photo: Anna Niedermeier
In a recent public statement, Peter Brötzmann provided an update on his health situation which, like his music, is brutally unapologetic and blunt:
Long an indestructible Teutonic beast in the world of freeform jazz, Father Time appears to finally be getting in a few licks on the 82 year old saxophone pioneer. We wish him an encouraging rebound, of course, but this episode of mortality is a good time to stop and reflect to appreciate the man while the living legend is still living. And by ‘appreciate,’ I mean by taking in a new Brötzmann record issued only about a month after that statement.
Catching Ghosts (ACT Music) is characteristically co-headlined with partners. Also characteristically, it’s a capture of a live show, this time at the 2022 Jazzfest Berlin with the ol’ master showing off fine form despite only recently returning from nearly two years of inactivity forced by a worldwide lockdown.
Joining him is the brilliant drummer Hamid Drake and Moroccan folk musician Majid Bekkas manning a two-stringed, camel skin-backed guembre, a vintage Berber lute-like instrument. But two strings are all Bekkas needs to set the harmonic foundation for these four Gnaouan chants.
So yes, Catching Ghosts is a departure from the sublime European free-form violence that gained Brötzmann his notoriety. However, we’re not discussing a whole new direction for Mr. Brötzmann, nor for Mr. Drake, for that matter: Both had partnered with another Moroccan guembri master Maalem Moukhtar Gania on a couple of previous occasions, one culminating into the release The Catch of a Ghost (2019). Other avant-garde leaders like Ornette, Pharoah and Randy Weston have all previously reconciled Berber folk music with out-jazz and another leader Archie Shepp has also worked with Bekkas. Brötzmann puts his own imprint on it without ever getting in the way of the original feel of this music. Instead, he and Drake do much to enhance that feel.
These songs may be ancient but they’re used in this context to provide the basic parameters for inspired, modern group improvisations. You hear Brötzmann fully embracing Bekkas’ ancient melody and — alternately using saxophone, clarinet and tárogató (a Balkan woodwind instrument similar to the clarinet) — thrust them into the jazz vanguard. The tricky tempo of North African rhythms don’t seem to be a problem for Drake, who is also locked into Bekkas and able to fully realize what is merely implied by the Moroccan and even reacts to his vocal chants in such a way that it embellishes them. That’s especially true during “Balini.”
‘Festive’ and ‘danceable’ aren’t adjectives normally ascribed to Peter Brötzmann’s music, but Catching Ghosts is often that, and the free jazz giant feels right at home here, reminding us that his adaptiveness to any given setting is one of his secret weapons.
Bekkas typically sets the performances into motion but for “Hamdouchia,” the trio takes its lead from Brötzmann, who launches into the song with a very melodic saxophone soliloquy, leaving no doubt that the pandemic nor entering his eighties had diminished his chops in the least. It segues right into Bekkas’ incantations, with the sax great sliding right alongside him and making sacred incantations of his own.
While awaiting Peter Brötzmann’s next comeback, Catching Ghosts provides a fine keepsake from his last comeback, presenting an old soul taking chances with a fire still in his young heart.
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