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.