Manafonistas

September 3: close to perfection (though this word may ring wrong bells, we don‘t speak of the clean and the aseptic here), with an unbeatable sequence of „main acts“ and remixes in the moment! Jan Bang and I (changing impressions en passant) felt the same about that long and winding road / arc of this evening. Unforgettable. Nils Økland, The Harpreet Bansal Band with Svante Henryson, Eivind Aarset‘s „Phantasmagoria, or a different kind of travel“. Just look at ijb‘s photos!

Afterwards, before deciding to fall into our beds or join DJ Strangefruit’s after hours-party, we were (some of us, for sure) just looking (what is the word) fulfilled, maybe filled with wonder, as if the musics had been a sequence of dances now adding peculiar figures and pirouettes in our heads. It would be a delight (and might happen quite soon) to dive deeper (in retrospect) into every live remix in retrospect – each of them a thrilling ride. The little stories will write themselves wrapped up with trivia, philosophica, sidesteps.

I might come back, too, to the „different travel“ of Eivind Aarset’s 4_tet, and I really try hard to not write what I’m about to write now, but sitting with my new Norwegian friends at the table, Nick (originally from Australia, finally someone knowing The Go-Betweens) and Marte and Hank and Sten (kudos!) – doing no air guitar, but some kind of miniaturized body percussion with hands and legs mirroring the double drumming – the quartet was kind of working the limits, and, yes, this old saying, shooting some stars from the sky without making a big fuzz about it. And didn‘t Fiona Talkington make some great introductions  from her nature reserve in Reading bringing up front the magic of „thin places“!?

 
 
 
Vorsichtig schlug ich die Decke und das Laken beiseite und kroch ins Bett. Sofort kam es mir so vor, als würde ich versinken. Nicht die allerbeste Matraze, dachte ich. Ich sank tiefer und tiefer, es schien fast, als würde das Versinken nie ein Ende haben. Irgendwann war die Elastiziät dann aber doch erschöpft, und die Kuhle in der Matraze war so tief, dass es tiefer nicht mehr ging. Doch die eigenartige Empfindung des Immer-tiefer-Sinkens blieb. Das muss wohl eine Art Sinnestäuschung sein, dachte ich. Aber egal, wie mies die Qualität einer Matraze ist, letztendlich ist am Boden, auf dem das Bett steht, Schluss. Dann kann man nicht noch tiefer sinken.

(Maarten `T Hart, Der Nachtstimmer)

Man liest nur ein, zwei Sätze und beginnt sogleich zu schmunzeln. Was will man mehr? Als Romanlesephobiker lese ich das Buch sehr langsam und es wird mich vermutlich bis ins nächste Jahrtausend begleiten. Schneckentempo, so to speak. An einer Stelle ist die Rede von Bileams Eselin, sie stellt sich stur und wird geschlagen, will überhaupt nicht weiter gehen. Das erinnert an die eigene Aufmerksamkeit, die sich auch zuweilen quer stellt, wenn das Objekt des Interesses anscheinend kein lohnendes Ziel bietet, um weiter voranzuschreiten: Stichwort Fernsehserien. Ich konstatierte ja schon immer: es ist genau das von Interesse, was einen interessiert. The very thing, said Krishnamurti. Bücher wie das von Maarten `T Hart stimmen vergnüglich und ziehen mitten ins Leben hinein, sie machen Lust auf Sprache und auf Schreiben. Und ja, es herrscht die gute Laune! Oder wie ein gewisser Mister Harrison mal sang: „Here comes the sun.“

Choosing albums like this, Michael, always changes through out the years, but I´ve tried to choose three albums being important at an early formative stage for me, revolutionary in discovering the values of playing together, shaping forms and curves as an ensemble and playing in ways that open my musical mind at an early stage while trying to decipher the abstracts of music, chords, tones, sounds, timbre, dynamics etc both in bands and at the bass.

Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Jon Christensen, Palle Danielsson: „Personal Mountains“ – Wonderful musicianship, fantastic forms, dynamics, curves, pulses, playfulness, abstract transitions, lyrical passages, so (a)live, strong songs, improvisation, presence, conversation between musicians. Wish I was there. Formative for me in many ways as a musician.

J.S. Bach „Goldberg Variations“ Glenn Gould – Bach has a relaxing effect and these pieces are fully shaped and contrast each other even though the musical language is very Bach, very perfect, diatonic but so clear and cleansing. And the performance from Gould! Just so crystal clear, taking the music into his own possession, forming it, forcing t into his own way of shaping it. So his.

Weather Report „Black Market“ – Weather Report was an important change for me when I started to play the bass. I started listening to rockmusic and the first jazzalbums were more traditional bebop and early jazz. Great music and mindblowing at the time! But when I heard Weather Report and Jaco, (also Alphonso Johnson and Miroslav Vitous), the bass had such a different role in the band. Playing the melody, affecting the whole sound of the pieces, playing an orchestral affecting part, not only in the bottom register atking care of the bassnotes. And their music was just so different affecting my way of listening and hearing tunes and compositions.

(these notes of Mats Eilertsen go some way / years back. He may make some different choices today. I‘ve experienced his bass playing so often at Punkt, and yesterday he was again there, and, „in the zone“ as  being part of The Nils Økland Band. m.e. His new album  will probably be part of my penultimate edition of „Klanghorizonte“ and the jazz magazine radio hour on November 4)

I’m only waiting
Till the morning comes
Till the morning comes,
Till the morning comes.

Er war Volksheld und auch mein Held. Der große Komponist und Politiker hatte mir immer sehr viel bedeutet. Als Goethe-Institut Mitarbeiterin hatte ich immer seiner Forderung zugestimmt, Deutschland müsse die Kriegsschuld an Griechenland bezahlen. Ein großartiger hombre ist gestern von uns gegangen.

video

that is what music

can be, and then some

(more)

trivia: Hardanger fiddle ecstasy, not go forget the viola d’amore / what a fantastic band / afterwards a first nice encounter, talkwise, with Mats Eilertsen, bassman with a vision, and a new album out in november (we know one another from virtual interviews for many years 

I over 100 år har Blå Kors med hjerte, kunnskap og kraft vært en trygg havn for mennesker som av ulike årsaker sliter i hverdagen. Det skal vi fortsatt være. Blå Kors Kristiansand ble etablert i 1909, og har en lang historie bak seg. Blå Kors er en diakonal organisasjon som fremmer rusfrihet i samfunnet. Vi hjelper mennesker som sliter med alkohol-, rus- og spilleavhengighet, psykiske utfordringer og mobbing. Organisasjonen satser også på forebyggende tiltak i tillegg til behandling, rehabilitering og ettervern av mennesker og deres familier.

John Kelman should have been here, like in the days of old. A strange place for the opening event of this year‘s Punktfestival, with a French-looking Jesus on the wall, but this venue of Blå Kors offered kindness, fine acoustics, and a really good concert. My first live experience in a very long time. Bugge Wesseltoft was asked to put the group together for this 25th anniversary of Jazzland Records. In these years  around 250 albums have been published from well known artists and those deserving wider recognition. I normally don‘t trust anniversary concerts, they easily end up consisting of tapping shoulders instead of taking risks. This one was different. Did they really play for the first time in this set-up? No intense preparations? Nearly unbelievable for what I‘ve heard.

Håkon Kornstad: sax
Harpreet Bansal: violin
Lilja (Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir): guitar
Sanskriti Shrestha: tablas
Audun Erlien: bass
Veslemøy Narvesen: drums

Everyone of them was able to think outside of well-trodden paths. They all managed what Robert Pirsig once described as „lateral drifting“ – finding new ideas on the margins of things and sounds they can handle while sleeping. The interaction was a lesson in mutual empathy – wakefulness and restraint in equal measure. They easily followed one another to places most quiet, and they all seemed to be as curious to each other‘s dicoveries as the audience was. The  music was travelling far distant places, in a natural sounding amalgam of styles, in which Classical Indian moments, fusion jazz stylings, nordic folk memories (as well as valuable seconds that would put a smile on the faces of Barney Kessel, Jon Christensen, and Sonny Rollins), were just stages of a long journey. They should do a record.

Live Remix: John Derek Bishop

And then John Derek Bishop offered a kind of „ghost story“ in the aftermath of the concert using his own apparatus and sounds he had sampled from what had happened before – transporting them (and us) into a parallel world of distant echoes, strange reminders, floating water and (crushing?) waves. Closing your eyes, this was a fine opportunity to „turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream“, to put it simple, and with John Lennon.