Big Band Jazz - Exploring the Limits

Spooner's Zeitgeist reviews an evening of big band jazz as part of the Klang_2 Biennale at the German state of Hesse Studios, Bertramstrasse 8, Frankfurt am Main.
Saturday 21 November
Ticket price 16 Euros

The HR Big Band were like putty in the hands of three avant-garde jazz composers. They premiered the complex compositions with flair.

We were here to see veteran jazz innovator Django Bates. The big band played three of his pieces to top the evening off. We were expecting to hear something mad. But after the intense emotional workout of Bernhard Lang's 'Monodologie VIII', Django's upbeat rhythms were somewhat of a relief.

Django wrote the pieces in honour of his old big band 'Loose Tubes' who with 21 members were active from 1984 to 1990.

First came 'Gaza' which was quite a circus trip. I thought I heard samples of children laughing in the background, but I may have been mistaken. In the plush programme Django writes that he was trying to create a musical illustration of meaningless triumph. The end effect was quite uncanny, a black humour take on the middle east situation.

Next up was 'Midnight Roundabout' which certainly did have samples of traffic on city roundabouts blaring in the background. The piece was quite gloopy and a bit too meandering for this reviewers liking.

Finally, came the piece 'Loose Tubes'. An electric bass line held the whole thing together as brass and keyboards had a fun play around. Unfortunately, the electric guitar was virtually inaudible throughout the whole evening. Surely this was a mistake. There is subtle, but then there is superfluous. The guitarist himself was a rather irritating fellow forever chewing gum, so his impact was negative if anything.

Django's pieces actually sounded quite tame, compared to the earlier works of the evening. German avant-garde composer Hans-Joachim Hespos made the big band sound like an orchestra with a wonderful light piece reminiscent of a dawn chorus in summer.

'Monodologie VIII' by Austrian avant-garde composer Bernhard Lang was the most challenging and rewarding piece. The percussionist had his work cut out, alternately improvising solos on a squeaky wooden block and rustling shells and hitting other objects. Tension and release was skilfully exploited with volcanic rhythmic excerpts suddenly cutting to silence before spewing another jarring eruption forth.

It's not very often that you get to see three cutting-edge composers premiere new pieces all within one evening. And the HR Big Band allowed themselves to be contorted with sadomasochistic joy.

City and Restaurant Reviews

And we're back! Spooner's Zeitgeist has been mulling the world's situation during September and October. Now it's time to share those musings and in doing so create yet more musings until we get nearer to the essential truth. Chasing the Zeitgeist isn't easy.

In the meantime read these city and restaurant reviews that SZ penned for the online men's magazine www.askmen.com.

Frankfurt am Main

Oslo

Ambiente in Prague

Bull and Bear in Frankfurt

Too Much Metallica

Sonisphere Festival 04 July 2009 at Hockenheim Ring, Germany

Metallica

Die Toten Hosen

The Prodigy

In Extremo

Down

It was an inferno of beer-guzzling metal fans. The sun beat down on us without mercy. Thousands were gathered as if in worship of the black hole in front. Defenders of the faith took to the stage for the 1000th time. But could they still inspire revelation?

There was only one band people were really here to see. The posses of sun burnt beer guts and jaded biker couples in black were all waiting for one thing.

Sure as clockwork Mesa Boogie amps were racked up and a special stage constructed. Out came Hetfield and Co. and ripped into some ear-bleeding riffage. It was LOUD. It was FAST. It was MONSTROUS.

Have Metallica just become another Great American export? Just like a MacDonalds or a Starbucks they roll up into town and present their wares. Here we are. We are Metal Gods. Jump up and down like monkeys and we'll play Master of Puppets. Job done.

The word is BLOATED. Hammett mashed the solos. Looked like he hadn't picked up the guitar since the last concert. Hetfield spouted shit about 'Lovin' Germany'. Where's the originality? Sorry guys, but your show was a total cheeseburger with fries.

The Prodigy were the highlight of the day. Here was real energy and passion. Keith Flint was jumping around in fluorescent pink pants like a mad jack-in-the-box. The strobe lights they brought in pounded to the sick electronic beats as our rib cages throbbed. This was a show with colour and razzmatazz.

In between The Prodigy and Metallica, all the other bands were pretty uninspired. Die Toten Hosen aren't bad if A. you like radio-friendly punk and B. are German.

Maybe heavy metal and summer just don't belong together... More original bands like The Prodigy and it could have been a real party.

Photojournalism

Reporters hate photographers. Reporters painstakingly gather the facts, write gripping articles and bold headlines. They bring people the news. They should be the stars of a newspaper. But then someone with a camera takes a picture - suddenly nobody is interested in reading anymore.

"A picture tells a thousand words." Rarely has a saying been more accurate or more used.

Witness the photo here: 'Migrant Mother' taken in America during the 1930s depression.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) sent out a team of photographers to document rural poverty and the attempts to solve it.

[The US Library of Congress recently released an amazing set of these images on Flikr.]

Documentary photography was never the same again. Dorothea Lange's photo, here, was the beginning of a more compassionate style. One which took a humanitarian view and attempted to influence world opinion.

Some argue that photographers of this style are too biased, forcing their own beliefs onto the situation. But isn't a photo always subjective to some extent? Covering human stories needs a degree of human feeling.

Perhaps this is what infuriates reporters. How can their words ever capture the raw emotion expressed in a brilliant snapshot?


Sources:

Excellent blog post by BBC photo editor Phil Coomes

Further reading:

New York Times article "When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Debates, Give or Take"

No Rules!

Hey All! Don't worry SZ is back. We're dropping the rules for now and going for short sharp comment on all that is NOW.

Here's a Japanese proverb for the road:

"Better to write down something one time than to read something ten times."

[Unless, of course, you're reading Spooner's Zeitgeist]

Awesome Writer Dies

J G Ballard has died aged 78.

If there is one book you should read before you die, it is his autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun'.

It is a fictionalized account of his internment, at the age of 12, inside a Japanese prison camp in China during WWII. Surrounded by violence, starvation and death, Jim's spirits never fall and neither does his iron determination to cling onto life.

Self-pity is not in Jim's repertoire. Flies clog his sick gums and pus oozes from the sores that cover his body, but his black humour and ability to barter favours sees him live off a single mouldy sweet potato a day.

The Collins English dicitionary may define 'Ballardian' as 'dystopian modernity', but Ballard's writing in 'Empire' thrives on the man-made catastrophe of war.

Prostate cancer may have taken him, but I look foward to exploring his 15 novels and many short stories further.

• 'Empire of the Sun' was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987
• 'Crash' was made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996 and tells of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents
  

The Reader

1950s Germany: a teenage lad ends up knocking around with a sultry blond tram conductress. For some reason she gets him to read classics to her before she teaches him a new position. Although the reading is a bit odd at first, he enjoys it.

The affair lasts the summer and then she disappears. By the mid 60s the young man is a law student attending a special seminar on a war crimes trial. Who should be sitting in the dock, but his first love. She was a guard at Auschwitz.

The Holocaust and German guilt are major themes, but it is essentially the tragic love story which drives the film. We follow Michael’s relationship with Hanna throughout.

German actor David Kross is utterly convincing as the nervous besotted youth. But Michael holds his own and is soon rutting Hanna in bed with growing confidence. This is not child porn as some critics have argued. This is a fully consensual adult relationship. As with any relationship the power balance is in flux.

Kate Winslet is outstanding as Hanna Schmitz and fully deserving of her Best Actress Oscar. She’s hot, but at the same time mysterious and rather coarse. Her voice is dry with a hard edge – no cheap German accent here. The way she always calls Michael ‘kid’ is brusque yet affectionate.

Hanna is accused of letting 300 Jews die during a death march in 1944. She has a piece of evidence that may help her defence, but she is so ashamed of it that she keeps it a secret to the bitter end.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Hanna? Most of the film is shot from Michael’s perspective so his point of view offers a guide. He cannot forgive her for what she has done. But is it more the betrayal of his trust or the fact that she was complicit in the Holocaust? It is certainly a mixture of both and her betrayal becomes even more enormous given that she hid her terrible wartime past from him. Think about it, what if your first ever lover was a death camp guard? Wouldn’t that make you complicit?

Ralph Fiennes plays the grown-up Michael and is a perfect match for Kross. The make-up artists do a very thorough job of making Winslet look old as her character ages, maybe too thorough, since she looks like a decrepit zombie. But the overall artfulness of the cinematography lets them get away with it.

Ironically, the book by German author Bernhard Schlink is too cluttered by words. Director Stephen Daldry reads aloud with a clear voice and the emotionally heart of the story shines through.