Maria Faust and Jasper Høiby’s 3Elements among Copenhagen Jazz Festival highlights

One of the great walking-cycling cities of Europe, Copenhagen has charm aplenty in its streets, and the annual jazz festival is a pleasure because it is so easy to move from one venue to the next, without feeling any standard metropolitan pressure on the way.

And if improvised music brings unheard sounds to the party it also unveils unseen sights. Australian multi-instrumentalist Calum Builder’s (Re) Constructed pipe organ transforms the Koncertkirken church into a mini sci fi set. Made from the parts of defunct instruments as well as wooden stakes, plastic tubing and bits and bobs of brass it could be Munchausen’s flight deck. In an engrossing duet with British keyboardist Kit Downes, who starts on electric and moves on to a non-reconstructed pipe organ, Builder makes precisely the range of odd, uncommon timbres suggested by the unique machine at his disposal and blends in well with the richly counter-melodic flurries and yearning themes produced by his able partner. Together they bring a degree of homemade technophilia to the performance that gains in intensity when Builder unleashes a withering vibrato effect by pressing down on what looks like a giant plug socket. Preceding the duo is Danish saxophonist Lotte Anke’s

Sub Habitat, a pan-European ensemble that weaves together reeds, strings, spoken word and percussive patter into ashen laments marked by sonic quirks such as the leader scraping a bow on the bell of her horn to enhance the ambient spookiness.

The Danish experimental scene has been strong for many years and if Anke is one of its notable champions so too is drummer Kresten Osgood, who shows his versatility by making several appearances during the 10-day event. Most notably he forms a trio with compatriot, alto saxophonist Maria Faust and American viola master Mat Maneri. Their late night set at 5e, one of many studio spaces in the old meatpacking district is a scintillating affair. Teasing their way into a communicative ebb and flow the players hit a peak on clipped crunchy rhythms that, when Maneri swoops low and hard in line with Faust’s stark hollers, has a mild Wadud-Hemphill resonance. Osgood is impressively precise in his contributions and often lightens the sound with understated cymbal work before he moves to a set of free standing drum heads that throw a semblance of burring, humming, tuned logs into the mix  

A Danish-American collaboration at the other end of the stylistic spectrum is New York based tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm’s set with the Carl Winther trio at the popular Jazz Cup café-record store. This is barreling, boisterous hard bop from the man who has worked with Brad Mehldau among others. Frahm draws a line from Trane and Rollins to Brecker and Potter while ably assisted by pianist Winther whose trio, well anchored by bassist Rune Fog-Nielsen, has all the changes down pat. The last international combo I saw as I caught the tail end of the festival - headliners this year included Joshua Redman, Jakob Bro and Cécile McLorin Salvant – was Jasper Høiby’s 3Elements (pictured above). A Danish bassist-composer largely made in London Høiby plays a fine gig at DR Koncerthuset Studie 2 with young British accompanists, pianist Noah Stoneman and drummer Luca Caruso, who pick up smartly from where his much loved trio Phronesis left off. With swirling, shuffling, sometimes Latin-tinged melodies, carefully managed shifts of energy and a sense of lyricism that fits well in the Chick-Avishai-Danilo trio mould without cheapening it, the music strikes all the right chords for a highly responsive audience. As with the aforesaid Høiby has found a way of balancing complexity and catchiness, setting great store by the combined rhythmic strength of players who know when to drive aggressively and when to ease off into subtlety. With the packed jam sessions at venues such as La Fontaine running until the early hours of the morning Copenhagen jazz festival creates the kind of buzz that makes the event more than a string of concerts set over a breathlessly hectic week. Indeed the Danish jazz scene, represented by prolific labels such as Stunt, ILK and Barefoot, not to mention a wealth of artists of different generations, is a dynamic one and not even a day long torrent of very British rain is able to dampen its spirits.