FLEMISH JAZZ MEETING 2009

All About Jazz
d=34209
October 5, 2009

Unaccustomed as I am to inhabiting the trade/music business function
end of things, a sojourn at the Gent Jazz Festival and Jazz Middelheim
in Belgium inevitably led to a swiftly-following weekend at the Flemish
Jazz Meeting in the scenic city of Brugge. This is the third edition
of a September band showcase that’s designed to spread the musical
wares of Belgium’s Flanders region across the entire European jazz
network. Therefore, most of its delegates are drawn from the world
of promoters, festival organisers, club bosses and artist managers,
arriving from France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Lithuania
and Holland.

Also, as a kind of rogue element, there’s a small posse of
observationalist scribes, here to document the behavioural patterns
of this strange, instantly-formed beatnik community. The physical host
organisation is De Werf, which is quite possibly the key jazz body in
Belgium, in terms of being both a venue and a label of long-running
repute. The whole weekend is also jointly run by Jazzlab, Jazz Brugge
and the Flanders Music Centre.

Travel the globe, and thou shalt always find places of alternative
jazz refuge like De Werf. This feels like home. The concept is to
catch five bands on Friday and Saturday evenings, closing out with
two more on Sunday morning. These have been selected by a panel of
50 Belgian writers and promoters. Each band is given 20 minutes to
make their mark, although the later sets seem to have some leeway
for extension. There are one or two acts that proffer lukewarm sets,
and a vocalist who’s got to combat this reviewer’s difficulties with
most song-form jazz. That leaves a large majority of the combos who
manage to attain various levels of thrilling excellence.

Diverse musical backgrounds converge with the Hijaz sextet. Tunisian
oud player Moufadel Adhoum shares the front line with duduk blower
Vardan Hovannisian, from Armenia. Moroccan percussionist Azzedine
Jazouli allies himself with the Belgian the line-up is completed by
pianist Niko Deman and bassman Chris Mentens.

The dominant sound flows up from North Africa, draped over a
homogenised jazz base. They’re a suitable choice for an opening act,
offering a wide array of textures, without particularly rising above
a friendly fusion, devoid of the tensions and frictions that would
invest the music with a more compulsive energy.

The Pierre Anckaert Trio was augmented by flautist Stefan Bracaval,
who provided the main point of interest when hefting the bass variant
of his instrument, darkly blowing with softly percussive power.

It was only when the Free Desmyter Quartet took to the stage that
the Friday evening began its ascent to full intensity. I’d caught
this pianist’s trio at both the Gent and Middelheim festivals in
July and August of 2009, concluding that Desmyter’s enquiring and
spacious style was attractive, but only suited to an environment of
concentrated listening.

With the quartet, reedsman John Ruocco (an American dwelling in
Holland) added a volatile ingredient, ramming the piano trio formation
into a more riled-up state. He switched from tenor saxophone to
clarinet, wading through the spaces left by Desmyter’s wandering lines.

Operating on a very sparse terrain, accordionist Tuur Florizoone was
teamed with cellist Marine Horbaczewski and tuba/trombone maestro
Michel Massot (also a member of the brilliant Trio Grande). The
confluence of these three quite unlikely instruments immerses the
ears in sheer pleasure, uniting with the occasionally absurdist work
of Massot.

By way of extreme contrast, saxophonist Jeroen Van Herzeele led his
quartet toward free jazz oblivion, filling his space with lengthy,
involved solos as he took the music in an incremental skyward
climb. The leader’s steady, slow-motion explosion dominated, but
his band responded with equal force, not least the French bassist
Jean-Jacques Avenel.

On Saturday evening, Briskey made an unlikely opener. Given this
expanded combo’s cinematically wide-angled sound, they’d be more
to capitalise on their thrusting, accumulating motion. Gert Keunen
triggered samples and field recordings, expanding his previously
lonesome state into a full band-spread. Drummer Isolde Lasoen casually
flicked out tight funk accents at slow speed, keyboardist Sara
Gilis played on the edge of overload, but bass saxophonist Nicolas
Roseeuw would have benefited from a volume boost to facilitate the
full enormity of his elephantine belch-lines. Trumpeter Bart Maris
also impressed with a series of cutting filigrees. The music hovered
moodily around the realms of slow jazz and atmospherica soundtracks.

The Carlo Nardozza Quintet operated within a much more traditional
acoustic jazz framework. The band’s trumpeting leader began with a
straight-ahead post-bop blowing session, but as electric guitarist
Melle Weijters sat in, the band’s style gradually stepped sideways
into a more modernistic patch, decorated with his embellishments. The
presence of saxophonist Daniel Daemen also addded to this sense
of adventure.

The subversive tilting of the mainline jazz form continued with pianist
Christian Mendoza’s group. This Peruvian composer has an individualist
touch, filling his solos with subtle ornamentation, never playing
one note when five will sound more compelling. His style sounds
very natural, but it’s not solely stemming from any recognisable
jazz lineage. He seeks after the less obvious progressions. His
compositions are also quite untethered to any obvious influences,
not afraid of minimalist insistency in their themes, as piano and
clarinet nag away at an addictive figure.

The Saturday night climax arrived with RadioKuka Orkest, a combo that’s
led by bassist Kristof Roseeuw, of the Flat Earth Society. Actually,
it was reedsman Tom Wouters (also from FES) who came across as the
dominant personality in this already unhinged quartet. His surprise
switch from clarinet to drumkit dropped their full depth charge,
prompting a complete shunt of style from fidgety chamber complexity
towards a skitteringly funked momentum ack into the initial form,
forcing the music into a concentrated reprise. It was as if we all
had a sharp awakening from a deranged jazz nightmare. What is it
with accordions and cellos this weekend? Phillippe Thuriot and Lode
Vercampt also excelled.

Enjoyable though the concluding DelVita Group was, these striplings
had to endure the trial of following the last pair of particularly
creative groups, suffering through just not being dynamic or unusual
enough in their fairly routine construction of horns (trombone/tenor
saxophone) and rhythm section.

Following the Saturday night rush of excitement, Sunday morning’s
session was limited to just a pair of after-breakfast acts. First,
the South African singer Tutu Puoane led a quartet, sounding better on
the songs that spring more obviously from her homeland tradition. She
was too mellow for some, even at this early hour of the day. Far more
gregarious was the Bart Defoort Quartet, representing the old guard of
post-bop jazz, with their twin tenor saxophone front line. Their whole
set charged at full speed and intensity, providing a grizzled lunchtime
blow-out that acted as a conclusive emission of pent-up soloing gusto.

If only more countries could set out to encapsulate their jazz scenes
in a single weekend of condensed exposure…

The set-lengths were just right to sufficiently grasp each combo’s
ethos. The approaches varied (although none were truly extreme, in the
old-fashioned experimental sense), taking in song, ‘scapes, acoustic
chamber intimacy, mainstream blowing and ethnic adventuring. Some of
Belgium’s best-known artists have already been featured in the first
two years of this meeting, but there’s still no shortage of new or
new-ish discoveries to be made. Let’s hope some of these combos get
to appear on the club and festival scene around the rest of Europe
in the coming year.