Hearing Sounds, Making Sounds, Together
Antonio Borghini, Andreas Røysum Ensemble, Kommun, In Situ Ens.
It’s Time for Jazzfest Berlin
On Thursday, November 2 the 60th edition of Jazzfest Berlin begins. I’ve proudly served as a consultant to the festival’s artistic director Nadin Deventer for several years, and it’s been an honor and a privilege to help shape its diverse, adventurous program. Many of the events are sold out, but if you live in Berlin I’d advise checking back in at the festival website to take a look, as some tickets have recently been released for events that were previously listed as sold out. I’m headed back to Berlin from London today, so this week’s newsletter is a bit truncated, as with last week—it’s a bit tricky to write these from out-of-town, but I should be back in the groove next week. Still, I want to highlight a couple of shows in Berlin this week, starting with a few killer groups at Jazzfest where you can still pick up tickets.
Banquet of Consequences is a relatively new Berlin-based sextet led by the muscular and deeply soulful Italian bassist Antonio Borghini, who’s known to some readers as a member of the sublime Die Hochstapler. In fact, one of his bandmates in that quartet is also in Banquet of Consequences, French alto saxophonist Pierre Borel. He doesn’t live in Berlin, but the rest of the combo—tenor saxophonist Tobias Delius, pianist Rieko Okuda, cellist Anil Eraslan, and drummer Steve Heather—do, and the two performances I’ve seen from them during the group’s brief existence have been utterly delightful, a spirited mash-up of playfulness, buoyancy, and quiet agility, as elements of specific jazz aesthetics from Italy, the Netherlands, and South Africa are blended. The band will release its eponymous debut on We Insist! Label on Thursday and it elegantly reflects the pleasure transmitted by the sextet’s live show. It's one of the finest albums of 2023. You can read the description I wrote for the festival website and pick up a ticket to its performance on Saturday, November 4 at Quasimodo, but first check out the infectious bounce and Ellingtonian beauty of the tune “Lobster Promenade,” below.
Two phenomenal and closely-related bands at the center of Norway’s Motvind crew are performing this year. Unfortunately, the Marthe Lea Band performance at the cozy A-Trane has been sold out for weeks, but there are still tickets available for the final fest show on Sunday, November 5 at Quasimodo by the Andreas Røysum Ensemble, a sprawling dozen-strong group that brushes aside any dividing lines between wild, exploratory free jazz, folk roots, and elegant post-bop marked by sophisticated arrangements. Last year Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra closed the fest with a line-up that doubled as a who’s who of Scandinavian jazz and improvised music, and Røysum follows suit with a generally younger all-Norwegian cast that portends the ongoing vitality of nation’s strong scene.
The group has just released its third and most ambitious recording, Mysterier (Motvind), which pivots toward a joyful, harmony-rich attack while reducing some of the wilder blowing featured on its predecessors. Still, I have no doubt that a more extroverted side will be present when they play live, but that doesn’t mean the leader has mellowed. Rather, his skill, curiosity, and vision have simply expanded. While the musicians are rooted in jazz, the repertoire on the new record makes room for some unexpected folk material, including luminescent versions of British tunes like “Hares on the Mountain” and “Barbara Allen,” both beautiful sung by the pop vocalist Sofie Tollefsbøl, who will join the band in Berlin. You can read my festival text about the group here, with the full line-up included. Below you can check out “Kimbe Kimbe,” which contains more subtle folk overtones, but no single track can convey that range and versatility of the group.
Swedish Guitarist Finn Loxbo Brings his Quartet Kommun to Berlin for the First Time
The next Nowhere Street concert happens on Wednesday, November 1 at KM28, with the Berlin debut of Kommun, a fantastic Stockholm quartet led by guitarist and composer Finn Loxbo, with pianist Lisa Ullén, double bassist Vilhelm Bromander, and percussionist Ryan Packard. The group released its debut album Ephemeralds earlier this year on Fönstret, a new imprint run by John Chantler. That recording features a 36-minute interpretation of Loxbo’s piece, which you can check out in full below, but over time the work has expanded greatly and will fill the entire evening with lapidary overtones emanating from terse notes generated by all four musicians. I don’t know what the score looks like or how it works, but the sui generis music is a true wonder. Occasionally Bromander, a bassist of phenomenal pitch control and tone, will bow a line that’s something more than a brief sonic tattoo, but for the most part the cascading performance is built from a seriously limited set of pitch material that invokes the invisible array of sounds one might encounter within a dense forest, as a brook gurgles gently and leaves rustle. There’s nothing impressionistic about the actual tones, which are all clearly identifiable. Loxbo plays an acoustic guitar, favoring the sort of terse, harmonically-gnarled language of Derek Bailey, and Ullén using minor preparations to generate tender chiming sounds, but the focus is how all four musicians build a world of sound collectively, as if a mini-gamelan orchestra trying hard not to wake the neighbors.
In Situ Ens. Places its Sounds Perfectly
It takes a lot of care, patience, and collectivity for six musicians to get together and create something on the fly with as much cohesion, sonic imagination, and compositional logic as In Situ Ens. does for its remarkable 2022 album Same Place (Cubus). Each member of this international sextet have forged highly distinctive, individual languages with deep rigor over the years, but they also know who to play with others. The group features Liz Allbee on trumpet, Rhodri Davies on harp, Christian Kobi on saxophone, Enrico Malatesta on percussion, Magda Mayas on prepared piano, and Christian Müller on electronics, and they will come together for a rare Berlin performance on Saturday, November 4 at Morphine Raum. Over the course of the album’s five movements the group carves out a dynamic sound world that’s exceedingly tactile and in constant transformation. Sounds collide and coalesce in ever-shifting proportions, and while they work as a single organism, the rich layers of texture and steadily morphing timbre never subsumes individual agency or expression. The beautiful recording draws out every detail, allowing the listener to isolate this sound or that if desired. It’s been a blast to immerse myself in this sound world, letting the cumulative output to sometimes wash over and envelop me, while at other times I can marvel at the blend of arcing long tones and crunchy textures, as this vast sonic arsenal comes together and pulls apart. Below you can hear the album’s opening track.
Recommended Berlin Shows This Week
October 31: Skaatskapelle Berlin With Gidon Kremer, violin (Bartók, Mahler), 8 PM, Philharmonie Berlin, main hall, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1, 10785 Berlin
October 31: Soundscapes #4 Berlin: International Festival for Contemporary Improvised Music, 7 PM, Silent Green, Kuppelhalle, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin
October 31: Mateus Aleluia, 8 PM, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin
November 1: Kommun (Finn Loxbo, guitar; Lisa Ullén, piano; Vilhelm Bromander, double bass; Ryan Packard, percussion), 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 1: Soundscapes #4 Berlin: International Festival for Contemporary Improvised Music, 7 PM, Silent Green, Kuppelhalle, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin
November 3: Pankisi Ensemble, 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435
November 4: Liam Byrne plays solo works for viola da gamba (Max Andrzejewski, Samuel Milea, Freya Waley-Cohen, Greg Saunier, and Alastair Putt); Andreas Arend plays solo works for Lyra Polyversalis (Andreas Arend, Manfred Stahnke, and others), 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 4: In Situ Ens. (Liz Allbee, Rhodri Davies, Christian Kobi, Enrico Malatesta, Magda Mayas, Christian Müller), 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
November 6: Timber Timbre; Foundling, 8 PM, Festaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2, 12435 Berlin
November 6: Ernstalbrecht Stiebler & Tilmann Kanitz; Lee Méir; Enrico Malatesta, 8:30 PM, Kunsthaus KuLe, Auguststraße, 10, 10117, Berlin