Improvisers Build Border-Defying Community in Austria

By Bill Meyer I Nov. 26, 2024

DKV Trio’s combination of high energy, quick change-ups and soul-shouting melody was a crowd favorite.
(Photo: Peter Gannushkin)

Music Unlimited has been held annually since 1987 in Wels, Austria. The city elections of the past decade have placed it on the leading edge of the country’s populist, right-wing politics, but the festival operates in opposition to the town’s prevailing milieu. As Ken Vandermark, the Chicagoan reedist, improviser and composer who is the festival’s guest curator for 2024, said from the stage, “Culture is the Trojan horse.”

The fest’s earliest editions hosted European free improvisers. But in keeping with its name, it has since welcomed practitioners of jazz, electronic, rock and less categorizable musical methods. They are united by an openness to improvisational methods and a commitment to challenging status quo methodologies and mindsets. Musicians from different ensembles often collaborate with each other during the three-day festival, fostering a palpable spirit of community-building.

This year’s program, which took place Nov. 8–10, was entitled “The Future In Both Directions.” Its 21 sets presented a dialectic of veteran musicians, some of whom have been active since the 1960s, and present innovators. They came from the United States, Europe, Central America and Japan. Some presented established ensembles, including Vandermark’s DKV Trio, Sten Sandell and Mats Gustafsson’s Gush (third member Raymond Strid was sidelined by medical issues), The Nate Woolley/Paul Lytton Duo, reedist/vocalist Akira Sakata’s trio Arashi and the Ex, a 45-year-old punk+ quartet. But first-time encounters that explored connections between jazz, classical, electro-acoustic improvisation and sound poetry constituted one-third of the entire program.

Vandermark selected long-time collaborators, musicians who have inspired him to reevaluate his practice, and four of his own projects. The 30-year-old DKV Trio, with bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Hamid Drake, is his longest-running band. Their totally improvised combination of high energy, quick change-ups and soul-shouting melody proved a crowd favorite. Fresh off the road, the young musicians in Edition Redux, his newest touring combo, navigated the complex transitions of Vandermark’s multi-segmented, r&b-tinged compositions with impressive facility. A brief, bruising improvisation with guitarist Terrie Ex and painter Emma Fischer drew the audience into venue’s chilly courtyard. But the most powerful emotional charge came from his duo with Poughkeepsie, New York-based multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, who had just turned 85. They alternated between brief, free-form exchanges between their horns; McPhee’s spoken musings upon the inspiration of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and James Baldwin, and the challenge of finding one’s own creative path; and Vandermark’s lyrical, deeply reverential clarinet solos.

Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik and American electric guitarist Joe Morris are both uncompromisingly virtuosic soloists, but together, they were generous with space as they matched conventional and extended techniques. Octogenarian Dutch drummer Han Bennink and Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen exuded good-nature challenge as they ranged freely from pre-bebop swing to robust free play with a generous helping of Bennink’s comedic mugging. And the complex, constantly morphing soundscape that Chicago-based electronic musician Damon Locks and Austrian drummer Didi Kern fashioned out of provocative samples and mercurially changing grooves was a revelatory synthesis of political and rhythmic consciousness.

The Low Countries were well represented. Belgian trio g a b b r o offered an exquisitely balanced combination of stylistic and sonic elements. The compositions of Hanne De Backer, who plays baritone saxophone and bass clarinet with fluent restraint, showcased keyboardist Andreas Bral’s ability to move seamlessly between modern jazz moods, classical gestures and prog textures while drummer Raf Vertessen’s low-key but restless drumming rearranged the rudiments in constantly surprising ways. And the Ex, a multinational quartet that was originally founded in Holland’s punk rock squat scene, delivered wildness and commitment wherever they turned up, which was often. Two of their guitarists faced off with drummers Bennink and Drake in a jagged improvisation that literally drew blood when a dislodged fret sliced Terrie Ex’s finger. All three of the band’s guitarists joined Paal Nilssen-Love’s Circus, upping the razor-edged instability to that band’s anarchic dismantling and reassembly of song form. And on the last night they played a set of new songs that use open-ended riffing, jagged guitar textures and a volcanic guest horn section consisting of Rasmussen, De Backer, Gustafsson and Vandermark to articulate skeptical sentiments. But while theirs was the last concert on the schedule, a short surprise set by drummer Maria Portugal and cellist Paula Sanchez closed the concert with a final blast of impassioned, feedback-laced catharsis. DB