Peter Brötzmann kicks off the festival
To tell a beginning-middle-end type story about what it’s like listening to 76-year-old free jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann improvise is to ignore the most important facets of his music.It’s better to say that from the moment you hear that saxophone, you may ask yourself, like a character in a Talking Heads song, “Well… how did I get here?”
The frantic improvisation holds you captive as you try and figure out just how it all fits. And then, if you’re attentive, you’ll get a small moment of escape, a little lyrical melody to grasp onto.
The Ontarion asked Brötzmann about his influences and the state of free jazz today.
Jordan Walters: You were involved with the avant-garde art movement Fluxus. Could you tell me a bit about that?
Peter Brötzmann: I was working for the Korean artist Nam June Paik, because we had quite a good gallery in our town. Through Paik, I got in touch with some of the other Fluxus guys.
JW: Did you ever get in touch with Joseph Beuys?
PB: Yeah, of course. Beuys was professor in the art academy of Düsseldorf and we met a couple of times.
JW: Do you think that the free jazz movement has any connection to the sentiments of Fluxus?
PB: During that time people didn’t think in boxes, and now everybody is here and there and such. So it was in a way a much more interesting time, especially for me as a young man. Because I was in touch with Fluxus, it was easier for me to get over the rules that jazz music usually sets. I didn’t have to care if I had fulfilled the rules of jazz music; that never interested me, and I could start my own stuff.JW: How do you relate to the original traditions that inspired you many years ago?
PB: I’ve always been quite an adventurous guy. Life is about learning, making experiences, and not being too shy to try something that you could fail at. I’m a very traditional man and I’m still learning about the history of jazz and it’s still a big influence in my own playing and if you’re a tenor player you should listen to — you have to listen to — the old stuff like Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster. There are so many good players that nobody is mentioning anymore, really good guys. So this is one side of my learning all the time.
JW: Do you feel that the original inclination that was there in improvisational jazz is still there today, or has something changed as the years went by?
PB: You know, you have a lot of the Fluxus revival stuff going on, which is a contradiction in itself — like teaching free jazz in the conservatory, which is complete bullshit. Fluxus was a short movement in history and it should stay like that. “Ah yes, of course you can learn free jazz” and “You can do Fluxus-like things nowadays” — it’s completely bullshit. What you can do for yourself is develop your own things and find people you are interested in working with.I’m very happy with my collaboration with [pedal steel player] Heather Leigh, because she comes from a completely different side of music, and that helps me look at what I’m doing in a different way
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A NOTE ON PHOTOS
Thomas King, author of The Inconvenient Indian and other noteworthy books, provided the photo seen here. King has been photographing the Guelph Jazz Festival for over 20 years. In 2015, his jazz photography was featured in “Sound Check,” an exhibit at what is now the Art Gallery of Guelph.
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Photo by Thomas King.