The free jazz meets free-improv working trio of Copenhagen-based, Swedish reeds player Sture Ericson and Norwegian drummer Håkon Berre with Swedish. Malmö-based double bass player Johannes Nästesjö. This trio solidified its open and highly inventive interplay through nine international tours plus concerts at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, BlowOut in Oslo and Fem Jazz Festival in Banyoles, Spain, before it recorded its debut album «Ausfahrt Freihalten!» True to the trio experimental spirit, the album was recorded live at the Inter Arts Center in Malmö in November 2017.
All three musicians are well-versed in the art of the moment and the legacy of free jazz, on bith sides of the atlantic. Ericson and Berre have worked together in different constellations in recent years, among them Maria Faust Jazz Catastrophe. Ericsen played in the pan-European quartet The Electrics, the Jitter trio and in Simon Toldam’ Stork, Berre founded the Barefoot Records label and has played in The Mighty Mouse, Angel and Teeth trios, recorded with Peter Brötzmann, Susana Santos Silva and Jeppe Zeeberg. Ericson and Berre met Nästesjö in the autumn of 2014 and decided to explore together different aspects of free improvisation. Nästesjö recorded before mainly with Catalan improvisers as Agustí Fernández, Irene Aranda and Vasco Trilla.
The eight pieces on «Ausfahrt Freihalten!» Highlight the urgent and immediate atmosphere of the live set and the total democratic interplay of the trio. These pieces employ extended breathing and bowing techniques – including on the cymbals – and search for delicate and often abstract tonal textures or pitch-related linear playing, creating fragile tension, especially on the imaginative and very playful «Gegenüber». The interplay becomes more intense as the set progresses and pieces like the rhythmic «Während» are already informed by fiery free jazz aesthetics but the following «Zwischen» and «Anstatt» focus on conflictual strategies of free-improvisation that involve playful usage of extended techniques. The level and depth of communication remains immediate, full of clever, creative games and amusing gestures throughout the free-improvised pieces «Hinter» and the last, eccentric-dadaist and powerful «Durch».
Eyal Hareuveni
Sture Ericson (s, cl), Johannes Nästesjö (b), Håkon Berre (dr)
