Mariá Portugal And Inga Rothammel Cultivate Vibrant Spontaneity At Cologne’s Salon de Jazz

Most visitors to Cologne will soon discover Stadtgarten and The Loft, but the smaller Salon de Jazz might remain a hidden venue pleasure for longer. It’s even quite hard to find physically, secreted around a corner behind a low-key entrance. Inside, it’s full of colour. The day after the Moers Festival your scribe hung out in Cologne, making his first visit to this musician-run collective space.

The presence of drummer Mariá Portugal was the spur for attending, but the actual leader of the quartet was saxophonist Inga Rothhammel. The line-up was completed by Felix Hauptmann (piano) and Reza Askari (bass). Their two sets were completely improvised, but the tendency was to create organised and harmonised sonics rather than chasing spiky chance collisions. A tentative opening had Portugal making light woodblock touches, with Rothammel sending high-voiced alto joy around the walls of green, orange and red. Joint activity increased, as the saxophonist veered from cycling figures to vaulting flurries. Hauptmann is a pointillist, delicate explorer. Askari has a shiny head, big beard and a Mike Watt t-shirt.

Sparseness returned, with misty-eyed bass bowing, Portugal using reed-brushes and small mallets, just as much sensitive percussionist as lashing drummer. Rothammel struck with a thin, piercing alto precision, as Portugal controlled short bursts of skin-attack. Hauptmann flayed his keys in an abstract, though emphatic chase. The quartet floated onwards, communally contributing to the common flow.

Time for a break. We could gaze around at the dainty white curtains, spotted with red and yellow lantern designs. A bar is around the L-shaped corner, vending different types of local Kölsch beer. The Salon was opened in 2008, and also has a recording studio in its basement.

The second set had a straighter time-keeping pulse from bass and drums, while the alto and piano wandered with curiosity. Portugal brushed over her small side-table of objects, as Hauptmann chimed harmonically and Rothammel breathed out a soft march. A bowed bass and piano section progressed calmly, until the soloing alto goaded the band into full action again. As Rothammel turned circles, playing with the acoustics of the room, and also under the piano’s lid, the set flared up with an incandescent propulsiveness. Astoundingly, this was the first time that these four had played together as a complete unit.