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The 2005 Aarhus International Jazz Festival

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As the rest of the world reaches its exhaustion point for Danish jazz, Aarhus is just warming up.



About 200,000 people descend on Copenhagen for 10 days in July for more than 500 concerts during the city's world-famous festival. It's a nonstop barrage of everything from all-stars to "unplanned events that spill over into every nook and cranny, onto every square and plaza, even onto public busses," claims Denmark's government.



As the throngs drag their tired eardrums and bodies through the airport, few probably know or care about a train there taking a relative scarcity of music fans a few hours to the northwest.



In Denmark's second-largest city is the 17th annual Aarhus International Jazz Festival, 10 days of a more regional roster and community feel. Most shows are in small venues such as cafes, tent stages, bars and arts center foyers, and are - by European standards - within walking distance of each other. Visiting Americans get more than a musical indoctrination - those walking the U.S. average of 1.3 miles a week are likely to do more than that daily.



A handful of the estimated 160 performances are big-name acts. John Scofield, accompanied by sax wiz Chris Potter, played the opening weekend, Kurt Rosenwinkel a couple days later, and Dee Dee Bridgewater and Barbara Hendricks later during the week. But the meat of the festival featured names like Doc Houlind, Arosia, Don Kirk and Fat Tuesday.



The players and Aarhus don't lack jazz credentials. The city hosts one of Northern Europe's largest annual music gatherings, the Aarhus Festival in early September, a far- ranging event with a decent amount of jazz on the calendar. The city is seeking European Commission recognition as the European Cultural Capital in 2017, with a July news report noting "memories of runaway budgets and mismanagement during Copenhagen's reign as Cultural Capital in 1996" is not discouraging the committee promoting the bid.



Aarhus is also home to the Bent J, Scandinavia's oldest jazz bar. An intimate setting a few blocks from downtown's main squares, it's drawn a number of heavyweights at weekly shows over the years, plus conservancy and other young players for weekly jam session.



"There must be some kind of interest," said Bent J. Jensen, 73, who started his namesake club in 1973.



It seems safe assuming overall festival attendance is well into five-figure territory, as main acts draw sizable crowds and public squares are buzzing during numerous free evening shows. But it's tough getting the outside world to notice, especially being Copenhagen's encore act, said Rasmus Telling, the festival's manager. He estimates 70 percent of the audience is local and there's little non-Danish media coverage of the event.



"It's because Copenhagen is a bigger festival and when Aarhus has started they are tired and going on holiday," he said.



Still, Aarhus seems to be making a comeback on the jazz scene after a 10- to 20-year decline due to a lack of financial support and new music, Telling said. He and some friends started a small mobile jazz club two years ago, which books shows year-round at various locations.



"There was not so much modern jazz at the time." he said. "This year we are presenting 10 bands - 10 good bands."



The Roots



Aarhus is three-and-a-half hours from the Copenhagen airport by train, hardly unpleasant since Scandinavia's rank among the world's best. A $45 second-class ticket gets decent seats on a first-come basis, but there's also the possibility of standing in a passage with smokers. An extra $20 buys an assigned and cushy first-class seat, complete with table, power plugs, magazines, free coffee and snacks. As Travel And Leisure might put it, like duh.



The city of about 250,000 residents was founded more than 1,000 years ago as a Viking settlement at the mouth of the Aarhus Å river. Industrial development came around 1900 and the population has nearly doubled since 1935, according to Denmark's government. The Åarhus Domkirke is the largest church in Denmark, a mere 18 inches short of Northern Europe's tallest in Trondheim, Norway. Among the major tourist attractions is Den Gamle By (The Old Town), a collection of historic buildings brought in from around the country. Between May and October the city provides 250 free colorfully decorated bicycles for anyone's use at 30 stands (inserting a coin releases a bike from a locked rack, refunded when the bike is locked up again at any stand)



The government notes Aarhus "is a 'young' town due to the relatively large population of younger inhabitants. This follows naturally the location of many schools and educational institutions where young people from out-lying districts move into town to study. However, many of them move away once their studies are completed."



That youth and progressive spirit is reflected in the jazz festival's lineup, although there's also a heavy dose of artists representing artists like bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and saxophonist Ben Webster who helped Danish jazz break new frontiers during the 1950s and '60s. Telling, 25, said he tried to incorporate "a little bit more new jazz" this year, but since this is his first as the festival's director and he started the job in February, "it's tough to do anything new."



Telling said he'd like to book more big-name acts if funds existed. But the festival is largely depended on government support, which provides about $130,000 of the estimated $200,000 budget. Also, fees for U.S. artists can be 10 times as much in Europe due to music industry contracts (ironically, European artists often rely partially on government assistance when playing in the U.S.).



"That's the way it is," Telling said. "That's just the American industry."



Roughly a dozen executive committee and secretariat members are in charge of planning. About 10 volunteers assist with various duties, a miniscule number even by small festival standards, but Telling said many performances are at clubs and similar venues where staff handle the responsibilities.



The 17 venues generally feature certain types of music - Dixie, world, electronica/rock, straight-ahead and so on - and times are often a giveaway as well. Early afternoon shows were frequently heavy on chamber and world elements, with varying degrees of modernism. Traditional ragtime could be heard by those just getting off work, followed by generally upbeat mainstream and/or fusion street performances. Evening shows branch out considerably as voodoo Dixie, classic bebop, blues and avant-garde often are within shouting distance of each other, with a few premium and "beyond" acts a bit farther away.



The most informal were daily noon performances by pianist Peter Fahrenholtz, 70, pounding out classic takes of the likes of Jelly Roll Morton (with the titles of various such compositions about the only words I understood) on a portable electronic piano outside the Fodvarmeriet tent dedicated to old and new Dixie. A longtime European festival veteran, Fahrenholtz nonetheless resembled a street musician in his white bill-to-the-rear cap and blue overalls - and sometimes played in circumstances similar to one, competing at one point with a fuel truck a dozen feet away apparently taking care of some urgent city business. He played on other stages with other traditional groups during the week as well and was joined Wednesday by Dan Nedergaard, who brought his pocket trumpet and sat in for a few tunes. As a performance aimed more at casual lunchtime lingering than critical assessment, it worked.



Nedergaard, jamming with various players all week when appropriate, said his tastes run to more progressive music and I got a copy of his home-produced CD The Japanese Garden, featuring a Miles Davis tribute and some Eastern-theme compositions, in exchange for a Coke and a frankfurter (not a hot dog, as the grill man emphasized). A communication mishap about Nedergaard's drink of choice added a beer to the bill - close to the $20 a disc would cost anyway - but it's nothing I'd have found in a shop and his tablemate gladly drank the suds. The trumpeter said Aarhus is well-situated right now for the type of forward-thinking jazz characterized in Denmark's history and in his own work.



"It's a coming town, like Krakow," he said.



Getting Progressive



An exclusive Danish association with the biggest name in jazz was among the evening acts when I arrived Monday, July 11, the fourth day of the festival. Vocalist and percussionist Marilyn Mazur, the only Dane to play with Miles Davis, led her seven-member Future Song ensemble through an ethnic/poetic performance on the Klostertorv stage, one of several cafe-surrounded venues in the downtown streets.



Shows on the stages were free, although etiquette required those unable to grab a seat at the rapidly occupied picnic benches in front of the stage to buy something in exchange for a cafe table and/or seat. That's where the U.S. scored a rare cultural victory, at least in economy of scale: a Diet Coke cost $7 at one bar patio, whereas $10 allowed all-you-can eat buffet gluttony and a patio seat at Pizza Hut.



Mazur's ties with Davis during the second half of the 1980s could be heard on some long- form shifting fusion compositions and, after learning her history afterward, I felt less stupid thinking saxophonist Hans Ulrik sounded a lot like Kenny Garrett on some pieces. Mazur's vocals served largely as another instrumental texture, whether telling stories with whispered or harsh overtones, but her most notorious work was a wide range of ethnic percussion featuring as much showmanship as sound.



A positive initiation into the scene continued Tuesday with a solid splicing of improvisation and Broadway-show smoothness assembled by Cordelia, a youthful nine- member ensemble consisting of a string quartet, a guitar/piano/bass/drum jazz collective and vocalist Stinne Henriksen. Their early afternoon performance took place in the Ridehuset, which strongly resembled (and may have been) a large, stripped-down former cathedral in a park featuring a numbers of arts-oriented facilities. The airy structure, alone with the Musikhuset arts center a short walk away, hosted many of the younger world-influenced groups and mainstream evening headliners.



One of the most impressive things about Cordelia was guitarist Kasper Bai simultaneously playing and conducting various members through sections often entirely improvised with a series of classical-style builds and drops, supplemented by experimental sound such as percussionist's Kjell-Håkon Aalvik's cymbals-against-the-floor technique. Henriksen's modest-range vocals were a consistently strong and smooth stabilizer, infusing a stuck- in-the-brain quality to the wistful "What If I Can't Be Happy" and first-rate theatrical playfulness to "The Circus Is Back In Town." Although the instrumentation was frequently complex and liberal in its harmonic deviation from the safety of showtune structure, very rarely did individuals or the ensemble stray into undisciplined indulgence.



Subsequent shows I hit in my essentially random selection process Tuesday were mixed.



A 4 p.m. Klostertorv show by the trio of bassist Matthew Garrison (whose father, Jimmy, played bass with John Coltrane), guitarist Niclas Knudsen and drummer Anders Mogensen was an OK meshing of blues/rock fusion elements reminiscent of John Scofield and Bill Frisell, but felt more like a basement jam than accomplished stage performance. Their constant interaction and some ethnic/folk compositional touches held potential, but what was lacking was a sense of identity.



An evening show by trumpeter Jens Winther's European Quintet was more successful, especially on modernistic up-tempo arrangements where verbose and liberal deviations from the safety of scale tones were the norm. Small gestures such as a high-five handshake between Winther and pianist Antonio Farao following the latter's highly colorful solo on "Alone Together" seemed genuine and spontaneous, and various parts of the group showed high coordination constructing overlapping solos. Winther's horn ranged from Hugh Masekela warmth to Miles Davis sharpness, adding further variety, which stumbled only on some slower pieces like the Brazilian-themed "Uber Tuber."



On Telling's advice, I hit the VoxHall club for the band I Got You On Tape ("the vocalist is a fantastic guy. He sounds like a new David Bowie."). Let's call it a broadening of horizons: they seemed fine for Euro rock, but possessed a near-zero jazz presence in their opening songs and accordingly I won't even pretend to be qualified to judge the group's merits (it's worth noting some of the players are associated with local jazz groups). Maybe I should have stuck around for the subsequent 11 p.m. concert by Once Around The Park - they boasted an impressive-sounding rock/fusion lineup whose members have played with the likes of Paul Motian and Kurt Rosenwinkel.



Instead, wandering around the downtown stages late in the evening offered a good overview of the multiple styles that became familiar throughout the week. Drummer Kresten Osgood was doing fine old-school straight-ahead for a crowd at the Cafe Smaglos that spilled out in the street (the billing stated he ventures into plenty of additional genres extending to modern hip-hop). The Hoodangers, an Australian group, added their Down Under accent to a Dixie/world/rock fusing of styles ideally suited for the tent they were playing in. Some sort of R&B was audible a couple of blocks away and guitarist Jacob Fischer's swing/ blues trio sounded promising, but at some point there's a thing called saturation.



Some experiments work; others go awry



As Harrison Ford put it, "Don't get cocky."



The sense I've got my bearings is shattered twice Wednesday as I get lost heading to and from venues without consulting my map. The good part is seeing a number of midday street performers do their thing; the bad proves to be seeing the seedy side of town late at night.



Somehow it seems appropriate, given the unfulfilled expectations and pleasant surprises that seem to mark a number of mid-week performances.



DanGer, one of Wednesday's early afternoon acts, is a Danish/German sextet claiming to offer "an exciting 'game' of modern jazz," but all too often their Ridehuset performance was a series of promising ideas coming up short. Some compositions opened with a smooth jazz foundation with some kind of bite seemingly ready to surface. Others launched abruptly with free improvisations of combinations like guitar effects and horns. But nearly all resolved themselves into too-easy smooth and light straight-ahead pieces. It wasn't bad, but there didn't feel like there was much development, interaction or achieving of potential.



A better performance came from K-L-M in the antechamber of the Musikhuset theater in another part of the park. The Aarhus trio, supplemented with guest saxophonist Mads Hansen, established a solid progressive mentality with their opening "The Cowboy Hat." Hansen fulfilled a stated desire to provide some hardcore jazz chops on "Wanna Be Bop," an original set to the chord progression of "I Got Rhythm," with guitarist Jens Christian Kwella adding variety by evolving classic R&B lines into modern rock riffs. Dropoffs were rare, although the reggae beat of "Sandros Tune" was ordinary and the ballad "Kindred Spirits" didn't feel as accomplished as more challenging pieces.



Kwella, who teaches music and also played two duet concerts with bassist/drummer Jacob Venndt, said many Aarhus musicians study at the local conservatory - similar in curriculum and challenge to Copenhagen's - before moving to the larger city. A fan of guitarists like John Scofield, Mike Stern and Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kwella said he sees mixed attentiveness from local audiences, but many seem to have a strong interest and musical intelligence.



"Often it's the other musicians who are talking and drinking coffee, and it's the others who are listening," he said.



Things went a bit astray during a late afternoon traditional Dixie jam session led by trumpeter/drummer Doc Houlind on the downtown Pustervig stage, mostly because of a snotty waiter whose service flourishes included assaulting me with his handheld ordering computer before I could pull out a chair and set down my pack. Music was clearly a secondary concern of the cafe and much of the crowd seemed to be there more for late-afternoon socializing than listening. Houlind, to his credit, proved a good showman and seeing Fahrenholtz on piano as part of an interactive trio after his mostly solo lunchtime work was worthwhile. Still, it was fairly conventional.



Houlind took things to a serious next level during a subsequent performance with his Big Five group in the Fodvarmeriet tent, dedicating himself to the drums in a performance loaded with standout solo moments and a consistently modern New Orleans flavor. "A way to sell Dixie and modernists and vice versa" is how my notes put it.



The day's mind-blower was a show I got only a whiff of at the end, as saxophonist Petter Wettre dominated the Klostertorv stage with, for lack of a better way to put it, nonstop fire and innovation - the kind of pace Shorter and Brecker did in their prime. I kept waiting for him to let up and it just wasn't happening. Not that this was a problem - he proved more than capable of a marathon fronting - and support from bassist Jonas Westergaard and drummer Anders Mogensen was hardly passive. I found myself regretting not seeing more of him - not knowing at the time I'd be smacking my forehead in sudden recognition at a totally different eye-opener a week later in Norway (detail to come in a future article).



A more laid back, but still accomplished, performance followed as the Peter Rosendal Quartet did its chamber jazz blend of Irish, Nordic and traditional. A lyrical and compositional intellect prevailed over brawn, but it was one of those occasions where everyone brought something to the classroom. Rosendal's piano and Ole Theill's tablas spoke well to each other, and bassist Kasper Vadsholt stood out better than many during the week with the well-paced-but-room-to-breathe phrasing I associate with players like John Pattiucci. Perhaps Rosendal and Wettre should have switched places so the crowd went into the night fully charged, but each was a filling course.



One dialect, many accents



Blame it on the weather.



Worsening conditions, with a few downpours here and there, drove me indoors for a good number of late-week performances, and since location often reflects style a number of shows took on similar qualities. Part of this was also a choice to seek out regional acts instead of headliners.



The Electric Dream Quintet, led by bassist Jens Andersen, is described in stylistic "keywords" that seemingly try to include everything - bebop to groove, lyrical to eccletic. Their Thursday afternoon show was a mixed bag of fairly conventional ballads and more interesting odd-tempo numbers. On one of the latter saxophonist Morten Bruun opened one song with some freeform tonal exploration as Andersen matched the pace, but it wasn't until drummer Espen Laub Von Lillienskjold entered the mix that a common theme behind their musings became evident. At this point Bruun's notes started hitting the extreme hi and low registers - sometimes on adjacent notes - but unlike many such indulgences it didn't feel undisciplined. Guitarist Anders Holst came in with a totally different viewpoint, supplying the lyricism to some bowing from Andersen before the group built things up for the finale.



Across the park at the Musikhuset the Choro Brasil Skandinavia guitar-and- derivative-instruments quintet played a set of Brazilian choro I'm totally unqualified to rate beyond "they sounded pretty solid as a group." None of the individual moments blew me away, but it's a genre I know so little about I may simply lack proper appreciation.



Easier to absorb was an early evening concert by the Benjamin Traerup Sextet, which my notes call an "evolved" version of the Electric Dream Quintet due to a greater variety of instrumentation and more progressive compositional feel. Understated intensity, usually rising sneakily from simmer to boil, was the theme of many of the compositions and solos, with the group surrounding one player and lifting them up much as a wave might haul a surfer to shore. Traurup's saxophone phrasing was often sparse, while still possessing a strong ability to create and release tension against the group - one of the better characteristics of Scandinavian jazz. Pianist Martin Seier - at times adding variety on an ancient Rhodes - displayed a similar touch, although he tended to pack his delivery tighter and tighter in the buildup. Overall, it didn't stand out so far above other quality shows as to be dominant, but the only real hitch was not understanding the title of or thoughts behind the songs - something that happened a few other times since pretty much everything was spoken in Danish.



The lineup for Band Au Neon read like a potential bad joke, with a piano/accordion/sax trio playing Italian/Mediterranean tango-influenced compositions ("Many people think we play tango, but we don't," said Paolo Russo, the band's leader). What resulted was an avant-garde yet accessible performance featuring far denser sound than one might expect, due largely to pianist Francesco Cali keeping multiple chording and/or phrasing ideas alive at once. Russo, playing a bandoneon (an Argentinean accordion), kept busy as well, with an ensemble-like quality resulting between their various harmonies and improvisations. Over this, saxophonist's Fabrizio Mandolini's clean-cutting lines, if sometimes basic, were more than enough.



Getting cozy with the masters



As someone who doesn't drink, I rarely get bounced from bars. But we're all susceptible to bouts of stupidity.



In my case, it was thinking I could show up a mere 15 minutes before drummer Alex Riel's show at the Bent J on Wednesday and expect to get in. Nope. And forget about hanging around the entrance and listening to a few songs - once things started the soundproof door closed and I was on the wrong side of it and the street. Maybe that just set a mood, but wandering back toward what I thought was downtown actually took me a couple of kilometers off course to the industrial waterfront. By the time I made it back to my room all I knew was I missed a pretty good upbeat female vocalist at some club within earshot (I never did figure out who it was - the performance didn't match anything in the festival's billing).



I returned to the Bent J considerably earlier Thursday night.



Riel may have played 10 nights at the club, plus a few other venues, but there was no shortage of hardcore listeners wanting to hit one show - or all of them - and the few dozen seats filled quickly. Part of the attraction may have been the lineup - his trio played two nights apiece with saxophonists Herb Geller of the U.S., Fiete Felsch of Germany and Nisse Sandstrom of Sweden.



"It was my wife's idea," he said, noting she's from Aarhus and was a regular listener at the club.



The small venue surprised Tine Lutzden, head of the jazz union in Vejle, which books about 20 small-venue jazz performances a year for the community of about 50,000.



"It's a first-class concert and it's such as small place," she said. "He's the motor of jazz in Denmark."



The shifting quartets played with few or no rehearsals, but Riel said he's worked with them and others long enough to read them easily. Sandstrom was sitting in on the show I attended and there was little question he fit in immediately as part of an on-the-same- page trio. No, that's not a miscount - pianist Heine Hansen, at least a generation younger than his peers, differed most in this group despite his inclusion in Riel's group.



Sandstrom's tenor kicked out consistent fast post-bop one might associate with a couple of Joes - as in Henderson or Lovano - with Riel's classic technique heavily accented with an assortment of punctuating hits, rolls and other embellishments. For both it was a clinic in keeping ideas of the past fresh and, with nearly all the tunes being played at high speed, their energy was evident. A nice countertone came from Hansen's more progressive-minded solos, reminiscent of the younger ensembles on the ethnic and worldbeat stages throughout the week. Even if it was less compatible with the other players, it was in many ways a more genuine statement of each player's roots without feeling out of place.



After this I found myself listening to the concerts on Friday - my last day in Aarhus - with Riel's playing in mind and wondering if any elements of it existed among some of the area's younger players.



So it was intriguing to take in trumpeter Jakob Buchanan's Dreamfactory sextet, with drummer Anders Holm - the classic portrait of a blonde, long-haired rocker - maintain a subtle volume that allowed his co-players to shine even as he frequently went all out behind them. His solos were similar, with rolls and stick hits across his entire kit, but still keeping the dynamics under control. The ensemble was certainly locked into each other, with nearly everyone seeming to visually cue in, but the compositions themselves were a bit mixed (their work has been described as "instrumental dream jazz"). One song, "Me, You And W," a piece based on an experience Buchanan had with Kenny Wheeler, took hints of possible discordance and evolved it into a lyrical mid-tempo horn buildup that could have been a variety on the "Rocky" theme. But that was about as mediocre as it got and for the most part their hour-long Musikhuset show was well-received.



I caught only snippets of some other early shows, with the most interesting perhaps being the Nordic Quartet, with pianist Jacob Karlzon and saxophonist Christian Vuust fronting some outstanding compositions that were harmonic without being dull or repetitive. Thinking they sounded like the quintessential ECM Scandinavian band made more sense upon discovering that is indeed the label they record with. It's worth noting the overlap of players between a number of groups that often were similarly impressive, such as Vuust playing with Traerup's sextet and with his cousin Peter (another multi-band performer) as part of Trio Fascination.



The list of what I missed is lengthy, such as three days of musician/DJ collaborations known as Electronic Jazz Juice and the daily midnight jam sessions that are a part of so many festivals. Which is another way of say those who feel they were overlooked or this doesn't fully capture the atmosphere no doubt can make some valid points. The fact there's no way a person can hit even a majority of the shows single-handed is testament that even this "small" festival offers a thorough saturation for those seeking it, even if outsiders looking to hear top-tier jazz on a trip to Denmark probably are still best off making Copenhagen a first choice. But for those wanting to experience top-tier Danish jazz - a subtle, but important, distinction - getting a more intimate taste at the Aarhus festival may be the way to go as long as one has the shoe leather for it.

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