September Sounds Step into Overdrive
Adam O'Farrill, Magda Mayas, ükya, Immanuel Wilkins, Abdullah Imbrahim, Axis: Sova
It’s Time to Stop Sleeping on Adam O’Farrill
Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill first piqued my curiosity back in 2015, when as a 20-year old he appeared as a sideman and flinty coil to saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa on Bird Calls, an inventive homage to Charlie Parker where the leader isolated and abstracted material from Bird recordings to create a new set of music. From the outset O’Farrill’s lyric gifts, agile phrasing, and nicely burnished tone grabbed me, and over the years a series of terrific albums made with his own quartet called Stranger Days have captured his impressive but measured evolution, as his post-bop sensibilities have extended a continuum rooted in swing, while applying increasingly bold and absorbing conceptual tweaks. In recent years O’Farrill’s star has been rising through his essential work as a sideman in two of today’s greatest working bands in jazz and improvised music: Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis and Anna Webber’s Shimmer Wince. But it’s time for people to recognize his work as a leader.
Last month his excellent quartet dropped its first new album in three years with Hueso (Food), which stands as his most impressive endeavor yet. The music retains a strong connection to post-bop fundamentals, but the inner workings of the quartet—with tenor saxophonist Xavier Del Castillo, bassist Walter Stinson, and the trumpeter’s brother Zack on drums—are so refined and instinctual that it seems to exist on a different plain, one crucially enhanced by the leader’s remarkable writing. As with the group’s 2021 album Visions of Your Other (Biophilia), Hueso opens with some unexpected electronic enhancements, following up on its predecessor’s synth textures by slathering the leader’s solo trumpet in cavernous reverb on a bracing interpretation of Thom Yorke’s “Truth Ray,” but this music isn’t beholden to electronics. That solo take is followed by a band account of the same tune, establishing the gripping rapport and interactive style O’Farrill and Del Castillo embrace across the record. There’s a touch of cool jazz in the way the frontline is in constant dialogue. Sometimes the pair improvise simultaneously, forging stunning strands of contrapuntal melody, but the real attraction is how they navigate the written material. There’s a lot of hocketing throughout the album, as the horns divvy up the melodies in infectiously terse, fast-paced sonic daubs that might seem abstract in isolation, but which provide serious thrills in tandem. The way the pair articulate the melody of the title track is incredible, especially as they build a collective sound for the first three minutes of the track, before trading some more lyric, relaxed solos—check it out below.
I don’t know what portion of the arrangements are pre-written and how much is spontaneous, but hearing how they meld their lines to give each tune a hot potato interplay executed with staggering fluidity has been providing unalloyed, sustained pleasure and wonder. The horns do sometimes operate more independently, as on “Dodging Roses,” which opens with an extended trio section without the leader’s presence. When he enters about four minutes into the piece everything snaps into place, as if the tune is finally beginning, but then O’Farrill takes an excellent, propulsive solo straddling melodic generosity and darting rhythmic variations over the limber, cycling grooves meted out by Stinson and Zack O’Farrill. The horns lock in again as the tune winds down, the quartet subsumed by viscous reverb, as if they were playing on a flatbed truck driving through a long tunnel. No less impressive is the mewling ambient churn of the closing track “Cumulus,” where the image of drifting clouds underlines the way the quartet can sculpt sound like a kinetic force of nature.
As addictive and special as the interplay of the horns are, the rhythm section is just as essential. Zack often delivers a strangely circular kind of playing that dispenses with the cymbals for extended stretches: as you can hear on “Proximity of Clouds,” below, it seems like he’s only using his bare hands to produce the beats as the performance begins. With the looping, closely-linked horn pattern sticking within a very narrow set of intervals, bassist Stinson often becomes a crucial if easily overlooked melodic presence, his warm, woody tone, unerring pitch, and crisp time cementing the quartet’s indelible sound. The group developed the material while on a rural residency, spending some of their time tending to animals living on the farm where it was hosted, an experience that seems to have brought the musicians more in sync, especially the frontline, which transmits a Bach-like beauty on the leader’s brief “90s Requiem.” It’s an album that has snuck up on me slowly, but once I was able to zoom in on how the band interacts it’s brilliance exploded like a supernova. I recommend sticking with it until you experience a similar breakthrough. It’s unquestionably one of the finest things I’ve heard in 2024.
The Remote Reinvention of Magda Mayas’ Filamental
Decades ago Magda Mayas established herself as a singular force in improvised music, digging almost exclusively into prepared piano performances that could easily stand on their own or interact and enhance the machinations of others in group settings. Obviously, prepared piano wasn’t new when Mayas first emerged more than two decades ago, but she developed an impressive repertoire of techniques and preparations, and although many dynamic piano improvisers have followed in her wake, I don’t think anyone has matched her sui generis imagination and rigor. Unsurprisingly, when Mayas formed the ensemble Filamental, one of her most ambitious and expansive undertakings, she enlisted a group of musicians just as distinctive and bespoke in their approaches as her. In 2021 she released Confluence, a document of the ensemble’s 2019 performance at the Music Unlimited Festival In Wels, Austria in which a series of photographs capturing the melding waters of the Rhône and Arve Rivers in Geneva, Switzerland served as the color-saturated score. The onset of the pandemic put a halt to any momentum the project had experienced, so rather than let the endeavor fall to the side, Mayas figured out some methods to extend the ensemble virtually, an important adjustment considering the group’s geographic sprawl.
In May Mayas released Ritual Mechanics (Relative Pitch), presenting two new works played and recorded remotely, guided by new working methods. It’s also the first recording from Mayas that I can recall—in a long time, if not forever!—where she doesn’t play any piano, instead opting for harmonium and Fender-Rhodes. The same excellent cast—alto saxophonist Christine Abdelnour, clarinetist Michael Thieke, cellists Anthea Caddy and Aimée Theriot-Ramos, harpists Rhodri Davies and Zeena Parkins, and violinist Angharad Davies—contributed to the pair of new compositions. The title track was built upon an audio score Mayas created around her own harmonium playing, which included silences, noises, and disparate tonal material, along with some loose instructions for how each musician could respond to her part. For “Re-contour” Mayas created a photo score filled with grainy black-and-white images of shadowy foliage and trees and concrete instructions which offered each musician great latitude and space for how they interpreted her requests. She then added her own playing on Fender-Rhodes. Once she had all of the tracks she began to edit and arrange all of the material, assembling and composing a piece from the individual performances, which represents a bold new direction for her.
It's not as if Mayas has turned her back on past efforts here. In fact, the pieces extend a continuum of gestural improvisation steeped in quietude and restraint—something all of the participants have pursued for years. We can hear unpitched breaths, scrapes, abstracted fragments, and thick resonance, sometimes with the source instruments clearly heard, sometimes with them less identifiable. It’s impressive how Mayas was able to corral seven distinctive voices—to say nothing of her own—and direct the action in a way that isn’t too dense or chaotic. There’s a surprising serenity to the performances, with each layer meticulously shaped and placed within the collective din, that allows us to home in on specific features or let the general arc of each piece subsume us, in a kind of ambient wash that happens to be marbled with substantive detail and variation. Below you can check out the title piece. Naturally, such an international ensemble is hard to organize for live performances, so we should count ourselves lucky that Filamental is reconvening in the real world this week, with a performance at the Exploratorium on Tuesday, September 3. For this performance the ensemble will premier a new Mayas piece called “Murmur.”
New Sounds From Norway
One of the most distinctive records I’ve heard in the last year was Svartsymra (Sonic Transmissions), the otherworldly debut album by Norwegian guitarist and composer Kristian Enkerud Lien’s quartet Krise. Together the band shapes a kind of just intonation chamber jazz that I’m still grappling with. That is, I adore it, even though I’m still not sure how it works. I was able to catch a wonderful pop-up set by the group (with Hans Hulbækmo ably subbing for drummer Bjørn André Syverinsen) in a ramshackle shed during the Motvind Festival in Rollag this past June, where I got to hear trombonist Emil Bø for the first time–the quartet also includes keyboardist Anna Ueland, who’s retuned synth proved essential to the harmonic action. Brass can be super tricky when it comes to music built around tuning, but Bø’s precision and focus was remarkable. In April Bø and Lien released We Come for an Experience of Presence (Nakama), the debut album of ükya, a more improv-oriented trio they have with drummer Michael Lee Sørenmo. The music is characterized by sharp interplay, with sounds that tend toward the splintery and flatulent more than sustained harmonic shapes. The music still deploys just intonation, but the brittle textures and jagged sonorities tamp down the usual machinations one might expect from such a tuning system.
The music certainly takes great inspiration from classic non-idiomatic free improv, but the execution is so bold and assured that it avoids ever sounding tentative or cliched, qualities that frequently bog down so much like-minded improvised music today. The more I’ve listened to the album, the more it becomes clear that the trio has developed a subtle but distinctive sound that isn’t afraid to dig into individual practices and let them build new collective formations. My favorite piece is “Three,” the first half of which strolls over a steady strum of muted acoustic guitar that generates a kind of cloud-like swirls which Bø moves in and out of with restrained, elegantly wobbly tones and unpitched breaths, before a patch of silence reorients the action to more elaborate guitar patterns that have a distinct David Grubbs-like cadence, only to toggle into a more frictive spell. The album was made in April of 2022, so I’m curious to hear if the deep investment into tuning by Bø and Lien will be manifested differently when the trio makes its Berlin debut on Tuesday, September 3 at Café Plum.
Short Takes on Recommended Concerts This Week
Immanuel Wilkins Quartet
I don’t think there’s a more exciting saxophonist to have emerged from the mainstream jazz scene in the last five years than Immanuel Wilkins, a Philadelphia native that seems to have absorbed the entirety of the music’s history while thriving in the here-and-now, whether than means displaying mean gospel chops or free blowing that has little interest in burning down the past. His first two albums for Blue Note are both fantastic, but nothing can match the heat his excellent band—with pianist Micah Tomas, bassist Rick Rosato, and drummer Kweku Sumbry—generates from the bandstand. Next month Wilkins will release his third album, Blues Blood, a multi-media work which makes a sharp turn from his previous efforts in privileging contributions from a variety of super vocalists—Ganavya, June McDoom, Yaw Agyeman, and the mighty Cécile McLorin Salvant—while deploying the same working quartet. I already knew these musicians were able to exercise serious restraint, here they reveal a commitment to the project at hand, even making room for guest instrumentalists Marvin Sewell (guitar) and Chris Dave (drums) here and there. While it doesn’t excite me as much as the first two albums, I must salute Wilkins for taking a chance, expanding his leadership and composer chops by stepping out of the spotlight. The title is taken from a 1964 quote by Daniel Hamm—a member of the Harlem Six, a group of New York boys falsely accused of murder abused by prison guards while awaiting trial. Steve Reich famously used the quote—“I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the blues [bruise] blood come out to show them”—in his acclaimed process piece “Come Out.” The quartet rolls into town for a couple of sets at the Zig-Zag Jazz Club on Wednesday, September 4. Below you can hear the track, “Afterlife Residence Time.”
Abdullah Ibrahim Trio
On Saturday, September 7 the legendary South African pianist and bandleader Abdullah Ibrahim makes a rare appearance at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt with the same nimble trio that produced his recent album 3 (Gearbox), a recording made during a London visit in July of 2023. The double album features a short set of performances beautifully recorded straight to tape at the Barbican without an audience, while the second disc features music from the actual concert later that night. Ibrahim, who will turn 90 on October 9, doesn’t produce music as spry or buoyant as he once did, but there’s a grace and presence within the music that can’t be faked. He has the comportment of someone with nothing left to prove, but who still has something profound to share. The Berlin performance is with the same two veterans of his old band Ekaya who appear on the recording—flutist and alto saxophonist Cleave Guyton, and bassist and cellist Noah Jackson. The music is contemplative, mixing originals with standards like Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” and Thelonious Monk’s “Skippy,” but across both discs there’s an elegant restraint that draws out the most lyric qualities in the repertoire, all of it voices with abundant space and dynamic range. Ibrahim often sits out for extended periods, leaving his two worthy constituents to ably shape the performances, as you can hear on this tender version of his classic composition “Mindif,” taken from the audience-free session, where Jackson plays cello with exquisite tenderness.
Axis: Sova
Last December, as I frantically tried to catch up on the albums from 2024 that I hadn’t given a proper listen, I was hooked by the sounds contained on Blinded by Oblivion (God?), the most recent album from the long-running Chicago psych outfit Axis: Sova. Brett Sova has led the project for years, but on that album he found a sweet spot leading a trio with Josh Johnpeter and bassist Jeremy Freeze. The trio makes a rare visit to Berlin to perform Monday night, September 8 at Kantine am Berghain. You can read what I wrote about the record last December here, and below you can check out another great tune from the album, the deliciously glammy “I’m a Ghost,” where the influence of producer Ty Segall is pretty inescapable. But that doesn’t make it any less irresistible.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
September 3: ükya (Emil Bø, trombone, Kristian Enkerud Lien, guitar, and Michael Lee Sørenmo, drums), 6 PM, Café Plume, Warthestraße 60, 12051 Berlin
September 3: Berlin Solo Impro Festival with Matthias Koole, acoustic guitar; Signe Emmeluth, alto saxophone; Ignaz Schick, turntable, electronics; James Banner, double bass; Emilie Škrijelj, accordion, 7:30 PM, Acker Stadt Palast, Ackerstraße 169, 10115 Berlin
September 3: Magda Mayas’ Filamental (Zeena Parkins, harp, Rhodri Davies, harp, Magda Mayas, piano, Aimée Theriot-Ramos, cello, Anthea Caddy, cello, Angharad Davies, violin, Christine Abdelnour, alto saxophone, Michael Thieke, clarinet), 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
September 4: Berlin Solo Impro Festival with Dan Peter Sundland, electric bass; Julia Biłat, cello, voice; Michael Griener, drums; Carl Ludwig Hübsch, tuba, voice; Svetlana Maraš, 7:30 PM, Acker Stadt Palast, Ackerstraße 169, 10115 Berlin
September 4: Dead Leaf Butterfly (Els Vandeweyer, vibraphone, Lina Allemano, trumpet, Maike Hilbig, double bass, Lucia Martinez, drums), 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435
September 4: Chris Heenan and Antje Vowinckel, soprano saxophones; Caroline Tallone, hurdy-gurdy; Meinrad Kneer, double bass, and Andreas Voccia, synthesizer, 8 PM, Zwitscher Maschine, Potsdamer Str. 161, 10783 Berlin
September 4: Caleb Wheeler Curtis, alto sax, trumpet, Julius Gawlik, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Felix Henkelhausen, double bass, Marius Wankel, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
September 4: Omer Klein Standards Trio (Omer Klein, piano, Hans Glawischnig, double bass, Jorge Rossy, drums), 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
September 5: Immanuel Wilkins Quartet (Immanuel Wilkins, alto saxophone, Micah Thomas, piano, Rick Rosato, double bass, and Kweku Sumbry, drums), 6:30 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
September 5: Berlin Solo Impro Festival with Simon Rose, baritone saxophone; Cymin Samawatie, piano; Viola Yip, electric dress; Paweł Doskocz, electric guitar; Jaap Blonk, voice, 7:30 PM, Acker Stadt Palast, Ackerstraße 169, 10115 Berlin
September 5: Signe Emmeluth, alto saxophone, Keisuke Matsuno, electric guitar, Dan Peter Sundland, electric bass, and Max Andrzejewski, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
September 5: Maya Bennardo, violin; Katinka Kleijn, cello, and Kari Watson, electronics, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
September 5: Kirke Karja Trio (Kirke Karja, piano, Etienne Renard, double bass, Ludwig Wandinger, drums), 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
September 5: Earl Sweatshirt, 8 PM, Columbia Theater, Columbiadamm 9-11,
10965 Berlin
September 6: Jaap Blonk, voice, electronics, and Michael Vorfeld, percussion, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
September 7: Ensemble MusikFabrik, Bas Wiegers, conductor (Isabel Mundry, Georg Friedrich Haas), 7 PM, Philharmonie Berlin, chamber music hall, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1, 10785 Berlin
September 7: Abdullah Ibrahim “3” Trio (Abdullah Ibrahim, piano, Cleave Guyton, saxophone, flute, Noah Jackson, bass, cello), 8 PM, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin
September 7: Jeremy Viner, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Marta Warelis, piano, Felix Henkelhausen, double bass, and Axel Filip, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
September 7: Ángeles Rojas plays Fragile Harmony; Elena Kakaliagou, French horn, and Peter Meyer, prepared electric guitar, live processing, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
September 8: John Surman, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, with Petter Eldh, double bass, Rob Waring, vibraphone, Judith Hamann, cello, Kit Downes, piano, Rob Luft, guitar, and Thomas Strønen, drums, 6 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin
September 8: Axis: Sova, 8 PM, Kantine am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin