Oak Cliff, 5.22.2019

The titanic German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann has been visiting Texas for a couple of decades, in the company of collaborators like Dutch dada drummer Han Bennink, Japanese noise guitarist Keiji Haino, trumpeter-saxist Joe McPhee, vibist Jason Adasiewicz, and his "Die Like A Dog" quartet partners William Parker and Hamid Drake. But his previous visits were all to Austin or Houston, never to North Texas -- until last night. Oak Cliff-based musician-DJ Ernesto Montiel and friends, under the rubric Further Jazz, brought Brotzmann and his duet partner (four albums and counting), the West Virginian-via-Texas-and-Scotland steel guitarist Heather Leigh, to The Wild Detectives -- a well-curated small bookstore with beverage service -- on a bill with another duo, which teamed LA punk-jazz guitarist Joe Baiza with Zurich-based artist-writer-muso Jason Kahn, heard here on voice and drums.

The first time I heard Brotzmann's early landmark album, 1968's Machine Gun, I thought, "Wow, this is like Ascension, but really angry." The '80s free jazz supergroup Last Exit (in which Brotzmann battled to be heard alongside avant garde icons Sonny Sharrock and Ronald Shannon Jackson) was similarly unremitting in its energy blast. But later recordings (my favorites: 1994's Songlines with Fred Hopkins and Rashied Ali, and 2012's Yatagarasu with Masahiko Sato and Takeo Moriyama) document a more multifaceted sound, and the combination of aging (a few years ago, Brotzmann was diagnosed with enlarged lungs as a result of his ferocious attack) and what one Dallas muso called duet partner Leigh's "feminine energy" has brought an elegiac lyricism to his music (amply audible on Sparrow Nights, their latest outing). That's not to say his sound lacks power. On tenor, his massive vibrato still disturbs the air like Ben Webster on steroids, and the overtones he wrestles from the bass clarinet can be kind of terrifying. Leigh sculpts her liquid silver tone to resemble anything from the wobbly orchestral sound of a mellotron to the feedback drone of Boris' Flood.

Opening set by Baiza and Kahn was also inspiring. Kahn's wordless vocalizing evoked inarticulate anguish, while his running commentary on traps and small instruments gave the music momentum. Baiza's clean-toned Telecaster sang with alternating dissonance and chromatic fluidity, augmented by a looper pedal. Their dialogue reminded me of Don Van Vliet's line "I froze in solid motion, well" -- sometimes they would pause in mid-intention before continuing. At one point, Baiza essayed the melody from Ornette's "Peace," which gave at least one Fort Worthian in the crowd a spark of recognition.

Speaking of the crowd, I counted about 120 people in the sold-out audience, more than half of whom I didn't know -- a thrilling development. Yes, there is an audience for this music in North Texas, although it was not always so. Post-show, nearly everyone I spoke to said, in one way or another, that after hearing Brotzmann and Leigh, they wanted to go out and be as creative as possible in whatever modality is familiar to them. It doesn't get any better than that. Hopefully Ernesto and Further Jazz will bring more events like this to DFW. I wasn't going to speak to the performers, but when I happened to encounter Brotzmann just before leaving, I told him, "After hearing you, my heart is very full." Listening to Sparrow Nights this morning, I noticed there's a track titled "My Empty Heart." No coincidences.