TRIO NOW! - Live at Nickelsdorf Confrontatione
Leo Records CD LR 789
Tanja Feichtmair – alto sax and voice; Uli Winter – cello; Fredi Pröl – drums
Tanja Feichtmair improvises solo and in groups and uses those experiences here to exploit poignant lines which help to create scenarios against which animated Free/Bop channels may be explored. Cellist Uli Winter contributes tension through his clipped, gaunt idioms which are often set against the fluidity of his lower scales. The two are agreeably painted and shaded by Fredi Pröl’s adroit tinkering with stick and brush.
‘Trio Now!’ was recorded live at the Konfrontationen festival of Free and improvised music held in July each year at Nickelsdorf in Austria. This festival is more or less recognised as being the oldest celebrating free and improvised music and was nearly 40 years old this year. Its archives include such internationally celebrated artists as Marshall Allen, Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Louis Moholo and Simon Nabatov, but the aim of the festival does not seek to draw attention to recognizable ‘leaders’ of the avant-garde, but selects exploratory music that does not emphasise nations or nationalities but focuses on content.
Hence Tanja Feichtmair, because she, her voice and her saxophone have precisely that cutting edge that can sculpt and define the position that the trio holds, playing free jazz that hasn’t forgotten lyricism, amalgamating both yet never losing its fulcrum. Cello and drums clearly understand and underpin the associations and the trio delivers the best of classical free jazz, brim-full of energy, intensity and power.
This is a great band, the musicians gently prodding each other this way and that and showing the whole collective at its very best: absorbed, articulate, coherent, inspired and spirited.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Leo Records CD LR 789
Tanja Feichtmair – alto sax and voice; Uli Winter – cello; Fredi Pröl – drums
Tanja Feichtmair improvises solo and in groups and uses those experiences here to exploit poignant lines which help to create scenarios against which animated Free/Bop channels may be explored. Cellist Uli Winter contributes tension through his clipped, gaunt idioms which are often set against the fluidity of his lower scales. The two are agreeably painted and shaded by Fredi Pröl’s adroit tinkering with stick and brush.
‘Trio Now!’ was recorded live at the Konfrontationen festival of Free and improvised music held in July each year at Nickelsdorf in Austria. This festival is more or less recognised as being the oldest celebrating free and improvised music and was nearly 40 years old this year. Its archives include such internationally celebrated artists as Marshall Allen, Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Louis Moholo and Simon Nabatov, but the aim of the festival does not seek to draw attention to recognizable ‘leaders’ of the avant-garde, but selects exploratory music that does not emphasise nations or nationalities but focuses on content.
Hence Tanja Feichtmair, because she, her voice and her saxophone have precisely that cutting edge that can sculpt and define the position that the trio holds, playing free jazz that hasn’t forgotten lyricism, amalgamating both yet never losing its fulcrum. Cello and drums clearly understand and underpin the associations and the trio delivers the best of classical free jazz, brim-full of energy, intensity and power.
This is a great band, the musicians gently prodding each other this way and that and showing the whole collective at its very best: absorbed, articulate, coherent, inspired and spirited.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
