Peter Brötzmann has become one of our regulars here at Cafe OTO. In 2011 Peter turns 70 and we're excited to be celebrating this with the first London appearance of his Chicago Tentet - one of the great ensembles of improvised music. The tentet will perform across three days with additional sets by some of the well established smaller groups that make up the larger ensemble.
Performing with Brötzmann will be:
Joe McPhee (Pocket Trumpet/Reeds) Mats Gustafsson (Reeds) Ken Vandermark (Reeds) Paal Nilssen-Love (Drums/Percussion) Fred Lonberg-Holm (Cello) Per Åke Holmlander (Tuba) Johannes Andreas Bauer (Trombone) Michael Zerang (Drums/Percussion) Kent Kessler (Bass) Jeb Bishop (Trombone)
DAY ONE : Monday 18 April 2011
SURVIVAL UNIT (Joe McPhee / Fred Lonberg-Holm / Michael Zerang) Per Åke Holmlander (solo) intermission PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET
The BRASS4TET (Jeb Bishop / Johannes Andreas Bauer / Joe McPhee / Per Åke Holmlander)
Fred Lonberg-Holm (solo) intermission PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET
In addition, Jazz on 3's Jez Nelson interviews Brotzmann live onstage at 6.30pm. In company with Ken Vandermark, they'll look back at his pioneering career and bring it right up to date with the Peter Brotzmann Tentet. FREE ENTRY.
Jez's interview with Brotzmann and a recording of that night's Tentet performance will be broadcast on Jazz on 3 on Monday 2nd May.
PETER BRÖTZMANN
Since the sixties Peter Brötzmann has been one of the most important and uncompromising figures in free Jazz working with everyone from Don Cherry to Keiji Haino. Brötzmann first trained as a painter and was associated with Fluxus before teaching himself the saxophone and establishing himself as one of the most powerful and original players around.
"The set starts off with a furious full-band melee, but the brilliant Paal Nilssen-Love's drumming soon insinuates a menacing groove, and briefly dominant alto saxes, snorty baritones, and huffing tubas quickly reveal how varied the tonal and dynamic resources are. Sometimes the group's anthemic sax-choir sound suggests the roots of this approach in John Coltrane's Ascension, but there are fascinating subgroups like the three-sax Sonore trio (chattering and clucking like garrulous farmyard animals), ecstatic drum duets, almost ballad-like lyrical episodes for saxophonists McPhee and Vandermark, abstract-improv passages for cello, electronics and percussion, all-brass conversations, and much more. It's a virtuosic field day for free-jazz admirers with strong nerves." ***** John Fordham, The Guardian
"The Tentet touches on a number of the most significant strategies that have been developed for coordinating larger ensemble improvising. Brötzmann’s five-foot-long score for “Foolish Infinity” uses the same graphic method for structuring free play that he’s been investigating for decades; the narrative, episodic unfolding monolith integrates fragments of a remembered theme from Charles Ives (the circus-like clarinet motif) and a variety of block groupings of players that divide the band into different sized subgroups, providing textural and timbral juxtaposition and allowing for massive power-cluster build-up and breakdowns." John Corbett's liner notes to 'The Chicago Octet/Tentet' on Okkadisc
This event has been made possible with the generous assistance of the Goethe Institut, London.
