PETER Brötzmann CHICAGO TENTET

Concert by the Peter Brötzmann Tentet featuring: Peter Brötzmann (tenor sax, clarinets, tarrogato); Mats Gustafsson (tenor, baritone sax); Ken Vandermark (tenor sax, clarinets); Mars Williams (soprano, alto, tenor sax); Joe McPhee (trumpet, valve trombone, soprano sax); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); Kent Kessler (contrabass); Hamid Drake (drums, percussion); Michael Zerang (drums, percussion)

Over thirty years ago, in May 1968, Peter Brötzmann made a watershed octet recording for his own record label amid the heat of the student uprising in the left-wing leaning city of Bremen. Machine Gun, which took its name from Don Cherry's succinct description of Brötzmann, was the opening declaration of the Wuppertalian saxophonist's love of bigger bands. In the first decade of European improvised music, his octets, nonets and tentets stormed the stage at festivals like the Holy Hill Jazz Meeting in Heidelberg (1969) and the German Jazz Festival in Frankfurt (1970). Different groups featured an international cast, including many of the key figures of the British, Dutch, German, Belgian and Swiss scenes. Quicker and more concentrated than a creative orchestra (with which Brötzmann had already had plenty of experience, dating back to the earliest Globe Unity date in 1966), with a knockout punch more devastating than any small combo and range greater than a duo or trio, these upper-midsize bands were the perfect vehicle for Brötzmann's forays into the nexus of power and sound. Indeed, the notion of marshaling free music's tensile strength forces into a concise, dynamic action-jazz ensemble is arguably one of his most far-reaching visions. That format didn't exactly vanish from the Brotz-oeuvre, over the last 20 years on record alone there's the nine-piece Alarm group of 1981, the eleven-piece clarinet project of '84 and the MSrz Combo tentet of '92. But the self-evident truth is that as a band gets bigger it becomes much more expensive to book and logistics become more difficult to coordinate; the threadbare '80s forced Brötzmann most often to hunker down with his other preferred setting of trio-with-drummer or similarly economical groupings. As he began performing in the U.S. more frequently early in that decade, there were virtually no possibilities for larger ensembles once, in 1984, he led a big New York group through his piece -Alarm- with Charles Gayle, Frank Wright, Jemeel Moondoc, and David S. Ware in the sax section, but the vast majority of his American tours including half a dozen or so visits to Chicago have been with compact, fiscally feasible outfits. Nobody really knew it at the time, but the idea for the music on these three discs was spawned at the FMP Festival (official title: A Salute to Free Music Production) in 1995, a one-off event that brought ten major European improvisers (plus Shelley Hirsch from New York) to the Windy City for a three day series of concerts. Brötzmann had already made Chicagoan Hamid Drake a long-term partner, but the weekend gave him a bird's eye on other facets of the city's active scene he played with Drake and Michael Zerang in an off-site concert at Lunar Cabaret, saw the NRG Ensemble rip through a set at the now-defunct Bop Shop, and enjoyed a brief, white-hot duet with Mars Williams so promising that it obliged a follow-up. The experience left a very positive impression, plans for future collaboration were quickly exchanged, and a special relationship between Brötzmann and Chicago was deepened. Preparing for a Brotz visit in January, '97, I suggested that he come for a little longer than usual and that we put together, rehearse and record something different, maybe a larger group along the lines of his legendary octet. A lineup was almost instantly produced, calls were made, and suddenly a new band was formed. In addition to a new composition by the band's leader, other members were encouraged to contribute material, and initially four of them Zerang, Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, and Fred Lonberg-Holm did so. On January 22nd, Brötzmann played a concert of duet and trio improvisations with Drake and Williams (making good on the earlier promise), and a week later the Brötzmann Chicago Octet performed twice, raising Frank Lloyd Wright's roof on a snowy Superbowl Sunday at Unity Temple in Oak Park and finally bringing it all back home to a near-capacity crowd at the Empty Bottle. The results were so overwhelmingly strong as you can hear on -Burning Spirit- that vows were made to do it again. I don't think anyone believed the opportunity would come knocking so quickly, but just a few months later, flush from the kill, Brötzmann organized a visit for September. Given how successful the maiden voyage was, it was decided that the band should hit the studio as well as the stage. Furthermore, two more members were recruited Mats Gustafsson from Sweden, whose ears were set aflame by Machine Gun when he was a teenager in Umea, and Joe McPhee from Poughkeepsie, New York, musical citizen of the world. Orchestrally, the idea was to beef up the brass section (McPhee's one of the very few trumpet players who could cut it in this context) and add more bottom to the already terrifying woodwind section. But of course, in this music it's the personal sound of the musicians that's paramount and Gustafsson and McPhee each brought something unique and complementary to the group. Brötzmann contributed another piece and once again invited the others to compose. I will restrain myself from the urge to gush, since the music is here for you to judge, but what was so exciting and surprising to me was the range that the group could cover. The Tentet touches on a number of the most significant strategies that have been developed for coordinating larger ensemble improvising. Brötzmann's five-foot-long score for -Foolish Infinity- uses the same graphic method for structuring free play that he's been investigating for decades; the narrative, episodic unfolding monolith integrates fragments of a remembered theme from Charles Ives (the circus-like clarinet motif) and a variety of block groupings of players that divide the band into different sized subgroups, providing textural and timbral juxtaposition and allowing for massive power-cluster build-up and breakdowns. Vandermark's -Other Brothers- and Bishop's -Divide By Zero- are also sectional, episodic, but utilize more specific directives with thoroughly written-out charts, arranged themes, backdrops and lines, as well as open improvisation and featured soloing. Lonberg-Holm's -Immediate Music- also has scripted thematic material, but is closer in spirit to a New York style game piece; movement through the score (which contains directives concerning instrumental groupings, dynamic level, activity level, etc) is prompted by a large clock, controlled by Lonberg-Holm, who in effect conducts the free play. Gustafsson's -Old Bottles, No Wine- is also a conduction, the band's sounds steered by movements of the composer/conductor-s body, which is divided into an X-Y axis and interpreted in relation to a set of predetermined variables. Perhaps the most startling for Brotz fans will be Zerang's anthemic -Aziz- and Zerang and Drake's -Makapoor- both vamp-based tunes with funky grooves and plenty of blowing space. Brötzmann meets Niyabingi drum choir in free jazz back alley needless to say, in concert these were barnburners. A new adventure in the life of lines. Many lines, leaping limpidly, joyously, violently, wildly, leading from different points of origin to a convergent spot in Chicago. A work that shuns the absolute and personally embraces the contingent, the transitional, the impermanent, the imminent-immediate music, an improvised work, in other words. "My dear Picabia" wrote Tzara to his dada colleague, Francis. -To live without pretension, to dance on iron spikes, telegraphically, or to keep quiet on the equinoctial line, to know that at every instant -perpetua mobilia- it is today.
-John Corbett, Chicago, May 1998