On Friday I caught a concert that reminded me why live jazz still has the power to surprise: David Helbock’s Random/Control, featuring vocalist Fola Dada, At the Dottendorfer Jazznacht in Bonn.
Random/Control is the long-running trio led by Austrian pianist David Helbock, alongside Andreas Broger and Johannes Bär — though calling them a “trio” rather undersells it. Between the three of them, they play around a dozen instruments across the evening, with Broger moving between clarinet, saxophones and flutes, and Bär switching from tuba to alpine horn, vocal beatbox, what looked like a self-made mini-didgeridoo, and drums, sometimes seemingly all at once. The band has been together for more than 16 years and has played thousands of shows worldwide, building a reputation for turning a small ensemble into a full orchestra of sound.
For this project, Helbock set poems by writers like William Blake and Emily Dickinson to music, and invited German vocalist Fola Dada to bring those words to life on stage. Her voice has added a new dimension to the trio’s already inventive arrangements, and the chemistry between her phrasing and the band’s constantly shifting instrumentation made for a genuinely fresh listening experience where anything could happen, that held everyone’s attention for the whole evening.
I was sort of expecting an evening of entire poems spoken with suitable musical landscapes in the background. All fool me of course, this after all Jazz. An intro featuring William Blake’s ‘I heard an Angel’ segued smoothely into a a swooping happy ‘Infant Joy’. Fittingly enough for a poem celebrating birth. It was proof early on to expect the unexpected.
There were some better known pop songs presented, but even these had thoughtful re-workings. Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ started so solemnly, would you expect it to burst into life via an Alpine Horn/piano solo? Prince’s ‘1999’ kicking off with a sousaphone solo? The one track played relatively straight down the line stylewise was Duke Ellington’s ‘In a sentimental mood’ which showcased above all Fola Dada’s rich jazz voice. There was a tribute also to Abdullah Abrahim who died recently with ‘African Market PLace’
Most emotive presentation of the evening was written in memory of the Weissen Rose – a dark, sombre ‘Hymn for Sophie Scholl’. It is a hymn without words – appropriate for the murderous execution of Sophie and her two colleagues for which there are no adequate words. The care taken in presentation was shown by following it with a representation of Eric Fried’s ‘Freiheit’ which counters the former hymn’s sad gravity with an up-tempo lyric that is however still fatalistic “You say freedom will prevail but that’s a lie – freedom doesn’t prevail at all!”. The words themselves echo those spoken by Sophie’s brother Hans before his execution: “Long live freedom!”.
A unique musical evening then in Dottendorf. Two musicians, Andreas Broger and Johannes Bär who played multiple instruments – very often at the same time (on many occasions Broger had a wind instrument in each hand and was frequently blowing into both at once. Bär had to not only play multiple instruments but manouvre them into position on a stage with a low ceiling, there being only inches between his sousaphone and the rafters, not to mention having to carefully pick up the mouth-end of an Alpine horn whose length ran across half the stage. Helbock himself seemed to ‘only’ have a piano to deal with, except a glance at the said piano’s open top at half-time revealed an array of objects that he would regularly tap, hit and hammer as occasion demanded crammed into each corner. Fola Dada also had plenty to do using her voice as an instrument as well as spoken passages along side her silky smoothe singing.
A fascinating and exhilarating show finished with a flourish as Princes ‘1999’ got everyone off of their seats and clapping along. If you get the chance to see David Helbock’s Random/Control feat. Fola Dada live, take it — it’s a show built on curiosity, craft, and no shortage of surprises.
