Winter Break
crys cole, Luís Vicente, Silke Eberhard
This is the final edition of the Nowhere Street newsletter for 2024. I don’t know about you, but I’m more than ready for a break. The recommended shows listing below extends into the start of January, when I’ll get back into action here, running down my favorite new and archival recordings of the year. I’m shaking off a nasty cold that’s laid me low for the last week, forcing me to miss some performances I was excited to check out, so this edition is a bit shorter than usual.
crys cole’s New Jam
I’ve spent the last couple of months regularly revisiting Making Conversation (Black Truffle), the latest album from Canadian sound artist crys cole. I’ve been returning to it because I loved the music, but there was something about it that represented a shift in her work that intrigued me, and it took me a while to piece it all together. Cole has long proffered her own take on musique concrète with a decidedly unfussy collection of sounds and techniques, usually veering towards quietude, gradual shifts, and simple techniques. I’ve enjoyed the directness with which she’s pursued non-representational works, creating seductive atmospheres and abstract narratives through rather basic materials. But Making Conversation seems to capture not only a major shift, but a real creative breakthrough.
The album contains three pieces, one of which feels like it belongs more to her older body of work, but the other two compositions point the way to exciting new possibilities. Side 2 opens with “Valid ForeverRrrRRrrr… (pt. 1),” cole’s adaptation of “Valid for Life,” a Beth Anderson graphic score originally included in the 1975 publication Women’s Work. It uses elements that are probably familiar to regular listeners of her music: there’s the sound of a rolling ball that was featured in her 2014 work “keep the ball rolling,” which nicely translates Anderson’s rolling R’s in the text score, as well as the use of rippling sheets of paper. It was commissioned by Issue Project Room in 2021, and recorded during the pandemic in her small Berlin apartment, conditions which imposed certain limitations on what she could do.
But the other pieces flip the script in a sense, although they are quite different from one another. The title track is based on a series of field recordings cole made in Bali in 2018 and 2019, including sounds of insects and animals, passing vehicles, less identifiable noises, and collisions between all of three categories. In the past I feel as if cole would have abstracted this material as a primary source, and developed something less situational or specific. Instead, she used the sounds as compositional material, creating a kind of score from her recordings, which she chose to translate in her studio with a blend of her usual homemade musique concrete tools and electronic sounds, to forge a terrific and imaginative simulacrum of what she experienced in Indonesia. The results are at once more musical than much of her work, but also more mysterious. While listening to the piece on headphones a couple of months ago I experienced an almost psychedelic sensation from the buzzing insect sounds, which raced between channels with a hyperreal zing. In her liner notes cole writes that no field recordings were used, as she relied only on “electronics, voice, wind and percussion instruments, and haptic sounds.” To my ears the electronics are deployed with great subtlety. It would be easy and obvious enough to craft a fully electronic simulation of the source material, but most of it seems handmade and acoustic, delivering an act of impressive resourcefulness and imagination. There’s no doubt that the piece evokes a kind of tropical soundscape, but that blur between the real and the uncanny is what ultimately distinguishes the work. You can listen to it below.
The album’s closing piece “Valid ForeverRrrRRrrr… (pt. 2)” is obviously connected to the Anderson interpretation, but in an unexpected way. Here cole opens up yet another new pathway, translating the material from the IPR commission for MIDI percussion ensemble. The piece is based on elements from Part 1, but it’s not a literal adaptation. Instead cole has created her own instinctive sound world, one that blurs the line between synthetic and real percussion, but the most interesting facet is the choices made in translating the decidedly abstract musique concrete feel of the Part 1 into something more compositional. It’s a weird piece, to be sure, and I can’t really deduce the key to the sonic conversion, but there’s no missing the appearance of certain gestures, particularly the paper rippling sounds manifest in tambourine/shaker sounds. As divergent as this piece is from the title composition, to me they both represent a more rigorous, compositional approach, a shift that feels loaded with potential. As much as cole’s older work might seem more personal and private, this new stuff feels much more creative and profound, opening up thrilling new vistas. I’m eager to hear how it unfolds going forward.
The Sophisticated Heat of Luís Vicente
I feel like the Portuguese trumpeter Luís Vicente has been popping up more frequently often in the last few years, and he’s rolling through town this week to perform with an impressive ad hoc quartet featuring bassist Vinicius Cajado, drummer Dag Magnus Narvesen, and pianist Lisa Ullén. The pianist has appeared only a handful of times since arriving here in the fall, but she’s one of the most exciting figures in improvised music these days, and I expect we’ll get to hear more of her in the coming months. Until then this quartet should prove to be an excellent context for her playing.
Vicente has made waves leading a fiery trans-Atlantic quartet with saxophonist John Dikeman, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Onno Govaert, but recently I’ve been locked into a couple of burning albums on Clean Feed. He’s a guest on Muracik, joining the trio led by Spanish alto saxophonist Liba Villavecchia, with bassist Alex Reviriego and drummer Vasco Trilla. Everyone but the drummer wrote tunes for the project all of which collectively celebrate a lively but edgy strain of freebop. Vicente brought in an original called “Ornette Surrounds,” which unsurprisingly evokes the sound of the titular legend, and the combo’s livewire energy reminds me of Coleman’s classic quartet, even when the music charts a separate path: febrile and raw, yet deeply articulate. The unison horn lines in Reveriego’s dark ballad “Vika,” which you can hear below, certainly recall the singular blend achieved by Coleman and Don Cherry. The arrangements are sturdy but wide-open, built to frame and inspire high-octane improvisation.
Come Down Here is the second album Vicente has made with the trio featuring bassist Gonçalo Almeida and drummer Pedro Melo Alves, and together they transmit an impressive spark, balancing spontaneous heat and structural elegance, never far from that Coleman model. The rhythm section generates a similar brand of energy as the one on the Villavecchia album, giving the trumpeter a wide berth for his tuneful yet free-ranging improvisations. As explosive as the music can get, there’s a strong sense of control and proportion at work, and on a tune like “Hope II” the equilibrium between the thematic material and the free passages is spot-on, as if the trio has meticulously constructed a handsome edifice only to reshape, distort, and stretch that form without destroying it—its essence is never in doubt, no matter how many liberties are taken. I’m especially impressed with the trio's interpretation of “Mandei Caiar o Meu Sobrado,” a traditional Capoeira song that opens by evoking folkloric traditions of Brazil—the whistles of the leader and the twangy approximation of berimbau in Almeida’s bass playing—before the melody creeps in the and groove opens up, erasing any divide between folk and free music. Check it out below.
An Overlooked Side of Saxophonist Silke Eberhard
One of the shows I caught this past week before I was felled by my cold was a quartet performance at Sowieso featuring drummer Mike Reed and reedist Hunter Diamond from Chicago and a pair of Berlin mainstays too often taken for granted—bassist Joel Grip and alto saxophonist Silke Eberhard. The former has been duly and increasingly celebrated for his work as part of the phenomenal [Ahmed], an improvising juggernaut who's suddenly connected with a larger segment of the jazz and experimental music world. Eberhard’s abundant gifts have certainly been recognized before, but the way she connected with Diamond last Friday was so remarkable I couldn’t help but wish more people experienced it. The two had never met until the concert, but they played as if their minds were wired together. Eberhard isn’t a particularly radical improviser, and her deep connection to and ardor for jazz history has always been front and center, but within that context she’s consistently inventive and rigorous.
Back in 2009 she formed Potsa Lotsa, a chamber quartet designed to perform all of the extant compositions of Eric Dolphy—a la Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Monk’s Casino project. Over time she gradually expanded the group until arriving at Postsa Lotsa XL, a sturdy, agile tentet that tackles her own pithy themes. Along the way she’s developed into an incredible arranger, creating contrapuntal marvels with a committed ensemble. That ability has reared its head in multifarious contexts. Her trio I Am Three—with trumpeter Nikolaus Neuser and drummer Christian Marien—was formed to play her arrangements of Charles Mingus tunes before moving on to original material. When Jazzfest Berlin was impacted by the pandemic and a hoped-for visit by Henry Threadgill was made impossible, she was commissioned to develop her own arrangements for a wide variety of his compositions. The results were so strong that Threadgill himself was moved to write a new collaborative work blending his own band, Zooid, with Potsa Lotsa XL, which premiered at last year’s JazzFest. Late last year she released an Posta Lotsa XL ep called Chamber Works (Trouble in the East), a series of original pieces imbued with a third stream vibe without sacrificing the essential post-bop aesthetic at the root of all of her work. Only two of the nine pieces featured the full ensemble, but the remaining sextet pieces are plenty riveting. Below you can check out her “Light Light Blue,” which contains a twinge of Harry Partch timbres, between the sinewy cello of Johannes Fink and the cool marimba of Taiko Saito.
More recently Eberhard has been tackling the work of the overlooked French composer and arranger André Hodeir. He started out as a violinist before turning to writing music, which offered a kind of European collision of cool jazz and third stream concepts. His body of work is small-ish, but the music recorded first by Le Jazz Groupe de Paris in the mid-1950s and by a group of Americans (including Donald Byrd, Hal McKusick, Idrees Sulieman, and Bobby Jaspar) for Savoy in 1957 is remarkably sophisticated and swinging. You can hear his tune “Cross Criss,” from 1954, below; it’s included on Essais: Complete Paris & New York Sessions an essential double CD of this material from the Fresh Sound label. Eberhard told me she didn’t need to do too much to adapt the music to her similarly-constructed ensemble, but I’m curious to see how it translates to a thoroughly contemporary minded ensemble. Posta Lotsa XL will play her Hodeir arrangements this Sunday afternoon, December 15, at Industriesalon Schöneweide.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Month
December 11: Signe Emmeluth, alto saxophone, and Hanne De Backer, baritone saxophone; Edith Steyer, clarinet, Isabel Rößler, double bass, and Sofia Borges, drums, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
December 11: The Still (Chris Abrahams, piano, Rico Lee, electric guitar, Derek Shirely, double bass, and Steve Heather, drums), 8:30 PM, Ausland, Lychener Str. 60, 10437 Berlin
December 11: Fabrik Quartet plays Rishin Singh, Cenk Ergün, and Liza Lim, 7:30 PM, Kuppelhalle, Silent Green, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin
December 12: Lisa Ullén, piano, Luís Vicente, trumpet, Vinicius Cajado, double bass, and Dag Magnus Narvesen, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
December 13: Christopher Dell, vibraphone, Christian Lillinger, drums, and Jonas Westergaard, double bass, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
December 14: Michaël Attias, alto saxophone, and Simon Nabatov, piano, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
December 15: Postsa Lotsa XL plays André Hodeir, 3:30 PM, Industriesalon Schöneweide, Reinbeckstraße 10, 12459 Berlin
December 15: Trio Catch plays Beat Furrer’s Aer, 7:30 PM, studiobörne 45, Börnestraße 43, 13086 Berlin
December 15: Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano, Henrik Walsdorff, tenor saxophone, Ben Lehman, double bass, and Jan Leipnitz, drums, 9 PM, B-Flat, Dircksenstr. 40, 10178 Berlin
December 17: Nina Guo sings Morton Feldman’s Three Voices, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
December 18: Morgenbarn (Maria Faust, alto, electronics, Matteo Paggi, trombone, electronics, and Tilo Weber, drums, percussion, vibraphone), 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
December 18: Cloud and Stone (Taiko Saito, vibraphone, Alexander Beierbach, tenor saxophone, Maike Hilbig, double bass), 8:30 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435
December 19: Faces & Places (Michaël Attias, alto saxophone, Florian Müller, electric guitar, Jonas Westergaard, double bass, and Oliver Steidle, drums), 9 PM, Zig-Zag Jazz Club, Hauptstraße 89, 12159 Berlin
December 22: Liz Allbee, trumpet, and Ignaz Schick, turntable, sampler, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
January 1: Der Vorsatz (Rudi Mahall, clarinets, Gerhard Gschlößl, trombone, Ben Lehmann, double bass, Jan Leipnitz, drums); Tobias Delius, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Marc Schmolling, piano, Jan Roder, double bass, Martial Frenzel, drums, 7 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin