David Kennedy in Conjunction with the Burchfield Penney & Hallwalls Presents
THREE FOR A QUARTER, ONE FOR A DIME
A Series of Modern Jazz Performances
Nearly four decades after his death, the legacy of saxophonist Albert Ayler is clear: a plethora of reed-biting aural contortionists bent on exploiting the instrument’s propensity for making sounds that resemble human screams. While many saxophone players since – unable to play anything resembling a coherent melody – rely instead on the extreme manifestations of the Ayler technique, their playing is more often than not a randomly executed wall of energy and emotion-driven white noise. Peter Brötzmann, on the other hand, is the rare Ayler-influenced saxophonist capable (like Ayler) of producing improvised lines of depth and sensitivity while informing them with enough raw power to make lesser saxophonists wilt.
Brötzmann's playing has little of the arbitrariness one associates with other similar tenor saxophonists like Charles Gayle or Ivo Perelman; instead, Brötzmann possesses a surety of tone and the melodic center characteristic of a focused musical conception. While there's no lack of spontaneity in his music, Brötzmann's concern with motivic and melodic reiteration gives his playing a palpable sense of direction. Indeed, Brötzmann's obsession often serves as a pivot upon which an ensemble turns, making him a consummate team player in addition to being an affecting soloist.
Brötzmann was first a visual artist, attending the Art Academy of Wuppertal. A self-taught saxophonist, he began playing with Dixieland bands beginning in 1959; in the early '60s he became involved with the avant-garde Fluxus movement. He began playing free jazz around 1964 and in 1965 he played in a group with the virtuoso bassist Peter Kowald and the Swedish drummer Sven-Åke Johansson. The next year he played with Michael Mantler and Carla Bley's band and became associated with Alexander Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra.
In 1969, Brötzmann helped form FMP, a long-lived free jazz label and presenter that issues recordings and sponsors live performances. In the '70s, Brötzmann would play and record with pianist Fred van Hove, drummer Han Bennink, trumpeter Don Cherry, and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, among others. His circle of associates would continue to widen: in 1986 he played with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, guitarist Sonny Sharrock, and electric bassist/producer Bill Laswell in Last Exit, a metal/free jazz group that enjoyed brief success. By the late 1990s, one would be hard-pressed to name a prominent free jazz musician with whom Brötzmann had not played.
The strength of his personality is matched by his adaptability – as evidence, hear Eight by Three, his 1997 recording with the pianist Borah Bergman and multi-reedist Anthony Braxton. While one might expect Brötzmann's incendiary nature to overwhelm the blithe Braxton, he instead manages to parry and complement effectively. With Bergman's percussive intensity, the record becomes one of the more unusual and compelling free jazz artifacts of the era. In 2007, The Complete Machine Gun Sessions was released, reissuing the seminal free jazz outing Machine Gun recorded by the Peter Brötzmann Octet in 1968 and featuring two previously unreleased alternate takes and a live track. The ever prolific Brötzmann put out three new sets in 2008, The Fat Is Gone, Born Broke, and The Brain of the Dog in Section, all on Atavistic Records. ~ Chris Kelsey, Rovi
From http://www.peterbroetzmann.com/
Buy tickets online or call 716-878-6011 during gallery hours.