Music as a matter of personality - Part 4

Modus operandi: self expression and the past as a legacy 
Interview with Peter Broetzmann

Milano, May 8, 2011

Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

Artwork: Peter Broetzmann

Black Split, 1964, wood and oil on canvas

Now, would you like to talk about or describe some of your works I took from your website? Because not that much people usually ask you about this other aspect of your art, and I want you to talk about it, freely …

[he takes in his hands the pages I printed from his website, with his artworks and pictures, and smiles] These are really early works …

If you want, we can talk about more recent pictures or sculptures, and then I’ll look for them on the internet, to put them together with the interview …

Well, what can I say? It doesn’t matter if it’s older or newer stuff. Before I started to see the music as a kind of a profession, my main goal and target was being a painter. And very early, when I was still studying at the art school had my first exhibitions, in Germany and Holland, and at that time I didn’t like the people I had to deal with, the people coming to my exhibitions, all art business; I always was glad when I could go on the road with the guys, playing music, away from that; so, in all these years between the very early Sixties and let’s say until I started exhibitions in, let’s say 1974 or something, the first big one, there was not a break in producing, but I didn’t do exhibitions and all that because I was much more happy with the music, being on the road, seeing other countries, finding a much more interesting and open audience than in the art business. Art business, if you take it serious, it has lot to do with money, with this personality shows and things like that, and that’s what I hate, I hate personality shows, really, I like to work, we can talk about that, but all that producing yourself … I don’t understand … And that’s why I could develop my little art production independent from all this influences. I’m famous enough with music, I don’t have to care about anything that’s happening in the art business, I have a gallery, not an important one but one in Chicago, Corbett vs. Dampsey, they let me do what I want to do, they get me no pressure at all, and so I’m at the point or I always was at the point where I just did the things that I wanted to do, and that includes very normal oil paintings, it comes to objects, it comes to woodcuts again, what I did as a schoolboy, and so on. I have had an exhibition in my hometown running, we just had a meeting a couple of days ago, and as far as I can see, there’s a huge interesting people that are coming really. From far away, maybe connected with the music too, but that’s interested there, so I’m just happy when the things on the wall or in the room they just look good. I like them, and I’m very happy if I hear from people, "oh I like that, or that, or liked all". So, I will continue … time is my problem, being on the road, on tour, leaves you very last time.

To develop your own things …

Yes, but it has to do with getting older a bit; I would like to spend a bit more time in my studio and just do what I like to do, and yes … what I hate with the art is that is really a business for the galleries and for the big artists. For the rest is suffering. I mean, all the names you know, because I’m the same generation as Georg Baselitz, Edward Lupper, the famous Germans at the moment, I quite rank in the top ten, and they make millions, and sometimes I think, ‘shit, if I would have a little part for it for the Tentet, for the music, it would be nice’. On the other hand, we are just living always on the edge, always trying to survive, always fighting for a little progress keeps music alive, and that’s why I still want the music, and I need the music for myself too. It’s not the same on the art sight, I would say, but it’s just another facet of what I like to do. I think is quite a good equivalent between being on the road and being alone in your studio and have kind of a quite good time and get free of troubles travelling, stucking the cello and the bass in to the aeroplanes and shit like that; the two hours on stage, it’s a whole days just trouble. In the field of music, just improvised music, you have a couple of guys even a little older than I am, like Ornette, that is just ten years older, I really admire and respect him; or Sonny Rollins, I saw him last summer again, and played great music, the band was not so good but he himself was great, and he has physical problems with his body. Next morning we had the same flight to Oslo, and he was in the wheelchair … and Ornette this summer cancelled some European engages because he’s not in his best shape, but I have this feeling that the music of those, let’s call them heroes, are dying out, it’s just people like me, like the young ones, it’s just artwork …

It’s music you can’t develop staying on your own … You can work on your own style, you can work on saxophones sound, but without a human exchange, is very difficult to develop thing. To see people like Sonny Rollins playing … it’s a shame for the younger musicians; but maybe, not developing things being inspired by him, they will also develop in other ways …

I mean, whenever I talk to Ken .. Ken is thirty years younger than I, or twenty five or so, and I tell him stories about the old times; I have seen all the bands: all Miles Davis bands, Coltrane with Dolphy, I spent a night with Dolphy in a bar in Wuppertal, and Charlie Mingus with all these guys, I met Coleman Hawkins and Bud Powell, and the young guys even can’t imagine was that was, was that meant to me …

… and what could that mean to them, also …

Yes. In the Tentet I had to tell, ‘man, listen to Sidney Bechet’, or ‘listen to some good old Louis Armstrong records’. I mean, these guys was playing crazy shit, it was really incredible …

… or Billie Holiday that, as far as singing, can be compared to an avant-garde artist …

.. for example. At that time you have some voices too, and you don’t … I could name any important voice, I think the last one that was connected with all music was Jeanne Lee …

… there is one record out now, by Anthony Braxton, from 1972, issued by HatOlogy, it’s good too have her back again …

… yes, she was a great singer; at the times I was working with Last Exit, I did know there was Diamanda Galàs in these years ..

… yeah …

But since she brought her tight to Aids, since that time, she’s just back to very meditative solo shows, I don’t think she’s interested in playing again with all the guys.

In this moment she’s very busy with her recital, voice and piano.

But she has a voice, I mean, that Greek scraming woman, that was really … I like her very much.

In her very early years she was experimenting with voice and microphones, and did very great things …

Yes, and so, about musical perspectives, I don’t think about myself too much, I’m thinking about the development, and the scene, the situation for the younger musicians, it’s not getting better …

Do you think that people is working hard on what to do, but not that much about the meaning of what they are doing?

Yeah, and I know these guys coming out of these music schools, of course they can play on, of course they know about counterpoint, harmonies and scales; whatever you have to know, they know; but I have the feeling that most of them don’t know what to do with it, they just organise some nice aesthetic images and works: I miss personalities. I was one of the first to play with Peter Evans, the trumpet player, when he wasn’t famous at all: a strong guy, a strong horn, and it’s a difficult horn, that’s why you don’t find many of them. But I think he’s getting too fast in a kind of night after night step success. That’s fine because I’m making money with that, but if there is no time to find out what you want for yourself, if all this business around put you further and further, the danger is at least that you’ll never find out what you really want to do … for me music is not the same in five or ten years, music is a lifelong story, and at the end you’re still not where you want to get … I think that people should make experience, and best experience is that connection between yourself, the audience, being on the road, and bands don’t tour so much anymore, because have no chances to play anymore. One summer I was on the road with Gunther Sommer in Italy, we started somewhere in Imola and we ended up in Bari and we played in little Unità festivals and people were so fantastic, the food anyway was unbelievably good, and it was communication, in the best sense. That’s what I’m missing for the young guys. Look at Germany, the number of clubs I’m playing there from time to time.

Usually the clubs, in Germany or elsewhere, are looking for a wide range of music styles, or are they close and faithful to a particular style, in order to be recognized?

I’d say that the good ones, and still the working ones, are working on quite a wide range of music; the other ones, very narrow minded, that put on one music, they don’t work after a while. The point is of course to run such a place you need support, culture without support doesn’t exist anymore.

Related links:

Peter Brotzmann official website

Catalytic Sound Peter Broetzmann, Mats Gustaffson, Ken Vandemark and Paal Nilssen-Love new cooperative resource

Understanding music as a matter of intelligence and love

Interview with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith

Bologna, 7/5/2011

Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

Panic Jazz Café, Chiostri S. Corona, Vicenza, May 13, 2011

I followed directly Wadada Leo Smith in various live performances since Vitry-Sur-Seine in February. Since then, the trumpet player toured massively through North of Italy: in March he was in Milano with his Organic band (I put a review on Mescalina webzine in my native language), than he played in May (6 to 9) at Angelica Festival, solo, and in a duo with pianist John Tilbury, and finally both of them were in a quartet featuring Pauline Oliveros and Roscoe Mitchell (my photos). Astounding was his quartet performance, with all the musicians taking their parts as main soloist in turn, and the other ones following their stream in answer: very essential, and very fluid at the same time. Then again, one of his most beautiful performances: a duo with Gunther ‘Baby’ Sommer on May, 12 in Padova, in which Wadada played completely acoustic but with a mastery on his sound that would get him out of the boundaries of a trumpet player, even if no effects nor pedals were used, whereas Gunther made his drumset sound sometimes properly as a piano or a melodic instrument, working notably also on layering fore and background with his fellow. The day after, in Vicenza the couple played with Italian pianist Antonello Salis. Though the Italian musician is a master on his own (he played also with Cecil Taylor along with Tony Oxley), that was a harshly nervous performance, with serious interaction problems between the musicians; only in the end they finally played together all at the same time, giving shape to a melancholic, pointillistic and oblique blues … This is part of our conversation at the hotel he stayed in Bologna, followed by an open explanation of his Ankhrasmation musical system, that I deepened a little, as he suggested to me when we had the talk. Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is a great teller, and his ideas could seem simple, but they are amongst those that need an entire life to be developed. It’s a pleasure to listen to him talking as it is hearing him play. I thanks both the musician and his Italian manager Alberto LoFoco for their kindness and support.

I’d like to start our conversation talking about your first compositions, like The Bells and Light of the Dalta, that were on Anthony Braxton’s records [The Bells appears on Delmark’s Three Compositions of New Jazz, whereas Light of the Dalta was issued on Byg’s B-Xo/N-0-1-47a or Composition 6g] … Light of the Dalta is an open reference to the blues, and I was thinking about the fact that the first free jazz players, like Ornette Coleman, developed melodically the references to the blues … you were more kind of giving to sound itself, silence and timbre a major relevance … you know, if I have to think about a blues composition that can remind me of your music, that piece would be Dark Was the Night, Cold was the Ground [a Blind Willie Johnson piece, that inspired also musicians as diverse as Ry Cooder, Marc Ribot, Loren Connors and moviemakers like Wim Wenders], where you can hear this guitar chord very prolonged and repeated; so I think that there is also a spiritual aspect, if you will, in developing music that way from the blues … so I wanted to ask you about your references in music, blues, and spirituality, in developing your style with the trumpet …

Teatro San Leonardo, Bologna, May 7, 2011

Ok, the song that you’ve mentioned I don’t really know it, but the blues is a very complex music, that has alternation between a 1/4 and a 5/4, and most people take that to be kind of a progression, but it’s not. A progression has to be at least three of four relationships to a chord, and blues has this alternation between those two relevances that is time to get a dam. Now, what makes that so important is that the blues itself has already built inside of it a notion about freedom, most sentence look tells like that: ‘no refuse, make some happen, or call some to change, all you need is to part to what to change’, I mean, until that part happens. So the blues masters figured out that the most natural relationship between events and objects and humans is true; that for example, if you have a child, he needs a woman; man and woman make appear that from the form; so there’s another phenomenon, of sunrise and sunset; both of them do the same things: sunrise it brings for light, sunset it brings for dawn; so out of both of them it quills like new conditions. So the blues is based off of that, a natural relationship between events, abrupt and hint. Now, my music doesn’t come out quickly as the blues, that little piece, Light of the Dalta, does have motion between the one in the bar, you see … [sings] … dabadabadabadabada–bang-da … [shifts singing of a major] dabadabadabadabada–bang-da … but, that’s an illusion, is not really blues … I made music like that because of the notion about the Delta, you see, the South, Mississippi has the most famous Delta in America. So Light of the Delta has to do with the way the sun rise in Mississippi where in the Delta, it comes about and it warm, when it rise. And at certain points you as a human being as you’re stand and watch sunrise you tell of being that. And at another point, it comes up midway left by, it comes up to your head; you even look so, and at some point, it passes by your head and move forward, and you know how it moves, you see, and, he goes on like that; it can shatters, an the sunset never it reduce the light; so, that’s what The Light of the Dalta means, it has to do with sunrise, and it’s not really a blues, it has relationship that’s … spiritually, is attempt to the blues, ok?

Ok, so, it has to do with the sun rising on the Dalta, and not with a progression of chords …

No, has nothing to do with chords … y’know, lot of people look at how music should be organised, they reduce to notions about chords and their function…

Yeah, this is a big problem, if we talk about so-called avant-garde jazz, even for people like Charles Mingus, they took many years to understand how his music was working, because musicologists were thinking more about the developing of music in notational terms, more than studying directly his compositions, as we European think about music from 18^th century on … I read a good essay on Mingus written in Italy kind of six years ago, by Stefano Zenni [Charles Mingus: Polifonie dell’Universo Afroamericano, Nuovi Equilibri/Stampa Alternativa, 2002], because he was trying to use a different approach, starting from what he wrote on the lines of his records … but maybe, if you want to understand really music, you have to be an artist, like a poet, or a painter …

No!

No?

No, no … I would say that to understand music, it’s a head and a heart, intelligence and love, that’s all it takes …

The most simply things…

Padova, Cinema Teatro Torresino, May 12, 2011

But the most simple is the most complex, and everytime we do comes through those two things: a head, that is intelligence, and a heart, which is really the one’s request to be loved … so really when Mingus remembers whatever they were doing they would come from the same point, basically a head and a heart, and to understand that is all it takes, now artists, and journalists, and poets, and painters, in any kind of profession, they did kind of a special relationship with, but what works not so fair is that relationship that one understands from the head and the heart… Like for example, if I put another photo wide on it it’s still wide but maybe a little bit lighter and a little bit dumb in his right, but it’s still … still wide, you know, so … when people look at music and they took it and put it a way it shows some other view of value, like for example some other who wants to show a relationship between American music and European music, and they take out people like Charles Mingus or anybody, like Roscoe Mitchell, or Anthony Braxton, or Anthony Davis, they take them as if they use the same light, and they use the same kind of head and heart to analyze them, but that has only information from the eighteen, nineteen century, or even twentieth century, now they gonna miss, you totally miss it, you completely miss it, and if you look a fantastic book that is nice to read, but when you get to the conclusion of what it has wrong you made a value mistake, that most of people … that jazz created music, blues … anything that’s in America, the same bop, it came out of the euro century, with some stuff amassed; and that’s a lost, that’s completely lost, because, look at it like this: this is Africa, this is Europe, right? And those people that came from Africa when they came to America they already had knowledge of art, culture, music and count … how do have they had that? As slaves: because those people loved, when they were slaves, they composed music when they were slaves, and they thought about the situation which made them culturally conscious of what they were doing; so when they came that they had this homost that was actually equal to the European homes; and then this blend that happened that was the first melting pot, that’s when you can talk about the euro-century and the afro-century thing, but the moment that a scratch happened, the more you wrote that picture on ragtime, it was all over … and that moment, it had changed completely from this European and this African merge it became stuff on that, it would be no Europe nor Africa to realise, it became creating what the music is, all jazz, all ragtime music, all American music, all this tons of main zones, but the best man for the American music, you know, it’s people like Stockhausen, or Pierre Boulez, it’s all you can mean, not baroque or classical music, or this stuff ...

So the thing is, putting down too much boundaries between styles of music can’t be useful to understand music truly…

I think that … you see, writers write for the same audience, stylists write of the people that are stylists, they don’t write on normal people, you see? Artists that write about music they write for artists. Sometime the individualist economic stand it comes to a pure standpoint and so an artistic standpoint and so much a stylistic standpoint, but they’re not allowed to do it, it’s just those people count on brilliance, so to speak; but in all near places they have better to view wide music than anybody does, because brilliance doesn’t bring another reflection of what they could find among things; but they have in some way to have a way to peep inside of it; they look directly from their heart to your hart, from their head to your head, and they did it. I mean, I can’t burglarize you, because it’s not mean. Don’t mean to burglarize you, and they didn’t. And the most important dime about it is that when they do connect, it transform their life. What it does is to make that point to make it more aware, make it more conscious, and give them more feeling about a human being; that’s the profound change. And how it goes notice this is beautiful? That’s why the spiritual maze is like this, make it so that … spirit don’t have to know when you connect, like, when you came onstage and you’re making that music come out and make happen that feeling in contest connecting with people and the people in the audience they feel it and get connecting with it and sound out feelings and don’t get connecting with it, and sound do feels part of it, like just connecting some of them just with the head, some of them just with the heart, some just connect with even one of them, but the pushing to connect with both the head and the heart and this put intelligence to feel love … they made it, and they don’t even know it. That’s beautiful. I don’t know it; Roscoe doesn’t know it, you know, Miles Davis didn’t know it, nobody knew it, but … you can feel something happened. That’s beautiful. That’s what we call beauty.

An Ankhrasmation score example

Ankhrasmation

Spanning through his career, Wadada Leo Smith not only produced an important amount of recorded works; he also gave shape to a notation system called Ankhrasmation, which merges the idea of composition, improvisation and performance into a single construction. As the trumpet player would say, working on an Ankhrasmation score, every musician has to do a personal research, far from the ensemble playing. As an example, a red half triangle in the score could be taken as a velocity unit. So, every player will determine how fast or slow this unit would be, and nobody will determine it the same way: onstage there will be nine different realisations of that notion. Same with color: red could be a reference for blood, or for cherry, and this reference has to be developed in music; if nine musicians are playing that red, all musicians will have different references about that. And also, the cherry has a skin that’s red, a pin inside of it, and stems coming out of its center. Every player has to develop every part of the cherry. When finally the musicians play together, they have to rehearsal in order to find the right balance, the level of creativity coming out.

Wadada Leo Smith started developing his Ankhrasmation (from "Ankh", the Egyptian word meaning vital life force, "Ras", the Amharic or Northern Ethiopian word for Father, and "Ma", the conventional word for Mother: its sense, is that when Father and Mother procreate, they embody a vital and seminal life force) since his very first composition, “The Bells”, with his work on Rhythm-Units, a concept he started explaining after his residence in Europe since 1967, when he issued the booklet Rhythm: a study in rhythm units in creative music, and then formalized through his following activity as a musician and through his first self-published book notes (8 pieces)/sources of a new/workd/music/music: creative music in 1969. Improvisation #4, from Creative Music No. 1, first issue on Kabell in 1073, paved the way for Ankhrasmation. For full information about Wadada Leo Smith philosophy of music, scores and concepts, check his official website.

Talking jazz - Avant-garde from Turkey (Pt. 1): Korhan Erel

Istanbul, Galata Brigde - Photo: Ara Guler

I'm directly posting this e-mail sent to me, after my request, by Korhan Erel, improviser, composer, and computer instrument designer. Follow the link above to see his website, and listen to his music on his SoundCloud page.

Turkey has a relatively young free improv scene, which was basically started when my band Islak Köpek started performing free improvised music on a regular basis in 2005. Ever since, there have been other bands, such as Konstrukt and Have You Seen My Birds as well as ad hoc groupings of musicians from the scene that have been playing and recording. 

Samples from Islak Köpek's albums and live shows can be found here: www.soundcloud.com/islak-kopek

Islak Köpek will soon release their third album, which we recorded with German/Dutch flautist Mark Alban Lotz in Istanbul, on the Dutch label Evil Rabbit Records. The album will be pressed in June but the official release will be in September. The first concert to promote this album will be in Istanbul at the Borusan Music House (a very prominent, modern music venue) on November 19. Mark Alban will also play with us.

We are also expecting news of our participation in the Akbank Jazz Festival. I will play with composer, pianist and improviser Tolga Tüzün (an IRCAM fellow) on January 14th at Borusan to promote our album, which we hope to release by then. It's going to be a duet between acoustic piano and computer. 

I am part of an audiovisual project built on the poems by Nazim Hikmet, one of Turkey's great names in poetry. We had our first performance in Moscow on June 3rd as a part of events for his death anniversary (he is buried in Moscow) and a second one in Istanbul in March. Our third performance will be in Strasbourg, France on November 29.

These are the confirmed dates.

 Bird on a Dog @ Gitarcafe Part 1

Şevket Akıncı: Acoustic Guitar (Islak Köpek); Gökçen Dilek Acay: Violin (Islak Köpek);
Jose Blasco: Electric Guitar (Have You Seen My Bird?); Umut Çağlar: Electronics (Konstrukt)
Korhan Erel: Computer, Electronics, Melodica (Islak Köpek); Florent Merlet: Drums (Have You Seen My Bird?); Volkan Terzioğlu: Tenor Saxophone (Islak Köpek); Alexandre Toisoul: Clarinet (Have You Seen My Bird?)

Steve Lacy Joelle Léandre - One More Time (Leo Records, 2005)

Nearly 50 minutes of music have been crowded in this CD. In 2002, Steve Lacy gave a bunch of farewell concerts to Europe and came back in the U.S. after 30 years. All gigs were duo performances, with the likes of Japanes dancer Shiro Daimon, Fred Van Hove, Irene Aebi and, finally, on July 28 in Café Belga (Brussels) with Joelle Léandre. As Francesco Martinelli points out in his liner notes, Lacy and Léandre stand as farther apart as possible as musicians, but their paths are parallel. This concert wasn't their firts and last collaboration: Joelle commissioned to Steve "Vetement" (garment), a piece 'you can cut and adapt to season, like a garment', that the bassist played in her recitals along with Cage and Scelsi's compositions; both played with people like George Lewis and Derek Bailey; they talked often together about music, poetry and art; they both loved to play music related to or accompanied with poetry, and inspired to dance or theater; they both were fiercely and devotedly in love with angular and jumping-into-the-void music. This beautiful record show us this couple of musicians playing together for the first time since 15 years, and it's really futile to use words to talk about it. But if you really want to taste the essence of improvising, and the accuracy and deepness of the interplay of two master musicians, this is really a good place to start. 

Line Up: Steve Lacy - Soprano Sax; Joelle Léandre - double bass; Tracklist: 01 - One More Time 1 [32:15]; 02 - One More Time 2 [12:15]; 03 - One More Time 3 [10:10]; 04 - Phone Message [01:00] 

AngelicA - Festival Internazionale di Musica - May 5-28, 2011

Art shows us what is still invisible: it opens us up to new realms, it awakens us. 

“Contemporary” is anything we are drawn to by our inspiration, free from interference: it can be something ancient, or that is seen as ancient and old-fashioned, but that is absolutely new and necessary. 

“Contemporary” is anything that poses questions and makes us think, that corresponds to a time (which one?). 

“Contemporary” is also the reflection, the result of the culture of the time, of a state of
things. In this case its function may appear to be limited, inadequate, perhaps because it is too close to the world we are living in and almost closed upon itself, with no chances to grow and take off. A great amount of energy can be spent on a project, especially when its organizers want to bring something useful, stimulating and innovative to a stagnant scene.

In these times of crisis of the Institutions and of a great need for renovation, such choices can bring solutions, new life and a sense of hope that used to be let down in the past. 

Bologna welcomed us. 

Bologna is permeated by a contemporary reason, sedimented through time, and made up of the most diverse experiences: it is a hidden treasure that stirs silently.
 

An apparition, an event beyond our measures, causes a change with no return.
Giving shape to an idea requires an exchange beyond mutual limits.
In the midst of a thousand manifestations of protest, immersed in chaos, the opportunity to listen to an imaginative, creative voice that can reestablish a balance on several levels, open up once again the doors of imagination and give hope to our doings…this is a key.
Neptune among us, for a sensitive city.
 

Massimo Simonini

 

Complete program here: featuring Jim O' Rourke, Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, John Tilbury, Wadada Leo Smith, Stefano Scodanibbio, Cristina Zavalloni, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Paal Nilssen-Love, Lasse Marhaug, Heiner Goebbels, and many others.

Gunther 'Baby' Soemmer

Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

Since I've Interviewed Matthew Shipp  two weeks ago, but not his partner for that date (which I also listened to in Paris last February, but I didn't reviewed on this blog), I want to spend some lines in presenting Mr. Gunther 'Baby' Soemmer, born in Dresden in 1943 where he's currently teaching drums and percussions. At the concert I bought some records (that aren't easily available in Italy where I'm currently living) that showed me, along with his live performances, an extremely multi-faceted musician.

But, let's start from the beginning. Gunther starts playing behind the Iron Courtain, in the Communist Era. His musical apprenticeship is partly influenced from an older friend with whom he listens to the BBC Radio broadcasts. So he listens to Art Blakey, Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones amongst others. 

In 1961 he starts a class of dance music and plays as much as he can. In the 1980's he join Western Europe, where Jost Gebers, who run the FMP Label, begin to document his music and collaborations. In 1988 Soemmer plays in Atalanta at a National Black Arts Festival with bassist Peter Kowald and trombonist Konrad Bauer; the trio also plays in Victoriaville Festival in 1992.

But 'Baby' (named after 'Baby' Face Willette) starts playing solo drums since the 1970s, crossing the path of the likes of Peter Brotzmann, Alexander Von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Derek Bailey, Wilhelm Brueker, Han Bennink, and Misha Mengelberg, and also Cecil Taylor, and also Italian improvisers like Gianni Gebbia and Mario Schiano.

'Hörmusik' (from German, 'music to listen to'), is a set that Gunter plays behind a courtain (another one) in theater, as a matter of pure listening to music. The drums are invisible to the public and that is the concept that stays behind, as he states:

“As for the solo playing, I don’t feel like just a timekeeper percussionist, I’m listening to so many different types of music. For me the musical world is a global village and sometimes when I’m listening to an interesting music it remains in my body and then comes out transformed. So when I play real long solo concerts, sometimes I take you to Africa or somewhere else. It’s not the real original, but it’s something of this. I think about how to start them, how to end, and to have certain points I’m going to and from, that point to go in another direction. But what happens in between is up to the moment. I really try to bring in an order in terms of composition. Because this way improvisation is also a sort of ‘instant composing.’ You are playing and composing when you do it and you have to pay attention to all these things, like counterpoints, dynamics, slow & fast, to keep the whole thing in the right balance.”  (see the complete interview on Gongtopia Website)

Gunter 'Baby' Sommer has also collaborated with Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass, the author of "The Tin Drum", kind of a surrealistic long novel that metaforically overlooks the entire history of Germany through the rise of Nazist dictatorship until the end of WWII. There is a double CD made of Gunter Grass reading chapters of The Tin Drum and  The Fish (another novel shorter than the first one) with Soemmer accompanying him on drums. 

Some Records:

Zentralquartett - 11 songs - Aus Teutschen Landen (Intakt Records, 2006)

Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (alto, flute, clarinet); Conrad Bauer (trombone); Ulrich Gumpert (pian); Günter Sommer (drums, percussions).
This album proposes 11 Volkslieder, pupular songs from XV Century, plus a couple of Gumpert's originals (the pianist is responsible also for picking up and arranging the repertorie). Improvising over this kind of traditional structures gives the record a joyous and higly ironical tinge, along with pieces immersed in a meditative mood.


01. Der Alte Thüringer - 4:30; 02. Es Fiel Ein Reif - 7:44; 03. Kiekbush - 5:15; 04. Dat Du Min Leevsten Büst - 4:30; 05. Der Maie, Der Maie - 5:56; 06. Tanz Mir Nicht Mit Meiner Jungfer Käthen - 3:53; 07. Es Sass Ein Schneeweiss Vögelein - 2:18; 08. Kommt, Ihr G'spielen - 5:39; 09. Es Ritten Drei Reiter Zum Tore Hinaus - 4:22; 10. Conference At Conny's - 2:21; 11. Es War Ein König In Thule - 5:07



Gunter 'Baby' Sommer - Live in Jerusalem (Kadima Collective Recordings, 2009)

Gunter Baby Sommer (drums); Steve Horenstein (baritone, and soprano sax); Jean Claude Jones (bass); Assif Tsahar (tenor sax, bass clarinet); Yoni Silver (bass clarinet); Yonatan Albalak (guitar); Yonatan Kretzmer (tenor sax).

In 2004, bassist JC Jones, born in Sfax, Tunisia, founded Kadima Collective Recordings, in order to document new Israelian jazz movement. In this record, Gunter leads improavant most know israeli stars, including tenor saxophonist Assif Tsahar, in various lineups d(uos, trios and quartets). Thundering, challenging, and extroverted performances. Sommer solos on Sommertime, inspiring through the recordings (made at Kalima Music Salon in Jerusalem) the musicians playing with him. 

01. Bojoh - 6:02; 02. Jassek - 10:40; 03. Sommertime - 5:52; 04. Bast - 13.12; 05. Yo Yo Yo - 7:48; 06. Sababa - 6:20.


Gunter 'Baby' Sommer percussion & strings - Whispering Eurasia (Neos Jazz, 2010)

Gunda Gottschalk (violin); Xu Fengxia (guzheng/sanxian/voice); Akira Ando (double bass); Gunter Baby Sommer (percussion)

Xu Fengxia started playing traditional Chinese music on various intruments since when she was 5; during her career she joined the Shanghai Orchestra of Chinese Music, but spanning throughout the years, she played also pop and rock music as a bassist and, since 1990's she started playing jazz and improvisation, touring with Peter Kowald. This record is a beautiful example of mixing  tinges taken from different traditions in improvisational textures.

01. Jing Ye Si - ester Gedanke - 06:09 - 02. Cubus - 02:17 - 03. Stelline - 03:40 - 04: Inside - Outside - 04:20 - 05. Snack I - 01:15 - 06. Qui Ye Luo Ting - 07:50 - 07. Snack II - 01:38 - 08. Netzballe - 06.15 - 09. Snack III - 01:13 - 10. Silenda - 03:34 - 11. Snack - 01:05 - 12. Warabe Sobi - 02:13 - 13. Rumba Saxonia 05:31 - 14 Jing Ye Si - zweiter Gedanke - 05:23

Interview with Matthew Shipp

Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

March, Thuesday 24. Pavia’s Municipality Culture Department scheduled a very good jazz review called Dialoghi Jazz per Due including Rudresh Mahanthappa playing with Vijay Iyer, whereas on April, 6, it will be time for Marc Ribot and Marco Cappelli to play. This night there will be a previous unheard performance by pianist Matthew Shipp and drummer Gunther ‘Baby’ Soemmer. They have never met each other before. You can see my photos of the concert here. Matthew joined at about 6 p.m., I asked him directly for a little interview and he very kindly agreed. Matthew Shipp was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1960, and debuted on Rob Brown’s Sonic Exploration (Cadence, 1987). Since the beginning of the 1990s, he was part of the David S. Ware quartet along with bassist William Parker, and also featured as a member of Roscoe Mitchell’s The Note Factory. As a leader Shipp issued many records with HatOLOGY, along with the likes of Mat Maneri, Joe Morris, Susie Ibarra and many others, and he devoted himself to both piano/bass/drums trio and electronic music as the curator of Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series, that at the beginning of February 2011 issued a two discs set (trio and solo performances) titled Art of the Improviser. I thank Matthew for his kindness and for the time given to me, and also for his ecstatic performance with Gunter at night in Santa Maria Gualtieri.

C.C.: The first question is about the beginning of your career and your first solo record, which is from 1997, Before The World; in the liner notes, you wrote that you were influenced by baroque music …

M.S.: Thought also in baroque music … Baroque was a matter of contamination also, but I like to be on linear sense, because jazz can be very linear, and baroque music also can be on a flake, inventing on lines from a quarter, but there’s also kind of a thing in Renaissance music called the Breaking of the Circle that I’m really into to even now, in a much more modern way… I don’t remember the liner notes at all, but I think all I meant was that there is a rich traditional keyboard music, and in baroque history, and jazz musicians has often used it as a device for practising because it’s very similar to the way jazz musicians would play, not language-wise, not inflection-wise but just in how keyboards lay out, because baroque indulges from quarters, that’s why.

C.C.: Thinking about your palette of colours, you skimmed through improvisation, hip hop, and also electronic music … as far as jazz, you studied with Dennis Sandole who was John Coltrane teacher, and Ran Blake, but as far as electronic music and hip hop, were you having in mind some particular musicians, that could have influenced your style?

M.S.: No, no, I’m primarily an acoustic jazz player, as far as when I have done experiments with electronic music I’m just relating to the modern world in a modern field, I mean, I’m fifty years old but I grew up listening to a lot of funk music and even now hip hop generations a lot younger than myself, so I’m still settling in, so I don’t have any directing point as far as electronic music; I’m into what’s happening up on the street, but at the same time I’m familiar with music concrète, and Varèse, I know that music.

C.C.: Using real instruments and layering them with others recorded on tape?

M.S.: Yeah, exactly, I know that music, I wouldn’t say that I know it more than anything else, but I had checked it out …

C.C.: Were you also into the way contemporary composers are layering and patterning instruments or into borrowing structures from that music?

M.S.: No, it’s more … just the psychological space, and the idea of the spinning sound, I wouldn’t say I had borrowed any structure.

C.C.: Your new bassist is Michael Bisio, that replaced Joe Morris within the trio that recorded your last record The Art of the Improviser, along with Whit Dickey,

M.S.: … Right …

C.C.: What are the main differences between those musicians playing together? Did the entering of Michael Bisio change in some way the way you improvise… ?

M.S.: I think Michael Bisio enjoys playing with Whit Dickey, the drummer, more than Joe Morris did, cause there was some friction (laughs) …

C.C.: So your playing together is more fluent …

M.S.: I would say that the drums and the bass are enjoying each other and coupling more now than they did in the past (we both laugh) ...

C.C.: I was reading an interview in which you said that when you were playing with David S. Ware, usually in this quartet it wasn’t the drummer to give the pulse, but you and William ... it’s the same with your trio, as a matter of dictating the pulse of the composition in general?

M.S.: Oh, I think what I met in the Ware quartet was that we had four drummers, in the time I was there, so the direction of piano and the rhythm section was more dictated by William and myself than it was the drummer, so William and I started to swerve in, serve in and aquit and the drummer skimming at and up to it, but we never allowed the drummer to really dictate the direction of the rhythm section. While in my own trio I’m bringing people that I have a natural relationship with, so I don’t think it’s a matter of anybody dictating anything, just … We feel each other and we know where we need to go …

C.C.: You were also talking about this thing referring to people saying ‘oh, those guys play avant garde music, like in the ‘70’; and you were also talking about the differences between the New Thing, and even before, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler, and the next generations, because they were kind of investigating new sounds by themselves because maybe, I mean, maybe it was different for Albert because he was playing with people like …

M.S.: … Sunny Murray …

C.C.: Yes!

M.S.: Very picked up ...

C.C.: but maybe for someone like John Coltrane, who had McCoy Tyner on his back, maybe McCoy would follow him, but maybe he wouldn’t help him to have kind of a net, as a musician …

M.S.: Right, right …

C.C.: And then, after a while, there was this new generation, people like Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith, and Roscoe Mitchell, who, like Sun Ra, tried, at least some of them, to make a relationship between composition tools and ancient philosophies …

M.S.: Right …

C.C.: …So, in some way,do you think that Roscoe Mitchell, with whom you played for many years in a double quartet [and besides the Note Factory, the two musicians played together in 1996’s duo record 2-Z, on Thirsty Ear label], is the nearest to your generation of players, kind of a middle figure between the old avant-garde generation and your generation?

M.S.: Oh, I’m older than I am … (laughs) Yeah, yeah, I agree with that, I think the great thing about Roscoe is that especially on the soprano playing he has a kind of approach opposed to Coltrane thing that he did with … you know, he doesn’t sound like Coltrane at all, so he stopped a very strong post Coltrane experience in sound and approaching; in many years of development Roscoe music have been incorporated and many has this kind of crazy Roscoe post bop feeling. So I think that what he really mixed and incorporated is not again the same thing of the sixties, in fact he is very conscious of the music having his step on it, and in another way he is a bridge between the older generation and my generation, definitely …

C.C.: Talking about piano players, what are the ones that influenced you the most? Duke Ellington, Mal Waldron, Andrew Hill, and maybe Clifford Brown outside piano music …

M.S.: Yes…

C.C.: I know that your mother introduced you to his music …

M.S.: She was a friend of him …

C.C.: Ah …

M.S.: Yes, as far as piano, I don’t have influences (laughs), I would say the whole tradition of music. Mal is an indicative and very colourful pianist … I think he was a big influence on all of the first generation of avant-garde players, he was an amazing influence on Hempsey Davis and the second and third generation maybe … and he was an organizer of improvisation itself, and also going to be an influence on Monk as a pianist, who is often mentioned by avant-gardists as a major figure so I would say that Mal Waldron is someone people don’t talk about but he was my favourite piano player…

C.C.: I have an old record [in fact, from those live sessions at the Five Spot Café in 1961, three records were issued on Prestige label: Eric Dolphy at Five Spot voll. 1 and 2, and Eric Dolphy and Booker Little Memorial Album] in which he was playing with Eric Dolphy and he had this piano completely out of tune, but he made such things on it  …

M.S.: Oh right, look, what I like about Mal, he was abiding to play traditional bars but at the same time he often has his minimus thing where he can do repetitions on various things and almost make in a free festival like electronic music even on playing, and I also did a big orchestra staring a very rich distorted sound on the instrument and he’s .. yeah, that’s what I mean, he was a bridge between Bud and Monk who is somewhere else, so I really love Mal Waldron a lot.

C.C.: I wanted to talk a little also about spirituality, because every time I listen to musicians like Willam Parker, Leo Smith, or even Toshinori Kondo, you can relate the building of their style as musicians to a personal quest … William Parker often described himself not as a creator of music but as a conductor … do you mind about something similar, I mean you feel as a composer or as someone who takes elements that are existing in the world, putting them down on notes or …

M.S.: Oh, that’s what everybody does … I mean, I don’t know nobody dealing with pure void, I mean you always try to empty your mind so you can deal with the void, but at the same time we’re human being, so there’s limitations to how pure we can be because the world’s not pure, and I’m not pure myself … but I’m attempting to reach a pure rama creativity and a pure rama language, and a pure rama vibration, in other ways pure mind or even behind mind and that’s another chance that you have, you know, whatever I do up in there there’s a spiritual quest because there is a request to understand language and who you are. We can depot a picture of the whole universe and the whole cosmos …

C.C.: So … a couple days ago I talked with a painter that also has a huge interest in spirituality and there is a reflection of that in her creation … in some ways, Sunyata, that is the name of your master, that was also a musician ..

M.S.: Right, right, Nothingness, that’s what that name means to extent … I’m definitely aiming for the void that is empty but full up .. so the process of playing to me is a meditating process, that’s what I’m trying to do.

C.C.: Ok, the last question is about some of your past statements … talking about which, I’ll try to make some sort of self-analysis ... maybe often critics tend to be lazy, in some ways, maybe there’s people that would write a lot about, say, Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter, musicians that forged their own style maybe fourty or fifty years ago, but maybe in this very present there could be lots of musicians that are trying to find out their own way and maybe people like me isn’t try to deal with them, because we’re still listening to old musicians …

M.S.: I don’t remember talking about writers  …

C.C.: … I read about this controversy [I read about that first on AllaboutJazz forum at the end of 2009 ... references are Jazz Times, Nov. 2009, and Spinner, Jan. 2010] … I think that the problem is related more to the space that is given to well know musicians and the difficulties in dig in …

M.S.: I think I was talking about jazz in the stream in general, more than on writers, and I was talking firstly about people that played with Miles Davis that kind of had a monopoly, but I don’t have anything against jazz writers, they are very kind, but the jazz in the stream in general is still really behind here, in a thirty or forty years cycle and that’s the problem. That’s because you’re spending your own full life trying to get to a certain level when you can work regularly and by the time you get there your best music is already behind you, and go yet that when you get playing ordinary things and there is that young people coming along, you know, it’s good but that’s where electronic music go, and that’s where everybody catches up (laughs), kind of a weird tablet, that’s the way whole jazz in a stream operate, and it’s only twenty years behind itself, and I find that interesting.