Angles

Swedish sax player Martin Küchen has consistently been one of most unconventional figures in freejazz, performing with ensembles like Tresspass Trio and All Included. That being said, The Death of Kalypso, the latest conceptual venture from his other consistent project Angles, is a whole new level of ‘out there’. And considering Küchen’s consistently unruly output, that’s saying something.

The Death of Kalypso is – wait for it – a free jazz opera (!) for our times: a macabre and tumultuous socio-political performance where Küchen joins forces with pianist Alexander Zethson and vocalist Elle-Kari Sander to conduct an 8-piece ensemble that could perhaps be described as a free-jazz answer to Hieronymus Bosch’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels: a sprawling, orchestral piece that uses both the opulent resplendency of the divine and the faults and vices of the earthbound as stepping stones.

The white-clad Sander takes center stage as an almost arcane soliloquist tying the immensehood of it all together. The Death of Kalypso is definitely a listening experience unlike anything – if only to find that something of such scope and ambition can be matched by equal amounts of playfulness and mischief.

Line up orchestra is Elle-Kari Sander (voice), Martin Küchen (saxophone), Mats Äleklint (trombone), Jasmijn Lootens (cello), Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone), Alex Zethson (piano keyboards), Johan Berthling (double bass) and Konrad Agnas (drums).

– Jasper Willems