Coming in Like a Lion
Dave Douglas, Ballister, SI Distribution
Dave Douglas Pays it Forward With Dividends
Like many veteran bandleaders before him, trumpeter Dave Douglas has increasingly turned to younger generations of musicians for his bands, opting for players who complement chops with distinctive sounds and visions. That process changes him, as he allows himself to be pushed in new directions without relinquishing his sure-handed conceptions. He celebrates that exchange explicitly on his forthcoming album Gifts, due in a month from his own Greenleaf label. In his liner note essay he writes, “The musical arts are a gift that is shared between musicians, and also with listeners as part of a perpetual conversation. Cherishing the music of the past blesses us to make the music of the future.” This particular line-up reveals an additional divide between the young recruits themselves, or at least one that I see in my mind. Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, a one-time student of the trumpeter at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada is a force of nature, a confident explorer with a deep respect for history. Guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang have long worked together in the art-rock band Son Lux, and even if the former has been involved with pure jazz projects, such as his masterful production on keyboardist Chris Patishall’s excellent Mary Lou Williams project, their connection to jazz seems to be refracted through a pop-rock prism. (I could be totally wrong, but that's how I’ve always heard it.)
Last summer I caught a terrific quintet set by Douglas at Jazzfest Salfelden, with his old Masada bandmate Joey Baron on drums, Nick Dunston on bass, Marta Warelis on piano, and Lewis on tenor. The leader sounded better than ever, and the upcoming record suggests he’s on a hot streak, as much as that’s possible in the jazz world today. Bhatia has absorbed plenty of ideas from Bill Frisell, particularly in the use of effect pedals to distend, wrinkle, and warp his atmospheric, gently melodic lines, while Lewis can’t help but maintain the fiery edge that’s central to his entire aesthetic. More and more he reminds me of David Murray in the way he straddles tradition and ecstatic expression. I think the band benefits from the yin-yang of the younger collaborators, with the leader wordlessly bridging that divide, connecting muscular post-bop with moody atmospheres, particularly on the powerful opening track, “Gifts.” Bhatia and Chang initially create a levitating sense of motion, the horns revelling in a sweet-sour blend as they unveil an arching melody, but the tune comes into focus with an abstracted shuffle, as tightly-coiled energy seeps out of a gorgeously buoyant solo from Lewis, a calmly avuncular statement from the leader, followed by a far more abstract Bhatia solo involving the play of feedback and effects, as he and Chang again float through texture in free time.
The blues show up more explicitly on the leader’s titular Miles Davis tweak “Kind of Teal,” where a shuffle rhythm is more direct, but the blues is reharmonized and reassembled through an inside-out take on “Take the ‘A’ Train,” one of four consecutive Billy Strayhorn tunes that suddenly seize control of the album—you can hear the first of them, below. Those last three Strayhorn tunes all appear on the brilliant 1967 Duke Ellington album And His Mother Called Him Bill—his powerful homage to his long-time collaborator who had died from cancer earlier that same year—including the indelible ballad “Blood Count.” Lewis bows out for a while, leaving the ensemble to operate as a trio without surrendering richness. The Strayhorn tunes fit neatly with the Douglas originals, all transmitting a cool burn, contrasting atmospherics and line. As nice as those trio performances are, my favorite stuff features Lewis. Even better, the group recently launched a European tour with a quintet version of the Gifts band, with the addition of cellist Tomeka Reid. The group performs on Friday, March 15 at Zig-Zag.
Ballister: Calm Amid the Storm
With a name like Ballister it’s easy to forget that the trio of saxophonist Dave Rempis, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love does take its collective foot off of the gas pedal now and again. There are some moments of exquisite repose on its new album Smash and Grab (Aerophonic), powerful valleys in a sea of ferocious peaks. I’m not trying to be a contrarian by pointing out how the trio does go against type once in a while—it’s there for anyone to notice. I’m also fully aware that these fellows are three of the most aggressive and loud musicians in the history of improvised music, and when they get together they almost always produce an unholy din of explosive rhythm, slashing lines, acidic tones, and bulldozer power, elements that make those stretches of calm function as a chance to collect one’s breath as well as providing an opportunity for sonic intimacy. Even if Ballister’s m.o. is full-on fury, those passages of quietude are just as crucial to the music’s dynamic ethos.
That said, this recent album—recorded live in Chicago at Elastic Arts in December of 2022—captures the trio’s volatile heat straight out of the gate, with Nissen-Love launching a sudden fusillade followed in seconds by a lacerating arco cello lines and screaming, upper register baritone blowing. Nothing will ever match the visceral thrill of hearing Peter Brötzmann play for the first time and feeling instantly pinned to the back wall by his attack, but this opening salvo by Ballister comes close. After two-and-a-half minutes the drummer drops out and the cellist steps on a pedal to alter his sound, leaving Rempis endless space to wind up and pull apart some patterns, but before long Nilssen-Love is back, quickly accelerating from a measured entrance, and the trio is off to the races again. Over the course of twenty punishing, throbbing minutes “Smash” captures at a group so confident and jacked in its ability to formulate endless blow-outs that it can be easy to overlook how its components fit together—each part either reacting to, blending in, colliding with, and erasing another. The members of the trio are good at hearing through the din, shaping something from the most unwieldy setting. There’s a long solo, a heavily abraded solo cello passage that winds down into a funereal plod, as the drummer taps out some gentle yet insistent beats that feel like a benediction, and after initially making space for Nilssen-Love’s energy, Longberg-Holm deftly adapts his playing around those clopping beats. Even when Rempis rejoins the fray the calm holds, revealing interplay that’s no less impressive than during the all-out assaults. On “Even More Smashing” a section that might seem more subdued on first blush reveals textures and colors that feel far removed from free improv, with Lonberg-Holm conjuring something closer to industrial music, with the drummer revealing the metallic side of his cymbal mastery. Below you can hear the last of the album’s three pieces, “Grab,” which actually emerges from the lulling conclusion of “Even More Smashing,” part of the trio’s deft ebb-and-flow process. In recent years I’ve helped organize annual fall visits by various Rempis groupings, but this performance marks its first ever concert in Berlin. They play Tuesday, March 12 at Sowieso.
SI Distribution Spreads the Noise
In one of the first editions of this newsletter back in February of 2023 I wrote about Party Perfect! a then-new label operated by Hunter Brown and Dominic Coles, focusing on noisy, abstract electronic music. One its first titles was by Technical Reserve, a trio with the two label founders and former Mivos Quartet cellist T.J. Borden. That trio’s new album PP-07 was just released today. I haven’t had a real chance to dig in, but on first blush it’s another gem. Call me old-fashioned, but the collisions and connections between Borden’s hyper-tactile cello sounds and the harsh electronics elevates the synthetic element. It could be that I just can’t locate the more rigorous machinations within the electronics, so I find the cello-electronics divide more transparent, but either way they all prove to be exceptional listeners with stop-on-a-dime reflexes.
Brown is actually in Berlin this week, performing laptop for the Berlin premiere of Michelle Lou’s new piece “teeth” at MaerzMusik next week. Luckily, he’s got some free time so he’s performing at Petersburg Arts Space next Sunday, March 17, celebrating the forthcoming release of another project for Party Perfect—a duo with Berlin-based experimentalist Eric Wong called SI Distribution. The pair first met and played together in Berlin in April of 2023, recording the new album at Wong’s apartment. I was struck by how different the music and approach here is from the previous stuff I’ve heard from Brown. Wong uses small Bluetooth speakers as a main focus, sounding out the acoustic properties of the performance space as they shift location. In one performance I caught last year a slew of the speakers were distributed and passed around by the audience, creating sounds that were constantly in flux by dint of their location. I’m not even sure what Wong was doing to control the source material, but the random diffusion of the speakers provided plenty of interest on its own.
The recording seems to collect purely synthetic tones from Brown’s computer alongside room recordings that combine environmental elements drifting in through open windows and Wong’s Bluetooth output. As with Technical Reserve, I enjoy the clear divide between the two improvisers. Below you can check out “SI Distribution 1,” a wonderfully tactile mélange of white noise, sine tones, glitchy smears and disruptions, industrial hums and rumbles, and diffuse atmospheric drift. They share the bill with Berliner Bryan Eubanks, who himself is celebrating the release of a new album, Series E-A (Sacred Realism), and Michael Speers, who’s on a split release with Ryu Hankil on yet another Party Perfect release from last year.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
March 12: Ballister (Dave Rempis, saxophones, Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello, electronics, Paal Nilssen-Love, drums), 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
March 12: Mary Lattimore; SG (Andrew Pekler), 8 PM, Panke, Gerichtstraße 23, 13347 Berlin
March 15: Acousmonium (works by Beatriz Ferreyra, KMRU, François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Michele Bokankowski, Ivo Malec, Eve Aboulkheir, François Bonnet, and Iannis Xenakis), 8 PM, MaerzMusik 2024, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Schaperstraße, 24, 10719, Berlin
March 15: Dave Douglas Gifts Quintet (Dave Douglas, trumpet, James Brandon Lewis tenor saxophone, Rafiq Bhatia, guitar, electronics, Ian Chang, drums, and Tomeka Reid, cello), 6:30 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
March 15: Ernesto Rodrigues, viola, Frank Gratkowski, winds, Guillermo Rodrigues, viola, and Michael Griener, drums, percussion, 8:30 PM, Kuhlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
March 16: Michaël Attias, alto saxophone, Achim Kaufmann, piano, and Devin Grey, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
March 17: Tony Malaby, saxophones, Christian Weber, double bass, and Michael Griener, drums, 3:30 PM, Industriesalon Schöneweide, Reinbeckstraße 10, 12459 Berlin
March 17: Bryan Eubanks; Hunter Brown & Eric Wong; Michael Speers, 8 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG
March 17: Polyaspora: International Contemporary Ensemble With Zafraam Ensemble (works by Aida Shirazi, Raven Chacon, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Jessie Cox, Laure M. Hiendl, and Charles Uzor), MaerzMusik 2024, Theater im Delphi, Gustav-Adolf-Strasse2 2, 13086, Berlin
Greetings from Palo Alto. I think I signed up because Ethan Iverson mentioned you. He was in Germany but he will be in Palo Alto for two nights April one April 2. No fooling. But I’m also a big Dave Douglas fan. He played here right before the Covid. I was the sponsor of a recording he made during Covid I get a producer credit more or less. Overcome. What is the German word for overcome? Weiss
PS as I reread the above, I’m thinking of the Tarantino movie where the spy holds three fingers and a thumb whereas we hold or you hold four fingers—- I’m forgetting who is we? And who is this Germain American Jew. Not to politicize. David was supposed to work on something called Tisha B’Av.