Ever the contrarian, there were in fact eleven members of Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet for their three day residency at Cafe Oto. Eleven. This was more than an attempt to simply be “one louder”: in an interview conducted for the BBC beforehand, tentet member Ken Vandermark was rightly insisting Brötzmann’s reputation as the crazy shrieking sax player was – at least in part – a lazy journalistic invention. There is so much more to him than this; even when paired with Japanese noise guitarist Keiji Haino at Oto the previous week, the subtler side of his talents was still apparent. What the big band format in fact gives Brötzmann, aside from a financial headache, is sonic possibilities, different formations of musicians, from solos, duos, trios, quartets, right up to and including the full force of all eleven blasting away at once. Over the three days, the formal lineups included, as well as the tentet+1, Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit, a brass quartet, the Sonore saxophone trio, as well as solo sets from tuba player Per Åke Holmlander, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and the bass player Kent Kessler. And that is before we get to the countless combinations which assembled and disassembled organically during the course of the big band sets. Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.
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