- #THE CHAPEL SF PETER BROTZMANN HOW TO#
- #THE CHAPEL SF PETER BROTZMANN TRIAL#
- #THE CHAPEL SF PETER BROTZMANN FREE#
#THE CHAPEL SF PETER BROTZMANN TRIAL#
Eventually, after much trial and play, Keiji and Brötzmannan molded and created an experience that embodied a performance of unbridled liberation. Like children playing with toy blocks, both had built, torn apart, and started to build again. When they’d first started, there had been nothing. The note was so simple, so pure, innocent, and childlike, almost like we’d been warped back in time to witness the first note Brötzmannan had ever played.Ī pause followed by dually deafening cheers from the audience. Brötzmannan, his neck muscles constricted, his veins bulging, his eyes shut tight, let out one last note. Keiji leaned back in his chair hard, his gray hair whipping back into the air, nearly sending him over as he struck his guitar and stopped.
#THE CHAPEL SF PETER BROTZMANN FREE#
They played in that spontaneously created space for what felt like an eternity, moving and living free within it as long as they wished, or as long as the moment would allow them to. Brötzmannan machine gun saxophone rose and rose with Keiji’s spiraling riffs until both of them seemed to create a resonating, pre-void droning sound. He was sitting with his back arched, head hung, his fingers curled inward while they struck the strings. I got right up to stage right and was engulfed in booming Keiji’s guitar playing. At first, it just sounded like repeated strikes and blows of their instruments, but eventually that repetition generated into a tangible, followable melody. Throughout, eventually, I saw the conversation going on between the two of them. Every time they would explode, he’d circle them around each other as if molding their energy. He had cymbals and was clashing them together. From the vantage point of the fourth or fifth step, I watched as Keiji’s animalistic energy morphed into a calm, almost shamanistic one. They were free to explore, to make mistakes, to go back, and to start again. They seemed to demand attention without fear. Keiji grunted, clicked, and screamed into his mic, Brötzmannan all the while in the back blowing into his clarinet in short, sharp bursts.
#THE CHAPEL SF PETER BROTZMANN HOW TO#
No one knew how to act, what to do, whether to cheer or run in terror. Then, as if from the depths of some ancient, prehistoric cave, there erupted a pterodactyl-like screeching from Keiji. All anyone could hear was the creaking of the floorboards under either player’s feet. There was some scattered applause that triggered little to no reaction from Keiji or Brötzmannan as the room filled with a sudden air of reverence.Ī deafening silence. Keiji, checking his guitar and his drum set, walked up to the single microphone slightly left of the middle of the stage. After experiencing his raging, violent, enraptured performance, that makes complete sense to me. His first passion was theatre, leaning towards The Theatre of Cruelty and the surrealist movement of the 1930s in Paris. Born in Chiba, Japan in 1952 his work revolves around rock, percussion, improvisation, noise music, psychedelic, minimalism, and drone music. I could barely notice his sunken face and his pursed lips through his chest-length wispy gray hair that hung over his face. He wore thick, onyx-colored sunglasses that wrapped around his head. Keiji was thin, dressed head to toe in black, probably no bigger or taller than a sophomore in high school. Peter Brötzmann at the Chapel in San Francisco He paid no attention to them, their flashes, their anxious breath or questioning eyes.īrötzmannan knew not what was coming, only that it would be. On the floor, the crowd stood maybe two feet from Brötzmannan. The amber stage light from above barely seemed to penetrate his thick, gray beard. Gripped between his two, meaty hands were his clarinet with his sax close by. His baggy clothes reminded me of someone about to go fishing for the day. Every action counted.īrötzmannan is tall, but with a hunched stance like a bent oak tree. His movements were slow, pained, heavy, but deliberate. Immediately, I sensed a somber, quiet intensity about him. Brötzmannan stood in the back right of the stage almost near the curtain, like he was trying to hide. A clarinet and saxophone player, he is a major figurehead in free jazz and experimental music. Peter Brötzmannan, born in Remscheid, Germany in 1941, career started in the European jazz culture of the 1960s. From what I could tell, I as well as the audience weren’t even sure when a song began or ended, let alone when to clap. There was no album they were touring for. At The Chapel Wednesday night, that’s exactly what Peter Brötzmannan and Keiji Haino showed to their wall-to-wall packed house.īoth musicians are known as improvisational or free artists, creating music together on the spot, right there on the stage, in real time. The late, great Nina Simone said I’ll tell you what freedom is.