The pan-European free improvising trio of German sopranino and alto sax player Stefan Keune (of XPact and the King Übü Örchestrü), Belgian guitarist Dirk Serries (who runs the A New Wave Of Jazz label), and British violist Benedict Taylor (of London Improvisers Orchestra) first performed at the A New Wave Of Jazz Live Event at PlusEtage in Baarle-Nassau, The Netherlands, in April 2022 (Live at PlusEtage Volume 1, A New Wave Of Jazz, 2023). Six months later, this trio recorded Closer and Beyond at the  Sunny Side Inc. Studio in Anderlecht, Belgium. Serries’ partner, Martina Verhoeven, took the cover photo.

Series and Taylor collaborated extensively on many projects over the last decades, including on duo albums (the most recent one, Obsidian, Creative Sources, 2023). Taylor, like Keune, collaborated with the late British free improvising guitarist John Russell. Closer and Beyond offer four untitled improvisations leaning into the chamber yet uncompromising, spiky side.

Keune, Serries, and Taylor’s interplay is immediate, urgent, and organic. They challenge each other, never settle on familiar courses, and are determined to exhaust the magic of the art of the moment. It is an elaborate dance of three intrepid improvisers, with no safety net, moving seamlessly and between control and surrender, eruptive attacks and silences, and timbral searches and brief textures, and deepening their restless, searching dynamics as this studio session progresses, until the last intense and cathartic fourth piece.

Eyal Hareuveni

Stefan Keune (sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone), Dirk Serries (archtop guitar), Benedict Taylor (viola)