Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Cerkno / Gabrijel / Slovenia
Concert date: 16.02.2018
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €5.00
Two prominent jazz musicians stand behind Ullmann / Swell’s The Chicago Plan. The first is composer and trombonist Steve Swell, the second is German tenor saxophonist, bass clarinetist and no less of a composer, Gebhard Ullmann. Ullmann and Swell have known each other for ages and have been working together musically for almost fifteen years. The Chicago Plan is rounded out by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who is also in charge of the effects-laden sonic »mangling« of that instrument, and drummer and percussionist Michael Zerang. In 2016 the Ullmann/Swell’s The Chicago Plan quartet put out their self-titled debut on Clean Feed, and the critics of the international jazz »cuisine« welcomed it with wide open arms!
As befits the charming Cerkno venue Gabrijel (and as has become almost proverbial about it), the place always has to vibrate, resonate and jangle at least a little bit jazzy. And not that conventional, comfortably tailored cabaret jazzing, learned at the Graz conservatory with some cooing little dove front and center on vocals, peddling their »snobbery« and makeup in some old-Ljubljana bars. No, Cerkno is where the most extremely unhinged musicians of utterly free, truth-telling musical art have always taken refuge, the ones who have forever been marked by total avant-garde musical excess, or at least a pinch of it. Free jazz got its citizenship in Cerkno long ago, both through the esteemed Jazz Cerkno festival and the yearly Keltika festival program, which is where the Ullmann / Swell’s The Chicago Plan quartet played as well. Music in Cerkno always breathes with full lungs, and this time was no different!
Bar Gabrijel was enviably full. Not as packed as a week earlier, when Grad Gori! played there, but still filled with some 70 music-curious souls who always know how to treat their receptors to the finest and sweetest musical adventurism. A little after nine in the evening, about fifteen minutes late, the musicians took their positions on stage, and after some quiet anticipation, the opening part of the show went to a dialogue between Ullmann and Swell, or rather a »prolonged debate« between tenor sax and trombone, who slowly built up a sparkling, contemplative crossfire of improvised variations. In doing so they created the feeling of two old friends meeting again after a long time and now chatting away enthusiastically, as loud as they can. The crowd’s focus was unified. The audience stared ahead hypnotically, not even necessarily staring, some of them simply closed their eyes so they could melt even more easily into the quartet’s musical language.
Sure, the guys had sheet music in front of them, but at the same time they coaxed a sense of spontaneity out of their playing as if it were nothing, along with a heap of unexpected twists. Even though they come across as avant-garde and unhinged,they also develop a not insignificant measure of melodic tangibility, and phrasing like that from both wind players is by no means rare. The quartet floored everyone with their unusual musical language, which occasionally fell apart completely into the free form of witty and provocative jazz mischief, and then, after pushing everything to the extreme limit of free jazz shenanigans, masterfully »grounded« or »caught« itself on tangibly formatted motifs. The riddle of the evening was cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm. He was surrounded by a heap of effects, and every so often the guy conjured the strangest sounds out of that thing, frequently accompanied by distortion, which added even a touch of punk and rock and noise to the group’s concert ethereality.
The quartet masterfully handed solo spots back and forth. The transitions were fluid, the whole flow of events gave the impression that the quartet was playing with feather-light ease and having an immense amount of fun doing it. And that’s the essence of every performer once they step on stage. Along the way the musicians masterfully »opened doors for one another« through which the chosen individual stepped into the center of the action and, freely and following the inspiration of the moment, latched on to improvisations. The course of events kept flowing dynamically, and it was fascinating to watch, in such an intimate atmosphere, the communication between the quartet members, who, for all their free jazz shenanigans, still had to keep a measure of rationality. So it happened, for instance, that Swell and Zerang found themselves in a longer adventure together within a musical exposé, during which Ulmann and Lonberg-Holm stood completely still. At one point Ullmann patted Holm on the shoulders, as if to say: »Jump in« and, almost in a trance, the two simultaneously dropped into the motif that Swell and Zerang had been keeping going, round after round, for quite a while. In the obligatory encore, which was very short, we also got the answer to why a mute had been lying on the stage floor by Swell the whole time, and Ullmann finally picked up the bass clarinet too in this part of the show!
Bold, unusual, but never over the edge. So there you go. The musical substance is light, though not endlessly loosened up, which means Ullmann / Swell’s The Chicago Plan don’t demand a thick skin from the listener, something you can often experience in the wide kingdom of free jazz rhetoric. A gorgeous get-together, brilliant musicianship, superb interplay and a hypnosis that carried you far, far away for a good hour, into a parallel world that only these wonderful and unique artists can create.
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