The Carsten Daerr Trio can’t be entirely blamed for the two women who walked out a little way into their performance at the Cairo Opera House on Sunday night.
The absconding young ladies were no doubt expecting a performance more in tune with the traditional understanding of the word ‘jazz’. Perhaps something in the line of Nat King Cole or Louis Armstrong – something pleasant and foot-tapping to while away a sultry evening.
But as the group’s leader and piano player extraordinaire, Carsten Daerr, explains, this German trio has developed some considerable way since their early days as students of jazz at the University of Berlin.
The group follows the traditional jazz trio set-up of a drummer, double bass player and pianist. And according to tradition, they take their name from the pianist, who acts as leader in more ways than one, providing explanations for each piece in a soothing and intimate manner as the set progresses.
But once the band strikes up its first tune it becomes clear that tradition is not foremost in anybody’s mind. These three affable young men appear to have carved a musical world all their own.
“We began as a quite normal jazz trio, and then things changed, and we were going deeper into the contemporary music and pop music, electronic music, says Carsten.
“It developed from jazz. You know, we studied the old giants, but then we tried to find our own sound, our own voice, combining it with the new music, pop music, reggae music, things like that.
Hearing them play, the overwhelming impression is of three skilled musicians who could easily knock out some early Oscar Peterson or John Coltrane, but simply choose not to. After all, why repeat past ventures when there is a world of musical freedom to be explored?
The set played in Cairo at the weekend was drawn in large part from their third album “Insomniac Wonderworld, which takes travel – or at least exotic places – as its theme. Carsten wrote the bulk of the pieces while on tour with the German singer Esther Kaiser, a trip that took him to some sultry and apparently inspiring spots.
The show opens with a boat journey, but one that appears to have hit a snag, the wind having dropped, leaving the crew bobbing about on the waves in a rather nauseating way. This bobbing about is called “Dumpeln in German, from which the tune takes its name. And as Carsten explains to the audience before turning to his keys, it is a circumstance prone to making him sick as a dog.
You know a pianist is in an experimental mood when he reaches into the open lid of his instrument and begins to pluck the strings directly. Carsten began with something suggestive of the quiet before the storm (or lack of one), accompanied by some gentle tappings on the drummer’s high hat.
Pretty soon, though, we were treated to a hard drum rhythm and crashing cords on the ivories, which, backed up by a furious bit of bass, provided a certain rumbling urgency, somehow more like a fast train than any yacht I’ve had the pleasure to sail on.
Before we knew it, though, we were back to a lazy, laid-back section, although with some tricky play of the bridge of the bass.
Which set the scene pretty much for the rest of the evening – tunes that do not conform to the standard structures and which the audience had not a hope of predicting more than two seconds ahead.
The next work described the city of Manila, or in Carsten’s words, “the energy and hot air of the place. Again, the band’s ability to create a compelling rhythm came to the fore, this time built around a simple but utterly captivating melody (maybe six notes in all) repeated and developed on piano and base. Again, there were quiet sections, before the main theme was rejoined.
In the original version, as heard on the album, there was the added texture of a saxophone contributing its own melody, although this was lacking in Cairo. Also lacking was the organ, which we were told had been broken “somewhere between Tripoli and Cairo .
Further on, the audience was transported to the Hanging Gardens of Bablyon in a work dedicated by Mr Daerr to the composer Arnold Schoenberg, famous for his twelve-tone scale and pioneering musical creations. For this piece, Carsten picked up what appeared to be the top of a metal ashtray and gently lobbed it into the piano. At my estimation, it landed about eighteen inches left of Middle C.
The result was some very interestingly deadened notes, with the added zing of a metallic object vibrating in its own metallic way as the keys were struck.Whatever Shoenberg might have said, had he been around to hear it, the audience was appreciative enough, applauding warmly. In many cases, though, they seemed to be somewhat unsure as to whether a piece had actually concluded, leaving the players frozen in their “end of item postures waiting a small eternity for the first tentative claps.
The only other recognisable touristic destination on the list was Singapore (“Singapur in German, apparently), described by Carsten as “the most clean city I’ve very been to . There was more reaching into the depths of the grand piano, while the bassist slid his way interestingly up and down the strings of his instrument, the drums going at one point like a machine gun and ending on such a definite note as to indicate the correct moment for applause.
The rest of the set seemed to have no obvious travel connotations, consisting of works with titles such as “Hardboiled , “Inner and “Sombre, Sombre . One piece called “Intuition was described as being representative of “a small child improvising without being able to play the piano , while “Epilog was dedicated to Carsten’s father who passed away a while ago.
While Carsten clearly hogs the limelight, there are also a few compositions from the drummer, Eric Schaefer, one of which provided the final note of the evening. “Negative Effects was driven by some very fast percussion, to which Carsten at one point played with the edges of his hands, rather like a karate master chopping bricks. The bassist, Oliver Potratz, chipped in with a long and apparently utterly engrossing solo, judging by his closed eyes and hypnotic movements.
To punctuate the end of the piece, and the night, Carsten kicked the ashtray across the stage, promping a few giggles.
Having listened to the trio, it is very tempting to pick out the various influences and styles that combine to form the whole. At times there seems to be something reminiscent of the Tom York’s piano from English guitar band Radiohead, and Carsten points to New Wave and Britpop as strong influences, although they are hard to disentangle. On the subject of tonal boundaries, he mentions various jazz scales, as well as those of Messiaen.
And presumably Schoenberg is in there somewhere.
Even more tempting, though, is to try to find an appropriate label to slap onto the trio’s work. But talking to Daily News Egypt after the show, Carsten proved decidedly resistant to attempts at pinning down his music.
“It’s not free jazz, what we’re doing, says Carsten. “It’s structural music; it’s composed music. It comes out of jazz because it’s improvised, but it has a form, it has a groove, it has a shape. And there are free parts of course to this music. We feel it, we hear it.
“Jazz is a word for something. And what we do is improvisation and composition, a mixture of that. And it’s just called jazz because everything needs a label. We’re just doing music, which you find in the record store under the label ‘jazz’.
As for his pin-ups of the jazz world, Carsten reluctantly listed a few names that figured in his early musical education: John Coltrane, Miles Davies, Kenny Kirkland, Keith Jarrett and Andrew Hill. But he offered this clarification: “I had idols. Now it’s over, because I’m searching for my own sound and ideas. I’m not having real idols any more.
No doubt, on his various travels with the band over the past ten years, Carsten and his fellows have been asked numerous times to explain what exactly it is they are up to. And who can blame them if, faced by one snivelling hack afte
r another, they have come to feel less than enthusiastic about the task?
Indeed, the very effort of translating his thoughts on the subject into words seemed to sap Carsten of all enthusiasm for speech.
For now, then, the group will continue to be billed as a jazz trio , and will draw crowds with mixed expectations. Some will no doubt be delighted with what they get, while others will hear only a cacophony – and they ll be hailing an early taxi home.
For more information on the Carsten Daerr Trio, go to: www.carstendaerr.de or www.myspace.com/carstendaerr
