Mark Sanders at Cafe Oto
A three-night season at a place where he has made so many distinguished contributions was no more than Mark Sanders’ due. I was only able to make it to one of the nights, each of which featured a different line-up, and then only to hear the opening set. But what I heard was more than enough to remind me of Mark’s qualities both as a drummer/percussionist and as a dynamic component in any free-improvising group.
The set I heard teamed him with two German musicians, the distinguished and vastly experienced pianist, composer and educator Georg Graewe and a newer name, the viola-player Laura Strobl. It began as collective free improvisation sometimes does, with the feeling of waiting for something to happen. The three of them were playing at the same time, all busy enough, but with little apparent sense of connection.
Then, however, that thing happened that can only happen with free improvisation. An entire music emerged. A real collective creation began to take shape, as if from nowhere (although not from nowhere, of course). Gradually the sounds they made together acquired proportion and a pulse, momentum and direction, an abstract narrative.
A long crescendo was more than just a question of getting louder. A sudden halt was more than just a red light. Graewe’s scurries, Strobl’s scrapes and Sanders’ extraordinarily deft manipulation of a panoply of sound-making devices — gongs, bells and small cymbals as well as the regular trap set — fused into something living and breathing.
* Tonight, Wednesday April 1, is the last of Mark Sanders’ three nights at Cafe Oto. He’ll be joined by Adrian Utley, Larry Stabbins and Neil Charles.
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