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Live Reviews
Vision Festival: Day 4, June 8, 2011
John Sharpe
John first fell under the spell of free jazz in the 1970s when he wistfully regarded the loft jazz scene from across the AtlanticProgrammed to give Brötzmann respite, trumpeter Peter Evans' Pulverize The Sound ensured that the audience enjoyed no such luxury. This was the brass man's equivalent of Brötzmann's Full Blast Trio: uncompromising and in your face, bristling with amped up bass and pounding drums. Evans inhabits a variety of terrains from solo abstraction to post-modern category mashing with Mostly Other People Do The Killing, so it's never clear what to expect. But this time the clue was in the name. Actually a collective with electric bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Mike Pride, with both contributing compositions, the trio maintained a fierce focus.
Peter Evans
Fuzzed bass loops, breakneck drums and percussive trumpet blasts combined in a sledgehammer start. Evans nonetheless excelled, belaying a lexicon of hyper fast trumpet maneuvers: clicks, squeals, growls and fanfares piled on top of each other with dizzying precision. The group's third number was jaw-dropping. To begin, Evans conjured a circular breathed muted drone, over which Dahl and Pride interjected a seemingly random sequence of furious outbursts of fuzz bass and crashing drums, though stopping and starting in perfect synchrony as if conducted or following a score, though none was in sight. All through it, Evans sustained his barely changing single tone. It was a startling juxtaposition of two kinds of amazing musicianship and elicited raucous affirmation from the rapt throng. But overall the raw volume and power divided the crowd.
Peter Brötzmann Quintet
To close out the night, Brötzmann showcased what could almost be termed his Chicago Quintet. It comprised reedman Ken Vandermark, in his first Vision Festival appearance; Kent Kessler, his regular bassist from the Vandermark 5; and Norwegian drum dynamo Paal Nilssen-Love, all longstanding confreres from Brötzmann's Tentet. Alongside them was reedman Mars Williams, a former member of both the Tentet and the Chicagoan's combo. Those connections paid off in handsome style, with almost telepathic, on-the-fly arrangements, smooth transitions, and a shared mastery of dynamics during a performance just shy of the hour mark.
Unsurprisingly they blasted off at high intensity, with Brötzmann on tenor—his most powerful horn—Williams on alto and Vandermark on clarinet. After the opening salvo, a duet emerged from the maelstrom, with Vandermark (by now on tenor saxophone) and Kessler's muscular bass, before being subsumed once more within the polyphonic blast of the front line. An Americana-tinged section for horn choir, arco bass and Nilssen-Love's gongs gradually but inexorably built up to storm force, launching an alto explosion from Williams, with Vandermark on tenor, characteristically riffing in support, as Brötzmann stood back observing paternally.
From left: Paal Nilssen-Love, Mars Williams
From full ensemble they switched in the twinkling of an eye to a skronk duet between Vandermark's tenor and the Norwegian's spare cymbal and drum punctuations, recalling their compelling duo triumphs such as Milwaukee Volume (Smalltown Superjazz, 2009). Later, Brötzmann breathily channeled Coleman Hawkins in the company of Kessler's measured bass, before going places of which Hawk never dreamed. A second piece unleashed the three tenors of the Apocalypse in a cathartic blow out, terminated in a well-practiced move by the leader's leap into the air which cued an abrupt halt as he landed. The standing ovation that ensued was no more than his due for an outstanding sequence of music.
Day 1 | Days 2-3 | Day 4 | Days 5-6 | Day 7
Photo Credit
All Photos: {John Sharpe
