Schick Kühn Hertenstein – Live at Terzo Mondo

They say that applause is an artist’s bread and butter. One evening a little over a year ago on Gormanstraße, accessible by S-Bahn, near Savigny. My student days, less than four blocks away, return as if over the rooftops, an American car sprawls grimly across two parking spaces, something between fourteen cylinders and 30 liters of fuel consumption. The evening sky glistening silver, we here, on the other hand, at a concert that barely pays for a sandwich—five paying guests at Terzo Mondo. A place with a spacious restaurant, created for concerts like this, which break through the end of the working day in Charlottenburg and linger on.

Ignaz Schick, Christian Kühn, and Joe Hertenstein didn’t start quietly; they went full throttle right away, initially bulky and powerful. The three know each other, the four behind me know each other, and I, seeing and hearing them in this constellation for the first time, realize: there is no pandering here, no strained formal gestures, they get right down to business. The end of the working day is postponed until later; now they continue to work for that one roll. I feared that it would stay that way, and that once again it would all be subject to the process of habituation and would once again become an evening that leaves no impression, because it all evaporates immediately, nothing sticks, it all happens only now, for the present moment. Jazz in the Terzo, in the Trio, in the Diffuse, in the Impenetrable. Noise-laden. For professionals. I thought it, heard it, and waited for it.

Ten minutes, twelve, fifteen, getting used to something happening outside of you again. You are not part of it, never were part of it, never will be, but you have heard that it could be about their positioning in relation to each other, about balancing their energy fields. The space, the sound, my hearing. Music needs form—not in melody or rhythm, but in the relationship between them, three who know each other and have already performed together on stage several times in this formation. You can imagine it: there is creaking and crunching between them, so it creaks and crunches, crackles, dusts, jerks and twitches, who of the three pulled whom along or changed their mind or pulled away – difficult to tell.

Joe Hertenstein is known for his precision, his endurance, his patience, his driving desire to play; Christian Kühn is known for his restlessness, his love of carnival and slapstick. Ignaz Schick is known for being versatile, here with the saxophone, there with the turntables.

This performance has recently been released as a recording. Those who were there and now listen to it may think that these are the times between times. Or the space between the past and revival. Seen in this light, the live experience in the room and the live experience on the recording appear to be very different worlds, equally astonishing. This is how the difference between today and yesterday sounds. Where, according to Eric Dolphy, everything tonal disappears into space. We know that Ignaz Schick listened to a lot of John Zorn.

So that’s how it sounded. That’s how it sounds today. Either my memory is deceiving me – if this is the recording from the concert, it must have been the same concert.

The Bandcamp release, which came out about a year later, is sharp, present, and astonishingly precise in terms of sound. It’s not a smooth live recording, but one that creates closeness: to the musical gesture, to the intention, to the tension. Hertenstein’s percussive pulse, Kühn’s drawn lines, Schick’s subtle playing – everything takes shape. Everything suddenly seems bigger than the room in which it was created.

Something immediate and direct. Captured between table conversations, in the semi-darkness in front of Terzo Mondo, and discussed immediately after the concert. An evening that already remained in my memory, and now—upon listening back—stands out clearly and distinctly. With the best recommendations.