Delicate sound of Gunter, etc.

Just got home from a late concertgoing night. Head on over to The Volume--the new Time Out New York music blog--to read my account of free-jazz demilegend Giuseppi Logan's comeback gig at Bowery Poetry Club. (My preview is in this week's TONY.) Hint: Logan may have headlined, but he was hardly the main event. Veteran German polyinstrumentalist Gunter Hampel (above) absolutely SLAYED on vibes, bass clarinet and flute (sometimes two simultaneously) in the opening slot. Hampel's a player I've long heard *of* but actually heard only a little, something I'm going to have to majorly rectify soon.

This continues my current German-jazz obsession: Don't know what set this off exactly, but I've listened to nothing but Peter Brötzmann over the past few days. The discography is legendary and voluminous, but I'm actually most pysched about latter-day Brötz, including the Paal Nilssen-Love duo Sweetsweat (on Smalltown Superjazz, which is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting jazz labels on the planet) and the Marino Pliakas/Michael Wertmüller trio Full Blast (originally on Jazzwerkstatt, now available from Atavistic), as well as a few of the Tentet recordings, including Broken English on Okkadisk.

And there's just no messing with a matchup this heavy (not to mention unlikely). There are a thousand drummers who play free in their sleep, but you can tell here that Nasheet Waits is actually feeling his way to that point; it's not "autopilot free"--he's getting there in a very honest, hard-won way:



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Just finished and highly recommended: John Feinstein - Tales from Q School.