Nearly four decades after his death, the legacy of
Albert Ayler is plain -- a plethora of reed-biting aural contortionists bent on exploiting the saxophone's propensity for making sounds that resemble a human scream. Many such players, unable to play anything resembling a coherent melody, rely instead on the extreme manifestations of the
Ayler technique; their playing is more often than not a randomly executed wall of energy and emotion-driven white noise.
Peter Brötzmann, on the other hand, is the rare
Ayler-influenced saxophonist capable (like
Ayler) of producing improvised lines of depth and sensitivity while informing them with enough raw power to make a lesser saxophonist wilt.
Brötzmann's playing has little of the arbitrariness one associates with other similar tenor saxophonists like
Charles Gayle or
Ivo Perelman;
Brötzmann possesses a surety of tone and a melodic center characteristic of a focused musical conception. While there's no lack of spontaneity in his music,
Brötzmann's concern with motivic and melodic reiteration gives his playing a palpable sense of direction. Indeed,
Brötzmann's obsession often serves as a pivot upon which an ensemble turns, making him a consummate team player, in addition to being an affecting soloist.
Brötzmann was first a visual artist, attending the Art Academy of Wuppertal. A self-taught saxophonist, he began playing with Dixieland bands beginning in 1959. In the early '60s he became involved with the avant-garde
Fluxus movement. He began plying free jazz around 1964; in 1965 he played in a group with the virtuoso bassist
Peter Kowald and the Swedish drummer
Sven-Åke Johansson. The next year he played with
Michael Mantler and
Carla Bley's band and became associated with
Alexander Schlippenbach's
Globe Unity Orchestra. In 1969
Brötzmann helped form FMP, a long-lived free jazz label and presenter that issues recordings and sponsors live performances. In the '70s,
Brötzmann would play and record with pianist
Fred van Hove, drummer
Han Bennink, trumpeter
Don Cherry, and trombonist
Albert Mangelsdorff, among others. His circle of associates would continue to widen; in 1986 he would play (with drummer
Ronald Shannon Jackson, guitarist
Sonny Sharrock, and electric bassist/producer
Bill Laswell) in
Last Exit, a metal/free jazz group that enjoyed brief success. By the late '90s one would be hard-pressed to name a prominent free jazz musician with whom
Brötzmann had not played.
The strength of his personality is matched by his adaptability; as evidence, hear
Eight by Three, his 1997 recording with the pianist
Borah Bergman and multi-reedist
Anthony Braxton. While one might expect
Brötzmann's incendiary nature to overwhelm the more blithe
Braxton, he instead manages to parry and complement effectively. With
Bergman's percussive intensity, the record becomes one of the more unusual and compelling free jazz artifacts of the era. In 2007
The Complete Machine Gun Sessions, was released, reissuing the seminal free jazz outing
Machine Gun recorded by
the Peter Brötzmann Octet in 1968 and featuring two previously unreleased alternate takes and a live track. The ever prolific
Brötzmann put out three new sets in 2008,
The Fat Is Gone,
Born Broke, and
The Brain of the Dog in Section, all on Atavistic Records.
–
Chris Kelsey, Rovi