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music
Witness® @ Tampere Jazz Happening 2000
Tampere FINLAND, 2-5 November 2000
by Jeff Schlanger
January 2001
Tampere, the second largest city in Finland, has hosted an adventurous
jazz festival since 1982. Performing artists from all over Europe
and the USA have included Arthur Blythe, David Murray, Joseph Jarman,
Muhal Richard Abrams, Sonny Sharrock, Abdullah Ibrahim and Anthony
Braxton in the 1980s and Henry Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, Don Cherry,
8 Bold Souls, John Zorn, Ornette Coleman, Joe Maneri and Cecil Taylor
in the 1990s.
The 2000 Program roared into life on November 2nd when Jack DeJohnette
presented his solo Rumpuklinikka (Drum Clinic) in an intimate
jazzclub space filled with attentive listeners. Playing a cohesive
and melodic drumsong for over an hour with exquisite control of dynamics
and touch, his personal approach to rhythmic patterns saturated the
time. Afterwards, in response to questions, he talked about the essential
mastery of playing softly with strength, loudly with relaxed looseness
in the limbs, of pitch developed over time spent making music on the
piano and vibraphone and in composition studies. He also made sure
the audience knew the names of drummers who inspired him in Chicago,
mentioning especially the great Vernel Fournier.
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Rumpuklinikka (Drum Clinic) - Jack DeJohnette |
The next evening's concert was in the large hall with a superb sound
system and a generous, clearly lit stage with its circular backdrop
screen displaying color changes coordinated with the music in different
ways for each group. Jack DeJohnette appeared again on drums and piano
in duo with his longtime improvising partner from England, John Surman,
master of reeds and composer.
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Aamulehti (Morning Paper) - Jack DeJohnette + John Surman |
Then the big stage filled with the uncontainable music of Taraf De
Haïdouks (Band of Brigands) from Romania. Those souls curious
to know the source of the new klezmer revival in the USA and the old
recordings on which it has been based need search no further than
contact with one live outburst from generations of the gypsy tradition.
The entire group breathes music as a way of continuous and contagious
living communication of the essential nature of the song of human
feelings right now, then, and forever. Flamenco heartstring cries
from the caves of Andalusia, inter-layerings of dancing blue sounds
following caskets in New Orleans, and pre-dawn calls from minarets
in Central Asia vibrate in the personal delivery systems of each of
these musicians and in the voices of the older lautari, griots whose
song achieves direct speech. Everyone present and past is contacted
as well as those to come and, literally, this music never stops.
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Tzigane (Gypsies) - Taraf De Haïdouks |
Three sets the following afternoon changed the pace to a quieter chamber-music
interaction. Bassist Barry Guy and violinist Maya Homburger, both
virtuosos, developed intricate duets and solos often based on composed
materials and texts.
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Never Telling Lies - Maya Homburger + Barry Guy |
The Austrian alto-saxophonist Max Nagl's Quintet offered original
compositions in carefully balanced acoustic modulations of sound.
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Naftalin - Max Nagl Quintet |
Electronic generators surged and sucked among the plucked and stroked
strings of Zeena Parkins' harp and Elliott Sharp's guitar. The power
dynamics and color blends of their personal string sounds were expanded
with digital dancing on footpedals, dials, and computer keys. Clearly,
it's now a 21st century for the ears. The eyes, however, can see at
least one long sympathetic string stretching from the pointing, slippered
toe and brocaded pant leg of our hippest harpist through her black-garbed
partner's fingered fretboard transformations on a long line strung
way back to elaborate sonic chambers in Haydn's Vienna.
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Digitech - Zeena Parkins + Elliott Sharp |
The big hall filled again shortly afterwards for the evening's opener:
KRØYT, a Norwegian Trio well known in Scandinavia and Germany.
Built around songs sung in English by the smoldering Kristin Asbjørnsen
as she paces barefoot on an elevated runway, two cool guys—Øyvind
Brandtsegg profiling on vibes & computer and Thomas T. Dahl on electric
guitar back her up. Crouched before the group at the front of the
stage, Ottle manipulates a video camera and laptop computer to project
re-fractured images of the performers on the big round screen behind
as smoke rises and huge loudspeakers groan under full utilization.
Using up-to-date media capabilities, KRØYT declares its struggle
towards and away from contact with love. Filter out the electronic
overlay with dynamic backdrop projections and it isn't hard to hear
basic folk music roots of brave, lonely young people in a north country
making songs about personal isolation in a new century that nobody
feels quite at home in yet.
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KRØYT |
Derek Bailey, the inimitable English guitarist, had to cancel at the
last minute, so Susie Ibarra was called upon to step up once again
into a challenging percussion situation. Instead of a Duo, she was
suddenly on her own before a full house on Saturday night with the
drums, cymbals, and little instruments she brought plus the tympani
and gongs she called for to expand her kit. No music Witness who heard
her live in the David S. Ware Quartet, in William Parker's Quartet
and Orchestra, with her own Trio, or in the beautiful percussion Duo
with the late, great Denis Charles could doubt her ability to deal
with a challenging situation.
The audience glued itself to the great range of integrated colors
she was weaving and to her personal mastery of the spectrum of touch
Jack DeJohnette had just declared was the basis of it all. Plenty
of sinuous power was always ready in reserve. The beautiful drama
of one young woman creating an extended, intimate connection between
the most elemental family of tactile sounds and a large hall filled
with expectant new listeners was greeted with enormous appreciation.
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Susie Ibarra - (Drum Solo) |
When Edward 'Kidd' Jordan, the tenor saxophone legend from New Orleans,
tossed his cap across the stage while preparing to play, it stuck
on the corner of Virginia-based Joel Futterman's grand piano as though
it had been hung on a hook. This was a clear signal that the Southern
Extreme Trio couldn't miss tonight. Solidly set up in the middle
behind the drums was the veteran field marshal from Mississippi and
founding member of Chicago's AACM, Alvin Fielder. Whatever Jazz
Happening may mean in words, the music was indisputably happening
at midnight downtown in Tampere, Finland.
Each member of this Trio loves to play, loves to listen and respond
to each other, and loves each unique journey to a place deep in the
interaction of human feelings new and fresh to everyone in the room.
Jordan's call may be rolling onwards from a zone in which I heard
John Coltrane stand and deliver at the Village Theater in New York,
a few months before he passed on. This is music blown from the toenails
way out beyond the tenor instrument. It is open, searching, free and
deep.
Like his contemporaries, the Romanian lautari who sang the
night before, Jordan's horn delivers direct, universal speech declaring
the truth and blessing of standing together in this moment tonight
alive on this Earth, dedicated to those who stood here before and
to keeping it open for all the young ones coming on.
Sonic colors keep changing as Joel Futterman thunders the piano strings
from the keyboard, plucks them from within by hand, moves to soprano
saxophone and flute sounding with the tenor and then back to the piano
again. Coordination master Alvin Fielder demonstrates throughout how
drums can in so many ways push, pull, move, clarify, separate, join
and drive the ensemble through new territory in the dark.
The audience thundered back in rhythmic applause. Mr. Kidd, his kind
face gleaming, magnificent white eyebrows raised, asked them in a
gentle, smiling voice, "Where were y'all when I was 25 ?" And then
they lifted off again. It was the best of real USA togetherness, incandescent
in northern Europe. Open improvisers, playing together totally and
joyfully, trusting each other's contributions throughout, sharing
every discovered gift with legendary generosity. Look, you can still
hear it!
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Tampere Jazz Happening - Kidd Jordan, Joel Futterman, Alvin
Fielder |
Late Sunday morning, a wilting Witness was taken to the famous Ruhaniemen
Sauna on the nearby lakefront with its looming spruce trees and spirited
native crows. Air temperature was 8°C (45°F) in a light rain. The
beach is one immense, wet, striated glacial boulder easing into frigid
water. The wooden sauna room is not large, but well populated by Tampereans
of all ages on three racks going up, feeling good together. Serious
and powerful saunistas ladle water on hot rocks producing major blasts
of steam. When the penetrating heat becomes unbearable, you can follow
a smiling grandmother barefoot out over the stone beach towards total
immersion in the lake outside. Three cycles through hot sauna and
cold lake dissolve and exorcise physical and mental stress.
Between jetlag and showtime, one might not have quite known one's
location. But now, cooling down on a bench overlooking the misty lake,
it all becomes absolutely clear to the real you—"This must
be Finland!"
And it's just in time to reload, set up in the main hall and deal
with the Finnish improvising Big Band, Sukhan Ukha. This must
be the name of some Viking vessel assembling in your ears, whose 12-man
crew of individual voices was nurtured on Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra and
the recently departed jazz explorer Edward Vesala.
Antti Hytti seems to use his big acoustic bass as a steering oar for
the crew's energy. Raoul Björkenheim's keening electric guitar
cries high over burning saxophones and trumpet while the vocalist,
Jukka Gustafsson calls out shore sightings with great, cracking humor
in totally convincing English. A freshly purified Witness found himself
grinning throughout, grateful to be hearing yet again from another
group of musicians in another country who love playing together and
are most eager to share their harmonic adventures, discoveries, and
victories.
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Sukhan Ukha Suomi |
The Happening staff at Tampere has a long history of treating the
music and its creative artists with consistent respect and care. Its
practiced coordination is capable of keeping all aspects of a complex
production running smoothly forward without fuss. There is also a
sustaining sense of occasion as the City gathers in live music from
many countries to inaugurate the Finnish winter. It was an inspiring
pleasure to experience how new music can be brought together in such
a setting, among such people.
All original art 27 1/2 x 39 1/2" (70 x 100cm)
made during live performances in Tampere, Finland
2—5 November 2000
©Jeff Schlanger, music Witness®
2001.
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