An Hommage To Peter Brotzmann

On June 22, 2023 multi reedist, composer, improviser and fluxus alumni Peter Brotzmann has sadly passed away. This article is our way, after a long interview released many years ago, to remember him. Peter Brotzmann during the 1970 was the true face of European avant garde jazz, and along with his partner and mutual friend Evan Parker one of the pivotal figures of improvised music.

A close friend of visual artist Nam June Paik and others pertaining to the Fluxus movement, Brotzmann tried to incorporate elements of this iconoclastic idea into his own playing. Brotzmann style at saxophones is assertive, violent, abrasive and a little bit ironic. In the following years, after being cherished by Don Cherry and other American avant-garde artists more than by European critics, he started playing with musicians coming from the other side of the ocean like William Parker, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Bill Laswell.

This is a quick introduction to his discography. The first album you have to listen is Machine Gun (FMP, 1968). Here Brotzmann is leading an octet featuring Willem Breuker, Evan Parker, Fred Van Hove, Peter Kowald and Han Benning among the others. The music is surprisingly violent, with at the beginning the horns section imitating the sound of machine guns, in an attempt to give life to an  anti militarist concept. But the music is texturally rich, with the various musicians giving life to a multi structured creature.

You can find the same assertiveness on subsequent records like Nipples (FMP, 1969) and Fuck The Boere (FMP 1970), an album dedicated to the South African musician Johnny Dyani who died in the same years. An album that is worh of attention and of deep listenings, a true testimony of creativity and fantasy, is Schwarzwaldfahrt (FMP 1977), in which Brotzmann and mutual friend Han Bennink recorded a live set of free music into a forest, with Bennink beating logs and other natural elements with his sticks and Brotzmann utilising his many saxophones so to create a site specific music inspired by nature.

During the 1980, a period not favorable for experimentations, Brotzmann gave life to the quartet Last Exit, with U.S. musicians such as Sonny Sharrock, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Bill Laswell. The music here is even more heavy and dense, and in a way it anticipates what John Zorn at the end of the decade will create with his band Naked City. Now finally accepted as the uncompromising musician he is, Peter Brotzmann can finally manage to give life to various line up and various musical creations.

During the 1990s, his most important combo is the Die Like a Dog Quartet, an hommage to Albert Ayler that featured again U.S. musicians like William Parker, Hamid Drake and japanese trumpet player Toshinori Kondo. The quartet issued four albums of pure existential poetry, in which reflecting on life and death through notes is part of a project that is one of a kind. While in effect many musicians like Marc Ribot tried to hommage Ayler playing his own music, Brotzmann quartet gave life to new material instead of reproposing old tunes.

A second life, if necessary, was given to Brotzmann music during the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new century by the Peter Brotzmann Tentet, featuring musicians such as Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Joe McPhee, Paal Nilssen-Love and Fred Lonberg-Holm among the others. The tentet and his various combinations in duos, trios, etc. gave life to a live adventure that brought Brotzmann all around the world performing fresh and harsh music, making the old master known to younger generations of musicians and fans.

As every master musician, Brotzmann is particularly fond in the art of soloing, even if that part of his own work is not completely above the banner of his most recognised art. Two albums in particular can be advised to the listeners issued in recent years: No Nothing (FMP 1991) where Brotmann imagines a different concept for each of his instrument like e-flat clarinet, alto sax, bass sax, tenor, tarogato, and I Surrender Dear (Trost 2019) where he reinvents classics like Lover Come Back to Me or Con Alma at tenor saxophone.

Having toured extensively during the last years, Brotzmann has played with an enormous variety of musicians, among which Keiji Haino and many others coming from all over the world: from the East to the West, many artists payed a tribute to the complex art of Peter Brotzmann playing with him. Impossible to imitate, difficult to be inspired by, Brotmann was one of a kind for technique and vision. Possibly his leaving is the sign of the end of an era.