Fall Ramps Up
Meshell Ndegeocello, helping Sam Dunscombe, celebrating Tristan Honsinger
Meshell Ndegeocello shares her depths
I can’t say that I’ve always loved everything Meshell Ndegeocello has created over her incredibly fruitful, varied, and restless career, but it’s impossible not to admire her commitment to artistic evolution and experimentation, particularly in a marketplace indifferent if not downright hostile to such exploration. She performs in Berlin on Tuesday, September 5 at Festaal Kreuzberg in support of her recent album The Omnichord Real Book (Blue Note), one of her most ambitious and varied recordings in a wildly disparate discography. The album was produced by former Chicagoan Josh Johnson, a saxophonist and keyboardist who’s become a crucial part of the Los Angeles axis around guitarist Jeff Parker, who also turns up on the record.
The deeply collaborative double album reveals the leader’s confidence in sharing creative tasks with others, whether co-writing material, yielding the vocal spotlight to others, and sitting out altogether. Ndegeocello is clearly most interested in making vibrant music, whatever it takes. On a song like “Clear Water,” which sports a killer opening guitar solo from Parker, her voice is one of several navigating a cool funk groove, with clear (George) Clintonian overtones, although Ndegeocello’s inscrutable faux-spoken delivery is instantly recognizable; check it out below. Every tune creates a different feeling, with certain tracks taking a chill, expansive tone, while others are exquisitely taut. R&B is the bedrock here, but within that expanse, Ndegeocello forges breathy balladry, jazz-rooted seeking, and skittering funk. Subtlety is the key feature, a tightly controlled atmosphere that in no way constricts expression. The recording features a slew of heavy guests including trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, pianist Jason Moran, vibist Joel Ross, and harpist Brandee Younger, but despite the extended cast the album never feels overstuffed and the cameos never sound gratuitous. The singer leads a compact working quintet, with guitarist Chris Bruce, drummer Abe Rounds, keyboardist Jebin Bruni, and bassist Kyle Miles.
Berlin communities come together
On Thursday, September 7 two very different events take place centering on important figures of the Berlin creative music community. KM28 hosts the first of two evenings organized to benefit clarinetist Sam Dunscombe, who’s currently undergoing treatment for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is thus unable to work. The program features a playback of their piece “Study 2.1 in Mass Plasma Synthesis for clarinets and sine waves (diffusion),” while the duo of cellist Lucy Railton and clarinetist Michiko Ogawa will perform “Four Visitor Chords in Sublunary Pitch Space” and Rebecca Lane will perform her own “ascending (below)” for quarter-tone flutes and electronics. A second benefit will take place on September 16; more details on that program in this newsletter late.
On the same evening Petersburg Art Space will present “This, that and the other,” a celebration of the life and music of the cellist Tristan Honsinger, who died last month at age 74. Reedists Ab Baars and Michael Moore, longtime bandmates of Honsinger in the ICP Orchestra, will join a raft of Berlin-based musicians as some of the cellist’s old ensembles including Hopscotch, Hook, Line & Sinker, and Klub Demboh will fete his singular spirit and aesthetic. The venue is also hosting “A foot at the face,” an exhibition of paintings and drawings by bassist Joel Grip—a trusted collaborator of Honsinger, who illustrated the cellist’s book Wander & Wonder—which opens on the same evening and runs through September 21.
Recommended Berlin shows this week
September 5: Meshell Ndegeocello, 9 PM, Festaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2, 12435 Berlin
September 6: Joe Hertenstein Trio with Michael Moore & Antonio Borghini, Kunstfabrik Schlot, Invalidenstraße 117, 10115 Berlin
September 7: Sam Dunscombe and Friends, 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
September 7: Hein Westgaard Trio, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
September 7: THIS, THAT AND THE OTHER: Tristan Honsinger (1949-2023), A celebration, 8 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG
September 9: Mariá Portugal and Tony Buck, 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
September 9: Trilopacy (Axel Dörner, Toby Delius, Joel Grip & Michael Greiner); Ada Rave, 8 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
September 10: Contagious (Sabine Ercklentz, Andrea Neumann & Mieko Suzuki) and Andrea Belfi, 8 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
September 10: Alexander von Schlippenbach-Barry Altschul Quartet with Rudi Mahall and Joe Fonda, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
September 10: Aki Takase & Daniel Erdmann, 8:30 PM, Jazz Club A-Trane, Bleibtreustraße 1, 10625 Berlin
September 11: Contagious (Sabine Ercklentz, Andrea Neumann & Mieko Suzuki) and Sofia Jernberg, 8 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)