Musical monsters
| Musical monsters | |
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| Live album by Don Cherry , John Tchicai , Irène Schweizer , Léon Francioli , Pierre Favre | |
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Intakt Records |
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
4th |
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running time |
59:23 |
| occupation |
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Musical Monsters is a jazz album by Don Cherry , John Tchicai , Irène Schweizer , Léon Francioli , Pierre Favre , which was recorded on August 30, 1980 at the Willisau Jazz Festival and released on August 15, 2016 on Intakt Records .
background
The band name Musical Monsters results from the fact that the trumpeter Don Cherry's appearance was uncertain. The festival therefore decided on an anonymous band name. The Live Session Musical Monsters was preceded by a performance by part of the group at the Willisau Jazz Festival; the pianist Irene Schweizer and the alto saxophonist John Tchicai appeared in a quartet at the 1975 Swiss Festival. Five years later the trumpeter Don Cherry joined them; the Swiss bassist Leon Francioli and the drummer Pierre Favre were there for their predecessors Buschi Niebergall and Makaya Ntshoko . The session was recorded by sound engineer Peter Pfister ( HatHut Records ); the program consisted of four loose compositional pivots with numerous collective improvisational decision-making. John Tchicai provided three of the subjects; a fourth thematic “loan” came from the guitarist Pierre Dørge (“Real Kristen”), who was friends with Tchicai .
The recording was rediscovered 35 years later by the participating pianist Irene Schweizer in the archive of the festival producer Niklaus Troxler .
Track list
- Don Cherry, John Tchicai, Irene Schweizer, Leon Francioli, Pierre Favre: Musical Monsters (Intakt CD 269/2016)
- Musical Monsters 1 [Includes "Real Kirsten" (Don Cherry)] 12:47
- Musical Monsters 2 [Includes "Transportation of Noodles" (John Tchicai)] 22:40
- Musical Monsters 3 [Includes "Xongly" (Pierre Dørge)] 17:05
- Musical Monsters 4 [Includes "Pà Tirstag" (John Tchicai)] 6:51
reception
Derek Taylor wrote in Dusted, the first track, that “Real Kristen” materializes in fleeting melodic form, “before the four go to the races in a sound robin of improvised leads and chases. Francioli and Favre combine to create a vibrant, colorful fabric, but the resulting rhythmic fabric is surprisingly elastic and porous. The reinforcement of the bassist gives his racing pizzicato runs extra momentum and more than one opportunity, the semblance of humorous disrespect. ”“ Cherry and Tchicai are unusually well-suited contrast figures , and each role alternates between dark legato brooding and more violent staccato explosions. Schweizer often pushes into the middle or gives himself up completely and precisely times her contributions, taking the larger architectures into account. Such a detour leads to the first index point after three quarters, as the horns exchange open melodic overtures with brief answers from the piano, before Schweizer does it alone for a short while. The cautious return of Francioli and Favre fills the piece with swelling grandeur and replaces the previous severity with an almost overflowing feeling of pathos. "
Compared to Steve Lacy, “Transportation of Noodles” almost sounds like a mixture of repetition, spoken word and raw melody, which the composer Tchicai utters without his colleagues, Taylor continues. "Francioli suggests a gruff but playful nursery rhyme pattern in response, but it's the alto [Tchicai's] show until a full band join occurs after about four minutes. A circular unison passage at the six-minute mark means a different deviation in the direction in which each player plays along and undermines the ostinato in overlapping trajectories. Once again, Favre's skillful but assertive approach is an invaluable asset in maintaining the rhythmic integrity that underlies the chatty and often passionate conversation between Tchicai and Cherry. A percussion solo running down the rank, full of captivating space and texture framing, gives the piece a grandiose note. "
“Xongly” by Dørge and “Pa Tirstag” by Tchicai each work on additional rich rhythmic material, the latter of which is particularly contagious, “thanks to a groove owed to Africa. Cherry and Tchicai sound in bursts over the pianist's rolling ostinato, while the snare and cymbals set sharp accents. Tchicai's disciplined solo takes on Klezmer- like contours, contours the beat and returns to vertical geysers of crumpled notes before switching to a flood of sacred singing without a saxophone. Schweizer is once again the model of a malleable rock [reef], robust but quick to react and connects Francioli and Favre in a turbulent race with the horns. "
The critic Ed Hazell (Point of Departure) wrote that with some bands, the less prepared the music is, the better. This is also the case with the musicians of this all-star quintet, who all knew each other from other situations, played a few melodies for a short time, then entered the stage at the Willisau Festival and played this extraordinary set. The beautifully recorded recording of the performance shows what a group of disciplined improvisers can do when only a minimum of material is available to enable listening, intuition and spontaneous composition.
The musicians begin with a collective improvisation , in which, according to the author, one can hear “how they develop a form while they go on.” The voice of everyone involved appears in the ensemble play - “Tchicai angular and cryptic, Cherry playful and mischievous, Swiss intelligent and percussive, and Francioli and Favre push the music forward with African rhythms and pure energy. ”According to Hazell, they are an ego-free group, nobody has the need to play all the time, so the instrumentation varies, the tempos change, and they played with the awareness that density, color and texture must be in contrast. "And when they finally swing in Tchicai's lovely 'The Real Kirsten' towards the end, it feels like they are reaching the goal they have always been working towards."
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The second track on the album is said to be episodic as various vamps, most of which were created on the fly, propel the music into new realms for the band to explore. "Tchicai's wonderfully titled 'Transport of Noodels' appears for a few minutes in the improvisation and again towards the end." "Musical Monsters 3" is essentially a head arrangement by the guitarist Pierre Dorge's composition "Xongly", but even here the performance is different , with a trio section for Cherry, who plays the most carefree and carefree, and Tchicai, who plays a solo with a vibrato- heavy, watery flow over an intensifying vamp that is played at a lightning-fast pace. The Swiss are here in their most pleasant, graceful dissonance, even at a fast pace. "This is a great historical discovery that still sounds vivid and relevant more than 35 years after it was reproduced."
John Fordham ( The Guardian ) awarded the album three (out of five) stars and said: “The five offered a relaxed, intoxicating music that was prepared in a conversation shortly before the gig, with the minimal trumpet patterns, ingeniously thoughtful Ornette Coleman- like motifs and Quickly contributed bass walks unleash avant-garde swing sprints. Tchicai's eerie, violin-like alto saxophone rose above it, or the horns rustled together over Favre's booming drums and Schweizer's flowing runs. There is a lot of manically abstract vocalization as well as slow-strutting marches in the manner of Albert Ayler's numbers. The track 'Musical Monsters 3' is almost and unexpectedly danceable, and the unaccompanied solos demonstrate both the technical class and the experimental appetite of all players. It's a [record] for the free jazz musicians, but a rare one. "
The critic Kevin Whitehead said in a broadcast on National Public Radio that the five improvisers were in a good mood when they met at the 1980 Swiss festival. "Much of the music they made that day was collectively improvised, but with some catchy melodies and some of those crazy marching beats that European players loved back then." This recording is an excellent example of how good such one-offs are Meetings with the right players can work. In fact, Don Cherry's trumpet chops are pretty shaky, as was often the case in later years, according to Whitehead, but his melodic tone could still rally the troops and his influence is evident throughout the music. He loved rolling rhythms, fanfares and long improvisations interrupted by catchy themes. In the 1960s he and saxophonist John Tchicai played together in New York's Contemporary Five . When they reunited in 1980, they made their melodies exceptionally vivid, even when Cherry's lips are insecure.
Whitehead emphasized that it was Don Cherry's diligence to have brought into jazz the scales and rhythms of non-European musical systems from India to West Africa and beyond. These influences gave the improvisers more opportunities to create varied music. Like Don Cherry, the Dane John Tchicai was "an international bridge builder" who had worked in the USA for many years. The author pointed out that although the saxophonist had written most of the pieces that the quintet played, he played more unobtrusively than anyone else. “Tchicai can make a calm statement that changes the direction of the entire band because the other players listen and answer.” Here you can hear pianist Irene Schweizer playing along.
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This type of slightly structured improvisation is often referred to as free jazz , explains Whitehead in summary. “Some people understand that as freedom from good material like melody or harmony or swing . For Don Cherry and his fellow travelers, however, free jazz means the freedom to choose anything, to be open to all kinds of music streams and strategies, to play riffs or to reject them, or to work on whatever they like. In this case, it became a literal, unique work of art. These five players never worked together again, but the music they made sounds fresh 36 years later. "
Thomas Fitterling wrote in Rondo that all four European players were truly “musical monsters” of free jazz , in a style of playing that liked to “juggle with motifs that, in the case of Don Cherry, were also allowed to be singable”. Tchicai would have associated the approach based on Ornette Coleman with "the spiritual gesture and the virile tone" of John Coltrane and would have remained "self-deprecatingly grounded". In collective play or in trio, duos and unaccompanied solos, “a consistently exciting music of respectful interaction takes place. Motifs played tutti served as hinges for varied explorations. ”Irène Schweizer would have contributed to the secret orientation with percussive actions, and Pierre Favre had underlined the event“ with subtle patterns , swing reminiscences and sometimes with energetic pulsation ”. "Léon Francioli gave the Schweizer-Favre axis the appropriate depth and anchored the wind instruments". The recording is free music, summarizes Fitterling, "which in hindsight turns out to be so coherent and logical", which is extremely rare. A treasure would have been found here, "which only really reveals its shine in the present."
In the NPR Jazz Critics Poll , the album came in seventh place, ahead of A Multitude of Angels by Keith Jarrett and behind The Savory Collection, Volume 1: Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins & Friends .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Thomas Fitterling: Musical Monsters. Rondo, August 20, 2016, accessed April 1, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e Derek Taylor: Cherry / Tchicai / Schweizer / Francioli / Favre - Musical Monsters (intact). September 21, 2016, accessed April 1, 2019 .
- ↑ Musical Monsters at Discogs
- ↑ a b Ed Hazell: Don Cherry, John Tchicai, Iréne Schweizer, Léon Francioli, Pierre Favre Musical Monsters. Point of Departure, September 1, 2016, accessed April 1, 2019 .
- ↑ Don Cherry / Irène Schweizer: Musical Monsters review - technical class and experimental appetite. The Guardian, September 8, 2016, accessed April 1, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c Kevin Whitehead: Musical Monsters Revisits A 1980 Concert By Cornet Player Don Cherry. National Public Radio, September 7, 2016, accessed April 1, 2019 .
- ↑ NPR Music Jazz Critics 2016. NPR, December 21, 2016, accessed March 31, 2019 .