feature photo: Sergei Gavrylov
Earlier in 2024, we told you about a daring new electro-acoustic quartet started up saxophonist Peter Van Huffel and their debut album. But the Berlin-based Canadian expatriate’s got more stuff cookin’. Meet his new free jazz trio with double bassist Meinrad Kneer and drummer Yorgos Dimitriades and their debut album Synomilies.
Returning a strictly acoustic format, Van Huffel has been working with the German Kneer and the Greek Dimitriades in a combo that cuts across different countries, cultures and backgrounds to find a common vision in improvised music.
The Van Huffel, Kneer & Dimitriades trio is freer, to be sure, but also more contemplative, as the core of this music is the close listening and reacting to each other. The album even opens on hushed note: “E La Nave Va” floats along not beholden to any rhythm but the doleful, instant melody the trio teases out. As Huffel invents a lead line and Kneer comes up with harmonic counterpoints, Dimitriades expertly provides the proper amount of tonal shading to complete the portrait. “Au Comptoir” is pensive at first, but you can sense the three loosening up over the course of the song, which doesn’t mean going off of a cliff, but instead maintaining their composure.
“Dear Old Werner” has a nervous energy, doubled when Kneer joins in — not to add the low tones — but to saw his strings on high to simulate a second saxophone. Kneer applies that same tactic equally as effectively for the barren soundscape of “A Tree Has A Thousand Ears” and “Convergence.”
“Umstürzende Einbauten” features Kneer undertaking the lead role with his arco bass while Dimitriades and then Huffel map creative strategies around him. “Beasts And Creatures” is snarled, nasty, guttural and wonderful. With Kneer plucking with force and Van Huffel on baritone sax, the three weave a path from the angular to the outright brutish, yet following down a melodic — if staggered — path.
The terse “Steel Water” is marked by Dimitriades’ exotic percussion. His use of unorthodox percussion along with the savvy to make the group dynamic more interesting continues into “Convergence”
Nothing reveals the character and musical personality of musicians playing in an ensemble like the collective improvisation approach. The free jazz unit of Peter Van Huffel, Meinrad Kneer and Yorgos Dimitriades exposes these individuals as those who leverage their aptitude in absorption, interaction and harmonic development to the fullest.
Synomilies can currently be purchased from Bandcamp.
*** Peter Van Huffel CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
- Peter Van Huffel, Meinrad Kneer + Yorgos Dimitraidis – ‘Synomilies’ (2024) - December 20, 2024
- Emily Remler – ‘Cookin’ At The Queens, Live In Las Vegas 1984 & 1988′ (2024) - December 9, 2024
- Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin – ‘SPIN’ (2024) - December 8, 2024
