The inimitable Matthew Shipp treated Incubate 2011 visitors for an hour-long of unmatched piano virtuosity. A mix between own work and improvisation, best described by the master himself with the following quote: “The next tune I will play is… Well… I don’t know“.

We recorded the session that you can listen to below or on our slowly expanding Soundcloud, that reached over 700 followers already. You can find a complete overview of all the recordings here.

Enjoy!

Photo by Jan Rijk

Matthew Shipp is one of the most talented people we ever witnessed live. His strengths lie in listening to his own voice and taking risk in both composing and performing. He has performed around the world and has over  20 CDs both solo and in groups. We are great fans of this guy.
Barbara Januszkiewicz  is a multimedia artist/filmmaker from Washington DC. She wants to celebrate creativity through her art. Her actions have advocated taking art outside of boundaries of the (art) system and to open it up to multiple possibilities bringing creativity into all areas of life like that of Joseph Beuys. Her strength lies in her drive to take risks and see opportunities in alternative approaches that answer well to those of Shipp. The interweaving of each others gifts promises to offer the rarest artistic collaborations and expressions.

Dutch jazz drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink will be coming to Tilburg. He is not only known for his enthusiasm, but also makes sure every show is unique because of the random objects he gets on stage just before his show. He will give a show at 013 on September 14, but we haven’t forgotten about the little ones: on Friday September 16, Bennink will give a special performance for children.

If you love drums, please make sure you will be in the Paradox on the weekend. American jazz drummer Chris Corsano has collaborated with former Incubate acts and will now be hosting the entire weekend! During the weekend he will be joined by various artists, among whom Christine Sehnaoui (France, altsax, Friday) and Mats Gustafsson (Sweden, sax, Sunday).

Other jazz artists included on the line-up are American jazz pianist Matthew Shipp, sax player Charles Gayle and pianist Liam Noble, so make sure you will absorb your portion of jazz during Incubate 2011!

Watch this cool short experimental film/music video about a guy who looks at life through a scaffolding pipe (‘Steigerpijp means scaffolding pipe in Dutch). The actors featured in this film as well as the music were created by the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra (ICP), which is a group of jazz musicians from the Netherlands. In the video, the actors move fast, slowly, hardly or not at all through Amsterdam traffic. ‘Steigerpijp’ was taken from the online film program ‘The Milkbar’ which is featured on the LimboLand blog. More info (in Dutch) after the break.

“Experimentele film die zich laat bekijken als een videoclip, tegen de achtergrond van Amsterdam. Een man raapt een stuk steigerpijp op en kijkt er doorheen. De muziek komt tot leven. Zo grillig als de geïmproviseerde muziek klinkt, zo caleidoscopisch zijn de beelden van Amsterdam, zoals het Centraal Station en het Bimhuis en de passanten op straat. Die passanten zijn de muzikanten van het Nederlandse ICP Orchestra, bestaande uit kopstukken van de Nederlandse jazz.”

Filmmaker: Barbara Hin en Martin van der Veen
Film: Steigerpijp
Nederland, 2009
Sushi Film

If you have never seen Jaga Jazzist before, this show is highly recommended. If you’ve ever seen Jaga Jazzist before, you know you don’t want to miss out on any other gig from Jaga again. The band consists of two brothers Lars and Martin Horntveth with a good amount of great rotating musicians. Together they are Jaga Jazzist and play experimental, instrumental jazz with hints to modern electronic music. Nu jazz you could say, but above all Jaga Jazzist is just one of a kind! Nanko will be the support act of the evening. We can give away 2×2 tickets for the show.

How to win
All you have to do is send an email to win ATT incubate DOTTT org with your full name and the answer to the question “What’s your favorite Jaga Jazzist lyric?” Please mention “Jaga Jazzist” in the subject line. Good luck!

A movie of the track ‘One Armed Bandit’ can be found after the jump

One of the pioneers within the bepop scene and has worked together with famous jazz artists such as Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington, here with a 1 and half minute solo on the hi-hat. Sick!

We’ve already previewed this gig of Marshall Allen from Sun Ra playing at Paradox, Tilburg, but we can also give away free tickets! You can also pre-order your tickets on the Paradox website.

We’ve already had Marshall Allen playing with the Sun Ra Arkestra at ZXZW 2008 and now Marshall Allen will play at Paradox with Eric Thielemans and James Harrar, as well as local guitarist Jasper Stadhouders (played at ZXZW 2008 with The Black Napkins).

How to win
We’ll keep it simple this time, all you have to do is send an email to win ATT incubate DOTTT org with your full name. Please mention “Marshall Allen” in the subject line. Good luck!

Less than one month until Incubate 2010. For the past few months we’ve been announcing new artists every week. But with 200 + artists coming up in September we can imagine you losing your hold. That’s why we compiled the Incubate 2010 Spotify playlist (http://incu.at/spotify). Subscribing to this playlist will get you acquainted with most of the Incubate 2010 bands.

Apart from their music, part of the getting-to-know-them-better-proces will also be us asking some of the artists a few questions in the upcoming months. The sixty-eighth edition in a series:

Sidsel Endresen

1.Can you please introduce yourself?
Sidsel Endresen, Norwegian singer/composer/bandleader. I live in Oslo.

2.Where are you at the moment?
Just back home from MoldeJazz Festival and a duo concert with Norwegian guitarist Stian Westerhus.

3.Have you played in the Netherlands before and if so, what’s your view on or experience with the scene you’re operating in in The Netherlands?
Yes, I’ve played in the Netherlands before: A couple of times in Amsterdam (Bimhuis) and at the North Sea Jazz Festival, a.o. All very good experiences. And Bimhuis has that wonderful room…!

4.What can we expect of your gig at the Incubate Festival?
I honestly don’t know! This will be my first ever concert with Bram and Jim – and we will be working completely free improvised.

5.What are your plans for the (near) future?
Festivals in Europe with Norwegian sax-player Haakon Kornstad – plus some solo-concerts. Japan in November. Also working on a new solo-record for Jazzland.

Buy festival tickets here!

All good things must come to an end, and thus also The Ex Files end. We’ve illustrated the first two decennia of The Ex‘ impressive music career, and by now you should have gotten a pretty good idea of The Ex’ legendary status and their importance to contemporary music. That is, if you didn’t have that idea already. Might you still not be convinced, then there’s only one thing left to do: come see ‘em at Incubate and let them convince you theirselves! Do it…

We’ll end this series now with some footage of their very impressive performance at the Holland Festival in 2000. Watch The Ex perform Dutch versions of their songs together with a 20-piece big band and Jan Mulder, who wrote the translations. Below that, some recent footage of The Ex playing with Ehtiopian jazz saxophonist Gétatchèw Mèkurya in 2009. Have fun, see you later, and don’t miss The Ex at Incubate!

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

The year 1999 sees The Ex touring all over Europe and the U.S. In February, The Ex play New York and Houston, and then tour the U.S. West together with Fugazi. Back in Europe they tour Germany, followed by the release of the joint Tortoise/The Ex collaboration for the In The Fishtank series, a special studio & recording project of music-company Konkurrent, who are The Ex’ distributors.

At the end of May The Ex celebrate their 20th anniversary at a sold-out Paradiso (The Netherlands’ number one club stage) in Amsterdam, where they invite artists such as Steve Albini’s Shellac (check out his comment on The Ex below), De Kift, Kamagurka & Herr Seele, and Eritrean vocal legend Tsehaytu Beraki. The week after, they tour Scandinavia together with Shellac. In October they tour Italy for the first time in 12 years, followed by Hungary and three shows in a row (with special guests) at Instant Chavirés in Paris, France. In December The Ex head back to the U.S. to tour the East coast, once again with Fugazi.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In 1996 Terrie goes on a year long round-trip through Africa. Although The Ex are supposed to have a sabbatical this year, it’s members are not idle. Singer Sok tours with the troubadouresque punk-folk posse De Kift, bass-player Luc can be heard on the album The Untraceable Cigar of melancholic free-jazz quartet Roof (featuring a.o. Tom Cora, check a clip above), and Andy plays with the energetic klezmer-noise outfit Kletka Red who release the CD Hijacking on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.

The next year G.W. Sok publishes Ex-rated, a collection of 69 used and unused lyrics he wrote during the first 17 Ex-years. The Ex are offered the “Jazz Compositie Opdracht” by the Dutch broadcasting company NPS: they are commissioned to compose an hour of music, and invite the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) to join them for the performance of it. Then the five-piece go back on the road, first in Holland, together with the Malian kora player Djibril Diabate, followed by the American East coast and Chicago.

In June 1998 they record their new CD in Chicago (USA), recorded and produced by Steve Albini, an old fan, in his recently built studio. The new album, released in October 1998, on Touch & Go USA and Ex Records Holland, is called Starters Alternators. The well-received album is dedicated to Tom Cora, who died earlier that year. After the Summer The Ex tour Holland, together with Lanaya, a trio from Mali, with a.o. Djibril Diabate.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In March 1992 The Ex finish their 7″ singles series with a 12″ single that doesn’t fit into the compilation-box. The next period sees The Ex slowly but surely moving more and more towards the jazz and improviational scene. Most of the year The Ex tour extensively with Tom Cora in the U.S. and Western Europe. In May they release the Live at the Bimhuis video, recordings from a special improvised concert they gave a year earlier.

The next year sees the release of And The Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders, their second release in collaboration with cellist Tom Cora. Concerts with Cora take the band to prestigious jazz-festivals such as Konfrontationen Nickelsdorf, Mimi and Moers. After another U.S. tour in 1994 with Tom Cora, The Ex work together with musician/performer Joop van Brakel (a.o. ex-Nasmak) and DansWerkplaats Amsterdam, a dance group led by choreographer Wim Kannekens. The project under the name of It’s All Too Beautiful consists of performances in which music and modern dance confront each other and is presented thoughout 1994 and 1995.

After another album release Terrie and Andy team up for a series of improvised guitar-concerts. Shortly after this, an even more intense collaboration follows with heavy-weights from the Dutch improv-scene such as Han Bennink, Ab Baars and Wolter Wierbos. This results in the instrumental improvisation double-CD Instant. An extended version of The Ex tours through Europe under the moniker The Ex & Guests. Later that year, three of The Ex’ members join Katie Duck‘s dance company Magpie for a series of improvised dance performances. Also, a collaborative live session with Dutch rock ‘n’ roll icon extraordinaire Herman Brood was recorded. Check out a clip of those recordings here below.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

Theater producer and choreographer Gerard Mosterd is working on an new interdisciplinary project in wich he works with the contrast between Asiatic ritual cyclical musical forms and the individualistic improvisation techniques of jazz. On May 20th and 27th during the Tong Tong Festival in The Hague he will give two presentations of his work in progress.

The production (working title: Gamelan & Jazz) features live music by Boi Akih and live video by Morgana Machado Marques. Dancers are Ricardo Ambrozio who dances for Ultima Vez/Wim vandeKeybus, Blazej Jazinski, dancer for theater producer Andre Gingras and Joana Schwing who has among others worked with Dutch post-metal band Izah.

The end result is expected to go on an international tour in 2011. The pre-premiere will be at the Tong Tong festival at the Malieveld in The Hague on May 2oth at 20:15 and May 27th at 14:45.

Last night American jazz legend Hank Jones passed away. Jones played with artists like  Ella Fitzgerald, Artie Shaw, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman. In 1989 he received the NEA Jazz Masters Award, one of the most prestigious awards in jazz. In 2003 he received the Jazz Living Legend Award of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Hank Jones has made over 60 albums.

The series of Artist Exposed for the ZXZW 2009 fest, highlights the artists you definitely do not want to miss! Click the tag Artist Exposed for more posts!

Knalpot will play Sunday 20 September.

Knalpot are Raphael Vanoli (guitar/casio/electronics) and Gerri Jäger (drums). At a push it’d be possible to sqeeze Knalpot into the punkfunkelectro bag, but the seams wouldn’t hold the duo for long. Sounding a lot more organic than other similarly tooled outfits, their music is stuffed with loops, blips and Mulder melodies.

Knalpot means ‘exhaust’ in old Dutch, but its connotations are: noise, pandemonium etc. And that is exactly what Knalpot brings live on stage, but in controlled bursts. Using a keyboard, drums and more guitar effects than even you have, these two guys bring experimental electro/jazz like they have never done anything else before. They claim their sound engineer will be there to make sure no-one gets hurt. Our advice to you is to come and see this fresh duo, but do not forget your earplugs!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyswvzgzyBk&feature=player_embedded]

The Guardian has put up another piece on Jazz history, this time focusing on Benny Goodman. Read it here!

Ellington’s music and motivation was different to that of Benny Goodman, a white virtuoso clarinetist from Chicago who became a bigger star than Ellington during the 30s boom in big-band swing – a phenomenon as big in its day as rock’n'roll was to be two decades later.

You know the Japanese post-rock of Mono, but did you know Nomo? The perfect soundtrack for your Thursday afternoon. Jazzy, electronic, funky, delicious!

Check this out cats! George Russell was one of the jazz innovators, inspiring artists like Miles Davis. This video had a very young Bill Evans on piano.

Knalpot features the drummer of The Black Napkins, who performed at ZXZW 2008. Check out their live performance at 3voor12.

Acoustic Ladyland is one of the coolest jazz bands from the Uk. They will play Paradox this friday. Be there.

This Saturday there’s a new L’Avventura night. Bram Stadhouders will bring a new ensemble, mixing world music with jazz. Marinke Marcelis created new work based on the difference between art and labour. Autonon provides the soundtrack. Wanna know more? Check the site.

As part of a big Norwegian program (more on this later) in 013 we’ve added Puma and Monolithic on the 16th of September. Monolithic consist of Stian Westerhus (Puma, Bladed, Jaga Jazzist etc.); on baritone guitar and Kenneth Kapstad (Motorpsycho, Animal Alpha etc.); on drums. One part extreme metal, one part big balls rock’n roll, a whole lot of sweat and more energy than a raging flock of bulls. Monolithic seek to push the boundaries of what is physicaly possible in rythmic music today. Monolithic is total awareness and explosive energy throughout!

Puma is back in Tilburg after their six week tour in April, May and June! Their performance is not possible to stereotype, and is very hard to even describe though they have been compared to Supersilent and Moha at times. The listener will experience the most sincere of melodic music, ranging from loud intense physical gestures to the most concentrated gentle hum. The many aspects of their music, the willingness to both confront and compliment each other with both razor-edged musical motion to unrestrained drift to wherever, the balance between the almost rigorously precisely timed rhythmical patterns, to the limitless freeflowing musial strain, makes Puma haul an energy on their liveshows that very few other bands do after them.

In de commentaren op ZXZW horen we vaak dat de een eenduidige artistieke visie ontbreekt. Dat klopt, want ZXZW is een festival van liefhebbers en niet van technocraten. Toch zijn we hard op zoek naar die visie, naar dat lichtje daar achterin de tunnel. Omdat het moet. Want visie is belangrijk.
Visie is vet. Visie is vereist. Om met Freddy Mercury te spreken: “One man one goal one mission, One heart one soul just one solution, One flash of light yeah one god one vision.”

Daarom roepen we bezoekers van ZXZW op om met ons mee te denken: ergens op het festival moet een visie te vinden zijn. Heeft iemand hem ergens backstage verstopt of is het een som der delen? Een magisch geheel waaruit blijkt dat alles uiteidenlijk toch met jazz of met Baudrillard of met de bril van Heino te maken heeft. Wij hebben in ieder geval nog nergens die visie gezien. In onze visie bestaat er geen visie.

Visie moet niet zo moelijk zijn want elke andere professionele organisatie heeft er een. Zo’n visie moet in een middag te schrijven zijn en past makkelijk op een A4. Doe daarom mee en stuur je visie op onze visie voor 30 september 2008 naar vince AT zxzw punt nl

De jury, bestaande uit onze artistieke leider Vincent Koreman, bepaalt wie de winnaar is. Die wint de “Freddy Mercury One Vision Award” en een onkostenvergoeding van 136 euro. Gesponsord door Hans Anders.

Curatoren opgelet: ZXZW staat ook open om bestaande visies van niet meer gesubsidieerde instellingen uit de boedel over te nemen.

The Dutch master drummer playing in Afrika.

If you liked Supersilent you must also check out Puma, also from Norway, tomorrow in Paradox.