Peter Herbert’s night with Ensemble OnQ felt quite special. It allowed him to show off his composition and arranging skills, over and above just his insightful bass. This was a chance to bring together his musical experience based on his ‘travels’, including periods in New York (as an in-demand bassist with the likes of Art Farmer), Paris (where he worked with the oud legend, Marcel Khalife) and his awareness of musical history. A musical ‘cabinet of curiosities’. He’s been back nevertheless for a few years in Vienna, having just ‘retired’ from running the jazz course in Linz.
But for such a diverse musician, his pace hasn’t slowed. Retirement just means more time for playing, composition and also programming the second venue at the main jazz club, Porgy & Bess.
We know Austrian bassist Peter Herbert in the UK as an imaginative bass player, having collaborated on various recordings, often on Babel, with the likes of Huw Warren (100s of Things A Boy Can Make, Everything We Love And More, Hermeto+), Christine Tobin (Deep Song) and Phil Robson (Six Strings And The Beat). Here we really had a great opportunity to hear him take centre stage.
The Ensemble was in effect made up of several parts which could be bolted together to form one wide-ranging ensemble, with string quartet, jazz rhythm section, and small horn section. For this gig there was added a cello, his wife Margarethe Herbert, and a guitar, his nephew Kenji. The three of them have their own group together, “Scruffy Herberts”. The diversity of instrumentation reminded me, in its range and aural variety, of the recent gig by Bruno Heinen at Blackheath Halls.
The Ensemble itself is run by bassist Tobias Vedovelli and pianist Michael Tiefenbacher. Rather like the London Jazz Orchestra, it mainly gives opportunities for its members and other fellow travellers to show their skills. Intriguingly Peter Herbert believed that this was one of the few occasions that he had been able to have such a night to himself.
Peter Herbert clearly has a particular empathy towards Vedovelli, not just because of a common instrument, but because they both come from Vorarlberg in Western Austria, a creative part of the country in itself: it’s the home region of pianist David Helbock, and of the trio Haezz, run by Vedovelli, the other two members of which, trumpeter Martin Eberle and saxophonist Štěpán Flagar, are in the Ensemble. (Haezz was one of my favourite gigs at Südtirol Jazz Festival in Bolzano last summer.)
At one point, in the first set there’s a duo between the two basses, with the scope to soar, rather than just both remaining in the sonic depths. Herbert’s influences have ranged from across the current musical world, but also delving into musical history, clearly shown by the opening piece based on Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. There were features for him in the first set, such as with the string quartet, itself led by the virtuoso violinist Joanna Lewis, and with The Scruffy Herberts, also where there almost a ‘call and response’ between the two groupings. All members of the ensemble had the opportunity to solo at different times.
The second set consisted of a long continuous suite called “Alphabet City”, inspired by the lettered streets of the Lower East Side, a no-go area in New York when he lived there in the 80s. All titles were loosely based on the alphabet as a way of showing off his musical ideas collected over the years. Each was linked by a series of solo and duo improvisations. Again, sonic surprise across the ensemble marked a hallmark of
His charismatic bass can be heard on his latest solo recording “Naked Bass 2” (on the Unit label), bringing melody together with a whole range of sounds and textures exploiting the instrument to the full.
A postscript: Porgy & Bess’s sound was immaculate, despite the wide range of instruments to adapt to. All of their gigs are streamed live (though not archived) on the club’s website https://porgy.at
