Not going to abandon the Side A tour or the duo tour with Paal; but going to pick up midstream with what’s happening in Wels, then I’ll catch up in parallel- too much rushing by… “Long Story Short,” Wels Unlimited Festival curated by Peter Brotzmann, day 1: Sonore performs at the gallery opening for Peter’s artwork at MKH Fabrik. The paintings, prints, inks, and prints look beautiful, quite amazing how much the space changes the impression of the material- this time the “boxes” really mesmerized me more than anything else; new ones too- an amazing one with “star” in a sky. Sonore was the opening concert of a festival PACKED with music, so of course I was wound up to play. In addition, John Tchicai was asked to sit in with the band. The trio played in a long buy flomax drug industrial space with a curved ceiling, the acoustics were perfect, sound traveling to the back of the room with complete clarity. I expected maybe 100 people at most- the night really an “introduction” to the main days of the festival at the Schl8hof- but the room was completely filled, at least a couple hundred. The music was open, feeling very free, Peter brought all the horns, heard him play the bass saxophone for the first time in years. After about 30 minutes Peter invited John Tchicai to join us. This was the 1st time that anybody had played with Sonore and at first it was a jarring feeling, but things moved into pairs (Mats and John, Peter and me), and got into a final quartet space with tenors and baritone that really soared.
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