Jazzfest Saalfelden Presents Disparate Facets of World-Class Improvisers

By Peter Margasak I Oct. 2, 2024

Mats Gustafsson at this year’s edition of Jazzfest Saalfelden in Saalfelden, Austria.
(Photo: Mattias Heschl)

The best jazz festivals in the world tend to construct a kind of temporary community each year, not only bringing together throngs of listeners both devoted and casual, obsessive and curious, but often overlooked is how organizers also assemble pre-existing communities of musicians in new locales. Whether artists visit a festival as a stop on a bigger tour or make a one-off appearance, there’s often a dazzling critical mass of talent gathered in a single spot for a few days. Sadly, a lot of festivals pass up an opportunity to subtly showcase such community gatherings. They might occur backstage, out of the view of attendees, but many of the strongest festivals present a side of that exchange on their public stages. Beyond revealing the close sense of camaraderie shared by creative musicians, such programming provides an invaluable look at how the actual jazz ecosystem functions these days. Such activity is common at the long-running Jazzfest Saalfelden, nestled in a picturesque valley marked by Austria’s breathtaking Alps, and it was in full force during the 2024 edition of the gathering, which ran Aug. 22–25.

Given the financial difficulties of the working jazz musician, it’s increasingly commonplace for individuals to belong to numerous ensembles, whether as a leader, side person or collective member. This practice reflects both the economic necessity of earning income from a variety of projects to survive, but, more interestingly, as part of a big-picture need to reflect the full range and interest of many players. As listeners we enjoy variety, but for many musicians it’s almost a requirement to explore one’s full artistic diapason. Thus, the programming at Jazzfest Saalfelden offered a unique opportunity to experience disparate facets of some of the world’s greatest improvisers by letting them present work in very different situations.

Swedish reedist and composer Mats Gustafsson is well-known for his relentless work ethic and sprawling aesthetic tendencies, so it felt appropriate that he was a part of four wildly varied performances during the festival. I wasn’t able to attend an early morning duo set he played with trumpeter Nate Wooley as the pair drifted around the Ritzensee in a small rowboat, but I did catch him in three other settings, each revealing assorted facets of his multi-pronged practice, none more exciting that a first-time trio with the Austrian turntablist Dieb13 (aka Dieter Kovacic) and Spanish pianist Jordina Millà, who lives in nearby Salzburg. The nonchalant push-and-pull of the three musicians was remarkable. Dieb13 eschewed extremes with his three-turntable setup, usually drawing coloristic, sustained sounds from unidentifiable recordings of experimental and improvised music which he manipulated through repetition, turntable speed, friction and overlap to generate a fertile sound stream that both provided his collaborators with countless portals into new spontaneous directions and allowed him to provide his own running commentary and interventions. Millà, who recently demonstrated her strong grasp of contemporary music practices on an excellent duo album with bassist Barry Guy on ECM, toggled between passages of rhapsodic melancholy drawn more from classical tradition than jazz and elaborate prepared piano and inside-her-instrument tinkering. Sandwiched between these two inventive sound-makers, Gustafsson deftly moved between flute, baritone saxophone, slide saxophone and even harmonica, moving between spasmodic gestures, abraded drones and knotted curlicues. For nearly an hour the performance flowed seamlessly from episode to episode, each musician adroitly aware of their surroundings.

Gustafsson also led his hard-hitting band the End through selections in its repertoire, but the most exciting moments offered a hint of a new shift in the band’s sound away from heavy rock vibes toward a more meditative folk flavor. On one particular piece guitarist Anders Hana moved to the traditional Norwegian zither-like langeleik while singer Sofia Jernberg intoned a folk melody with crystalline precision, eventually veering into a bit of kulning, a Scandinavian vocal technique used in herding. As they cast a spell with their delicate interplay, Gustafsson and saxophonist Kjetil Møster played gauzy, meditative unison lines that took the music into otherworldly terrain. Gustafsson also played abstract sounds in Ifaname, a new trio with bassist Johan Berthling, his bandmate in the trio Fire!, and electronics maven Jan St. Werner of Mouse on Mars. The new trio seems to still be finding its footing, but when Gustafsson and St. Werner locked in with shape-shifting blurts and bloops over the bassist’s muscular constructions its promise was clear.

Likewise, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier excelled in a freely improvising trio with drummer Nasheet Waits and reedist Ned Rothenberg, delivering a thrilling series of exchanges ranging from sound-oriented gesture to groove-driven extrapolation. Her mastery of internal piano manipulations veered often veered toward the rhythmic, vividly enmeshed into the infectiously off-kilter funk judiciously meted out by the drummer between bracing cymbal play. Rothenberg gamely adapted to each shift, moving between reedy clarinet and nasally alto saxophone, long tones and post-bop momentum depending on circumstance. Later in the fest the pianist led her ambitious Chimaera project, implanting incisive extended improvisations from a cast including trumpeter Wooley, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, and electric guitarist Christian Fennesz within lithe compositions by turns cinematically atmospheric and meticulously turbulent.

There were also plenty of dazzling one-offs, including the European debut of pianist Kris Davis’ new trio with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake. They opened the set with “Little Footsteps,” a tune named for the way the pianist’s child prances around the family home, and the trio played with the groove so naturally that it couldn’t help but reflect a joyful sense of newly discovered mobility, although there was nothing child-like in the virtuosic malleability. Davis told the audience that playing with the veteran Hurst was a dream fulfilled, explaining his mastery of the vamp before they launched into a tune where he demonstrated that astonishing skill. Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, a pioneer in mapping out the use of unpitched breaths and weightless abstractions, revealed a sharp 180-degree turn in his set leading Regenorchester XVII, summoning the spirit of early ’70s Miles Davis through his effects-heavy blowing, the funk groove of drummer Lukas König, and the ferociously dueling guitars of Fennesz and Martin Siewert, although the second half of the set lost focus in loud, ambient drift. Tomeka Reid’s long-running quartet with guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and bassist Jason Roebke delivered a knockout set fueled by feverish interplay and a deep-seated rapport that allowed the musicians to truly lift the notes off the score into a deeply intuitive statement of collective might. DB

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this feature was illustrated by a photo that was not Mats Gustafsson. DownBeat regrets the error.