Freitagabend in der Roten Fabrik gab es dann den ersten grossen Festival-Abend mit drei Formationen. Den Auftakt machte das Duo Irène Schweizer-Joey Baron. Es war Schweizers grosser Wunsch, ihre Reihe von Duos mit Drummern mit Joey Baron fortzusetzen. Die Hoffnungen waren gross, zumal ich beide sehr mag, doch wie sie zusammenfinden sollten, war mir nicht ganz klar - und das Konzert hat das letztlich auch nicht geklärt, muss ich im Rückblick sagen. Es begann zunächst zögerlich, als wolle Schweizer ihren Gast nicht zu sehr herausfordern, ihn nicht vor fertige Tatsachen stellen. Stattdessen ein Motiv da, ein paar geklimperte Töne dort, ein stark rhythmisierter Melodiefetzen, eine leicht versetzte Repetition ... wartend auf Reaktion von Baron, der dann irgendwann einfach zu spielen anfing - was natürlich schon den Besuch des Konzertes lohnte, klar, der Mann ist umwerfend. Nach wohl 15 Minuten ging es dann langsam zur Sache, das Einspielen war vorbei und das Zusammenspiel klappte leidlich gut, Baron eruptiv wie immer, wie unzähligen Einfällen, immer wieder der schiere Aberwitz. Schweizer kam dann auch in die Gänge, spielte ihre Motive und Phrasen auf insistierende, immer härtere Weise. Man spielte Time und auch nicht, und ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob da der Kern des trotz der guten Entwicklung irgendwie fortbestehenden Problems war. Ich höre Baron als einen Jazz-Drummer, der Time spielt, mit Time spielt, ausbricht, zurückfindet, mit den anderen Musikern spielt und gegen sie, sie umschmeichelt und vor den Kopf stösst, sie streichelt und ihnen dann unvermittelt eine reinknallt, um gleich wieder zum schnurrenden Kätzchen zu werden ... Schweizer kann Time spielen, aber meistens will sie wohl anderes und ihr Time ist auch nicht so flexibel, dünkt mich, wie Barons. Aber gut, mit Bennink z.B. klappt es ja ganz wunderbar, aber der ist halt im freien europäischen Jazz ebenso daheim wie Schweizer. Die erste Zugabe war dann eine bekloppte Idee, ein hüftsteifer 12-Takt-Blues, in dem die beiden komplett aneinander vorbeispielten, Baron versuchte wohl eine Art Catlett/Krupa-Hommage zu trommeln, aber das ging mit dem Klavier zusammen gar nicht. Zum Glück spielten sie noch eine zweite Zugabe und da war alles wieder im Lot - in den Zugaben quasi nochmal die Entwicklung des Sets gespiegelt, irgendwie passend.
Dann war William Parker an der Reihe - solo, Kontrabass und Gesang. Ich bin nun ja erklärtermassen kein grosser Fan von ihm, war aber gespannt und sass, so bilde ich mir das wenigstens ein, mit offenen Ohren und offenem Herzen da, auf das harrend, was kommen mochte und mich vielleicht doch noch eines Besseren belehren würde. Doch leider weit gefehlt. Parker sang einfache Verse, politisch aufgeladene Programmusik, die Stücke bestanden aus zweieinhalb Tönen (die letzten drei Stücke - seine launige Absage zum Schluss war dann der Höhepunkt des Sets - bestanden alle aus dem gleichen einen Ton). Aber gut, soweit kein Problem, WAS er spielte gefiel mir nicht schlecht, der Gesang, die Worte, das alles war durchaus stimmig (wenngleich nicht mein paar Schuhe), aber das WIE ... sein Bass hatte null Körper, keine Resonanz, klang völlig flach, da war kein Vibrieren in der Luft, nichts. Quasi die Konzertversion einer digitalen CD-Aufnahme aus den späten Achtzigern. Dann griff er auch noch öfter zum Bogen, um auf seinem Bass herumzuschaben, der alte "Fingernägel auf der Wandtafel"-Effekt ... nunja, der Tiefpunkt des Festivals, und das nach einem schon holprigen Einstieg, ich begann fast schon, vom Glauben abzufallen.
Den Abend beschloss dann eine Gruppe, die eigentlich gar nicht in den Rahmen passten, das Marc Copland Quartet mit dem Trompeter Ralph Alessi, Drew Gress am Bass und - erneut - Joey Baron am Schlagzeug. Die vier spielten eine Art abgehärtete (sie sind ja Ostküsten-Amis) Version eines Existentialistenjazz à la Rava oder Stanko, allerdings geht Alessi jede spielerische Ader völlig ab. Das war Post-Bill-Evans-Jazz, in der romantischen Ecke gefangen und irgendwie fehl am Platz am Unerhört. Sehr gut waren allerdings Drew Gress am Bass und erneut Joey Baron. Die beiden versuchten hartnäckig, das Geschehen zu beleben, aber Copland nahm sich viel zu sehr zurück, wurde quasi zum Statisten in seiner eigenen Band, während Alessi irgendwie auf keinen grünen Zweig kam. Der Kontrast von Gress' Ton und Wumms am Bass zum fahlen Parker davor war übrigens immens, schon die paar Töne, die er Griff, um zu überprüfen ob das Instrument noch gestimmt war ... wie Tag und Nacht. Aber gut, damit endete ein mittelprächtiger Abend, es blieb letztlich die zweite Hälfte bzw. die zwei letzten Drittel von Schweizer/Baron, die man mitnahm.
Posts mit dem Label Drew Gress werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Posts mit dem Label Drew Gress werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Taktlos.12 - Tony Malaby "Paloma Recio", Matthew Shipp-Sabir Mateen, Phall Fatale - Rote Fabrik, Zürich, 12 May 2012
Okay, so how was it... Taktlos is held the 29th time these days, it's long grown to be an institution, presenting the avantgarde of jazz and other related musics. Fire police have allowed them - on very short notice, it seems, since they did minimal five-minute sound checks ahead of each set - to use my favorite stage there, at the Rote Fabrik, the Clubraum, which is smaller than the regular venue for jazz concerts (the Aktionshalle) and hence looks half full, rather than three quarters empty. Anyway, I got there early, met a friend who showed me pictures from last week's Le Mans festival, where he heard plenty of amazing music (wish I'd been there!).
Tony Malaby, then... his quartet is named Paloma Recio and consists of Ben Monder on guitar, Drew Gress on bass and Flin Van Hemmen on drums. Never heard of Van Hemmen before, but he was great, with a lose yet controlled, swinging and fun style that could push the band quite some, if called for! Gress was way too low in the mix, alas, while Monder was often over-bearing, even more so when he started using distortion and other sound pedal effects. I'm afraid I didn't quite get how this group's music worked, though... they all had music stands in front of them but never changed pages (only once did Gress change something towards the end)... the dramaturgy of it lay in the dark to me, anyhow. They started playing rather quietly, until Monder for the first time fell out of his "jazz" style and started getting real loud. He and Malaby played complex lines in unison, while the rhythms kept changing underneath, solos would emerge - some great playing by Malaby, for sure! Wonderful sound, big at the bottom, but still rather slim... thin but beautiful in the high range - and he got pretty intense and wild doing plenty of falsetto stuff as the set unrolled. Monder fit in well mostly, but kept being somewhat overbearing throughout the concert. They reached a climax after some forty minutes of continuous playing, then took a break, but after Malaby announced the band he asked if there was time for one more, and off they went onto an amazingly powerful, exhilarating flight. At the end I was pretty pleased by it all, but it took a while for the band to catch flight and for me to get into this rather complex and coolish sound.
Then break, changing the setup, dragging the baby grand to the center, setting up new mics... and a short sound check (Mateen in orange t-shirt). On it went with Matthew Shipp and Sabir Mateen - first on clarinet, then on tenor, and back to clarinet for the encore. A most powerful set, digging right into the music from the very first tones. All music, so to speak. Mateen has a wonderful tone on clarinet and even more so on tenor, very big, deep, rough. Both of them had a few unacccompanied passages, and Mateen's tenor one was the highlight of the night for me. Shipp was both quick and sparse, both dense and pointed - never heard him live and have been kind of an on and off fan of his... but this concert easily convinced me! At the end, all was said and done, no need for any more music, really! Amazing set!
Third band was a Swiss one called Phall Fatale, featuring two singers (Joy Frempong and Joana Aderi), both also using samplers and electronics, John Edwards and Daniel Sailer on double basses, and drummer Fredy Studer (of OM-fame). Good beats and grooves from the basses (Edwards is wonderful, needless to say), but I found the whole thing pretty boring and the singers not too convincing (and the lyrics pretty ... uhm, uninspired and flat). Anyway, I should have left after Shipp/Mateen anyway, so maybe I'm being somewhat unfair.
Trivia: spotted in the audience: Irène Schweizer and Gerry Hemingway - the later came to chat with Ben Monder and seemed to have a good time.
Tony Malaby, then... his quartet is named Paloma Recio and consists of Ben Monder on guitar, Drew Gress on bass and Flin Van Hemmen on drums. Never heard of Van Hemmen before, but he was great, with a lose yet controlled, swinging and fun style that could push the band quite some, if called for! Gress was way too low in the mix, alas, while Monder was often over-bearing, even more so when he started using distortion and other sound pedal effects. I'm afraid I didn't quite get how this group's music worked, though... they all had music stands in front of them but never changed pages (only once did Gress change something towards the end)... the dramaturgy of it lay in the dark to me, anyhow. They started playing rather quietly, until Monder for the first time fell out of his "jazz" style and started getting real loud. He and Malaby played complex lines in unison, while the rhythms kept changing underneath, solos would emerge - some great playing by Malaby, for sure! Wonderful sound, big at the bottom, but still rather slim... thin but beautiful in the high range - and he got pretty intense and wild doing plenty of falsetto stuff as the set unrolled. Monder fit in well mostly, but kept being somewhat overbearing throughout the concert. They reached a climax after some forty minutes of continuous playing, then took a break, but after Malaby announced the band he asked if there was time for one more, and off they went onto an amazingly powerful, exhilarating flight. At the end I was pretty pleased by it all, but it took a while for the band to catch flight and for me to get into this rather complex and coolish sound.
Then break, changing the setup, dragging the baby grand to the center, setting up new mics... and a short sound check (Mateen in orange t-shirt). On it went with Matthew Shipp and Sabir Mateen - first on clarinet, then on tenor, and back to clarinet for the encore. A most powerful set, digging right into the music from the very first tones. All music, so to speak. Mateen has a wonderful tone on clarinet and even more so on tenor, very big, deep, rough. Both of them had a few unacccompanied passages, and Mateen's tenor one was the highlight of the night for me. Shipp was both quick and sparse, both dense and pointed - never heard him live and have been kind of an on and off fan of his... but this concert easily convinced me! At the end, all was said and done, no need for any more music, really! Amazing set!
Third band was a Swiss one called Phall Fatale, featuring two singers (Joy Frempong and Joana Aderi), both also using samplers and electronics, John Edwards and Daniel Sailer on double basses, and drummer Fredy Studer (of OM-fame). Good beats and grooves from the basses (Edwards is wonderful, needless to say), but I found the whole thing pretty boring and the singers not too convincing (and the lyrics pretty ... uhm, uninspired and flat). Anyway, I should have left after Shipp/Mateen anyway, so maybe I'm being somewhat unfair.
Trivia: spotted in the audience: Irène Schweizer and Gerry Hemingway - the later came to chat with Ben Monder and seemed to have a good time.
Ingrid Laubrock Oktett - Rote Fabrik, Zürich, 10 December 2011
Fabrikjazz - Sa, 10. Dezember 2011
Ingrid Laubrock Oktett
Ingrid Laubrock, tenor-/sopranosax/composition; Tom Arthurs, trumpet/flügelhorn; Ted Reichman, accordion; Liam Noble, piano; Mary Halvorson, guitar; Ben Davis, cello; Drew Gress, bass; Tom Rainey, drums/percussion
Good but not great concert. The music - all composed by Laubrock, though both set-openers were fully improvised, it seems - left me a bit puzzled. Some of it was good, some of it was a bit on the cute side, some of it just seemed to go nowhere and left me hoping for more improvisational parts. Those improvisational parts were too few, I found. There were plenty of interesting combinations of sound, that's for sure. Mary Halvorson's guitar, Ted Reichman's accordion, Liam Noble's piano (all three had fine solo spots), Ben Davis' cello and Rainey switching to what seemed to be a vibraphone but without the motor turned on (maybe it was a marimba or a large xylophone, I couldn't see it as it was back on stage) - that all made for large sonic and textural possibilities. There were parts when the music made good use of them, but other parts just seemed like lose sketches (and then one of those cutesy melodies would turn up, picked by the cello) and the whole effect was lost again. However, what was great was how different instrumental pairs emerged time and again to form duos within the band for sometimes quite lengthy bits.
Needless to say that Laubrock's tenor and soprano and Tom Arthur's trumpet as the only horns were front and center a bit more often than most others - and both did very well and had some mighty fine spots. Laubrock on tenor has a slightly shady sound - reminded me a bit of Joe Henderson (whom alas I've never heard live). Arthurs went from chopsy highnote stuff that was always lyrical and melodic to harmon mute, plunger, and just producing air sounds and whimsical noises.
And Drew Gress - he was a bit low-fi and low in the mix, too - and Tom Rainey both did a great job anchoring the music. Gress' bass and Davis' cello often merged together to form a bottom that was quite strong, and every now and then the presence of the one allowed the other to do some flageolet playing. Rainey was a bit subdued, too, but had many great moments and in the second set really came to live!
The music was presented in two gap-less sets - of roughly 50 minutes each, I guess (didn't watch the clock). Reinhard Kager from SWR2 was there to present the band and the music and talked a bit too long and explained a bit more that what I found appropriate for an audience that most likely was much more "in the know" than he thought. The concert was the final (I think) stop of this year's SWR "New Jazz Meeting 2011" tour - bits of the three concerts will be broadcast in February and a CD will be released on Intakt as well. Guess it will be interesting to revisit the music and check if the cutesy bits still sound cutesy if you listen on your hifi rather than live. Can make a big difference with music of this kind (also the other way 'round, that great concerts don't work at all on CD).
All in all, I'd have enjoyed it more if there'd been: a) more solo space for individual voices, and b) more tightly-knit (and less clumsy) ensemble parts. But it was still interesting and often pretty good. And it's always a thrill to hear Mary Halvorson, at least for me ... and Tom Rainey is great! First time I caught him live.
Ingrid Laubrock Oktett
Ingrid Laubrock, tenor-/sopranosax/composition; Tom Arthurs, trumpet/flügelhorn; Ted Reichman, accordion; Liam Noble, piano; Mary Halvorson, guitar; Ben Davis, cello; Drew Gress, bass; Tom Rainey, drums/percussion
Good but not great concert. The music - all composed by Laubrock, though both set-openers were fully improvised, it seems - left me a bit puzzled. Some of it was good, some of it was a bit on the cute side, some of it just seemed to go nowhere and left me hoping for more improvisational parts. Those improvisational parts were too few, I found. There were plenty of interesting combinations of sound, that's for sure. Mary Halvorson's guitar, Ted Reichman's accordion, Liam Noble's piano (all three had fine solo spots), Ben Davis' cello and Rainey switching to what seemed to be a vibraphone but without the motor turned on (maybe it was a marimba or a large xylophone, I couldn't see it as it was back on stage) - that all made for large sonic and textural possibilities. There were parts when the music made good use of them, but other parts just seemed like lose sketches (and then one of those cutesy melodies would turn up, picked by the cello) and the whole effect was lost again. However, what was great was how different instrumental pairs emerged time and again to form duos within the band for sometimes quite lengthy bits.
Needless to say that Laubrock's tenor and soprano and Tom Arthur's trumpet as the only horns were front and center a bit more often than most others - and both did very well and had some mighty fine spots. Laubrock on tenor has a slightly shady sound - reminded me a bit of Joe Henderson (whom alas I've never heard live). Arthurs went from chopsy highnote stuff that was always lyrical and melodic to harmon mute, plunger, and just producing air sounds and whimsical noises.
And Drew Gress - he was a bit low-fi and low in the mix, too - and Tom Rainey both did a great job anchoring the music. Gress' bass and Davis' cello often merged together to form a bottom that was quite strong, and every now and then the presence of the one allowed the other to do some flageolet playing. Rainey was a bit subdued, too, but had many great moments and in the second set really came to live!
The music was presented in two gap-less sets - of roughly 50 minutes each, I guess (didn't watch the clock). Reinhard Kager from SWR2 was there to present the band and the music and talked a bit too long and explained a bit more that what I found appropriate for an audience that most likely was much more "in the know" than he thought. The concert was the final (I think) stop of this year's SWR "New Jazz Meeting 2011" tour - bits of the three concerts will be broadcast in February and a CD will be released on Intakt as well. Guess it will be interesting to revisit the music and check if the cutesy bits still sound cutesy if you listen on your hifi rather than live. Can make a big difference with music of this kind (also the other way 'round, that great concerts don't work at all on CD).
All in all, I'd have enjoyed it more if there'd been: a) more solo space for individual voices, and b) more tightly-knit (and less clumsy) ensemble parts. But it was still interesting and often pretty good. And it's always a thrill to hear Mary Halvorson, at least for me ... and Tom Rainey is great! First time I caught him live.
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