Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I’m 200 pages into Alex Ross’ dense 2020 tome Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. The altercations in defense and denunciation of Richard Wagner’s controversial innovations at eventful performances described by Ross fascinate me. One hundred and fifty years later, another German is making similarly divisive sounds, albeit in a far less prominent realm. Many of Michael Wollny’s brash revisions to improvised music are as discordant as Wagner’s work must have sounded to his contemporaries. The keyboardist is joined by Emile Parisien (soprano saxophone), Tim Lefebvre (bass and electronics) and Christian Lillinger (drums and percussion) on the magnificently abrasive XXXX. The album consists of aggressive manipulations of live recordings made at Berlin’s A-Trane in 2019. XXXX fills in the gaps between Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas, John Coltrane’s Ascension and Aphex Twin’s I Care Because You Do without seeming beholden to the disparate works. Participating in the Wagner festspiele in Bayreuth is near the top of my bucket list. It would be inconsistent with Wagner’s visionary spirit to not also attempt to pay my respects to Wollny when I finally make it to Germany. And with any luck at all, I'll manage to instigate a brawl about the validity of revolutionary glitch-jazz at A-Trane.