Berlin-based reedist and composer Boris Hauf has been a regular visitor to Chicago since 1999, developing strong ties with local musicians on his sometimes extended stays. One especially noteworthy product of these collaborations is his sextet, which performs locally tonight for the first time since the 2011 release of its most recent album, Next Delusion (Clean Feed). Hauf leads five local jazz and experimental musicians, combining their aesthetics for a restrained but not minimalist sound that borrows the solo language of free improvisation and the patience of avant-Âgarde drone. Over four extended pieces, he and fellow reedists Keefe Jackson and Jason Stein play braided long tones and multipitched clusters of percussive pops over a mix of thrumming, scraping textures and ferocious polyrhythms from kit drummers Frank Rosaly, Steven Hess, and Michael Hartman. Few ensembles can match this sextet’s decisive motion among pure sound exploration, carefully harnessed chaos, and meticulously ordered drones.
What you’ll hear in the Fern Room is Round the creep of the wave line by composers and musicians Boris Hauf and Keefe Jackson. For this collaboration, the composers considered the materials and elements in the Fern Room—soil, metal, glass and sunlight—in parallel to the materials and elements of the saxophones and clarinets they play—wood, metal, plastic and breath. Combining their instruments with recordings of plants growing, and incorporating long silences and subtle phrasing, they composed separate tracks of different lengths for each loudspeaker. The result is that the sound combinations are always different, so the piece grows and changes organically and unpredictably, much like the plants in the Fern Room.
Exhibition hours: DAILY, 9:00AM-5:00PM
Opening Reception:Sunday, February 1, 3-5pm
Fern Room, Lincoln Park Conservatory 2391 N. Stockton Drive
FREE ADMISSION
About the artists
Boris Hauf is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who lives and works in Berlin. He has composed for large and small ensembles, performance art, radio, video, and installation. Since 1999 he has regularly collaborated with many Chicago musicians.
Keefe Jackson is a reed player and composer wo is a key member of Chicago’s vibrant improvised music scene— as such he regularly collaborates with many local and visiting musicians. A respect for traditional forms combined with adventurous experimentation exemplifies his approach to saxophone and clarinet.
Genesis of round the creep of the wave line
Science has shown that entire forests are all interconnected by networks of fungi. ‘Maybe plants are using fungi the way we use the Internet and sending acoustic signals through this Web.’
‘[…]Plants can recognize when a good neighbor is growing next to them,’ says Monica Gagliano, evolutionary ecologist at the University of Western Australia. ‘[…] this communication may be based upon an acoustic exchange.’
Drawing upon Hauf’s and Jackson’s extensive assortment of saxophones and clarinets, using their natural timbral varitations based on the overtone series, together with sampled sounds (especially those of plants growing, amplified) and synthesized sounds, and processing them both by both digital and analog methods. Then mixing these at first seemingly disparate elements all together, and finding a ‘whole’ — but instead of trying to impose an artificial order or a narrative structure, allowing the man-made and natural sounds to co-exist and co-mingle with the experience of the actual ferns and the humidity in the Conservatory. An especially important aspect of this will be the quiet spaces and silences that are a natural compliment to winter weather.
Sunlight, glass and steel; humidity, soil and concrete; water, rubber and copper: the physical elements (inanimate) at play in growing ferns, beside the ferns (animate) themselves.
Wind, brass, and wood; aluminum, copper and plastic: the physical elements (inanimate) at play in growing sounds, beside the sounds (animate) themselves.
In experiencing this piece the audience is invited to take a position to ask: At what point do the animate and the inanimate reverse roles?
Using live reed instruments, recordings of the sounds of plants growing, amplifying and ornamenting the natural sounds of plants, 4 channel analog and digital processing, Boris Hauf and Keefe Jackson blur the lines between these at-first-glance disparate elements – illuminate the similarities and differences of the creative processes occurring betwixt and amongst the plants and the recordings.
During the process of creating the piece, a similar approach will be taken toward combining the individual contributions: in using the recordings, editing and processing them, and finally arranging the sounds throughout the Fern Room an attempt will be made to bring these decisions forth by working together not through a traditional artistic collaborative effort or the type of teamwork espoused by workplace efficiency experts, but by following the trajectories of the creative and reductive impulses and organizing things with the least amount of ‘intervention’ possible, to imitate the process of the plants’ growth.
“[…] On Next Delusion by Berlin-based saxophonist Boris Hauf, […] forms […] an even more unconventional lineup. There can be few instrumentations that are completely novel, but three horns matched with three drumsets recalls few precedents. Waxed on one of the German’s regular trips to Chicago, Hauf has assembled a talented crew, though their abilities are almost totally sublimated to the leader’s offbeat conceptions.
For much of the time, the three percussionists (Frank Rosaly, Steven Hess and Michael Hartman) are so restrained as to be subliminal and the horns (Keefe Jackson, alongside Stein and Hauf) aren’t much more demonstrative. It’s largely impossible to tell who does what in the four tracks, which defy categorization in their execution of Hauf’s austere and rigorous charts. Dissonant unisons and subdued drones characterize the horn lines, which often sound on a parallel but unconnected track to the rumbling massed drums. Ultimately it’s a curiosity that sounds like nothing else.”
Boris Hauf Chicago Sextet ‘Next Delusion’ – sound set out in the iris of the eye
Vienna saxophonist and improviser Boris Hauf, born in 1966. in London, but a decade flirts with the Chicago scene, and its debt to American counterculture recently expressed an homage Levon Helm of The Band.
Boris Hauf Sextet ‘Next Delusion’
Haufov Chicago sextet Next Delusion three wind players and three drummers, in the first series bass clarinetist Jason Stein , and saxophonists Hauf (tenor, baritone) and Keefe Jackson (tenor, bass clarinet), while in the second Frank Rosaly , Michael Hartmann and Steven Hess , respectively drummers.
Connection Chicago and Berlin is not sporadic, because at the time before it was Jeb Bishop left the electric guitar to be devoted entirely to the trombone, Art Institute of Chicago has organized a major event dedicated tuvanskoj singer Sainkho Namtchylak inhabited in Vienna, where the Chicago quartet performing guitarists Werner Daefeldeckera. And judging by the recordings are from 1991. year on YouTube, it seems that it was Boris Taba. Ahead Viennese moving to Berlin at the beginning of the millennium Hauf mapped sound EAI label Durian, Mego, Grave and Extraplatte, along with colleagues from the collectiveKlingt. Electrification of experience gained in the sound texture group Efzeg with Saks, synthesizers and computer harnessed to work with the American trio TV Pow, lap-gunner, in which in addition to a Hartmann opskurnija names.
Sextet moving aesthetic minimalist sound, even before the reductionist, in the introductory “Gregory Grant Machine” frequency point are established from the rainy strikes by cymbals and mikrovizatorskih winds that slowly heat up the intoxicating drone collective timbre spreading aura solar orgasm. In “Eighteen Ghost Roads” suggestive atmosphere is indicated akordnim voicinzima three winds, followed by the massive crowds refined drumming.
In polikromatskoj “Fame and Riches” idea is enshrined in the iris of the eye with a provocative voice, saxophone playing a double role, the soloist and the first one to vote almost chamber orchestra. And although they are invasive in “Wayward Lanes”, the listener is also not required to take care of every detail.Crawl under his skin – that! – Leaving him at a distance to the sound discretion cope.
Rating: 9/10
(Clean Feed, 2012).
Type Jeraj Sundays from 22:00 to 24:00 hours editing and hosting the show ‘Hearing deception’ on Radio 808th
A collision of musicians that on paper might suggest fractious, frantic results, is instead a gestalt of tempered, balanced, largely restrained playing, with egos in abeyance and empathy keenly evident. You can refer to Bill Meyers’ fine liner notes for a run-down of Hauf’s affair with the city, but I do find one aspect of this ensemble’s joined sensibilities of interest. Essentially the Sextet is an encounter between Chicago improvisers of the Umbrella Music Collective (Jason Stein, Keefe Jackson and Rosaly) and musicians associated with (let’s forgo bickering about placeholder names) EAI (Michael Hartman of T.V Pow, Hauf with his Efzeg affiliation, Steven Hess of, among many projects, Haptic). A little research reveals that all of the Sextet came to Chicago, from every direction,between 1999-2001. Efzeg became active in Vienna in 1999, but Hauf began his infatuation with the Midwestern city that year, returning annually, more or less, to this date; Keefe and Rosaly hit the city in 2001; T.V. Pow, as a trio, became active in the city at that time; in other words, the present-day Sextet gathered in Chicago at least 12 years ago, drawn to it as a burgeoning locus for experimental music. That’s one aspect of this collision.
The music at hand owns some of the blurring of individual roles associated with Efzeg or Haptic; the horns often braid and twine together without solos or a foregrounded voice. There are passages where, oddly and refreshingly, the three drummers lay out, opening a World Saxophone Quartet-like space for Stein, Hauf and Jackson’s stacked harmonies. The flip is true as well – one piece finds the percussion rumbling alone, with an admirably tamped-down fire. There are occasional bursts of frenetic reed work, though reigned in and always returning and folding back into the whole.
Somehow – and I count this as no small feat – Hauf has immersed himself for many years in his adopted city, his love for theimprovisation forged there self-evident, without becoming derivative or diluting his own sound and approach. This enables the Sextet to be a strange brew, an authentic collective, remaining horizontal, unimpeded by egos, and able to foment, as they do onNext Delusion, a surprise or two.
Write up by Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak. Thanks thanks thanks:
“Berlin-based Austrian reedist Boris Hauf has been a regular visitor to Chicago since 1998, often taking up residency for months at a time. He’s developed close ties and friendships with many locals, mostly notably the members of TV Pow. Hauf arrived here Sunday night for a stay of two and a half weeks, and on Wednesday he’ll perform at the Hideout in an improvising quartet with bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Anton Hatwich, and drummer Tim Daisy. Also on the bill is a project called Baseless led by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm (here doubling on guitar), which includes saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, percussionist Steve Hunt, and analog synth player Aaron Zarzutzki.
Two of Hauf’s latest recordings were cut in Chicago during a 2010 visit, and they both bring together players from the improvised and experimental-music communities. Next Delusion(Clean Feed) is a sextet outing with fellow reedists Stein and Keefe Jackson and drummers Frank Rosaly, Steve Hess, and Michael Hartman, and as Reader contributor Bill Meyer writes in his liner notes, “You might find the Berlin-based saxophonist’s accompanists on the same bill, but not in the same group.” Indeed, Hauf combines aesthetics and personnel from both worlds not only on Next Delusion but also on Proxemics (Creative Sources), a quartet album with Jackson, Hess, and keyboardist Judith Unterpertinger; they dig deep into sustained drones rippling with subtle textural variation, while maintaining a clearly improvisational mind-set.
Everyone joining Hauf for Wednesday’s performance is rooted in Chicago’s jazz and improvised-music community, but all of them are flexible enough that things could go in any direction.”
Boris Hauf is probably still best known as a participant in the Vienna improvising scene of the turn of the millennium, a saxophonist as comfortable in electronically rich environments (like Efzeg) as in micro-improvising. This new sextet music – with Hauf on tenor and soprano, Keefe Jackson on tenor and contrabass clarinet, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, and Frank Rosaly, Steven Hess, and Michael Hartman on drums (Hess also adds electronics) – is a rich amalgam of the two approaches. Next Delusion often sounds as if something of the woody intensity of Gebhard Ullman’s clarinet trio (at least their methodology if not their instrumentation) meets with a percussion sound midway between the spare beats of Martin Brandlmayr and a kind of Paul Lovens bustle. The opening “Gregory Grant Machine” is terrific, moving between sections of Polwechsel’s flinty sparseness and solemn moving chords from low woodwinds, continually dipping in and out of silence. It’s an approach that Hauf favors for this instrumentation, and he uses it even more effectively on “Eighteen Ghost Roads,” whose slow sectional chords rise patiently and deliberately to a stately, ROVA-esque feel before erupting in a threeway percussive rumble that sets up a different context for the same horn movement. There’s plenty of variation on the record, lest you think there are simply different settings for this general approach. Each tune features great attention to tonal / timbral contrast, often pitting high whining feedback against eructations from the lower horns. A burble of reed popping sets the course on “Fame & Riches,” which morphs via woven tones and the gentlest, deftest cymbal work into a sustained hum of an atmosphere. And the closing “Wayward Lanes” races along with a skirling series of bass clarinet patterns wending through a thicket of rimshots. It’s a compelling record, a consistent study of contained tension and contrasts.
In Rotation: Multi-instrumentalist Boris Hauf says Last.fm saved his ass
Boris Hauf, Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist and part-time Chicagoan, what he’s obsessed with. His answers are. . .
Last.fm I put on a record when I know what I want to listen to. If I want to discover something new but still fancy control over the range of that “new,” I turn on the radio. As anyone who’s traveled Europe knows, radio here sucks. If you’re looking to find anything alternative or even simply tolerably mainstream, you’re lost. My buddy Steve, also a Berlin resident, was spot-on when he said, “Last.fm saved my ass in many ways.”
Fred Anderson The very first time I visited Chicago, Fred Anderson invited me to “come down to the Lounge.” We sat at the bar, drank Coke, and chatted. Thrilled that such a sax giant would hang out with little me, I asked something about “free vs. nonfree” in music. He seemed annoyed and changed the subject. Many hours later, while I was bidding my farewell, Fred mused, “You know . . . that question you asked earlier . . . I think I want to answer that one now.” He took out his tenor and started blowing like only Fred Anderson could. I’ll never forget that man.
Levon Helm Recently I was invited to contribute to the “interactive library” of a performance festival. It was guaranteed that “no book would ever be allowed to leave the space of the library and that they’d be stored and locked every night.” I chose to loan my copy of This Wheel’s on Fire, Levon Helm’s retelling of the story of the Band. After the festival was over, all books were returned but mine. It was the only book that was stolen. Good for Levon. And the thief.
