Trondheim Splitter orchestras bring hardcore free improvisation to Maerz Musik in Berlin

Cautious beings might warn against the risks of extremely large ensembles, when freely improvising, but the Trondheim and Splitter orchestras are unfazed by such advice. There are thirty players ranging across the stage of Berlin’s Akademie der Künste, combining the resources of the local Splitter Orchestra and the visiting Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. The Norwegians are here in a reduced state, with only nine of their membership present, but the TJO is a malleable beast anyway, according to the needs of each project.

Maerz Musik is a 10-day festival organised by Berliner Festspiele, the institution behind Jazzfest Berlin. Most of its programme revolves around the music of such composers as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Francios Bayle, Beatriz Ferreya, Helmut Lachenmann, and the obscure highlights of Lucia Dlugoszewski. Free improvisation is also welcomed, during several concerts.

Splitter and Trondheim players aren’t stage left and stage right, they all sit in mixed ranks, to avoid set ways. The first set opens with a deliberately brief improvisation, to allow an introductory speech concerning strategies and stances. That thankfully over swiftly, they proceed to concoct an extremely minimalist piece that stretches across the first half until intermission. Guiding drummer Steve Heather sets a tough task by his start-gambit of making a slowly ticking time-figure on a triangle, or other thin-metal object. Few other players can find their way in without a clumsy interruption, so purely self-sufficient is the regular tinging. Orchestra members glance at each other, clearly with a duo or trio offshoot wing in mind, but no one dares step in for quite a while, until some hesitant mouthpiece breathing emerges. This is like expanding The Necks into a big band, then forcing silence on most members.

A faint gamelan shimmer arises from one of the pianos, and some soft fingering scampers over an upright bass, but a massive discipline still exists, something that makes this a very special promenade of spellbinding music. We might expect a lone maverick eruption, but no player dares to spout. After heavy duration, muscles are slowly flexed, with trombone and cello activating, only Axel Dörner getting near to a continuing solo form, as he develops a sewn slide-trumpet line through the stasis, curling high.

Of course, we suspected that the second part of the gig would involve greater volume and activity, and indeed it did, allowing full participation from the electronics players in the line-up, digging down for subsonic truffles, while Norwegian trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø unleashed his own tempestuous effects barrage. Andrea Parkins and Magda Mayas also found more opportunity to twist up their volume dials. Alto saxophonist Amalie Dahl decided to take a circuitous walkabout around the theatre, maintaining silence for a while, then making us jump when she began barking out single tones. Jenny Frøysa was meanwhile making gruff barks on her baritone, and contrabass clarinettist Chris Heenan had switched to an aggressively spiralling sopranino saxophone. The three drummer-percussionists were constantly probing for chain-draping peripherals, or sensitively skimmed kit runarounds. This was around an hour of lovingly detailed soundscaping, radically dynamic following the calm of the preceding improvisation. Especially considering the sprawling size of these combined orchestras, there was an amazing degree of sculptural control in place.

Pre-gig, there was a smaller performance in an upper gallery, with improvising vocalist Audrey Chen. She’s known as a member of Mopcut, with French guitarist Julien Desprez, purveyors of freedom with surprising sonic palettes. Here, she had Hugo Esqinca, hunched over his laptop, stealing her voice-matter to stack it up into layers, processing for extension, and elaborating on the visceral nakedness of her deep-breathing gutturalism. Chen can become quite frightening in her rapid intensity, but also shapes frosted snowstorm landscapes of suspended tones.

The following evening, at the industrially-styled Radialsystem, the dominant instrumentation was heavily amplified metal percussion and naked bagpipes, although not during the same performance. The Polish sticksman Aleksander Wnuk performed “Form And Disposition”, by Zbigniew Karkowski, with the assistance of sound designer Piotr Peszat. Given that the initial run of the piece involved spatially extended capturings of suspended metal sheet scrapings and strikings, Peszat had a significant role on the sonic processing front. Wnuk went down the percussion-as-heavily-amplified-industrial-monster alleyway, taking some time before actually attacking his array of drumheads, concentrating on the shifting rumble of abused metal plates. He played with endurance, loud extremes maintained by constant pummeling. The composition (not scored, only transcribed) sounded quite basic, almost acting as a framework for a percussion demonstration, as Wnuk slowly worked around his spread. First he played the drums with mallets, then hard sticks, finishing with shakers, again warped sonically, before concluding with harsh cymbal shimmers, getting softer, but hardly reaching full softness, as Wnuk’s ears may well have been deadened by this point.

Another form of musical extremity closed the night, with a solo bagpipe set by Erwan Keravec, featuring three contrasting compositions. The German word for bagpipe is dudelsack!

The least appealing piece was “N°20/58”, by Heiner Goebbels, which had Keravec making a dramatic entrance (eventually), after his piping gradually became louder from backstage, walking out into a bright white spotlight, into almost white noise, birdsong, then thunder. Something of a conceptual work. We almost expected him to descend from the rafters in a silvery harness, but no, he’s just walking down the steps to an insistent electro-industrial pulse. The presentation distracted from the music.

When the lights rise for “Two Pages”, an early work by Philip Glass (1968), Keravec’s instrument is revealed as clean and shiny, rather than some vintage folk bag, and he proceeds to walk mathematically left and right across the stage, beginning from the rear and coming closer to the audience. This Glass interpretation is the set’s most impressive selection, capturing its composer’s soundworld in a piling-up of precise escalations, palpably a difficult piece to realise, requiring immense stamina and precision.

The concluding “Occam XXVII” was played stationary, seated on a stool, and swam in a much calmer suspension of breath, a continuing ambient emission, at length, the pipes shorn of their animalistic bite, instead issuing a much smoother exhalation. This Éliane Radigue work was captivating, but hardly dedicated to change or development, even for those of us who enjoy slowcoach drone music.

This was just a two-day segment of Maerz Musik, demonstrating its wild diversity and experimenting inclinations…