Flemish Jazz Meeting - 08/09/2007@Vooruit, Gent

The Flemish Jazz Meeting is essentially a showcase to hip foreign concert promoters to what's happening in Flanders (though not all musicians involved were Flemish, and a few were even Dutch). It's an insider thing, somewhere between a pageant, a super-market and a mail-order catalogue, that's not even listed on Vooruit's website - I got in because I won a ticket (and, thankfully, I was in excellent company). Five bands each got a short set of generally three songs each.

Robin Verheyen Narcissus Quartet (myspace)
Robin Verheyen is maturing out of his wunderkind phase (the challenge, I guess, is to move from impressive to meaningful), no doubt helped by spending a lot of time in New York. Taking off from the more abstract end of '60s bop, they played a single, continuous improvised piece that may (or may not) have incorporated some written material at some points. The quartet moved from colouristic rubato and free-form to a percussive climax and finally slipped into a slow-burn time feel that perpetually threatened to be overturned. Verheyen was mostly above the fray, urgent and slashing on soprano, gentle and thoughtful on tenor. I still find him a little cold, but at least he's working hard to push his music outwards.

Narcissus Quartet - "Wudalianchi"


VVG Trio + Jozef Dumoulin (website)
This was a surprise. On the VVG's first two albums, the open-mindedness was implicit, but the music remained melodically-oriented and neatly organised even at its most improvisational. The three pieces they played here came from a brand-new album I haven't heard yet, and brought in a denser group sound as well as electricity (in the form of an electric bass and pre-recorded sounds). On the third piece, after having looped a sort of sneezing sound that was both funny and irritating, Bruno played with and around a pre-recorded version of the song's melody. The inflexibility of the recording was artfully embedded into a loose almost-groove in an intriguing and unusual way.

The most satisfying piece, though, harked back to the old days. In Gulli Gudmundsson's "Too Soon," against a pre-recorded backdrop of Sigur Ros-ian slow-moving strings and the rustling and plinking of drums and piano, the bassist and Bruno played and played around an elegiac melody.

VVG Trio - "In Orbit - the blast one"


Jef Neve Trio (myspace)
Back again so soon? I'm not complaining. "Sehnsucht," a piece of Schubert-inspired brooding, has become a staple, and in it the jazz looseness and the classical melody sit down and chat like old friends. The other two pieces managed to imply bustling activity and barely-contained enthusiasm even in their quietest moments. Jef is in such a fertile patch right now, he's like the Lil' Wayne of Belgian jazz.

Jef Neve Trio - "Nothing But A Casablanca Turtle Slideshow"


Maak's Spirit (myspace)
Quite clearly, Maak's Spirit is the closest thing Belgium has to the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Their usual theatricality was enhanced by a low-budget light show made up of neon lights and studio projectors strewn across the stage and operated by someone sitting next to the drums. The great concert I saw last spring had been based on the compositions from their latest album, but this time they improvised freely and delighted in humourously poking at standard codes of conduct. The dynamic range was vast: they projected more loudly and more harshly than everyone else, despite Laurent Blondiau (trumpet) and Jeroen Van Herzeele (tenor) and Eric Thielemans (drums) not being miked, but ended with a silence (and in near-darkness) caressed only by Jean-Yves Evrard's unplugged electric guitar strumming.

Maak's Spirit - "Strange Meeting"


Flat Earth Society (website)
A big band that draws the raw energy of Duke Ellington's jungle music into a contemporary complexity and an absurdist sense of humour: a growling wah-wah trumpet solo ended up being accompanied only by a coffee mug. To draw a really blog-centric comparaison, FES is an Industrial Jazz Group with a lot more institutional support and regular work.

Introducing the last of the three pieces, the clarinetist, leader and composer Peter Vermeersch mentioned a cameo by Joseph Goebbels. This turned out to mean FES's accordionist repeatedly interrupting the band, first to instruct them, in German, to play with less swing, then with a flat-footed two-beat, then with less chords and so on, until they were reduced to a single staccato note blown in unison. By that time, the docility with which the Nazi's orders were followed had become a little troubling. It was uplifting and poignant, then, when the musicians (the Goebbels impersonator and Teun Verbruggen, in his third appearance of the evening, excepted) filed out from behind their music stands to gather in a semi-circle at the front of the stage and attempt to reconstruct a quiet, swinging music.

The only album I have of theirs is fairly old and not nearly as good as what they played here, so no MP3.

Jazz Middelheim (Day 5) - 19/08/2007@Antwerpen

Every time I go to a festival and see the people, the tents, the setting (idyllic or not), the scramble for seats that haven't been "reserved" by means of jackets or cordoned off for VIPs that only show up for the headliner, the mind-numbing excess of music, the crush of photographers at the lip of the stage (Volume12 was apparently amongst the mob and got some nice, crisp shots out of it), the food stands and the picnicking, I ask myself why I put myself through it at all (maybe I attend the wrong festivals). Two years ago, Jazz Middelheim was for Wayne Shorter, this time it was for Ornette Coleman.

Jef Neve Trio
Jef Neve - p (myspace)
Piet Verbist - b
Teun Verbruggen - d

The M.C. ran down Jef's accomplishments, insisted on the word "philharmonic," and my resentment grew: must the audience really be reassured of the social worthiness of the music they are about to hear? Would they be less accepting of it if Jef had not won lots of prizes or not had the top-selling Belgian jazz album of 2005 (and, according to a press release, of 2007)?

The actual music was as magnificent as ever, and demonstrated its continued evolution. Gladly, the seven song set was made up exclusively of original (and mostly unrecorded) compositions: their shape-shifting, mischievous and romantic ways have always been far more vivid vehicles for Jef and the group than their takes on standards. Indeed, the uniqueness of this music is becoming ever clearer, from small gestures like the odd, fleeting shapes Jef used to accompany the bass solos, to the larger ones, such as the broadly-written story arcs the drove each piece. And between the two poles, there was Teun's liquid groove, whose details shifted around so continuously that it became almost amorphous.

For a long time, the immediate point of comparaison for Jef has been Brad Mehldau, and he'd be the last to deny the influence. However, I'm increasingly hearing that of Keith Jarrett as well (which undoubtedly has as much to do with my own listening as with the music itself) in the mix of vamp-based pop/blues, mainstream bop (the hard-edged '90s kind), heart-tugging melodies and classical clarity. A section in "Nothing But A Casablanca Slideshow Turtle" (which is as wacky as its title: it begins with a Hanon exercise gone psychedelic and shoots off from there) that featured the heaviest percussive playing I've ever heard this group do, also pointed in this direction. Whereas Mehldau and Jarrett inject everything they do with A Great Significance, Jef did all this in a spirit closer to Jacky Terrasson's playfulness.

every year i love this less and less

Nicolas Thys & The 68 Monkeys
Tony Malaby - ts
Andrew D'Angelo - as, bcl
Ryan Scott - g
Jon Cowherd - p
Nicolas Thys - b (myspace)
Nasheet Waits - d

Thys called up some heavyweight New York friends for a set that ended up looking better than it sounded. It started promisingly, with D'Angelo and Malaby climbing to a dual scream atop a steady vamp. Their mindsets were compatible despite their very different styles: D'Angelo, rocking violently back and forth, raced ahead with a tone that always seemed on the point of bursting, while Malaby, nearly immobile aside from a twitching leg, hung back with a calmer, slower-building power.

The steady vamping, as melodic as it was rhythmic continued, in pretty much all of Thys's compositions, but the overall mood felt a little too smooth, despite Waits's characteristic churn and the front-line interweaving. It was only at the very end that Thys's bass solo turned the mood from appeased to soulful.

Bert Joris Quartet
Bert Joris - tp, flh (myspace)
Dado Moroni - p
Philippe Aerts - b
Dré Pallemaerts - d

The Brussels Jazz Orchestra's The Music of Bert Joris is an absolutely great album of Joris's compositions (and soloing) that I cannot recommend enough. His quartet has just released a new CD, and it's with its title-track, "Mangone," that the concert really took off. The understated 4-bar vamp and the steady ticking of four-to-the-bar rim clicks allowed Joris's sensual phrases to hang in uncluttered air. The sense of stripping away the superfluous to arrive at a pure melodic core is central to Joris's playing, and emerged fully when he played fluegelhorn on an almost-ballad. Despite its quality, I didn't listen to the whole concert because I wanted to rest my ears before Ornette Coleman came on, but the crowd went wild for its local hero.

Ornette Coleman 3 Bass Quintet
Ornette Coleman - as, tp, vln
Tony Falanga - b
Charnett Moffett - b
Al McDowell - el b
Denardo Coleman - d

Most miraculous to me about this performance was that it made music mysterious again. How did they decide to begin and end? Why the trumpet, now, the violin, later? How was the inscrutable relationship between alto and the rest determined? With his spoken introduction, Coleman offered a seemingly simple answer to all these questions, and others besides: "If you follow the sound, we'll all be in the same room."

The three bassists mostly kept themselves out of each other's timbral range (Falanga and Moffett swapping bowing duties, Moffett judiciously applying Milesian wah-wah pedal as Coleman played trumpet, McDowell chording in the upper register), but three improvising bassists is never going to be easy for the listener to follow, so perhaps Denardo's steady, but not unsubtle, pummeling is meant to act as a counterweight to that tangled complexity.

The habitual (though always spine-tingling) encore performance of "Lonely Woman" (no improvisation, just an interpretation of a melody well-suited to a bass-heavy setting, as the original recording already featured that amazing bass thrum) highlighted a second outstanding aspect of Coleman's mysterious music-making. His tone and melodic playing have a conservative beauty that is startling in the context of the rough and tumble of Denardo's high-octane drums and the three-bass mêlée. I once read somewhere that Coleman was unhappy with the way the classic Atlantic quartet albums were mixed, because he wanted the instruments to be more equal in the mix. Here, though, it is difficult not to hear him as above the fray, even as he pushes and pulls against it. It is often said that musicians mellow as they get older, but I wonder if it is not rather that they are rid of all extraneous elements. Everything Coleman played sounded essential, in any case. The crowd roared.

"The Good Life" was included in the set-list (along with a Bach prelude that drew some laughter and some stuff from Sound Grammar). How could you not love this tune, even though the tumbling section in the middle was absent from this rendition?

Pascal Schumacher / Jef Neve - 28/03/2007@Jazz Station, Bruxelles

Jef Neve - p (myspace)
Pascal Schumacher - vib (myspace)

This duet is a spin-off of the Pascal Schumacher Quartet, in which Jef and Pascal have developed a rapport over the last four years. That rapport was put to the test right away, with a slightly-too-fingerbusting arrangement of "Alone Together" that zoomed through different modes of interaction and allowed for room to wiggle rather than defined spots for improvisation. It also mapped out the duo's territory: one that's demanding for the players, but immediately gratifying for listeners.

Interestingly, some of the duo's repertoire is made up of things that never really clicked in quartet format, but work well here. Bobby Hutcherson's "Sirius" was a case in point: a year ago at the Musée des Instruments de Musique, it had a twinkling-star-against-night-sky quality, this time it served to emphasise that more often than not, there was no accompanist, just the sum of intricate, tighty-wound interplay. The context allows Jef to play more full-bodied piano than he usually does, and he took full advantage of the space on Bud Powell's "Hallucinations," providing a strong walking bass line for an old-time swing feel. Another adaptation from the quartet's repertoire, a "Misterioso"/"Blue Monk" medley served as encore. After Jef's stripped-down blues playing, "Blue Monk's" theme was hilariously played in a dainty, stiffly aristocratic manner.



"Ancil" is one of Pascal's loveliest melodies, with its distilled, melancholy line that's left to hang in space long enough for its effect to sink in, but that feeling was lost as they grew louder and more emphatic. Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood" was more successful at preserving the lush ballad mood throughout, even after Pascal had finished toying with the unmistakeable first, rising phrase.

The instrumentation's more percussive possibilities were explored in "Wonder World," where simple, shimmering chords are rapidly pounded out in Minimalist fashion, occasionally blossoming into mist-shrouded melodies. You can hear a version of it on Pascal's MySpace page.

Jef Neve Trio, "Second Love" (excerpt)

Afterwards, Pascal told me a bit about the Quartet's just-mixed third record, Silbergrau. It will feature much of the repertoire they've been performing recently, along with a few improvised pieces. On a totally different topic, there was a suggestion that the Europe-as-Eldorado for certain big-name American musicians, who demand exorbitant fees, maybe be drawing to a close, due to fed up organisers...

Fred Delplancq Quartet - 24/03/2007@Jazz Station, Bruxelles

Fred Delplancq - ts (myspace)
Jef Neve - p
Gus Bakker - b
Kris Duerinckx - d

Fred Delplancq is a solid contemporary post-bop player, with an even sound and a predilection for rolling, muscular rhythms. We walked in mid-way through the first set and, maybe I was tired or irritated, but it took me a very long time to get into the music. The last two songs of the second set, in fact. The turning point came with a sublimely slow introduction: Delplancq intoned a plaintive melody, accompanied by droning arco bass and thunder-clap piano string strumming. Kris Duerinckx progressively grew agitated, in complementary contrast to the stretched-out mood. Jef's solo was magnificently spare, with chiming chords left to hang in space.

This was followed by a very different kind of tune, as Delplancq and Gus Bakker exchanged raunchy blues phrases before leading into funky four-to-the-floor hard bop with a tricky, harmonically elaborate tag. Here, the saxophonist started with long, sweeping lines and ended with bluesy wails. On the encore ballad, Jef gave a most intriguing form of accompaniment to the bass solo, finding cristalline resolutions to unexpectedly dissonant chords.



There's currently a Chet Baker exhibit at the Jazz Station, with photography, LPs, newspaper and magazine articles and other memorabilia. Some gig-in-the-basement photos made me think of the difficulty of performance photography, too many of which are just "here is X, playing instrument Y." Including mine, which is why I generally avoid posting concert photos (though I've been indulging recently, human weakness...). I think Jean-Philippe's from the Susie Ibarra concert go beneath the surface and comment on the music itself. I especially love the minimalist Craig Taborn photo.

musician questionnaire: pascal schumacher quartet

[The whole quartet took the questionnaire together at the Sounds, which explains the lack of details (but I love Jens's bonus question answers), but ensured lots of unprintable jokes and conversation that ricocheted between english, french, dutch and german.]

Pascal Schumacher (PS) is a vibraphonist from Luxembourg. His Quartet has released two excellent albums and has just recorded its third. He won the Django d'Or Nouveau Talent in 2005. (myspace)

Jef Neve (JN) is a pianist. His Trio recently made its major label debut with the amazing nobody is illegal and is proving immensely popular. (myspace)

Bassist Christophe Devisscher (CD) recently recorded and toured with the resurrected English singer Tony Christie and is a member of his wife Kristen Cornwell's quintet.

Jens Düppe (JD) is a German drummer. He replaced Teun Verbruggen in the PSQ last year and is a member of the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra and (sometimes) the Brussels Jazz Orchestra. He's the only I got to ask the bonus questions to.

GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:

1. Movie score:
PS: All the James Bonds, Kill Bill;
CD: Cinema Paradiso (Ennio Morricone);
JN: The English Patient (Gabriel Yared);
JD: Le merveilleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Yann Tiersen)

2. TV theme:
CD: "3rd Rock From The Sun", "Frasier";
JN: "MacGyver";
PS: A-Team;
JD: "Alf"

3. Melody:
CD: "Godfather Theme" (Ennio Morricone Nino Rota);
JD: "Ballad of the Sad Young Man" (Frans Landesman/Thomas Wolf) as played by Keith Jarrett on Tribute;
PS: "Still" (Elvis Costello), "Innocent Eye, Chrystal See" (Harmen Fraanje, from Ronja);
JN: Second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto

4. Harmonic language:
PS: Debussy;
CD: The Beatles;
JN: Scriabin;
JD: Radiohead, African singing

5. Rhythmic feel:
JN: Shakti;
JD: Bulgarian music

6. Hip-hop track:
JD: "Feel Like Making Love" as covered by D'Angelo on Voodoo;
PS: "Die Da" (Fantastischen Vier);
CD: "Praise You" (Fat Boy Slim);
JN: Vanilla Ice "Ice Ice Baby" [I tried to discourage him...]

7. Classical piece:
CD: "Adagio For Strings" (Samuel Barber);
JN: "The Passion of St. Matthew" (J. S. Bach)
PS: The Military Orchestra of Luxembourg playing a swing version of "Eine Kleine Nachtmuziek" [sarcasm alert: Pascal had endured this the previous night];
JD: "Symphonie Classique" (Prokofiev)

8. Smash hit:
PS: "The Man Who Sold The World" (David Bowie);
CD: "Don't Dream It's Over" (Crowded House);
JN: "With Or Without You" (U2);
JD: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Nirvana)

9. Jazz album:
JN: "Songs" (Brad Mehldau);
PS: Xenophonia (Bojan Z), - (Nelson Veras);
CD: Live At The Pershing (Ahmad Jamal), Trio Jeepy (Branford Marsalis);
JD: Live at the Village Vanguard (Bill Evans), Bloomington (Branford Marsalis)

10. Non-American folkloric group:
PS: Milton Nascimento;
CD: Goran Bregovic;
JN: The Chieftains;
JD: Djavan

11. Book on music:
CD: Beneath The Underdog (Charles Mingus), Schoenberg's harmony book;
PS: Sonata Forms (Charles Rosen), Farinelli;
JN: Mozart's letters to his father;
JD: The History of Blue Note

BONUS QUESTIONS:

A) Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would never guess in a million years:
JD: Dave Sanborn Heart To Heart and Straight To The Heart. I know both... by heart.

B) Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is underrated:
JD: Jorge Rossy - the Brad Mehldau Trio isn't the same without him; Billy Hart; Bob Moses - I once recommended that a saxophonist friend go to a Moses workshop I couldn't attend. He was the only one there!

C) Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit (but wasn't, not really):
JD: The only rock I know, I know because it sold a lot.

D) Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer:
JD: Brian Blade, Fellowship. He's a busy player, but manages to sound warm and transparent.

Pascal Schumacher Quartet - 01/02/2007@Sounds, Brussels

Pascal Schumacher - vib (website | myspace)
Jef Neve - p (website | myspace)
Christophe Devisscher - b (myspace)
Jens Düppe - d (website)

This is the sixth Pascal Schumacher Quartet concert review I've written on this blog, to which I must add a couple more for Citizen Jazz, not to mention reviews of both PSQ albums and a feature article for Flemish arts magazine Rekto:Verso. This would be overkill if the band hadn't evolved steadily (and maybe it's overkill anyway?), notably with the recent change of drummer. Jens Düppe provides a steadier, more swing-rooted beat, compared to Teun Verbruggen's super-interactive style. The difference between the two is captured in Jens's answer to the DTM musician questionnaire's "pop or rock album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit" question, which should be up soon.

The last PSQ concert I saw, in October of last year in Gent, was pretty lacking in energy, but introduced me to some of the new compositions they'll be recording for their third album. This concert, with those new tunes and some even newer ones, however, was strong.

With Jens, it's become a four-composer band, making it difficult to fit everyone's pieces in, perhaps explaining why none of Jef's were played. Also, the scope of the influences and rhythms they're bringing in is growing all the time, exemplified by the Arabic base of Christophe's "Sita's Walk" and the collective, uncentered groove Pascal's "Piata's Paint Thing" bursts into. "Monday Night at the Cats Club," also by the vibraphonist, was particularly striking, for a band used to making grand gestures: the menacing, low-lying piano chords that changed at unexpected times and the steady jingle of bells attached to Jens's foot created a menacing atmosphere, like an acoustic version of minimal electro. The difference with the pair of Pascal's older tunes that they played, the compressed, multi-thematic "Leap Year" and the bursts of rock that punctuate "Kitchen Story," was huge.



Jens contributed two pieces. "Kaa" gets its title not from the snake in The Jungle Book, but from a frequently-used Thai token of politeness. It's a mid-tempo ballad made slower by the bass's 3-over-4 pattern and the four simple, lovely chords it drifts through, over and over. The more challenging and percussive bridge livened things up, though. "Toast And Salty Butter" demonstrated Jens's affinity with African music, as its South African-style chords and polyrhythmic groove triggered a melodic, '70s Jarrettian solo from Jef, and a particularly singing one from Pascal.

The oldest tune they played was Christophe's "Chucho's Groove," a sturdy 9-beat bass vamp that everyone hovered around. Familiarity allowed for some silly frolicking, as when Pascal achieved sci-fi FX by speeding up his fan. He seems to be manipulating sound more adventurously, of late: the new "A Bad Memory" was the first time I've seen him use a bow, a practice that, a few years ago, he saw as being confined to contemporary classical.

A Monk medley that starts as "Misterioso" and ends as "Blue Monk" had failed to take off in Gent, but turned into a heavy-duty blues workout this time. It started with a vibraphone intro that toyed with "Misterioso"'s ascending intervals and the vibes-specific overtones they created (a bit like the intro to "Summertime" on Change of the Moon), then morphed organically from a heavy 12/8 to a 4/4 shuffle to some classic Jef Neve clowning around with hilariously simple, sing-song blues lines, one hand on the keyboard, the other on the strings, and ended with a series of intense bass-drum exchanges.

Jef Neve Trio - 30/01/2007@Vooruit, Gent

Jef Neve - p (website | myspace)
Piet Verbist - b
Teun Verbruggen - d (website | myspace)

Just a short note, as I have a review of Jef's great nobody is illegal coming up.

Contemplating the packed Vooruit, my joy at Jef's new-found stardom was tinged with sadness, as I couldn't help but think back to the same room, two-thirds empty for Dave Burrell, last October.

The first set got off to a slow start, despite the evanescent quality of new composition "Remorse." Three of the six tunes played were ballads, and while they showcased the trio's ability to use stillness and silence to great effect, they weren't really arresting. Things started to warm up with the driving "Wakeup Make-Up," which elicited Jef's first leap from the bench. His body language is a fairly precise indicator of the music's quality: the more he jumps around or laughs, the better the music being played is. They ended the set in style, with "Second Love," which, while less agitated than the album version, swelled to relatively gigantic sonic proportions.

The second set was brilliant from start to finish. A revised and retitled Schubert "Impromptu" allowed Jef to fully channel Mehldau in both his playing and title: "Sehnsucht." "It's Gone," from his second album of the same name, gained a surprisingly funky syncopated undertow that Jef either dug into with sparse, percussive lines or floated above with translucent chords.

One of this trio's particularities is that every composition has a strong narrative drive: new motifs or moods are introduced, finnicky rhythm accents are placed in strategic places, the band grows busy and relaxes together. This whole process, though, has grown increasingly organic: certain elements can be stretched when the need arises, so that there's never the feeling of a rush towards the next cue or section. "Nothing but a Casablanca turtle slideshow dinner" - a classical-to-bop-to-afrocuban fantasia as exuberant as its title - clearly used the in-built freedom, as Jef engaged in an extended duel with Teun by slapping the piano's strings, as Piet kept up a frenetic vamp.

jef what i asked for

Download this Jef Neve radio session. In addition to some chatter, he plays originals "Not What I Asked For" and a particularly good "It's Gone," followed by a tempestuous "Alone Together." There's even a cameo by enfant terrible Arno.

It's actually part of Jérôme Colin's podcast-only weekly "radio" show VOX and it seems pretty good.

it's gone, recaptured

Jazzques links to a live Jef Neve recording/interview originally found on Vox.

Feeerieen Day 2: Jef Neve Trio + swod

The week-long Feeerieen festival is taking place in the park opposite the Palais Royal. A sort of big gazebo set up in its middle serves as (a very high) stage. Park benches fan out in front of it. Blue and green spotlights lighting up the trees, gently pulsating garlands of light and dry ice machines placed not only on the stage but also in the treetops conspire to give the event the Mists of Avalon feeling the title implies.

swod is a Berlin duo made up of laptopper/electronics guy Oliver Doerell and pianist Stephan Woermann. If jazzTronika is usually an updating of funky hardbop/soul jazz, then swod is Electronic Third Stream. The beats (and sometimes non-beats, when recurring noises give only the merest hint of propulsion) and piano-playing are minimalist: soft pulses connected by threads of static, clicks and gloops form fragile webs, while Woermann drops in icy chords or repeated melody fragments in careful doses that leave plenty of breathing room. swod skillfully avoids the piano-on-top-of-beats format, as the occasional more animated passages tend to be about the piano fully taking on a rhythmic chording role in the music's centre. Afterwards, I talked briefly with the od in swod (who is much more approachable than the retiring stage demeanour and skinny black suit would suggest) and bought their CD. I figure the music is better in the studio than on stage. Even if it's not, at least in my living room I won't have people behind me loudly voicing their displeasure.



The Jef Neve Trio continues to develop strongly (search for Jef Neve in the box at the top of the page, if you've missed the previous episodes). The last time I saw them, they played a tune Jef had written that afternoon. A few months down the line, it seems that "Second Love" has grown into a fully-fledged repertoire staple. The swinging 5/4, heavily chorded opening and closing sections have a Radiohead-ish feel to them (or a pianist-playing-Radiohead feel to them), while the middle 4/4 gives Jef a chance to do what he does so well, and is one of the main reasons he is so popular. I like to call it the "blossom" mode of soloing, as opposed to the traditional forward-moving string of ideas mode. Jef builds on the sound the composition has established, keeping strong melodic, harmonic and structural links to it, but pushing outwards at the same time. The melancholy "Lament" introduced this style a couple of years ago, "Second Love" is a more forceful take on it. The set-opener "Benny the Blues Goose" and "Ballad for Plastic Surgery" merit mention, at least for their titles. An old original like the joyously triumphant "When Spring Begins" continue to be tinkered with and so remains interesting after nearly three years and many performances. Perhaps sensing the audience's mood, the trio kept it fairly big: the tepid reaction to swod had shown that a carefully chosen dissonance that creates an ambiguous and affecting soundscape wasn't going to win this crowd over.

Pascal Schumacher Quartet - 18/07/2005, Antwerpen

Two weeks ago we had gone up to the Hopper, a 45-minute drive away, to see Pascal and Jef in duo (something I've been waiting to see for a long while, a wait that seems justified, see below), but due to something of a scheduling conflict, the entire quartet was performing in South Africa at the time. They were replaced by a random band and a loud audience. This time, everyone was in their right place and the monday night Hopper crowd allowed itself to be tamed. The Hopper itself is an important jazz institution, doing in Antwerpen what the Sounds does in Brussels: a smallish bar that has a lot of concerts and gives musicians young and old space to develop bands, with month-long monday (and occasionally tuesday) residencies. The Sounds provides a more pleasant listening experience, though.

Almost a year ago, the PSQ won a French competition, the main reward of which is two days in one of France's finest recording studios. They're heading there in a couple of weeks' time, so tonight's concert was a bit of a preview for the group's second album, scheduled for release in November.

We stood at the bar for the first set, which isn't the ideal place for listening or comfort and my enjoyment was probably impacted. They started with Bud Powell's "John's Abbey," a fast bebop tune to warm up with. I don't consider the PSQ to be a bebop band and probably wouldn't like them nearly as much if it were their bread 'n' butter: I can think of better places to get my straight bop, so that's not where their comparative advantage lies. Things really started cooking with Neve's sure-fire "Blues for Mr. P.S.," by now an old favourite. The theme doesn't necessarily tell you it's a blues, but the piano solo does. Then came an exotic Mike Mainieri tune: a biguine-type bass and a tom-based (as opposed to cymbal-based) rhythmic pattern give off a slow, sultry Caribbean steam (kind of like a Bacardi ad's visuals), while the vibraphone melody delights in wide and oddly melodic intervals and the piano solos in a wonderful reflective (the use of octaves, perhaps?) Cuban mood. The first set ended with Schumacher's "Kitchen Story," which starts gently but discord erupts periodically, as if to evoke a blender's sudden cacophony. Metric shifts emphasise the mood swings as waltz becomes harsh 4/4 rock.

The undisputed highlight of the second set was a medley of Neve's "Flim Music" (new to my ears) and Cole Porter's "You and the night and the music" (they've been playing that one for a while). Neve uncorked one of his trademark intros, which are unpredictable (simple or complex, happy or sad or playfully weepy) but incredibly penetrating. Here, the key moment was a quiet, rising 3-note arpeggio that brought the chattering crowd to a talkstill through sheer simplicity and obstinate repetition. The song could then burst forth boldly and joyously, with something of a Keith Jarrett European Quartet feel. The transition to the Porter was handled as a demanding and magnificent piano-vibraphone duo: seamlessly blending water-surface textures, complex interlocking rhythms and fast unison lines, it was breath-taking. As an encore, we were treated to a Belgian premiere: a light, happy South African song learnt during the tour and powered by an irresistable dance rhythm.

Clearly, the band is still moving forward, even if many of the basic parameters are set. The old sense of joy of playing together is still there and individually, the players continue to evolve: for example, Schumacher seemed to me more fluid on four mallets than he used to. Tellingly, he never reverted to two.

Jef Neve Trio - 16/06/2004, Brussels

This is the third time I've seen Jef's trio in the space of a few months. I even passed up the France-Croatia game to go see the concert. Following someone like that (I also see him regularly in Pascal Schumacher's Quartet and a few days ago got a CD with Jef as sideman) creates an interesting tension: I've built up so many reference points that there's a sort of objectivity within my (strongly favourable) bias. I can hear (to a degree) when he's pulling an old trick out of the bag and when he's doing something new. I can hear the trio (Piet Verbist on bass and Teun Verbruggen (photo) on drums) evolving, its repertoire getting sharper. I revel in the always radically different piano intros to "When Spring Begins," which have ranged from maudlin hymn to austere abstraction.

One major evolution was the trio's interpretation of standards. Back in March, they had only recently started integrating standards among the original compositions (mainly written by Jef, some by Piet). They slipped into a kind of pastiche of Miles Davis's first quintet's rhythm section or amused themselves by superposing 3 tempi, which "sounded very much like bad jazz well-played." Pleasant, funny, even, but anecdotal. Now it's a different story.

The second set was having a little trouble taking off, when on the fourth song Jef opened with a beautiful, long piano intro. He's a big fan of Russian composers and I think he was taking his not-too-abrasive dissonances from there* (that's another positive evolution: the increasingly imaginative integration of classical music into his jazz playing). The trio eventually slid into "Blame It On My Youth." The slow and spare accompaniment complemented Neve's dramatically pianissimo forays into the upper register, the intro's classical bent came back in discreet touches. Bill Evans probably owns this tune, but Jef was staking a strong claim.

The magnificent first set ended with "Get Yourself A Wheelchair." This tune is as cock-sure as the title suggests, racing between three different tempi. What made it really impressive is that the tempi weren't simple multiples of each other and that the trio didn't jump-cut from one to the other, but accelerated and decelerated together towards the new tempo, over a bar or two.

You know you're gaining fans when people recognise unreleased tunes. When Jef announced "Lament," the person in front of me commented knowingly (in Dutch) to his neighbour "That's a really great tune." It won't remain unreleased too long though, as the recording sessions for Jef's second album are done.

* Not that I actually have any firm knowledge to base that on.

Jef Neve Trio - 01/04/2004, Brussels

Jef Neve - p
Piet Verbist - b
Teun Verbruggen - d

This was a pretty big night for Jef Neve, as it was his first time playing in the prestigious Flagey and he was in suitably high (too high?) spirits (a number of people seemed surprised by all the joviality and smiles displayed). He introduced a new move to his stage show: the standing jump. I'd already become used to the sitting jump (or "frog jump," as I like to call it), but the standing jump (I haven't found a cute name for it yet) is a new one. There was a massive turnout of about 200 people: the small Studio 1 (Flagey has a much bigger Studio 4, where Andrew Hill played not too long ago, for example) was full to the brim and they even had to add two rows of wooden chairs. Two odd things: the trio were all in suits, as Neve had decided that should look sharp for their initial Flagey performance; on the first tune, as Neve snapped and counted to give the tempo, someone just behind me started snapping and counting as well, quite loudly. Weird.

The repertoire was similar to the one I saw him play just under a month ago at the Hopper in Antwerp. Both opened with a playful reading of Chick Corea's "Matrix" and otherwise consisted of new originals. Neve playing "Matrix" makes evident that Corea is perhaps the biggest influence on his composing style. A very nice piece was "Lament," which begins with Verbruggen tapping out a quiet drum'n'bass beat with hands and fingers, while piano and bass slowly build upon two sparely stated chords. It builds up to a kind of warm and relaxed folky-bluesy stretch (I always think of Norah Jones at this point... in a good way), bursts into a full-out 12/8 before dissolving into a more classical-sounding take on the initial two chords. In the middle, Piet Verbist took a very nice bass solo, full of finger-bending double stops. Overall, the feel was open, dreamy and with an emphasis on texture, as Neve often insisted on a single low note while Verbist doubled it on bow.

The fourth tune featured a very nice intro recalling Brad Mehldau's contrapuntal playing. The second standard played was "It Could Happen To You," which featured a fantastic bass solo in the 50s jazz style the trio decided to play the tune in. Sometimes you branch out by going backwards, I guess. The last piece before the encore was "Get Yourself a Wheelchair" in which tempo was stretched and compressed like a lump of clay. This and the previous "Bop Me If You Can" seem to indicate that Neve is taking a subtler approach (both in his writing and soloing) to the fast, highly arranged bop of "Pink Coffee."

The two-song encore consisted of a three-tempos-at-once "There Will Never Be Another You" (until the three tempos snapped into one towards the end, it sounded very much like bad jazz well-played, which was the point, I think) and the ever-popular "Blues For Mr. P.S." I felt this concert not quite up to the afore-mentioned Antwerp one, but Flagey does tend to have a slightly soul-sapping effect, on jazz performances at least. Still, I taking a stand now and saying that I don't know who can challenge Neve for the title of "Best New Talent" at the Belgian Django awards to take place in December.

Week-end round-up

4 concerts in 4 days (Jef Neve Trio, Sylvie Courvoisier, Vandermark 5, Lundis d'Hortense Festival) is a nice run, even if I only really enjoyed 2 of the 4 nights.

Jef's trio was better by leaps and bounds than what I heard just under a year ago. He's recording a new CD aimed at a November release, which should be excellent.

The Vandermark 5 was MINDBLOWING! I'd never seen them before, nor Ken Vandermark himself, and was simply overwhelmed. I was most impressed by the combination of brawny free jazz playing and smart writing/arranging that kept the concert moving forward and not stagnating in some morass of meaningless energy. I've written about it for Citizen Jazz, maybe I'll write something in english for One Final Note.

The second day of the Lundi d'Hortense (I missed the first day in favour of Vandermark) was rather underwhelming. It started out with guitarist Peter Hertmans's trio, playing slow-moving ECM-ish kind of stuff of little interest. Then he brought out three young horn players, most impressive of whom was Tim Dejonghe, who, after fumbling about a bit in a bop vein, found a Miles circa Jack Johnson groove, which energised the rest of the band and got them into a great rock beat.

Then 20-year-old saxophonist Robin Verheyen gave a very good trio concert, playing original compositions and some jazz standards like Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti" and Monk's "Introspection." He's got a fair amount of "heir apparent" hype around him at the moment, but he's both technically gifted and smart, so hopefully he'll fulfill the potential made apparent during this concert. Interestingly, Wayne Shorter sounded like a big influence at first, but a few hours later at the jam session, he was playing just like Charlie Parker.

The main part of the festival ended with pianist Diedrik Wissel's world music extravaganza: harmonica, cello, guitars/saz, bass and drums/percussion, with singer Fay Claassen joining in at the end. It's one of those things where you're supposed to bask in the music's well-arranged internationalist beauty, but I found it rather dull and drifted off a fair amount. The last straw was when on the last song, Wissel took a solo consisting of running up and down a scale in the most harmonically and rythmically uninteresting way possible, over and over. It was one of those moments where you felt like heckling was appropriate, just to show him that someone was paying attention and ready to call him on his shit. If only I had those kind of balls. Other minus points were that the band as a whole, and the harmonica and guitars especially, were way over amplified. Thankfully, they never rose much above a self-satisfied mezzo-forte. One thing I did find cool were the frequent unissons between cello and harmonica: an unexpected combination that really worked.

From what I was told, the first day of the festival was dominated by a fabulous performance by Jef's trio, which pleased me much. Saxophonist Bart Defoort's quartet and guitarist Marco Locurcio's electronic group sandwiched Jef, but I didn't get the feeling that either did anything to write home about. So, interestingly, the younger musicians will have stolen the show this year. A good sign, I guess.

Orange Kazoo & Pascal Schumacher Quartet - 5/02/2004, Brussels

Amazingly, I forgot my notebook, and then suffered computer problems that stopped me from posting earlier, so the accounts of these two concerts will be more sketchy than usual.

I had seen Orange Kazoo almost two years ago, when they released their first album. Back then, they had a singer who sang in a language of his own invention, to very good effect, but he's no longer in the band. Despite this, and being playfully billed as "jazz rock afro bulgarica," Orange Kazoo seems to have become far more song- (they even words everybody understands now) and composition-oriented, reducing improvisation to almost incidental levels. But wait, I hear you ask, who/what is Orange Kazoo?

Orange Kazoo is a band that originated in Charleroi (home to comic book character Spirou) and is made up of musicians that come from outside the music academy circuit (and, from the look of some of them, from the dingy-hippy demographic). Because of the notoriously atrocious concert conditions at the Café Central, I'm not sure what the line-up was. I could make out drums, electric bass, keyboards, guitar, marimba (an essential distinguishing feature), saxophone, trumpet (I think) and flute. At least two of the musicians (including the female marimba player) did some singing. I say "made out" because I couldn't be bothered to stand up during the one (first) set I heard (a sign of aging?) and there were many bodies between the band and me. That's part of the reason I left after one set: all those people seemed to absorb most of the higher-register instruments, leaving the bass as lead voice (from where I was sitting) and rendering front-line passages extremely indistinct.

The "jazz rock afro bulgarica" tagline sums up the band pretty well. They started out with a jazz-rockish 5/4 groove, and sometimes went into the long unisson lines characteristic of the genre, but a Fela Kuti horn arrangement influence ensured that the lines never became too unwieldy. The bulgarica intervened once, when they briefly sounded like an East European fanfare. Still, after a 40-minute set, I had had enough of the poor listening conditions, so I decided to drive cross-town to the Sounds to drop in on the Pascal Schumacher Quartet. Long-time readers will moan "What? Again?" What can I say? I like 'em.

I got to the Sounds in time for the last song of the first set. If the November concert had been dissappointing because of the stress of an upcoming recording session (the quartet's first CD, Change of the Moon, will be released next month on Igloo Records), here they were relaxed and in full gear. While not as explosively energetic as at the Hopper, this was perhaps the most balanced and well-rounded of the three PSQ concerts I've seen. Ballads such as bassist Christophe Devisscher's "Goodbye Little Godfather" (the version recorded by Alexi Tuomarila's quartet, of which Devisscher is also a member, contains an incredibly poignant solo bass intro) and Schumacher's "Change of the Moon" were played sensitively, and the semi-ballad reading of "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise" was playful. They also played a few of pianist Jef Neve's compositions: the fast, stop-start "Pink Coffee," the poppish backbeat of "When Spring Begins" and the Bad Plus-ish "Blues For Mr. PS." The first two were given fantastic versions that easily topped those recorded on Neve's Blue Saga and highlighted how much of a band this quartet has become over the year or so they've been together. I interviewed Schumacher recently and he told me that the great thing about this particular group was that they really were friends: they didn't just see each other at concerts or rehearsals, but also met up to go see a movie. Apparently, this is fairly rare. In concert, the pieces seemed at once tightly arranged and loosely played, as the musicians bent the music in whatever direction they felt like going in. When Schumacher and Neve gently decrescendoed to near-silence, they proved once again that the best way to silence a crowd is to play quietly, rather than overwhelmingly loud. More generally, vibraphone and piano blended most felicitously, at times sounding like a new, third instrument.

For me, though, the highlights were a few of Neve's solos: I (and the rest of the crowd, judging by the applaud-o-meter) was left slack-jawed in wonder. He was in a lower register mood, and continuously came up with ways to make the bottom end of the piano sing. I've seen him in three different groups (including his own trio), and so far the PSQ is the one that has really pushed him the most, although I'm curious to see his new-look trio (later, Neve told me that he was soon to record a second trio album, and that in November he had a gig backing up no less than Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu). I think that he has the potential to become something like a Belgian Stefano Bollani: technically impressive, yet always audience-oriented in a non-pandering way (his solos retain a strong sense of melodic development) and with humour and fun shining through. At times, his contrapuntal playing, florid left-hand accompaniment (halfway between Bach and Bud Powell) and exchanging of leads between right and left hands may seem like a bag-of-tricks approach, but then again, I had never heard him do much of what he did last night.

After the concert, guitarist Pierre Van Dormael gave me some unexpected and amusing news. A song he composed/performed/recorded for that pride of Belgian pop, Plastic Bertrand, "Tout Petit la Planète," had apparently been covered by the Star Academy in Québec (Star Academy=Fame Academy=musical reality TV show) and that they had sold 520,000 CDs and 100,000 DVDs with his song on it. It's really hard to square what I know of Van Dormael with the most crassly commercial musical offerings, but it's great news nonetheless.

Pascal Schumacher Quartet - Brussels, 20/11/2003

Pascal Schumacher - vib
Jef Neve - p
Christophe Devisscher - b
Teun Verbruggen - d

A few days before going into the studio to record their first CD, the quartet went through a trial run in the d'Imprimerie studio's quite nice lobby/bar/performance space. Attentive readers will remember the previous concert I saw of this group. Here, being a trial run, the mood was a bit different: they had decided to try out short versions of the tunes and were thus able to get through 11 compositions. Results were a bit mixed: the energy never reached the explosive levels I witnessed at the Hopper (then again, I'm not sure how well the acoustically bright room would have supported them), but the ballads, such as Schumacher's "Ancil," benefitted greatly from more concentrated and coherent readings. Because of the shorter lengths, the trademark thunderous climaxes were perhaps rushed and ended up feeling a bit forced and mechanical rather than natural and organic releases.

There were, however, a number of highlights, such as Devisscher's "Goodbye Little Godfather," which opened with Verbruggen playing drums with his fingers and Neve strumming the piano strings, all this so softly that you could also hear him tap his fingers against the top of the piano. I badly needed to cough, but held it in so as not to risk breaking the mood. Then came the concert-ending "When Spring Begins," a happy and dynamic poppish Neve composition, on which, half-way through his solo, Schumacher dropped two of his four mallets into the piano to play fast but highly melodic lines, wonderfully supported by Neve's simple pop/gospelly/bluesy chords. Neve's solo started off with one hand providing the basis for 3-way amusement, with many breaks for bass or drums. Earlier on, on "Pink Coffee," another Neve composition, the pianist showed a bit of his "entertainer" side, standing up in throes of ecstasy, then crashing back down on his bench as the solo ended. To end the first set, the quartet played a very surprising re-arrangement and re-harmonisation of "Summertime" (a warhorse if ever there was one), adding a new motif that continued through much of the arrangement. My hope for the recording sessions and subsequent CD, is that they strike a good balance between those songs that benefitted from the concision displayed tonight (or last night, as it is now very early friday morning) and those that need to be stretched out and blown to bits, energy-wise. It is great fun watching this group play together, as they are all visibly happy to be making music together, and I hope that that spirit can be transferred to tape.

After the first concert, I commented that "Teun Verbruggen refuses to settle into anything for too long," but tonight he was far less jumpy - and it worked just as well. A great pleasure was being able to actually hear Devisscher, as he is an impressive player. You'd never guess he started out in heavy-metal bands!

Jef Neve told me that he was planning to record his second CD in February (the follow-up to the excellent Blue Saga) and mentioned some interesting-sounding experimentation the trio is working on (Jef: have you heard Michel Bisceglia's "Second Breath"? And have you talked with Pierre Van Dormael?). While he's an extremely exciting pianist, his composing skills continue to impress me just as much, as they are tuneful, original and interesting. A short new tune played tonight called "Blues For Mr. S" (I didn't think to ask who Mr. S was) sounded much like a Bad Plus tune, and Jef grudgingly admitted as much. I am extremely curious to hear what he has in store. As I always say: 300 Japanese fans can't be wrong!

Revisited: Jef Neve - Blue Saga (Contour)

I must admit that I rarely return to records after reviewing them. However, after the terrific concert described two posts ago, I felt the urge to pull out "Blue Saga" once more. I didn't remember hearing the high-energy playing Neve displayed in Pascal Schumacher's group, so I especially wanted to see if I had somehow missed it.

It turns out I hadn't missed anything. "Blue Saga" remains in the running for Belgian album of the year, but it is certainly far more sedate than the Schumacher gig. The set consists essentially of original ballads, interrupted only by the uptempo bop of Charlie Parker's "Segment" and "Pink Coffee" and the dynamic, two-drum back-beat of "When Spring Begins." While this may account for what I perceived as Neve's greater ability to carry a ballad (notably in dynamics and pacing), it offers only a limited view of his formidable capacities.

"Blue Saga" can be ordered from Jef Neve's website. Buy the album and help him pay off his brand-new Citroën Berlingo.

Pascal Schumacher Quartet - Antwerpen, 15/09/2003

Pascal Schumacher - vibraphone
Jef Neve - piano
Christope Devisscher - bass
Teun Verbruggen - drums

My oh my... Three words for last night's concert: energy, energy, energy.

I already knew and appreciated the talents of the Belgian rhythm section, but this was my first encounter with Schumacher, who is from Luxembourg (I didn't ask, but probably no relation to Michael and Ralf, despite a passing resemblance).

I may be over-stating the merits of this concert, as I was sitting within striking distance first of the vibraphone, then of the drums, but rarely have I seen young Belgian jazz musicians play acoustic jazz with this combination of energy, enthusiasm, joy and technique. Take away the lacklustre ballads, of which there were few in the incredible first set, too many in the second: these four guys (their collective age would be somewhere around 100) haven't yet mastered the art of dynamics necessary to make the ballads work. That leaves you with roof-raising, no-holds-barred playing on five or so long tunes. The pleasure they took in their music-making was evident, both visually, in the exchange of looks and smiles, and musically. This quartet is recording in November and I hope that this energy and joy can be captured on tape.

Pascal Schumacher was a very pleasant revelation. I pretty much never see vibraphone players, yet I've seen three in a little over a week: Belgian drummer Jan de Haas (vibraphone is his second instrument) and Frenchman David Patrois. Schumacher was the most fun of the bunch. When using two mallets, he successfully played fast bop-blues lines with soulful touches. I don't know what the dynamic range of the vibraphone is, but I would have liked to have heard a bit more space in his phrasing.

Teun Verbruggen refuses to settle into anything for too long. While paring down would lead to increased clarity and deeper groove (but maturity can wait!), his overflowing ideas and rhythmic shifts are a joy to behold. In the first piece, Satieology by Schumacher, Verbruggen moved easily between 3/4 and 4/4, sometimes super-imposing them. Later on, even when not formally called for, different rhythmic formulas tumbled forth.

Christophe Devisscher suffered from the "seen but not heard" syndrome that affects so many acoustic bassists, but contributed an enjoyably knotty, spikey and inscrutable composition called Chu Chu's Groove. While the bass remained fairly steady, the drums were even more unsettled than usual, the melodic elements veered towards the abstract and the whole kept on jumping nervously from one improbable construction to the next.

Jef Neve (interview, in French) was the man last night, for me. I have and enjoy his debut CD, Blue Saga (review (in Fench), which you can purchase at his website when the second pressing is done), but as a sideman he simply took his playing to another level. On a Joe Henderson composition, Neve provided a long, thoroughly awesome solo which started out in a mid-tempo, spare, funky, bluesy and percussive style and built up towards uptempo bop lines brimming with inventivity and playfulness. On another tune, his climax consisted of splintered chordal pounding. Which is not to say that great intelligence and structural elegance where not in play: they were, in spades. On the standard You and the Night and the Music Neve improvised in a Keith Jarrett fashion, throwing out lots of short, semi-abstract boppish lines, with attentive support provided by the rhythm section.

photo credits: Jos L. Knaepen