What makes all of this most remarkable is the creative vision of artistic director Rui Neves<\/strong>, who often programs the festival to emphasize a single country\u2019s music. This year half of the festival\u2019s 12 performances were devoted to Canadians, including four performances that provided an international forum for groups from the fertile Vancouver scene. The festival was bracketed by big bands from Canada\u2019s opposite coasts, opening on Tuesday with Vancouver\u2019s NOW Orchestra conducted by George Lewis and ending on Sunday with the Paul Cram Orchestra made up of musicians from Southern Ontario to Nova Scotia. The symmetry was highlighted by the two concerts taking place in the Gulbenkian\u2019s stunning concert hall, the only night-time performances brought indoors by the threat of rain. The evening concerts in between took place in the outdoor Anfiteatro, another gorgeous setting for music and one taking advantage of Lisbon\u2019s balmy August evenings.<\/p>\n In addition to Neves\u2019 geographic theme, there seemed to be a historical theme\u2014three of the festival\u2019s most prominent groups strongly referenced the jazz history of the \u201860s and \u201870s in ways that variously suggested post-modern appropriation and irony rather than simple homage.<\/p>\n Otomo Yoshihide\u2019s New Jazz Quinte<\/strong>t\u2013on this occasion featuring Gustafsson as special guest\u2014might elicit a range of responses and did, from one critic who could happily speak of \u201cgrooving to it\u201d to a composer who left early, remarking his ears were too valuable to subject them to that kind of assault. Yoshihide\u2019s group is a multiple homage to the \u201860s and therein lies its special difficulties. It\u2019s an excellent free jazz ensemble devoted \u2013on this occasion–to repertoire by Mingus (\u201cOrange\u201d), Coleman, Dolphy (\u201cHat and Beard\u201d) and Charlie Haden\u2019s Liberation Music Orchestra. Yoshihide is an interesting presence when comping on guitar–imaginative, dissonant, fresh. Then came the guitar solos\u2014unaccompanied (what might a rhythm section do?) walls of feedback, monumental in the manner of Jimi Hendrix, but also inert. The first of these\u2014with Coleman\u2019s \u201cLonely Woman\u201d standing in for the \u201cStar Spangled Banner\u201d–was imaginative and surprising, but Yoshihide\u2019s other solos followed the same pattern. Anthemic ironies aside, I could never feel the two halves of the performance in anyway cohere, leaving instead a statement about compound nostalgias.<\/p>\n In the midst of this altoist Kenta Tsugami was a brilliant presence. Initially overshadowed by Gustafsson\u2019s more extrovert effects, Tsugami eventually ranged from the subtly evasive to sustained and incendiary playing, inspiring the rhythm section of bassist Hiraki Mizutani and drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki to their finest work of the night\u2014complex, interactive, fully engaged.<\/p>\n The Thing and Yoshihide\u2019s group recalled for me John Zorn\u2019s\u00a0Spy vs. Spy, his hyper-kinetic treatment of Ornette Coleman compositions.\u00a0What, I thought then,\u00a0had Ornette done to deserve this? And in Lisbon I wondered at times what had Albert Ayler (and Dolphy and Hendrix, et al.) done to deserve these double-edged tributes? I think it\u2019s that their work remains so central and powerful that musicians either ignore or attack it (odd that Wynton Marsalis contributes \u201cremarks\u201d at the presentation of this year\u2019s Lillian Gish Award to Coleman), play slavish if limited imitations (the pathos of much current free jazz), or try\u2014as do Gustafsson, Yoshihide, Zorn, et al–to find ways to express the real complexity of the current relationship to that music. One explanation might be found in Harold Bloom\u2019s \u201cAnxiety of Influence,\u201d the notion that strong poets advance by misunderstanding their forebears. It\u2019s a fundamentally Oedipal theory of cultural progress, especially apparent when there\u2019s as much love, violence and irony as Gustafsson and Yoshihide were serving up. The source music is anathematized, both blessed and cursed.<\/p>\n Viennese trumpeter Franz Hautzinger\u2019s Regenorchester XI<\/strong> may have been the most fascinating of these groups, certainly the subtlest and most surprising. Hautzinger\u2019s recordings (on Grob) are brilliant exercises in an attenuated minimalist improvisation\u2014in which instruments\u2019 sounds are often stretched beyond recognition. While I tried to imagine how this might play to a large audience (Lisboans are the most intrepid listeners) on a Saturday night in the\u00a0Anfiteatro, Hautzinger presented an entirely different\u2014and apparently unrecorded–side of himself with a sextet rooted in Miles Davis\u2019 early-to-mid \u201870s adventures in funk and fusion. It, too, was homage with a difference, the difference again manifesting itself in a strangely heterodox band: bassist Luc Ex (from the Amsterdam anarcho-punk-improv band The Ex) and drummer Alex Deutsch laid down raw and rugged funk beats while Christian Fennesz on laptop and Helge Hinteregger on sampling machine provided cool electronic frames for the leader\u2019s abstract trumpet. Guitarist Karl Ritter paced the stage, literally shifting membership from the abstract to the funk components of the band. Description ultimately fails here, for the Hautzinger band did something quite extraordinary, at times presenting musics that seemed perfectly in step with each other\u2014and perfectly clear–but which this listener at any rate couldn\u2019t conceptualize a relationship between. It spoke of a special insight into Miles Davis and, more importantly, how you might put contemporary music together. For that I\u2019m willing to declare it the most engaging and meaningful performance I\u2019ve seen this year.<\/p>\n Solos Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen<\/strong> made thoughtful use of his native folk materials and a battery of electronic devices along with his voice and sometimes two trumpets. It was Henriksen\u2019s concentration on mood and melodic values that made all of this hold together, providing focus in a concert that might have just wandered into effects.<\/p>\n Conclusions Jazz em Agosto\u00a0is a festival that one recommends without hesitation. Very different from the endless string of performances presented by so many festivals, its presentation of one to three events a day focuses real attention on the music at hand. One of the incidental benefits of that approach is the opportunity to explore a city and surrounding environment that are both rich in history and blessed with a wonderful climate. It\u2019s well worth a visit even when your own country\u2019s music isn\u2019t featured.<\/p>\n Editors note: This review was originally published \u00a0in Coda, The Journal of Jazz and Improvised Music, November\/December 2004\u00a0by Stuart Broomer and Laurence Svirchev. In this edition, the texts have been separated into independent reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text \u00a9 Stuart Broomer, Photography \u00a9Laurence Svirchev<\/p>\n Jazz em Agosto\u2014Jazz in August\u2014is a festival with any number of differences, an event that in recent years has spanned a few days or two weeks, presenting both the celebrated and the little-known with the emphasis on innovative work. The festival is sponsored by . . . → Read More: Jazz em Agosto, Lisbon, Portugal August 3-8, 2004: Post-Modern Nights<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-reviews","odd"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1253,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/1253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/The-Thing-Lisbon1.jpg\" "\\"The-Thing-Lisbon\\"")
<\/a>The Thing<\/strong>\u2014Mats Gustafsson on tenor and baritone saxes, drummer Paul Nilssen-Love and bassist Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten\u2014is a group of tremendous energy and co-ordination, in effect raising the bar on \u201cenergy music\u201d traditions with extraordinarily rapid and accurate shifts between free-improv and composed sections executed via cuing. Gustafsson plays baritone saxophone with the same brilliant fluency that he displays on tenor and his partners are in perfect synch. The performance was genuinely exciting and cathartic as well, including a special homage to Albert Ayler\u2019s trumpeters that included Don Ayler\u2019s \u201cOur Prayer\u201d and Norman Howard\u2019s \u201cHounded\u201d (the latter played in memory of Steve Lacy), in a program that also transformed current pop songs (P.J Harvey, White Stripes) and Scandinavian folk songs. It is, however, in its very co-ordination that the group becomes problematic, sometimes rendering a music of great spiritual depth with the precision and machismo of a Marine drill. Cathartic, yes, but also unsettling.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>The solo performance by Gunter \u201cBaby\u201d Sommer <\/strong>was an unalloyed delight, a brilliant and witty journey into Sommer\u2019s life from percussion to the skewed world of East German politics and society in which he began his career Sommer\u2019s gifts as a raconteur almost matched his wonderful drumming as he played a patchwork of jazz styles and African rhythms, often accompanying himself on voice and in one memorable sequence, a collection of bizarre homemade horns that he claimed were traditional East German instruments found abandoned in a field.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>The final concert by the Paul Cram Orchestra<\/strong> was a rare opportunity to hear this band amidst genuinely sparkling acoustics. It highlighted the leader\u2019s acute sense of voicings and texture, adding sonic detail to the sweep of his compositions. Like all good jazz orchestrators, Cram is inspired by the sounds of his musicians, making felicitous use of Don Palmer\u2019s flute and soprano with the darker, grainy hues of John Scott\u2019s cello, Jeff Reilly\u2019s bass clarinet and Tom Walsh\u2019s wide ranging trombone palette, from vocalic mutes to gravelly lows and clarion highs. Walsh and Cram, playing gruffly rambunctious tenor, were responsible for the solo highlights. With Cram\u2019s eclectic and cinematic compositions, the two themes of the festival\u2014the post-modern and the Canadian\u2014seemed to be drawn neatly together.<\/p>\n