Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Cerkno / Star plac / Slovenia
Concert date: 20.05.2017
Attendance: 400
Ticket price: €17.50 (advance) / €20.00 (day of the festival)
The third day of the traditional, and by now 22nd, Jazz Cerkno festival had arrived. This day was special because women jazz musicians absolutely dominated the lineup! Despite the weather turning properly cold and nasty, it was a very busy day for the RockLine tandem. After catching the Halvorson / Fujiwara concert at the music school in Cerkno, our attention was grabbed by a »racket« drifting out of the carefully covered lobby of Hotel Cerkno. That’s where Nova Gorica’s Neseseri Kakalulu were playing. Wha… who? Wild name, no doubt about it. If I counted right (I was never brilliant at math), eight guys had »escaped« there straight from the rain. They were supposed to play before the first act of the festival’s last day on the paved area (part of a closed-off road) right in front of the festival grounds, but they would have gotten properly soaked there. They did make it out there later, once the rain stopped in the evening. With a shortened second set the same day. In the break while we waited for Tomeka Reid Quartet.
Even though I caught the gig in front of the hotel doors in its dying moments, it was easy to tell from the music that Neseseri Kakalulu are a seriously fun and high-spirited band, approaching music in the spirit of pure partying and positive vibes. The rhythmic structures are solid, backed up by extra jingly percussion. The melodic core is carried by a horn section of sax and trumpet, a dynamic, active bass guitar line adds the »groove«, and two guitars fill out the sonic space, with a pinch of rock. In short: the band works strictly instrumentally. The compositions are simple, Santana would have liked them, except that he’d complain about the total lack of guitar soloing. A musically simple, instantly winning lesson in funk, but also SKA, with rhythms that can nudge their way toward salsa too. All of it with a playful haircut of positively minded leading motifs. Good vibes in the rain, then. Lovable.
The first act on day three’s program, on the other hand, demanded more seriousness and a more attentive ear. Kaja Draksler Octet + 1! This was the premiere of this nine-piece lineup in Slovenia, led by the internationally established, highly regarded Slovenian composer and keyboardist Kaja Draksler. She lives and works in the Netherlands. She came to Slovenia with her octet, which, besides Kaja, is made up of vocalists Laura Polence and Björk Níelsdóttir, reed players Ab Baars, Ada Rave and Lotte Anker, violist and violinist George Dumitriu, double bassist Lennart Heyndels and drummer and percussionist Onno Govaert.
Yet another musical phenomenon you can’t really compare to anything. Kaja’s concept of setting poetry by various poets to music, from Adriana Minou and Pablo Neruda to Gregor Strniša, works through a truly unique fusion of compact motifs and jazz improvisation. It all depends on the nature of each setting, that is, on how the message and depth of the poem in question touch the arrangement plan. The band opened with a setting of Adriana Minou’s poem titled Promise is Promise, where the way both vocalists were combined and used within the structure of the composition was impressive. Quite a playful intro, too. Between pieces, Kaja addressed the audience, accompanying almost every number with a short story behind how it came to be. Later in the concert the band offered a much more experimental musical adventure and artistically challenging substance, marked also by the setting of Pablo Neruda in the composition Canto: XII, which at moments felt downright eerie, chilled, cold and alienated. The concert is a real treat, bringing together a wide range of musical ideas, and it’s fascinating how the building blocks of the »octet plus 1« coexist as equals, thrilling with a bold fusion of forms and structures that at first listen seem to have no common ground, and yet. The Kaja Draksler Octet, which among other things didn’t shy away from flirting with cabaret jazz chanson, bridged the apparent incompatibility of its musical fragments into a vivid macramé of absolute musical strangeness.
Finally! A group at Jazz Cerkno where guitar playing finally gets a more prominent role. Tomeka Reid Quartet. The group’s leader is Tomeka Reid, a cellist! She’s a top-class, versatile musician, and her quartet features, besides Tomeka, the very special guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and double bassist Jason Roebke. This group too is welded together from distinctly eclectic ingredients of musical perception. Lead composer Tomeka Reid creates music that follows clearly tangible structures throughout, delivering an exceptionally successful alloy of classical music and jazz freedom. No wonder guitarist Mary Halvorson fits so well into this formation, since her guitar playing is likewise a neat blend of jazz and neoclassical elements. Over an hour and a half, the quartet offered exceptionally refined, sensual playing full of unpretentious content, approached softly and subtly, with a great feel and movements full of fine mechanics. No escalations and blasphemous outbursts, no band shaking out an endless series of rapid-fire notes in an adrenaline rush. Okay, interludes of soloing are »allowed«, like the extended opening solo by bassist Jason Roebke on one of the pieces, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara also treated himself to a few solo excursions, but otherwise the quartet developed its soundscape as one organism. In an incredibly focused and concise dialogue, where the combining of tones never lets the motifs fall apart, even though the unusual atonal lines that appear in the playing and composing are more than necessary to break up settled, predictable patterns, and so keep even the most demanding music gourmet intensely occupied.
For the big finale, Finland’s Mopo, from Helsinki, took the stage. Mopo (which means moped in Slovenian) are an incredibly attractive and utterly likeable, infectious trio who quickly won over the whole audience with their stage presence, and the crowd followed the festival’s closing acts on the edge of their seats. Under the trio’s often goofy, lucid and grimacing direction. An absolute attraction and the best possible choice to close this year’s Jazz Cerkno festival. Three musicians: Linda Fredriksson, who played baritone and alto sax and a whistle that evening, bassist and double bassist Eero Tikkanen and drummer Eeti Nieminen. Unbelievable energy. Especially when it comes to saxophonist Linda. A tiny, scrawny girl barely bigger than her baritone sax, she swung the thing around with such intensity that many of her male peers on the jazz scene can only envy her. The band builds on solid phrasing, which Linda projects onto the compositions through her sax, and then the trio scatters off to their own corners at will and treats itself to witty exchanges of improvisational mischief, although Linda stays at the center of attention throughout. All the essential things in Mopo revolve around her saxophone. Linda’s escapades aren’t demanding, but they’re damn fun and inventive, so they could be integrated into jazz and rock fusion lineups without any trouble, and former Van Der Graaf Generator saxophonist David Jackson would be thrilled with them too (Linda can play harmonies by blowing into the alto and baritone sax at the same time, like the legendary David Jackson, although we didn’t get anything like that from Linda this evening). The band opened the show with the mischievous, high-spirited song Meikän kissa (translated: My Cat), somewhere in the middle they tackled Mustafa, which came about after the trio, wandering around Morocco, met a local with that name, the mildly mysterious Metsärukkanen worked especially tantalizingly, and Mopo threw a special party at the very end of the set, performing a song about a grandpa in two acts. The first act is called Pappatunturi (which means grandpa’s motor), followed by a particularly spiced-up second act called Vesiklosetti (grandpa’s toilet). Especially in the second act the group staged a proper show of theater, with Eeti dramatically hurling all his drumsticks into the drums and onto the floor, while he and Linda goofed around with rubber animals, as Eero unplugged from his bass and started theatrically tidying up a bunch of cables lying on the stage. All these sounds farcically brought to life grandpa’s intimate acts on the pot. On to the closing »chaos tornado«, then! Mopo are a phenomenal choice, delivering a mix of incredibly weird humor and constant positive vibes, generated by the playfully seductive lead motifs of the sax. Let’s hope this band shows up one day for a solo gig at the bar Gabrijel.
And that’s that. The 22nd Jazz Cerkno festival has been successfully wrapped up. It glowed in full splendor all three days. In all its unique glory. It spoiled and pampered everyone there once again! Like always. With plenty of excellent music and a rich side program that isn’t focused on music alone. And we absolutely can’t skip the excellent food, either. Along with Ančka’s top-notch goulash and a local specialty called »smukauc«, they also fry up the best calamari in the world there. We’ll meet again in Cerkno, and if not before, then definitely at the next one, the 23rd edition of the festival. See you next year!
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