The Prague Post
December 1st, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Inspirational music for anarchists

Invoking the revolutionary spirit at the Third Free Jazz Festival
Stage Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
September 24th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Ra Power. Sadiq Bey brings his Berlin-based group to Prague to explore the poetry of Sun Ra Sept. 26.
COURTESY PHOTO
A voice like no other. Phil Minton appears Sept. 27.
Free Jazz Festival-III

Sadiq Bey Schwartzgeist, Vjačeslav Ganielin, Limbo
When: Friday, Sept. 26, at 7
Where: Divadlo U Hasičů
Tickets: 180 Kč

Phil Minton Quartet, MovieTalk, Jana Koubková and Heinz Grobmeier
Where: Saturday, Sept 27, at 7 p.m.
When: Divadlo U Hasičů
Tickets: 180 Kč, available through Ticktpro and at the venue

The Third Free Jazz Festival in Prague returns with some first-rate, daring improvisation for two evenings this weekend at Divadlo U Hasicu.
Headlining Friday’s show is Sadiq Bey Schwartzegeist, a Berlin-based group led by Sadiq Bey, who is a poet, percussionist and performance artist originally from Detroit, now based in Berlin after living several years in New York City. In 1998, Bey worked with Don Byron and Existential Dread, writing the lyrics for Nu Blaxploitation (on Blue Note). Currently, his group is touring their Sun Ra Project, which celebrates the music and (lesser known) poetry of Sun Ra, though not playing Sun Ra covers.
Sun Ra, the Philadelphia-based grandmaster of free jazz orchestras from the mid 1950s through the early ’90s, was an early influence for Bey. “Detroit was a big supporter of the Sun Ra legacy and we [avant garde artists of the day] often quoted or read Sunny’s poetry from the backs of LP’s,” he writes in an e-mail. “In fact, the very first group of mine was the Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra [ESP label] in 1968, just about the same time I heard Jimi Hendrix and Funkadelic. It was the era of magic music in America.”
“The point of Schwartzegeist in all this,” Bey says, “is the poetry of Ra. I use several pieces in the program along with my own work, and on this Prague performance, a piece or two from Rilke, another poetic influence.”
With Bey on vocals, percussion and electronics, the rest of the group includes Katrin Mickiewicz on viola, Stanislaw Michalak on bass and Kenny Martin from New York on drums; and though this group is small compared with Ra’s 12-plus-member orchestras, Schwartzegeist aptly creates a well-layered collage of strange electro-jazz sounds for space travelers and always with the aim to open up secret pathways to one’s inner ear.
A co-headliner Friday is Vjačeslav Ganielin, a pianist from Latvia (born near Moscow in 1944) who debuted on the East European free jazz scene in 1961, at the age of 17. He’s since been among the best-known figures from the Baltic free jazz scene. In 1987, he emmigrated to Israel to devote his time to compostion and particularly music for films. Opening for the co-headliners is a local quintet, Limbo.
On Saturday, there is Movietalk, featuring improv players Albrecht Maurer (violin), Achim Kaufmann (piano) and Wolter Wierbos (trombone), as well as a duo with local improv jazz vocalist Jana Koubková and Heinz Grobmeier on saxophone and clarinet. Headlining Saturday is the main event: the Phil Minton Quartet, led by Minton, one of the most arresting improv vocalists transcending all music genres.
Minton recalls that he’s played Prague “with Roof, a long time ago, 4WALLS about six years ago, then Butchermintonhart sometime ago, and No Spagetti a few years back.” But what he remembers most is that “the taxi drivers are the worst in the world.”
Minton uses his voice the way Coltrane used the saxophone in his freest period, which takes his performances far beyond the norm, but it is hard to pinpoint his music. He writes, “Most conservative jazz people would prefer that I was in another category. In fact, I’m proud to be considered by whomever it is, that decides in shops and mags, a jazz singer. Jazz for me is not a ‘style.’ It was the music of revolution and enlightenment for the first 50 years of the 20th century, then became fossilized after Coltrane died. Now I’m sometimes put in other limited categories like ‘noise,’ ‘sonic art’ or ‘experimental.’ I like the category ‘inspirational music for anarchists and atheists,’ and that will be a hinderance for a long time.”
Minton will be joined by longtime associates John Butcher on tenor saxophone and vocals, Roger Turner on drums and vocals, and Veryan Weston on piano and vocals for a night your ears will never forget.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (24/09/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.