Hautzinger, Pongracz, Schneidewind, König

Quite a few friends were present; the Jazz Gallery clique from Nickelsdorf was numerous, longtime musical companions, and other relatives and acquaintances gathered to celebrate his 60th birthday musically at first. The honoree is Franz Hautzinger. He played his own birthday serenade. With a light-figure band from the Austrian progressive pool of contemporary music, as well as an Afro-American choice Viennese. Constantly swirling, shifting, brutally towering yet statically flowing sound fields formed the situationally elastic conditions for the spontaneous triggering of events. And the fundamental prerequisites for this could hardly be more exciting. On one flank was Martin Siewert, who has uniquely adapted the entire development history of the electric guitar for himself, with a bizarre array of splinter sounds, compressed clusters, drones, and riff monsters, while on the other was Christian Fennesz, with characteristic, pop-friendly chord architectures, to which he stripped away the ingrained comfort nerve, introducing coarse-grained ambient waves drawn from his experience as a key impulse giver in the pop-electronic/soundscape-rock environment. In the resulting fusions, frictions, and fever dreams, the weight of elaborate harmonies and melodic fragments expressed themselves—whipping, biting, and being filtered, looped, and sampled. Angus Thomas, who this time presented himself in a slowed-down, resourcefully melody-oriented manner, tapped in, entwining the convolutions of the guitarists/electronic musicians or worked with an outstanding Lukas König on the jagged, rugged rhythmic plane. The drummer added another facet. By skillfully unfolding and enriching the sound with his unorthodox accentuations, rhythms, and meters. Rarely encountered sublimity that is. Franz Hautzinger, who has cultivated restraint, precisely senses that moment when his contribution is required. With the sound language of a sui generis personal style. This sympathetic, perpetually surprising trumpet innovator has always stood against canonized, bourgeois musical understanding. Accordingly, he defines himself not only through his instrument but also contributes genuinely to the shape of New Improvised Music. The trumpeter once formulated it this way: “Improvisation equips one with enormous decision-making freedom. That suits me: I don’t want any boundaries in my music.” This credo was followed by the unleashed “Moment Music.” Hautzinger staged sharply cutting sound movements. He sent them through echo chambers, dressing them in hall scenarios—mostly. The musical plural conglomerate from Miles' “On The Corner”/“Agartha” period peeked around the corner. It was appreciatively transposed into his own. What resonated strongly was the genome of modern jazz tradition, but it was not expressed in a jazz idiom. The sound architecture is too transversal across stylistics. When the events take on the texture of smallness, Hautzinger's sound qualities transform into fine, percussive pointillism. It hissed, sizzled, and popped. He stimulated rhythms, intensity, and tempo. The collective shone with the skill of transforming density/stretching. Not least with ad hoc conceived form—state-of-the-random-art. Just when one thinks Franz Hautzinger has found a corner, he is already on his way to the next. He will let creativity rain once again. Wishing him rich happiness. (Hannes Schweiger on the concert on March 24, 2023, in celebration of his 60th birthday)

Program and cast

Franz Hautzinger: trumpet, electronics
Vincent Pongracz: clarinet, electronics
Jakob Schneidewind: bass
Lukas König: drums, electronics