There is sound; a notion of impotence; a programme without a head or tail; there is power, chatter, compassion; there is nothing but also a vista, blurred image full of action and opposition. Moreover, the language seems a bit overwrought here and there. Of course, incoherent drivel can be cosy, or moving. Under circumstances, meaning can be possible, but it won't be easy to ground something valid on it. Although, something like that must have been tried at some point. An example does not come to mind right now. From: Misha Mengelberg, Cows/Cows.
'another day is over'
Last year, the 'Misha opera' Cows/Cows on tour. Guus Janssen had previously taken over Misha's chair in ICP and, based on sketches and ideas by Mengelberg, completed a real opera for ICP Orchestra together with director Cherry Duyns. Where beforehand you could marvel at the fusion of improvisation (Misha's strength) and opera (in which every outburst of feeling is scripted), it turned out to be a small and telling gem, with the ICP at top strength and Pierre Bokma in the role of Misha Mengelberg. The song Another day has passed had a melancholic power even then in this audience. That it took no less than two giants (Bokma and Janssen) to portray Misha had something striking about it. The wonderful quote above is from this opera. Hilarious and typical how Misha subverts two thousand years of Christian history in ten words.
'Dirty and delicious air'
Misha Mengelberg: pianist, taoist and professional disruptor of musical situations. Together with Willem Breuker (died in 2010) and Han Bennink (still drummin' strong!) founder of the Instant Composers Pool, an internationally renowned collective of improvisers who just as easily take up jazz or contemporary when the musical moment demands it. The orchestra celebrates its 50th anniversary at Amsterdam's Bimhuis on 14, 15 and 16 April, for the first time without Misha alive. For a better understanding of the man and his oeuvre, I can recommend the wonderful film Jellie Dekker made for the NTR in 2006: Afijn. In it, childhood friend, sinologist and Tao specialist Kristofer Schipper and composer Louis Andriessen come up with very accurate characterisations of Misha. Cherry Duyns also made a film about Mengelberg (his last tour), but Dekker's film is more loving and complete.
'accompany the stone up'
I did not experience the heyday of the Willem Breuker Kollektief because I was too young, but what did strike me is that many of ICP's albums sound more timeless because they kept their distance from fashionable politics. Not only on stage, Misha Mengelberg was inclined to immediately decry any orthodoxy or complacency. That innate attitude, more Tao and Dada than Marx, gives his music an enigmatic power and serenity.
'criss cross'
There is very, very much good music by Misha Mengelberg - one has to start somewhere. I myself started with the two movements Forest path Rabbit Hollow (ICP028 and ICP029), the ICP orchestra thrived in the early 1990s. Mengelberg plays on perhaps the best record by reedist Eric Dolphy, Last Date (Fontana, 1964). About this legendary collaboration, Mengelberg delivers in the documentary Last session/Last Date (Hans Hylkema, 1991) the finest anecdotes.
'hypochristmutreefuzz'
Initially, Misha was not impressed by Dolphy, whose playing on the bass clarinet is still analysed daily by musicians worldwide. So Mengelberg decided to write a breathless piece to test him. Unfortunately, Dolphy fared just fine: marvelling Mengelberg notes so many years later that some sympathy did begin to grow then. Misha had the understatement hanging from his ass like Johnny Kraaykamp the laugh, because Last Date is now globally known as a jazz classic, not least because of its interplay with the Dutch (including recently deceased bassist Jacques Schols).
'you left your big shoe at my house'
Not to be missed further is Keshavan Maslak Quartet, Kenny Millions' Big Time, voted best Dutch jazz record in 1982 and reissued on CD by Challenge in 2001. Controlled, you can clearly hear here how tremendously Mengelberg could swing. ICP049 from 2009 shows an ICP at its very best in the noughties. In 2011, Muziek Centrum Nederland, in the series Jazz at the Concertgebouw the fine album Journey from: Misha Mengelberg with the Piet Noordijk Quartet, live in 1966.
Misha Mengelberg turned 81, leaving behind wife Amy and daughter Andrea.
another day has passed
in his den of poetry
Does the fleeds spill a measure of forests
some spot sticks out threadbare
—-
—-
our mother and us
(cough text ICP 043)
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