Location: Cerkno / Star plac / Slovenia
Date: Thursday, May 16, 2019
And just like that, the year comes around again. Quietly and, of course, unstoppably fast. Here we are once more. In Cerkno. Our beloved Cerkno, with the 24th edition of its traditional annual international festival Jazz Cerkno, keeps on delighting us and feeding body and soul. Old friends, old town! This is that moment in space and time that peaks in a string of creative highs, chasing total freedom in musical art year after year, on the Slovenian scene and the wider international one alike. Jazz Cerkno has grown into an internationally recognizable music festival with a polished character all its own. And Jazz Cerkno isn’t just music, it’s so much more. The packed program once again offered a whole range of other activities through the morning and afternoon, but our beloved outlet, as always, focused on the festival’s program side, which of course meant the concerts.
The very first day already served up an experience of piercing, musically challenging vividness. Boštjan Gombač is one of those names. A man rooted in the Cerkno scene and always the right address when you want to sink your teeth into a geyser of inexhaustible, penetrating, unusual musical daring, that is, sweetly provocative flexibility in musical expression. This time he teamed up with Žiga Stanič and Blaž Pucihar. The first created Črna luknja, the second adapted works by Mozart and Bach. And in what manner? All-encompassing wind-instrument purism. A brilliantly twisted piece of music that starts from a classical format, fully arranged for Boštjan to work with the Trobilni ansambel slovenske filharmonije (TASF), where classical music shakes hands with free-spinning kinetic improvisation at its core, and where the modal format cheerfully pals around with escapes into jazzy loosening-up. The opening piece, Tangle (by Nina Šenk), with only the wind orchestra on stage in a trimmed-down lineup, felt like a slightly cheeky warm-up, an opening calibration of the instruments, even the most fragmented and exploratory part of the whole performance. Then Boštjan’s entrance and address, followed by the rest of the brass squad, led the audience into Črna luknja. The crew had performed the piece live only for the second time. Don’t even ask how crucial a prop the mutes are in all this sonic contortion, whether it’s that giant “lid” for the tuba or all the other, smaller ones, of course. Boštjan, who naturally played his clarinet during the show along with the rest of his lovable pipe-and-whistle racket of exotica, opened by telling us a bit about the history of an utterly fascinating and bizarrely unusual instrument called the Tidldibab. The lucid and fitting name is built from the initials of Turk-Ivan-Dimkaroski-Ljuben-Divje-Babe. It’s a replica of a Neanderthal flute discovered at Divje Babe, not far from Cerkno. This instrument, a replica made from the bone of a “modern” bear, played a central role especially in the opening and closing sections of Črna luknja, which, judging by how the music is performed and written down, hints at the possibility of a continuation someday in the future. An extremely interesting and unusual musical story, then, that surprised us full-bloodedly right from the start and left a strong mark of musical strangeness and uniqueness, with the works of the classics transformed into strictly harmonized wind playing. And the Tidldibab? A special kind of sonic seasoning, though of course no “miracles” were to be expected from it. Just a whole bag of charm, since Dimkaroski, who studied the flute down to its foundations, only managed to slightly “upgrade” the instrument in his reconstruction (an upgrade as a modern person understands it), so that in its expanded reincarnation it coaxes out more notes. Gombač, with his sharp mind and restless spirit of exploration, naturally put that to good use, and with this seemingly innocent holey object he kept us thoroughly entertained and delighted throughout. In all of this, Gombač of course also uses his voice, as an occasional spice, an extra instrument that colors the character of the compositions and forms. And then there was a gong. For real.
The proper free-jazz hurricane, the one that, at least for a while, swung things at the festival back to the expected spot, came next from the trio Stoffner / Lovens / Mahall. This German-Swiss combo of drums, guitar and bass clarinet turned the festival’s nature back toward its core program platform and, with jazz brilliantly shoved into opposition, thrilled with a reckless hunt for the most wildly bizarre sonic excesses and interweavings that their stage setup could coax out. You play a semi-acoustic guitar in every way imaginable and wring bizarre sounds out of it, without once striking a chord or a string so that it rings out clearly. You do everything with the drumsticks except hit the drumheads with them. Well, even when there are hits, they carry the overtone of a simultaneous strike on the rim of the drum shell. Lovens uses the whole drum set as a composition, looms over it, grabs the cymbals and scrapes relentlessly across them. Rudi Mahall on bass clarinet kept leaping sharply between sonic extremes, from high, howling “strutting” that suddenly swapped (almost) into a crouching low drone. It’s a pleasure to watch the trio in their perception. A pleasure to watch him enjoy his trance so immensely. When Mahall locks into a calmer motif, Flo Stoffner and Paul Lovens follow him with supple softness and delicately chase the calm and serenity of the notes played on the bass clarinet. The chemistry this trio creates walks a thin, imaginary line between bare instinct and concision, into which you keep waking up from the “daze.” That’s the space “in between” that the artists discover while playing, where they “linger” and float freely on top of it. As if they’d found a sweet opium they can’t resist, one that draws out of them something unrepeatable. There’s some distant nodding to forms here, of course, and the trio moves as far away from them as it possibly can while sailing through the fascination of free-jazz absorption. In a heartbeat they dart into the terror-chaos of sonic junk, only to follow it in the very next moment with soft, reconciling elation. And here we are at that old story. The listener gets offered entry into a world of music like this through a different door. And of course, they have to find it themselves.
The most modal accessibility of the evening came from Samo Šalamon (bass guitar), Bojan Krhlanko (drums), Achille Succi (saxophone) and Eva Poženel (vocals), who took the stage as the combo Rotten GirlZ and presented their studio effort “Punk You.” They played it in full and caught us quite off guard with a new playground of musical strangeness and eclecticism that we got to witness. Šalamon this time on electric bass, perched on a bar stool, wearing glasses! Not like Robert Fripp, no way. Not even a little. All they share is the glasses and the bar stool. Nothing more. Samo, by the way an avid fan of the San Antonio Spurs, unlike the “uptight” Brit, keeps smiling away to himself throughout the performance as he watches what his stage companions are up to. Eva shook us right from the start, when she completely tore loose in the song Ego Trip. It’s incredible what she gets out of those vocal cords. What piercing power. A wild combination of tangible motifs and jazzy combustibility, bordering on the realms of the avant-garde, even bits and pieces of free-jazz forms. Rotten GirlZ unexpectedly venture right up to the edge of total chaos, but always deftly swing themselves back. Complete alertness, order and discipline, flawlessly tuned in. The chemistry is working at an optimal level and the four musicians keep on fascinating. With Šalamon on bass, Rotten GirlZ have actually brought a bit of punk charm, mockery, that lovable rebellious note into their music. In this role Šalamon often plays the bass as if it were an electric guitar, and often hammers out whole chords, sharp and clipped, building the frameworks that Succi mostly slots himself into. Krhlanko got a huge amount of room to blow up in improvisations like a spider and do all the gymnastics there was to do. Incredible skill, speed, wit and explosiveness adorn this drummer. Rotten GirlZ are an extremely well-balanced combination of everything. Let’s just say a fitting one. The quartet doesn’t lack for strong musical grip either, and they can even back it up with the rhythms of funk-flavored tomfoolery. Those parts balance out the jazz excess beautifully. All in one. And then there’s the remarkable Poženel, who adds the cherry on top of complete vocal bizarreness, enough to make you jump out of your own skin. No need to guess that her voice plays the role of an additional instrument here. Of course, it’s not all just “junk” played at full blast. No, this supergroup quartet is very experienced and tight in the details. They switch brilliantly from noisier moments into a special kind of dainty, melodious flexibility, led by Poženel’s gracefulness, which, working with the saxophone lines, brings a brilliant vocal contrast to the coloring of the motifs. So to close out the festival’s first day, Rotten GirlZ delivered just the right stew, mixing musical accessibility with piercing, rascally mischief and witty improvisational escapes into jazz freedom. A great pick to wrap up day one. Not too heavy to listen to, but far from an easy bite. A band with a refined, inward-turned streak of eclecticism, which in all its oddball finesse hooks you as a listener and keeps you glued to it throughout the set. This is also one of those shows that can turn on a dime, such is the strength of the message this music carries, since the listener is kept constantly busy with its interpretation.
So the first day came to a close. Superb! Colorful, yet, given the variety on offer, incredibly complementary!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
