Peter Brötzmann – Steve Swell – Paal Nilssen-Love

“First Meetings from the Multiverse | Peter Brotzman – Steve Swell – Paal Nilssen-Love | Fast, loose, thoughtful and powerful, these musical imaginations merge for the first time to examine what it means to be an improviser traveling in our three dimensional illusion. Soaring through the stars gathering sound, textures and force they will coalesce a lifetime of soundworlds to create a 21st century big bang. Together they will go deep into the Multiverse to retrieve their undiscovered dreams and bring back the poetry of the unimagined. Prepare to be unhinged.

Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love have a history going back 16 years, based on a predilection for musical intensity, an innate respect for technical excellence and an indifference to the pigeonholing of genres. The duo has toured several times in Europe, played concerts in Japan and the USA and released 3 CDs over the past six years: SweetSweat from 2008 and Woodcuts from 2010, both on the Smalltown Supersound label, followed by A Fish Stinks From The Head, out on Brö in 2013.”

Steve Swell – Trombone

Peter Brötzmann – Saxophones

Paal Nilssen-Love – Drums

TICKETS 40 pln

Steve Swell – Trombone

One of the most adventurous and prolific members of the New York free-jazz community, according to Ed Hazell of Signal To Noise, Steve Swell’s reputation, work ethic and commitment to excellence has kept him in the forefront of improvised music and a leading voice on his instrument for more than 20 years.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Steve Swell has been an active member of the New York music community since 1975. He has established himself as a premiere leader and sideman of some of the most exciting groups ever assembled, giving performances at festivals, clubs and theaters in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. His composing talents have been recognized the world over. His Suite for Players, Dreamers and other Listeners was voted number 2 in the 2006 Cadence Reader’s Poll. Swell’s curiosity and need to create has led him to becoming a much heralded sideman affording him the opportunity to participate as an integral part of groups led by some of the most renown musicians in the jazz and improvised worlds. Among those notables are Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Alan Silva, Roswell Rudd, Jemeel Moondoc, Ken Vandermark, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Roscoe Mitchell, Rob Mazurek, Dave Burrell, Elliott Sharp and Bill Dixon to name a few.

Swell has forty recordings as a leader or co-leader and is a featured artist on more than one hundred other releases. He has taught master classes at universities, elementary schools, high schools, shelters and community centers all across the U.S, and Europe. He is also a teaching artist in the NYC public school system working mostly with special needs children and was awarded a Jubilation Foundation Fellowship Award of the Tides Foundation in 2008 for recognition of that work.

Steve is constantly searching new ways in which to express his restless imagination in his music through his composing and trombone playing. Touchingextremes.com says of Swell’s trombone playing: We are ever so lucky to have friends like Steve Swell, who plays the damn thing as if that was the last day of his life, injecting the music with huge soul, gravitational pulls towards the right energy channels and astounding technical wizardry.

He was nominated Trombonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, 2008 & 2011 and was named Trombonist of the Year, 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2012 by the Argentinean journal, “El Intruso.” The Downbeat Critics Poll, selected Steve for the Trombone category in 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013.

Peter Brötzmann – Saxophones

Peter Brötzmann is one of the most important and uncompromising figures in free jazz and has been at the forefront of developing a unique, European take on free improvisation since the 1960s.

Brötzmann first trained as a painter and was associated with Fluxus (Participating in various events and working as an assistant to Nam Jun Paik) before dissatisfaction with the art world moved his focus towards music. However he continued to paint and his instantly recognisable visual sensibility has produced some of our favourite LP sleeves as well as a number of gallery shows in recent years.

Self-taught on Clarinet and Saxophone, Brötzmann established himself as one of the most powerful and original players around, releasing a number of now highly sought after sides of musical invention including the epochal Machine Gun session in 1968 – originally released on his own Brö private press and later recordings for FMP (Free Music Production) the label he started with Jost Gebers.

Brötzmann’s sound is one of the most distinctive, life-affirming and joyous in all music and he has performed with almost all of the major players of free music from early associations with Don Cherry and Steve Lacy to regular groupings with Peter Kowald, Alex Von Slippenbach, Han Bennink and Fred Van Hove, the Chicago Tentet (Mats Gustafsson, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark and more) and various one-off and ad hoc associations with many others including Keiji Haino, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton and Rashied Ali.

Paal Nilssen-Love – Drums

Nilssen-Love literally grew up in jazz. He was only five-years old back in 1979 when his parents opened the Stavanger Jazzclub, a venue they operated until 1986. A career in music came as a natural (and encouraged) choice. The young drummer began to work with saxophonist Frode Gjerstad and trumpeter Didrik Ingvaldsen in 1990, three years before he began formal jazz studies at Sund College and the Trondheim Music Conservatory. His first available recording is Enten Eller, a CD by Gjerstad’s Circulasione Totale Orchestra, released in 1992.

Being active in several bands at the same time has always been Paal’s deliberate working method. He is constantly conscious about the projects he is in, as his participation in each and one of them is fully dedicated. Playing is not about getting from start to goal, but rather being in an everlasting process, a continuous movement where each new piece of music performed is a prolongation of the latest. Hence, keeping focused and concentrating all energy around what’s happening there and then is of greatest importance – as is the freedom in the music, the ability of being free within the expression.

Today Paal’s portfolio includes Atomic, School Days, The Thing, Frode Gjerstad Trio, Sten Sandell Trio, Scorch Trio, Territory Band, FME, Chicago Tentet, and various duo projects such as with Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, John Butcher, organist Nils Henrik Asheim and noise wizard Lasse Marhaug. He has made numberless performances at festivals and clubs in Europe and USA and participated on more than 100 recordings. He runs his own annual festival – All Ears – for improvised music in Oslo, which is an important part of his musical life, and he plans to start his own recording label for vinyl productions.

Like Pat Metheny put it in 2002, after having played with Paal at Molde Jazz festival: He is simply one of the best new musicians I’ve heard during the latest years! And after having heard Paal in 9 different settings at the same festival, Down Beat reporter Dan Quelette stated: His week at Molde proved a revelation: Nilssen-Love is one of the most innovative, dynamic and versatile drummers in jazz!