EXTREMEN BIK BENT BRAAM (SELF-RELEASED)
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Bik Bent Braam has existed for more than 20 years, evolving over that time into one of the most polished bands trafficking in what’s now a familiar Dutch style: a pastiche of jazz, pop, music hall, and avant-garde, laced with humor both broad and subtle. Extremen, released on Braam’s own label, documents a concert from this past February, but in so doing provides only the roughest of guidelines for the music his audience will hear in Chicago—and therein lies the tale.
Similar projects have come together in the past 35 years, most famously John Zorn’s Cobra—a set of cues, rules, and tactics that turns performances into “game pieces.” In Chicago we have Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox Orchestra, where the leader uses (among other things) a box of signal lights, each color corresponding to one player, to guide the improvisations in one direction or another. But I can’t think of a process better constructed to resist hierarchy than the one that produced Extremen. Playing this music in this way, Bik Bent Braam becomes something that even Braam himself didn’t exactly see coming: an anti-orchestra.
“The Chicago players have the recording,” says Braam. “We have only two days to rehearse, so we’ve narrowed the program down to 8 or 9 of the 13 compositions. It’s an interesting experiment for us. Of course, experimenting is the heart of the music, so I don’t see any problem with this. Still, it is the first time we’ve ever done the music with other players. All the Dutch musicians are a little worried now. They say, ‘Well, what if they play it better in Chicago? You won’t want to keep us.’”v
Fri 11/7, 9 PM, Elastic, 2830 N. Milwaukee, second floor, 773-772-3616, $15 suggested donation. A
