Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double // Potsa Lotsa XL

Livestream from New York

Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double

With ‘Triple Double’ Drummer Tomas Fujiwara employs a basketball term to describe this sextet, which features three pairs of acclaimed instrumentalists: the leader and Gerald Cleaver on percussion, Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook on guitars, and Ralph Alessi and Taylor Ho Bynum on trumpet and cornet, respectively. The audacious conceit works in part thanks to the highly distinctive personal approach of each participant, allowing them to meld and disentangle at will as they traverse a disparate set of compositions marked by angularity, shifts in density and a scrappy tunefulness. The musicians do not engage in flashy battles, but instead they find ways to reconcile their sonic polarities, keeping each tune bristling with energy and tonal variety. Cleaver is the lone musician who hadn’t worked with Fujiwara before, but on the group’s 2017 debut album their affinity and generosity is made explicit on the duo piece “For Alan,” a salute to the leader’s old teacher Alan Dawson. There, they produce a dynamic yet fluid model of spontaneous interaction, offering an exciting microcosm of how the entire combo is fuelled by high-wire interplay. Fujiwara, Cleaver and Halvorson shined already in other formations at the last two editions of the Jazzfest Berlin.

Tomas Fujiwara drums
Gerald Cleaver drums
Mary Halvorson guitar
Brandon Seabrook guitar
Ralph Alessi trumpet
Adam O’Farrill trumpet

Livestream from Berlin (commission)

Potsa Lotsa XL: “Silver and Gold Baby, Silver and Gold”

Jazzfest Berlin commissions Alto saxophonist Silke Eberhard, the winner of the 2020 Berlin Jazz Prize, to lead her magnificent tentet Potsa Lotsa XL through original arrangements of compositions of the legendary Henry Threadgill. For more than two decades Silke Eberhard has been one of the most revered figures on the Berlin jazz scene. Her indelible writing has formed the basis of the repertoire of her nimble trio with bassist Jan Roder and drummer Kay Lübke, with her fluid post-bop improvising style brings lyric vitality to her explorations, but over the last decade her fascination with the music of Eric Dolphy has opened new vistas. She formed Potsa Lotsa as a drummerless quartet to play his compositions, and as her ambitions grew Eberhard enlarged the ensemble to accommodate his experiments with third stream music. Last year she applied her dynamic arranging skills to her own music with the superb “Silk Songs for Space Dogs”, revealing the orchestral depth of her excellent tentet Potsa Lotsa XL, with fellow reedists Jürgen Kupke and Patrick Braun, trumpeter Nikolaus Neuser, trombonist Gerhard Gschlößl, cellist Johannes Fink, vibraphonist Taiko Saito, pianist Antonis Anissegos, bassist Igor Spallati and drummer Kay Lübke. The ensemble can swing through the most corkscrewing passages, but it can also bring a chamber-like vibe, too. Jazzfest Berlin has commissioned Eberhard to craft new arrangements for music by the legendary Henry Threadill, the singular Chicago reedist and composer, who’s dense writing and contrapuntal imagination has made a deep impact on modern jazz history. The set will feature music from across Threadgill’s storied career, including pieces by several of his projects: the Henry Threadgill Sextett, Make a Move and Very Very Circus, promising both a beguiling salute to the charter member of Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) as well a showcase for Eberhard’s orchestral imagination.

Silke Eberhard alto sax, composition
Jürgen Kupke clarinet
Patrick Braun tenor sax, clarinet
Nikolaus Neuser trumpet
Gerhard Gschlößl trombone
Johannes Fink cello
Taiko Saito vibraphone
Antonis Anissegos piano
Igor Spallati bass
Kay Lübke drums

These concerts are part of Jazzfest Berlin – New York