Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Cerkno / Stari plac / Slovenia
Concert date: 17.05.2018
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: €39.00 (for all three days)
The year has turned and a new edition of the famous Jazz Cerkno festival has rolled around. The 23rd in a row, no less! As always, going to this event is about much more than just listening to and enjoying great music. It’s first and foremost a reunion of good old acquaintances, friends, comrades. You’ll be hard pressed to find as much good cheer piled up in one place, at the same time every year, as in Cerkno during Jazz Cerkno.
Day one alone brought three musical indulgences, and after the usual, well-oiled workshop program, shortly before half past seven in the evening Austrian jazz cosmonauts, united in an orchestra called Orchester 33 1/3, took the stage. A twelve-member crew made up of Christof Kurzmann (saxophones, electronics, vocals), Thomas Berghammer (trumpet), Günther Castanetti (percussion, drums), Viola Falb (saxophones), Klaus Filip (electronics), Katrin Hauk (guitar), Susanna Gartmayer (bass clarinet), Petr Vrba (trumpet), Michael Krupica (acoustic bass), Maria Petrova (drums), Michael Moser (electric bass) and Michael Danner (sound engineer), with two special guests, Slovenian musicians Irena Z. Tomažin (vocals) and Ana Kravanja (violin).
Bandleader Christof Kurzmann, planted on the far right and mostly blowing into his saxophone, quietly called the shots. The collective is sworn to absolute experimentation, and it quickly became clear that jazz is merely an umbrella label for everything that happens at their shows. Even the intro, which forced drummer Maria Petrova into playing a completely trivial rock beat that would fit in some punk rock band, hinted that we were in for some real oddballs. Tight jump-ins at just the right moments, solo flare-ups from saxophonist Falb or trumpeters Berghammer and Vrba, Moser occasionally scraping a violin bow across his bass, bizarre sounds from electronic manipulations out of Filip’s Apple gear, extra percussion, interlocking with the acoustic bass,… At moments a complete »breakdown« into cacophonous turns, then a swing back into assembled interplay with forms where you can more easily pick out a phrase, but always teasing and unpredictable. Considering the band works as an orchestra, it takes a good deal of precision and deliberation to tune such a crew into one body that breathes and communes as one with the magic of the jazz experiment at hand. That experiment kept one foot firmly planted in outright avant-garde adventure the whole time. The band pulled off the big finale by having Kurzmann invite both Slovenian musicians onstage. Irena, of course, froze the crowd once again with her extraordinary vocal articulation, bringing back to life certain sounds you can barely believe the human body is capable of producing until you hear them. But the biggest surprise was the integration of the Slovenian partisan song Na oknu glej obrazek bled. The orchestra completely reworked the familiar melody, seasoning it masterfully with the at times fiercely provocative rhetoric of their own instrumental guests, while Kurzmann and Tomažin traded vocal lines. Irena sang in Slovenian, Kurzmann (presumably) in Austrian. Huh? An Austrian band playing a Slovenian partisan song? That doesn’t happen every day. What an outstanding opening to the new edition of the festival!
Then a leap into the realm of free jazz. When you ran into the trio Cene Resnik Free Stelar Trio, joined onstage by Chicago trumpeter Rob Mazurek, it was instantly clear why Mazurek buddies up so brilliantly and effortlessly with the musical logic of the other three. With both eyes shut, it felt like we were brushing past a real jazz band, a derivative of the Chicago free jazz current. Loaded with total musical strangeness, a proper vagueness for the lay listener, chasing complete freedom and the spirit of drifting through complex, utterly wild unconventional jazz structures, where you constantly challenge your inner self and pull an expressive, confessional imprint out of it, an authentic imprint of the musical magic as you perceive it in the moment. The trio knows every trick in the book. No wonder Resnik and Lasič are also occasional musical companions of Kaučič. Mazurek was visibly enjoying himself with his piccolo trumpet in such company.
Anything but an easy bone to gnaw on, and of course an exceptional musical feast for everyone who doesn’t just have a thick skin but prefers, with taste, the highest degree of musical complexity, unpredictability and spontaneity. Intuitive sensing of the building blocks of music, with Mazurek and Resnik up front, the quartet often »circling« as the guys passed free jazz patterns back and forth among themselves. At times Mazurek and Resnik fell into a boundless dialogue with each other, while Pacurig and Lasič patiently waited for their moment, then Lasič replaced Mazurek, and so on… Pacurig gets up and leans over the piano and starts plucking the strings. Nothing unusual for free jazz formatting. Still, a listener used to conventional jazz moves is shocked to the core when meeting Resnik and company, and starts wondering what the hell such avant-garde free-thinking is even doing onstage. Wild without limits, yet incredibly reconciled into a cohesive cumulus of the musicians’ brilliant perception. Cene was visibly swaying during the show. Clearly the guys had been happily tipping a few before the gig. That doesn’t even matter. This fired-up, devilish free jazz, which is hard to get close to, if you can at all, shook up and stunned the audience.
The first day of the jazz festival in Cekrno for 2018 was closed out by a Croatian collective, a sextet to be exact, called Franz Kafka Ensemble, made up of Damir Prica Kafka (saxophones), Franjo Glušac (guitar), Bruno Vidović Vorberger (drums, toys), Roko Crnić (electric bass, double bass), Ivan Marincel (trombone) and Igor Pavlica (trumpet). Horn section, drums, bass and guitar.
The band delivered an excellent experience. Just musical enough and just seasoned enough with complex virtuosity. The fractured rhythms were especially impressive, leaving no room for a »healthy« dance step and, if I may be a little wicked, at best a »spastic« one. Joking aside, Franz Kafka Ensemble proved to be an incredibly fresh, sharp and inventively darkly humorous collective, creating a completely original musical calling card out of a crafty blend of firm, decisive forms, which the group doses out with a free-spinning jazz vibe that leads to an »unexpected« experience, yet without free jazz dilettantism. More than once the darkly figured melodies, backed by enigmatic rhythmic rhetoric, were also reminiscent of King Crimson’s compositional patterns (Tarred And Feathered). Their debut is fittingly named too, »Circus Noir« (black circus), released this very year by a collective that’s four years old and made up of experienced, excellent musicians.
The unruly sextet really stretched out and played the whole album. They certainly don’t lack drama, yet in their playing together they never lose the red thread, and thematically it never falls apart either, even as it constantly flirts with the weirdest combination of strung-together notes, which feels especially challenging and appealing to the musical gourmand. How do you blend complexity with a tangible dose of musicality into a mix that’s appealing throughout and endlessly fun to listen to? Franz Kafka Ensemble know best, and on this evening they gained at least one gravely afflicted new fan at the venue (the author of these humble lines) with their excellent show.
Postizati vrlo nezadovoljavajuće uspjehe (in translation: »achieving very unsatisfactory results«) is perhaps the most fitting title for everything described above. Rhythmically, Franz Kafka Ensmeble are exceptionally strong and tight, the rhythm runs through their veins, and you can tell that no collective could put together something like this unless its members had previously played in bands a mile apart genre-wise. That is precisely what gives them the platform to shape the kind of musical strangeness Franz Kafka Ensemble served up in Cerkno.
Day one of the 23rd traditional Jazz Cerkno festival was over in a flash. The crowd, as usual on days like Thursday, was a touch smaller than you’d wish. Thursday is still part of the week that is followed by a working Friday. But that’s in line with what we expected. Day one served up absolutely exclusive music and plenty of the unusual. That’s what experimental music fans come to Cerkno for every year.
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