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Keep training!
The Berlin Jazz duo Max Andrzejewski and Johannes Schleiermacher a.k.a. TRAINING and John Dieterich (of Deerhoof) in virtual vastness...
The Corona crisis has presented musicians with difficult tasks over the past year and a half. From album recordings to tour planning. From emergency aid programmes to improvised streaming concerts. There were few musicians who dealt with the difficult situation as playfully as the two jazz musicians Max Andrzejewski and Johannes Schleiermacher from Berlin.
Both have known each other very well for a long time and play together in different outfits. Max as a drummer and Johannes as a saxophonist. Both also like to play synthesizers or samplers. Preferably all at the same time. That's why in the Corona spring of 2020, when they often only met as a couple to rehearse together, literally detached from any broader project ideas, the two musicians found it to be very fitting to perform their "training sessions" in public. They organised a small gig and it went viral via the recording of the Berlin music streaming platform Berta.Berlin.
In the meantime, Jazzfest Moers had already called to ask if TRAINING, the apt name of this exceptionally playful duo, would like to perform at the online edition of the festival in 2020. This gig finally took place and suddenly TRAINING were an established jazz act: As an internet streaming act straight out of the pandemic rehearsal room.
Musically, TRAINING revolve around the axes of free jazz, spiritual jazz and post-rock. It's like listening to Albert Ayler, Tortoise and Deerhoof perform as a duo.
Deerhoof is an important reference here.
Shortly after the Jazzfest in Moers, JazzfestBerlin contacted TRAINING to ask if they would like to create a commissioned piece for their Corona edition in autumn 2020.
TRAINING contacted Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich and together they decided to tackle an improvisation and composition work based on 3-second samples.
Field recordings, cut into loops, sending layouts back and forth. A transatlantic exchange work between jazz and musique concrete under the conditions of a pandemic. Incidentally, when TRAINING and JOHN were working on the pieces in the summer of 2020, it was still unclear whether the live performance in front of an audience would ever take place or not.
It came as it had to: JOHN was not allowed to enter Berlin from the USA for the festival and TRAINING weren’t allowed to perform here in front of an audience. What emerged from the situation was one of the most legendary streaming concerts of the last year to marvel at.
Max and Johannes performed via livestream in Berlin to visuals by the artist Isil Karatas. Simultaneously, tracks from JOHN, who was connected via Zoom, were played and processed in the live sound. All based on the original 3-second loops.
These live recordings from Berlin-Jazzfest were then edited again in the studio and new tracks were added.
And that is where we stand now with this album: "THREE SECONDS".
Three musicians who conceptually (the meditative loop as a compositional starting point) and expressionistically (fast-paced intervals and noise) integrate all the events and obstacles of recent times into their music. And this without ever having been in a classical concert or rehearsal situation at all together. TRAINING & JOHN didn't plan all this from the beginning, but have always come to terms with the difficult challenges and circumstances and utilized them improvisationally in their art.
This is how "THREE SECONDS" takes the jazz of now to a new level. From the rehearsal room to the festival stages through the fibre optic cables into the dropbox. Jazz as physical as transcendental. As much virtual as it is live.
In fall, TRAINING will return to the festival stages with the new source material. Hopefully in front of an audience. On board: this elusive monolith as the result of a great experiment in musical possibilities of tomorrow. Unbelievable.
Tracklist
A1 Anthill Closeup (Schillerpark, Berlin)
A2 Remorseless Dimensions
A3 Fanenvuei
A4 Vibrations through the Glass (Işıl’s Desk, Vienna)
A5 Infinite Error Finitude
B1 Sprinkler and Birds (John´s Garden, Albuquerque)
B2 Sound Agave
B3 Pöppel
B4 Silent Phonons
B5 Glocken