Summer Heat
Monheim Triennale, Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force, Potsa Lotsa XL & José Davila
Monheim Triennale II: More is More Except When It’s Less
I spent this past weekend in Monheim am Rhein, a small German city not far from Cologne and Dusseldorf for the second iteration of the Monheim Triennale. The ambitious project is the brainchild of veteran presenter Rainer Michalke, who was approached in 2016 by the city’s mayor Daniel Zimmermann about developing a new music festival in Monheim. A crew of international curators work together to select a number of artists who are given resources to mount ambitious projects otherwise beyond their means. Originally slated for 2020, the initial event was repeatedly postponed by the pandemic, and in the effort to keep the delayed event from fading away they devised various smaller, ad hoc ventures to maintain momentum. They serendipitously evolved into a new three-year format: a sound installation festival, followed by the core artists working with one another, and finally the grand event, with the “signature projects” surrounded by collaborative endeavors from the massive cast of assembled musicians.
It's a strange project that clearly costs a ton of money to produce, especially given the limited number of tickets available. The city doesn’t yet have a venue to host such an undertaking, so most of the action occurs on a cruise ship docked along the river, with a variety of churches and a single nightclub space hosting more intimate events. My early take on the project admired how the larger casts on hand for signature projects could form endless constellations of both ad hoc and working bands, and while I found the initial Triennale in 2022 to be a mixed bag due to the contrasting aesthetics of the various curators, it offered a clear blueprint for success. The second Triennale roster created serious limitations, as there were a bunch of invited artists who create electronic music in relative solitude, so some of them, like Muqata’s and Terre Thaemlitz, didn’t enlist any musical collaborators, while others like Ludwig Wandinger and Rojin Sharafi struggled to make cohesive projects featuring additional musicians. Midway through the second day of the festival I was convinced that the best stuff I heard featured the most direct and lean performances, where the elaborate infrastructure was pushed aside for the most basic sort of sound-making. Solo sets at a small church by alto saxophonist Darius Jones, vibraphonist Joel Ross, singer Sofia Jernberg, and violist Joanna Mattrey were among my favorite things all weekend.
Over time I was just as impressed with some of the signature projects, whether it was Vancouver singer Julia Úlehla presenting the current iteration of her group Dalava as heard on its second album Understories (Pi), a reimagining of Moravian folks songs collected by grandfather and brought to life by guitarist Aram Bajakian, cellist Peggy Lee, and violinist Josh Zubot, or a giant iteration of Oren Ambarchi’s minimalist Hubris project, where he was joined by twin drummers Will Guthrie and Andreas Werliin, bassist Johan Berthling, guitarists Jules Reidy, Fredrik Rasten, Marcus Pal, and Phillip Sollmann, programmer Konrad Sprenger, and reedists Mats Gustafsson and Sam Dunscombe—along with a touch of spoken word by crys cole. Ghosted, Ambarchi’s trio with Berthling and Werliin, also played a knockout set. The Mayfield, an improvising collective assembled by veteran composer and keyboardist Heiner Goebbels delivered an impressive set, although the boat’s acoustics damped Willi Bopp’s exquisite sound design. Jones presented a new work for vocalists and percussion called Samesoul Maker, a kind of ritual piece that showcase another side of his strengthening compositional practice. Violinist yuniya edi kwon assembled a powerfu group with violist Mattrey, cellist Tomeka Reid, double bassist Henry Fraser, violinist Darian Donavan Thomas, and percussionists Nava Dunkelmann and Dudù Kouate, which played her crystalline arrangements with dazzling precision and bite. Kwon’s vocals drew upon Buddhist ritual and seemed a bit out of place with the instrumental attack, but it remained a dazzling performance.
The greatest work came from trumpeter Peter Evans, who presented a new iteration of his long running Being & Becoming quartet, which now includes the singular Tyshawn Sorey on drums, joining vibist Ross and bassist Nick Jozwiak. The dramatic change came from three vocalists: Jernberg, Mazz Swift, and Alice Teyssier (the latter pair double on violin and flute, respectively). Yet it wasn’t merely the expanded instrumental pallet that impressed me as much as a compositional expansion from the trumpeter. A few years ago Evans knocked me out with the restraint and sustained atmosphere of the 2023 Being & Becoming album Ars Memoria, although subsequent live encounters with the group returned to the trumpeter’s hyperactive virtuosity, which can prove exhausting. More recently Evans has displayed a new facet of his personality, ceding some control to the dice-and-splice production savvy of bassist Petter Eldh, first in a trio with drummer Jim Black captured on the riveting 2024 album Extra (We Jazz), and more recently on the audacious Jazz Fest, which weaves something intangible and mind-melting from Being & Becoming sessions and variety of gust musicians including Teyssier and Dave Liebman. Still, this new project offered a huge forward leap.
The group played on consecutive evenings, billed as parts 1 and 2. After the first evening Evans told me wasn’t sure what would happen in the second performance. The group hadn’t fully rehearsed all of the material he had composed, but as the second evening arrived he decided to wing it, which feels like a silly choice of words given how assured and masterful that set was, eclipsing the ease and energy of the magnificent debut set. The group tackled some of the same material both nights, but with marked alterations. Tempos were changed and the modular nature of some of the material was exploited. Both Ross and Jozwiak added electronic elements that fit into the music perfectly, but it was the brilliant control of live instruments that knocked me out. The trumpeter’s typically fluid, heroic lines danced in the same tonal range as the singers, especially Jernberg, producing a steady onslaught of complementary lines. Given the busy schedules of the participants and geographic challenges—Sorey lives in Philadelphia, Jernberg in Stockholm, while the others are in New York—it probably required the festival’s significant resources to make such a gathering happen, but I sure hope they figure out a way to keep the project going, or, at the very least, make a recording. What I heard was as strong as anything I’ve encountered this year.
There were plenty of other great sets, including first-time duos by Úlehla with piper Brìghde Chaimbeul and Sorey with Jones. There was also a lot of mediocrity, either from musicians whose various skills weren’t on par with their ambitions, or others who lacked any sort of rigor, allowing half-baked elements into their sets. Mayor Zimmermann has announced that he isn’t running for office again, so it’s an open question if the festival will retain its generous funding, and if it can better balance its open-minded embrace of younger musicians—I appreciate and applaud those inclusions, but some fell well short of the work produced by the more experienced participants. But it remains a sui generis event.
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force Gets Slimmer yet Stronger
Mark Ernestus helped forge the techno sound of Berlin through his legendary Hard Wax record shop and later through his partnership of Basic Channel with Moritz von Oswald, forging a singular, spaced-out collision of dub and electronic music. Decades later he drew deep inspiration from mbalax, the Senegalese music built around muezzin-like vocals and the jittery, shape-shifting attack of sabar drumming. As his obsession developed he found his way into a fascinating fusion of his own sonic history with this still-evolving African tradition, enlisting musicians in Dakar to join his project Jeri-Jeri, which soon transformed into Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, which released the classic Yermande in 2016, capturing a hollowed-out mbalax elbowing for space with his own dubbed-out production, leaving the soulful cry of Mbene Diatta Seck—who has clearly been influenced by singers like Youssou N’Dour and Baaba Maal, who sang onn Jeri-Jeri’s 800% Ndagga—and talking drums to float within and pierce a pool of deliciously murky digi-dub.
After a long break the project has returned with Khadim. The new album is the product of countless band performances around the globe, but rather than leaning into the group’s live sound, Ernestus chose to tweak the formula, reverting to his studio roots and using only the voice of Seck and the multiple layers of percussion from Bada Seck and Serigne Mamoune Seck, which erupt from a minimalist scrim of programmed beats and dubby, washed-out synth tattoos. From the beginning Ernestus chose to downplay the traditional dynamism of mbalax for something more futuristic and hypnotic, and Khadim pushes that idea to its extreme. The music is static in a way, its wild energy subdued by a countervailing drift that’s more about chilling-out than jacking-up. Even Seck’s once soaring voice seemed a bit denuded. You can check out the opening track “Lamp Fall” below.
On first listen I was disappointed by this shift, but after a couple spins it became clear that if I wanted to straight-up mbalax there’d be no reason to opt for the producer’s minimalist interrogations. Once I figured that out I found myself pulled in by Khadim, accepting it as something altogether different, and perhaps the most vivid evocation of what the producer was after on Yermande, a feeling suggested by a live review of a fall performance at Café Oto by Francis Gooding for the Wire:
Though rhythm is all, nothing really sets the dancefloor alight, for the modus is medicative deep heat and smoulder – a music of the human interior, both bodily and psychic, that addresses the entire person from the inside. I could see why people moved, but didn’t really get down: the drums were doing all the dancing.
The project performs Sunday, July 13 as part of Gaswerk Days, which runs over the next two weekends at Gaswerksiedlung Berlin. Saturday’s program features HHY & the Kampala Unit and Arsenal Mikebe, a couple of key acts from Uganda’s Ngeye Ngeye crew, with a DJ set from my Berlin neighbor Brian Shimkovitz, the man behind Awesome Tapes From Africa, which now has a retail location in the city.
Silke Eberhard’s Endless Evolution
Back in December I wrote about the ever-expanding portfolio of alto saxophonist Silke Eberhard as both composer and arranger. She’s always been a terrific reedist with one foot planted in tradition and another seeking out more open-ended terrain. In fact, it often seems like one project opens up a variety of new pathways. Years ago she started her quartet project Potsa Lotsa to tackle the extant catalog of Eric Dolphy music a la Alexander von Schlippenbach used Monk’s Casino to interpret every Thelonious Monk composition in disparate fashion. She later expanded the line-up to interpret some of Dolphy’s more ambitious compositions, but after a visit to Chicago in 2017, where she worked with an ad hoc large ensemble to play new tunes, she redirected the Dolphy project to play her own material. Over the years her abilities as an arranger have risen steadily, whether giving her own pithy material a prismatic depth or injecting new life into vintage tunes by French composer and arranger André Hodeir. On the heels of a triumphant collaboration with Henry Threadgill’s Zooid at the 2023 edition of Jazzfest Berlin she’s pushed Potsa Lotsa XL—the tentet that grew out of the original Dolphy quartet—into fresh terrain revealed on an ambitious new album called Amoeba’s Dance (Trouble in the East), which she composed during a month-long residency at the Banff Centre in Canada in April of 2024.
Threadgill’s Zooid plays music within an intervallic system based on the titular microorganism. Eberhard was clearly inspired, as the new book of compositions was based on amoebas.
I had a basic idea that amoebas move around by changing their shape. I built various small systems that I looked at as if through a microscope. What happens when I go deeper and deeper into the details and then pull the sounds apart again until I am satisfied with them? It was research in tones.
The new recording embraces a more experimental sound, a kind of contemporary third stream aesthetic that collides with the sturdy post-bop ebullience that’s marked the group from its genesis. Eberhard intersperses more familiar forms with concentrated vignettes inspired by her scientific research, producing a chamber sound relying more on composition than on previous endeavors. There’s still plenty of improvisation embedded within these heady miniatures—and sometimes the whole ensemble is improvising on loose structures— but it’s all directed by the writing, serving the underlying concept. Below you can get a sense of the dense collisions on the piece “Orthotactic.” The band will perform on Sunday, July 14 at the Kuhlspot Social Club, but rather than revisiting the material on Amoeba’s Dance it will showcase another set of new material indirectly spurred by the Threadgill project. During that project Eberhard worked closely with Zooid tubaist/trombonist José Davila, and in its aftermath he’s been involved with Potsa Lotsa XL, adding his sound to music conceived with his participation in mind. Davila is in town this month, and they’ll perform this new set of music together.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
July 9: 20,000 Hour Band (Rieko Okuda, piano, Johannes Fink, cello, Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone, Nikolas Neuser, trumpet, Gerhard Gschlössl, trombone, Taiko Saito, vibraphone, Antti Virtaranta, double bass, and Flo Fischer, drums) plays Duke Ellington, 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97, (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435, Berlin
July 9: Ya-Nung Huang, suona, double reed instruments, and Raed Yassin, synthesizers, electronics; Marina Cyrino, amplified flute, and Tony Elieh, acoustic bass, pedals, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
July 11: Splitter Orchester with Michael Vorfeld (Burkhard Beins, percussion, Roy Carroll, electronics, Anat Cohavi, clarinet, Axel Dörner, trumpet, Sabine Ercklentz, trumpet and electronics, Kai Fagaschinski, clarinet, Emilio Gordoa, percussion, Robin Hayward, tuba, Steve Heather, percussion, Chris Heenan, contrabass clarinet, Mike Majkowski, electric bass, Matthias Müller, trombone, Andrea Neumann, inside piano, Andrea Parkins, electronics and accordion, Michael Thieke, clarinet, Sabine Vogel, flutes, Biliana Voutchkova, violin, Marta Zapparoli, tape machines and antennas, Michael Vorfeld, light bulbs, electrical switching devices, slide projectors), 4 PM, former Rossman location, Brunnenstraße 105-109, 13355 Berlin
July 11: Ya-Nung Huang, suona, double reed instruments, and Raed Yassin, synthesizers, electronics; Elisabetta Lanfredini, voice, and Matthias Koole, acoustic guitar, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
July 12: HHY & the Kampala Unit; Arsenal Mikebe; Awesome Tapes From Africa; K’boko; Sonic Interventions; Studio Out of Time, 4 PM, Gaswerk Music Days, 2025 Gaswerksiedlung Berlin, Blockdammweg 1, 10317 Berlin
July 12: Ensemble Aparat plays Souvenir by Sarah Hennies; Viola Yip; Camilla M. Fehér; Augustė Vickunaitė; Darla Quintana, 8 PM, Heroines of Sound Festival, Radialsystem V, Holzmarktstrasse 33, 10243 Berlin
July 12: Simon Jermyn, electric bass, Marc Michel, drums, and Julius Gawlik, tenor saxophone, 8: 30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
July 13: Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force; Queen Asher & Rehema Tajiri; Marylou; J. Wiltshire, 2 PM, Gaswerk Music Days, 2025 Gaswerksiedlung Berlin, Blockdammweg 1, 10317 Berlin
July 14: Silke Eberhard’s Potsa Lotsa XL and José Davila (Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone, Jürgen Kupke, clarinet, Patrick Braun, tenor Saxophone, clarinet, Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet, Gerhard Gschlößl, trombone, Johannes Fink, cello, Taiko Saito, vibraphone. Antonis Anissegos, piano, Igor Spallati, double bass, Kay Lübke, drums, and José Davila, tuba, trombone), 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
July 14: Aki Takase’s Japanic (Aki Takase, piano, Daniel Erdmann, saxophone, DJ Illvibe, turntables, Carlos Bica, double bass, and Dag Magnus Narvesen, drums), 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
Big fan of Silke Eberhard, but had missed the new Potsa Lotsa album. Thanks for the heads-up. I wonder if Eberhard's familiar with (Signe) Emmeluth's Amoeba. (To be clear: not to compare the music of the two different bands -- have only just begun to dig into the Potsa Lotsa release -- but I remember noting the shape-shifitng movements of amoebas in my review of Emmeluth's Amoeba's second album several years ago).