Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
The Essence of Emily
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
Tyshawn Sorey (left) leads a “conduction” performance at this year’s Berlin Jazz Festival.
(Photo: Camille Blake)The Berlin Jazz Festival handily accomplished a two-fold mission to preserve its prodigious historical legacy while keeping the music fresh and contemporary during this fall’s 54th edition (Oct. 31–Nov. 5). Artistic Director Richard Williams, a seasoned British critic/journalist, presented an impressive and balanced program, the third of his three-year contract as festival head.
Williams managed to find footing in the many niches and subcultural byways making up jazz in our moment. Among the “straighter” high points of the six-night program (expanded from the usual four nights) were the NDR Big Band in handsomely understated Norwegian mode, with guests pianist Geir Lysne and gleaming vocalist Solveig Slettahjell, and organist Lonnie Smith’s mighty trio. An inventive balladic agenda shone through on the Nels Cline Lovers project, and German pianist Michael Wollny generated much buzz with his rare solo piano set, revealing his breadth, organic technical aplomb and unapologetic sentimentality. It all ended with John Beasley’s adventurous MONK’estra big band tribute to Thelonious Monk at 100.
But many of the sets took a more adventurous path. A short list of festival highlights this year would have to include the cerebrally but also viscerally dazzling young trio known as Punk.Vrt.Plastik—with Slovenian-born pianist-of-note Kaja Draksler, uber-nimble German drummer Christian Lillinger and the stellar Swedish bassist Petter Eldh—and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s socio-historically charged project written for this occasion, Mae Mae, a blues-rooted suite.
Steve Lehmann & Sélébéyone, one of the stronger jazz-meets-rap projects to date, sparked up the venue Lido, an inviting funky-around-the-edges nightclub in Kreuzberg. In a very different “alternative venue”—the polygonal chapel next to the bombed-out Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-Kirche memorial site on the major avenue, the Ku’Dam—the festival returned with a powerful, meditative Sunday afternoon event. This year’s “festival goes to church” visit featured the alluring, primal and mostly improvisation-driven Trondheim Voices, with British keyboardist Kit Downes showing his considerable chops and flowing imagination as a pipe organist.
Interspersed throughout the week in Berlin, drummer Tyshawn Sorey—who had made a bold impression as part of Myra Melford’s group at last year’s fest—showed up on multiple stages and asserted his multifaceted voice as the festival’s new artist-in-residence. With musical talent that extends into areas beyond his obvious mastery as a drummer, Sorey’s star has been rising of late, and the Berlin residency is another confirmation of his importance.
Sorey’s climactic appearance in Berlin was in the setting of his masterful work as a “conductionist,” deploying an intricate series of commands and gestures over a varied large ensemble and creating an evocative hourlong work before our ears. Sorey, who may well be the heir apparent to the late “conduction” master-founder Lawrence “Butch” Morris’ legacy, demonstrated that he can work magic with groups of musicians not necessarily ingrained in jazz or free-improv ways.
In drummer mode, Sorey appeared on the main stage with his trio to explore the sensitive terrain of music from his acclaimed album Verisimilitude (Pi). The music ranged, without dogmatic or “ism”-related limitations, between avant-jazz venturing and the scored vistas of a “new music” aesthetic, sometimes echoing the poetic time-lapse qualities of the late Morton Feldman’s music.
In a way, Sorey ventured more freely in the role of drummer-conversationalist and while creating a flexible foundation for two powerful German saxophonists. Very early on Friday evening, he was a dynamic and empathetic foil, along with bassist Chris Todoni, for the omnidirectional saxophonist Angelika Niescier, who had just won the Albert-Mangelsdorff-Preisverleihung (Deutscher Jazzpreis) before winning over the audience in the hall. Sorey returned late on Friday night to square off with veteran tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist Gebhard Ullmann in a free-ranging duo set that fluidly ran a gamut of intensities and ended well past midnight. DB
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
Mar 4, 2025 1:29 PM
If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the…
Larry Appelbaum with Wayne Shorter in 2012.
Feb 25, 2025 10:49 AM
Larry Appelbaum, a distinguished audio engineer, jazz journalist, historian and broadcaster, died Feb. 21, 2025, in…
“If you don’t keep learning, your mind slows down,” Coleman says. “Use it or lose it.”
Jan 28, 2025 11:38 AM
PolyTropos/Of Many Turns — the title for Steve Coleman’s latest recording on Pi and his 33rd album overall —…
“This is one of the great gifts that Coltrane gave us — he gave us a key to the cosmos in this recording,” says John McLaughlin.
Mar 18, 2025 3:00 PM
In his original liner notes to A Love Supreme, John Coltrane wrote: “Yes, it is true — ‘seek and ye shall…
