Peter Brötzmann & Heather Leigh

The history of jazz, Peter Brötzmann said in an interview, always concerned revolutionary approaches. “I am doing this too because there is no reason to calm down, and no reason to play beautiful music for people when you look at the situation the world is in.” Free jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who turned 75 this year, has been working on the aesthetics of irritation and vehemence since the sixties. May things are termed radical in art, and this matches Brötzmann, but defining him only with this term would mean underestimating him. The autodidact has demonstrated his breadth often enough. Now he has gotten together with American pedal steel guitar player Heather Leigh who has done solo performances since the early 90ies and also played with musicians like Christina Carter and Jutta Koether. The two match brilliantly. Leigh can create sound walls, feedback orgies as if Sonic Youth were on stage; at the same time she creates delicate, whirring structures; it sometimes sounds like John Fahey’s guitar bluegrass. Brötzmann goes into a dynamic dialogue with Leigh, which can get brutal but equally lives off blues and something undefinably poetic. Precisely: there is no reason to calm down. But of course there many reasons for further intensifying each concert.