Drawing on previous collaborations between Amsterdam pianist Kaja Draksler and wind player Ab Baars, here on tenor sax, clarinet & shakuhachi, and two duo albums between Baars and guitarist Terrie Ex, this meeting as a trio took place at the 2018 Konfrontationen Festival in Nickelsdorf, Austria for a diverse journey from uniquely introspective to wildly energetic conversation.
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Ab Baars-tenor saxophone, clarinet, shakuhachi
Terrie Ex-guitar
Kaja Draksler-piano
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UPC: 5904441617122
Label: Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!)
Catalog ID: 11 | 2022
Squidco Product Code: 32100
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2022
Country: Poland
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded live at Konfrontationen Festival, in Nickelsdorf, Austria, on July 21st, 2018, by Robert Pavlecka
"On July 21st 2018, the third day of the 39th Konfrontationen Festival, Kaja Draksler played a blisteringly intense concert with the Peter Evans Quartet. The biggest surprise of the day, however, came a few hours later, when she joined forces with Dutchmen Ab Baars and Terrie Ex. The surprise was not the combination of these distinct personalities in itself. You could have seen that coming. The remarkable thing about it was the emotional pay-off and the sheer beauty of the performance. Like some of the best improvised music out there, whether created by the trampling energy of a collective clenched fist or the subtle empathy of kindred spirits with a thin upper skin, this music excels with its remarkable coherence and unity.
Of course, the musicians had ample opportunities to finetune their interrelations. By the time of this concert, Draksler had just left Amsterdam, the city where she had become one of the brightest players of the jazz/improvised scene. It is where she met Baars in Fish-Scale Sunrise and developed ideas for the Octet he is also a member of. It is also where Baars and Ex forged their unique chemistry with a couple of duo albums, countless performances with The Ex and other projects. The guitarist even became the wild card on the latest ICP-album, Komen & Gaan. A few years ago, Draksler and Ex also road-tested their affinity, which led to the disjointed harmony of The Swim on the latter's Terp Records.
Baars' eccentric timbre can seem wild and jarring to unprepared listeners, yet as this recording proves, it can also be exhilarating and touching. It retains that untamed sense of control, as well as a kind of fickle unpredictability, which it has in common with the natural world he gets so inspired by. Draksler often relies on dreamily repeated motives, subtle inside playing and, during a tumultuous passage when Baars explores the clarinet's upper register, a carillon-like sound that dissolves into a brief solo with brilliant cohesion. All the while, Ex darts all over the stage with his animalistic scrapes and howls, the five-stringed sound generator an endlessly productive communication vessel. His intuition is downright uncanny.
This album is not the kind you should use to single out short fragments to illustrate the musicians' extraordinary interaction. You'd miss the arc of their story, the flow of the performance and their enormous range. You could cut up the performance in three parts, based on Baars' use of the tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi respectively, but take into account what's happening next to him. And between them. It is that snap of the finger, an inexplicable sensation that you recognize when you hear it, extended for forty short minutes. Perhaps it is something like the murmuration of starlings, an unspoken and spontaneously executed agreement. In this case, the birds have a markedly divergent plumage, but there's no discussion about their joint direction. They know where they are going and it is a sight and sound to behold."-Guy Peters
The Squid's Ear!
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Ab Baars "Ab Baars (Magrette, 1955): Dutch musician-composer and bandleader Ab Baars performs on tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. He focuses mainly on Ab Baars Solo, Baars-Buis, Fish Scale Sunrise, Perch Hen Brock & Rain, Ab Baars Trio, Duo Baars-Henneman and the ICP Orchestra. In reviews Baars' music has been characterized as joyfully obstinate, but surely appealing and as colourful as it is astonishing. It embodies the best typically Dutch improvised music has to offer. Although he seldomly uses recognizable song forms or ongoing swing rhythms, the music stays catchy, because it is stripped to the essence and clearly presented. Ab Baars has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music performed in hundreds of concerts throughout Europe, North America, Brasil, Japan and Australia in the past 30 years. Influenced by the American saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, whom he worked with in 1986, and by his participation in the Monk Project (performed by the Instant Composers Pool, directed by Misha Mengelberg), Baars adopted a very personal style, or 'ab music' as Misha Mengelberg calls it. At the age of 15, Ab Baars began playing the saxophone in the Philips Marching Band and other local bands in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. From 1976 to 1981, he studied saxophone with Leo van Oostrom at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. He was granted a scholarship by the Dutch Ministry of Culture in 1989 to study with clarinettist-composer John Carter in Los Angeles. That same year Baars was presented with the prestigious Boy Edgar Award. In 2005, Baars set out playing the shakuhachi (a Japanese end-blown bamboo flute) and took lessons with Kees Kort, Christopher Blasdel and Takeo Yamashiro. So far, Ab Baars has worked with improvisers such as Han Bennink, Jaap Blonk, Alberto Braida, Anthony Braxton, John Carter, The Ex, Cor Fuhler, Ben Goldberg, Tristan Honsinger, François Houle, George Lewis, Michael Moore, Sunny Murray, Sonic Youth, Fabrizio Spera, Cecil Taylor, Roger Turner, Ken Vandermark, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, Michiyo Yagi, poets H.C. ten Berge and Diane Régimbald, dancers Beppie Blankert, Hisako Horikawa, Masako Noguchi and Katie Duck's Magpie Company." ^ Hide Bio for Ab Baars • Show Bio for Terrie Ex "Terrie Ex, born in Westzaan, 12 october 1954. Started playing guitar when he co-founded the Ex in 1979. Kind of coincidence; it was the instrument no-one wanted to play. Some 1900 concerts with The Ex eversince. (www.theex.nl). More than 2000 in total. Next to all Ex releases, he started free-improvising from the very start. From a little guitar solo on the Awara/Ex 7" in 1981, till recent tours with Han Bennink or impro-groups Offonoff or Lean Left (with Ken Vandermark, Andy Moor and Paal Nilssen-Love). Drives a year along 21 African countries with Emma Fischer in 1996. Starts in 2000 the TERP label, for his own impro-projects and African Music. Produced CD's with ao Tsehaytu Beraki, Getatchew Mekuria, Konono No.1 and Mohammed Jimmy Mohammed. Played with:Sonic Youth, John Cale, Getatchew Mekuria, Herman Brood, Herr Seele, Kamagurka, Jan Mulder, Mekons, Chumbawamba, Tsehaytu Beraki, Peter Brozmann, Hamid Drake, Jan Akkerman, Djibril Diabate, Butch Morris, Mats Gustafsson, ICP, Wolter Wierbos, Wilbert de Joode, Zu, Guy Picciotto, Roy Paci, Cactus Truck, Christine Senaoui, Mary Oliver, Ig Henneman, Tim Hodgekinson, Michael Vatcher, Magpie Dancecompany, Alex d' Electrique, Ferrie Heyne, Saadet Turkoz, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Melaku Belay, Endris Hassen, Misale Legesse, Noel Akchote, Akira Sakata, Played duo gigs/tours with:Andy Moor, Han Bennink, Ab Baars, John Butcher, Rozemarie Heggen, Jaap Blonk, Paul Lovens, Paal Nilssen-Love, Joost Buis, Xavier Charles, Thurston Moore, Steve Beresford, Moe! Staiano, Katherina 'Ex' Bornefeld, Tony Buck, Tom Cora, Lasse Marhaug, Ken Vandermark, Steve Albini, Wim Janzen (accordeon), Rene van Barneveld, Onno Govaert. George Hadow, Romeo Mayor, Peter Zegveld." ^ Hide Bio for Terrie Ex • Show Bio for Kaja Draksler "Kaja Draksler (1987) is a Slovenian pianist and composer. After her studies in the Netherlands (BA in jazz piano and MA in classical composition), she decided to stay in Amsterdam, where she is an active member of the improvisors scene, performing extensively all over the Europe. Besides her frequent solo concerts, she has been working regularly with Čudars-Draksler Duo, Feecho, BadBooshBand, and Draksler-Santos Silva duo. She is also one of the founding members of the interdisciplinary group I/O. She recently formed her Octet. As a composer she has been commissioned by various international groups, ranging from vocal and chamber ensembles to big bands and orchestras. Kaja is interested in finding ways to merge the composition and (free) improvisation by working with different structures and musical logics. She is drawn to the idea of erasing the stylistic and historical musical borders, and discovering personal expression and language through composition and improvisation." ^ Hide Bio for Kaja Draksler
▪ Ab Baars Trio tour Netherlands (2013 - 2014) recorded on Slate Blue (Wig 24, 2014)
▪ Duo Baars-Henneman Autumn Songs USA Tour (2012) recorded on Autumn Songs (Wig 22, 2013)
▪ Ab Baars Trio & New York Guests Fay Victor, Vincent Chancey and Dutch poet Anneke Brassinga in Invisible Blow (2011) recorded on Invisible Blow (Wig 23, 2014)
▪ Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark (2007 and 2009), recorded on Goofy June Bug (Wig 15, 2008)
▪ Kinda Dukish. The music of Duke Ellington (2004), recorded on Kinda Dukish (Wig 12, 2005)
▪ Ab Baars Trio plays music of Native Americans (1999), recorded on Songs (Geestgronden, 2001)
▪ Ab Baars Trio with trombonist Roswell Rudd (1996 & 98), recorded on Four (DATA Records, 2001)
▪ Ab Baars Trio plays the music of John Carter, recorded on A Free Step (Geestgronden, 1999)
▪ Ab Baars Trio in collaboration with the Nieuw Ensemble, shakuhachi player Yoshikazu Iwamoto and conductor Butch Morris at the Festival Improvisations/Improvisations (1996)
▪ Ab Baars Trio with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (1995)
4/10/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
4/10/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
4/10/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. When The Hills Run Across The Fields - Live In Nickelsdorf 39:14
Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Trio Recordings
New in Improvised Music
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