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Buell
Neidlinger
Snake
& Weasel
1720 SE 12th Ave.,
(800) 992-8499
8 and 10 pm Wednesday,
June 21
$8 each show
Peter
Brötzmann Tentet + 2
Warner Pacific College, McGuire Auditorium
Southeast 68th Avenue and Division Street, 772-0772
8 pm Wednesday, June 21
$14
Portland: allegedly a jazz town, right? Big supporter of
the musical counterculture that, perhaps more than any other,
depends on the loyalty and grassroots élan of its
legions, yeah?
Tonight, those axioms are tested. By grace of a fluke alignment
of the planets, both Buell Neidlinger, bass player to the
stars (Cecil Taylor, Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello among
them), and Peter Brötzmann, the German who propagated
a united free Europe long before the Euro was even a glimmer
in capitalist eyes, converge on our humble jazz grounds.
The 64-year-old Neidlinger is perhaps best known for his
seven years of service with musical heretic Cecil Taylor.
Taylor's early quartet, with Neidlinger on bass, turned
left from the path of the post-bop establishment into a
new musical realm. The bassist went on to do rare triple
duty in the jazz, classical and pop worlds, adding his expertise
to hundreds of recordings with heavies like Stravinsky,
Sinatra, Streisand, the Stones--and that's only the S's.
The big-money studio time set the savvy bassist up to do
his life's work: bringing the music of jazz iconoclasts
Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols to the public's eye through
work in his Thelonious and Blue Chopsticks groups.
Nichols is especially undervalued, and Neidlinger brings
the music of this '50s innovator to town as he pairs up
with Portland Nichols-ophiles Rob Scheps and Alan Jones.
The duo will joust with the bassist and his longtime partner,
L.A. trumpeter Hugh Schick. Scheps' ring-running sax has
the perfect loopy grace for Nichols' material; as anyone
who's seen his sextet gigs knows, Jones can hold forth with
any caliber of musician. He should issue a formidable response
to Neidlinger's call.
Inspired by Taylor, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and
especially Albert Ayler, German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann
also responded to that call of the wild with a distinctly
European cry of his own. In 1968, he released Machine
Gun, an album of such brain-ravaging primal force that
it seemed as much a response to the psychological and societal
splintering of the time as to the contemporary course of
music. He went on to become one of Europe's founding fathers
of free jazz, schooling musicians continentwide in his decidedly
Germanic brooding.
In the '80s, he too worked with the visionary Taylor. For
the past decade, the saxophonist has mounted a miniature
German invasion of Amerika, making Chicago his unofficial
stateside home. Drafting from that city's big-shouldered
pack of free warriors, he's assembled the Peter Brötzmann
Tentet + 2.
MacArthur-certified genius Ken Vandermark sounds off in
the sax lineup, as do Mars Williams and Mats Gustaffson.
The tag team of William Parker and Hamid Drake once hit
Portland supporting Norwegian sax screamer Frode Gjerstad.
Brötzmann doubles the pleasure, adding bassist Kent
Kessler and drummer Michael Zerang from Vandermark's acclaimed
quartet.
The story of how the two shows happened to converge in
Portland--not exactly the epicenter of international jazz
life--is one of a fortuitous near miss. Scheps, a visionary
in his own right who single-handedly made last year's Roswell
Rudd and Kim Clarke Magnets! shows happen, had the cojones
to cold call Neidlinger and suggest the date. After hearing
of Scheps' track record with Rudd, a former Buell partner
and Herbie Nichols disciple, the bassist agreed to journey
down from his Puget Sound retirement compound.
Ironically, prior to settling on a date for the gig, Scheps
approached the Creative Music Guild about sponsoring the
show. However, Guild president Brad Winter said they had
other dream gigs on the horizon. Brötzmann blipped
on the screen because of his forthcoming appearance at the
DuMaurier International Jazz Fest in Vancouver, British
Columbia. CMG honed in. Unbeknownst to both Scheps and Winter,
they then scheduled their shows for the same night, causing
ulcers to rumble among the city's avant-jazz fans, who usually
spend Hump Day brewing beer or doing laundry.
So which show do you catch? With Brötzmann on at 8
and the second Neidlinger set scheduled for 10, you can
always do both.
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