Monday, March 25, 2019
Performance 8pm / Doors 7pm
What: In a rare US appearance, legendary free-jazz ensemble The Schlippenbach Trio perform at Roulette for one night only.
When: Monday, March 25, 2019
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $18 presale, $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/the-schlippenbach-trio/
Brooklyn, NY – Over the last forty-five years, Evan Parker, Alexander von Schlippenbach, and Paul Lytton, known as The Schlippenbach Trio have become known as the greatest group playing free jazz in Europe. Their group chemistry is founded on intuitive listening, interaction, the ability to respond in an instant and on the synergy between their characters, all capable of complementing as well as challenging one another. The spectrum of their performance ranges from furor to elegy. It extends from energetic, forward-thrusting pieces to cool, calm, ambling passages, from ballad moods to submersion in sound, or in silence.
Although happy to fit occasional individual concerts into their work schedules, for the last fifteen years or so the trio has concentrated its touring into one sequence at the end of each year. This limited touring schedule, coupled with the challenges of international logistics make this performance a rare opportunity to see the Schlippenbach Trio in the US. In homage to the tragic Schubert/Muller song cycle their concert sequence has become known as the Winterreise.
Evan Parker, saxophone
Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano
Paul Lytton, drums
One of Europe’s premier free jazz bandleaders, German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach’s music mixes free and contemporary classical elements, with his slashing solos often the link between the two in his compositions. In 1966, Schlippenbach formed The Globe Unity Orchestra—a big band that bridged the techniques of free-jazz and the techniques of the classical avant-garde (including the twelve-tone scale)—to perform the piece Globe Unity, which had been commissioned by the Berliner Jazztage. He remained involved with the orchestra into the ’80s. Schlippenbach began taking lessons at eight, and studied at the Staatliche Hochschule for Musik in Cologne with composers Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Rudolf Petzold. He played with Gunther Hampel in 1963, and was in Manfred Schoof’s quintet from 1964 to 1967. After 1967, Schlippenbach began heading various bands—among them, the 1970 trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens and a duo with Sven-Ake Johansson, which they co-formed in 1976. In the late ’80s, he formed the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, which has featured a number of esteemed European avant-garde jazz musicians including Evan Parker, Paul Lovens, Kenny Wheeler, Misha Mengelberg, and Aki Takase.
