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.