Two incredible shows this week at the Velvet Lounge, featuring rare area appearances by legendary German improv saxophonist Peter Brotzmann and Japanese psych stalwarts Ghost. Sure, Brotzmann occasionally rolls through town with his tentet or Die Like a Dog; this Thursday, he will give a lecture, perform solo, and collaborate with Chromatic Mysteries (myself and Ed Ricart, plus possible special guests). Ghost last played in DC in 2002, and they are absolutely one of my favorite bands -- live and on record -- of the past 15 years. As if that it isn't enough of a treat, Magik Markers are opening with their brand of unpredictable improv, embodying the best aspects of No Wave and punk and translating it for the 21st century. These shows will be epic and they will be heavy...
Thursday, May 7
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com202-462-3213
$12, doors at 8:30, show at 9, 18+!
Peter Brotzmann: lecture, solo, and in collaboration with Chromatic Mysteries
http://www.myspace.com/peterbrotzmannBorn Remscheid, Germany on 6 March 1941; soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, a-clarinet, e-flat clarinet; bass clarinet, tarogato.
Peter Brötzmann's early interest was in painting and he attended the art academy in Wuppertal. Being very dissatisfied with the gallery/exhibition situation in art he found greater satisfaction playing with semi-professional musicians, though continued to paint (as well as retaining a level of control over his own records, particularly in record sleeve/CD booklet design). In late 2005 he had a major retrospective exhibition jointly with Han Bennink - two separate buildings separated by an inter-connecting glass corridor - in Brötzmann's home town of Remscheid.
Self-taught on clarinets, he soon moved to saxophones and began playing swing/bebop, before meeting Peter Kowald. During 1962/63 Brötzmann, Kowald and various drummers played regularly - Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc. - while experiencing freedoms from a different perspective via Stockhausen, Nam June Paik, David Tudor and John Cage. In the mid 1960s, he played with American musicians such as Don Cherry and Steve Lacy and, following a sojourn in Paris with Don Cherry, returned to Germany for his unorthodox approach to be accepted by local musicians like Alex von Schlippenbach and Manfred Schoof.
The trio of Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald and Sven-Ake Johansson began playing in 1965/66 and it was a combination of this and the Schoof/Schlippenbach Quintet that gave rise to the first Globe Unity Orchestra. Following the self-production of his first two LPs, For Adolphe Sax and Machine Gun for his private label, BRÖ, a recording for Manfred Eicher's 'Jazz by Post' (JAPO) [Nipples], and a number of concert recordings with different sized groups, Brötzmann worked with Jost Gebers and started the FMP label. He also began to work more regularly with Dutch musicians, forming a trio briefly with Willem Breuker and Han Bennink before the long-lasting group with Han Bennink and Fred van Hove. As a trio, and augmented with other musicians who could stand the pace (e.g. Albert Mangelsdorff on, for example, The Berlin Concert), this lasted until the mid-1970s though Brötzmann and Bennink continued to play and record as a duo, and in other combinations, after this time. A group with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo continued the trio format though was cut short by Miller's early death.
The thirty-plus years of playing and recording free jazz and improvised music have produced, even on just recorded evidence, a list of associates and one-off combinations that include just about all the major figures in this genre: Derek Bailey (including performances with Company, e.g. Incus 51), Cecil Taylor, Fred Hopkins, Rashied Ali, Evan Parker, Keiji Haino, Misha Mengelberg, Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew Cyrille, Phil Minton, Alfred 23 Harth, Tony Oxley. Always characterized as an energy player -- and the power-rock setting of Last Exit with Ronald Shannon Jackson, Sonny Sharrock and Bill Laswell, or his duo performances with his son, Casper, did little to disperse this conviction -- his sound is one of the most distinctive, life-affirming and joyous in all music. But the variety of Brötzmann's playing and projects is less recognized: his range of solo performances; his medium-to-large groups and, in spite of much ad hoc work, a stability brought about from a corpus of like-minded musicians: the group Ruf der Heimat; pianist Borah Bergman; percussionist Hamid Drake; and Die Like a Dog, his continuing tribute to Albert Ayler, with Drake, William Parker and Toshinori Kondo.
Peter Brötzmann continues a heavy touring schedule which, since 1996 has seen annual visits to Japan and semi-annual visits to the thriving Chicago scene where he has played in various combinations from solo through duo (including one, in 1997, with Mats Gustafsson) to large groups such as the Chicago Octet/Tentet, described below. He has also released a number of CDs on the Chicago-based Okka Disk label, including the excellent trio with Hamid Drake and the Moroccan Mahmoud Gania, at times sounding like some distant muezzin calling the faithful to become lost in the rhythm and power of the music.
The "Chicago Tentet" was first organized by Brötzmann with the assistance of writer/presenter John Corbett in January 1997 as an idea for a one-time octet performance that included Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang (drums), Kent Kessler (bass) and Fred Lomberg-Holm (cello), Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams (reeds), and Jeb Bishop (trombone). The first meeting was extremely strong and warranted making the group an ongoing concern and in September of that same year the band was expanded to include Mats Gustafsson (reeds) and Joe McPhee (brass) as permanent members (with guest appearances by William Parker (bass), Toshinori Kondo (trumpet/electronics), and Roy Campbell (trumpet) during its tenure -- all in all a veritable who's who of the contemporary improvising scene's cutting edge. Though the Tentet is clearly led by Brötzmann and guided by his aesthetics, he has been committed to utilizing the compositions of other members in the ensemble since the beginning. This has allowed the band to explore a large range of structural and improvising tactics: from the conductions of Mats Gustafsson and Fred Lonberg-Holm, to the vamp pieces of Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake, to compositions using conventional notation by Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams, to Brötzmann's graphic scores -- the group employs almost every contemporary approach to composing for an improvising unit. This diversity in compositional style, plus the variety in individualistic approaches to improvisation, allows the Tentet to play extremely multifaceted music. As the band moves from piece to piece, it explores intensities that range from spare introspection to all out walls of sound, and rhythms that are open or free from a steady pulse to those of a heavy hitting groove. It is clear that the difficult economics of running a large band hasn't prevented the group from continuing to work together since its first meeting. Through their effort they've been able to develop an ensemble sound and depth of communication hard to find in a band of any size or style currently playing on the contemporary music scene.
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Sunday, May 10
Velvet Lounge
$12, doors at 8:30, show at 9:30, 18+!
Ghost (Drag City, Japanese psych)
Magik Markers (Drag City/Ecstatic Peace)
Ghosthttp://www.ab.cyberhome.ne.jp/%7epochamal/"In 1984 Ghost was formed in Tokyo. In the beginning, they played only improvisation/freeform music naturally. But when they started their first recording in 1988, their music had been changing to more constructive one. Still now on their live activities we can find they play improvisation sometimes.
Their music was based on acoustic guitar usually. A lot ethnic instruments or strange instruments are added to it freely on recording. And the place they play were so unique as examples ? Buddhist temples, churches, ruins, metro, fields, woods, caves... Such strange methods are nothing but ones of their expressions. They are Ghost anytime."
Ghost is:
Masaki Batoh: Vocal, Acoustic Guitar, Hurdy Gurdy, Banjo, etc.
Kazuo Ogino: Piano, Oscilator, Recorder, Lute, etc.
Michio Kurihara: Electric Guitar
Junzo Tateiwa: Tabla, Percussions, Drums
Takuyuki Moriya: Elecric Bass, Contra Bass
Taishi Takizawa (aka Giant): Flute, Theremin, Saxophone
Magik Markershttp://www.themagikmarkers.comThe Magik Markers self-referential improvisations and gritty brand of strutting, spinning and splitting in packed houses, panel trucks, and the underground sound and light discotheques, began in a Hartford basement. Way back in 1987, Elisa Ambrogio met Leah Quimby. Elisa Ambrogio had 7 cats, but no washer or drier, so she always smelled a little 'off'. Leah Quimby had a weak sense of smell; they became fast friends. In 1999, Elisa was traveling in Hungary, and met Peter Nolan. Peter Nolan grew up in Mount Pleasant, Michigan; he was summering in Budapest to escape the pressures of the exacting East Lansing collegiate set. In a Jamesian twist of fate, he checked his email before Elisa Ambrogio, setting the stage for a mammoth rock collaboration the two travelers had no intimation of. Elisa's grandparents Salvatore and Madeline Ambrogio lived in a two family house in Hartford, CT that 4 generations of Ambrogios had called home. Elisa, Pete and Leah moved into the upstairs apartment and Leah and Pete began jamming in the basement. After Elisa joined Pete and Leah in the basement, the band played some shows. INSIDE FACT: Did you know early Magik Markers lyrics consisted of reciting the periodic table, including all known lanthanoids and actinoids? TRUE. Quitting her mall job, Elisa attended Smith College briefly majoring in Literature and minoring in East Asian Studies and taking no honors. She dropped out and the band went on its first US tour. Since then, the band has been lucky enough to tour with Astral Blessing, Sonic Youth, Nautical Almanac, Dinosaur Jr., Sunburned Hand of the Man, The Believers, Blues Control, Lambsbread and work with rad muthas like Scott Colburn, Aaron Mullan and Lee Ranaldo. In 2006 Leah Quimby, despite protests, left the band to pursue her dream of owning an apple orchard on Prince Edward Island. Left as only two, Peter Nolan and Elisa Ambrogio soldier on, jamming before capacity crowds at home and abroad.
