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VIOLA FALB / BERND SATZINGER / MARK HOLUB TRIO - A Room for You

SLAM Productions SLAMCD 2112

Viola Falb, saxophone; Bernd Satzinger, bass; Mark Holub, drums
Recorded 12/13 September 2018 at Hotel Pupik, Schrattenberg, Scheifling, Styria, Austria

HOTEL PUPIK is an internationally oriented Artists-in-Residence programme.

This is the first album from a new, saxophone-led, free jazz, free improv trio from Austria.  The crux of the music (yet again) seems to be aimed at the generation of a group language through the melding of a gamut of individual ideas and expressions, to some degree born of an extraordinarily pedagogical bent, but also arising from the creative brilliance, ingenuity and skills of the inspired collective.

The trio manipulates an impulsively imagined timing, set in a malleable configuration which together yield a new freedom.  Improvisation is no longer seen as a natural or essential sequence to a chorus, but is instead an invitation to each instrument to spread itself, to travel where it will, to foil and frustrate the restraints that confine the jazz music so that it may now be played and heard freely.

Each musician has brought notions to the mill: Falb from many commissions and innumerable ensembles of different genres; Satzinger from years as composer/arranger for bass guitar and double bass and sideman for many groups, travelling worldwide; American Holub from his British, award-winning, jazz/rock quintet Led Bib project and other bands.  The three together provide a truly exciting sound.  They move with a continuous motion, bracketing abstractions and conceptions with extemporisation, and all in an air of high-dynamic multiformity.

This is Viola Falb at her very best and very much ‘of the present’.  There are many instances in this music which illustrate the persistence of the spirits of free jazz, contemporary jazz and classic, with some moments of folk in the blend too.  It needs no classification – just enjoy. 

Reviewed by Ken Cheetham

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