Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Cerkno / Stari plac / Slovenia
Concert date: 05/20/2016
Attendance: 350
Ticket price: €37.00
Alongside the accompanying program, namely the three-day concert photography workshop run by the renowned and highly esteemed master of the craft Žiga Koritnik, the second day of the Jazz Cerkno festival, the twenty-first edition overall, also spiced things up with the start of a two-day workshop on »wild food«, led, of course, by Jazz Cerkno’s longtime festival fixture, the »freelancer« Dario Cortese.
One of the most respected gurus of the appealing sphere of healthy living culture, the incredibly likeable and charismatic Dario, with his head and beard, also hosted the program across all three days of the festival, and so he kicked things off on the second day’s stage too, announcing the arrival of the trio led by one of the most internationally talented Slovenian keyboardists of the new generation, Marko Črnčec. The Maribor native, who earns his bread in New York, landed on stage backed by an exceptional rhythm section of Ricky Rodriguez (double bass) and Jonathan Barber (drums). The Marko Črnčec Trio’s set brought the festival a musical story of the highest listenability, yet at the same time heaped with musical complexity and the incredibly inventive, sly wit of soloing tricks that the guys, especially with Marko out front, conjured up from their world of imagination, or rather their perception of the vibrations of the musical universe. The transformation of that energy was extraordinary. Cunning fine-tuned mechanics, playing with a delicate touch in every single struck note, a constant attunement between musicians who at times played as if in a trance. The technical know-how gave the performance a feather-light feel, even though the guys had to grind away at full-on concentration, which demands an extraordinary degree of precision. Marko took the initiative in the solos, and with the classic piano and the electric »Rhodes« piano he kept up the central figure of the trio’s musical picture book throughout, but the other two members of the band also stretched out concretely with their full-blooded improvisational acrobatics. The band rode a refined, thin dividing line between musical accessibility and experimental breakaways, as the world of jazz knows them. They masterfully folded those two fields into a pamphlet that kept both the less demanding listeners and those who crave the most unusual in musical experimentation glued to their seats. Marko is definitely a hot item. On the rise. His artistic bloom is heading toward a creative zenith, and mountains will still tremble over this musician. At home and abroad. Brilliance and perfection are words that fall far short of describing the musical experience this trio’s performance in Cerkno left with listeners.
Next, another trio took the stage. A French one. Whatever comes from France is always something special. Different. Provocative. The adjective avant-garde often gets tacked on, too. And that’s no surprise in the case of Pourtant Les Cimes either. The band’s name and the music itself are inspired by haiku poetry from faraway Japan, especially the kind left behind by Matsuo Basho in the Edo period (the seventeenth century). The poems contain seventeen syllables, two lines of five and one of seven. So that’s three lines. On stage stands a trio. Which matches the delivery of musical structures »in triads«, in a sequence of successive moves by the individual members of the trio. Since the mission of haiku is supposed to reflect the authenticity of inner feelings through the momentary perception of one’s surroundings and nature, and the transformation of those feelings into verses, Pourtant Les Cimes approach it similarly, only here they of course lean on the language of jazz. Triads of momentary feelings that your surroundings fill you with, and the genuine transformation of them through the instruments. It certainly stirred up a hefty dose of musical strangeness, along with bold curiosity seasoned with sly twists from the three players, who strung together their performance in the spirit of strictly spontaneous development, of unexpected moves that sweetly shocked and entertained the listeners. And as always, it takes extraordinary concentration and extraordinary contact between all three so nothing goes wrong and the ideal coexistence within the triangle of building blocks of the sound picture doesn’t accidentally collapse. The motif of the first instrumentalist was picked up after an arbitrary pause by the second one’s motif, followed by the third, and the story repeated. Short, punchy tricks and passing the »ball« around without dropping it. Three charismatic musicians on the saxophone, drums and double bass axis delivered one of the most special experiences. Bathed in the glow of avant-garde provocation. Unique and unrepeatable. As is true of every concert by this band. There was no shortage of sonic pranks, and the one that probably stuck in memory most was drummer Didier Lasserre dragging a violin bow across his drums…. Boundless passion for music, it turns out, gives birth to exceptional gems.
Third on stage and the last act of the festival’s second day! A German-British pairing of keyboardist and drummer/percussionist. That’s Georg Graewe and Mark Sanders. Both musicians have extraordinary mileage behind them, collaborating in many musical formations, enriched with plenty of musical challenges of daring improvisation and experimentation. They also know each other very well, having worked together for years in the quartet Frisque Corcordance. Once again we witnessed an utterly abstract unfolding of events, with the two musicians weaving an unusual tangle of constant searching for musical twists, the kind that musical empiricism tolerates extremely poorly. Bold. Provocative the whole way through. They challenged each other above all. Being loaded with the mileage of rich experience made for extraordinary chemistry. This resulted in an incredibly supple responsiveness from both instrumentalists, who consequently complemented each other phenomenally in their playing and sailed lavishly and unbridled through jazz’s free spirit. Until the end of the night, of course.
The second day served up, just like the first, three performances, three completely different stories from the world of jazz, and so delivered to listeners a heaping helping of sensual musical experiences.
Photo Gallery
