top
floor encounter
Review
Mit Spielwitz, Humor und einem Gespür für die Wirren
des Miteinander spielt das Trio dichten und abwechslungsreichen
Improv. Manchmal stottern Percussion und Sax im Wettkampf, um
von dickbäuchigen Basstönen ausgebremst zu werden...mehr
- nur einer der witzigen Momente der CD. Titel wie "Quickie"
(Laufzeit 15 Sekunden) tun ihr übriges dazu.
Yves
/ auf abwegen
C'est
à l'initiative de Dietrich Eichmann qu'est né
le label indépendant allemand Oaksmus. Il faut souligner
tout d'abord l'audace de cet amateur de « musique en marge »
de proposer le projet qu'il nous est donné d'entendre
aujourd'hui, tant la production devient difficile dans le jazz.
Enregistré live à Berlin, Top Floor Encounter,
réunit trois jeunes musiciens qui ont en eux le souci
permanent de construire quelque chose de neuf en tenant compte
de la personnalité de chacun. Pas d'étalage technique,
de jeu joué à « l'énergie » ou d'hyperboles.
La tension naît de l'échange et de l'écoute.
La musique se bâtit ainsi en atmosphères sans qu'un
leader n'initie le mouvement ou n'oriente le jeu vers telle
ou telle piste mais en laissant chacun apporter sa touche à
l'oeuvre en construction. John Hugues et Jeff Arnal se sont
rencontrés en 1995 à l'université de Baltimore
dans le Maryland. Jeff y étudiait alors la composition
et la musique nouvelle avec Stuart Saunders Smith. Tous deux
participaient parallèlement aux sessions données
par le poly-instrumentiste John Dierker. Lorsque John Hugues
quitta les Etats-Unis pour venir s'installer à Hambourg
en 1999, il eu l'occasion de jouer à plusieurs reprises
avec le saxophoniste Lars Scherzberg, développant avec
lui quelques idées abordées avec Jeff Arnal. Top
Floor Encounter réunit pour la première fois ces
trois instrumentistes ; le projet semble pourtant issu d'une
longue maturation de la musique, c'est-à-dire que l'entente
est parfaite. Il devient rare de voir se forger des projets
aussi aboutis dès la première rencontre. Lars,
John et Jeff s'imposent comme des musiciens à suivre
et pas uniquement parce qu'ils proposent des pistes nouvelles.
Sebastien Moig / Jazzosphère
The Scherzberg/Hughes/Arnal trio plays fully unstructured music
having a serrated and stimulating edge. The unique tonality
derives from the high-pitched voice of Scherzberg's alto, which
is pitted against the bass of Hughes, who covers both ends of
the spectrum, and the foundational drumming of Arnal. The recording
was captured live at a Berlin concert and is documentation of
the interrelated responsiveness of the three musicians. They
develop a framework of atonal sound that comes together as the
product of a completed jigsaw puzzle. The music is presented
in broken, somewhat staccato fragments. Scherzberg rations notes
from his horn in squeaky, stingy parcels. He ekes out strident
rounds of jarring phrases, which sets the pattern for the stark
progressions that evolve from the three artists.
Hughes adeptly uses the bow to match the upper tonality of Scherzberg's
alto, and then he slips down the scale using conventional fingering
to add dashes of density to the session. Arnal scrapes and scratches
at the drum skins to inject his responses to the conversation,
but he also takes the music up a level by achieving a more percussive
asymmetric beat. Often the drum rims and cymbals serve his purpose
of coating the spontaneous ideas gurgling from the alto and
being reshaped through the bass. Although there is not defined
flow to the music, it has a continuity built on the simultaneously
evolving vocabulary of this difficult language. When all the
words are assimilated, they become a form of prose that is intelligible
though not easily grasped. This is heady music that places demands
on the listener to complete the communication loop.
Frank
Rubolino / Cadence Magazine
Is
Top Floor Encounter part of the revenge of Generation Y musicians?
For
the past 15 years or so, Gen X jazzers -- the so-called young
lions -- have dominated the musical agenda, limiting improvisation
to that involving swing, tonality and conventional interaction.
But now, as many of the young lions are revealed to be little
more than toothless tigers, even younger players are throwing
those conventions aside and discovering how such techniques
as speech-like inflection and dissonance, first utilized by
neo-con mocked avant gardists gives them additional freedom.
The two American and one German musician featured here, who
are all on either side of 30, demonstrate how well this rediscovered
musical independence can be used.
Link between sensibilities, is American bassist John Hughes,
29. While going to university in Baltimore he was part of an
shifting group of experimental improvisers, which included drummer
Jeff Arnal, 30. Arnal, who studied composition at the University
of Baltimore also played with Vattel Cherry, a former Charles
Gayle sideman, with whom Hughes studied bass. Moving to Hamburg
in 1999, he began an association with local alto saxophonist
Lars Scherzberg, 29. When Arnal visited Germany in the summer
of 2000 the three got together to record this skillful CD.
Existing in a common improv zone, where they're certainly not
a group, but no longer strangers, the three range through a
mixed program rooted firmly in what could be called the EuroImprov
tradition.
Although working in the time-honored horn and rhythm section
trio preferred by committed jazz saxophonists as different as
Ornette Coleman and Branford Marsalis, this is no soloist-plus-back-up
date.
Instead what you see is what you get: three young musicians
working together to achieve a certain congruence and mutual
solving of different theoretical challenges. Although the sleeve
lists nine selections, you could just as easily see the entire
disc as one subdivided suite. Flowing one tune into another,
only interrupted near the end for some scattered applause from
the small audience, this is music of diminutive hand movements
and quick responses.
Scherzberg, a saxophone student of King Übü mainman
Wolgang Fuchs, plays in a style that implies sounds as much
as expels them. A compendium of extended techniques, his favorites
seem to be rolling flutter tonguing, false fingering and protracted
pain-flecked shrieks. Near the end he does try some honking
as well as circular breathing, but that's also the only time
anything resembling a regular plucked bass pulse appears.
Reticent most of the time, Hughes usually confines himself to
lightening quick arco attacks, quick bass guitar-like strums
or bass stave accents. While Arnal, favoring brushes, mostly
confines himself to the lightest parts of his kit, sometime
introducing the odd bell-like cymbal tone.
Having set out their parameters, the three still reveal themselves
Gen Yers on most pieces and the CD itself really lack a definitive
ending. But, then again, who beside the neo-cons ever assumed
that a young musician's definitive statement was made first
time out? Extraordinary improvisation comes from many years
of familiarity with your own instrument and your thoughts about
music making.
This encounter is a fine record of a stop along that road. As
the promise exhibited here is realized, the three may arrive
at a place that's even higher than the top floor.
Ken
Waxman / Jazz Weekly
