52nd Ljubljana Jazz Festival

The 52nd Ljubljana Jazz Festival commenced on 29 June 2011 with an excellent photo exhibition and three outstanding concerts. In the Linhart Hall of Cankarjev dom, Zlatko Kaučič, his Kombo and string ensemble Rararoža premiered their new project, Polja (Fields), dedicated to deceased journalist Tomaž Simon. The project’s title is a tribute to the journalist’s and Kaučič’s fields of imagination, their overlapping and merging. Featuring postmodernist treading and collage of diverse music idioms, the composition retained an astounding intensity and compactness. Fresh and unrestrained, it fused an ostensibly non-compatible line-up (a combo of percussion, guitars, double bass, piano, trumpet and string orchestra) as well as a myriad of music lexicons. Although all musicians challenged the limits of the genre, the string ensemble retained the tonally and metrically standard structures, thereby often grounding the guests Bruno Cesseli on the piano and brilliant trumpet player Herb Robertson, pushing the sound beyond all expectations – the entire combination was conducted by Kaučič, who throughout communicated with the musicians, now arranging the sound and then making untypical gestures that allowed for a greater measure of improvisation.

An entirely different musical experience was provided by Farmers by Nature featuring William Parker, a double bass legend, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver at the Cankarjev dom Club. The bend performed two rather dissimilar improvisations; the first constructing the sound gradually – first from the minute, incoherent sounds that warily tiptoed through Parker’s gentle overtones and Cleaver’s gliding across the cymbals with a bow, in the end the atmospheric cloud of sounds grew in size also through Taborn’s suspensive rendering of recurrent themes, which was seemingly restrained, and designedly subtle.

The third concert of the evening, held within the scope of the Defonija Festival in Gromka Klub on Metelkova, offered a fair amount of free jazz; but before Free 4 Arts came on stage, the audience was transported into another sonic dimension by a meditative guitar and electronica improvisation. A quite dissimilar atmosphere was created by the invigorating band of Polish and Danish musicians, composed of a classical line-up of drums, bass, saxophone and trumpet. The band leader and trumpeter Tomasz Dąbrowski often resorted to the Balkan folk version of brass, adjusting the timbre with various dampers. The group played an utterly aesthetical and sublime free jazz, where the complex lines of the trumpet and the sax, played by Maciej Obara, dissolved into relaxed rubato tinges, perfectly complemented by bass player Andreas Lang and drummer Anders Mogensen. Replete with elements of hard bop, the sound often verged on folk music, as the extremely communicative musicians kept prompting the concert-goers and each other, either verbally or by way of expressive gesticulation.

Jazz luminary William Parker enthralled the audience with a good hour of fresh double bass playing on Thursday, 30 June, at 18.00 in the Štih Hall. Heavily drawing on various music references, he first performed two lengthy improvisations. While his first composition featured especially his idiosyncratic subtle bow figures, diversified with different approaches to playing, he played the second composition pizzicato, whereby often creating a walking bass line and distinctive riffs, and then again resorting to rubato and unexpected modulations. He concluded the variegated programme with an entirely different improvisation, based on a spectre of overtones, produced by bowing the strings subtly.

Soon after Parker’s concert, the Angles, performing at the Ljubljana Festival as an octet for the first time, entertained the passers-by on the streets of Ljubljana. Playing the authentic edgy music of the travelling brass ensembles, the Angles first thrilled the audience on the Cobblers’ Bridge and then in front of the Dvor pizzeria. Here, they resumed their repertoire that included improvisations on brass and wind instruments in mixolydian mode, while the rhythms, harmonies and mode of playing of some sections strongly resembled those of a Balkan brass orchestra. A testing ground for that night’s concert, the performance energized and reinvigorated the streets of Ljubljana. In the evening, Kino Šiška hosted a concert by Robert Jukić Quintet showcasing its new project, Operation Charlie. The conceptual album, inspired by Jukić’s love of classic movies and Charles Mingus’ music, was rendered as the score of as yet nonexistent film. An original and versatile composer and bass player, Jukić was accompanied by drummer Gašper Bertoncelj, David Jarh on drums, clarinettist Daniele D'Agaro and Cene Resnik on saxophone. Playing passages for an individual instrument or as a group, the line-up heavily invested the compositions with a 1950s feel; as the drummer’s eclectic modern rhythms kept eating away at it, the music was rendered dynamic and ecstatic throughout.

The last concert of the evening was held by the Hidden Orchestra, an extremely popular Scottish band praised by the critics and the audiences alike. They played a series of compositions from their two albums and as yet unreleased songs. The backbone of the band, drummers Jamie Graham and Tim Lane, entered into a counterpointing dialogue between two drum sets, thus creating a solid and at the same time variegated platform above which floated the more ethereal sounds produced by Poppy Ackroyd on violin and keyboard. Bass guitarist Joe Acheson engaged in communication with the long, withheld tones and repetitions of the violin and drums. A strong impression was created by the guest hornist Fraser Fifield, who deepened the sound of the band by contributing to most compositions with his saxophone or diverse folk wind instruments. The featured music was a unique mixture of club genres, jazz, rock and various folk elements.

The evening of Friday, 1 July, was dedicated exclusively to the Portuguese Clean Feed label – a publishing company that offers a wide spectre of genres and artists. At 18.00, the Club of Cankarjev dom hosted the Bernardo Sassetti trio. Sassetti, a pianist who also writes film score, is being likened to Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, while in Ljubljana some motifs inspired by Bob Stenson, Philip Glass and other diverse influences could be discerned, merged by the trio into a unique context. Their first song was Homecoming Queen, which was followed by a series of original compositions and improvisations as well as arrangements. Sassetti, who oscillated between pure lyricism and more daring, venturesome terrain, was accompanied by double bass player Carlos Barretto, this time upholding the tradition of American jazz, and drummer Alexandre Frazão, who dexterously switched between subtle, chamber mood and impulsive, high-pitched sequences. Towards the end, the trio was joined by expressive dancer Manca Dolenc, whom Sassetti had met only a day before.

At 20.30, Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth performed in Linhart Hall. The band opened the concert with a series of songs based on rock-invested backbeat, with which Gerald Cleaver on drums strengthened the contours of other instruments. The tension was especially heightened by the sax players who exchanged themes dialectically – while Tony Malaby kept resorting to free jazz, allowing free reign to shrieks, glissandos and other more unconventional sounds of the instrument. Chris Cheek built his solos on rigorous structures. The variegated soundscape was heavily invested with the sound of the Rhodes piano, throughout most of the concert played by Craig Taborn, a genial and innovative pianist. Rather than playing accompaniment, Chris Lightcap on bass assumed the role of an intermediary between the prominent sounds in the midst of continuous soloing.

At 22.30 the Linhart Hall of Cankarjev dom hosted the Angles, and astounding line-up that the day before enchanted the citizens of Ljubljana with a street concert. The atmosphere in the auditorium was astonishing. With its vigorous, chaotic simultaneous soloing, the rich brass section, joined by trumpeter of Croatian descent, Goran Kajfes, was transported into ecstatic rapture, heightened by the balanced forceful drumming by Kjell Nordeson and the repetitive figures performed by bass Johan Berthling and merely 20-year-old Alexander Sethson on piano. The organic net of associations among others featured influences of free jazz, hard bop, Balkan brass music and noise. The originator of the band, sax player Martin Küchen, incited his band with cries, humming and idiosyncratic gestures. The politically engaged music, reflective and intensely rhythmic at the same time, delighted the Ljubljana Jazz Festival audience.

At midnight, the CD Club experienced a fair amount of free bop, graciously performed by Tony Malaby’s Tamarindo. The concert opened with pure sound and improvisation. Malaby, who a few hours previously played in an entirely different context in the Bigmouth project, challenged the extreme bounds of his instrument, receiving profuse encouragement from entirely tameless Nasheet Waits on drums and William Parker, who alternately bowed his strings and performed pizzicato. The more intimate parts included refined ascetic timbres, whereby the musicians probed into the deep recesses of sound – especially Malaby allowed his saxophone to speak with a rarely experienced idiom also during quieter moments.

The last day of the 52nd Ljubljana Jazz Festival featured as many as five considerably dissimilar concerts. Already at noon, the CD Club hosted the Igor Lumpret Trio. Christopher Tordini on double bass provided persistently meditative accompaniment to Lumpret’s eclectic playing, and drummer Nasheet Waits elevated the soundscape more than grounding it with his rather DeJohnettean bravados. In an alchemistic fashion, Lumpert fused the intricately laced themes and transitions, connecting two compositions with open saxophone solos, where post bop was reinvigorated with tinges of free jazz as well as more traditional idioms.

The astounding soundscape of 11:11 Eric Revis could also be admired at 16.00, when the band played at the CD Club. Featuring Ken Vandermark on saxophone, the remarkably intense playing, oozing with density and expressiveness of sound, delved deep into the texture of the music. Vandermark’s instrument sobbed, shrieked, snapped and generally employed a broad sonic palette, with the musician remaining faithful to his incredible sensibility. Waits resorting more to broken rhythms and free jazz idioms, the talented Jason Moran on piano freely combined the impressionistic harmonies, throughout juxtaposing tuneful and discordant accords. Their almost mechanical synergy allowed for the harmoniousness of the atmosphere, whether built gradually and with suspense or most radically and swiftly.

The concerts at Križanke open-air theatre commenced at 20.00, with the gig by the legend of contemporary jazz, Charles Lloyd, and his new quartet – Jason Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on acoustic bass, and currently one of the most promising drummers, Eric Harland. Despite the top-notch performers being almost equally talented, Lloyd stood for the axis around which the music was constructed; the atmosphere finding a balance between trance-like state and subtle, yet inspiring melancholy. Contributing to the latter with an arsenal of impressionistic figures, Moran’s divergent solos and ornaments also tinged the sound with new hues. Lloyd, who in Ljubljana played some older standards and material from his latest album, Mirror, released by ECM label, thrilled the audience.

The second performance at Križanke was also of a momentous importance – not only Mia Žnidarič, playing songs from her twelfth record, Love You Madly, symbolically commemorated her twentieth anniversary of music career, but her band also played together for the first time. Apart from jazz standards, such as Blue Moon, they also played compelling digressions – they thus performed a most touching rendition of The Gallery by Joni Mitchell, whom the singer especially appreciates, while one composition (Three Journeys (Africa)) was performed by Steve Klink, pianist and Mia’s spouse, bass player Martin Gjakonovski and drummer Mario Gonzi. Throughout the concert, the talkative and incredibly relaxed Žnidarič communicated with the audience, urging the concert-goers to help her sing the chorus of her famous version of A si ti al' nisi ti moj ljubi (Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby) by Nat King Cole.

The final concert at the Križanke theatre and the concluding performance of this year’s Ljubljana Jazz Festival was held by Portuguese singer Maria João, a passionate and emotional artist, who delighted the audience with her unique voice as well as colourful clothes and playful dancing. She was accompanied on piano by her partner and long-standing collaborator, Mário Laginha, and it was the chemistry between them that energized not only the band but also the Križanke audience. Maria, who sang in English as well as in Portuguese, employed diverse registers of singing, whispering and talking, with the piano following and supporting her. She would also leave the stage to Laginha’s inspired soloing that resembled first Keith Jarrett, and then Gil Evans. Towards the end of the concert the atmosphere became rather elated; the emotional highlight of the evening was the last composition, when João in her solo crossed through all possible idioms of expression facilitated by her voice; she oscillated between singing, talking, whispering and whimpering. She not only astounded the listeners but also herself and the rest of the line-up, apart from Laginha composed of Brazilian drummer Alexandre Frazão, who the day before accompanied Bernardo Sassetti, and Bernardo Moreira on bass.

Thus the oldest European jazz festival again concluded in a colourful and promising mode, amply offering free music and free collaborations – either creative blend of genres, which was palpable throughout, or the combination of music and photography, featured in the Small Gallery of Cankarjev dom. This year, the Festival was characterised by artistic synergy, musical cross-over and creative fusion. In this regard, especially worth mentioning are Robert Jukič, who blends jazz with film score, Igor Lumpert who brings together tradition and innovation, as well as the Hidden Orchestra and Angles.