Cologne Jazzweek scoops a brand new Scandinavian supergroup, Unionen, and highlights intense German dynamism

Cologne Jazzweek seems to expand further with each year, this time spanning eight days and featuring a bloated schedule of large concerts and small sessions. For the completist this can be worrying, everything usually gets very difficult around 8pm, when multiple gigs compete directly with each other, often with no clear choice between exciting band configurations. Jazzweek is skilled at selecting either combos in their freshest stages or even presenting player combinations unseen elsewhere. The festival also makes extensive use of the many suitable venues across the city, so hopping distance is another factor in building a personal programme.

Nevertheless, your scribe made wise choices (he thinks). A highlight scoop was the new outfit representing Norwegian-Swedish relations (with much joking for historians), bonding Per Texas Johansson (reeds) and Petter Eldh (basses) with Gard Nilssen (drums) and Ståle Storløkken (keyboards). They call themselves Unionen and they performed at Filmhaus, on the outskirts of the city. They also have a debut LP coming out on the We Jazz label in October. We Jazz have suddenly become highly prolific with their autumn output.

Unionen had a heavy rapport readily worked out, the audience beaming with the evolution of a style and mood changeability that dealt with substantial group arrangements and suddenly rising solo demonstrations. Johansson oversaw a remarkable collection of instruments, including oboe and contrabass clarinet, but also the plain old flute and tenor saxophone, plus regular clarinet. Consequently, the palette was already diverse, even before considering the remainder of the crew. Eldh alternated acoustic and electric basses, as well as manipulating on a small keyboard/effects console. We were all bobbing together in a flotation tank, following an unctuous tenor solo, Storløkken leaping in with a distressed Fender Rhodes outburst of spangled decay. Unionen made a livening hike upwards, Nilssen driving tough until all four members locked together, taking off madly, lifting weighty matter heavenwards.

When Johansson turns to contrabass clarinet its deep belch sonorities shake vibration down to the ankles, following the jowls and the waistband. Low dribbles of black treacle hang off low pipes, and Eldh takes up the electric, lurking with intent. A slow carnival takes shape, Nilssen setting up a brushes gait, Johansson brightening with flute, shadings graduating from sullen to pastoral pastels. One number seems to be called ‘69, 83’, in celebration of the birthdates of the band, Eldh joking about their multi-generational mix. He builds a chasing funker bassline, lending thrust to the unison tenor and Rhodes, until Johansson rears up into his solo, gushing rough. Here’s a band that has retro concerns, updated for the now-time, composing originals in the groove-jam-freeform-ballad styles. Sadly they will suffer from Late Vinyl Syndrome, courtesy of the pressing plant, but no one can stop the Unionen digital release.

This Filmhaus gig opened with a duo set from Armbruster & Heck, young locals armed with trombone (Carlotta) and drums (Jonas), presenting a very open selection of tune-heavy numbers. Plexus (as they term themselves) had a structured suggestion of larger line-up in their heads (and ours), with propellant drums and an alert ‘bone navigation. Armbruster made a defined enunciation of lines, while Heck clacked and shuffled. Slow and sparse, sometimes, with small rolls, pausing between deliberating phrases, rounded and full. There’s a chaser on drums which turned out to be Ornette’s ‘Lonely Woman’, an ambitious selection to dare, the melody taken at a slower sway than the stick-time. A mute was wielded to disperse and soften, again to a disparity of pace between the twosome’s individual rhythmic parts. Armbruster topped the set with vocal multiphonics, the territory of the mighty German trombonist forebear Albert Mangelsdorff.

On the festival’s second day, much of the music was played outdoors at the side of the Stadtgarten venue, a chief haunt for Jazzweek. These multiple sets were also freebies-for-all, opening up the audience range and filling up the garden under a sweltering sun. Dog Soup are a local quartet, featuring the trombone of Philipp Hayduk (Jazzweek’s artistic director is Janning Trumann, also a ‘bone man, helping to highlight this often too-scarce horn), along with saxophone, bass and drums. They opened the afternoon with challenging sounds, but the crowds remained seated, lapping up this convoluted jazz manifestation.

Even better are Kuhn Fu, apparently a regular act, but not previously sighted in Cologne by your scribe. Active since 2012, they specialise in violent prog-punk fusion, angularly riffing guitar to the fore, as the horn-heavy band is fronted by the eccentric-seeming Berliner Christian Achim Kühn, who also digs dancing footwork. Guitar acrobatics are answered by five jostling horns, with this section boasting Frank Gratkowski, Tobias Delius and John Dikeman, the latter a member of the similarly inclined Spinifex, those other masters of axe’n’saxes confrontation. Organised chaos at its mightiest!

The following night, indoors at Stadtgarten, the transplanted South Korean drummer Sun-Mi Hong (pictured above - photo by Niclas Weber) revealed even greater powers of imagination and rhythmic invention, building on her already impressive abilities of a few years ago. Supported by the Bimhuis venue in Amsterdam (where she’s a long-term resident) Sun-Mi has composed a suite-like work that has ample space for improvisation (or penned sections that sound like freeness). She selected an unlikely team of players, including Mette Rasmussen (alto saxophone), John Dikeman (reeds), Alistair Payne (trumpet), John Edwards (bass) and Jozef Dumoulin (keyboards and wire-tangling heavy electronics), arriving from Norway, England, Scotland, Belgium and the Netherlands (not necessarily their birth-lands). This was the German premiere, but the BIDA Orchestra (as it’s called) is also booked for the 60th edition of Jazzfest Berlin.

Sun-Mi invoked the rampantly rebellious spirit of 1970s and ‘80s British free jazz, sounding old school in a way which injected that approach with vivified energies. Horns united, rhythm section out of control, all players equal. Her horns cried in unison, a card-pack spread, Dumoulin on the acoustic piano for a spell. Sun-Mi is more abstract than ever, completely feeling the pulse while she drops heart-quickening detonations. As strong as her hits are, Sun-Mi maintains a skin-and-metal sensitivity supreme. Payne controls his sputter, then takes it down to a dusty pollen-puffing. Dikeman reveals an open thought-stream, honking, smearing, spouting with a fine control, roughly hewn. Edwards scares with his bowing friction, harshly alone, all guts and groaning. It’s an arresting sonic rupture of space. Dikeman and Rasmussen help build a textured landscape, as Sun-Mi punctuates with mallets, setting up a dirge processional. Rasmussen blows high and the drums cohere, focus hitting sharp, then Dikeman brings out his secreted bass saxophone (how do you secrete such a massive horn?) providing the lowest growling-beast toad-subsonics of the entire festival. Sun-Mi has tiny meditation-bells tied to her kit, to be struck by her knee, or even kicked by her foot. Nowadays, composition and improvisation can be seamless, and no-one feels duty-bound to separately categorise the two forms. Here’s a triumphant example!