Between a trip to China last weekend and my immersion in Jazzfest Berlin this past weekend I wasn’t able to publish this newsletter as scheduled, yesterday. I’m half-surprised I’m doing it now, to be honest. Music has the ability to elasticize time, but I don’t, and time has been in very short supply of late. My current condition also explains why many of this week’s entries are shorter than usual—which will likely please some readers.
Silke Eberhard Returns to Her Trio, but She’s Not Thinking Small
In the last few years alto saxophonist Silke Eberhard has leaned in to writing and arranging music for her versatile tentet Potsa Lotsa XL, collaborating with Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, tuba player José Davila, and gayaguem player Youjin Sung, and exploring procedures more commonly associated with contemporary classical music. She seems to move from strength to strength, steadily expanding her practice in all directions. All of that growth has been impressive, but sometimes it diminishes her excellence as an improviser, an ability that takes center stage in her long-running trio with bassist Jan Roder and drummer Kay Lübke, which released Being-a-Ning (Intakt), its fifth album, earlier this year. While the music remains tethered to post-bop fundamentals, it’s the freest, most exploratory music I’ve ever heard from the group.
Kevin Whitehead’s typically astute liner note essay mentions Eberhard’s interest in the intervallic system that Threadgill developed for his group Zooid. While she hasn’t embraced that model here, the experience does seem to have impacted the way she thinks about music. The album title is a clear nod to Thelonious Monk, but it also refers to a string of titles she’s used for her last albums that include the word “being,” which suggests a larger devotion to existing in the moment. These ten new compositions are more jagged, angular, and surprising, which you can sense right out of the gate on “What’s in Your Bag,” a Braxton-esque gem which further illustrates a deep connection to Chicago jazz history. The genesis of Potsa Lotsa XL, for example, emerged from a project she had with Chicago in 2017. On the other hand, the trio takes on all sorts of new tacks here, from the needling, tightly-coiled “Sao,” a showpiece for Lübke, or the infectiously limber “New Dance,” where the elastic rhythm section ride the driving group with an impressive snap, expanded with some subtle electronic flourishes, giving Eberhard wide berth in her extended solo. Still, no matter how much the trio experiments and leans into freedom, it maintains an inexorable connection to swing, and there’s no missing those connections on the title track, which like the Monk piece it’s named after, is based on rhythm changes. Check it out below.
The trio performs as part of the Jazz am Helmholtzplatz series on Thursday, November 6. Eberhard also plays on Wednesday, November 5 with a new quartet called Endophyte with Lübke, Davila, and Potsa Lotsa XL trumpeter Nikolaus Neuser at Münzenberg Saal in the building that houses the offices of Wolke Verlag and FMP Records (address below in recommended shows list).
https://petermargasak.substack.com/p/berlin-non-stop?triedRedirect=true
