Gannushskin
  1.  What is your greatest joy in improvised music?

    When musicians hear each other deeply, exchanging essential energies, faster than cognition and more deeply than emotions, to ultimately unify within a consciousness of truth, even for a fleeting moment, is a great joy and inspiration.

  2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?

    Musicians with the imagination to discover their individualism, which opens the expression of soul.

  3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?

    There are too many artists that I love equally. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Jeff Beck, Keith Jarrett, Borah Bergman, and Cecil Taylor, are a few examples.

  4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?

    Borah Bergman. Though we played many sessions at his place, we never recorded. I wish we did. Borah is a great original who was a true friend.

  5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?

    I will strive to grow my creativity and skills as composer, violinist, and violist.

  6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?

    I don’t listen to much pop music…I like Taylor Swift when she sings just with her guitar or piano, not in the pop arrangements that diminish her lyrics… Brittany Howard is great. Going back, Queen, James Brown, Aretha Franklin.

  7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

    I am grateful for who I am, a person with strengths and flaws. The strengths could not exist without the flaws.

  8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?

    Soliloquies, Human Rites Trio, Critical Response, and Uncharted Faith are my most recent recordings. I am proud of all of them. I’m in my prime now.

  9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?

    In the process of mixing my own recordings, I listen to a track hundreds of times. Once the CD is released, I rarely listen again.

  10. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?

    No single album comes to mind. But, I do listen to the work of my favorite artists that I listed above.

  11. What are you listening to at the moment?

    William Parker’s and Ellen Christi’s brilliant Cereal Music. Memoir, poetry, and social critique interwoven magically within WP’s inimitable storytelling. Ellen’s glorious voice. Evocative sound design and music casts a spell. Also, box sets of Monk and Dolphy.

  12. What artist outside music inspires you?

    Right now, the poetry of Bob Holman and Patricia Spears Jones. 

 Jason Kao Hwang on the Free Jazz Blog:


Saturday, November 16, 2024

Makoto Kawashima - Zoe (Black Editions, 2024)

 

If I were to sum up this entire record in a single word it would be undeniable.
It's a controlled demolition, always on the verge of unraveling but somehow managing to stay afloat just a bit more than you'd expect. It's a lonely album; a lonely alto sax (sometimes a harmonica) screaming into the listener's ear, the notes from the instrument accompanied only by the sound of Kawashima's growling distorting them.

In a wonderful article I read recently, powerhouse guitarist and hero musician of mine Marc Ribot was musing on the importance of distortion and volume in music, pointing out how it's emotionally resonant for the audience to feel as if a musician or instrument is powering through pain and struggle to deliver their message to us, and I'd add that the pleasure we derive from it is two-fold: it's the empathetic feeling that what the music is conveying to us is so important, so emotionally resonant that the only way to convey it is through broken, emotionally shattered voices and it's the triumphant and uplifting sensation one can get from hearing the sound persevere through the pain and come out the other side as a piece of art.

I think Zoe as an album is emblematic of this process: it's a difficult but rewarding listen in which Kawashima explores the limits and extremes of his instrument, whispered mellow long tones give reprieve from the howling and frantic screams that make up a lot of the material on this release; sometimes a melody bubbles forth and rises above the noise and throat-rending growls only to be inevitably subsumed by them. Although improvised and probably recorded in one take the album has a great flow to it, with steady builds towards deafening emotional peaks and moments of quiet in which you can hear Kawashima catching his breath or sliding his fingertips off the keys. The idea of interpolating a few minutes of harmonica playing in the middle of the session was also great as it provided the album with fresh textures and modes of playing at exactly the right time, avoiding the risk of some people finding the music too monotone or samey.

A fantastic album made even more impressive by the fact that playing a solo monophonic instrument is always a daunting task; to Marc Ribot's delight (and mine), struggle and pain abound on this release, from the strained altissimo notes to the grinding lows, everything hurts and everything feels vital, urgentand so emotionally resonant as to be undeniable, as are Kawashima's talent and musicality.

Words don't do this music justice, so go listen to it! Available digitally and on vinyl from Black Editions.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Lina Allemano’s Ohrenschmaus – Flip Side (Lumo Records, 2024)

By Matty Bannond

Seconds can slip past unnoticed, stacking up into minutes. Then come hours, days, weeks. But where did the time go? Oh, how you’ve grown! Why, it seems like only yesterday... That’s the sensation of each improvised segment on this album from trumpeter Lina Allemano and her Berlin-based trio, plus guest. It’s a record in constant but barely perceptible flux.

Ohrenschmaus is an international group, with Norwegian bassist Dan Peter Sundland and German drummer Michael Griener joining their Canadian leader. Flip Side is the trio’s second release following their 2020 debut Rats and Mice (review here ). It also adds Andrea Parkins on three tracks. She carried an accordion, electronic effects and some unspecified objects all the way from the USA.

The first track, called “Sidetrack”, awakens with rusted joints and creaky cogwheels. It’s a nine-minute journey around a pre-dawn metropolis that’s slowly whirring into action. A million machinations scratch and shudder until Allemano announces her arrival with long-tone calls. More sounds rise, competing for attention and causing the atmosphere to thicken.

“The Line” is probably the most thoroughly composed piece on the album and it features an abrupt shift of mood that stands in contrast to the rest of the record. A short passage leaves Allemano alone in the heart of the music, before drums and bass return for an improvised section with an untypically hectic feeling.

Allemano’s trumpet sound is clear and concentrated, but she plays with more fizz and soft edges on “Stricken”. It’s the most moving piece on the album. Sundland uses the bow on his bass for a while. It’s a mournful track with a heavier emotional weight despite its lower mass of tonal material.

Flip Side is a many-sided release that changes shape subtly, but constantly. Lina Allemano has extensive classical training and commands a striking variety of extended techniques, which she combines to create infinite fluctuations and mutations on this small-group record. The forty minutes and twenty-one seconds slip past like a half-remembered daydream.

The album is available on CD and as a digital download here. You can read another review of Flip Side on Free Jazz Collective here .

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Phil Freeman - In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor (Wolke Verlag, 2024)

By Taylor McDowell

Most of us probably remember first hearing Cecil Taylor’s music. For me, it was Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) (Enja, 1978): a solo recording that embedded itself into my mind and gut. I recall feeling mesmerized and, frankly, confused as hell: knowing what I was listening to was profound but I couldn’t grasp why.

That initial point of deflection hurled me along a path of discovery and wonder: confronting Taylor’s massive discography and trying to gain better sense of his genius. I craved reading more about Taylor and accessing as much of his music as possible - like turning over rocks to discover flecks of gold. My appreciation of his artistry grew with each new and repeated listen, coupled with disparate interviews and articles I found online.

Much has been written about Taylor and his music over the years, but conspicuously missing was a published biography of the man and his music. I knew it was a matter of time before some brave journalist endeavored to synthesize the story of one of the most prolific and enigmatic figures of 20th-century music. After hearing of Freeman’s new book, published by the wonderful Wolke Verlag, I instantly set about getting myself a copy.

Like the other Wolke Verlag books I own, it is beautifully published and printed: a thick stock softcover with Taylor’s likeness consuming the front cover. The photo of Taylor, seated at the piano and adorned in sunglasses and a bucket hat (essential Taylor accessories), was taken from his Orchestra performance in Warsaw, 1984. Over 300 pages of material span between the covers and include many photos from over the years.. It’s the kind of book that earns a permanent place on the coffee table or is featured prominently on the bookshelf.

In the Brewing Luminous is Phil Freeman’s fourth book, though he might be best known as the founder of Burning Ambulance (also a record label). Recently, he led the initiative to upload the Leo Records catalog to Bandcamp, but more on that later. Phil’s exposure to Cecil Taylor is documented throughout the pages of his book, such as his first encounters of Taylor live in New York:

“The music was far too much for me to absorb; they played a single 60-minute piece that I received like a child standing in a tidal wave pool at the water park, repeatedly smashed down but determined to withstand whatever came my way.”

And later culminating with his time with Taylor leading up to the 2016 residency at the Whitney Museum. The author’s personal experiences, while not dominant, come to the fore at times. It’s a reminder that Cecil’s music is a highly personal and subjective experience; we, as listeners, can’t help but be reactive to his art, so why write a book that attempts subvert this experience? It also worthwhile to mention Markus Müller’s striking preface, which highlights Taylor’s monumental presence in Berlin in the 80’s and 90’s. Müller’s recollection functions as the flip side of the same coin: the European experience of an American phenomenon.

At its heart, In the Brewing Luminous is a musical biography - linking together events and periods of Taylor’s life that define his artistry. Freeman makes it clear from the beginning: the intent of this book is to illuminate the biographical details of Taylor’s life that lend to his music and art; beyond that, you won’t find the little tidbits of personal information standard to “bio-dramas.” In some aspects, this book functions as a narrated discography and sessionography. We can follow along Taylor’s globetrotting tours, trace the many permutations of his unit and orchestral works, chart the evolution of his solo performances, and participate as the proverbial fly on the wall during his numerous studio recording sessions. Each chapter deals with a discrete period (e.g. Part VIII: 1980-1987) and exhaustively covers each of Taylor’s musical maneuvers: setting his personal encounters and artistic developments against the arc of his career totalis.

Freeman opens the story with a short, but deeply personal introduction describing his interaction with Taylor leading up to the 2016 event at the Whitney Museum: Open Plan: Cecil Taylor. The initial chapters deal with Taylor’s early and formative years: his relationship to his parents, the influence of his mother during his youth; later, his formal education in music, his time in Boston at the New England Conservatory, and early gigs as a professional musician back in New York. The book continues to unravel his long career, highlighting his earliest studio records and the criticism that followed him, “breaking free” in Sweden in 1962 and meeting such iconic figures as Sunny Murray, Andrew Cyrille, Jimmy Lyons, Albert Ayler, etc. We learn about Taylor’s views on musical notation and his propensity towards rigorous rehearsals, where he would dictate passages to his acolytes so they could learn it by ear. Taylor's academic stay at the University of Wisconsin (and later Antioch and Glassboro State Colleges) was crucial to his development as a bandleader, composer, and arranger. We also hear from his former "pupils," such as bassoonist Karen Borca and saxophonist Jameel Moodoc, on Taylor's idiosyncratic approach to rehearsals.

Later chapters deal with Taylor’s legendary residency in Berlin in 1988, which led to the career-defining box set published by FMP. Taylor was no newcomer to Europe at the time, but in the late80s, and following the untimely death of Jimmy Lyons, Cecil’s ensembles became more of an international affair. Reading about this prolific period of Taylor’s career, we can’t help but imagine this was the apogee of his art. Also discussed is his increasing use of dance and poetry within performances (and, at times, poetry recital being the entire performance). Freeman invites us readers to listen to his recorded poetry, such as Chinampas (Leo, 1987), in the same way we would listen to his solo piano: that the rhythmic quality of his words, emphasis on certain syllables, or the volume dynamics of his voice really aren’t all that different from his approach to piano.

The chapters that I found most illuminative were those that deal with the twilight years of his career and life. By this point, Taylor has long been recognized by the world and established as a leading voice in creative music. Choosing not to slow down, Taylor’s creativity flourished in the late’90s and 2000s in a series of partnerships, new and old. His collaboration with Tony Oxley continued, even expanding into a trio with Bill Dixon. Taylor also spent a great deal of this period working with various large ensembles and orchestras. It was, as Freeman describes, “...the ultimate fulfillment of Taylor’s compositional principles…” Some of this music was recorded, though unreleased at the time of writing, giving us hope that these recordings will surface one day. Freeman was present at a number of Taylor’s performances during this period, and later during his retrospective at the Whitney Museum. The author’s personal accounts make the final chapter especially vivid, especially for someone (myself) who never saw Cecil Taylor live.

Occasionally, these chronographic non-fictions run the risk of becoming tedious play-by-plays. Freeman avoids this pitfall for several reasons. First, the text is rife with quotes and interview excerpts from Taylor and his associations. The voices of, say, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, journalist Chris Funkhouser, or Taylor himself breathe life into the text. One such passage quotes Gary Giddens on the climatic recording session that produced the 3 Phasis(New World, 1978):

“After about forty minutes, [producer Sam] Parkins exulted, ‘We’ve got a record now!’ — but ten minutes later he was worried about whether Taylor would stop in time: ‘I hope he stops pretty soon, because I’d hate to cut this. I’ve never been to anything like this before, have you?’ Taylor punched out a riff, his hands leaping as fast and deft as a cheetah, his arms almost akimbo. Everyone was eyeing the clock nervously and with giddy excitement. And then, nearing fifty-seven minutes, just short of the maximum playing time for a long-playing album, Taylor began to wind down for a dramatic finish. Observers burst into the studio with excited praise, and the laconic Taylor was heard to say, ‘Well, you know we knew it was good, too.’”

Secondly, Freeman capitalizes on what he does best: describe the music in lucid terms. Taylor’s music, like most free or improvised music, isn’t easy to describe. So, Freeman leans on metaphors and easily discernable analysis when writing about Taylor’s music. On describing Tony Oxley in his inaugural meeting with Taylor, which produced Leaf Palm Hand (FMP, 1988):

“His [Oxley’s] kit sounds like it’s made of hard plastic and he’s tapping at the toms with pencils; his cymbals sound at times like aluminum can lids, at other times like they’re in the next room. He rattles across the kit as quickly and dexterously as taylor overruns the keyboard, and his leaps between the lower and upper registers of his multifarious instruments mirror the pianist’s, in spirit at least. He never seems to be following Taylor at any point. And yet, their duo is absolutely that. They are not just playing simultaneously, they are playing together.”

I read In the Brewing Luminous twice. I ended up doing the same thing both times: re-listening to many of Taylor’s recordings. This is where I think Freeman does a service in his book: he encourages the readers to approach Cecil Taylor’s music, again and again:

“Let it hit you like a flood for the first time. Wash yourself in the waves of the notes. Then come back — a day later, perhaps. Play it again, and this time listen as carefully as possible. Focus on his opening gambits, and trace their paths through what follows, like a nurse injecting colored dye into a patient and watching their veins reveal themselves. If — when — you get lost, listen a third time. A fourth. A fifth. At some point, it will unfold before you like a flower, and the beauty of his conception will be fully audible.”

Arming us (the reader) with descriptions of the music or anecdotes about Cecil when the music was recorded, these repeated listenings become a little richer and more satisfying. Like, for example, hearing traces of Taylor’s style yet-to-be in his earliest recording, Jazz Advance(Transition, 1957); Or hearing his fully-formed compositional/arranging vision realized in his short-lived 1978 Unit. Regardless of your exposure to Taylor’s music, there is always something new and exciting to be gleaned through repeated listens. In the Brewing Luminous provides the footnotes to add depth and context to that listening experience.

In the Brewing Luminous is an achievement, not only as the first and only Cecil Taylor biography but because it makes Taylor (and his music) approachable. It’s the kind of book that I wish I had years ago when I first heard Air Above Mountains. But even today, as a devout Taylor fan, it is a book that encourages me to do what I enjoy most: indulge in the music.

Free Jazz Blog Interview With Phil Freeman

Phil Freeman

How did you get the assignment to interview Cecil Taylor for The Wire in 2016?

I was the only journalist granted an interview with Taylor during the run-up to his Whitney Museum show, Open Plan: Cecil Taylor, in February 2016. (The show ran for two weeks in late April of that year.) The whole thing was coordinated between the show’s curators, Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, and The Wire’s then-editor, Derek Walmsley. He emailed me one day and asked if I was interested in interviewing Taylor and I responded affirmatively in about two seconds.

I had previously done lengthy interviews with Ornette Coleman and Bill Dixon for the magazine (and attempted to interview Pharoah Sanders, but it didn’t come off), so obviously there was precedent for a piece like this, but it really turned into something I could never have anticipated.

How did you prepare for the interview? Did it go according to plan?

I prepared as I always do, by listening to as much of the artist’s music as possible and thinking about what I would like to ask them if it were just the two of us talking, without considering a reader. In Taylor’s case, I had been listening to his music for nearly 30 years by then, having first seen him perform at the Village Vanguard in August 1997.

Did meeting Cecil change at all how you listen to, interpret or appreciate his music?

No, but I greatly enjoyed our time together. He was a fun person to hang out with – he was a smart, witty man who was deeply engaged with the world far beyond music. We talked about politics, about food, about birds, about our respective family histories, and many other things.

Meeting him strengthened my appreciation for his music, because it caused me to read more deeply into it, looking up what the titles of his pieces might mean and in the process gaining insight into him as a person by charting the evolution of his interests. This came into play again when writing In The Brewing Luminous, as I was able to trace, for example, his interest in African history and religious traditions through the titles of pieces like “The Stele Stolen and Broken is Reclaimed” (from Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!) or “B Ee Ba Nganga Ban’a Eee!” (from Olu Iwa ).

What was your first interaction with Cecil's music? Do you recall what it was? How did you feel when you heard it?

I don’t remember if I had heard any of his records before the Village Vanguard performance from August 1997 that I mentioned earlier. I went to that show because of a blurb Gary Giddins had written in the Village Voice ’s club listings, asserting that Taylor was a genius and that any NYC appearance was not to be missed. The music rolled over me like a tidal wave that night; it was a single long piece and far too much to take in unprepared. I walked back upstairs afterward, my head swimming. Not long after that, I bought Trance, a Black Lion CD that featured some (but not all) of the 1962 recordings from the Café Montmartre; when the Revenant label issued the complete Montmartre tapes as Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come , I bought that, and over the next few years began picking up one title or another here and there. I specifically remember buying the CD of Dark to Themselves as research for my first book, New York Is Now!, which included a profile of David S. Ware. (Ware was in Taylor’s band on that album.)

I remember finding Taylor’s music overwhelming for a long time. Sometimes that was pleasurable, other times not. Listening to it was like trying to climb an icy cliff; it pushed me away. It wasn’t really until I got hold of some of his solo albums, especially Air Above Mountains and The Willisau Concert , that I was able to hear the romanticism and beauty at the heart of what he did. Once I was able to identify those qualities, I could go back and listen to the group records with new ears.

Do you have a "favorite" period of his music? A favorite album? If so, what and why?

My favorite period of his music is definitely the 1978 Unit with Jimmy Lyons, Raphé Malik, Ramsey Ameen, Sirone, and Ronald Shannon Jackson, which made the albums The Cecil Taylor Unit, 3 Phasis, Live in the Black Forest , and One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye. I wrote a long essay about their work for Burning Ambulance, parts of which made it into In The Brewing Luminous . But I love albums from every era of his career, including early works like Looking Ahead!, The World of Cecil Taylor and New York City R&B ; the solo albums Air Above Mountains, Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! , the two volumes of Garden, and The Willisau Concert; the early ’80s Orchestra Of Two Continents, heard on Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) and Music From Two Continents; his collaboration with the Italian Instabile Orchestra, The Owner of the River Bank; and the collaborative session with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones, Momentum Space .

When did you decide you would write this book? What did you think the challenges would be? And were they? 

The book didn’t start out as a biography of Taylor. Originally, I wanted to write a history of free jazz as a whole. That was far too unwieldy, though, and inevitably more people would be overlooked than covered. Then I thought about a book that would profile seven major avant-garde jazz figures: Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, Bill Dixon, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Taylor, and Henry Threadgill. (I considered including Julius Hemphill as well.) The point of that book would have been to discuss these men as major American composers, and bring so-called “free jazz” into the spotlight as, in fact, a deeply considered music full of theory and conceptual rigor. But then I realized that no one had written a full-length biography of Taylor. So I emailed Wolke Verlag in Germany, whose books on avant-garde jazz have been excellent, and pitched In the Brewing Luminous . I had the title and everything, and they went for it right away.

The biggest challenge was research. I was unable to physically visit places that I knew would be excellent sources of material, like the New York Public Library’s performing arts collection or the Rutgers Institute for Jazz Studies, because I had moved from New Jersey to Montana. But I was able to get a lot of scans of old magazine interviews from both US and European sources from Rutgers and the Darmstadt Jazzinstitut via email, and when word of the project began to spread, people reached out, offering theses they’d written, personal reminiscences and much more. Ultimately, the book took a little over a year to research and write, and its scope grew as I worked. The more I learned, the more there was to learn. I conducted new interviews with many musicians who worked with Taylor at various points in his and their careers, and dug up as many old interviews with musicians now dead as I could find. I also searched through the archives of the New York Times and the New Yorker, both of which covered Taylor extensively during his lifetime, which revealed to me that in New York at least, he was considered a major cultural figure worthy of serious critical assessment and regular “check-ins”.

I’m very proud of this book. A lot of the information I present has been available for decades, but it’s scattered in old newspaper and magazine articles, album liner notes, and other places, and it’s never been pulled together in this way. Whether you’re a longtime Cecil Taylor fan or a newcomer to his music, I think you’ll learn something by reading In The Brewing Luminous .


Switching themes a bit ...

Burning Ambulance Music has been active for a number of years now, in fact we did a Q&A with you about it (see here). So, simple question, how is the label going? What's new?

The label is going quite well; we have just released our ninth and tenth CDs.

Polarity 3 is the third collaboration between saxophonist Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley, and it’s as intimate and beautiful as its two predecessors. We’re offering a special package deal to people who want to buy all three discs together.

Irrational Thinking of the Subject is an album by Ukrainian musician Sergey Senchuk, aka Tungu; it consists of 15 collaborative pieces featuring notable avant-garde musicians from around the world: Noël Akchoté, John Bisset, Lawrence Casserley, Jacek Chmiel, Phil Durrant, Wayne Grim, Ayumi Ishito, Pak Yan Lau, Lucia Margorani, Phil Minton, Lara Suss, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Gebhard Ullmann, Sabine Vogel, and Sylvia Wysocka.

You recently started offering the Leo Records catalog as downloads, how did this come about? How does it work and what are the future plans for it?

I saw an announcement from Leo Records that Leo Feigin, the label’s founder, was thinking about shutting the operation down. I thought that was a shame, as their catalog is stuffed with brilliant music by a vast array of musicians, some famous and some obscure, and I knew that Destination: Out! had done quite well with licensing the FMP catalog for digital reissue on Bandcamp. So I emailed Mr. Feigin and proposed uploading the Leo catalog to Bandcamp, and he agreed.

The arrangement is simple: Leo sends me the music and I upload the files and scan the cover art to make it look as good as possible. Because their catalog runs to around 800 titles, we’re doing things in waves. The first wave is focused on the work of American (and a few European) avant-garde jazz legends like Anthony Braxton, Amina Claudine Myers, Marilyn Crispell, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Evan Parker, Reggie Workman, Joe and Mat Maneri, and others. The second wave will be dedicated to the work of Ivo Perelman, who has something like 70 releases on Leo, including many collaborations with Matthew Shipp. The third wave will deal with Leo’s deep catalog of Russian avant-garde jazz, and the fourth wave will be… everything else. 

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Read the Free Jazz Blog review of 'In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor' here.