May 2008 gig reviews

Lotte Anker

Wednesday 7 May

'In Her Own Sweet Time (Swell)' by Stephen Middleton

Lotte Anker (tenor and soprano saxophones); Pat Thomas (piano); Peter Friis-Nielsen (electric bass); Mark Sanders (drums).

I was drawn to the Vortex for this concert by familiarity with Lotte Anker's Leo CD Triptych, the fact that she has worked with Marilyn Crispell (of whom I am a friend and fan), and the title of one of the CDs by the group Copenhagen Art Ensemble, which she co-leads: Don’t Mention the War.

Conversations at the bar: cities in the small hours, the music in the first half (the word from behind the bar is 'pretty uncompromising'), and that Lotte Anker knows and rates Joe McPhee. This last fitting perfectly with her performance.

The first set yields scattergun impressions, which cohere later. The importance here of the piano. Pat Thomas runs the gamut from internal plinks and shudders, via squiggles, crashes, Andrew Hill crabbed, to flowing lyricism, and often alights on a sort of jagged calypso groove that seems to both delight and surprise him (and Anker). The second pieces of both sets are examples of this. Set one's is on tenor, beginning with trills and quavers over Thomas's estranged Caribbean rhythms, rolling out into a swell. A series of false endings leads into a different swelling (Coltranesque) coda. Coltrane, of course, retained a piano to the end.

On soprano Anker is more fluttery over scampering bass and drums in the opening number, where Thomas touched base with myriad genres. Sanders and Peter Friis-Nielsen (on his considerable Vortex debut) tended to quick fire and full on, Friis-Nielsen in remarkable little flurries on his electric bass. The piece ended with Anker on tenor, architectural lines, accelerating, a buzz-saw effect around the notes, but the structure intact.

The set closed on a soprano piece, with Pat Thomas plucking and strumming in the piano and a siren in the street outside as the notes decayed. How often this seems to happen. I once listened to a Joe McPhee broadcast with helicopters and sirens audible throughout. (Osama captured in Hornsey. Jazz poet misses entire event).

Two things became apparent made manifest in the extraordinary tour de force that opened the second set. Lotte Anker takes her time (in a good way) to make a point, with long repeated notes, and (on soprano) blowing gently on the reed to begin, slow-building structures, and juggled motifs. Fred Anderson is another thus. Another tenor player with whom Marilyn Crispell has worked. And, though she uses mild distortion around some notes, her playing, especially on tenor, is basically tonal. She is, in fact, the most restrained and tightly focused, but far from the most conservative, player in her band.

These facets are apparent in the monumental opener to set two with Anker playing tenor, extended notes. Pat Thomas produces rumbles from within the piano and then is suddenly almost scalic, with bass busy, well nigh conversational. Anker growls and quavers, but still essentially tonal, extremely long notes, gradually breaking up into repeated motifs.

Piano and tenor alone, then all join in at speed, with Anker working on the same trilled refrains, now fast, now reined in, steely focused in the face of relentless rhythm-section barrage (a quality she shares with both the aforementioned Joe McPhee and, for example, Roscoe Mitchell). It is interesting that, though the established partnership here is with Friis-Nielsen, a pianosaxophone unison, either alone, or over busy bass and drums, is what predominates. And so it is again, the two of them alone, before they all spiral off.

The closing piece is on the more squally soprano. Thomas is playing the pedals, Sanders the cymbals, the soprano a fluttering decrescendo, the bass all wobble and sudden flurries. Soprano and cymbal squeal. One brief Lacyesque dance. Then she is moving the reed in front of her mouth, almost whistling on to it and Friis-Nielsen's bass creaks where he has improvised a slide on the strings, interrupted by sudden plucked slurries. Tremolo a single shimmering note in the strange new Vortex lights, the candles burnt low.

Swelling into louder flurries, the rhythm section in frenzy. Anker phrasing outwards from her single notes, but still restrained. Pat Thomas is hitting the piano with a stick (cripes! sounds like a case for Boris) throughout this wild passage, then is left isolated for a beautiful solo interlude. Sanders follows, brief and then the jagged, twitching rhythm section is off until Thomas and Anker lock on to another Caribbean riff, albeit an edgy one, that charms them and the audience as they close.

The audience seems delighted. The only unfortunate note is that it is not a large audience by recent club standards. I remember, though, seeing Marilyn Crispell, early in her career in a venue that shall remain nameless. Unlike at the Vortex, publicity was non-existent.

There was not even any indication on the building itself that she was playing there, except a note to say that the regular Gay Humanists meeting would take place upstairs, where it was, presumably, better attended. About eleven people saw and heard her that evening. Now she fills the place.

Once more of London's jazz community have had the chance to hear or hear of Lotte Anker (a major star in Danish improvising and compositional circles) her thoughtful and insistent music should draw the large audiences it deserves here too.

May 2008
gig reviews

Gig reviews archive

Lotte Anker

Wednesday 7 May

'In Her Own Sweet Time (Swell)' by Stephen Middleton

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May 2008 gig reviews

Gig reviews archive

Lotte Anker

Wednesday 7 May

'In Her Own Sweet Time (Swell)' by Stephen Middleton

Join the Vortex email list

RSS feeds

May 2008
gig reviews

Join the Vortex
email list