April 2010
28 posts
The Jeff Bridges thing
On the train back home from LOFT festival, dog-tired (did have to get up once I laid down, sort of a trampoline effect), I’m finally listening to Coptic Dub from the Embassadors, which Hayden (above) gave me at the last moment. The group are probably named for the fact that they do an embarrassing job as ambassadors for jazz. Or anything really. The record’s a smash, like Hayden’s previous...
Wildcard: Gratkowski, Xu, Kiedaisch
Here Fengxia would have to confront another extrovert (plus a set of percussion, which if provoked might break into severe noise any moment). What could possibly be the result. Outright mayhem? But yes! Detailed, triumphant mayhem! There’s really not many words one could fold around the fact, it was just a delight to witness.
It’s been a delight of the whole festival, anyway, to see the freedom...
Wildcard: Hayden Chisholm, Frank Gratkowski
Today’s wildcard improvisation definitely merits two posts. It began as a duo between Hayden and Frank. Now two visuals were immediately striking: while Hayden was bathed in an angelic halo of red curls but his alto looked sort of faded, Frank himself looked kind of grey while his alto is much too sparkling. See the pic. Frank’s sax is really too shiny for him to be taken seriously as a...
Set two: Voyage to the Inner Mongolia
When, to get into the mood for his inner Mongolia, and into the right voice of course, Hayden gargled a good swallow of 80 proof bison grass vodka, I had a feeling I could relate to this trip, whatever ensued. This was a much more roughshod ride than the previous set, again, only related through the vast ground it covered. And the profane fact that people on stage tended to break into vocals....
Set one: Approaching Sesfontein
Whoa. This was a duo set by Gareth Lubbe and Michael Kiedaisch, who had never improvised before together. In public, that is, they had met on the new music beat, tried out some things during down times, and Michael was the man who Gareth wanted to play duo with when he was asked for his favourite project to contribute to the festival.
Michael started out with one soft, one hard mallet in each...
Xu Fengxia has arrived and set up her equipment! Here she is trying out the room’s acoustics on her guzheng (not an instrument that I would be sure to know, quite honestly, but wikipedia backs me up). What you can’t see is that at the other end of the room Michael Kiedaisch is back behind his kit jamming along. Maybe that is part of what will happen on today’s third Wildcard session?
Approaching rehearsals
Right now there’s Michael Kiedaisch and Gareth Lubbe doing their rehearsal. The funny thing is, small world again, that I will have seen Michael behind a drum set in Stuttgart, where I grew up, haunting the jazz clubs when I was a kid and he not much older. Today he brings a vibraphone and a drum set enhanced by several metal pieces (see the ship-like forms on the kit in the background) done by a...
No morning music
Today’s morning music is no morning music at all. It makes me feel edgy. It makes me feel like I had several drinks too much the evening before…
I was actually listening far into the small hours to Marcus Schmickler and Hans-Martin Müller dissecting the music scene in Cologne from Stockhausen to the now. I’m sure I could spread incredible insights except for the fact that…well, see...
Wildcard: Gratkowski, Brendel, Pauß, Schröder
Now that was the wildest of the wildcards I’ve yet seen at the two LOFT festivals I’ve been to. Both in respect as to how spontaneous the group that actually hit the stage was formed, and the music itself.
Frank Gratkowski, once upon a time Hayden’s teacher, and widely recorded reed player, had been invited and brought his bass clarinet. Plus Adrian decided he hadn’t sufficiently hugged the...
Storm blown over
I’ve stayed in the tech’s room after all. See the two headphone heads of Jonas and Elmar providing the video live edit which should have been streamed. It’s all safely in the can.
Well, the concert really has become an 80s party. The unflinching exploration of all our repressed instincts. Wait, since you can’t hear the music, you’ll need some references. Think mid-era Weather Report....
Chamber Work rewind
The stream’s still broken, it’s ridiculous, I thought this was the 21st century…
So how to describe in a little more detail what just went down?
First there were the Kodaly pieces. The first of them required placing a silver hotel mute over the strings. This made for such a quiet sound that I didn’t dare take notes because the paper would rustle. More obvious than innocent little...
Set one: New Chamber Works
I have the exact programme for the first set now. It is
György Kurtág: 6 pieces from Signs, Games and Messages, an ongoing series of miniatures
Kaija Saariaho: Spins and Spells from 1996
both of these for cello solo and interpreted by Adrian Brendel. He just played the Saariaho for me in a backroom of the LOFT (see above) and it’s a fascinating mix of very dizzy moves and calm, almost eerie...
Oh, and here’s the composer confidently tooting his horn while everybody else is still desperately ogling the music.
Precious Storm soundcheck
Here’s Simon trying out the Fender Rhodes for tonights’ second set, with Hayden tinkering at the knobs of the amp. As always, it is hard to make predictions. I think it’s safe to say that Hayden will not walk the table. Simon is probably the most likely of the three to succumb to his baser instincts and move into some heavy riffing from what I hear in the background. John will funkily disrupt...
Morning music
So, it’s the first morning after. BJ Cole has kindly given me his latest record yesterday, Lush Life, a trio with Roger Beaujolais on vibraphone and Simon Thorpe on bass. I’m sitting backstage at the LOFT, enjoying a frugal breakfast and blasting the record over a bass-heavy boombox. Which I’m sure is the best way to listen to this, because this definitely is morning music. Sometimes the...
Wildcard: Gareth Lubbe and Simon Nabotov
Both musicians had not played as a duo before, but between a classical viola player who works in many improvisatory contexts and an improvising pianist with classical chops, common ground was quickly found. When things almost threatened to become too comfortable, Gareth broke into sudden bearsong. Well, I guess there was some sort of throatsinging involved, but really it sounded like bearsong,...
Set two: Odessa Blues Suite
Now that was great fun. Mad amount of ground covered during this suite. There probably is a mad amount of ground around Odessa. Also unbelievable emotional contrasts at work, we started somewhere near permafrost with Nils working the high range of his trombone, but the band also plain rocked out – the man who sat beside me laughed with delight.
The players worked like a cast of characters with...
The first piece like roundelay with each man taking over responsibilities in succession. BJ Cole doing string orchestra to Gareth’s slightly ruffled lark ascending, or letting rip to suggest a visit by Sun Ra. I’m not sure if I processed the text correctly, but it seems people in Kansas drink a lot of wine. The music tells me they get along very well. The second piece started with a drone and...
First set: To the Heart of Kansas
You can switch on the stream now, Hayden will definitely not croon during the first set - watch here - . He’ll instead be reading a self-penned text (dare we call it poetry? don’t ask me, I haven’t heard it yet) and accompany himself on the instrument most dear to the heart of Kansas (where he lives amongst a dozen other places): the microtonal steel drum. I have no idea what to expect, there was...
All ready to kick off at the LOFT
I thought I’d feel glamorous on the train blogging away on a usb stick, but I got no connection. Right now I cannot concentrate because here in the back room Gareth Lubbe is fiddling away on a Stroh violin. But that will be the beauty of my days here. Expect even less coherence.
I had a quick look in on the band practicing, here’s a pic. Not trying to give away too much, but in the Heart of...
BBC Music Magazine Awards Live Stream
Missed out on the BBC Music Magazine Awards? Fear not - you can still watch the entire ceremony, including details of all results at www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/awards2010
Winners include Wagner’s Lohengrin/Semyon Bychkov for both Disc of the year and Opera Disc, pianist Murray Parahia’s recording of Beethoven Sonatas for the instrumental Award and a second Chamber Award win for The...
Tomorrow is the day!
Well, Hayden is still fighting the smoke clouds over Iceland, I hear, but he’ll be fine, we cognoscenti always refer to him as the Red Adair of the alto saxophone. I’m looking for train connections while dreamsy 2010 offers me a Russian lady that will love me with all of her heart over skype. Sometimes life is just sweet!
So, go to the LOFT live stream page at 8pm local time (19.00...
Yoga might help
Simon Nabatov. I can’t remember when I first heard him, but I sure know the first record I bought he was on. That was by the Perry Robinson Quartet. Can I write a post on Perry Robinson? Hayden once decoyed me into Cologne on the strong hint that Perry Robinson might make a surprise appearance. I forget about the pianist on that record I bought.
More seriously, Simon has had a string of records...
In the air
“When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.” Eric Dolphy
Now it seems like the LOFT festival would go on overkill to destroy that notion. Live video-streaming, recordings of everything, even a blogger telling you what to listen for.
But, the beautiful thing is, Dolphy’s quote will still apply. And the music will be gone, in the air.
(Dolphy of...
Today's spotlight is on John Schröder
It’s kind of fun to try and remember when first you might have heard a musician. Once you’re my age. It must have been the late 1980s, John Schröder on guitar with Dieter Ilg? On SWF, the German radio station that gave you the guy that taught Buddy Bolden how to play the trumpet, Joachim Ernst Behrendt? His disciples there did a world of good for my budding ears. Of course this is only a memory,...
Further soliloquy
I met the curator of the LOFT festival while working for the publisher Holzwarth, who was releasing an edition of music for Rebecca Horn’s installations, plus a CD of improvisations over standard changes, called Nearness. That CD, I thought, suffered from the drums being somewhat low in the mix, so to my ears it wasn’t a three-way conversation between Messrs Chisholm, Penman and Rückert, but...
The heart of Kansas
Over the next couple of days, the plan is to get into the right mood and know the participating musicians a little better. I must admit that I have no really privileged information as of yet. That might be just as well, since we can all start from roughly the same place. Then again, there’s room for embarrassment, because right now I have to make sense of the following details, the very first...
The Slow Road to Cologne
One, two. This is a test. Hello, I’m a new voice here. Plushmusic’s festival at LOFT in Cologne is kicking off this coming Friday, and there’s not only live streaming and canning for eternity of all that goes down, but also an embedded blogger, sort of a house ghost at LOFT who somnambulizes about everything happening over the three days there. That’s me.
Besides writing on this blog, I will...