The Free Jazz Collective

MoE & Ikuro Takahashi featuring Signe Emmeluth - Live at Børsen Kulturhus

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

MoE, the vocals, guitar and bass duo of Guro Moe and Håvard Skaset, is one of the most interesting rock acts around today, merging aggression and a punk attitude and with a love for improvised and experimental music. On this release they're joined by frequent collaborator Ikuro Takahashi on drums and alto saxophonist powerhouse Signe Emmeluth. While collaboration and experimentation are to be expected with this band this record is notable for mainly two reasons: it was recorded live in concert (which came as a surprise to me because their chemistry is so great that I'd assumed a lot of their records were recorded live) and it's the first MoE album in which frontwoman and backbone of the band Guro Moe trades her trusty electric bass for a double bass.

While each of the six untitled tracks has its own identity, the album is a full gig recording with the dynamics of a concert as a consequence. After a short minute of mood setting and acclimatization the four musicians get straight to business with pummeling, fluid drumming, furious guitar bashing and driving bass setting the stage for Emmeluth to shine on her sax. This no holds barred first track immediately shows just how tight this band is and will be throughout the album, the especially fantastic interplay between the sax and the guitar being a highlight. The second track brings the energy down a bit and rests on Moe's signature bass playing, simultaneously gluing the band together and laying down a delightfully off-kilter groove. Takahashi and Skaset take a step back, the former focusing mainly on the cymbals and the latter turning his guitar into something that resembles a synth pad, leaving the bass and sax to their polyrithmic dance.

Track four, the midpoint of the concert, introduces hints of psychedelia, with its effects-heavy guitar and a saxophone that at times sounds like a half-remembered dream, but the music and the mood are in constant evolution and the underwater feeling is soon spirited away by a massive bowed bass riff and a desperate shriek.

In the latter half of the album the music takes on a mysterious quality and something else takes center stage: Moe's fantastic vocal performance. While the vocals and lyrics are present throughout the record (MoE is a rock band at their core at the end of the day) it feels like at a certain point all four musicians collectively decide to give priority to the vocal performance for a while. And what a performance it is! Full of passion, melody and angst, ranging from hissing whispers to operatic highs, often in conversation and sync with Emmeluth's altissimo notes, it's endlessly engaging and captivating Takahashi and Skaset then take on a more active role, guiding the band towards a final crescendo of distortion, blister-inducing bass playing and squealing sax overtones. For the second time on the record the band proves to be just as capable at bringing the energy down as building it up, something arguably harder to do convincingly, and they close the concert out with a slithering bowed bassline enveloped by Moe's soaring vocals.

All four musicians are extremely talented and have a very assertive voice. The challenge for the band then becomes creating music that's balanced and doesn't particularily revolve around any one musician and I think they pass this challenge with flying colors. The players know exactly what and when to play, when to be active and when to play support in order to serve the music first and foremost. Emmeluth in particular is fantastic at exchanging ideas with the others, always picking the right notes to embellish a guitar chord or supporting a vocal melody,. There are no flashy solos or traditional jazz or even rock forms, just collective creation of a kind of music that revolves around attitude and emotion. It's an elating, moving and lively album, beautifully recorded and presented. I hope to hear this lineup together again soon.

Released on digitally and on CD by Conrad Sound.

Live at Børsen Kulturhus by MoE & Ikuro Takahashi featuring Signe Emmeluth

Jack Wright/Ben Bennett – Tourne (self-released, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:09:00 +0000

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

This, unfortunately, digital only release is a treat, a future hidden gem, probably, for all those interested in the free thinking ethos of improvisation. Jack Wright is on the saxophones (alto and soprano, I believe) and Bennett on the drums and some other percussive objects. Tourne is comprised of three long tracks, each over or around the ten minute mark, and presents their take of playing live.

When I’m saying that this is their take, I mean it literally. Even though there’s a certain generational gap when it comes to those two players’ age, they both refer to the early days of free improvisation (we could comment that those days where having jazz as a reference but nothing more) when a new language –every sound is possible and only the players are liable for it- was being formed and presented through playing live.

This is how both of them antagonize with their preconceived ideas about playing music: by challenging each other to go further and further, even beyond the margins of what is sound, what is music, what is that should be heard from percussion and saxophones. This is not their first collaboration but, still, they sound fresh and willing not to fall in the shaky ground of presenting “good” music-not even playing “challenging” and “adventurous” stuff. They just are themselves, staying true to the basic ethos of free improvisation. Trying, at least, to present something new each time.

Bennett’s playing is agile, feverish and energetic as never before. He seems to be enjoying himself as he releases low level percussive barrages. Wright, restless as ever, follows but also runs in parallel releasing saxophone sounds as if his respected instrument is made of rubber and can bend and displace notes and phrases.

I’m not sure if I made my point clear out to you, but this is a joy to experience release that has to be, at least, listened by a lot of people.

Tourne by Jack Wright and Ben Bennett

Fot.isn

Frangenheim / Keune - New Traces (scatterArchive, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Martin Schray

Bassist Alexander Frangenheim and saxophonist Stefan Keune belong to the third generation of European Improvised Music (or fourth, depending on how you calculate). I came across Keune and his trio with bassist Hans Schneider and drummer Achim Krämer with No Comment (FMP 2009), Frangenheim was on my radar because he was a member of Cecil Taylor’s Workshop Band (Legba Crossing,FMP 1988) and later on he released several very good recordings on the Creative Sources label. Their musical style - not atypical for European Improv in the 1990s and 2000s - was more abstract than the recordings of the godfathers of this music which - while experimental - were often very concrete. Whereas concrete improvisation works with direct, tangible materials, situations, or predetermined rules - be they small melodies, energetic structures, or even a pure desire for destruction (one need only think of Peter Kowald’s and Peter Brötzmann’s “Kaputtspiel” phase - even if the latter disliked the term), abstract improvisation detaches itself from external circumstances to express feelings or states of mind primarily through sound, structure, and form.

Abstractions are evident in many ways on New Traces, Frangenheim’s and Keune’s debut collaboration as a duo: first, in the pauses - moments of silence that are repeatedly interspersed among the music’s hectic passages, as in “New Traces 1” or “New Traces 7” - and second, in the music’s extreme density and concentration. Both musicians employ extended playing techniques such as harmonics, overtones, and percussive strokes. It’s not about melodies, but about exploring timbres, textures, and dynamic extremes. Ultimately, however, the abstract moments are most evident in the frenzied runs and competing trills, the contrasts in register (especially in “New Traces 4“, where they really reach the limit of what listeners can bear to hear), the impetuous stylistic drive, and the simultaneous clarity of the sound. True, Keune still hisses, coos, hums, and gurgles for all he’s worth, and Frangenheim scrubs away, making his bass weep and crash - yet it’s as if one had stripped Barry Guy & Mats Gustafsson’s Sinners, Rather Than Saints (No Business, 2009) of all its embellishments, oriental flourishes, vibratos, frills and obvious crescendos (don’t get me wrong, I love this album) - to draw a concrete example for comparison. Just listen to “New Traces 8“. Here, the improvisation takes unpredictable turns and surprising sounds are created, yet the structure of the piece remains crystal clear. A prerequisite for this is that both musicians have such an excellent technique that during the more frenzied moments, instrumental timbres coalesce without getting in one’s way.

The album is a treat for fans of abstract music and sonic exploration. Very recommended.

New Traces is available as a download.

new traces by Frangenheim / Keune

Melvin Gibbs - How Black Music Took Over the World (Basic Books/Hachette Book Group, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Lee Rice Epstein

As a writer, researcher, musician, composer, and artist in the public sphere, Melvin Gibbs seems to have been working towards something like How Black Music Took Over the World for while now—a synthesizing work that brings together personal history, polemic, Black music made in and beyond America both under and in spite of a racialized cultural hierarchy, and the heartbreak and joy that come with learning and acknowledging this shared (like it or not) history. How that synthesis enacts itself on paper is one of Gibbs’s particular skills, his melding of register (as he lays out in the Prelude) replays his musical practice. An open reader who lets the book take over will be, I think inarguably, rewarded.

One of the key areas that’s under-discussed in literature, as far as I’m aware, which Gibbs both personally and academically goes over in the book is the Gullah-Geechee, the community rooted in the Sea Islands, along the Georgia and Florida coast. In the chapters “Stono’s Children” and “Changing Time With the Times,” Gibbs recounts his discovery of his Gullah heritage, then takes readers on a fascinating journey of the elemental components of rhythm, from ring shout, hambone, swing, and backbeat, to dub. What works pretty well in idea—merging registers, mixing personal memoir with rhythmic analysis—plays out (pardon the unintentional pun) wonderfully on paper. From an extended rhythmic analysis in “Stono’s Children,” Gibbs drops us right into a Harriet Tubman rehearsal. In a later chapter “Can’t Stop,” Gibbs breaks down a specific rhythm he’s dubbed the “lunch table cell,” then demonstrates its use in school lunch ad libs, James Brown’s “Soul Power,” Fela Kuti’s “Shakara,” and Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” There’s a joy in taking all this in, and the infectious enthusiasm Gibbs seems to take in sharing the rhythms and ideas he’s studied and generated.

“The Music of Black Science” demonstrates the linkage from mythos developed through sharing stories to cosmologies that underpin systems of belief, math, science, and artistry. As a somewhat mystical rumination on West African frameworks, and what Gibbs describes as an ontology of Black music. The ensuing pages explore mythologies, fables, and physics through the lens of oral communication and visualization. It’s one of the chapters I’ve dipped back into multiple times, letting myself drift to and fro, which doesn’t seem to contradict Gibb’s intent.

However intentional, or not, How Black Music Took Over the World is in conversation with two crucial writers and researchers in this area, Race Music by Guthrie Ramsey and Blacksound by Matthew Morrison. Ramsey’s been in the space for over 30 years building up a compelling and provocative (for me, personally, I’m using this word in terms of “provoking intellectual thought and reflection”) body of work, and Morrison’s Blacksound is the kind of seminal work that hopefully becomes required reading for anyone seeking to understand the acoustical aspects of blackface minstrelsy that became the bedrock of the recording industry. Much like Gibbs’s assembly of evidence showing Black performance and foundational rhythms permeating styles and genres, Morrison demonstrates how Blacksound (re-)centers the ephemeral sonic and performance aesthetics that were capitalized on by early white adopters of vaudeville and dance. While no single author can be expected to cover all aspects of a topic, there are areas Gibbs elides or leaves out of his narrative that are readily picked up in these two—and, yes, many other—books, which an earnest reader is encouraged to also seek out.

Ines Terra and Santiago Bogacz - Boca De Acero (ScatterArchives, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

By Hrayr Attarian

To say that a work starts with a bang is a cliché, yet Boca De Acero definitely has an explosive intro. Not only that, the momentum on this five-movement duet remains taut till the final note. A collaboration between two singular musicians, the Argentinian vocalist Ines Terra and Uruguayan guitarist Santiago Bogacz, this album is entirely improvised and demonstrates a seamless camaraderie between them.

This abstract, cinematic conversation has a shifting mood and thrilling twists and turns within the underlying harmonic narrative. Track “1” opens with fiery, angular guitar strums and Terra’s wordless vocal acrobatics. Terra makes her shouts and cries bounce off Bogacz’s strings with dramatic flair. The guitarist weaves a dense and dynamic soundscape around Terra’s chants.

[Text Wrapping Break]Despite embracing dissonance, the pair maintains a subtle lyricism throughout their exchanges. The darkly hued “2” brims with mysticism. Terra’s rising and falling voice hauntingly floats over Bogacz’s sparse chords. The refrains that evolve with each repetition have a ritualistic feel, almost like the ceremonial liturgy of a long-forgotten ancient rite.

With “3” the somber mood continues, becoming quieter and more nocturnesque. Terra softly whispers, and Bogacz plucks single notes that underscore the serenity of the mood. Their conversation takes on a sublime theatricality. Meanwhile, on “4” the two artists fully embrace mysticism as her throat singing and his hypnotic strums ebb and flow against a quiet backdrop, ending on a passionate note.

The fifth piece features synthesizer sounds that distort the emotive and stimulating improvisation, creating a delightfully otherworldly atmosphere. The burgeoning piece melds the organic quality of the human voice with sharp, acerbic electronic vamps for a performance that is simultaneously stimulating and eerie.

With Boca De Acero, Terra and Bogacz have undertaken a successful sonic experiment that is provocative and moving. It is also a much-needed glimpse into South America’s vibrant improvisational scene. That, much like the recording’s creators of this album, is unique, expressive, and fearless.

Boca de acero by Inés Terra + Santiago Bogacz

XENOFOX @ Konfrontation, July 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

This past month, the duo XENOFOX — Olaf Rupp on electric guitar and Rudi Fischerlehner on drums — performed at the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf during the 46th edition of Konfrontationen. Held under the motto ‘A Tribute to Hans Falb’ in honor of the festival’s founder, who passed away in December 2025, this year’s program carried an added weight: this edition may be the festival’s final one.

Caleb Wheeler Curtis - Ritual (Chill Tone Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Tempus fugit . A number of up and coming adventurous saxophonists who once surprised with their original voices suddenly, it seems, have been around for quite a while now. Immanuel Wilkins, Stacy Dillard, and Caleb Wheeler Curtis, the subject of this review, by now have expansive discographies. Wheeler’s album The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery was listed as a top album of 2024 on the Free Jazz Collective by one reviewer. Ritual, for goodness sakes, is the multi-instrumentalist’s sixth album as a leader . And it’s so easy to lose track and just call a musician “new.” A case study for mistaken novice is the pianist on this record, the legendary Orrin Evans. Evans had anchored the Philadelphia jazz scene and had been a mainstay in New York’s jazz community for decades when he won Downbeat’s Rising Star award. It was great for the maestro to get some long overdue recognition, but remains one of the most baffling episodes in the history of that magazine’s historic poll.

Evans after all, by that point, was already serving in a mentor capacity to Caleb Wheeler Curtis, signing him to Imani Records. Ritual advances the narrative even more, as this is the first album as a leader Curtis has recorded for a label other than Imani, going this time with Chill Tone Records.

Ritual is a beautifully free-roaming album that is somehow simultaneously tightly controlled. For me, there are two standout tracks on this album: the first, “Fantasmas,” and the last, the title track “Ritual.” “Fantasmas” is a wonderful rubato ballad for which Curtis composes a traditional AABA theme. Despite the thematic jacket, the piece just meanders and floats in a sea of rhythm and atmospherics. The rhythm is largely thanks to drummer Michael Sarin, who on this album often chooses not to simply play time. The atmospherics are mainly the result of a stunningly powerful guitar performance by Emmanuel Michael. Together, Sarin and Michael remind me of the ECM Paul Motion and Bill Frisell albums.

Joe Lovano often was the horn player on those ECMs, while here Caleb Wheeler Curtis’s tone is much more hard edged, made a little sharp and prickly by his saxophone of choice: the stritch. Wheeler’s website cites possibly a more accurate reference point: Wheeler “draws from a wide range of influences including progressive bop and post-Coltrane/Ornette free improvisation.” Actually, one might say a song like “Fantasmas” is like Ornette Coleman playing with Liberty Ellman.

“Ritual” is a stunning composition that leaves bold seams of silence intact throughout. After a mournful eight note melodic line, this time featuring Curtis on trumpet, multi-instrumentalist Henry Paz on flute, and Vincente Archer bowing the double bass, the band stops playing for a full four seconds–and this four seconds of silence contains so much weight and power as I listened for when, or if, the band would return. These gaps are slowly filled in by the musicians: first Curtis on saxophone, then Sarin on drums, and finally Emmanuel Michael’s guitar.

The album, I should note, is more straight ahead than some followers of the FJC may want it to be. While there is tremendous freedom on the record, even those who loved The True Story of Bears may find Ritual to be quieter and tamer by comparison. And don’t mistake my point, I love the two tunes referenced above, but this album is filled with beautiful songs (check out “Florence,” “Pond,” and “The End of Power,” for instance). The Bandcamp page for Ritual says Caleb Wheeler Curtis “celebrates the ritual and practice of communal music making,” and this should appeal to those of us who love this music not so much for its virtuosity, but for the kind of world it imagines and makes possible. A ritual provides solace through routine. I would like to imagine our world in such dedicated practice of community that doing so becomes routine.

Ritual can be ordered here: https://calebwheelercurtis.bandcamp.com/album/ritual

Ritual by Caleb Wheeler Curtis

Skúli Sverrisson with Bill Frisell - For All Your Flowers (Newvelle Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

For All Your Flowers does not check the usual boxes for my reviews. It is not free jazz or avant garde. It does not really stretch the boundaries, or fuse unlike elements, or shattered the eardrums. Nor is it quiet, or phased, or whatever other attributes I often ascribe to experimental music. What is more, it is guaranteed to get due attention in a variety of other music publications and will likely come to listeners’ ears regardless of what I write. Still, For All Your Flowers presents a blend of crystalline beauty and pastoral expansivism that I find irresistible right now. It captures warm feelings of nostalgia that I have been pining for lately. And it is good music.

None of this should be shocking. Both Bill Frisell and Skúli Sverrisson have catalogs that run decades of years back and albums deep. They have earned their reputations, and I am not sure For All Your Flowers is as much a departure or venture into new pastures than a continuation of the styles and sounds Frisell and Sverrisson have already made their own. As points of comparison, one could include Frisell’s mid-1990s collaborations with Gary Peacock, which are generally more abstract, or the 2021 Sverrisson-Frisell duo Strata, which occupies similar sonic space, but is glitterier. In terms of feeling, however, Charlie Haden and Hank Jones’ 1994 Steal Away , a collection of masterfully performed and unadorned southern spirituals, comes to mind as a reference point. Differences, of course, abound. For one, the songs on For All Your Flowers are primarily penned by Sverrisson, rather than unknown American authors and communal groups of generations prior. The instrumentation is also different with the commonality of bass and the substitution of electric guitar for upright piano. (And Sverrisson and Haden are very different bassists.) However, For All Your Flowers hits me in the same visceral and mistily wistful way. The folky melodic simplicity, the spaces of controlled adornment, and the impressionistic imagery of the hinterland are all there, as is that sense of a time and place past, regardless of where or whether they actually existed. Owning that ambiguity is, of course, what the best art can do. It takes the listener away to a fantasy land to experience vicariously, through sound, image, or narrative, something new and apart from their own lifeworld. Sverrisson and Frisell achieve that, not through uncompromising innovation or eccentric displays of virtuosity, but a shared sense of melody, vision of space. and untouchable precision.

For All Your Flowers is available via Newvelle Records as part of the Newvelle Ten collection.

Mats Gustafsson / Kimmo Phjonen - Two Balls Are Enough (Trost, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

Some musicians seem destined to play together at some point. Not always at the beginning of their careers, but as their music develops, it feels as if their paths are compelled to cross. Gustafsson and Pohjonen have been in the other’s orbit for some time, but it took a suggestion from Bogdan Benigar that the duo perform together at the 2024 Ljubljana Music Festival to provide the impetus and foundation of a pairing that has since enlivened stages at events such as the Tampere Jazz Happening in 2024, where their energised performance impressed audiences.

Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen plays the accordion in ways you would not imagine. He creates music that changes how the instrument is viewed. With roots in regional folk and classical music, Pohjonen is also influenced by rock and punk. He has written string music for the acclaimed Kronos Quartet and played in the art-rock band KTU alongside King Crimson percussionist Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn.

Pohjonen uses accordions with additions to create enhanced effects, and his delivery has revolutionised accordion music and visual performances. He has, in effect, created a genre of his own, with the accordion at its heart. For the last thirty years, he has toured the world, taking part in events, festivals, and playing in different venues. His solo 5-row accordion project featured extreme and original compositions with effects and performances with lights and sounds. His custom-made accordion, along with his imaginative playing, has given him a renown as one of music’s most intriguing characters. He has released several albums and toured extensively in Europe, Asia, and America.

Swedish musician Mats Gustafsson needs little introduction to improvised music appreciators and is also known for his experimental music, his diversions into punk, rock, classical, and his dynamic performances. He has composed for orchestras, created solo recordings, and toured extensively, as well as being a writer for jazz magazines.

Both musicians have strong stage presence and dynamic personalities, yet each is capable of pulling back to leave space. Their strong personalities could see them clash, but they also have the altruism and connection to others that true musicians possess, so as a duo, they create music both individual to each musician and that stands as duo work. Their similarities and differences combine to create a connection where they are pushed to excel beyond their normal range. It is clear from this recording that ‘Two Balls Are Enough’ brings together kindred spirits, each of whom contributes equally.

Gustafsson told me, “The duo was initiated by Bogdan Benigar, a mutual friend of Pohjonen and me. I have admired Kimmo for years. He may be slightly from another side of the improvised music spectrum, but the energy he is playing with is very appealing. He has amazing levels of energy, and the vibe and feel of the music is one hundred percent 100 % DIY.

We are both the same age, and both spring from punk rock in our teens. Our stupid interest in ice hockey and saunas unites us even more. This is just the beginning. The way Kimmo is using samplers and electronics with his accordion is heaven-sent.”

Both appreciate the capabilities of their instruments but embrace technology and effects that enhance and work with the sonic measurements of their instruments. Since that inspired curation in 2024, they have been blending their sound worlds, and ‘Two Balls are Enough’ is their first album out on Trost Records.

The opener, ‘Ice Heaven’ is a fierce, sparking, energy-laden piece, with intricate, heavy rhythmic patterns, backed by harmonics between the two musicians that bind and create a wholeness to the divergent patterns. Gustafsson unleashes a stentorian solo, while Pohjonen maintains harmonies and high-energy, powerful lines behind. The unified lines are loud, forceful, and incredibly effective in contrast.

‘Magna’ combines chords from the accordion with electronics and screaming effects across a pounding, intense litany of rhythms. A piece of three sections, divided by total silences, this is an intriguing listen. And wholly irreverent.

‘Snow.Linat’ is gentle, with Gustafsson’s flute floating, whispering over the constantly shifting soundscape foundation. Some sections feel powerful and intense, with the flute slashing through, contrasting with emotive, delicate sections, where the accordion’s voice sings, adorned with breathy vocal tones. The sudden shift to a powerful, pithy solo from the sax is gorgeous, and the intensity becomes palpable.

The title track is a messy, joyful, eclectic mix of pops, whistles, accordion chords, and electronic effects, into which Gustafsson’s flute weaves and dives. The track sums up the essence of the album, distilled into just over two minutes of chaotic mayhem, while ‘Its Body Falls Open’ is a tinkling, high-pitched maelstrom of swirling sounds and effects, topped by Gustafsson’s eccentric sax playing and jittering accordion, with ‘Worn Out Words’ providing more of the same.

‘Slow Down The Beating’ is a track that creates deep impact. It has gentleness, with the flute introducing a melodic section before a percussive deluge of changing patterns. This is backed by intricate beats and rhythms, and a development into a raw, pared-back piece with some beautiful rhythmic clashes and dynamic changes over a steady background beat.

‘Naga’ is an exemplar of interaction between two minds with chaotic intent, yet a definitive directive, the result of which is a confident exchange of ideas, manifestations and rhythms that rise and fall, creating an engaging listen. The musical foundations shape-shift, creating powerful imagery and an aural dynamism that evokes spirit. The tautness of the atmosphere is tempered with melodic lines from Gustafsson, as well as his fulgurating, strident phrasing.

“Backengrillen 1” (maybe named after the punk band Gustafsson plays in) creates epic grandeur yet is surprisingly intimate and filled with rustic beauty. The repeated melody on the sax intensifies and provides a gentler interlude before Gustafsson varies the phrasing, and all the while the rapid accordion runs provide a tight but moving backdrop.

Gustafsson and Pohjonen have been touring regularly over the last couple of years, and the release of ‘Two Balls are Enough’ demonstrates the powerful connection these two musicians have.

I commented to Gustafsson that the accordion was not an instrument I really liked – until I heard this. His response was, “Same here - it was never my favourite instrument, but after working with Kimmo, and also some insane Norwegian players: Kalle Moberg, and Ida Lövli (fantastic!) and Frode Hatli - I had to change my mind. It is a funny instrument!. I never thought I would work seriously with anyone playing it, but ha!”

(Moberg has recorded with Nilssen Love, Hakion thelin and many more, Lovli recorded her debut album Skumring (Twilight) on Lawo Classics, and Hatli is a composer who has released several albums and is part of multicultural projects worldwide).

Recordings like this unite different genres and also expand the possibilities of instruments, and maybe, just maybe, change how we hear and feel music.

To quote Gustafsson – “This is just the beginning.”

Two Balls Are Enough by Mats Gustafsson / Kimmo Pohjonen

Mats Gustafsson / Kimmo Phjonen - Two Balls Are Enough (Trost, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Eyal Hareuveni

The work of Finnish hyper-accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen has never been reviewed on this site. He comes from Finnish folk music but has revolutionized how it sounds, is played, and looks. Pedals and effects augment his accordion, and his own wordless vocals, and it sounds like a mini-orchestra. Pohjonen looks like a modern-day pagan shaman who moves with ecstatic dances and feels at home whether he plays with Kronos Quartet, French jazz drummer Eric Echampard or in the art-rock band KTU (alongside King Crimson alums drummer Pat Mastelotto and Touch guitarist Trey Gunn).

Swedish reed and electronics player Mats Gustafsson, like Pohjonen, is an adventurous, inimitable iconoclast who enjoys turning genres inside out like others do their pockets. He comes from punk rock and free jazz, but just look at his new collaborative projects from last year - the surf rock meets free jazz, The MagNuts (with guitarist Hedvig Mollestad), death metal meets free jazz, Backgrillen, and the free-improv flute duo, Flöjter, with French Delphine Joussein (of Nout trio), that already produced two live albums.

The musical union of Pohjonen and Swedish reed and electronics player Mats Gustafsson was envisioned by Bogdan Benigar, the director of Druga Godba festival in Ljubljana in Slovenia, who invited both of them to the 2024 edition of the festival, without letting them know that this was his plan. Gustafsson and Pohjonen bonded instantly. They share a love for ice hockey and saunas, and are motivated by a great passion - for spontaneous, risk-taking improvisations, creating a community, and cultivating individual and collective consciousness (as Gustafsson says: fighting against local and global stupidities). Throughout their live performances, they sounded like a powerful, raw, and intense sonic entity, Kimmats, and often Gustafsson’s saxes are channelled through Pohjonen’s effects.

Two Balls are Enough is the debut album of Pohjonen and Gustafsson, and it was recorded in a two-day session in Vienna in February 2026 by Martin Siewart (of Radian), with Pohjonen and Gustafsson responsible for the mix. Gustafsson brought to the recording session slide, tenor, baritone and bass saxes, Ab clarinet, flute and slide flute, live electronics, harmonica and organ, while Pohjonen played his electro-acoustic accordion and sang.

Each of the nine pieces sends you into unpredictable, uncompromising, deeply visceral, and wonderful hyperactive territories. Club dance pulse on steroids collides with ecstatic free jazz sax blows. Noisy electronics join a cathartic pagan dance, with Pohjonen’s organ-like chords ascending from hell to dance with Gustafsson’s garrulous baritone sax patterns. A poetic cinematic vision of a snowy Arctic storm. Experimenting with feedback-filled, mutated timbres. A touching, singable folk song. Three pieces were inspired by French poet Danielle Collobert. The last piece, “Backgrillen”, sketches a completely different texture from Gustafsson’s death jazz band, and offers a surprisingly intimate, touching melody filled with rustic beauty. It sounds like these Nordic wolves found a new pack of like-minded partner who enjoy creating a genre of their own.

Two Balls Are Enough by Mats Gustafsson / Kimmo Pohjonen

Miroslav Vitous, Michel Portal, Jack Dejohnette - Mountain Call (ECM, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Ferruccio Martinotti

To understand why we're here—we writers, you readers, both listeners to this kind of music—requires skills that we, with a law degree, can't offer. Instead, we’d need to turn, depending on which School of Thought we’re referring to, to Freud or Lacan. What we could try to do is to share what drives us to buy certain records rather than others, excluding the dyschaolic compulsiveness that isn't ours. In short, we could say:

1) claiming to be completists of some musicians (try that with Mats Gustafsson and then tell us...);

2) a recommendation from a source (magazine, blog, fanzine, radio etc.) we trust;

3) the advice (damn, they're NEVER wrong...) from the FJC editors;

4) taking a leap into the void with an artist completely unknown to us, just to push away our personal horizon or, vice versa,

5) the need to breathe a little bit in our comfort zone, let’s say, with a reissue of Mingus or Taylor.

There's reason number 6) for this review: to pay homage to an artist we love, in this case the Frenchman Michel Portal, who passed away at 90 last February.

While Weather Report was never our cup of tea, we're not so obtuse as to fail to recognize the greatness of Miroslav Vitous, whose bio, from Chick Corea to Miles, is completely pointless to summarize, just as it is for Jack DeJohnette, honored on these pages on the occasion of his passing, in a way only this blog can do. We will always remember Portal as the author of that 1969 Our Meanings and Our Feelings, which represents to us one of the "6 Star Records" to be sent into hyperspace to make aware anyone who should find it of what free music means. His extraordinary artistic career has been enriched by collaborations with the likes of Boulez, Berio, and Stockhausen, which have defined his profile as a forward-looking musician, always respectful of History and Tradition. In our more than humble opinion, he remains a resoundingly underrated musician, so much so that, if memory serves, even our forum archives have no trace of him. Now you know.

Ten years after his last album with ECM, as the label's liner notes tell us, Vitous creates with Mountain Call, a sort of musical self-portrait that demonstrates his immense talent as an improviser, composer and sampling pioneer. The album strikes a balance between spontaneous improvisation and sequences in which the recording studio's technology is put at the musicians' service, like a canvas on which to paint brand new soundscapes. Miroslav and Jack have not forgotten that they were one of the most thermonuclear rhythm sections ever and the rust of time has not affected their sublime class: “Tribal Dance”, “Epilog” and “Evolution” are there to demonstrate it incontrovertibly. The latter features Bob Mintzer's bass clarinet (Tito Puente, Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, Thad Jones, Jaco Pastorius, and Billy Cobham among his collaborations), while in the five-part suite "Rhapsody" we can hear Esperanza Spalding's vocals, making her ECM debut. The extraordinary bassist/vocalist joins Vitous, Gary Campbell's sax (on record with Randy Brecker, John Abercrombie, Dan Wall, Adam Nussbaum, among others), and Gerald Cleaver's drums (Sylvie Courvoisier, Charles Gayle, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, William Parker, Craig Taborn) on "Fun and Games," where "call and response" dynamics are inserted within the textures created by Vitous. The keystone, however, lies in the opening and closing of the album, which see Vitous and Portal perform astonishing duo sequences, probably the freest moments of the Czech bassist's artistic journey, since his collaboration with Jan Garbarek on "Atmos." Sheer beauty and irrepressible bliss, period.

Anyway, forget the trivial and negligible considerations that drew us to this album and, whatever yours, if any, definitely give it a listen: this is a really relevant work that delivers much more than it promises.

SoundScapes Series: Buck, Duthoit, Sjöström & Kääriäinen

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

This week's video comes from the SoundScapes Series organized by Finnish saxophonist Harri Sjöström in Berlin. Surrounded by ever changing exhibitions of contemporary at the Wolf & Galentz Art Gallery in Berlin, Sjöström performs with his own ever changing arrangements of top-flight improvisers for his quarterly Soundscapes Series.

Here in an appearance in May is Jukka Kääriäinen (guitar), Harri Sjöström (soprano saxophone), Tony Buck (percussion) and Isabelle Duthoit (voice & clarinet).

Learn more about SoundScapes: https://soundscapesberlin.de/, and more about Wolf & Galenz: https://wolf-galentz.de/.

A new trove from Udo Schindler and company… (Part II)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

German multi-instrumentalist Udo Schindler has been recording and releasing music relentlessly over the last few years. The reviews below offer a glimpse of just some of his production over the first half of this year.

See part 1 here.

Udo Schindler and Andreas Willers – Analytical Pre-Summer Retreat (FMR, 2026)

Analytical Pre-Summer Retreat captures Schindler (tenor sax, e-flat clarinet, piccolo flute, and cornet) with Berlin improvisor Andreas Willers (guitar and devices) at a live date at Studio+Atelier SCHINDLER in Krailing/Munich in 2025. The two had previously collaborated on 2022’s STORM without WIND and a 2023 trio session with Eric Zwang Eriksson titled Cassiber Complex_Unconditioned Sounds In A Box. As with the other, this one shows range, but a different range than the more restrictively acoustic outings reviewed above. Here one hears how electric Schindler’s trills and flutters can sound, and Willers, with over forty years of electro-acoustic collaboration under his belt, is the person to bring that out. He veers from shreds and electronic chaos to simple repeating clusters and other rummaging to prickly vines with a Scandinavian free rock sensibility a la Tellef Øgrim, Gunnar Backmann, and their ilk. A gritty and textured set that is as much about Schindler’s arsenal (including some nice trumpet work) as it is about Willers’ clattery fretwork.

Analytical Pre-Summer Retreat is available via the arc-musik website: https://arch-musik.de/project/analytical-pre-summer-retreat/ .

Udo Schindler, Harald Kimmig, Eric Zwang Eriksson – Imprints of Experiences (Creative Sources, 2026)

With a total of three members, Imprints of Experiences captures the largest unit of the releases reviewed here, and its sound is correspondingly (and comparatively) full. Schindler deploys a range of instruments, some heard before (clarinets, cornet, saxophone) and one (b-flat tubax) unique to this recording. Harald Kimmig meanwhile contributes an energetic violin and Eric Zwang Eriksson, an array of prattling percussion. Playing live over two nights in Munich in 2024, the trio offers quite a range of sounds. Schindler does his thing, screeching, torquing, huffing, and, now, even singing through an array of horns. Kimmig and Eriksson, however, really distinguish this release. Eriksson and Schindler have collaborated frequently over the last half-decade, and the resulting concordance shows especially in the quieter segments, when Eriksson matches Schindler’s clucks and clicks with a concerted pitter patter of his own. Kimmig, who has a shorter history with Schindler, can also tap raindrops and rustling foliage, but shows he can also drive the trio out of these moments through his sharp and shimmering tremolo, at which points Schindler starts to stretch out into more frenzied spaces. This may be less rambunctious than some other releases, but it is no less probing, and even more entrancing. And some of that pull should be attributed specially to Eriksson and his controlled but curious rummaging. It lays a calm but spumy sediment that gives bubbly rise to the harmonics that fill out the wider sound.

Imprints of Experiences is available on CD and as a download on bandcamp.
Imprints of Experiences by Udo Schindler, Harald Kimmig & Eric Zwang Eriksson

PS: I had originally intended to review Schindler’s 2026 releases up through June, however quickly I realized that was a fool’s errand. For those interested, this year he also released albums with Andrea Centazzo and Harnik on Itcus, Nicola Hein and Nikolaus Neuser on Creative Sources, and Flo Stoffner and Michael Wintsch on arc-musik. By the time this review runs, there will likely be others, as well. Happy listening.

A new trove from Udo Schindler and company… (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

Udo Schindler and Elisabeth Harnik – Poetry of Friction (arch-musik, 2026)

To his immense credit, architect of buildings (by day) and sounds (by night) Udo Schindler is tireless and itinerant. He has some of core collaborators – see Harald Kimmig and Eric Zwang Eriksson on Imprints of Experiences below – but, more often, he pushes his music forward by performing with new musicians. Presumably, this forces him and his collaborators to adapt to each other on the spot, and in the process explore unanticipated sonic territories.

Poetry of Friction captures Schindler on tenor sax, clarinet, and cornet in a duo with Elisabeth Harnik on Bechstein piano (in and out) at a May 2025 performance at Musik- & Pianohaus Schwinghammer in Weilheim in Oberbayern, Germany. The affair is largely muted. Both Harnik and Schindler have been studying extended techniques and uncustomary articulations for years, and as should be of no surprise given the title, they continue to do so here, focusing on frictions, burbles, and heavy vibrations rather than anything crisp or ostensibly melodic. If one were to consider this a duel, Schindler has found his match in Harnik, who just as adeptly swings from idiomatic to non-idiomatic techniques. Some passages are blustery and beautiful. Some are hardly audible, roughly textured flutters and other understated soundscaping. Whichever way the duo veers, however, Schindler and Harnik stay linked and measured, wandering wide spaces but most often in tandem, which finds an unexpected potential in the soulful and dramatic climax and release of its final minutes.

Poetry of Friction is available as a download on Bandcamp.
Poetry of Friction by Udo Schindler & Elisabeth Harnik

Udo Schindler and Sergio Armaroli – Transalpine Sound Bridges (Munich-Milan) (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2026)

Transalpine Sound Bridges is the oddball of the group. Whereas the other releases were recorded live in studio or in front of an audience, this album came out of a canceled duo gig. As no in person collaboration had (or has yet) taken place, Sergio Armaroli responded by recording a series of vibraphone and percussion solos for Schindler (soprano sax, clarinets, flute, cornet) to improvise over. The result is a music that wafts through space. As the other releases here attest, Schindler can honk, contort, and scream with the best of them. Here, likely inspired by Armaroli’s dreamy runs on the vibraphone, Schindler also shows that he can lean into minimalist, calmer motifs. One hears his expert control, but in restraint rather than this John Butcher-like acrobatics. This album reflects on some remote Alpine mountain range rather than conquering the Großglockner’s peak. In a sense, this is impressionist more than expressionist, which is notable given the improvisations have taken place remotely. It grapples with that tension in the colorful patchworks of yielding and unyielding pastures, unsteady breezes, a panorama of beautiful flowers juxtaposed to barren crags, peace with a soft undertone or playful danger. Consider Transalpine Sound Bridges yet another side of Schindler that ranges from the bucolic and airy to the positively bluesy, coaxed in those directions by Armaroli’s knottily vining solo chasses and the vagaries of circumstance.

Available as a double CD and download from bandcamp.
Transalpine Sound Bridges [Munich-Milano] 2CD by Udo Schindler & Sergio Armaroli

Udo Schindler and Uwe Oberg – Schädel-Magie (FMR, 2026)

The title, Schädel-Magie, is German for skull magic, which sounds quite macabre. But maybe we should think of it in terms of sounds bouncing around the inner caverns of the head, in the eardrums and the auditory cortex and amygdala, rather than something more sinister. The skull in this analogy is self-evident, and the magic lay in the music produced, received, and processed. (A quick internet search tells me sound processing is an extremely complicated and weird, and in that sense quasi-magical, process, as much higher brain functioning is.) The album, Schädel-Magie, features Schindler on various clarinets and alto flute, and Uwe Oberg on piano (like Harnik, in and out) and captures the duo in studio in 2024. The track titles are untranslatable (or nonsensical?) compound nouns invented by the late German poet Thomas Kling.

If the words themselves do not quite carry over into English (what the hell is a body-branch or night machine?) the collectivity of the sounds are universal and perform a universal linguo-emotive magic of their own. Schädel-Magie begins as a wild and winding romp but quickly dissipates into extended passages of piano and saxophone constructivism. From there, Schindler and Oberg shift into a series of noirish pieces that explore a range of techniques and dynamics, though always drawn to some dark, mysterious corner. Or a winding staircase at the darkest part of night, wherein nothing nefarious has to happen but various anxious potentialities nevertheless reside in its shadows. As much as anything else, Schädel-Magie distinguishes itself from the other albums reviewed here in its mood – even in its tender moments one senses something cryptic, if not also haunting – and its barbed-wire spiraling.

Schädel-Magie is available via the arc-musik website: https://arch-musik.de/project/schaedel-magie/.

Eyal Maoz, Piero Bittolo Bon, Zeno De Rossi - Forced to Feel (self released, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Guido Montegrandi

Improvised free music recording develops around some recurring patterns: the single event in which musicians group, play and then disperse – the recording freezes a moment in time; the long term association – each recording a moment in a sequence sometimes with the risk of developing idioms, of creating a comfort zone at the expense of creative freedom; or a core of frequent collaborators meet a guest / guests - in this case the embryo of an idiom is here but it is tested and mutated by the newcomers.

Forced to Feel offers still another possibility being recorded after the group has “already tested its chemistry on stage (…) at a moment of deepened trust and heightened risk, refining a shared language forged in performance and now pushed further in the studio” (linear notes). What I understand is that they are on their way to create an idiom but are still willing to experiment and take risks… their language is still a virus.

Eyal Maoz (electric guitar), Piero Bittolo Bon (alto and baritone sax, shakuhachi, electronics), and Zeno De Rossi (drums, bells) all come to this meeting from different directions with Bittolo Bon and De Rossi having played together many times in many different contexts, and the results are intense.

A meaningful use of electronics, a sort of underground groove that flows into this sonic universe, splinters of melody scattered into the noise. In the opening piece, Renato’s 'Arcade,' a set of electronic sounds coming directly from a 1980s arcade creates a foundation on which De Rossi builds his texture and Maoz and Bittolo Bon display their fragments of melodies.

Music then evolves into a more pensive mood in 'Invoking the Ancestors' - the guitar provides a net of arpeggios and fragmented melodies while percussions, bells and electronics create a field for the alto sax to play a eerie song that dissolves into itself.

In 'Nervous Butterflies' a quasi unison of electronics, sax and guitar open the piece developing a swarm of circular motives that evolve one into the other with the addition of the percussion. Something like a jazz-rock guitar emerges over a riff just to develop into angular sounds that seem nostalgic of other times. The drum than brings the sax into a jazzy atmosphere that seems to freeze into the end.

'Moon Hovering' builds on an obsessive percussive patterns and offers the possibility to mark the essential contribution that De Rossi offers to the trio creating a unifying but open and volatile design that enriches sense of global improvisation. The same may be true for 'Part Hypnosis' where the three musicians seem to find a place of their own.

The baritone sax develops an obsessive melody in 'Flickering Wings,' this slowly changes into a deconstructed blues, sometimes some electronic noise adds an ironic note to prepare the finale with De Rossi again in evidence.

'Pull Me into the Blue Water' contains all of the elements presented so far with the addition of the shakuhachi flute that adds rarefaction to the mix. The guitar reacts with dreamy sonorities, the drum marks its path with a sense of necessity.

That’s it. After many listening sessions, I feel that all of the fragments, the different sounds, the different attitudes gather into sonic nebulas each with its distinctive features but with an overall inner coherence. Undetermined and yet beautiful.

You can listen to and download the digital album on bandcamp.

forced to feel by Eyal Maoz, Piero Bittolo Bon & Zeno de Rossi

Paradoxical Frog: Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubrock, and Tyshawn Sorey: Live at the Village Vanguard – July 21, 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

My daughter and I walked up Seventh Avenue on a balmy, post-thunderstorm July night to one of the most well-known, and most sacred, of all jazz venues on the planet, the storied Village Vanguard, to catch the opening night of a week-long residence by the trio Paradoxical Frog.

Readers of the Free Jazz Blog might care to know this was a historical occasion and one that involved the reuniting of three musicians often discussed here at the FJC: pianist Kris Davis, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey.

Behind the famous red doors that evening would perform an avant-garde trio that had not played together in over a decade. And the band’s unconventional leanings are perhaps less alien to the Vanguard than one might first guess. Davis and Sorey have performed at the Vanguard countless times, and Laubrock’s appearance is as rare and welcome as the recent celebrated stint of the James Brandon Lewis Quartet in the West Village club. This is to say nothing of the audience in the house that night: I spotted Sylvie Courvoisier a few seats behind me, and encountered William Parker outside the doors after the first set had concluded. Davis actually opened the show fact-checking the record. “I was corrected on social media,” she said. “It has not been fifteen years since the three of us played together; it has been eleven.” In any case, for listeners to either of the group’s two Cleanfeed recordings, 2010’s Paradoxical Frog, and 2012’s Union, it had been a long wait to hear these three masters perform in this distinct context.

The opening night’s set consisted of four long compositions, all of which have appeared on record at some point. The first performance, a combination of Laubrock’s “Masterisk” and Davis’s “Union” spanned over twenty-nine minutes. Seeing the work live allowed me to confirm just how through-composed these Paradoxical Frog pieces are. Note the extensive paper scores in Davis’s and Sorey’s hands and the extensions on Laubrock’s music stand: a necessary tool to display the lengthy writings of each work without requiring the saxophonist to flip pages of these surprising compositions that challenge functional harmony and defy circular rhythm.

The third work was “Whistlings” from 2020’s Blood Moon, the Intakt Records duo of Davis and Laubrock. The live performance, over twice the length of the original recording, featured Laubrock on soprano saxophone and Tyshawn Sorey on a sonic array of material, at times the room so quiet that Sorey’s percussion would consist of simply waving his brushes in the air, an effect that hauntingly filled the room with audible whisperings.

The set concluded with Sorey’s “Slow Burn,” clocking in at over sixteen minutes and featuring the mysterious repetition of single notes on Davis’s piano keys. It was moving to see these three unite again, and I am certain I do not speak alone in voicing my hopes for more work in the future, maybe even a Live at the Village Vanguard recording to place among some of the mythical voices who have passed through that hallowed underground room.

Fermín Suárez, Shantala Ferreyra, Gonzalo Goicoechea - Las Instancias (625 Discs, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

Las Instancias comprises Shantala Ferreyra on clarinet, Fermín Suárez on double bass, and Gonzalo Goicoechea on drums. Ferreyra is an Argentinian clarinettist and composer who graduated from the Jazz Performance Program at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory in 2024. In 2025, she released her debut album featuring her original compositions performed by her quintet, and in 2026, she was awarded a scholarship to study composition in Basel, Switzerland. Her work combines composition and improvisation.

Suárez is a double bass player, improviser, songwriter, and composer from Rosario, Argentina. His artistic work encompasses a wide range of genres, including jazz, tango, Argentine folk, improvised music, and classical, often mixing, stretching, and breaking the limits between languages and traditions. He co-created the punk-tango and avant-garde ensemble ‘La Rompiente’ for which he composes and arranges. In 2026, he started the solo project ‘Ola de sótano’, a double bass and vocals set with electronics, featuring songs, improvisations and spoken word. He’s also a frequent collaborator of composer and pianist Rocío Giménez López.

Goicoechea is a drummer and educator specializing in jazz. He began his studies at the Leopoldo Marechal School of Arts and later continued at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory. Since 2021, he has performed with a variety of jazz-oriented ensembles.

After a year devoted to live performance and composition, Las Instancias is released by the Argentine label 625 Discos, and captures the result of their ongoing collaboration so far.

With no harmonic instrument, the trio leans into timbre, register, and the register distances between clarinet, bass, and drums. The pared-back format serves as the foundation upon which the group builds its identity and scribes its musical language.

The ensemble work their way through various compositions (mostly written by Ferreyra and Suárez) that constantly flirt with the edges of jazz and improvised music, exploring their aesthetic possibilities and different orchestration combinations.

Recorded during a session in Rosario, the album seeks to become a living reflection of a live performance, with all its nuances and dynamism. There are fierce solos rooted in jazz language contrasted with moments of introspection expressed through a more abstract idiom, all while maintaining a strong sense of tension and attention. There is a sense of a group whose members perform in proximity, without separation or post-production tricks. The recording is an intimate encounter between both the musicians and the listener. The absence of a harmonic instrument becomes a presence: a framework that pushes them toward inventive orchestration, elastic structures, and an exploration of musical language.

This album contains some standout solos and ensemble work. There is a subliminal quality to this trio that makes the music fun, as well as profoundly interesting to listen to. Don’t be fooled by the opening bars of the first track. ‘Lampara Nueva’ starts like a traditional jazz piece, but develops into something extraordinary, the dialogue flowing between the clarinet, bass and percussion like water, flowing back and forth, with a swing here, a change there, and something just for the heck of it anywhere you might care to drop in. There is a taste of traditional jazz, particularly in the drum solos that emerge from the ensemble work, particularly in the second half of the number, but there is also much free playing.

‘Mucho Agora Mismo’ starts with a gentle bass solo and works itself into a frenzy, the clarinet delivering fiery solos across the percussion, with many variations in between. This is a track of many parts, blended seamlessly together. Just beautiful.

‘Dos Veces Agosto’ is a track of harmonies, rhythms, and counter-rhythms, with some bass solos, clarinet that works around the theme, and explores many musical avenues, while maintaining a connection with the central theme. ‘En Meyo’ is a clarinet solo track, with Ferreyra meditating on a theme, while ‘Ok/Off’ is a track where all three instruments lock into the same rhythmic pattern, creating a hypnotic dynamic. A bowed bass emerges, warm and resonant, before the trio returns to their lively, idea‑trading interplay.

‘Pegao’ is introduced by a bowed bass solo, over which the clarinet drops, adding light touches and a rapid change of texture, which the drums enhance, adding their own feel and colour. It is worth listening to this for the changes and rhythmic patterns that evolve, disappear, and re-emerge, led largely by the bass, whose voice is central to this number.

The album closes with a second take of 'Mucho agora mismo' which is extravagant and allows each musician to deliver improvised music of the highest calibre.

Las Instancias are three musicians whose shared curiosity has shaped a sound that feels both stripped back and richly alive. There’s a cohesion that makes the music both fun and deeply absorbing. You hear three musicians who trust each other enough to take risks — to push, to pull, to leave space, to fill it, to let the music breathe and then ignite. It’s intimate, inventive, and full of personality.

Las instancias by Las instancias

Get it on vinyl here: https://elasticstage.com/625discos/releases/las-instancias-album

Karoline Wallace - Eon (Sauajazz, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Alene. Voldsomt Alene.

Alone. Violently Alone. These are the lyrics highlighted by crescendo, volume, and underlined by Karoline Wallace’s celestial voice, in this case, a voice electronically transmuted to sound like Tuvan throat singing, at the apex of Eon’s opening track, “Tycho.” It turns out, much of Eon employs loneliness, separation, and uncertainty as lyrical motifs. But Wallace’s Norwegian text never collapses into isolation. Her opening musings in “Tycho,” named for the famous and complicated Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, marvel at the distant shining above us, Skapt i vill kraft, created by wild force. So much of the lyrical work by Wallace resounds with interior weather, the cosmos within that counters with enthusiasm the supernovas and aurora borealis without, the fiery and magnetic and kinetic elements of the universe that, like the imagination, contain the power to create and destroy.

What does it mean, after all, to be violently alone?

A wild, eternal roar iseach being. We are made of star stuff and ultimately whirl in oneness with the most distant corners of the universe. Oneness is never aloneness, and words like buldrer(roars),klinger(rings), andfunkler(sparkles) are as present as any other words of emphasis on this astral and exploding album.

And the music buoying these lyrics into the electric air is filled with a quiet simmering that always contains the potential to whip and whirl in fiery bursts and detonations at any second. Take, for example, what happens after “Tycho” quietly opens with Karl Bjorå’s sparse albeit off-center guitar strumming. As the music builds to its thunderous Alenecrescendo around the 3:30 mark, Martin Langlie begins smacking and slapping the cymbals with increasing excitement. A cello, played by Joel Ring, becomes more obviously audible. And out of the enveloping cosmic atmosphere emerges Signe Emmeluth’s alto saxophone that bursts through the spheres with noise and screaming, as it roars with presence. Emmeluth, it grows apparent, shadows Karoline Wallace’s ethereal vocal line from early on in this work. Only at this explosive point did I become aware of it, however. Wallace’s lonely voice was never alone, it turns out.

The album’s second song “Bittelille meg,” or Tiny little me, dances ahead blithely bouncing over a four note ostinato cello line Ring plays with joy and wonder.

Tiny little me, listeners are told in Norwegian, lives in a quiet house, but it’s not quiet inside me . “Klokkestein,” follows and calms down all the flaring effusion. Bjorå and Ring play a two note sequence over which Wallace’s vocal lines soar with soothing beauty.

This calm interiority is juxtaposed with outward ebullience throughout the entire album. Just listen to the second half of “Klokkestein,” as it shifts into a near house, EDM club track. Or better yet, turn to the wailing opening call of “Atlas,” a high point on the record, as it discharges around the one minute mark its wild energy into the exploding star half of this album always is. The song then proceeds for four minutes oscillating between fire music and the lonely call of evening somnolence, eventually crashing the two states together into one wall of sound.

“Karamellgneis,” a meditative work leading to the album’s hushed ending, is marked by up and down tuning and sliding mid-track by Bjorå’s guitar and Ring’s cello, and by Martin Langlie playing the banjo as Wallace reminds us Again and Again Again and Again We were…And we are again And will always be.

I have neglected to mention perhaps the core and mantle of Wallace’s project in Eon: geology. On the record’s inner sleeve Wallace writes “In this project, I am inspired by deep time—geological time. An eon is the longest unit of time in the geological timescale.” And, about “Karamellgneis” she writes gneiss “was formed by being pushed beneath the Earth’s crust…The heat and high pressure made it soft as caramel.” I rarely stop to remember that the natural state of rock is also caramel in texture, so accustomed I am to the unyielding formations in which I generally encounter them. But then again, the stars are tiny sparkles on clear evenings in my perception, and not the impossibly giant masses of nuclear fusion they are eons away in outer space.

Eon, Wallace’s third album as leader, is a master stroke of musical experimentation and cosmic poetry. Her lyrics and compositions manifest for listeners again and again that all is one, we are never alone, that large is small, quiet is noise, and what is far away is also intimately close. There is no need to feel sad for what has been lost to the past, and to live for anything other than the present moment. But even Wallace's very philosophy culminates in paradox as she ends the record with her father’s words: “It’s easy to say/Live for today,/When I tomorrow/Live for yesterday.”

Karoline Wallace’s Eon can be found on Bandcamp:

Eon by Karoline Wallace

At Jazzwerkstatt Peitz

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Jazzwerkstatt Peitz has a special place in the history of jazz festivals in Germany. First held in the 1970s and lasting through the early 1980s in the former East Germany, and then reinvigorated in 2011, the festival has been been parts cutting-edge, politically-subversive and nostalgic. After a generational change at the helm, Marie Blobel, daughter of the festival creator Ulli Blobel, has been updating, tweaking and re-inventing the weekend-long event, and winning the Deutscher Jazzpreis 2026 for Festival of the Year along the way.

The Free Jazz Blog will be heading there in a couple weeks and will tell you all about it. In the meantime, enjoy this choice clip of an improvisation workshop from last year featuring a stellar cast of uncompromising musicians, namely Frank Gratkowski on alto sax and flute, Lotte Anker on saxophone, Kazuhisa Uchihashi on guitar, Antonio Borghini on double bass and Toma Gouband on drums.

Learn more about the festival here and on the Free Jazz Blog here.

Camila Nebbia/Chris Corsano – Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone (Relative Pitch, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

I was lucky enough to catch Argentinian expat tenor saxophonist live very recently. It was a trio with double bassist Goncalo Almeida and percussionist Sylvain Darrifourcq, promoting their music for Defkaz Records. Leaving the other two great musicians out for the time being, I was impressed by Nebbia’s versatility and the flexibility of her sound. Her tenor saxophone easily traveled from free form improvisations, to one note growls to supporting a tri-folded interaction between the musicians.

Here on this cryptically titled CD where Relative Pitch has nailed it again, Nebbia shows another side of her playing, the fiery one for sure. Chris Corsano is well known of course and you don’t need me, dear reader, to point out that he is one of the best drummers around for this century. He has build a vast, polyrhythmic and diverse discography but he can still –and want to- “play”. Meaning: fire music as in the tradition of free jazz.

But, why another sax-drums duo is needed nowadays, since we are saturated with so much music? Well, leaving personal taste aside (certainly trying not to objectify it) this is a CD that clocks around one hour and is full of feelings and sentiments. Joyfully energetic providing an unbreakable interaction between the two artists, the seven tracks that comprise this recording, seem like a definitive answer on how free jazz (especially the micro-scale of the duo) should be heard in 2026. Even though Corsano has done it before in the crucial duo with Paul Flaherty, here, this duo with Camila Nebbia is redefining a part of, once, radical but marginalized music that we called free jazz or, better (sic), free music.

Maybe it is, but I have this feeling that it’s not, a coincidence that one half of the duo is this time a woman. Apart from the serious ongoing debate about the participation of women in jazz based musics the truth still is that this is a great CD full of small scale ideas, gestures, details, free blowing polyrhythmic barrages that make it a must listen. And one of the best for 2026 so far.

Listen here:

Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone by Camila Nebbia, Chris Corsano

@fot.isn

Please note: Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone was also covered by Brian Earley here.

Joel Futterman Solo and Duo

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Paul Acquaro

It's a little bit like finally going to that restaurant, the one that you have known about for awhile, maybe it's just down the block from where you live and have walked by countless times and always thinking, "hmm, should really go there." Then, one day you do and it's excellent, leaving you to wonder what took so long?

The music of pianist Joel Futterman has been something like that for me. I knew the name but not the music, however, this has changed. My experience began with the two releases Absorb and Reflective from late last year featuring this pianist playing solo and followed by Transcendent Universe, a duo recording with bassist William Parker. Let's dig in...

Joel Futterman - Reflective (Squidnote, 2025)

Where to begin with this feast? Perhaps Reflective offers a choice entry point, an appetizer in some sense with its set of short improvisations, however, be warned, it is rich enough to be served as a main course.

Reflective is essentially a quiet album. It is sparsely played and there seems to be deliberate attention given to each note's spacing, rather than an approach with speed and density, everything feels carefully considered and played with careful attention. Within the range of the albums 19 short tracks, the genres of modern, classical and free jazz mix generously.

The first track establish the spaciousness and the next few follow through in this manner, punctuating the reflective, flowing improvisations with bright bursts notes, like for example the fourth track which ends with in an energetic melodic charge. Track five, on the the other hand, swings back to the open spaces, but now bright chords are placed gently next to each other, setting the stage for the next expressive burst.

An aptly titled set of improvisations that whets the appetite for more.

Reflective by Joel Futterman

Joel Futterman - Absorb (Squidnote, 2025)

Absorb stands like a counter argument to Reflective. Comprised of four longer tracks, the focus shifts away from the very deliberate passages with the distances of the notes carefully measured to one where texture and tempo take center stage.

'Absorb Part 1,' the longest track at just shy of a half-hour begins with a strong, stately proclamation and then quickly picks up in tempo. Futterman's right hand plays an ever expanding set of quick, darting phrases while the left hand keeps the melody it from flying off the keyboard. Half way through the track, there are crashes of notes, atonal splashes, in the midst of the relentless piece providing a center point for the somewhat symmetrical second half.

The second track, which is just slightly shorter at 23 minutes, also begins with a distinctive statement and then rapidly unfolds with quick stabbing notes whose intensity rapidly grows. Tonal clusters collide as rhythmic motion pushes and pulls the track the along. There is again a relentlessness to the piece, keeping the energy high and the listener engaged.

Tracks three and four, together just over 20 minutes, add up to the last third of the album, and both carry on with the general approach that has been set and introduce a final contrast. Again starting with a bold statement, track three erupts into a flurry of melody and counter-melody, giving way to some classic jazz harmony towards the end. The final track, however, breaks the mold, beginning with a rapid set of notes and then opening up to more spacious passages. Overall, the pieces seem more compositionally minded than on Reflective.

Absorb by Joel Futterman

Joel Futterman and William Parker - Transcendent Universe (Burning Ambulance, 2026)

Although Cecil Taylor’s name has so far not entered the picture, his presence inevitably looms over this music - particularly in the way both pianists use rapid arpeggios and splintered atonal chord clusters as expressive devices. Their shared intensity at the piano is mirrored in another common thread: their musical partners. Futterman worked with longtime Taylor collaborator Jimmy Lyons in the 1980s, as well as with bassist William Parker, who himself spent many years associated with Taylor. On Transcendent Universe - a Futterman/Parker duo released on Taylor biographer Phil Freeman’s Burning Ambulance label - the two draw on these long-running connection with striking clarity.

Presented in three variable length tracks, 'Transcendent Universe Part 1' kicks off the album with a musical punch. Parker's bowed bass squeaks abrasively over a sustained chord from Futterman. Then, the two engage in a rapid chase. The music tumbles through the speakers like a fight scene in a movie that destroys everything thing in its path. Occasional legato passages help add contrast and build tension. Both hold their own, Parker plucking at the strings with a audible physical force and Futterman generating vibrant explosions of tone. After five minutes or so they both pull back, catch their musical breath (and who knows, maybe actual breath as well as this was a live, first-take, no overdubs recording), and begin building the tension anew with percussive extended techniques from the bass and laser focused passages from the piano.

The music simply breathes - melodically, harmonically and rhythmically. While completely improvised, the intense passages give way at times to endearingly melodic moments that are kept from becoming to sweet through dissonance and rapidly morphing musical ideas. Sometimes voices can be heard, the musicians singing their ideas, but it is not enervating like a Keith Jarrett recording, rather it provides a glimpse into the musical headspace, giving the music a charge of live energy.

Parker is back with the bow at around the 18-minute mark in the track and he's pulling the sound tightly together. Futterman responds with a rapidly repeating figure, the two are locked-in, which is a state that permeates the recording. While it's temping to do a play-by-play analysis of the music, this is only a third of the way into the recording!

Transcendent Universe keeps unfolding, recombining, and surprising, ultimately emerging as a portrait of two musicians leaning into risk, density, and lyricism. What begins as a torrent of sound becomes a dialogue, then a meditation, then another eruption. By the time the final gestures fade, the lasting impression is not just intensity but connection. And in that sense, we come back to Taylor’s presence, which is expressed as a continuation of his musical legacy, audible in the high‑level interaction and uncompromising musical expression. Futterman and Parker's music extends the space he carved and creates music that feels both rooted in precedence and utterly new.

Transcendent Universe by Joel Futterman/William Parker

Nolan Hildebrand – Noise Trip Explosion (Redshift Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

As the title indicates, Noise Trip Explosion is intense. I am tempted to label it unrelenting or something of the sort, but it does not quite reach that intensity of harsh noise, at least for extended stretches. Rather, the noise on this trip is glitchy, it comes in starts and stops, and Nolan Hildebrand's mixer feedback and live electronics are complemented by saxophones, violins pianos, guitars and percussion. Notably, it is also composed through a series of sound inputs and generative graphic scores that leave ample room for intermittent relenting and pivots. (For more on the set-up, loops, and feedback that produce the graphic scores and the musicians’ interactions with them, see the liner notes.)

Rather, Nosie Trip Explosion is diverse in sound and personnel. Hildebrand occupies the roles of musician and composer, and is joined by a coterie of musicians, whose own backgrounds run from contemporary classical to jazz and free jazz to abandoned warehouse micro-noise. Hildebrand himself is even absent on the surprisingly open but still dark Raw Data Speed Demons, where Roan Ma deploys both electronics and violin, and the final summative track DADA BENDER, which is a percussion sextet “with fixed media.”

Having listened to a lot of noise recordings that fall short, sometimes in ways I cannot quite put my finger on, I can vouch for Noise Trips Explosion. Hildebrand is never just making noise, as if anyone really can outside of some predetermined system. Rather, he acknowledges, constructs, analyzes, and reconstructs his choice (sometimes generated in and adaptive in real-time) system to great effect and clamor. What is more, some of the strongest tracks, such as knurl cracked green and the 16+-minute portals II (everywhere and everything right now) (which must be a nod to Everything, Everywhere, All at Once), stray from delight in sheer electro-noise especially through the more traditional instrumentation of the rest of the crew. Portals II in particular draws noise into harsh free jazz and vice versa with real aplomb. DADA BENDER is also a standout in its collision of percussion and beats with glitched circuitry and cartoon effects that amalgamate into a techno-dystopian march of shrapnel, laser sounds, and other sonic dregs, and scraps of various live percussion to prod it along. This particular bender, and this entire sonic trip, is well worth the abandon.

A side-note on the artwork: it is a glitchy and colorful throwback to earlier days of home computer/internet abstractions and fits the deceptively scrappy aesthetic of the album perfectly.

Noise Trip Explosion is available on CD and as a download via bandcamp:

Noise Trip Explosion by Nolan Hildebrand

bloodcog - musics for a savage planet & planete sauvage *****

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

bloodcog - musics for a savage planet (whi music 2026)

bloodcog - planete sauvage (whi 2026)

By Gary Chapin

bloodcog is Phil Hargreaves on woodwinds/EWI, Richard Harding on Chapman Stick and ambiences, Richard Harrison on drums and objects, Fran Bass on electric bass, and Pete Smyth, analog electronics. On these recordings they engage in a venerable tradition of improvising a soundtrack over the film, Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet), a 1973 science fiction masterpiece of animation and disquiet.

There’s ample precedent for this. James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and Count Basie played for the original — venerable — silent pics. Miles Davis recorded his improv for the film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. Bill Frisell played over (or behind?) Buster Keaton films. Marc Ribot took a spin.

The bloodcog quintet provides a mixture of non-idiomatic free music, electronica, musique concrete, found sound, and noise that could be industrially deafening or could be a close recording of a bug chewing loudly on a leaf. Hargreaves’s winds sketch a story — or character or scene — but still the whole thing seems wonderfully, drivingly abstractly expressionist, a musical experience that references nothing, that makes allusions to nothing.

Or so it seems.

The two albums take the music from the recording sessions and present it to us in two different ways. Planete Sauvage (Improvised Soundtrack) is the OST recording. Seventy minutes of music improvised directly to the film. Savage Planet takes the material from the two takes and curates chunks of it into 13 distinct, self-contained tracks. There is some music on Savage Planet that is not on Planete Sauvage, and vice versa, and I was surprised that this mildest of curation and editing created a genuinely different listening experience for each. Maybe it was just the pauses between tracks for breath. But no, the two are related, of course. The Venn Diagram has a good amount of overlap, but also a good amount of distinction.

A third way to listen to the soundtrack is to watch the film with the soundtrack. It’s a genuinely transformational experience — both because the music and film are each so good, and together even better, and because the exercise of hearing this music in three ways provides hypnotically fascinating insight into how music and images can so profoundly change each other. Sadly, you cannot watch the film because there’s a copyright dispute going on. This is what is known in the industry as A DRAG!

Each album is great, and the entire project is something you can really immerse yourself into. Five stars!

musics for the savage planet by bloodcog

planete sauvage (improvised soundtrack) by bloodcog

Camila Nebbia and Chris Corsano - Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone (Relative Pitch Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again." These, as many readers of the Free Jazz Blog will know, are the famous final words of Eric Dolphy’s mythical work, Last Date . While other recordings have come to light over the years, in many ways these also serve as the final words of Dolphy’s life, as he died a mere 27 days after Last Date’s recording.

I evoke Dolphy’s words here because of the grabbing and somewhat cryptic title of the first album recorded together by saxophonist Camila Nebbia and drummer Chris Corsano. Last Date was a functional title; it provided listeners with useful information about the record they were to hear, and it held weight. It most certainly was intentional.

As I listened to Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone I found myself returning again and again to this title. What the hell does it mean? Was I chasing specters, pumping meaning into a mere throw away phrase by Corsano or Nebbia? But I also kept returning to Dolphy’s words.

Music, afterall, can become undone, and as it turns out, Nebbia and Corsano do a masterful job of achieving this in each piece. The duo make a tacit pact with their listeners as each song opens, only to wipe away expectations completely by midsong. For example, the album opens with a burner: “Shattered Things.” Nebbia slides around her instrument’s keys like an oiled snake as Corsano works urgently on cymbals and snare. By the one minute mark, the piece feels like it wants to reach through the ceiling as Nebbia holds long notes with multiphonics and screeches in death-ray like effects, roiling up and up and up as Corsano opens ringing crashes on the ride cymbals and drops explosions on the toms. It is as though Rashied Ali were playing with John Coltrane AND Pharoah Sanders at the same time on Interstellar Space.

The kinetic maelstrom continues, but somewhere around the seven minute mark, I realized that the music had furtively gone quiet. Nebbia leaves tons of space and silence and Corsano softly swipes the high hats or bows other cymbals. And, by 7:50 the piece has entered total silence. It must be over, I thought. But the two musicians continue extemporaneously creating overtones and whistles and shimmering effects for over three more minutes. The piece becomes undone, but the two recreate new expectations well before the work finishes.

This coming undone happens again and again on this album. Well, seven times, since there are seven total songs. Although the final track, “Unadorned/Never Better,” only sort of follows this approach, remaining largely atmospheric and meditative, with Corsano playing what sounds like a gong or a sheet of metal and Nebbia whispering overtones. At times it becomes almost impossible to tell if I was hearing a saxophone or a drum kit, as the sounds whistle and ring out. This work serves as an entirely new direction for the album as a whole, and in that sense, serves another method of becoming undone. So, let’s call it six or seven times, or ways, of becoming undone.

I want to be clear, however, that Nebbia and Corsano do not repeat one pattern the entire way through the first six tracks. While, “Shattered Things,” and the following pieces “Cast-A-Spell,” and “Sunken House” all possess Interstellar Spaceintensity and searching at times, the songs move surprisingly into sonic territory I did not anticipate. My favorite work is a piece titled “Dead of Night.” The fourth of the seven works on the album subverts expectations by opening with the saxophonist playing her horn whispery, airy, and breathy. Corsano adds accents with sticks and rolls with what sound like his fingers. This song retains its quiet openness, and, in this way, the undoneness isthis song. The piece is seductive, however, and plays with expectations as the two appear to build intensity, only to continue searching through the silence. But, by the 5:40 mark Nebbia’s horn is screaming with more volume than at any other time on the record.

“A Paper Cut in Smoke” sees Nebbia both whispering and honking her instrument. Corsano even nearly plays a groove a quarter of the way in. “Nothing is Fixed” remains a highlight of the album, and works mysteriously and lyrically. I swear at times I hear Ben Webster blowing breathy ballads on this tune.

Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone is a masterpiece that leaves me, at least, asking questions about impermanence. All things, as the opening work states, may be shattered, and nothing may be fixed, but we strut and fret our way through paper cuts in smoke not to signify nothing, but to be “Never Better.” All songs must become undone as they fade and end, but the next adventure is waiting to bloom sonically somewhere from the silence.

Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone by Camila Nebbia, Chris Corsano

Summer Bummer in Focus

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

At the end of this summer, the Free Jazz Blog will be heading to Antwerp to check out the Summer Bummer festival. Held over the last weekend of August, it's been on our 'bucket list' of festivals over the past few years as its reputation has leaked across the ethers. Today, we present an interview with programmer Koen Vandenhoudt, about the festival's origin and concept ... but first a short impression of event from the festival itself:

Paul Acquaro: How did the very first edition of the festival come into being?

Koen Vandenhoudt: The first edition of Summer Bummer came into being as the celebration of 25 years of Freakscene, my radio show at Antwerp’s Radio Centraal, so originally it was Freakscene’s Summer Bummer. But even then it was a combined effort of music enthusiasts, supportive artists and a lot of volunteers that made and still make it happen.

PA: What do you think distinguishes your festival from others in Europe?

KV: We work purely by content, and though we pioneer many artists and give chances to lesser known and emerging artists, we go less by trends or commercial choices. At Summer Bummer we often present artists in constellations that have never happened before or that are brand new. That’s super exciting but hard to promote. People want the hear and see things before hand. So to see people coming from all over the world to witness this musical adventure, gives us a good feeling. It’s a trust kind of thing built over the years.

Another important thing is that we never do overlaps. We use multiple stages but always make sure that people can see all the shows -- and very important, it’s a community thing, where people can hang out, meet the artists, participate in an installation, enjoy some nice homemade food or score some excellent records.

PA: What guides your programming choices from year to year?

KV: We would like to say the artists and the ever changing amazing music they make. The international network and knowledge we built from within our Sound in Motion organization - volunteers, professionals, artists and like minded organizations - over all the years is pretty vast. This means that from all over the world we are continuously fed with the ins and outs of the music world.

On top of that, we support musicians over the long term, from the early stages, where the artist is new and unknown, to the moment where the international stage starts noticing.

PA: How do you decide when a project is “right” for the festival?

KV: That’s a very subjective process and impossible to pin-point exactly. We sometimes set out a kind of wish list or some minor themes but this very often gets overruled by the sheer quality of surprising offers or by the fact that every day is a day of potential musical discovery. Being able to keep this flexibility, this room to manoeuvre is crucial...

PA: How do you balance presenting established artists with discovering new voices?

KV: Since the first Summer Bummer edition and also in our nomadic concert series, our Dropa House residencies and our Dropa Disc label, we always balanced the older generation with established artists and the up and coming generation. In an age where pioneers of improvised, adventurous and experimental music are rapidly forgotten and disappearing, it’s super important to stage these different generations together. Sometimes we can combine them, like Peter Brötzmann with Farida Amadou and Thurston Moore, or Cel Overberghe with Adia Vanheerentals and Ornella Noulet (60 years of age difference), and Joe McPhee with Mette Rasmussen and Dennis Tyfus is also a good intergenerational and genre defying example.

And sometimes it’s exemplary of how the past is still more than relevant and moves into the future, like the trio of Barry Guy, Evan Parker, Paul Lytton or the historic duo of Fred Van Hove and Brötzmann. As said earlier we support musicians over the long term. Therefore some artists who are considered established these days still have a strong bond with Summer Bummer and Sound in Motion as an organization. Being able to show how these artists evolve is something very beautiful and exciting to witness.

This year we have some beautiful examples of this with the world premiere of Rodrigo Amado, one of the hardest working reed players around, in a trio with the legendary bass player/icon Joëlle Léandre and the genre hopping genius drummer and electronics manipulator Gerald Cleaver, not a trio we requested but a proposal by the artists themselves.

And what to say about one of the all time greats, Alexander von Schlippenbach, who will play this years Summer Bummer in a duo with phenomenal drummer and one of the most prominent representatives of the scene Paal Nilssen-Love, another request by the artists themselves and super exemplary of everything we stand for. And maybe the ultimate example of mixing up generations, gender, established and new artists is the passage at Summer Bummer in 2024 of Fire! Orchestra CBA and Fire! Orchestra CBA Youth. Mindblowing and very inspirational indeed.

PA: Are there artistic boundaries you intentionally avoid—or intentionally cross?

KV: Crossing artistic boundaries is inherent to the invited artists. Creating the platform to cross potential boundaries is the essence of Summer Bummer as a festival and to Sound in Motion as an organization. Just look at this years program and you know what we mean.

PA: What do you hope musicians experience here that they might not elsewhere?

KV: We once published a book with the title Food For Thought asking the artists how they experienced playing for Sound in Motion. One of the answers was: 'Feeling at home away from home.’

We like to think and hope that we are part of a handful of organizations and festivals that actually make this happen. That we can create the perfect environment for artists so they can focus 100% on their craft and artistry.

PA: What do you hope audiences experience here that they might not elsewhere?

KV: That there’s more than just mainstream music, forced upon everyone by mainstream media. And that, unlike mainstream channels will make you believe, it is not by definition difficult music. Even alternative channels struggle with this, shying away or being apologetic when music is abstract or noisy or not following known paths, as if there’s something wrong with it. No, embracing the unknown and enjoying it full on is the way to go.

PA: How do you see the festival’s role within the local music community?

KV: By showing the international dynamic of adventurous, improvised and experimental music and putting local musicians in the spotlights, introducing them first hand to international mainstays the Summer Bummer Festival tries to open international doors and opportunities.

PA: What is one thing that we didn't ask you that you think we should have?

KV: Sound in Motion is a nomadic organization, how does that relate to the concert series and the festival, and what's the importance of this within the field of improvised and experimental music and free jazz?

Sound in Motion uses a "nomadic" model that fundamentally shapes both its ongoing concert series and its annual festival. In fields like free jazz, improvised, and experimental music, this structural fluidity is not just a logistical choice—it is an aesthetic and philosophical necessity. Experimental and improvised music has historically suffered from being ghettoized either as purely academic or overly elitist. By refusing to stay inside a traditional, high-art institution, Sound in Motion actively de-academizes the genre. Bringing free jazz into a rock club one week, a community art space the next, or a cultural center the week after meets diverse audiences where they already are, embedding avant-garde sound into the community fabric.

Free jazz and free improvisation are built on the rejection of rigid frameworks, fixed charts, and predictable patterns. As a nomadic organization, Sound in Motion mirrors this artistically. When an organization is not connected to a physical building, it avoids the institutional inertia that forces venues to book "safe," commercially viable acts to cover high overhead costs.The organizational structure is as improvisational, adaptive, and high-risk as the music itself.

Because we must constantly collaborate with different physical venues and artistic spaces, Sound in Motion inherently builds an inter-connected infrastructure. We do not guard our audience; instead, we aim to cross-pollinate with the crowds of the partner venues. This creates a robust safety net for touring experimental musicians, making Belgium a vital European hub for artists who rely on agile, grassroots bookers to sustain their careers.

Find out more about Summer Bummer here.