Jazzfest International 2008
Steamboat Switzerland
Monday June 23, 8pm. $18.00
Butcher/Muller/van der Schyff Trio
Wednesday June 25, 8pm. $15.00
Steamboat Switzerland is a post-progressive-rock trio. Featuring Dominik Blum piano/electronics, Marino Pliakas guitar/electronics and Lucas Niggli percussion, this formidable Swiss group churns out a highly rhythmic and complex, but also unrepentantly anarchic, style of music that is largely improvised jazz. Steamboat has lots in common with fringe music phenomena such as psycho-blues, intellectualized punk, avant-garde hardcore and other forms of expression that could maybe be called art-noise. http://www.marinopliakas.com/
Anyone interested in hearing three masters of free improvisation in full flight should get tickets for Butcher/Muller/van der Schyff, who wowed the Vancouver jazz festival last year with their bravura display of highly energized free jazz. England’s John Butcher, an unparalleled master of multiphonics and other idiosyncratic techniques, is almost without peer on soprano and tenor saxophone. German bassist Torsten Muller has earned a global reputation for his intensity, attack and fierce commitment to improvisation with no boundaries. Supplying percussion is former Victorian, Dylan van der Schyff, who has collaborated with the literal “who’s who” of free improv.