Rhythm and Sound in the Ether
Sven-Åke Johansson, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Jung-Jae Kim
Due to travel this week, today’s newsletter covers the next two weeks of music in Berlin, which means it might be too long to fit if you’re reading this as an email. In that case please click the header for the web-based listings
Farewell to Two of the Greatest to Ever Sit Behind a Drum Kit
Well, fuck. On the heels of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson passing away, two of the greatest drummers/artists of creative music have died in the last four days. On Friday, June 12, Louis Moholo-Moholo died at 85, and last evening as I was making some final touches on this week’s newsletter I learned that Sven-Åke Johansson had just died, likely age 82—I haven’t been able to find any mention of his specific date of birth beyond that it was in 1943. It is no exaggeration to say that these were two of the most creative, deeply original artists to emerge from the European free jazz scene in the mid-to-late 1960s, but I would say their impact long ago transcended any specific tradition or musical community. I don’t know if they had any personal relationship, but as unique as they were from each other musically, they both had pushed against the grain in their own vastly different ways.
I got to catch a handful of fascinating performances in Chicago by Johansson before I moved to Berlin—both in conceptual mode and “jazz” mode, although they were rarely too far apart in some essential way. The drummer left his native Sweden for Berlin in 1968, leading a career that toggled between visual and conceptual art, bebop, and free improvisation. There is always more to discover with Johansson, and I expect I’ll learn much more once I dig into his typically askew autobiography Dynamic Vibrations (Wolke Verlag/MusikTexte), which just got a first-time translation into English. I had a number of interactions with Johansson after moving to Berlin and I remain exceptionally proud for helping to give him a significant feature at Jazzfest Berlin in 2023, where his excellent quintet Stumps performed, Antoine Prum’s SÅJ documentary Blue for a Moment was screened, he sang a few standards with the Umlaut Big Band, and he conducted a performances of his wonderfully absurd “MM schäumend - Ouvertüre für Handfeuerlöscher”—literally a work for 15 fire extinguishers. It was a remarkable experience.
I knew Johansson was very ill. I last saw him in December at his stunning Kreuzberg studio, and my memories of that evening are dear to me, a perfect final encounter. I had recently written a text about him that nonchalantly celebrated his range, style, and originality. Soon after I arrived I stopped by the sofa he was sitting on to say hello. He said, “I read your hymn to me. I can’t believe it!” He paused, and then added, “But it’s true.” That sort of prankish arrogance was a trademark, and he could push it too far, but it was true. Johansson looked uncomfortable and I was surprised that he carried through with a performance with Chinese improviser Yan Jun and veteran Berlin oddball Nicholas Bussmann (Telebossa, Kapital Band) on robot-controlled piano. At this point Johansson could only use his left arm, but despite that limitation he was incredible, using a tom as a resonator, playing simpatico cracklebox, and deploying a peashooter to gum up Bussman’s works, blowing little pebbles into his own upright piano. His whole expression changed—the discomfort seemed to vanish, replaced by a clear sense of joy. There was a beautiful moment during the cracklebox solo where something he played caused him to burst into laughter. It was incredible, revealing his artistic essence transcending his physical decline.
From visiting his studio in the spring of 2022, in the lead up to Jazzfest Berlin, I saw what a meticulous person he was. He had documented and preserved his papers, clearly more aware than most other folks, how important it all was. In the last few years he seemed to be on a campaign to secure that rich legacy, trying to get as many unreleased projects out into the world. At the same time he continued to play as much as possible, creating new music. There’s a lot more good stuff—vintage and recent—on the way. Since learning the news I haven’t had the time to dig into his massive discography, to describe his instantly recognizable sound, or to detail his vast multi-disciplinary practice—I hope to do so when I write about the book later this summer—but I will share a track from Stumps recorded live at Jazzfest Berlin, from a recent album on Trost. The group included bassist Joel Grip, pianist Simon Seiger, trumpeter Axel Dörner, and alto saxophonist Pierre Borel, and Johnasson referred to the set of skeletal tunes—schematic designs with very particular variations to distinguish them from one another—as his magnum opus of small group projects. It was probably a tongue in cheek assessment, but you could never tell with Sven-Åke. Anyway, you can hear “Stumps 2” below.
A couple of weeks ago when I wrote about a fantastic archival release featuring pianist Irène Schweizer and Rüdiger Carl I mentioned that the duo played with a variety of drummers during their partnership, without naming any of them. That recently released album featured the singular Dutch drummer Han Bennink, but the pair's most frequent collaborator might have been the South African great Louis Moholo-Moholo, who died on Friday, June 13 in his native land at age 85. He was the last surviving member of the Blue Notes, the daring, ebullient combo that fled Apartheid in 1964 for the more welcoming climes of Northern Europe. In fact, it was Schweizer that likely provided the warmest and most important embrace of the expats. (Blue Notes bassist Johnny Dyani is on that new recording).
She had already forged an earlier friendship with Abdullah Ibrahim, and the music of the South African townships became a crucial element in her own playing for the rest of her life. Of course, the reverse is true as well—Moholo-Moholo absorbed plenty of ideas from Europeans, and he soon became an active figure on the free jazz scene, working not only with Schweizer and Carl on classics like Tuned Boots and Messer, but sharing his seething energy and versatile textures with folks like Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, and Harry Miller. He went on to play with Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith, and Tristan Honsinger, among countless others. Suffice to say, he consistently found fruitful ways into all kinds of disparate contexts. He could rival Sunny Murray for the way he laid down a carpet of sound and motion, using snare and toms to produce a sensation akin to Murray’s sizzling cymbals. There’s no shortage of choices to illustrate Moholo-Moholo’s volcanic sound, but I’m going to share a galvanic track from his classic but often overlooked 1982 album Tern with saxophonist Larry Stabbins and pianist Keith Tippett. “Mania/Dance” begins with a ruminative, almost tender sound, with Stabbins blowing, dare I say, a soulful, pretty tenor melody before the drummer lays down a muted but highly active foundation of rhythm that can also be heard as a sustained tone, in a way, simultaneously lifting up his partners while injecting feints, accents, and bombs into the performance. Tippett also begins the piece with restraint, producing a gauzy scrim that slowly intensifies, but when the whole edifice begins unwinding from the climax it takes a different path, with the pianist and drummer sculpting a delicate pointillism for Stabbins to unspool wonderfully fragile soprano lines.
Still, Moholo-Moholo will probably always be best known for the jackhammer-strength propulsion he lent to the kwela-related sounds he played in Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, the wonderful London ensemble that surrounded the original Blue Notes (the titular keyboardist, bassist Dyani, reedist Dudu Pukwana, and trumpeter Mongezi Feza) with a heavy duty group of Brits. Listening to this facet of Moholo-Moholo’s music is among the most joyful experiences there are for me, and while the drummer’s passing is sad, his legacy remains pure joy in the face of oppression and conflict, qualities now needed more than ever. If hearing Pukwana’s “Mra” from the Brotherhood of Breath’s eponymous 1971 debut doesn’t get you jacked-up, you’re probably already dead. Check your pulse, below.
Both in McGregor’s various ensembles as well as Moholo-Moholo’s own combos, the music moved freely between South African roots, post-bop, and free jazz, all fully engaged and teeming with vibrancy. Sadly, the only time I got to hear the drummer play live was in 2017, when he played the Chicago Jazz Festival—I was lucky enough to serve on the committee that programmed the event, and having a tiny role in bringing him to town is still memorable for me. John Corbett wrote a great profile of the drummer for the Chicago Reader in advance of the visit. That version of his band the 5 Blokes included bassist John Edwards, pianist Alexander Hawkins and two reedists. One of them, Jason Yarde, was unable to travel since the US embassy didn’t bother to return his passport, with his approved visa, in time to catch his flight. The other reedist was Shabaka Hutchings, making his Chicago debut—on that same trip he played the session with drummer Makaya McCraven featured on his 2018 album Universal Beings. The Blokes set was magical. On Instagram Hutchings reposted an article he originally wrote for the Wire recalling his first performances with the drummer. It’s a fascinating account of how improvisers communicate, as Hutchings openly shares a profound learning experience while honoring one of his mentors. There are so many brilliant recordings featuring Moholo-Moholo, and the music on his 1978 debut as a leader, Spirits Rejoice!, is among the best-known. But that won’t stop me from sharing his beloved tune “You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me,” a gospel-tinged classic that feels like it could roll on for eternity, as it will.
Jung-Jae Kim: Free Improvisation as Ritual
As I’ve written before, no matter how immersed in the Berlin improvised music scene one is, there are always new players to encounter. The Korean saxophonist Jung-Jae Kim moved to the city in the spring of 2022—although he’s been living in Europe for a dozen years—but it wasn’t until a copy of his new album Shamanism turned up in my inbox that I became cognizant of his presence and music. The credit for that goes to Kevin Reilly, the guy behind Relative Pitch Records, a label that regularly introduces me to new players, even some who live in the same city as me. I owe it to Kevin for making me aware of many artists I’ve come to have great admiration for like Zosha Warpeha, Sakina Abdou, and Don Malfon, to name just a few.
Kim made Shamanism with three fellow Korean musicians, forging a kind of guided improvisational suite based on a self-designed ritual informed by the titular practice, which remains prevalent in his homeland. In a text that he sent Reilly about the project, Kim wrote:
In this project, I wanted to use the concept of Korean shamanism in perceiving one's identity. The ensemble consists of only horns and drums (with many different objects) to maximize the primitive and ritualistic atmosphere, creating emptiness to emphasize the messiness of all the textures and small details and expressing the musical shape that shows a drawing of dots, lines, and faces like a Korean traditional painting (particularly the one in monochrome - no chord instrument). The whole album follows a structure of ceremony, which is not real but created by me as an artistic expression. Each track is recorded based on the theme of each stage of the ceremony, with a specific concept of sound and direction but has improvisation as its core and gives freedom to individual musicians in their roles.
On the stellar recording he's joined by drummer Junyoung Song and Sunki Kim along with fellow saxophonist Sunjae Lee, and together they engage in a dynamic set of improvisations of stunning clarity, dynamic range, and energy. I’m not sure how the 12-part album is structured beyond what’s referenced in the description above, but the design is perfect, presenting the album as narrative-ritual hybrid filled with satisfying peaks-and-valleys thanks to the sharp ears and responsiveness of the players, who never get in each other’s way. The performance is highly interactive, eliding any clear genre although there are clear jazz roots, and if there’s any distinct ties to traditional Korean music it’s deployed in non-obvious fashion. The group rapport is very impressive and I’d love to hear this quartet present the material live, but geographic distance is no joke. Kim wanted to launch this project with fellow Korean musicians, but he always planned to populate the group with other players. He’s presented Shamanism in Berlin before and he’ll do it again this Saturday, June 21, with a performance at Morphine Raum, which doubles as a recording session. He’s joined on the frontline by trumpeter Brad Henkel, with percussionists Marcello S. Busato and Quentin Cholet, as well as synth player Adreas Voccia. Below you can check out the album’s opening piece, “Jeop.”
Recommended Shows in Berlin for the Next Two Weeks
June 17: Marmalsana (Maurice Louca, acoustic quarter-tone guitar, Tony Elieh, acoustic bass guitar, and Burkhard Beins, percussion) with Cansu Tanrıkulu, voice, 7:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
June 18: Kevin Richard Martin & KMRU; Rashad Becker; Lumpeks; Michał Żak & Synnøve Plassen, 7 PM, Gretchen, Obentrautstr. 19-21, 10963 Berlin
June 18: Harmonic Space Orchestra play Cenk Ergün and Fredrik Rasten, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
June 18: Schlippenbach/Walsdorff Quartett (Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano Henrik Walsdorff, alto saxophone, Antonio Borghini, double bass, and Jan Leipnitz, drums), 8:30 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97, (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435, Berlin
June 18: Attias/Edelman Quartet (Michaël Attias, alto saxophone, Nataniel Edelman, piano, Phil Donkin, double bass, and Devin Gray, drums), 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
June 19: Sébastien Beliah, Jon Heilbron, Mike Majkowski, and Derek Shirley, double basses, play Bertrand Denzler’s Low Strings; Antoine Ferris, electric bass; Don Malfon, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
June 19: Jeremy Viner, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Jakob Astrup, guitar, Phil Donkin, double bass, and Marius Wankel, drums, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
June 19: Frank Gratkowski, alto saxophone, clarinets, flute, Achim Kaufmann, piano, and Tony Buck, drums, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
June 19: Malacoda String Quartet (Silvia Tarozzi, violin, voice, Erica Scherl, violin, voice, Anil Eraslan, cello, voice, and Antonio Borghini, double bass, voice) play Tristan Honsinger, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
June 19: Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano, and Soko Steidle (Rudi Mahall, bass clarinet, Henrik Walsdorff, alto saxophone, Jan Roder, double bass, and Oli Steidle, drums, percussion), 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
June 20: The Magic I.D. (Michael Thieke, clarinet, Kai Fagaschinski, clarinet, Christof Kurzmann, vocals, G3, Lloopp, and Margareth Kammerer, vocals, guitar), 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
June 21: Kim Jung Jae (Jung-Jae Kim, tenor saxophone, Brad Henkel, trumpet, Marcello S. Busato, drums, Quentin Cholet, drums, and Andreas Voccia, synthesizer), 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
June 21: Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano, and Dag Magnus Narvesen, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
June 22: Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop play string quartets by Yuri Umemoto, Yaz Lancaster, Misato Mochizuki, Sarah Hennies, Henry Threadgill, Sarah Davachi, Wadada Leo Smith, Raven Chacon, Ted Hearne, Alvin Singleton, and Cassandra Miller, 6 PM, Radialsystem V, Holzmarktstrasse 33, 10243 Berlin
June 22: Kim Deal; Our Girl, 8 PM, Columbia Theater, Columbiadamm 9-11,
10965 Berlin
June 25: Peter Zummo, trombone, and Bex Burch, percussion, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
June 25: Phillip Golub, piano, Thorbjørn Stefansson, double bass, and Marius Wankel, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
June 26: Josephine Foster; Anaïs Tuerlinckx, 8 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG
June 26: Kimmig Studer Zimmerlin Electric Trio (Harald Kimmig, electric violin, Daniel Studer, electric double bass, and Alfred Zimmerlin, electric cello), 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
June 26: Cansu Tanrıkulu, voice, and Nick Dunston; Melt Trio, 8 PM, West Germany, Skalitzer Straße 133, 10999 Berlin
June 27: Antonio Borghini’s Banquet of Consequences (Pierre Borel, alto saxophone, Tobias Delius, tenor saxophone, clarinet Anil Eraslan, cello, Rieko Okuda, piano, Antonio Borghini, double bass, Steve Heather, drums); Yeah, About That; M. Takara & Carla Boregas, 7:30 PM, Gretchen, Obentrautstr. 19-21, 10963 Berlin
June 27: Tony Elieh presents Passé Composé with Burkhard Beins, Tony Buck, Andrei Cucu, Marina Cyrino, Yorgos Dimitriadis, Owen Gardner, Emilio Gordoa, Frank Gratkowski, Matthias Koole, Mazen Kerbaj, Niko de Paula Lefort, Magda Mayas, JD Zazie, Raed Yassin, and Ute Wassermann, 8 PM, Kontakte 2025, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
June 27: Josephine Foster; Anaïs Tuerlinckx, 8 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG
June 27: Phillip Dornbusch, saxophone, Phillip Golub, piano, Roger Kintopf, bass, and Oli Steidle, drums, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
June 28: Julius Gawlik, tenor saxophone, Bastian Stein, trumpet, Evi Filippou, vibraphone, Thorbjørn Stefansson, double bass, and Moritz Baumgärtner, drums, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
June 29: Contagious (Sabine Ercklentz, trumpet, electronics, Andrea Neumann, inside piano, mixer, and Mieko Suzuki, electronics, turntables), with Mariá Portugal, drums, voice, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
June 30: Peter Cusack, field recordings, tablet, and Annette Krebs, Konstruktion#4; Ephemeral Fragments (Korhan Erel, electronics, Emily Wittbrodt, cello, and Florian Walter, tubax), 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
I sent your review to Joe (he did sound at S.end) who lives in South Korea now. He wrote back, "... the other players are known here. Sunjae Lee runs a label here called Mung Music focusing on improvised music from Korea which is recorded to a 4-track cassette recorder.^^
https://mungmusic.bandcamp.com/ " there's a whole bunch of releases there, thought you might be interested...