ALEX KOO: Identified Flying Object
Pianist composer Alex Koo is on one hell of a roll. For example, the trio he formed with musical heavyweights Mark Turner and Ralph Alessi has released a very warmly received album: Appleblueseagreen. Not so very long ago, we saw him at nona excelling in a quartet with the stunning Jean-Paul Estiévenart, Lennart Heyndels and Dré Pallemaerts.
ALEX KOO: Identified Flying Object
piano
Alex Koo
trumpet
Ralph Alessi
drums
Attila Gyárfas
Raf Vertessen Quartet:
tenor saxophone
Anna Webber
trumpet
Adam O’Farrill
double bass
Nick Dunston
drums en compositions
Raf Vertessen
in partnership with
Mechelen Cultural Centre
More than anything, the click with ECM icon Ralph Alessi (“the monster trumpeter who hails from a separate world altogether”, in the words of Downbeat magazine) was so special that a further collaboration between the two of them was inevitable. That is why Koo decided to bring Attila Gyárfas on board. After all, he has had a duo called Identified Flying Object, or IFO for short, for quite some time with this young drummer, one of the poster boys of Budapest’s vibrant jazz and impro scene.
That collaboration immediately resulted in an album, recorded in just a few takes during the first lockdown and released at the beginning of 2021. “Right from the first number, that makes an immediate statement, Alessi charts a masterful course between the familiar pair. Together they create a very organic music that sounds intimate at times and uninhibitedly contemporary at others. It offers an exciting space voyage with a few unexpected diversions into fat synths, crazy toy pianos and New York energy”, according to Jazz & Mo'.
“The year has only just begun, and we already have a locally made, world-class record.”
- Jazz & Mo' on the album Identified Flying Object
Raf Vertessen Quartet
The drummer, percussionist and composer Raf Vertessen, who lives and works in Brooklyn, will present his first LP LOI on the same evening. This album was released in autumn 2020 on the Ghent label el NEGOCITO that celebrated its tenth birthday last year. Although there are nine song titles on the cover, LOI sounds like one long flow of ideas that blend into one another according to their own rules. The drums are regularly reminiscent of Teun Verbruggen’s style. And if we are going to start name dropping: the album was mixed by the trumpet player Jaimie Branch, whom we welcomed earlier in the season with the Dave Gisler Trio.
Vertessen’s quartet use graphic scores and invented signs to structure the music and improvisations. Nonetheless, all the compositions have a different result each time they are performed. As the laws of improvisation dictate, there is no hierarchy among the performers and never one soloist in the spotlight. The musicians include Nick Dunston, who we also heard in the project Fragments of Expansion by Pentadox last season. Predictable build-ups of tension are not in this quartet’s vocabulary. So prepare to be surprised.
