It was something of a relief, therefore, when Peter Brötzmann took the stage for what turned out to be one of the grooviest, most sheerly enjoyable sets I’ve ever heard him play.
Ultimately, I would be more inclined to look favourably upon Haino’s performance if his persona weren’t so wilfully enigmatic and impenetrable, a pose that set him apart from just about every other artist at the festival. The anguished cries, moans and utterances were those of a man being sick, while the pieces for guitar and analogue devices were intermittently entertaining but dragged on long after the point had been made. Haino’s schtick is beginning to grate on me, a feeling planted by the lengthy vocal improv with which he kicked off and confirmed by the even longer instrumental passages which followed.
#Peter brotzmann long story short full#
Having said all that, I could probably have done without the extended set by Keiji Haino which opened the third full evening of the festival (I unfortunately missed what must have been a corking clash between Mats Gustafsson, dieb13 and Martin Siewert in the afternoon).
#Peter brotzmann long story short free#
As, indeed, was the staggering fact that the festival was sold out weeks in advance how often has that happened at a free jazz fest? I was only able to make two of the festival’s four days, but the riches presented on those days were more than enough to convince one of the epochal, never-to-be-repeated nature of the event. Two years in the planning, Long Story Short was also the 25th Music Unlimited festival, an annual event rivalled only by the Konfrontationen festival in (this is getting embarrassing) Austria in its ability to attract, year after year, the world’s leading names in free jazz and improvised music. But where did he choose to have the main event, the one that brought together pretty much all of his musical friends and collaborators, the Brötzfest to end all Brötzfests? Not Germany, not Japan and certainly not the UK, but Austria of course. Peter Brötzmann has been on tour even more than usual in 2011, this being the year in which he celebrates his 70th birthday.
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