7 August 2022

JOHN FISCHER ENSEMBLE "BIELEFELD, 1987"

 


John Fischer, piano
Willem Van Manen, trombone
George Steinmann, guitar
Peter Kowald, double bass

1. Poor Piano 8:50
2. Improvisation I 18:29
3. Bielefeld Suite 22:38

Recorded on March 12, 1987 at Ravensburger Spinnerei, Bielefeld, Germany.

7 comments:

Ernst Grgo Nebhuth said...

1fichier

Guitarradeplastico,scraping oddities said...

Many thanks

jeff said...

A really excellent post.
Looking forward to hearing this.

francisco santos said...

BIG THX!...

correct silence said...

A very important post in my opinion. John Fischer's discography is not so important and this recording is one of the rare where he play with european musicians. The result is in my opinion that is music is on this recording more influenced by european way of improvisation. it is also a document because since the eighties Fischer will record less than in the seventies.
The duration of the tracks would have made a perfect lp, was it planned and never released? Finally we have it now
thank you Ernst.

JColtrane said...

Many thanks

serviceton said...

I agree with correct silence that this really is an important post , although I guess I might disagree that John Fischer's discography is not so important - one should at least include his kalaidescopic group INTERface in such reckonings..

If Fischer was not necessarily a completely original and individualistic improviser, he was all the same an extraordinary faciltator of musical interactions and group dynamics [with Lester Bowie, Mark Whitecage, Arthur Blyth, Perry Robinson, Steve Lacy, Marion Brown, etc etc..]

On the 3 performances here, he comes across a little like a free-jazz Milt Buckner on the first solo tune - I love his commitment, if not necessarily his heavy touch and his realised ideas.
The group performances are great though - Willem Van Manen's trombone is absorbing and Kowald is sensitive and terrific

I remember talking to Fischer on the phone for a couple of hours about his archive of material - and especially about ENVIRON, the club he ran in NYC in the early 1970's - about the Brubeck boys improbably helping with founding the place, about the huge array of free-jazz (and other!) artists booked, and the audiences that they sometimes packed into the place. About too eventually having to move down the street to a subtearaenean new Environ, where the rats ran along on the ceiling pipes. The chat seems fresh in my mind - it's a shock to recall that Fischer died in 2016.

Thanks so much for posting this Ernst