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Music
The latest Frank Gratkowski Quartet recording, Kollaps, is available through
Park Avenue CDs.
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Home Improv-ment
Frank Gratkowski
with Doug Mathews and Michael Welsh
10/07/2001
somewhere in Winter Park, Florida...
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Sunday the 7th of October was a night of firsts for many of the guests at Civic-Minded Five member Matt Gorney's house. It was the first night Matt and his roommates put on a show in their living room. It was the first time most everyone present had attended a concert at a residence in Winter park, and the first solo free-jazz concert for even fewer than that.
But not for saxophonist Frank Gratkowski, who has spent more than one occasion developing his spontaneous flow at the European home of a fan or a Manhattan loft apartment. For this Civic-Minded Five production, Hamburg-born Gratkowski would perform two sets of improvisational jazz; the first solo and the second accompanied by bassist Doug Mathews and drummer Michael Welch. None of the three musicians would rehearse together.
After the hat was passed around for donations (there was no "admission"), Gratkowski blew a series of short, angular riffs, jerking his body and jumping in place as he mapped out patterns that changed slightly with every breath, evolving into a snake charmer dance and then a long passage in which Gratkowski manipulated his breathing and valves to sound like an orchestra of plucked strings. He coaxed flatulent bursts and automatic weapon fire from his chosen weapon, then made it sputter like an engine before coming back to snake charmer school, melancholic meandering and what sounded like an homage to a silent-movie musical accompaniment.
Then he throws down dizzying, merry-go-round falsetto spires of squeal. Sam River sits at the back of the house listening intently, exclaiming "Beautiful! Yeah… ooooh… goodness… yes!" Gratkowski finally lets the audience of 30 or 40 some-odd entranced new fans down from the ride, and there's a full 60 seconds of applause.
Gratkowski, a renown soloist for over ten years in the USA, Canada and Europe, formed a trio in 1995 with German bassist Dieter Manderscheid and American drummer Gerry Hemingway (they became a quartet in 2000 with the addition of Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos). And since Mathews (Sam Rivers Trio) and Welsch are no strangers to triple-threat instrumentation the set was incendiary, to say the least. Mathews started out by caressing sound out of his upright bass as Welch, two sticks in each hand, hammered away like a ambidextrous telegraph operator on amphetamines and Gratkowski produced torrents of free jazz phrasings. The trio wavered back and forth between sounding in sync and pouring it on as if they were in a three-man race, with each musician blissfully unaware of how long it takes to get to the finish line.
Mathews soon began coaxing notes out with a bow as Welch briefly punctuated rhythms by bringing his heel down on a dog's squeak toy (possible belonging to the spaniel that added to the scene by periodically breaking loose and running back and forth in front of the stage). Gratkowski indicated the end of the piece when he slowly deflated his lungs through his horn, a toneless exhalation that held the audience's rapt attention until the final soft sputter… out. Faces still showed attentive expressions in the silence; meditative, trenched-out, blessed-out, eyes-closed.
It was an amazing experiment that will hopefully lead to more. There was standing room only, but a pool out back provided a change of scenery foreign to the rehearsal halls and clubs of previous CM5 endeavors. But it was the intimacy of the atmosphere that made this night special, like a first mind-blowing show by a visionary indie band without a recording to check out first or a DJ that really takes a chance and successfully breaks convention and adding a new dialect to the languages of dance music.
Gratkowski's been there, and feeds on the warmth and immediacy of the audience. "I give it my all," he says while waiting for a glass of whisky that will bring him down from his adrenaline high. "I give it my all every time. But when I can give it all in a place like this…" No more needs to be said. His sax already spoke.
for sounds and bio go to
www.gratkowski.com
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