This set of three collaborating and colliding trio's at the Baden-Baden New
Jazz Meeting in 2002 is the next step. While
Matthew Shipp and his colleagues are trying new ways to interact with the culture on
Thirsty Ear's
Blue Series, at this European festival, three trios from different musical and sonic genres came together to improvise, confront and collaborate with one another in offering different permutations of one composition:
Bernhard Lang's
"Differenz/Wiederholung." The theory was that
Lang and two other "
electronic musicians -- Brit turntablist
Philip Jeck and Vienna composer
Christof Kurzmann -- would perform and remix the compositions with mutating groups of players who included three new music participants -- pianist
Paulo Alvares, flutist
Philippe Racine, and saxophonist
Marcus Weiss -- and three vanguard
jazz musicians --
Steve Lacy, drummer
Wolfgang Reisinger, and bassist
Peter Herbert. And this is exactly what happened. First there was an organic reading of
Lang's complex, rhythmically challenging and harmonically striated work played as written, and then it was opened up to remixing and further
improvisations. While both CDs are utterly compelling listening, the track where
Lacy and
Jeck interact -- the 22-minute
"dw remix freiburg 2.9 and 2.10"" (quartet),
"dw 1.2 remix 7.7" (duo), and
"dw 1.2 remix 7.4" (trio) -- are the most compelling because of how utterly at ease
Lacy is with whatever is thrown his way. He guides, shapes, and skitters along seemingly effortlessly against the other instruments and brings them to still and movement points in each case. Another piece in the middle of Disc One,
"dw 1.2 remix karlsruhe," offers an aural encounter with the entire nonet. This is indescribable stuff but it's utterly amazing and engaging as both music and
noise. This look at the tensed balance between composition,
improvisation, and performance opens the way wider to further collective participation, and is in its own right not only of historical import, but aesthetic weight as well. ~ Thom Jurek
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