A Slow Warm-Up as Spring Beckons

Max Asarva

Max Asarva’s Deliciously Hazy Borders

Earlier today I touched back down in Berlin after a couple of weeks in the US where I presided over Frequency Festival, the annual event I program in Chicago. This year all of the concerts were at my beloved Constellation, with a special solo organ performance by Ellen Arkbro at Bond Chapel, co-presented with the good folks at the Renaissance Society—namely Karsten Lund and Michael Harrison. It was an uplifting week, with stellar performances from BCMC, andPlay, Nate Wooley, Sarah Saviet, Eyvind Kang & Jessika Kenney, Zarabanda Variations, Ensemble Dal Niente, Cory Smyth, and Austin Wulliman. My gratitude to all of the artists, the staff at Constellation—especially my enabler Mike Reed—and Seth Brodsky at the Gray Center.

I spent the second week of the trip in Philadelphia, visiting family and friends and decompressing. I had hoped—there’s always hope—to publish a normal edition of this newsletter today, but time and focus proved to be in short supply, so consider this installment to be me dipping my toes back into the icy waters before making the full plunge. I have compiled a full listing of recommended shows this week, below, but the only record I had time to write about was Nowhere Dense (Aut), a new quintet album from pianist Max Arsava. The group will celebrate the release on Sunday, March 10, with a show at the Exploratorium.

Max Arsava (photo: Luise Anna Heinig)

I had never previously heard of Arsava, who lives in Berlin—a reminder that the pool of talent here seems bottomless—but he’s got some nice ideas at work on this recording. In fact, turntablist Ignaz Schick is the only member of the group I had any previous knowledge of, and he kind of operates like a free agent, injecting liquid noises into the mix. When the band plays more compositional pieces his visceral sounds function like a tension-producing gloss, adding grit and friction atop loosely structured post-bop tunes, but most of the material tends to be more open, and on these pieces his contributions are a binding agent. He blends those roles on pieces that explore both approaches, toggling between compositional frameworks and wide-open collective improvisations.

The group also includes double bassist Alex Bayer, drummer Flo Fischer, and tenor saxophonist Max Hirth—all of whom are also new names to me—and they reveal a clear devotion to the leader’s loosey-goosey conception. On a piece like “Utility Dust” the group kicks things off slowly, staking out the terrain, giving-and-taking, colliding and receding before a theme emerges and they fall into line, minus Schick, who runs appealingly roughshod over the action. But then they pull apart, falling into a loose post-bop feel with various members dropping solos. The album is named for a mathematical term describing a numerical set where the elements aren’t necessarily fixed, and that certainly applies to the various components in this band. At times I hear the herky-jerk, spasmodic propulsion of Jim Black, especially when the group becomes more kinetic and flinty, as on “Interior Motives.” Below you can hear “Adherent Terrain,” one of the album’s most riveting pieces, where freedom and structure dance around one another, requiring careful attention to deduce where one mode ends and another begins.

Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week

March 4: Lux Quartet (Myra Melford, piano, Scott Colley, double bass, Allison Miller, drums, and Dayna Stephens, saxophone), 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin

March 5: L’Rain; Embaci, 9 PM, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstraße 227, 10178 Berlin

March 5: Nick Dunston, double bass, & Michael Thieke, clarinet; Anil Eraslan, cello, Carina Khorkhordina, trumpet, and Tom Malmendier, drums, 6 PM, Café Plume, Warthestraße 60, 12051 Berlin

March 6: Silke Eberhard Trio (Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone, Jan Roder, double bass, Kay Lübke, drums), 8:30 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435 

March 6: Julius Gawlik, tenor saxophone, Evi Filippou, vibraphone, percussion, Phil Donkin, bass, and Jim Black, drums, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin

March 6: Hieroglyphic Being, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)

March 7: Axel Dörner, trumpet, Matthias Müller, trombone, and Tom Malmendier snare drum; Ben Bennett, solo percussion, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin

March 7: Arditti Quartet (Jonathan Harvey, Cathy Milliken, Toshio Hosokawa, Harrison Birtwistle), 7:30 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin

March 8: Bakr Khleifi, oud, and Misagh Joolaee, kemençe, 7:30 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin

March 9: Simon Løffler, Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen, and Jessie Marino, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin

March 10: Max Arsava, piano, with Max Hirth, tenor saxophone, Ignaz Schick, turntables, sampler, Alex Bayer, double bass, and Flo Fischer, drums, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin