Berlin Non-Stop
Lucy Railton, Wadada Leo Smith, Silke Eberhard, Archer, Jean-Luc Guionnet
Between a trip to China last weekend and my immersion in Jazzfest Berlin this past weekend I wasn’t able to publish this newsletter as scheduled, yesterday. I’m half-surprised I’m doing it now, to be honest. Music has the ability to elasticize time, but I don’t, and time has been in very short supply of late. My current condition also explains why many of this week’s entries are shorter than usual—which will likely please some readers.
Deep Listening With Lucy Railton
Over the years cellist Lucy Railton has taken a rather circuitous stylistic path, moving from contemporary music into experiments with electronic music on the two albums she made for the British label Modern Love. Both Paradise 94 (2018) and Corner Dancer (2023) struck me as efforts where she was stretching her practice in different ways, and the mixed results reinforced that transitory position. In recent years Railton has been working with different tuning systems, as a member of Berlin’s Harmonic Space Orchestra, a duo partner with clarinetist Michiko Ogawa, playing the music of Maryanne Amacher with Ensemble Contrechamps, and as a regular collaborator with Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley. That’s not to say that she’s put all of her eggs in the just intonation basket—she continues to work closely with Sidewalk Collective, among other projects—but her recent album Blue Veil (Ideologic Organ) is a deep dive into her evolving engagement with tuning, and it’s my favorite things she’s done thus far.
Across seven sequences that she dubs “phases,” Railton explores intervals and chords that transform the cello into a sound machine, toggling between serenity and instability. The music elides melody, focusing exclusively on the kind of shifting harmonies that generate startling psychoacoustic effects, such as the massive beating patterns that transform moments of placidity into juddering ecstasy. The performances require Railton to listen closely to her own instrument, picking up sonic phenomena and feeding it back into her playing to unleash magical properties. Intervals of two simple notes explode into almost three-dimensional swells that make the performance space seem to shake. It’s not so much a composition as a pre-meditated sequence that the cellist follows with each performance, akin to how Charles Curtis traverses the entirety of his cello when he plays Éliane Radigue’s masterpiece Nadjorlak. Yet activating and shaping these sounds is no mean feat, and Railton has put the time in judging from Blue Veil, the kind of sonic trip that’s manna from heaven for me, as regular readers of this newsletter have probably realized by now. Below you can check out “Phase IV.” Railton will perform the music at a performance on Wednesday, November 5 at Silent Green, sharing the bill with Oren Ambarchi, who also performs solo.
Wadada Leo Smith, One More Time
Last week the remarkable trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith performed a deeply nuanced, meditative set with keyboardist Vijay Iyer as part of Jazzfest Berlin. Smith, 83, is wrapping up what’s been billed as his final European tour, and while he sounded more taciturn and terser than usual at an artist talk prior to that performance—speaking more in poetry than prose—his playing on stage seemed utterly undiminished Just over a week later he returns to Berlin for another performance, playing in a collective with Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, drummer Marcus Gilmore, and guest bassist Thomas Morgan at Pierre Boulez Saal on Saturday, November 8.
Minus Morgan the other three musicians recently released a stunning improvised album called Murasaki (Loveland Music) last month. It’s interesting to hear both Bro and Gillmore in this setting, as they usually work with composed material. Still, they are all fervent improvisers at heart, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’ve created something coherent, focused, and deeply moving. Bro and Gilmore sculpt and hold down sturdy yet aerated armatures for Smith’s wide-open blowing, which is fearless in its reserved intensity. The music moves gracefully between abstraction and tune-like exploration, fusing hushed turbulence and atmospheric arcs. Bro gracefully accepts a support role, more or less, sculpting nifty arpeggios, spiky figurations, and harmonic overtones, while Gilmore drives the proceedings, whether conjuring delicate shading or aggressive polyrhythms—his exquisite touch straddles color and motion without compromise or contradiction. Together they provide a stunning foundation for Smith’s playing. Below you can hear “Sonic Mountains,” a performance that’s simultaneously febrile and measured.
Silke Eberhard Returns to Her Trio, but She’s Not Thinking Small
In the last few years alto saxophonist Silke Eberhard has leaned in to writing and arranging music for her versatile tentet Potsa Lotsa XL, collaborating with Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, tuba player José Davila, and gayaguem player Youjin Sung, and exploring procedures more commonly associated with contemporary classical music. She seems to move from strength to strength, steadily expanding her practice in all directions. All of that growth has been impressive, but sometimes it diminishes her excellence as an improviser, an ability that takes center stage in her long-running trio with bassist Jan Roder and drummer Kay Lübke, which released Being-a-Ning (Intakt), its fifth album, earlier this year. While the music remains tethered to post-bop fundamentals, it’s the freest, most exploratory music I’ve ever heard from the group.
Kevin Whitehead’s typically astute liner note essay mentions Eberhard’s interest in the intervallic system that Threadgill developed for his group Zooid. While she hasn’t embraced that model here, the experience does seem to have impacted the way she thinks about music. The album title is a clear nod to Thelonious Monk, but it also refers to a string of titles she’s used for her last albums that include the word “being,” which suggests a larger devotion to existing in the moment. These ten new compositions are more jagged, angular, and surprising, which you can sense right out of the gate on “What’s in Your Bag,” a Braxton-esque gem which further illustrates a deep connection to Chicago jazz history. The genesis of Potsa Lotsa XL, for example, emerged from a project she had with Chicago in 2017. On the other hand, the trio takes on all sorts of new tacks here, from the needling, tightly-coiled “Sao,” a showpiece for Lübke, or the infectiously limber “New Dance,” where the elastic rhythm section ride the driving group with an impressive snap, expanded with some subtle electronic flourishes, giving Eberhard wide berth in her extended solo. Still, no matter how much the trio experiments and leans into freedom, it maintains an inexorable connection to swing, and there’s no missing those connections on the title track, which like the Monk piece it’s named after, is based on rhythm changes. Check it out below.
The trio performs as part of the Jazz am Helmholtzplatz series on Thursday, November 6. Eberhard also plays on Wednesday, November 5 with a new quartet called Endophyte with Lübke, Davila, and Potsa Lotsa XL trumpeter Nikolaus Neuser at Münzenberg Saal in the building that houses the offices of Wolke Verlag and FMP Records (address below in recommended shows list).
Archer’s Rhythmic Bullseye
Chicago reedist Dave Rempis is a dyed-in-the-wool improviser. Early in his career he worked in some bands that used composed material, whether it was Vandermark 5 or a collective assembled to play the music of the Blue Notes/Brotherhood of Breath axis, but otherwise he’s always preferred playing without a net. On the other hand, he also likes bands where he can establish a certain stylistic or sonic footprint. Although he deftly handles ad hoc encounters, he really digs in when working with familiar collaborators. One of the most bruising and volatile of those ensembles is Archer, a quartet with Dutch guitarist Terrie Ex and the Norwegian rhythm section of bassist Jon Rume Strøm and drummer Tollef Østvang. On Thursday, November 6 the group will make its Berlin debut with a performance at KM28.
Back in April the quartet released its debut album Sudden Dusk (Aerophonic), a hard-hitting recording captured at performances in Chicago and Milwaukee last spring. As you can hear below on the album’s briefest track, “Half Stack,” the group is kind of a jagged rhythm machine for the powerful, free blowing of Rempis. Here Ex is the heart of that groove mechanism, cycling through a deliciously raw, churning pattern that allows Strøm to move up and down his bass while Østvang conjures a sea of clanking and bowed metal percussion, a modulating sheet of tinkling and scraping. The self-taught Ex has managed to build a long career by trusting his instincts, developing an unconventional arsenal to techniques—using drumsticks and other objects to trigger wiry, noisy gestures that seethe and spasm—and Archer is among his most effective outlets, as the band is frequently content to drive a throbbing rhythm into the ground, allowing the guitarist to unleash unkempt noise or stubborn, homemade riffs.
The Intense Sound Studies of Jean-Luc Guionnet
French saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet is one of the fiercest alto saxophonists on the planet, an improviser that grapples with the grain of his instrument and the way his blowing occupies whatever space he places it within. He’s involved in all kinds of disparate practices—working with film, composition, and experimental formats—but there’s something about the visceral, white-knuckle intensity of his alto improvising that consistently compels me even as its force frequently pins me to the wall. He’s in town this week playing a solo show at Sowieso on Wednesday, November 5, where he shares the bill with trumpeter Axel Dörner and percussionist Seijiro Murayama, and the following night at Richten25 he’ll play duets with Murayama while Mazen Kerbaj will play two shorter solo sets for trumpet and crackle synth. Guionnet has just released two fantastic improvised solo recordings that reveal how he can adapt his highly original language in different contexts.
L’Epaisseur de L’Air Live (Potlatch) contains two gritty takes on the titular piece that originally surfaced on an equally superb recording of the same name on Thin Wrist back in 2021. Each of the two performance spaces leave their mark on the performances, but the saxophonist’s burr-laden bray is all his own, moving through a shifting array of riffs and gestures, including some gnarly long tones where the sound he’s transmitting seems to transform into sonic magma, a thick, viscous outpouring that plays tricks on the ears its glisses upward with tone-splitting harmonics. You can hear a brief excerpt of the performance from July of 2024 at La Brasserie Bouchoule below.
Last week Guionnet released the digital-only album Per Sona (Empty Editions), a series of shorter pieces recorded in a decidedly drier environment than the above album. He demonstrates the same hyper-focus, drilling down into more limited material on each piece, revealing a more pronounced exploration with psychoacoustic and overblowing. I’m particularly fond of what he accomplishes on the opening piece, “Per Sona 1,” where it sounds like he seems to be splitting tones in a fascinating manner whole apart from the effects Evan Parker’s circular breathing produces. Check it out below. Each piece has a different concern, revealing a catalog of techniques that manages to feel of a piece.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
November 4: Surface of the Earth; Rosy Parlane, 8 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG
November 4: ükya (Emil Bø, trombone, Kristian Enkerud Lien, guitar, and Michael Lee Sørenmo, drums); Tasso Savvopoulous, guitar, Kellen Mills, electric bass, and Raiga Hayashi, drums, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
November 5: Endophyte (Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone, Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet, José Davila, tuba, and Kay Lübke, drums), 7:30 PM, Münzenberg Saal, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin
November 5: Lucy Railton, cello; Oren Ambarchi, guitar, 8 PM, Kuppelhalle, Silent Green, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin
November 5: Foxwarren; Elanor Moss, 8 PM, Frannz Club, Schönhauser Allee 36, Kulturbrauerei, 10435 Berlin
November 5: Anna Kaluza, alto saxophone, Achim Kaufmann, drums, piano, Jan Roder, double bass, and Artur Majewski, trumpet, electronics, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
November 5: John Butcher, saxophones, Florian Stoffner, guitar, and Chris Corsano, drums, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 5: Seijiro Murayama, voice, percussion, and Axel Dörner, trumpet; Jean-Luc Guionnet, alto saxophone, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
November 6: Silke Eberhard Trio (Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone, Jan Roder, double bass, and Kay Lübke, drums), 8 PM, Brotfabrik, Caligariplatz 1, 13086 Berlin
November 6: Archer (Dave Rempis, saxophones, Terrie Ex, electric guitar, Jon Rune Strøm, double bass, and Tollef Østvang, drums), 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 7: Mazen Kerbaj, trumpet, crackle synth; Seijiro Murayama, drums, voice, and Jean-Luc Guionnet, alto saxophone, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
November 7: Lisa Ullén, piano, Brad Henkel, trumpet, and Marius Wankel, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
November 8: Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet, Jakob Bro, guitar, Marcus Gilmore, drums, and Thomas Morgan, double bass, 7 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin
November 8: David Grubbs, guitar, Jan St. Werner, electronics, and Jules Reidy, guitar, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 10: Eiko Ishibashi Band, 8 PM, Kuppelhalle, Silent Green, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin
November 10: The Tubs; Finks, 8 PM, Lark, Holzmarktstrasse 15-18, 10179 Berlin