Past event!
This event has already taken place.
Find all current events for this promoter here.
Charles Gayle is a saxophonist, pianist, nowadays also a double bassist, sometimes a clown and radical musical performer wrapped into the body of a humble person living in Downtown Manhattan since the 1960s.
It is sometimes hard to predict what he will do on stage. In all his musical (and personal) life Charles Gayle has remained outside of any form of mainstream and thus became the ultimate jazz artist.
Tonight he plays in his trio with Klaus Kugel (Drums/Percussion) and Ksawery Wojciński (Bass/Vocal)
CHARLES GAYLE
"Somewhere out there is a parallel universe where Charles Gayle is included in the original pantheon of jazz musicians who launched the first wave of the New Thing in the mid-1960s; an alternative world where, like other septuagenarian survivors such as Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, he's now mellowing into a partial return to bop and blues. In reality, however, Gayle has just released a new album of fierce and uncompromising free jazz, Streets, on the up-and-coming Brooklyn based imprint Northern Spy... proving that he is doing more than most to keep the radical flame of New York Fire Music burning." – Dan Spicer, The Wire
Charles Gayle blew down with hurricane force - the pun is too obvious - out of Buffalo. He drifted in and out of the first great free jazz scenes of the Sixties, playing with Pharoah, Archie Shepp, and other trailblazers. But he says now that his sound then was even more fiery and forceful than it is now, and he couldn't get a recording date. He drifted. He became homeless. He lived as a squatter in an abandoned Lower East Side tenement. He found Jesus.
He kept playing. His music retained its hard industrial edge. It sent listeners through the wall. It busted them out of the day-to-day grind into a divine ecstasy. It lifted and uplifted. He developed a tremendous facility with the upper-upper register of the tenor saxophone, so that he could take his spiritual flights to their farthest reaches. He played wherever he could; his steadiest gig was in the New York subways.
Eventually lightning struck. In the late Eighties Silkheart Records recorded three discs him featuring Gayle's ecstatic, holy holy tenor. One of them, the much-overlooked Always Born, paired him with the incomparable John Tchicai, a pairing that seemed problematic at the time but which worked much better than perhaps anyone was aware then.
After that work, and recordings, came a bit more steadily. For the enigmatic German FMP label he recorded the all-time classic Touchin' on Trane with musicians as talented and passionate as he: bassist William Parker and drummer Rashied Ali, a living connection with the Coltrane legacy that Gayle so dynamically extends here. But this disc became something of an anomaly in the Gayle discography: most of the others were much more furious. Gut-wrenching, metal-tearing, pedal-to-the-floor music.
On some discs Gayle himself plays viola, bass clarinet, other oddments. His bass clarinet solos are deeply felt and generally more conventionally lyrical than his tenor blasts. He plays it to particular effect on FMP's Abiding Variations. But his chief double is piano, which he has played with increasing frequency and facility in recent years. He's even planning a piano disc loaded with standards, which could change popular perceptions of him - as could the majestic and hard-won lyricism of his tenor playing on the recent Delivered and Ancient of Days.
Popular perceptions may change, but a lot of people do not get familiar with the persononality of Charles Gayle because he speaks his mind in concert, and his views are not fashionable. He speaks about his Christian faith and about respect for life. He dresses up like a clown and acts the fool for the many who say he acts like a fool. His speech is as unpolished and sincere as his playing, and obviously springs from the same well.
There is no player on the scene today with the emotional wallop of Charles Gayle. His later discs - particularly Ancient of Days - manifest a mature improvisational talent that can stand with any saxophonists today. If you are interested in improvised music, you owe it to yourself to hear him.
KLAUS KUGEL / drums, percussion
Klaus Kugel is one of the most inventive and adventurous German drummers. He attracted attention worldwide through projects with Petras Vysniauskas, Karl Berger, Tomasz Stanko, Charlie Mariano, Kenny Wheeler, Vyacheslav Ganelin, Bobo Stenson, Glen Moore, Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, a.o.
"Klaus Kugel is a commanding force behind the drum set. He creates layers of tension drawn out from intuitive listening. There is a constant emotional swelling underlying every fill and cymbal crash." – John Barron, Jazzreview.com, USA
KSAWERY WOJCINSKI / bass, vocal
An unusually versatile, classically trained double bassist, well acquainted with styles spanning from early music to contemporary improvised music. His interests range from early music to most sophisticated improvised contemporary music. Wojciński possesses a very characteristic deep sound and exceptional sense of rhythm bringing to mind the great African-American double bassists. His virtuoso bowing technique allows him to draw out melodic lines that enable him to enter into dialogue with solo instruments on equal terms. He has collaborated with such musicians as Michael Zerang (USA), Klaus Kugel (GER), Hamid Drake (USA), Tim Sparks (USA), Mikołaj Trzaska (PL), Perry Robinson (USA), Nicole Mitchell (USA), David Boykin (USA), Mwata Bowden (USA), Renee Baker (USA), Wacław Zimpel (PL), Raphael Rogiński (PL), Gaba Kulka (PL), Ian Smith (GBR), Kazuhisa Uschihashi (JAP)
