Sounds Abound
Akira Sakata, Maria Kannegaard Trio, Peter Ehwald-Stefan Schultze-Tom Rainey, Arto Lindsay, Phill Niblock
The Unstoppable Akira Sakata
The remarkable Japanese reedist Akira Sakata is headed to Berlin this weekend for a last-minute gig on Saturday, October 21 at Morphine Raum. At the age of 78 he’s extended his prime well beyond what most mortals could hope to achieve, playing with undiminished fire and focus, and by all appearances, he appears to be fit as a fiddle. I got to hear Sakata this past March in Oslo, where he appeared as a special guest at the 10th anniversary soiree for Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit. He played solo and he joined the band, his energy and slashing lines as vital as anything his cohorts, most of them several generations behind him, were doing. It’s been gratifying to see him embraced by a new global generation over the last couple of decades as he worked with bands assembled by younger admirers, whether drummer Chris Corsano and bassist Darin Gray in Chikamorachi—with a major assist if not full responsibility to Jim O’Rourke—and Nilssen-Love and bassist Johan Berthling in Arashi. The more he’s toured across Europe and the US, the more his circle of collaborators has expanded.
On Friday the great Austrian label Trost, which has now issued eight albums featuring the reedist, dropped Live in Europe 2022, a double album recorded with a pan-European crew called Entasis. Sakata has worked often with pianist Giovanni di Domenico, who appears on all three concerts included in this set, along with the Greek guitarist Giotis Damianidis . A different drummer appears on each of the three dates recorded in Thessaloniki, Padova, and Brussels, and double bassist Petros Damianidis also joins on the first session. The musicians are fine, building up rise-and-fall swells of sound that gravitate toward rock-infected thunder, especially when Balázs Pándi is behind the drum kit, yet none of the players push Sakata in a memorable way, and there isn’t the same chemistry that exists with the trios mentioned earlier. But that only makes Sakata’s performances even more impressive. He doesn’t allow himself to slack or resort to licks, but instead he pushes through the sonic morass in search of a real discovery. Sakata toggles between clarinet and alto saxophone on each of these performances, and at some point he delivers his sharp, hectoring Japanese-language oratory. His delivery is always stern and it seems angry, but I actually have no idea what he’s saying. I’d love to know what he’s going on about, but he leaves no doubt that he’s serious. Below you can check out the first part of the concert in Thessaloniki.
It’s not really fair to compare them, but my tastes lean more toward Mitochondria, a Sakata recording Trost released in early 2022 featuring a vintage duo performance with drummer Takeo Moriyama from 1986. They both played in the brilliant trio led by pianist Yosuke Yamashita back in the 1970s, perhaps the most galvanic free jazz group in Japanese history. Unlike the younger players with Sakata on the album above, he shares deep jazz roots with Moriyama even if most of this album comes on like a high-speed bulldozer. Apart from readings of Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts” and Yamashita’s classic “Chiasma,” which you can hear below, the other pieces are credited to one of the two performers, which I assume is determined by whoever begins each of the pieces, all of which seem to be freely improvised. The pair’s jazz roots are clear in the phrasing and strain of propulsion that characterize these performances, regardless of how explosive or violent they may get. In fact, Sakata inserts a quote from “A Night in Tunisia” in the middle of “Dance.” The music recedes at times, but the intensity is all threaded by seriously adroit listening; these guys are on a string. Sakata will play two separate shows on Saturday, playing a solo set at 6 PM, and then returning for a duo performance with guitarist and daxophone player Kazuhisa Uchihashi, a former member of Ground-Zero who’s lived in Berlin for years. Tickets for both are available at the Morphine Raum link above.
Maria Kannegaard Trio Hiding in Plain Sight
In a better world the trio led by Norwegian pianist Maria Kannegaard would be a major crossover force, as it brings a pop-like concision and fizzy accessibility to the format. Instead, we have to hear about, I dunno, the execrable Fergus McCreadie Trio. It seems like certain musicians from countries with strong arts funding, with Norway at the top of the heap, don’t make much effort to leave their borders and to share their work because they don’t need to. Of course, that’s an easy assessment to make from my armchair, but it’s nonetheless unfortunate that Kannegaard is so obscure outside of her homeland. A couple of weeks ago she released Live at Dokkhuset (Jazzland), a fantastic recording of her trio with bassist Ole Morten Vågan and drummer Thomas Strønen that establishes how impressively the group has internalized its repertoire.
The concert occurred in Trondheim in May of 2020, six months before the release to the trio’s most recent studio album Sand I en vik—which includes three of the four tunes included on Live at Dokkhuset, and the live versions prove brilliantly illustrative of the rapport and elasticity they bring to the material. While I enjoyed the studio album, it doesn’t hold a candle to what they do live. The album is currently a vinyl-only release apart from the track “Bortimot”—which you can hear below—with a digital version to follow later this year. But the most exciting thing on the record for me is the opening track “Dokking,” an improvised piece that lays out how powerful the music can be when it’s left to the instincts of the musicians. The bond Vågan and Strønen possess is mind-blowing, as they build a soulful groove from the ether that accrues depth, grit, and meaning as they stretch, accent, and construct hypnotic patterns, a process the expands exponentially when the pianist joins in, embroidering and nurturing simple phrases over time. The trio never loses the thread nor does it allow flashes of abstraction to shift the focus, even when the propulsion ebbs and the group goes into a kind of levitational stasis. The piece is worth the price of admission, and it's one of the most delicious things I’ve heard all year.
I’m not a huge fan of “Bortimot” as a composition. It’s super catchy, but it clings to the sort of post-Keith Jarrett faux-gospel churn that E.S.T. made its calling card. The account of the tune on Sand I en vik is more about the writing, but on the live record the trio simultaneously rips it apart and honors its contours; a tactic employed on all three of the tunes from the studio recording, pushing and pulling the inherent sentimentality of the compositions to their breaking point. The album is kind of a blueprint for structural improvisation. All three musicians serve up great solos, but the real joy is hearing them reinvent the material as a collective.
Tom Rainey Renews his Partnership with Peter Ehwald and Stefan Schultze
I had the honor of writing the liner note essay for the recently released debut album by the quintet Stamp, a group co-led by saxophonist Peter Ehwald and pianist Stefan Schultze. In the process of asking questions about the project they both revealed how important their ongoing collaboration with drummer Tom Rainey has been to their long-term partnership. “Playing with Tom, there is no safety net, no seat belt, or fixed roles of instruments,” Ehwald told me. “It is super interesting to see how Tom can very quickly strip a piece of music to its core and then explore it from any angle possible.” Indeed, Rainey is that kind of musician, and since he often works in freer contexts much of time time—including an excellent trio with his wife, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, and bassist Brandon Lopez, which will perform as part of Jazzfest Berlin in a couple of weeks—it’s easy to forget how jazz tradition is so deeply instilled in his aesthetic—this is a guy who has worked in the past with mainstream figures like Fred Hersch and Kenny Werner, among others.
The trio with Ehwald and Schultze—which performs at Donau115 on Wednesday, October 18—has made two excellent albums for Jazzwerkstatt that straddle tradition and freedom, erasing any lines between the two. This week I’ve been revisiting the better and most recent of them, Seven Whites, continually marveling at the spell Rainey casts. Jessie Marino has remarked that he seems like an octopus when he plays, his two arms suggesting many more as unfurls them across his kit during a performance, and yet there seems to be no effort on his part—which I know is far from the truth. He keeps time, of course, but he also creates an atmosphere. On the album’s opening track, a moody Schultze ballad called “Down Pillow,” he sets the tone unaccompanied, shaping a kind of circular groove that’s richly multivalent, creating a vibe that anticipates the sorrowful tune shaped by the pianist’s sparse chords.
Ehwald and Schultze operate with stunning delicacy, injecting the most tender melodic shapes with wonderfully ambiguous harmony and complexity. They can generate emotional torpor across their meticulous sonic tightrope, and Rainey takes that quality and runs with it, sometimes handling it with sensitivity, and sometimes stoking it like a nest of hornets. The album contains a couple of group improvisations that feel of a piece with the composed material, a real testimony to how they’ve congealed as a unit. Below you can hear the album’s title track, an Ehwald tune marked by pin-drop dynamics, gauzy atmospherics, and a gorgeously aching melody.
Quick Hits of the Week
Arto Lindsay
Few musicians are as instantly recognizable as Arto Lindsay, an artist who forged his singular skronk guitar style more than 45 years ago as the focal point of the paradigm-shifting trio DNA. Since then he’s managed to situate that untrained approach—as well as equally distinctive vocals, somewhere between Bob Dorough and an ogre—in so many disparate settings that he’s as much a magician as he is a musician. In recent years he seems to have reduced those approaches to a refined essence. I’m still marveling at the music he created for Charivari (Corbett vs. Dempsey), a bracing 2022 solo album made for the Black Cross Solo Sessions series co-curated by gallerist and writer John Corbett and visual artist Christopher Wool. He toggles between unholy sheets of metallic clatter and jagged, highly rhythmic patterns, all interleaved with his koan-like vocal phrasing, often within a single track. You can hear that weird range on “Nothing,” below, as his voice takes sudden u-turns from delicate croon to pained howling. While the album may lack the cosmopolitan sophistication of his gorgeous post-bossa nova albums, a certain kind of beauty abounds, an elaborate concentration of his broad aesthetic within equilibrium-smashing joy.
Lindsay makes a rare Berlin appearance on Sunday night, October 22 at Silent Green, part of an event celebrating the second year of Edition Dur, a boutique vinyl series launched by Sven Hasenjäger and Daniel Meteo in conjunction with the Berlin book and record shop Dussman. While most of the 15 titles released thus far focus on electronic music, there have been plenty of compelling outliers, including releases from jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and veteran sound artist Christina Kubisch. Lindsay will join a bill featuring Thomas Fehlmann and Mauritz Fasbender—both of whom have also released recordings in the series—along with DJ sets from labelmates Anika and Masha Qrella. I Had a Fever When, Lindsay’s contribution, was recorded recently in Reykjavik, Iceland with tantalizing contributions from bassist Skuli Sverison and contrabass clarinet master John McCowen (who also plays some recorder). It’s a collage-like assemblage, with poetic rambling colliding with thinking-out-loud asides, as Lindsay wonders where he put some unnamed object. He conjures non-verbal chants, rides McCowen’s drones, unleashes furious noise, and warbles over a beautiful bass line by Sverison, in no particular order. It’s a wonderful head-scratcher.
Phill Niblock
On October 2 composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock turned 90, his apparent appetite for creating new work still undiminished. As time passes, his creative circle expands, and he’ll be in Berlin this weekend to mark his birthday with a 24-hour celebration of his work at Silent Green, beginning on Saturday, October 21. The event is named for his landmark film, which he began making in 1973, titled The Movement of People Working, which captures unmediated, quotidian forms of labor, deftly paired with his long form sound works. Niblock is the OG of drone, working with a still-widening cast of collaborators to provide sustained tones for his microtonal studies. The film, which contains more than 25 hours of footage, will be screened continuously, while every two hours many of the musicians who’ve worked with him with perform the pieces built for them, whether a brand new work by synthesizer master Thomas Ankersmit or a vintage piece by new music guitar specialist Seth Josel—you can hear a 2003 recording of his piece, “Sethwork,” below. Other participants include cellists Deborah Walker and Lucy Railton, percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, vocalist Anna Clementi, violinist Biliana Voutchkova, and the bass clarinet duo of Lucio Capece and Katie Porter.
Recommended Berlin Concerts This Week
October 17: Vikingur Olafsson plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations, 8 PM, Philharmonie Berlin, Main Hall, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1, 10785 Berlin
October 18: Peter Ehwald, Stefan Schultze & Tom Rainey, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
October 18: Nadah El Shazly & Elvin Brandhi: Pollution Opera, 9 PM, Arkaoda, Karl-Marx Platz 16, 12043 Berlin
October 18: SG (Andrew Pekler); Blackbody Radiation (Andrew Black), 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
October 18: Jeremy Pelt Quintet, 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
October 18: Michiko Ogawa (shō & electronics); Jon Heilbron, Rebecca Lane, Léo Dupleix & Fredrik Rasten, 8 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG
October 18: Sawt Out (Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Vorfeld, Burkhard Beins), 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435
October 18: Oùat (Joel Grip, bass; Michael Greiner, drums; Simon Seiger, piano), 9 PM, Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68, 10245 Berlin
October 19: Jeremy Viner, Camila Nebbia, Liz Kosack, and Lukas Akintaya, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
October 19: Quatuor Diotima (Brahms, Ligeti, Lachenmann), 7:30 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin
October 20: Kasper T. Toeplitz & Reinhold Friedl; Mark Harwood, 8:30 PM, Ausland, Lychener Str. 60, 10437 Berlin
October 20: Hanne De Backer, Elisabeth Harnik & Dan Magnus Narvesen, with Ignaz Schick, 8:30 PM, Kuhlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
October 21: Steve Swell, Harri Sjöström, Achim Kaufmann & Tony Buck, 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
October 21: Akira Sakata (6 PM); Akira Sakata & Kazuhisa Uchihashi, 8 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
October 21: Phill Niblock: The Movement of People Working, 8 PM, Silent Green, Courtstrasse 35, 13347 Berlin
October 22: Thomas Fehlman; Moritz Fasbender; Arto Lindsay, 4:30 PM, Silent Green, Courtstrasse 35, 13347 Berlin
October 23: Apparat With Zeynep Toraman and Paul Hübner, 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin