Surviving Jazzfest Berlin
Per "Texas" Johansson, Richard Dawson, Madison Greenstone, Selvhenter
Last night the 60th edition of Jazzfest Berlin came to an end with raucously fun performance by a 12-member iteration of the Andreas Røysum Ensemble, which largely detoured away from its free jazz roots to navigate folk songs, soul classics, and a killer rendition of the Art Ensemble of Chicago classic “Theme de Yoyo.” It was a long, exhilarating weekend, and naturally, as soon as it wound down my body surrendered to some of cold strain that it had been fighting to help me make it through a flurry of travel and activity in recent weeks. Now I’m struggling with a nasty cold. But I’m back in the saddle with a new edition of Nowhere Street.
It’s Time to Take Stock in the Music of the Great Per “Texas” Johansson
Swedish reedist Per “Texas” Johansson was part of an exciting wave of adventurous post-bop musicians that emerged in the late 1990s, where he worked alongside folks like fellow reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist and bassist Dan Berglund (Esbjörn Svensson Trio), who both played in superb quartet he made several albums with. His early recordings capture his rigorous investment in post-bop fundamentals while capturing a feverish intensity and openness that could also be heard in the work of saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar and the Scandinavian quintet Atomic. His classic 1998 album Alla Mina Kompisar will get its first release on vinyl later this year on Moserobie, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, with a full side of previously unissued material from the sessions.
Early in the current century he trained and began working as a nurse in a Stockholm hospital, and that vocation largely took him out of circulation on the city’s jazz scene. He would turn up as a sideman sporadically, making impressive contributions to recordings by bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, trombonist Mats Åleklint, trumpeter Goran Kajfeš, guitarist Jari Haapalainen, and keyboardist Klas Nevrin, among others, but after releasing Man Kan Lika Gärna Leva in 1999 he wouldn’t issue another album as a leader until 2015, when Moserobie dropped his fantastic De Långa Rulltrapporna I Fleminsberg, its title referring to the long escalator rides he endured on his way to work at the Huddinge Hospital in Flemingsberg, a suburb of Stockholm. That record signaled his full-time return to music, and he’s been making up for lost time ever since.
Johansson still turns up as an invaluable sideman, making stellar contributions to Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra, the Johan Lindström Septet, and an excellent new quartet called Unionen with Nilssen, bassist Petter Eldh, and keyboardist Ståle Storlokken. In 2019 his comeback picked up speed with two terrific albums on Moserobie, a chamber music project called Stråk På Himlen Och Stora Hus and a collective trio with Zetterberg and drummer Konrad Agnas called Orakel. Together they captured his sophistication as an arranger and composer and his deeply lyrical gifts as an improviser. Last month he returned with another pair of albums for Moserobie that reveal his growing ambitions as a leader; better late than never, as Johansson is one of the great talents of our time.
Orkester Omnitonal was put together in 2020 for a performance at the Stockholm Jazz Festival. Johansson assembled a stellar cast of players from the city’s jazz, classical, and improvising communities, which all run deep, and both the writing and arranging—with contributions from Lindström and bassist Viktor Skokić, neither of whom play on the recording—point to a modern strand of third stream elegance without every losing the essential rhythmic heart of the music, most of it sparked by flinty improvisations and lush harmonic designs. Straight out of the gate there’s a zig-zagging collision of 20th century classical music and big band charts, as the rhythm section of drummer Agnas, bassist Pär-Ola Landin, and pianist Rasmus Borg, thrives in thorny sync with the spiky vibraphone and marimba of Matthias Ståhl. Some of Stockholm’s finest players are on hand to deliver bracing solos, including Åleklint, Ljungkvist, trumpeters Karl Olandersson and Emil Strandberg, and reedist Alberto Pinton, but the leader gets the lion’s share of the solo space, gliding, slaloming, and going against the grain of the luminescent, sparkling arrangements on clarinet, bass clarinet, and contrabass clarinet. You can hear how his incisive playing occupies the shifting harmonic terrain in the first movement of his own piece “Orosmoln,” a marvel of orchestral jazz that deserves to earn as much attention as the work of Darcy James Argue or Maria Schneider.
He wrote all of the music on Den Sämsta Lösingen av Alla, an equally accomplished septet recording where he plays seven different reed instruments, with oboe, bassoon, and English horn complementing tenor saxophone and the three clarinet models he deploys on the big band record above. That variety could come off as a parlor trick, but in Johansson’s crafty hands those different voices all produce different vibes and atmospheres. On the opening track “Mardrömmen,” for example, Johansson places his sorrowful English horn within a gorgeously dark arrangement distinguished by the woozy pedal steel guitar of Lindström and the shimmering vibraphone of Ståhl. The piece conveys a darkly haunting tunefulness that reminds me of “Nature Boy,” its astonishing beauty suffused with deep sadness. The track is one of the most remarkable things I’ve heard all year—check it out below.
Johansson assembled a stellar line-up to tackle the music, with Agnas, Ståhl, and Lindström joined by keyboardist Johan Graden, bassist Petter Eldh, and violist/violinist Josefin Runsteen. When the leader blows one of his double reed instruments it transmits a brooding quality that simultaneously projects unalloyed beauty, as on the surging “Sent I Livet,” where swells of roiling sound rise and fall until an effective electronic intervention splinters everything, leaving Eldh’s forceful bass playing to wind things down. Concise solos by various group members are meticulously placed within each tune, but the album is no less of a showcase for his writing and arranging than the big band album: the pedal steel and strings that snake through “Var är musiken,” for example, deliver a bracing contrast to the driving motion carved out by the rhythm section, while the title piece is more of a simmering tone poem, fueled by the charged energy of Eldh and Agnas. I think Johansson’s skill as a versatile improviser is well-established, but here’s hoping the world starts to awaken to the full diapason of his vast abilities.
Richard Dawson’s Dystopian Present
Back before the pandemic descended upon us in 2020 I was filled with anticipation for a scheduled gig by Richard Dawson here in Berlin. He has been one of my favorite musicians for nearly a decade and his unhinged creativity,his breathless fluency in various traditions, whether folk or free improvisation, and his refusal to repeat himself have earned my deep admiration. Of course, that gig didn’t happen, and now more than three years later I’m going to finally see him play on Wednesday, November 8 at the Kantine at Berghain, in a duo setting with drummer Andrew Cheetham. The occasion has led me to revisit his superb 2022 album The Ruby Cord (Weird World), which opens with a ridiculous 41-minute epic titled “The Hermit.” The album is enhanced by the invaluable presence of Rhodri and Angharad Davies, the nonpareil Welsh siblings on harp and violin, respectively. While I don’t think it’s quite as strong as his indelible investigation of the indignities of contemporary life captured on 2020, it does offer a lovely return to his idiosyncratic folk-rock following an unexpected discographic detour made on a collaborative album with the Finnish hard rock band Circle, Henki.
But the focal point is all Dawson, whose rare ability to spin elaborate tales within the form and language of ancient folk traditions, using ages-old tropes as renewable vessels for his strange visions never fails to astonish me, painting a dystopian future that’s got nothing to do with plastic science fiction. Rarely has mandatory consultation of a dictionary proven so edifying, as he opens the piece thusly:
But the focal point is all Dawson, whose rare ability to spin elaborate tales within the form and language of ancient folk traditions, using ages-old tropes as renewable vessels for his strange visions never fails to astonish me, painting a dystopian future that’s got nothing to do with plastic science fiction. Rarely has mandatory consultation of a dictionary proven so edifying, as he opens the piece thusly:
But the focal point is all Dawson, whose rare ability to spin elaborate tales within the form and language of ancient folk traditions, using ages-old tropes as renewable vessels for his strange visions never fails to astonish me, painting a dystopian future that’s got nothing to do with plastic science fiction. Rarely has mandatory consultation of a dictionary proven so edifying, as he opens the piece thusly:
I’m awake but I can’t yet see / An eager chiffchaff is heralding me / The image starts to form of a four-poster bed / Sprung in the clarts of a riverbed
There’s no doubt that Dawson adores such language play, assembling phrases, images, and extended narratives like endless fever dreams. Of course, Dawson is also a brilliant singer, deploying his forceful voice to imbue his melodic shapes with endless shades of meaning. When his voice falters slightly, it packs an extra punch. And then there’s his guitar playing, which gets a bit less focus here than on some of his previous recordings. “The Hermit” goes through countless shifts, following an extended introduction where the musicians patiently establish a mood that both holds throughout all of the changes.
The album’s remaining six tunes are more concise, whether jacked-up, absurdly beautiful sallies like “The Fool,” which you can check out below, or the comparatively gentle “The Tip of an Arrow,” a feast of cascading harp arpeggios and sweet toned string lines caressing Dawson’s own nimble picking and soulful singing. Who knows what Wednesday’s performance has in store for me, but it’s been a long while since I’ve looked forward to a single concert this much.
Madison Greenstone’s Riveting Sonic Interference Studies
Clarinetist Madison Greenstone is probably best-known as a key member of two of New York’s most adventurous contemporary music groups, TAK Ensemble and The [Switch Ensemble], but outside of those contexts they’ve spent years forging remarkable solo and duo practices. I first heard Greenstone’s playing on a knockout collaborative recording with contrabass clarinet master John McCowan, Mundanas I-V, which was released by Edition Wandelweiser in late 2018. The musicians dive into the often strident harmonic worlds resting within in McCowan’s skeletal compositions. It’s a great recording, but Greenstone’s highly personal language really comes into its own on their stellar new solo album Solo Studies in Ecstatic Resonance (Relative Pitch), a heavy hitter that shares the musician’s research into tones that cleave the sound spectrum into wildly wriggling components that tickle both the ears and the mind.
The music is pleasingly visceral and thrillingly unstable, as Greenstone blows wobbly long tones to foster internal feedback phenomena. Each slithering tone judders and splatters, like a car wheel hub, shorn of its tire, grinding pavement at high speed, emitting wild showers of sparks, or a washing machine spinning so hard and fast that it generates an otherworldly drone. Greenstone functions like a ringmaster, creating conditions for unpredictable twists and turns, as if trying to keep a speeding bicycle from spinning out on black ice. The clarinet becomes like a floor buffing machine that Greenstone must stabilize against remarkable propulsion and centrifugal force. That constant sonic struggle reaps amazing dividends, as we hear how a single column of air can explode into competing pure tones and unwieldy abrasions, the latter pulling away or trying to consume the energy that’s generating it all in the first place. Yes, it’s hard to describe what’s going on, which is why you should simply check out the music, including the piece below, “ecstatic consciousness II.” Despite the piercing intensity of these interfering frequencies, Greenstone creates a soundworld that I want to keep getting lost within. They perform a solo concert at KM28 on Friday, November 10, sharing the bill with composer Zeynep Toraman, who also performs solo, followed by a duo piece for clarinet and electronics.
The Slipperiness of Selvhenter
I’ve been listening to Mesmerizer (Hands in the Dark), the latest album from the Copenhagen quartet Selvhenter, for months now, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the music. The group avoids any clear stylistic hierarchy, melding bits of improvisation, groove, and texture into a shape-shifting trip. Over time I’ve realized the best way to engage with the sounds is to simply let them work their magic however it feels best in the particular moment in time. The material is rooted in the twin drumming of Anja Jacobsen and Jaleh Negari. Together they generate a bubbling cauldron of polyrhythm that’s probably the most non-idiomatic quality of Selvhenter’s music. It pounds, twitches, and stutters, carving out a huge, ricocheting space for the electronically-treated blowing of trombonist Maria Bertel and saxophonist Sonja LaBianca. The former feeds their brass sounds through a slew of pedals, pushing those slinking, slow-end gestures into gut-punching low-end tones that more often suggests a distorted bass guitar than a modern sackbut, although on a track like “Open Cluster” she plays clean layers of long tones that stack and pull apart in space-warping overdubs. LaBianca also deploys electronic treatments, but without disguising or eliminating the grainy center of her saxophone lines, which are generally afforded the greatest freedom and usually provide most of the album’s melodic content.
At its best Selvhenter puts me in the mind of old-school New York no wave funk. As you can hear on “L.A.,” below, the band can conjure some sort of twisted update of Liquid Liquid, with an off-kilter funk: a tom-heavy percussive attack threaded by the grimiest, grinding bass tones of Bertel’s trombone. It’s hard to tell where other sounds are coming from, as the upper register squiggles that drift through the piece sound more like a synthesizer than a saxophone. There’s a tension-producing absence of resolve or clear structure of a short piece like “Heftig,” a quality I’m still not sure I find appealing or annoying, but it’s kept me engaged as I try to figure it out, while something like “Rundhyl,” which feels like a collision of doom metal and snake-charmer blowing, transforms that ambiguity into punch in the face. The group performs this Saturday, November 11 at House of Music, sharing the bill with Oliver Lutz’ RE: Calamari, the latest installment in Marie Blobel’s Jazzexzess series.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
November 7: Rəhman Məmmədli, 8 PM, Jugend[widerstands]museum Galiläakirche, Rigaer Str. 9/10, 10247 Berlin
November 8: Jacob Greenberg, piano (Wang Lu, David Byrd-Marrow, Dai Fujikuru, and Charles Ives), 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 8: Richard Dawson, 8 PM, Kantine am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin
November 8: Ustad Noor Bakhsh & Doshambay, 7:30 PM, Jugend[widerstands]museum Galiläakirche, Rigaer Str. 9/10, 10247 Berlin
November 8: Werckmeister Quartet (Markus Eichenberger, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Etienne Nillesen, Philip Zoubek), 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435
November 9: Ustad Noor Bakhsh & Doshambay, 7:30 PM, Jugend[widerstands]museum Galiläakirche, Rigaer Str. 9/10, 10247 Berlin
November 9: Schnell (Pierre Borel, alto saxophone; Antonio Borghini, bass; Christian Lillinger, drums); Rieko Okuda, piano, 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 10: Eli Wallace, piano; Drew Wesley, guitar, 8 PM, Kuhlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
November 10: Madison Greenstone, clarinet, & Zeynep Toraman, electronics, 8 PM, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 11: Oliver Lutz’ RE: Calamari; Selvhenter, 8 PM, House of Music, Revalerstr. 99, 10245 Berlin
November 11: Lost Girls, 8 PM, Silent Green, Kuppelhalle, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin
November 11: Elias Stemesder, Robert Landfermann, & Leif Berger, 8 PM, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
November 12: Quatuor BRAC, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
November 13: Lange/Berweck/Lorenz (Asmus Tietchens, Hanna Hartmann, Luc Döbereiner and Andrea Neumann), 8 PM, Theater im Delphi, Gustav-Adolf-Strasse 2, 13086, Berlin