Konstrukt made contact with both Alexander Hawkins and Alan Wilkinson during their presence at Konfrontationen Festival in Nickelsdorf in 2013 where the band performed for the second time in Austria after Saalfelden Jazz Festival with Marshall Allen in 2011. All three parts were excited and have agreed to get together sometime in the future.
The result was a night of music with high energy and a wide musical perspective. From drum & bass to ethnic funk vibes, from straight free jazz bursts to spiritual chantings, the whole performance here shows a wide range of outer wordly aspects of all musicians present.
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Korhan Futaci / alto & tenor saxophones, flutes, sipsi, kaba zurna, voice
Umut Çaglar / electric guitar, gralla, bamboo flutes, pocket drum machine, xylophones, percussion, tape echo
Barlas Tan Özemek / electric bass
Ediz Hafizoglu / drums, cymbals, bells, turkish hang drum
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Alexander Hawkins / acoustic piano
Alan Wilkinson / baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, voice
Daniel Spicer / pocket trumpet, bugle, bamboo saxophone, shenai, recorder, pan pipe, whistle, cow bell, kalimba, voice
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Omlott Records, 2018
“Konstrukt comprises; guitarist Umut Çağlar, saxophonist Korhan Futaci, drummer Cem Tan & Berke Can Özcan and bass player Barlas Tan Özemek. The band has been garnering attention not only at home in Turkey but in European improvised music circles. They have performed with Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Akira Sakata, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, Michiel Braam's Bik Bent Baam, Alfred Harth, Eugene Chadbourne. To record with these jazz giants is, indeed, a stamp of approval and hopefully their message of liberating music can be heard by a larger audience. Their albums have been released by prestigious labels on LP and CD formats.”
Daniel Spicer is a writer, broadcaster, improviser and poet based in Brighton, UK. He writes about music for The Wire, Jazzwise and Songlines magazines, and for The Quietus website. His book on Turkish psychedelic music, The Turkish Psychedelic Music Explosion: Anadolu Psych 1965 to 1980, was published by Repeater Books in 2018.
Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’). He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sofia Jernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.
"Sounds like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details" – The Guardian
ALAN WILKINSON (alto, baritone saxophones, bass clarinet) has for many years been a leading figure in the British Improvised Music Community. His reputation of a full blast, take no prisoners approach was cast in the Leeds based trio Hession/Wilkinson/Fell. Based in London since 1990 his current groups include a long standing trio with John Edwards and Steve Noble, the quartet The Founder Effect with John Coxon, Pat Thomas and Noble, and many collaborations past and present with among others Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Thurston Moore, J.Spaceman, Chris Corsano, Konstrukt and Talibam!
"At its highest points, this session unleashes some of the most preposterously powerful energy jazz heard since Peter Brötzmann's Yatagarasu trio with Takeo Moriyama and Masahiko Satoh" - Daniel Spicer, The WIRE
