Tim Richards & Sigi Finkel's Soundscape:
Shibop

Interview Sigi Finkel/Tim Richards

for AVANT (engl. Music Magazin)

If Europe’s important contribution to the evolution and broadening of what we mean by jazz has always received less than its due from the British jazz loving public, this can partly be ascribed to the long-held view of the music as being essentially American, partly to a seeming inability to embrace adventurous and experimental aspects championed by musicians and audiences alike on the other side of The Channel. Yet innumerable cross-collaborations, the past thirty years and more, between top British, European and American musicians and promoters, lovingly documented in innumerable recordings, have all contributed to the stylistic enrichment, diversification and inter-pollination, without which jazz would be all the poorer and more isolated in the world of music.
Many leading Continental jazz musicians once experimented at the furthermost outreaches of the music, and have achieved a mature consistency and instantly recognisable identity which has proved accessible and popular to large numbers of listeners: Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek comes instantly to mind. Outside the tight circles of free improvisation and experimental musics, it is these personalities who are most in a position to help open ears this side of the waters. One of them is the 38-year old German-born, Vienna-based tenor and soprano saxophonist Sigi Finkel, whose work in some ways brings to mind that of our own Andy Sheppard in its brightness of sound, range and depth of feeling and technical accomplishment.

A new group called Soundscape, teaming up Sigi with the British piano and keyboards player Tim Richards, bass guitarist Phil Scragg and drummer Marc Parnell, undertook a tour of the UK in April and May of this year to promote a CD titled ‘SHIBOP’, released on the Future Music label (FMR CD61-0499), registered earlier this year with the same line-up. It followed their first recorded collaboration, ‘Dervish Dances’ (ORF CD155), a relaxed but tight duo of Tim and Sigi, recorded at the Funkhaus, Vienna, in December 1996: six compositions by Sigi, six by Tim, and a closing standard, ‘Over The Rainbow’. This musical partnership had been in existence for a year, when Sigi visited London for the first time. On ‘SHIBOP’, Sigi provided five of the eight pieces, Tim three - one of which, the touching ballad ‘Your Heart’, is a new beefed-up version of that heard on ‘Dervish Dances’. Anyone expecting the relaxed interplay of ‘Dervish Dances’ will, I can assure you, be in for an equally pleasurable surprise: some of the tunes are presented in acoustic settings, while others enter Weather Report-tinged terrain, with electronic keyboards and attachments to modify the saxophone timbre. The music, at times, is positively bursting with almost blood-curdling energy.

Tim Richards, who not so long back had published a book titled ‘Improvising Blues Piano’ (Schott, 1997, with CD), is probably best known as leader of the group Spirit Level, which this year celebrates its twentieth anniversary with a national tour from October 22nd to December 16th, with a line-up Tim has chosen to call Great Spirit, comprising three of the up-and-coming stars of the new British jazz, saxophonists Gilad Atzmon (born in Israel, also possibly on clarinet), Denys Baptiste and Tony Kofi; trumpeter Dick Pearce; guitarist Dave Colton; vibes player Roger Beaujolais; Davide Mantovani on bass and Dave Ohm, drums.

Prior to Spirit Level, Tim had worked in and around Bristol in the mid-seventies in a fusion group called Chiconga, whose line-up occasionally guested Larry Stabbins, Elton Dean and Keith Tippett. He collaborated with Andy Sheppard. The first Spirit Level consisted of saxophonist Stan Thewlis, bassist Paul Anstey and drummer Tony Orrell. Various trumpeters, including Dave Holdsworth, Henry Lowther and Jon Corbett, joined Spirit Level at different stages between 1981 and 1988. Anstey and Orrell remain active on the Bristol scene. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Paul Dunmall, for the past decade a powerful stalwart of the free jazz scene, Keith Tippett associate in Mujician and member of Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, joined in 1980. Much has recently been claimed for Spirit Level as the group that sired the British hard bop revival of the 1980s, but while eschewing the then-fashionable fusion route, and remaining resolutely ‘acoustic’, there was always much more to Spirit Level than the narrow genre definition voluntary assumed by its later exponents. What the band plugged into were groups led by Elvin Jones, George Coleman, Joe Henderson and Bobby Hutcherson which recorded for Blue Note in the late ‘60s - expanding post-bop’s formal preoccupations by way of Mingus’ loosening of the shackles and Coltrane’s modalism. However, Dunmall had worked with Alice Coltrane in the States, and there was too much freedom in the band’s working practices to squeeze back into the bag. While ‘Killer Bunnies’ of 1986, with ex-Mingus trumpeter Jack Walrath guesting, managed to keep a tight rein on the its fissionary tendencies, performances by the group sometimes verged on a schizophrenia parallelling that of Miles Davis’ groups in 1965 and 1970, necessitating, for Tim, a rappel a l’ordre, which resulted in a parting of the ways in early 1989, outlined in Wire (issue number 64), although practical reasons for the severance were at the time emphasised, such as geographical separation and other musical commitments.

Tim had moved to London from Bristol in 1986; the new group formed as Spirit Level II in the summer of ‘89 comprised tenor saxophonist Jerry Underwood - himself a ‘product’ of the vigorous Bristol jazz scene and protege of Paul Dunmall, who has since worked alongside singer John Martyn and ex-Art Blakey saxophonist Jean Toussaint (Nazaire), among many others; bassist Andy Cleyndert, previously associated with Tommy Chase, Peter King and Don Weller - he would go on to become ‘house bassist’ at Ronnie Scott’s; and drummer Mark Sanders, more recently also a defector to London’s free improvisation scene. Alongside earlier tunes which had become the band’s staple - Spirit Level had never really been a ‘standards playing’ group - Tim composed a brace of new compositions which displayed his intriguing yet always logical propensity for unusual harmonic twists. The composing continues. As a player, Tim’s approach has always balanced an innate sense of precision and proportion with his love for blues from the boogie-woogie players onwards, while taking on board Monk’s spaciousness and McCoy Tyner’s early modal approach; his less known unaccompanied and duo work is well illustrated on the duo CD with Sigi Finkel: a British Kenny Barron might not be a bad comparison.
Jerry Underwood has remained a loyal member of Spirit Level; Two LPs have been recorded since the 1989 ‘schism’: ‘New Year’ for FMR in 1990, with South African bassist Ernest Mothle replacing Cleyndert; and ‘On The Level’ for 33 Records, with bassist Kubryk Townsend and drummer Kenrick Rowe, in 1994. Townsend and Rowe had been members of Tim’s Trio, in existence since 1988, whose one CD, ‘The Other Side’, was recorded, also for 33 Records, last year. Tim’s predilection for blues - I recall an excellent versin of ‘Honky Tonk Train Blues’ he chose to warm up a jam at a Bristol venue - is exemplified by his participation in several blues units, notably Grooveyard, with guitarist T-Bone Taylor. One claim to fame could be a marathon at the 1990 Soho Jazz Festival, at which Tim backed ten leading names, including Americans Ron Jackson, George Masso, Ken Peplowski and Ray Alexander.
Born in G¨nzburg, in southern Germany, in 1960, Sigi Finkel’s career in jazz rapidly took off in his late twenties.

He has worked in erudite company, sharing his playing and compositional gifts with several established figures in both European and American jazz, including two great trumpeters who have been at the heart of European jazz since the ‘sixties: the Italian Enrico Rava, and the Pole Tomasz Stanko - held by some as the pioneer of free jazz in the Eastern Bloc. He has collaborated with two Americans - guitarist John Abercrombie and Joseph Bowie - and has toured worldwide in his own and collaborative projects. As an ‘adoptive Austrian’, Sigi shares certain traits in common with his fellow countryman Joe Zawinul, by whom his music is perceptibly influenced: both have embraced the core rhythmic esssence of the black American jazz experience, infusing it with a European harmonic and melodic sensibility. Rather than being forced to emigrate to the States, as did Zawinul forty years ago, Sigi, through his own devices, has brought the outside into the somewhat enclosed mini-world of Austrian jazz.
Sigi’s start in musical life was a youth brass orchestra at the age of eleven, performing the sort of music one associates with Bierkellers. From there, at the age of 14, he moved onto dance bands, playing at social occasions, and transferring from clarinet to saxophone. Jazz became Sigi’s preferred option after being wised up by his tutor on the limited opportunities availing in classical music. Sigi had begun hearing jazz and pop, but had his ears turned by hearing Klaus Doldinger’s jazz-rock fusion band Passport, (which, at one time, had British drumer Bryan Spring in its ranks). From there he listened to acoustic bands and became aware of the broader tradition.

Sigi moved to Vienna in 1982, initially hoping to study at the Vienna Conservatoire, but after being turned down, set his sights on carving out his own niche on the local jazz scene. By now Coltrane was an influence on his playing, but the Americans who really attracted him were Steve Grossman and Dave Liebman:

‘They had this approach with pentatonic scales and fourth progressions, and this inside-outside playing on a really heavy rhythmic groove. That was my thing ... I tend to play this in-and-out stuff, but not really going into a free field. This is not what I feel’.

Despite rigorous practice at home, and approaches to established musicians to sit in, early efforts to integrate with the Vienna jazz scene fell on stony ground. This proved so dispiriting to Sigi that he withdrew from the scene, pursued spiritual disciplines and visited India in 1986. A combination of sheer grit and a new-found self-confidence then set Sigi back on his own path:

‘I had to build up all that stuff from scratch, by myself, without anyone’s help. If you go through that school - the ‘school of life’, in a way - you toughen up: either you survive or not. I survived. I just know, when I have certain aims or goals to go for, I will be able to do it. I have learned from my way of life ... I knew the musicians from one or two years before, when I played with them or met them in the clubs. So I put [the band Powerstation] together, and it ran through some changes’.

Half of Powerstation’s materials consisted of materials by such as Keith Jarrett or Don Pullen/George Adams, half Sigi’s own compositions, and a debut LP, titled ‘Nil’ was issued on a small Austrian label, with Wolfgang Puschnig - one of Germany’s top saxophonists (whom Sigi compares with Andy Sheppard) - guesting. Another double session, with Wolfgang Reisinger - the one-time drummer with the Vienna Art Orchestra - had Enrico Rava on its second recording. On the strength of a letter and a a tape of his own playing, the trumpeter accepted, and two recordings were made - plus a recording for Austrian TV, which led to a two-part broadcast. Over the years, influenced by the Brecker Brothers among others, this particular grouping moved in an increasingly electronic/fusion direction: Sigi is keen to point up his influences as lying in this direction, rather than the Europeanising tendencies to be found in Matthias Ruegg’s Vienna Art Orchestra.

In 1991 Sigi established Caoma, with Tomasz Stanko:

‘The idea of that band was not only to invite one guest from abroad, like it was with Enrico, but to put together an international band. I was bored, actually, with the whole Viennese thing: five bands with just four people, and every other night somebody else is the leader, always the same thing! I wanted to try something really new - but also on another level, not just Austrian - to invite musicians from other places. The first line-up of this band was Tomasz, Eddie Schuller, the bass player, and Billy Elgart, [a past associate of Paul Bley and Kenny Wheeler] the drummer. So we made a recording, and after two years the line-up changed to Herb Robertson, Mike Richmond and Wolfgang Reisinger’.

Enrico Rava’s encouragement led Sigi Finkel recording ‘Sweet Sue’ with John Abercrombie: Rava had suggested that Sigi phone Abercrombie and drop his name as a recommendation. Two other groups with whom Sigi works are Sigi Finkel & African Heart, with four Senegalese drummers part-resident in Austria, trombone, bass and keyboard; and DOOP TROOP, a quintet with Defunkt trombonist Joe Bowie and guitarist Kelvin Bell - formerly associated in America with Steve Coleman and Arthur Blythe - bassist (of 5 years’ standing) Robert Riegler and Brooklyn-based drummer Tobias Ralph, which started up last November. Sigi is strongly aware of the new possibilities for MIDI, sampling, and making live use of the technologies and rhythms in drum’n’bass, areas towards which his own music had been evolving autonomously. This band includes these things and has made a recording - at the time of this interview Sigi was proceeding with a major recording company. Tours for this group take place in the autumn, and for African Heart throughout Europe and the Near East through the year.

Tim and Sigi had first made contact through a German magazine; both were looking for opportunities for gigs: Sigi here and Tim in Austria. Then Spirit Level toured Europe in April 1995, and played at the Porgy and Bess Club in Vienna. Pursuing potential connections following the release of the ‘Sweet Sue’ collaboration with John Abercrombie, Sigi came to England later that year. Tim heard and liked the album, and so the collaboration started. For Tim it was a chance to work, for a change, with electric bass and keyboards, furnishing the group with new as well as refurbished compositions by himself and Sigi. Touring and gigs have assumed as much of a joint organisational project as the running of the band: a whole new article could have been written on the subject of playing jazz in Europe as compared to in Britain!

As to the other members of Soundscape, Marc Parnell had occasionally depped in Spirit Level; Tim had worked with bassist Phil Scragg in Coup D’Etat and a number of other contexts, and was aware of how well Phil and Marc worked together. Tim plays piano as well as a range of keyboard sonorities and wash-type textures, while, where pre-arranged, Sigi transforms his own sound on tenor and soprano through harmonisers, flanger and delay systems as elements of colour and atmosphere, rather than pretexts for playing ‘out’. The band thus covers every aspect and mood of living contemporary jazz, barring total abstraction. Sigi sums up his attitude to music making:
‘There’s a lot of other music - composed music, with really interesting sounds - or even pop or rock music which, in some aspects, has interesting sounds, or ethnic music. I wanted to try and open up my musical way of thinking to this other world, not merely to concentrate on being as fast, or at least as skilled as this other guy, or whatever, but just thinking more musically in general. If you’re a band leader, it’s much more necessary to think about the music than just being an instrumentalist. You have responsibility for the sound of the whole group. Including in your sound electronics, or rock grooves, or ethnic elements - wooden flutes, or special drums - opens up the whole angle of music, and you get new interesting sounds in jazz, which is really necessary for jazz, to get some fresh blood in it’.

(John Wickes)

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