2023-08-19 04:06:51
You can hardly get past him this year: Lukas König can be found almost everywhere this summer – be it in the Karlskirche at the Vienna Popfest or as a percussive sidekick at the Bilderbuch, which is touring through the country. What he’s really capable of was demonstrated by the drummer’s jack-of-all-trades on Friday evening at the Saalfelden Jazz Festival, where he opened the main stage in the Congress. There it became clear: Even a cap can be a crown.
The multi-instrumentalist can hardly be found without his hat, and this time it was the same. Supported by Pat Thomas (piano), John McCowen (clarinet), Farida Amadou (electric bass) and Luke Stewart (double bass), he served an hour-long best-of his latest endeavors on the commissioned work entitled “Sound Hazard”. starting with the cymbal album “Messing” to small excerpts of an as yet unreleased marimba project. In general, the following applies to König: everything is to be expected and nothing is certain. Which means a lot of brain work for the audience, but is always worthwhile in the end.
The quintet began the sightseeing flight through the royal cosmos of sound with an atmospherically dense sequence of flat passages, which were countered with subtle hints of groove, before it became much more comprehensible in the second section. Amadou used her instrument in an almost post-rock style, while the king, positioned in the center, used his armada of sound generators for intensive excursions into distant worlds. Nuances were the deciding factor as to whether the intoxicating pull tipped into gloom or climbed to clear heights. Small glitches, massive drones, filigree melodies: Everything was there to make it clear that genre conventions, even in jazz, do not represent limits for Lukas König, but at most small obstacles that have to be overcome with ease.
But you don’t always have to find something outside of all the rules, good old soul with plenty of rock gesture can also delight, as Uche Yara and her band later proved at the well-attended park stage. Where the Viennese Trio Dives used to deliver work to rule, the Upper Austrian musician was a safe bet when it came to entertaining the audience and took the colorfully mixed crowd, who appeared with free admission, with her from the very first second.
Something that the Leftovers at Kunsthaus Nexus should also be able to do later: the rock band, which unabashedly but also quite likeably made themselves comfortable in the grunge waters of the 90s, probably attracted the youngest crowd of fans of the day and quickly provided plenty movement in front of the stage. Songs for the no-future generation? A piece of cake for this team – with which artistic director Mario Steidl once again more than proved his knack for clever programming that appeals to varied and different layers.
On the main stage in the Congress there were only a few wishes that remained unfulfilled that day. The Argentinian pianist Leo Genovese chased his trio through wild landscapes that pay homage to free form, whereby the three musicians (besides the boss Demian Cabaud on bass and a furious Jeff Williams on drums) mostly seemed like equal captains who were in hard, but agreed on their goal after a fair discussion. The main thing was that nobody got bored on the course we had taken.
And anyone who was still longing for some beautiful sound after so much wild energy, demanding runs and idiosyncratic harmonies found what they were looking for in the voice magician Andreas Schaerer: the Swiss presented the album “Evolution”, which will be released in September, with guitarist Kalle Kalima and bassist Tim Lefebvre, on the classic Song structures are preferred to experimentation. Live, it often sounded like a somewhat unusual version of postmetal à la Karnivool or The Contortionist, when the percussive element came from Schaerer’s mouth (he obviously didn’t leave his beatbox skills in the quiver), before the singer in him returned to the foreground urged. With “Trigger” you almost had the mosh pit in mind – except that the jazz musicians started to bang their heads while sitting. Incidentally, there will be a second helping of it on November 16th at Porgy & Bess in Vienna. Before that, there are still two intensive days to be enjoyed at the 43rd Jazz Festival in Saalfelden. Diversity is the trump card in the Pinzgau mountains.
(S E R V I C E – www.jazzsaalfelden.com)
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