Turning the Page, Opening up the Tap
Sullivan Fortner, Sam Weinberg
Since returning from a two-week visit to the US during the last half of February I’ve been pretty swamped with work here in Berlin. That's a good problem to have, but it has meant that I haven’t had as much time to devote to this newsletter as I’d like, but I’m hopeful that I’ve turned a corner with the pile of deadlines I’ve been navigating of late. Even a less rigorous edition of this newsletter takes hours to produce, combing through a chaotic mess of calendars and websites to make a selection of recommended performances for the coming week, deciding which of those shows to preview, and then picking out some worthwhile records to write about that have no tie to what’s happening in Berlin during the week. I have kept the newsletter free from the start, as I wanted to prove to readers as well as myself that I had the energy and focus to keep this going regularly. Nowhere Street has been rolling for well over a year now, and I feel confident that this will keep going.
Still, my primary interest in launching this remains focused on communication and sharing, and I’m not interested in erecting a financial barrier for this endeavor. But next week I’m going to enable paid subscriptions and donations. If anyone has previously pledged to support Nowhere Street financially—and thanks kindly for doing so—be warned. Of course, I would be grateful to anyone who feels this work is worth paying for. I’m making the basic subscription $60 annually/$5 monthly. I will also try to set up a kind of tip jar so that if you can’t swing a recurring charge, you can still chip in here and there. I’ve been moved by the support and readership.
Considering the recent workload I don’t mind that the recommended shows list this week is a bit leaner than usual. I could use a break, although I’ll still be out checking some of these performances. I’m going to try making it out to hear Sullivan Fortner, who plays a solo show at Zig-Zag on Thursday, April 4. The New Orleans pianist is one of those players that other musicians speak about with great reverence, and his latest release is appended with some spoken liner notes by no less than Fred Hersch and Jason Moran. While the trio albums he’s made for Impulse have been technically stellar, they haven’t excited me all that much. The first time I listened to last fall’s Solo Game (Artwork) I felt the same way, but that’s only because I wasn’t listening close enough. Fortner, who I first heard as the peerless accompanist for singer Cecile McLorin Salvant, is rooted in the jazz mainstream, but within those conventions he’s a marvel.
The album reveals two distinct sides of musical personality, complementing a variety of standards on solo piano with a series of overdubbed pieces—featuring him on Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, Moog, vocoder, celesta, chimes, drums, percussion—where a clear Stevie Wonder influence is palpable. In fact, the album opens with a terrific acoustic account of “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing.” As with most of the pieces on the album he breaks down the tune with stunning clarity, offering an endlessly shifting feast of component parts—rhythmically, harmonically, melodically—that can be easy enough to overlook because he always privileges sound musicality over sheer technique. But it’s worth digging in to explore the meticulously ordered moving parts thrumming beneath the surface. Check it out below, especially from the 2:30 mark through the end, paying close attention to how he juggles so many competing lines and ideas beyond the rhythmic drive of his left hand and the lyric action of his right.
No less powerful or effective is his take on Randy Weston’s calypso vignette “Congolese Children.” Fortner slows it down, cycling through a rhythm with his left hand as his right taps out its sweet melody, but then he goes off, setting up a stuttering groove that plays with the theme like taffy. He moves in and out of the written material and his rhythmic invention is dazzling. Half-way through the pianist references some classic left-handed Weston patterns, only addressing its calypso feel at the end through a wry quote of the Sonny Rollins gem “Brown Skin Girl,” one of the many calypsos in the tenor great’s repertoire. I’m not quite as keen about the second half of the album, which is where Fortner delves into one-man-band-land. It’s all technically impressive, and the same impulses for engaging in rigorous counterpoint and jigsaw puzzle arrangements are palpable—I just prefer the sound of the solo piano stuff.
Sam Weinberg Channels the AACM
The other day I noticed a post by New York saxophonist Sam Weinberg mentioning that his terrific 2023 album Implicatures (Astral Spirits) had finally been issued on vinyl. The news led me to revisit that trio session with bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Tom Rainey and to also check out a more recent self-released session with bassist Henry Fraser and drummer Jason Nazary called Plays Quarter Notes and Other Notes. Delving into them as a set impressed me and led to the realization that Weinberg seems like one of the few people exploring the ideas of AACM heavies Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and Henry Threadgill in a small group (often) tune-based context. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise, since Weinberg authored an in-depth profile of Mitchell in an excellent issue of the sadly defunct Sound American devoted to that legend—you can read the whole thing online.
Weinberg has assimilated language from all three reedists into his own sound, but each of the trios remind specifically of Threadgill’s Air. Still, as you can hear on “Falls and Pratfalls,” below, the opening piece from Implicatures, it’s hard to miss the connection of his corkscrew phrasing, intervallic leaps, and tightly-coiled improvisation to vintage Mitchell. Weinberg erupts from the constraints of his composition during the final couple minutes, unleashing a gnarly free jazz solo that’s more redolent of the spastic splatter heard on his 2020 recording Grist (ugExplode), with Fraser and drummer Weasel Walter, who injects the usual chaos and relentless motion. Half of the album are improvisations, and while these don’t adhere to the steeplechase design of Weinberg’s rigorous writing, it’s nice to hear him in both situations, back-to-back, especially with the push back of such a strong group. On a piece like “Read and Reap” the rhythm section carves out its own space, particularly the knotty, circling patterns Lightcap unfurls with Rainey quietly splashing across his kit, allowing Weinberg to introduce the melody with a measured, almost relaxed ease that’s a welcome pivot from his most aggressive blowing.
Weinberg, Fraser, and Nazary cut the newer album in January of this year, and the leader released it on his digital platform just a couple of weeks later. Unlike the other trio, this is the saxophonist’s main working combo, which allows for deeper exploration and experimentation. One such practice is an interest in applying different tempi simultaneously, a tactic that requires collective investment but pays some real dividends. Fraser and Nazary ride a single feel throughout “arunthru” (say it out loud), while Weinberg deploys a different tempo, but they all share the same pitch material, generating a delicious tension. Obviously the three players are on a string, utterly connected despite the different time frames, while on “Yakker” the saxophonist articulates his lines at a slower pace than the rhythm section—check it out below. The rapport these three have developed allows for something denser and more interactive. I really love the woody, low-end thrum of Fraser, who’s tone almost sounds like he’s aping some down tuned bass line from a metal tune. Weinberg deploys a system to determine the phrase lengths in “Wells,” and while the tune isn’t a rag I love the circus-like air at the start, which sounds like it could be an homage to one of the Scott Joplin tunes on Air Lore.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
April 3: Owen Gardner; Robyn Schulkowsky, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
April 4: Sullivan Fortner, 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
April 4: Sun Kit (Jules Reidy and Andreas Dzialocha), 8 PM, Roter Salon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 10178 Berlin
April 5: En Attendant Ana, 8 PM, Schokoladen, Ackerstraße 169, 10115 Berlin
April 6: Müller-Mahall Moden (Rudi Mahall, clarinets, Flo Müller, guitar, Ben Lehmann, bass, and Uli Jenneßen, drums), 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
April 6: Camilla Battaglia; Mariana Carvalho, 8:30, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
April 6: Cease Fire Now!: Fundraiser for Gaza (Marcus Krispel, Sam Hall, and Maximilian Glass; Andrea Parkins and Eliad Wagner; The International Nothing;
Adam Pultz; Maurice Louca, Liz Allbee, and Sabine Vogel; Marcin Pietruszewski;
Sasha Markvart and Emilio Gordoa; Andrea Neumann; Beam Splitter; Jasmine Guffond; Marta De Pascalis; Frank Gratkowski) 8 PM, Ausland, Lychener Str. 60, 10437 Berlin