The Notes In-Between the Notes
The Notes In-Between the Notes
Microtonal jazz, King Übü Örchestrü, Peter Evans' Extra, Ignaz Schick, John McNeil
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Microtonality and Alternate Tunings Creep into Jazz
Regular readers of the space probably recall that Anna Webber made one of my favorite albums in recent years when she dropped the eponymous debut album from her quintet Shimmer Wince last year on Intakt. During the pandemic she spent a stretch of time at the American Academy in Berlin conducting research into just intonation, but in the process of applying that knowledge to the new band she opted to use tuning as a compositional tool rather than an all-enveloping construct. The group includes Elias Stemeseder on keyboards, and his tuning threw a glorious wrinkle into the arrangements. Webber focused more on writing sturdy jazz tunes than diving headfirst into pure JI, and the off-kilter harmonies put the album into rarefied territory, suggesting an approach ripe for exploration.
Alternate tunings and microtonality have long been part of certain jazz practices, even if those ideas have rarely been codified or rigid. Plenty of horn players have imparted microtones in their playing—whether accidental fits of wobbly intonation or by simply casting off the shackles of western harmony, like Ornette Coleman. The great Boston reedist Joe Maneri and his viola-playing son Mat famously deployed microtonality in the music they made, although within the general jazz community it often seemed as if it was regarded with bemusement more than admiration. Steve Lehman has pursued a more palpable use of microtonality, frequently applying techniques gleaned from his study of spectralism in his own music. But in the last couple of years a greater number of musicians devoted to jazz and improvised music have begun deploying these ideas with greater frequency and depth. One of the most striking examples of the practice I’ve heard is from the Norwegian guitarist and composer Kristian Enkerud Lien, who I recently wrote about when he played in Berlin with the trio ükya. Svartsymra (Sonic Transmissions), the 2023 debut album by his quartet Krise, proved instantly disorienting when I first heard it last fall. The harmonies were so unusual that the music immediately grabbed me, even if I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. That uncertainty has completely fallen away over the last year. The use of just intonation is fascinating, but unlike a lot of younger composers who are content to bask in the sonic riches proffered by JI, Lien actually wrote a set of durable, catchy, and engrossing compositions.
Last April I was in Oslo for the Only Connect Festival, where I heard a few minutes of an extended solo performance by Lien in the bell tower of the Majorstuen Church, using a custom-made acoustic guitar using JI. I didn’t realize who he was until later in the weekend, but the encounter made a mark. I later caught a pop-up performance by his quartet in June at the wonderful Motvind Festival in Rollag, Norway, and watching the group play the music live only increased my enjoyment and respect. The band, which includes the phenomenal trombonist Emil Bø—who also plays in ükya—keyboardist Anna Ueland (playing a retuned synthesizer, as well as a Korg MS-20), and drummer Bjørn André Syverinsen (who was missing in Rollag, with the great Hans Hulbækmo ably filling in), somehow transmitted a super charming, low-key vibe while retaining the necessary precision and focus to make it all work. There was something magical about watching the eye contact between Lien and Ueland as certain pieces opened up, with the musicians homing in on the sort of exquisite harmonies that can explode within just intonation. When the sounds all lined up Ueland would break out with a huge smile that was utterly infectious. The album’s six tunes are all quite ambitious, multipartite marvels rippling with deft interplay and harmonic thrills. They are also strangely catchy, weirdly swinging, and intimate, suggesting a raucous form of chamber jazz. The group is making its Berlin debut on Wednesday, October 2 at Sowieso, with Syverinsen in tow—I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The whole album is phenomenal, but below you can check out a piece called “Der ergeh stig og olieh flyr.” I’ve been wanting to write something about this JI/microtonal activity for a while now, and Krise’s upcoming performance has provided the occasion
One of the inspirations cited by Lien is the Norwegian composer and theorist Eivind Groven, who’s also a big influence on the Norwegian experimental duo Naaljos Ljom. Traditional Norwegian fiddle music has used alternate tuning across its history, and the pungent Hardanger playing of Ellie Mäkelä on the “Hittil ukent vesen,” the opening track of Name of the Wind (Dugnad)—the wonderfully strange debut album by Erlend Albertsen’s Bassspace—opens up that area of inquiry. While his album isn’t exclusively locked into JI, there are many invigorating, otherworldly harmonies and sonic blends at work. On that same track the wonderful Swedish musician Egil Kalman—a key member of the Marthe Lea Band—contributes some deliciously spacy, warped modular synth counterpoint that runs through the whole tune. Check it out below, but don’t expect it all to sound that way. In fact, on the next piece, “Bakenforliggende,” Albertsen toggles to tanpura, unleashing a raga drone and exploring a brief flourish of Indian classical singing, alongside the bracing viola improvisation of Mäkelä. Other pieces aren’t so explicitly connected to tuning: “Kjerleik” is rooted in Norwegian fiddle music, but with a buoyant jazz rhythm meted out Albertsen—who’s main instrument is double bass—and the loose-limbed drumming of his brother Simon Albertsen. A piece titled “Music—my favorite social media” conveys more than a touch of the hydroplaning grace of the Miles Davis Quintet with Wayne Shorter, with the group’s pianist Hogne Keliberg setting the dusky mood. The bassist clearly has a deep curiosity for all kinds of styles and approaches, and even if the record does leap all over the place, the schizophrenia is okay by me when each shade of personality is delivered with such elan and force.
Canadian keyboardist and composer Matt Choboter has been exploring his own form of microtonality for years now, from Copenhagen. I’ve only recently become aware of his work, which is my bad since it’s been sent my way for several years. There are only so many hours in the day. I’ve been catching up, but I think it’s safe to say that his most recent recording, Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging (ILK Music), is his strongest work thus far, a collection heavily informed by studies in Balinese gamelan and South Indian classical music. The music doesn’t remotely resemble either of those traditions. Instead, the engagement with harmony and tuning is manifest in the pianist’s own idiosyncratic compositions—which are drifty, open, and attractively loose. Choboter seems happy to revel within trippy harmonies, and his compositions seem more like sketches designed to bring out the almost psychedelic interplay between the instrumentalists: saxophonists Calum Builder, Miguel Crozzoli, and Michael Biel, drummer Jan Kadareit, and the leader credited with microtonal prepared piano. Compared with the other recordings I’m discussing here, his pieces feel more schematic and more distanced from “tunes.” Beyond the actual performances themselves, the leader employed some experimental techniques in capturing the various layers of sound: some of the saxophone parts were recorded outside of the studio context, further smeared and distorted by being blown through objects like oil cans and cymbals. There is a noticeably washed out quality to the ensemble timbre that’s appealing, enhancing the ambivalence of the tonalities at play. Honestly, I’m still trying to get my head around Choboter’s music, but I didn’t want to let my tenuous grasp stop me from including him here. I’ll be spending more time with his work. Below you can check out the piece “Marrow Midden.”
Back in late 2022 Stewart Smith reviewed Orlando Furioso (Aguirre), the dizzyingly original and strange project of the New York-based Chilean drummer and composer Vicente Hansen Atria, in the Wire. I looked in vain for it for quite some time, and I finally found a copy of the record in January of this year at Cologne’s ever dependable A-Musik—the date on the record is 2023, so I’m still unsure when it actually came out. Either way, it heralds another intriguing front on the microtonal jazz movement, with a stellar cast of musicians who seems to dance around the divide between improv, new music, and jazz—particularly the excellent saxophonist David Leon and guitarist Alec Goldfarb (about whom more, in a minute). Like the Krise album, Atria’s writing is as rigorous as it is genre-elusive. There’s a kind of chamber jazz vibe, but it’s also seriously propulsive. Naturally, the harmonies are central to the music, and even after a dozen or so listens it tickles my ears.
Whereas so much of this harmonic exploration in contemporary music unfolds in slow-moving columns of sound, Orlando Furioso is rhythmically active, and while there are some nice long tone vamps here and there, it’s the fast-paced patterns that really grab me, especially the playing of keyboardist Andrew Boudreau, who often unleashes harpsichord passages that give the ensemble sound a kaleidoscopic sparkle, like a sonic wagon-wheel effect. The ensemble is named after an early 16th century Italian epic poem of the same name by Ludovico Ariosto—a paragon of Renaissance art from the region—but rather than quoting from the work, “En Tornasol,” the opening track on the album sung by Chilean pop singer Niña Tormenta, draws upon text by Nueva Canción great Violeta Parra. While the arrangements and writing are incredibly detailed and dense, the rhythmic thrust breaks it all up, giving it a delicious dynamism. In fact, there’s so much going on I’m still getting my head around it. In time, this might well emerge as the masterwork of this developing practice, but there’s little question it’s a special and important piece of work. Below you can check out the piece called “Bootstrap Bernie.”
Guitarist Goldfarb gets a remarkable extended solo feature on “Anticueca N. 6,” the final track from Orlando Furioso. Before noticing his participation on the record I heard him as part of Zarabanda Variations, a conceptually bold project assembled by violinist Keir GoGwilt that I programmed for Frequency Festival in Chicago this past February; he also performed a piece with JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman that was no less inspired. In April he released his own take on tuning and microtonality with the album Fire Lapping at the Creek (Infrequent Seams). Like so many of these recordings I found it mystifying on first encounter, but compositionally it’s probably the most conventional of the music under discussion here, rooted heavily in blues forms through the lens of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, but with more expansive roots in traditional music from Africa and the Middle East. The killer band leans deep into the harmony, and that formal familiarity yields wonderfully alien pleasures in how the tuning radically alters the jazz perspective. The band includes alto saxophonist Leon from the Orlando Furioso band, tenor saxophonist Xavier Del Castillo—the crucial foil of trumpeter Adam O’Farrill on his recent album, covered in the space a few weeks ago—trombonist Zekkereya El-Magharbel (another tuning fiend with a knockout solo album on Dinzu Artefacts), the ever ubiquitous and versatile double bassist Chris Tordini, and drummer Steven Crammer. Across these ten compositions Goldfarb has created excellent arrangements that generate a mosaic of fascinating harmonic material, constantly accented and shaped by the deployment of classic jazz techniques: there are any number of ways a listener can approach the music. Below you can check out the elegant title track.
Finally, I should belatedly mention another album in this vein: the self-titled 2022 debut from the Vex Collection, which includes Atria alongside the bassist Mat Muntz, bagpiper Matthew Welch, and traditional Korean double reedist gamin. Although that project is less explicitly rooted in jazz, there are clear connections.
The Return of the King Übü Örchestrü
I’m sadly out of town this weekend, but if you’re in Berlin I’d seriously consider checking out what’s sure to be a highlight of the year’s improvised music offerings. On Saturday night the Exploratorium hosts a rare performance by King Übü Örchestrü in celebration of both the venue’s 20th anniversary and the ensemble’s 40th birthday. The group was originally founded by the craggy reedist Wolfgang Fuchs, who died in Berlin in 2016. Considering the size and geographic spread of its members, the conglomerate didn’t perform that often and its discography is scant. But the recordings indicate a phenomenal focus, demonstrating one of the most convincing and focused large ensembles in the history of free improvisation. A few years ago guitarist Erhard Hirt revived the group and the line-up for Saturday’s performance is superb, with quite a few original members: percussionist, Paul Lytton, violinist Philipp Wachsmann, and cellist Alfred Zimmerlin, here joined by a vivid assortment of fellow travelers and later participants (vocalist Phil Minton, saxophonist Stefan Keune, trumpeters Mark Charig and Axel Dörner, and tubist Melvyn Poore, with special guest bassist Alexander Frangenheim). Most of those folks participated in a 2021 concert in Bonn, released last year as Roi (Acheulian Handaxe)—check out the first set below.
The last available recording from King Übü Örchestrü occurred at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in 2003, released the following year on the FMP subsidiary a/l/l as The Concert. In Fuchs’ introductory note he wrote, “For Übü, there is no set personnel. Not only because of the guests that we occasionally like to invite, but because of the different developments that every player is going through with his or her own, mostly smaller ensembles before another meeting with Übü comes up.” While Fuchs was a key part of the project, there’s little question he would approve of its continued existence without him. Concert at Town Hall/Binaurality Live 1989, a dazzling performance recording, was released a few years ago as digital-only title available on the Destination-Out Bandcamp page—the official outlet for FMP material, which was recently updated and promises a crucial surge in activity thanks to the involvement of Markus Müller, the hand-picked successor of the late Jost Gebers. It’s a brilliant set, revealing the ability of the nonet to organize itself in real time so that the music makes sense, allows for collective expression, and takes advantage of the expanded palette without falling into chaos. Below you can hear the final part of the performance, which features several cast members playing on Saturday: Poore, Wachsmann, and Lytton.
On Monday, October 7 Marie Blobbel’s Jazzexzess series kicks off its fall program at Kantine am Berghain with the Berlin debut of an exciting new trio led by trumpeter Peter Evans. Extra features bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Jim Black delivering high intensity post-bop of virtuosic proportions. While the trumpeter ends up in the spotlight due to his endlessly morphing, breathless improvisations, there’s no missing the muscular ensemble vibe, with the rhythm section matching the horn player’s agility and energy. Eldh and Black are ferocious, bringing speed, propulsion, and prodding to the music, endlessly erecting fresh gauntlets for Evans to navigate. Naturally, he nails every jab, feint, and roundhouse they throw at him. The trio operates like a Grand Prix engine in the body of a bulldozer, but there’s nothing bulky or graceless in its execution, which is relentlessly fleet and precise.
As you can hear below on “In See,” a fiery track from the trio’s forthcoming debut, out on We Jazz on October 25, the music is dense with both ideas and motion. The album’s running time is just over 33 minutes, but the content is so concentrated that unraveling its essence can take plenty of time and repeated listens. There are new wrinkles in the tone and attack of Evans, and while the trumpeter worked closely with Sam Pluta—a master of real-time sound processing—this might be the first time one of his records contains synthesizers and electronics that aren’t using his horn as source material, especially on the track “Movement 56.” On the other hand, “The Lighthouse” is stripped down to mostly pointillistic blurts of sound, acoustic and electronic. That said, those elements are usually accents to the fierce interaction of the trumpet, bass, and drums. I don’t often expect jazz to pin me to the wall, but Extra is seriously extra.
Schick on Saxophone
Even though I’m well aware that Ignaz Schick plays reed instruments, in my mind I’ve always associated with noisy turntablism and raucous electronics. But this week he reconvenes the nimble trio that produced the recent album The Cliffhanger Session (Zarek), which he recorded last summer with bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Oliver Steidle. The album’s two lengthy pieces reveal Schick to be an impressively deft, buoyant improviser, on both alto and baritone saxophone, with a decidedly swinging freebop vibe. The performances don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but instead reveal a classic blowing session charged by a palpable rapport; the rhythm section is superb, giving the reedist plenty to work with. The trio performs Thursday night, October 3, at Sowieso, and again on Sunday afternoon, October 6 at Alte Kita. Below you can check out the second track from the album, featuring Schick on bari.
Saluting the Subtle Artistry of the Late John McNeil
Trumpeter John McNeil, who died on Friday, September 27 at age 76, was truly a musician’s musician. I never got a chance to hear him perform—from what I can tell the last time he played in Chicago was in 2002, before I had become aware of his music—but I became a huge admirer of his work beginning with a series of albums for OmniTone soon after he made that hit at the Green Mill, and, especially, his work in a fabulous quartet recordings with saxophonist Bill McHenry, to say nothing of additional albums in a quartet co-led with Jeremy Udden called Hush Point. In the years before I became aware of his music, McNeil was an active figure on New York’s mainstream scene, playing in Horace Silver’s band before making a slew of strong albums for Steeplechase, including several with Dave Liebman. He also spent years teaching at the New England Conservatory, where one of his students was the late jaimie branch, a musician he championed years before she achieved any measure of fame.
I wasn’t aware of the multiple health challenges he had to fight through to continue playing music, but pianist Ben Waltzer reshared an incredible portrait he wrote about McNeil for All About Jazz that says an awful lot about his spirit, resilience, humor, and humanity. Although I never saw or met McNeil I did enjoy a hilarious conversation with him for a press text I wrote for a project he had with trombonist Mike Fahie. He possessed a wonderfully dark comedic quality—he didn’t take himself too seriously, and his music had a decidedly playful quality, especially the music he made starting with those OmniTone dates. Maybe it was the health challenges that impacted his music, but to my ears his virtuosity became more human. I adored his ability to play simultaneous improvisations with his various frontline partners, harking back to the heyday of cool jazz, but with a much scrappier, lived-in sound. Below you can check out his version of the standard “Moonlight in Vermont,” the opening track from his brilliant 2010 album with McHenry, Chill Morn He Climb Jenny (Sunnyside).
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
October 1: Lagos Thugs, 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435
October 1: Clare Cooper, guzheng; Christian Marien, drums; Sofia Salvo, baritone saxophone, and Clayton Thomas, double bass; Cooper/Marien/Salvo/Thomas, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
October 2: Seth Josel, electric guitar, Christine Paté, and Carlos Salgado, electric bass (Phill Niblock, Stosspeng, Marguerite Brown, quiver/quiver), 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
October 2: Krise (Emil Bø, trombone, Anna Ueland, retuned synth, Kristian Enkerud Lien, fretted guitar, lap steel, and Bjørn André Syverinsen, drums), 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
October 3: Rodrigo Amarante, 8 PM, Colosseum Berlin, Gleimstraße 33, 10437 Berlin
October 3: Music From Four Basses with Clayton Thomas, Raed Yassin, Brandon Lopez, and Werner Dafeldecker, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
October 3: Ignaz Schick, alto & baritone saxophones, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, double bass, and Oliver Steidle, drums, percussion, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
October 4: Toby Delius, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Brandon Lopez, double bass, Clayton Thomas, double bass, and Tony Buck, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
October 5: Liz Allbee, trumpet, electronics, voice, Billy Roisz, turntable, electronics, electric bass, JD Zazie, turntables, 7 PM, Jugend[widerstands]museum Galiläakirche, Rigaer Str. 9/10, 10247 Berlin
October 5: Clayton Thomas, double bass, Raed Yassin, electronics, Chris Pitsiokos, alto saxophone; Ana Kravanja, violin, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
October 5: King Übü Örchestrü (Phil Minton, voice, Stefan Keune, saxophone, Mark Charig, trumpet, Axel Dörner, trumpet, Melvyn Poore, tuba, Philipp Wachsmann, violin, Alfred Zimmerlin, cello, Erhard Hirt, guitar, electronics, Paul Lytton, percussion, objects) with guest Alexander Frangenheim, double bass, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
October 6: Ignaz Schick, alto & baritone saxophones, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, double bass, and Oliver Steidle, drums, percussion, 3:30 PM, Alte Kita, Hasselwerderstraße 22A, 12439 Berlin
October 6: LVSXY (Clare Cooper, guzheng, Clayton Thomas, double bass) with guests, 8 PM, Ausland, Lychener Str. 60, 10437 Berlin
October 6: El Khat, 8:30 PM, Gretchen, Obentrautstr. 19-21, 10963 Berlin
October 7: Raven Chacon, solo for tapes, field recordings & electronics; Michael Winter (Remembering Clive Wearing), 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
October 7: Extra (Peter Evans, trumpets, Petter Eldh, bass, Jim Black, drums), 8 PM, Kantine am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin
October 7: Tindersticks, 8 PM, Theater des Westens, Kantstraße 12, 10623 Berlin
October 7: Paroxysm (Roy Carroll, electroacoustic media, and Werner Dafeldecker, double bass); Phoebe Bognar, flute, and Ignaz Schick, turntable, 8 PM, Richten25, Gerichtstraße 25, 13347 Berlin
October 7: Tony Buck, drums & percussion, Erhard Hirt, guitar, electronics, Harri Sjöström, soprano & sopranino saxophones, Clayton Thomas, double bass, Philipp Wachsmann, violin, electronics, 7 PM, Galerie Wolf & Galentz, Wollankstraße 112a, 13187 Berlin
I have been enjoying your write-ups and event recommendations a lot recently and am definitely going to try to see King Übü Örchestrü. Thanks for your important work for the Berlin underground music scene, Peter!