On Mikrojazz, their cutting edge
joint project for RareNoiseRecords, German saxophonist Philipp Gerschlauer and
guitarist David Fiuczynski explore the world of music that falls between the cracks
of the tempered scale. Joined by jazz drumming legend Jack DeJohnette, fretless
electric bassist Matt Garrison and microtonal keyboardist Giorgi Mikadze, this
daring crew creates dreamy, otherworldly soundscapes on tunes by Gerschlauer
like aptly-titled "Hangover" and "LaMonte's Gamelan Jam"
along with a swinging microtonal tune "Mikro Steps" and other
originals like Fiuczynski's "MiCroY Tyner", Zirkus Macabre and
"Lullaby Nightmare".
Fiuczynski, who heads up the Planet MicroJam Institute at
the Berklee College of Music in Boston, previously released two microtonal
recordings on RareNoise - 2012's Planet MicroJam, which opened a Pandora's Box
on non-Western tuning, and 2016's Flam! Blam! Pan-Asian MicroJam!, which was
jointly dedicated to 20th century classical composer Olivier Messiaen and
innovative hip-hop record producer JDilla. Gerschlauer, who was inspired by
French composer Gérard Grisey and Paul Desmond had been independently exploring
the world of microtonal music in Berlin and New York before developing a method
of dividing an octave (12 notes in equal temperament) into 128 notes on the
alto saxophone.
"I started to use microtones on the saxophone about ten
years ago," Gerschlauer explained. "I wanted to extend the harmonic
and melodic language which was used in jazz music so far. I began noticing that
the regular piano and keyboards could not provide the full harmonic and melodic
spectrum that was needed for my compositions. So five years ago, I decided to
also develop my own microtonal keyboard which
now fills this gap. The tunings and programming I am using are a
complete novelty in a jazz context. When I found out about David and what he is
doing, I naturally was very excited and it made sense that we would be meeting
and playing at some point."
This meeting of the minds was jump-started when Fiuczynski
invited Gerschlauer to Berklee to present his music, talk about playing
microtonal saxophone and playing with Berklee's resident Planet MicroJam
Ensemble. "David and I had already been in an intensive email
correspondence on microtonal music, so I knew that he was combining jazz with
microtones and that his music was really grooving," said the saxophonist.
"I couldn't wait to meet him in person and felt honored by the invitation
to hold a workshop there. I was pleased to find out that David's microtonal ensemble at Berklee
sounded great! You could hear right away that they played and rehearsed on a
regularly basis. I think it's awesome that such a band can exist in a
university context."
For Fiuczynski (aka Fuze), this collaboration with
Gerschlauer was marked by a kindred connection that was apparent from the
outset because of their mutual interest in melding micro- jazz and grooves.
"Just as there are jazz and classical snobs and uptight indie rockers,
there are many divisions in microtonality," he said. 'I've had plenty of
micro-snobs turn me away because I was injecting a groove element into
microtonality. But Philipp was stunned at how I was using grooves and coloring
microtones in a completely unique way, and I was intrigued by how he was
working with a very high order of microtones - 128 notes per octave and
untempered - amazing! So we decided to join forces because both had something
to offer to the other."
Fiuczynski has been operating on the fringe for decades,
flaunting mondo-chops with his avant- jazz-funk band Screaming Headless Torsos
in the early 1990s, as a member of Hasidic New Wave in the late '90s and in
collaboration with keyboardist John Medeski on 1994's Lunar Crush and
subsequently with his KiF trio and experimental Black Cherry Acid Lab. A
longtime exponent of the fretless guitar, his wicked whammy bar articulations
over the years have gone well beyond the 12-tone Western chromatic scale. In
more recent years he's been studying microtonal music in a more formal sense
while also experimenting with a quarter tone guitar.
Perhaps eerie-sounding, unsettling and 'out of tune' to
Western ears, microtonal music, which employs intervals smaller than a
semitone, has nonetheless been around since the Hellenic civilizations of
ancient Greece and continues to be prevalent in musical cultures around the
world today from India to the Balkans to China, Turkey and Africa.
As Fiuczynski noted, "When taken outside of the context
of blues, gamelan, Middle Eastern music - in other words the 'micro' sounds
we're used to - it can be jarring, especially since we're doing microtonal
harmony. You don't hear harmony in East Asian and Middle Eastern music. At
times it's polyphonic but harmonies are incidental. Microtonal harmony started
with Julian Carillo, Alois Haba, Ivan Wyschnegradsky (and also Charles Ives) in
the first half of the 20th century. These are our microtonal classical
forefathers. But what Mikrojazz does - and I've done this on Planet Microjam
and FLAM! - is jazz microtonal chord scales. This is fairly new, I don't really
know anyone else doing this. And when you play those microtonal melodies and
then you stack them in harmony, it can certainly throw you for a loop."
"I can't understand why the wide majority of jazz
musicians is still using only 12 notes per octave," Gerschlauer added.
"I feel we are stuck in this system because there aren't many people who
seriously think about this. Art has always been a reflection on the time it is
created in. The Zeitgeist or 'sign of the time' we live in is rapid
communication and innovation and artists should be the interpreters of this
Zeitgeist. I feel this is my mission. Microtones build the foundation of my
scale and harmonic language. None of the pitches I am using fits into our
predominant tone system. And I believe that due to it's physiology, the ear
finds justly tuned chords more consonant than other tunings. Hermann von
Helmholtz suggested in his book On the Sensations of Tone that there is a
direct link between the physics of a sound wave, the physiology of our ears,
the reception in our brain and music theory. This opened up a field of study
for me. When I listened to the opening chord of Grisey's "Partiels" it
hit me like a wave. Microtonality is the sound of TODAY, of NOW! This is how
today, the time we are living in, sounds like and I hope that when people will
hear this music, they will realize how rigid the predominant tuning system
is."
Kindred spirits Fiuczynski and Gerschlauer dive headlong
into the microtonal pool on Mikrojazz and are ably supported in their
explorations by the empathetic crew of DeJohnette, Garrison and Mikadze. As an
added visual treat, each piece on Mikrojazz, which is subtitled Neue
Expressionistische Musik, meaning 'new expressionist music', is paired with
expressionist paintings by the likes of Georg Grosz, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, August Macke, Egon Schiele, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Jean Michel
Basquiat and more. "Both Philipp and I grew up in Germany and
expressionist painting is an influence, certainly for me," said
Fiuczynski. "I do consider myself to be a Black German expressionist and
those paintings are major influences. The jagged forms, the intense colors and
the African-American elements (Basquiat) and other non-Western elements that
influenced many German expressionists are kind of a visual summary of what I
do. I feel very 'Black'' when listening to James Brown or playing with Jack
DeJohnette, but I feel very 'German' when injecting microtonality and jagged
lines and so forth. It's a personal thing, I don't have a rationale for this,
I'm just reacting."
"So Mikrojazz is about our affinity with expressionism,
something that's been close to my heart for a while," Fiuczynski said of
his joint effort with Gerschlauer. "I love painting in general, but
particularly expressionist painting. We've paired paintings with our music in a
very intuitive manner, based more on emotions than literal or direct connections.
It's literally a personal EXPRESSION of our music and art."
Regarding the provocative music heard throughout Mikrojazz,
Fiuczynski believes it just might be, to borrow the title of a 1959 Ornette
Coleman album, The Shape of Jazz to Come. "I would like to think that
Western microtonality is an evolutionary extension of 20th century music, and
since our 12 note per octave musical language is becoming exhausted and
repetitive, I think microtonality is a very natural and necessary musical development,"
he said. "Here is where Philipp and I can contribute the most to the
evolution of jazz and hopefully bring new insights and perspectives to the art
form. I think this record will change the way people hear and listen to
music."
Bold words from a bold visionary. But he delivers once again
in this microtonal meeting of the minds with the amazing Mr. Gerschlauer.
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