By Eyal Hareuveni
Legendary Swedish, Berlin-based Sven-Åke Johansson composer,
drummer-percussionist, poet, writer, and visual artist, will celebrate
his 82th birthday and six decades of work this year. He belongs to the
first generation of European free improvisers, known for his work with
Peter Brötzmann’s earliest and some of his most important projects,
including Machine Gun, but has never limited himself to any single
artistic discipline. in an interview with the Berlin newspaper Taz,
defined his work: “My work is not actually jazz, but rather the
exploration of sounds. In that sense, my music defies some
categorizations. Jazz is only a small part of what I do”.
Hautzinger / Schick / Johansson – Rotations + (Trost, 2025)
Rotations+ is a free improvised trio featuring Johansson on percussion
and accordion, German turntable wizard Ignaz Schick on turntables, and
Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger on trumpets. Both players use
electronics. The trio was recorded live at the Berlin experimental venue
KM28 in September 2023. The six collective improvisations adapt the
syntax of reductionist electronic music and explore a deep forest of
subtle colors and timbre, with each improvisation suggesting a fresh and
unpredictable perspective.
Johansson’s elegant sense of time is still remarkable, adding loose
structural narratives with a kaleidoscopic, rhythmic sensibility to
Hautzinger’s minimalist, extended breathing smears and cries and
Schick’s delicate yet noisy and sometimes cartoonish beeps and bloops.
At times, Johansson’s drumming even adds a ritualist dimension to the
abstract and fragile interplay of Hautzinger and Schick, immediately
disciplining exotic overtones (as on “R2”) and bringing a heightened
form of spontaneous sound sculpting, something Johansson has been doing
since the early 1970s. His accordion playing, on “R3” and the last “R6”
improvisations, injects a subversive, romantic touch to the abstract and
often nervous interplay of Hauztzinger and Schick.
Sven-Åke Johansson Quintet – Stumps (Second Version) (Trost, 2025)
Johansson first introduced the book of compositions used for his Stumps
project on the album Stumps (Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu, 2022), recorded live at Au
Topsi Pohl in Berlin in December 2021, with a quintet of Johansoon’s
long-time collaborator, German trumpeter Axel Dörner, Swedish double
bass player Joel Grip (of أحمد [Ahmed], another trusted collaborated of
Johansson), and young French sax player Pierre Borel (of Die Hochstapler
and Sebastian Gramss’ States Of Play) and pianist Simon Sieger, and
Johannson on drums.
Johansson referred to this book of six compositions as the magnum opus
of his small group writing. Extended versions of “stumps 2” to “stumps
6” are included on Stumps (Second Version), recorded live one year after
Stumps (which included all six compositions), at Haus der Berliner
Festspiele during Jazzfest Berlin in November 2022. These compositions
are based on strict, schematic instructions and offer a potential for
variation with falling and rising short signals (notes). Each “stump”
composition repeats the simple yet captivating theme four times and
establishes its light-swinging pulse. Each “stump” alters the melodic
and rhythmic shape of the basic formula and ignites a distinct kind of
thoughtful deconstruction with introspective collective improvisation
and solo excursions. A simple repetition of the theme at the end rounds
off the composition as a kind of return. The underlying tempi of the
themes are rather calm, there is no fixed tempo but more of a free
positioning, according to the principle of ‘free tempo/dynamic
vibration’.
Johansson leads the ensemble with commanding, modest, and always elegant
authority and his trademark rolling cymbal pulse and stuttering snare
drum keep the music forward. These compositions, despite their strict
formula and repetitive themes, demand probing individual playing, and
this ensemble brilliantly performs them.