Trio Roma

In May of 2011, the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville celebrated saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's 70th birthday with two concerts, one solo, one with his Trio Roma featuring electric bassist Massimo Pupillo and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. Both are included in this double-disc set on Victo. Disc two includes the nearly 70-minute improvisation "Music Marries Room to Room," followed by the five-minute closer "The Turning Glory." As one would expect, these are scorched-earth musical powerhouses. Brötzmann remains athletic and aggressive as ever; there are no signs of age in his playing. If anything, he's more interesting as a soloist here: his athleticism is extended by a more adventurous use of texture and more percussive phrasing. Pupillo's bass is laden with effects that multiply his range; he plays it like anyone else would play lead guitar. Add to this Nilssen-Love's physicality and imagination as a drummer; he finds powerful rhythms and even polyrhythms inside the chaos, and carves small semi-spacious corners that the other players react to with something approaching melody. Pull that all together and you have a perfectly balanced machine. The effect of this is free jazz as skronk & roll (which approaches the dynamism of Last Exit at their best). The most attractive element in the package, however, if the first disc. This is where Brötzmann gets to show his other side. While it would be inaccurate to call what he does here "gentle," it does possess a pronounced lyricism that is not usually associated with him. There are moments of great balladry alongside monumental tenor blasts; pregnant pauses that are answered by pure mellifluous flow, especially on tonal and breath sketches such as the lengthy "Shukeln to Dark Blues," "Frames of Motion," and the almost tender reading of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." For Brötzmann fans, this set is awe-inspiring, and therefore essential.