Slowing down in the Berlin heat
Sawt Out, Immanuel Wilkins Quartet
This week’s edition is a bit truncated in size from previous installments. The heat has finally arrived in Berlin, so I’m a bit slower, but ultimately other work responsibilities have eaten into the free time I spend on Nowhere Street. Expect a full complement of stuff next week.
Small sounds in Berlin from Sawt Out
I know plenty of non-Berliners that find the city’s decades-long embrace of such small gestural improvisation quite amusing, and I would agree that, in general, this practice is played out. Few working ensembles in Berlin embody the city’s old-school lowercase improv aesthetic like Sawt Out, a trio with percussionists Burkhard Beins and Michael Vorfeld and trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj. They’ve been at this game for years, so it’s no surprise that they operate with an elevated sense of telepathy, slowly improvising long-form structures built from unified sound building, but punctuated with endless, elusive details. A couple of weeks ago the trio released its second album Black Current (Al Maslakh) and it’s been a pleasure to get lost in its microscopic rigor and almost hypnotic beauty.
Beins and Vorfeld are masters at creating hydroplaning textures, exploiting the deep resonance and gentle tinkling of metallic percussion, through bowing, sustained friction, and more conventional means. They lay down a rich fabric for Kerbaj to splay out unpitched breaths pushed through his trumpet; flickers and drops of sound that alternately seem like beads of water sizzling into the air on a hot cast iron skillet or a lapidary mosaic translated into striated, tart circular breathing excursions. Sawt Out reminds us there is more to be mined from drilling down and digging even deeper. It’s not as if the new album, which was recorded at Ausland back in July of 2020, will appear radical in its stripped-down methods, but there’s a purity and focus that’s hard not to admire, and giving in completely to the experience of listening yields some genuinely transportive dividends. Below you can hear the lengthy opening piece, “After the Rain,” which seems to have no connection to the John Coltrane tune. The trio performs on Wednesday, July 12 at Hošek Contemporary, sharing the bill with the trio of Brad Henkel, Miako Klein, and Etienne Nillesen.
Immanuel Wilkins returns to Berlin
I don’t know if there’s another working band in mainstream jazz that’s packed more of a punch in recent years than the quartet led by alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins. Last year his band released its second album The 7th Hand (Blue Note), a recording that touches on numerous traditions from its post-bop perch, delivering an authoritative, holistic approach to the artform at large. His nimble combo—pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Daryl Johns, and drummer Kweku Sumbry—work in lockstep with him, barreling through a seven-part suite that concludes with the epic “Lift,” a 26-minute tour-de-force that underlines the connection between free jazz and religious fervor. Along the way there are stops for head-snapping contemporary hard bop, with the most intricately detailed rhythmic procedures sound as simple as drawing breath, a febrile West African breakdown with the help of the Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble, and plangent gospel pleas.
I hear a lot of technically dazzling jazz these days, but Wilkins proceeds with a burning sense of purpose, and one where an abiding sense of tradition doesn’t hold him back. In fact, few recordings in recent years have made it so clear how African-American music can endlessly repurpose and build on things we might assume have been played out, but that’s our loss if we’re not willing to pay close attention. Each of the pieces have different ideas and goals, but a peerless focus binds it all together; indeed, these different stylistic journeys aren’t discreet exercises, but crucial components in a comprehensive worldview. Every time I listen to the album I get fixated on some new tune, and this time it’s “Shadow,” a coolly simmering mid-tempo number that definitely references 50s soul jazz in part of its indelible saxophone-piano theme, but the vibe is totally contemporary, with a gentle rhythmic push and a restrained elegance that belies the mastery on display. Check it out below. Wilkins performed at Jazzfest Berlin last November, with a show at Quasimodo, but as I was committed to the activities at Festspiele I was unable to sneak away to hear him. I’m not going to let the opportunity pass again when he returns to Berlin for a show on Monday, July 17 at Zig Zag Jazz Club, with Matt Brewer subbing for Jones on bass.
Recommended Berlin concerts this week
July 12: Sawt Out, Miako Klein (recorders), Brad Henkel (trumpet) and Etienne Nillesen (prepared snare, drum), 7 PM Hošek Contemporary, Motor Ship HEIMATLAND, close to Fischerinsel 3, 10179 Berlin
July 12: Anna Kaluza & Marc Schmolling, 8 PM, Rixdorfer Jazz Salon, Schudomastraße 38, 12055 Berlin
July 13: Marina Džukljev & Raed Yassin, 8 PM, Morphine Raum,
Köpenicker Straße 147 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
July 13: AWA Khiwe (African Women Arise), Merope with Shahzad Ismaily, Virginia Mukwesha-Hetze – A Tribute to Stella Chiweshe, 7 PM, Schlueterhof, Humboldt Forum, Museumsinsel, 10178 Berlin
July 15: Stefan Schultze Large Ensemble, Nick & Niko’ -The Nick Haywood-Niko Schauble Quintet, 4 PM, Jazz em Kaistersteg, Hasselwerderstraße 22a, 12439 Berlin
July 17: Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, 9 PM, Zig Zag Jazz Club, 9 PM, Zigzag Jazz Club, Hauptstr. 89, 12159 Berlin