German free jazz saxophonist Peter Brotzmann, improvisation legend and totem of European counterculture, died on June 22 at his home in Wuppertal, aged 82. He died in his sleep, as two of his FMP labels from Berlin and Trost from Vienna confirm.
As if after one of his hurricane solos, the news echoed in the music scenes of cities like Chicago, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Stockholm, Kraków and London last weekend, where Brötzmann tied creative knots with artists of different generations. The shock wave of his disappearance was such that those who attended a concert by drummer Hamid Drake’s band in Washington on Saturday night observed a minute’s silence in his memory. During his six-decade, uncompromising, on-the-go career, he dedicated himself to building bridges between the United States and Europe. Drake, who began collaborating with him in 1987, defined him as “an outstanding interpreter of the language of the universal wisdom of improvisation”.
Cover of the album “Machine Gun” (1968).
It had a powerful, broad and harsh sound that could be intimidating, as anyone who has looked at his early masterpiece Machine Gun (1968) knows, whose opening bars are dubbed the most aggressive opening bar in jazz history. As his powerful physique and the aspect of Nietzsche in cowboy boots suggested, his thing was not delicacy, but he also knew how to elicit a lyrical sound from his saxophone, the climax of which was reached with the album 14 Love Poems (1984). Personally, he was serious and circumspect, but not sullen. He spiced his never-adopted ideas with profanity in a stony English, learned far from academia to see the world from the ruins of post-war Germany.
He belonged to the generation that had to learn to live with Nazi guilt and that, in the 1960s, looked to the teachings of American jazz musicians to invent a new, European language, when it still seemed possible that art could be the determining factor be to change the world customs. It was no coincidence that Brötzmann recorded “Machine Gun” with an octet in Dresden in May 1968 and released it with his own cover and on his own Brö label. These were his most orthodox Marxist years. “I was a member of the Communist Party for a short time,” he told this journalist in Madrid in 2009, “but I started running very quickly. I’m not the best person to accept rules. “You have to do this, believe in it”, that’s not my opinion.”
In another lecture, which took place in Lisbon in 2017 and was never published, he explained the ideological implications of his art: “Everything you do on stage is a political statement.” You can’t hide anything up there, there’s no escape . Americans tend to be enthusiastic and naive. As much as I admire the music of [el saxofonista] Albert Ayler, unfortunately I do not believe that music is the healing power of the universe. Other things are needed. I’m afraid I’m a very practical European, clinging to reality. The best criticism of myself is that I’m not an idealist.
The Brötzmann-Tentett (foreground), including Joe McPhee (left) and Paal Nilssen-Love (right).
Brötzmann was born in Remscheid in the Rhine-North Westphalia region during World War II. His father, a tax inspector, was a lover of classical German music, and so it took him a while, out of innate remorse, to come to terms with that legacy, “especially Wagner,” as he confessed on that day in July in Lisbon. “It was only later that I began to appreciate the Tristan and Isolde Overture as one of the most beautiful pieces in music history.” The boy had American jazz players like Sydney Bechet and Coleman Hawkins as early heroes. In contrast to other generation comrades, who found in him a vehicle for rebellion and founded bands like Can, Amon Düül or Faust, rock never meant much to him.
“I was only interested in Jimi Hendrix. “We can’t deny it, even if there are some who prefer to do it: Jazz is an American music,” Brötzmann said in the Lisbon talks. “Although I don’t want to despise the European contribution to improvised music since the 1960s; It’s been a give-and-take story ever since. Whatever I do, no matter how far from what you would normally call jazz, you can always hear it [los pianistas] James P Johnson and [Thelonious] monk or [a los saxofonistas] Ben Webster or Chu Berry. For me, the blues is the mother of everything. I’m not just referring to [el uso de] the 12 bars, but to the fact that the blues is the essence of life.”
artistic vocation
His first vocation, which he never gave up, was the fine arts, which he studied in Wuppertal, a city that was also the birthplace of the Pina Bausch dance company, another outstanding figure of the German avant-garde. One of his first creative jobs was assisting the legendary Korean video artist Nam June Paik, with whom he collaborated in 1963 on the occasion of his first major exhibition in Germany. The revolution of the Fluxus movement of conceptual artists, with whom Brotzmann shared beliefs in iconoclasm, was another influence on him.
His art and distinctive typography, almost always in capital letters, adorned most of his vinyl records, as well as many of the records on the FMP label Freie Musik Productions, one of the most important record labels in jazz history, which he helped launch. in Berlin with producer Jost Gebers and bass player Pete Kowald. Free music production. FMP. The Living Music, a recently published book, completes the story of an exhibition of the same name at Haus Der Kunst in Munich in 2017.
Peter Brötzmann, in the Black Forest, 1977, while recording the album “Schwarzwaldfahrt”.trost
Under the heading FMP he published the first jewels of his extensive discography: albums like Balls (1970), Nipples (1969) or the extraordinary Schwarzwaldfahrt (1977), a trip to the Black Forest together with the Dutch percussionist Han Bennink to improvise. A week in front of a portable Nagra recorder, in tune with the sound of the sea, the birds and the planes flying overhead. “It was a nice experience. Since it is a private forest, we had to get a permit over the radio. It was late winter; there was still snow. Every day we returned to the guest house in the middle of the field where we stayed. The owner was waiting for us and cooked a trout caught from the river. “It was just perfect,” Brötzmann recalled.
He found a home in Amsterdam and around the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) collective of Bennink and Misha Mengelberg. Also in London, in the heat of the Incus label and improvisers like Derek Bailey or Evan Parker. Brotzmann explained that the development of a pan-European free jazz scene is natural, like in a European Union governed by guerrilla treaties. Only a handful of these angry young men, such as German Alexander von Schlippenbach (85 years old), Dutchman Han Bennink (81) or Evan Parker (79), survived him.
He also strengthened ties with American musicians such as trumpeter Don Cherry (an expatriate in Europe), drummer Andrew Cyrille, saxophonist Steve Lacy or pianist Cecil Taylor, who between 1969 regularly performed at the Total Music Meeting festivals organized by FMP performed and in 1998 at the Academy of Arts, Berlin.
The story of his maturity can be told through some of the stable bands he has nurtured since the 1980s, such as Last Exit, whose poignancy is close to metal, or Die Like a Dog, a homage to the hero Ayler. He played together with his son Caspar and in duo or trio format with musicians from all over the world. One of his last and most refreshing stable projects was with pedal steel guitarist Heather Leigh. He argued that these adventures “should last as long as they had to last”; that is, as long as they were constantly “changing and creatively challenging themselves.”
After overcoming his drinking problems, he experienced a new youth alongside a young generation of European and American musicians who joined him in a band that was already legendary at the time: the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, funded in part by saxophonist Ken Funded by the prestigious $265,000 MacArthur Fellowship, Vandermark challenged the company’s logistical and economic rules every time he traveled. His concerts were experiences that were as unforgettable as they were difficult to describe.
It was his way of life of choice, here one day, there the next, from a humble hotel the next. He stayed true to this credo to the end, even during the years when he sustained a lung injury from blowing so hard through the mouthpiece of the saxophone. In March of this year, he posted a message on his social media titled “Facts,” written in all caps (minus the “b” in his last name), expressing anger and urgency at the impending end: “Yes, me I collapsed.” come home [de tocar] from Warsaw and London and yes, emergency renaming in ICU and yes, I left the hospital 10 days ago and am now trying to organize my life and no, I have no idea what the future will be and no, I won’t be able to play straight away, nor will I travel or go on stage. It’s not good news friends but it is and yes I will definitely try to get back to the form and substance I was when I was young. So all good, I’m not complaining. I wish you the best. B”. It was his farewell.
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