"unheard of!" potential

Jazz club Moods, Rote Fabrik, Musikklub Mehrspur and Werkstatt für improvisierte Musik (WIM) may still sound quite conventional as venues. But Museum Rietberg? Küsnacht cantonal school? The Bürgerasyl-Pfrundhaus retirement home? Surprises are part of the concept at the unerhört! festival. A prime example of the efforts to pull music out of its stylistic pigeonholes and place it in new contexts was the concert by the Kukuruz Quartet at Schlosserei Nenniger during the latest edition. Nomen is more than omen here: the Nenniger locksmith's shop is actually an active craft business. It is located in Zurich's Binz district, a stone's throw away from the offices of Intakt Records, the record label that has achieved worldwide renown in the independent music scene. The machines have been rolled up against the walls and made way for chairs. Pulleys hang from the ceiling. There are more benches on a ramp.

All the seats are taken, around one hundred spectators of all ages have gathered to enjoy a rare performance of Julius Eastman's works. The four pianos needed for the performance are arranged like a crescent moon. Behind them is the huge gate of the locksmith's shop, to the right a rack of colored plastic crates. The Kukuruz Quartet - Philip Bartels, Duri Collenberg, Simone Keller, Lukas Rickli - has dedicated itself for years to re-exploring the works of Eastman, who died in 1990 at the age of 49. His talents as a pianist, singer, composer and lecturer were encouraged early on. The bolder his experiments became, the more clearly he acknowledged an Afro-American, homosexual perspective and gave his works titles such as Evil Nigger or Gay Guerrillathe less he was heard in the New York scene. In the 1980s, he lived for a time as a homeless alcoholic in Tompkins Square Park. It was not until eight months after his death that a first small obituary appeared in the Village Voice. For some years now, Eastman has been experiencing a posthumous renaissance. In the Schlosserei, the Kukuruz Quartet impressively demonstrates how well deserved this is. The compositions may belong to the realm of minimalism, but the fact that the various repetitive "riffs" are performed by four pianos gives them a wonderful sonic opulence, not to mention a groove that lies somewhere between Thelonious Monk and Funkadelic. But there is also room for a captivating piece where the barely perceptible sounds are generated by strings pulled across the piano strings. The audience reacts with great enthusiasm. The sad question remains as to what else could have been created if Eastman had not been driven to the brink of existence and beyond by the conventions of his time.

The unerhört! festival has its origins in the weekly improvisation evenings that pianist Irène Schweizer and saxophonist Omri Ziegele once organized at Casablanca on Zurich's Langstrasse. "In addition to the concerts, we also wanted to create a celebration for our music," Schweizer wrote in the brochure published to mark the tenth anniversary. "This wish was the catalyst for unerhört!" Florian Keller from the unerhört! program group cites the educational aspect as a difference to the Taktlos festival, for example: "We work with schools, with an age residence and make sure that different scenes and age groups come together." He cites the example of the young Zurich saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve, who performed alongside bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake at the Rote Fabrik and at the Küsnacht and Stadelhofen cantonal schools. "Those are truly magical moments," says Keller. "I know from Hamid Drake and William Parker that they really enjoyed it. Because in the question and answer session afterwards, there were also political questions, and so they were able to say in front of 200 or 300 young people: 'This is what we do, this is our story'."

Outrageous! 2017 was once again a resounding success. The idea of a tribute to Thelonious Monk, who was born a hundred years ago, was the common thread running through the program. While the works of Eastman Monk could be traced as an influence, both Irène Schweizer and Mike Westbrook each performed interpretations of his pieces. In addition to Svosve/Parker/Drake and Byron/Ortiz, the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Aki Takase (piano) and Ingrid Laubrock (sax), Michael Arbenz & Big Band of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the band Human Feel and the Stephan Crump/Ingrid Laubrock/Cory Smythe trio provided further highlights with and without Monk references.