Plexus: (Carlotta Armbruster and Jonas Heck) / Unionen (Petter Eldh, Gard Nilssen, Per Texas Johansson, Ståle Storløkken)
This was my third and last concert during Cologne Jazz Week, so I’m not attempting to do justice to the breadth of the programming – over fifty events at sixteen different venues – but did note that it has a truly international feel, (“open to the world” as the brochure describes it). Festival Director Janning Truman has a team or panel known as the “Kuratorium” to help him come up with ideas, and members who contribute ideas hail from places as far-flung as Berlin, New York and Amsterdam.
The Tuesday night double bill at the Filmhaus by the Hansa-Ring showed two very contrasted acts, the trombone and drums duo Plexus with Carlotta Armbruster and Jonas Heck, followed by Unionen, a quartet led by bassist Petter Eldh.
Plexus
Plexus are at the stage where they are hoovering up just about every young German jazz award in sight. Carlotta Armbruster plays completely acoustically but does use extended techniques and a range of mutes. She mentioned at one point that Nils Wogram is definitely up there in her pantheon of trombone heroes, and she has also had inspiration from Shannon Barnett as a teacher at the Hochschule. The sense of being both at one and at ease with her instrument and its range was really strong. It came across from almost the first sounds she made, a series of hand-pats on the instrument, and later in the clever use of the slide to create some insistently rebellious microtones.
Plexus’s set was carefully contrasted and constructed, and the pairing with drums brought to the fore a sense that both of the players were comfortable with asserting rhythmic leadership. Armbruster also has an astonishing sense of stillness and calm on the instrument, and I started to imagine (possibly pointlessly) that I could see a visual resemblance with the painter Alexej von Jawlensky and his vast series of Abstrakte Köpfe (abstract heads). After having spent nearly two decades painting them, the artist wrote in a letter “They are technically very perfect, and radiate spirituality.” The same is true for Plexus.
Unionen
The quartet of players in Unionen are at a very different stage of their careers from Plexus. Definitely louder and brasher, they would have been just as much at home in a larger venue. The quartet led by bassist Petter Eldh has drummer Gard Nilssen from his own generation, plus Per Texas Johansson (five different wind instruments) and Ståle Storløkken (Fender Rhodes), both of whom almost a decade and a half older. The band was formed to play a few concerts in 2022, and is about to release its first album on the Finnish WeJazz label, with a release date scheduled for October.
When they formed, they declared their objective: “The band arose from a common desire to tie musical ties together in the borderland between an acoustic and electric expression, with songs and suggestive riffs as a starting point for long, open parts!”. That is at its most visible in the multiple roles Eldh himself takes on, whether as a super-strong double bassist, or laying down grooves on the electric bass, or indeed leaning into the knobs of the electronics and manipulating and processing the overall sound. Gard Nilssen is another forceful and energetic player, and the pair often set the core volume and energy level high. Heartfelt requests for water and towels at the end of numbers were the least surprising developments of the evening. Johansson with his loud cry on tenor and punchy contrabass clarinet, and Storløkken’s rocky Rhodes sound fitted the vibe well and were both truly persuasive. When things got quieter, Johansson switched to a plaintive, often vibrato-heavy cor anglais which was somehow less convincing. The album will nonetheless be an exciting prospect,
