The quartet gig which John Surman had at Ronnie Scott’s this past June (reviewed 12/06) was memorable enough in itself. What made the evening extra special was the fact that long-time ECM aficionados Adrian and Jane Goldsmith were in the audience. We had never met up before but when we did, just after the gig finished, we got on like the proverbial flaming house. A few weeks later, at a social get-together, Adrian introduced me to the marvellous recent Danish jazz documentary that is Music For Black Pigeons.
Upon its release the film received a slew of five-star reviews in Denmark. And rightly so. I never thought I would come across a documentary about the evolving play of European and American elements in jazz that could be as poetic, instructive and enjoyable as director Julian Benedict’s 2006 Play Your Own Thing: A Study Of Jazz In Europe (Euroarts 2055748). Well, Music For Black Pigeons is right up there. You can see a trailer for it on YouTube.
Those who know Play Your Own Thing will recall the passage in the final section of the film, The Personal Signature, where Tomasz Stanko plays the spacious and haunting main theme of his Lontano album, with his Polish trio of Marcin Wasilewski (p), Slawomir Kurkiewicz (b) and Michal Miskiewicz (d) and with producer Manfred Eicher looking on, deeply taken by the ad libitum flow of the music. It’s a sequence which cracks me up each time I see it. A fair few parts of Black Pigeons have the same effect: especially the moment when Jakob Bro (elg), Arve Henriksen (t) and Jorge Rossy (d) play Bro’s tribute piece To Stanko, from Bro’s Uma Elmo album and again with (the visibly moved) Eicher present.
With the exception of the excellent Japanese percussionist and pianist Midori Takada, the musicians in Black Pigeons all are (or have been) associated with the ECM label. And just take in the range of musicians featured here, presented in the front-cover graphics of the DVD packaging (but with Stanko, who appears in some brief performance footage, curiously absent). While Jakob Bro is a key linking figure throughout, Lee Konitz is also often evident as both player and incisively humorous commentator. Moving across location hotel and studio shots in New York and various European and Scandinavian cities, the film offer close-up sequences of musicians meeting up for recording sessions, relatively short but telling passages from those sessions and some fascinating interview material direct to camera. Throughout, sound and colour values, focal variety and overall “pacing” are superb.
Three moments from all such aforementioned interviews stand out for me. Joe Lovano tells us that he doesn’t want to play the saxophone on top of what is going on in the music, but rather, within what’s happening there. And, a touch like Charles Lloyd (absent here, unfortunately) Lovano speaks in his own insightful way about the living spirit of the historical jazz community which underpins the development of the music and which, inspiring him, helps keep him young. Thomas Morgan reveals that he doesn’t practise much, to help prevent the emergence of familiar learned patterns in his improvisations. And Jakob Bro summarises the great adventure that was his time with Tomasz Stanko: “But you know, whenever he would pick his horn up – also just sound-checks – the soul of his sounds was so deep.”
I would venture the same about the overall achievement of this exceptional, lucid and limpid film, which is dedicated to the memory of Paul Motian (1931–2011), Tomasz Stanko (1942–2018), Jon Christensen (1943–2020) and Lee Konitz (1927–2020). And that crazy title? Wait for the final sequences, when all is revealed in a typically engaging exchange between Bro and Konitz…
Music For Black Pigeons, by Jørgen Leth & Andreas Koefoed, colour, English/Danish language with some Japanese. 92 mins, 2023. ánorâk film/Camera Film/ IMDbPro DVD 0900 c. £12.00
