In der ursprünglichsten Form war dieses Trio in anderer Besetzung mit Moormother beim letztjährigen Jazzfestival Saalfelden zu hören. Für 2022 war es an der Zeit, Franz Hautzinger ins Boot zu holen. Außerdem kam es zu einen weiteren Ausfall von Shahzad Ismaily, der nun von Ingebrigt Håker Flaten ersetzt wird.

Wer hätte den Ort wohl besser aus der Taufe heben können als ein Trio von grenzüberschreitenden Meister:innen der Improvisation – die international renommierte Poetin und Musikerin Moor Mother gemeinsam mit dem experimentellen Powerhouse-Drummer Lukas König und dem unverwechselbaren, beeindruckenden Bassisten/Perkussionisten Shahzad Ismaily? Diese Eröffnungs-Performance der Otto-Gruber-Halle erwies sich als eines der unerwartetsten Highlights des Festivals – nicht weil irgendwer an ihren Fähigkeiten gezweifelt hätte, sondern einfach weil niemand wusste, was einen erwartete. Sie hatten tatsächlich noch nie vorher gemeinsam gespielt. Keine Probe, nicht einmal ein Soundcheck war dem neugeborenen Trio möglich gewesen, als Ismaily nach unzähligen pandemiebedingten Anreiseschwierigkeiten direkt vom Airport-Shuttle auf die Bühne sprang, präzise zwei Minuten vor dem Auftritt. Ungeachtet der herausfordernden Umstände war das Resultat absolut verblüffend. Das Trio eroberte die Bühne und ließ das Publikum alles andere vergessen. Eine intensive musikalische Verbindung, vorangetrieben von experimentellen Ausnahmetalenten: Die drei wurden eins in einer explosiven Performance aus schweren Industrial Beats, gemischt mit komplexen Rhythmen, dynamischen Changes, kraftvoller Dichtung, in der Seele wühlenden Basselementen und spielerischer Percussion, darübergestreut wie Feenstaub. Die drei trieben und schubsten einander an, forderten und ergänzten einander. Die Freude daran auf dem Podium war spürbar und übertrug sich großzügigst aufs Publikum, das es am Schluss nicht mehr auf den Sitzen aushielt und zur Bühne strömte (ein echtes Kunststück bei einem Jazzfestival). (Pressetext)

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (b. 1971)
The award winning Norwegian bassist, improviser, composer and bandleader Ingebrigt Håker Flaten has been at the forefront of modern creative music both in his native country Norway and internationally since the early 1990s. Perhaps best known as a founding member of the Scandinavian super group Atomic, Håker Flaten has merged post-free jazz explorations and experimentation with skillful use of attributes from many other idioms in countless collaborations, bands and projects.An innovative practitioner of both the double bass and electric bass, Håker Flaten studied at the highly respected jazz program “Jazzlinja” at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Early on, he gained attention as part of the groups Bugge Wesseltoft’s New Conception of Jazz, The Source and Element, the latter formed with fellow students and life-long collaborators Paal Nilssen-Love and Håvard Wiik. Both Nilssen-Love and Wiik would later join Håker Flaten in Atomic, which the three Norwegians formed together with the two Swedes Magnus Broo and Fredrik Ljungkvist. Making their recorded debut in 2001, Atomic has since been celebrated and treasured by jazz enthusiasts and critics alike, and won many accolades along the way.Throughout his career, Håker Flaten has reached beyond boundaries, both musical and geographical. In his musical approaches, grounded in the innovations and liberations of American and European jazz and improvised music of the late 50s and early 60s, he often takes on board other styles and idioms, such as the gnarl and heft of rock, the rhythmic bounce of hiphop, the atmospheric and melodic tones of folk music, and much more, taking the music into even new realms of discovery. Through such boundary breaking explorations, his many musical collaborations has taken him to many corners of the world, and in 2006 he moved from Norway to the USA; initially to Chicago and later settling in Austin, until returning to Norway in 2020. Through these moves, he has nurtured old and fostered new collaborations and interactions with musicians, both veterans and up-and-coming stars, based in and around those local, fertile scenes.Ingebrigt Håker Flaten has performed all over the world and appeared on more than 200 recordings. Along with Atomic, he leads US based groups like the genre busting Young Mothers and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten Chicago Sextet, and plays in groups like Icepick, I.P.A., and Dave Rempis Percussion Quartet. He was previously a core member of the powerjazz trio The Thingwith Nilssen-Love and Mats Gustafsson, as well as Free Fall, just to mention just a few past and present projects. Additionally, he often performs solo and in duos.In group settings as well as on his own, he has collaborated with a wide array of stellarmusicians like Joe McPhee, David Murray, Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, Rob Mazurek, Frode Gjerstad, Neneh Cherry, Mette Rasmussen, James Blood Ulmer, Bugge Wesseltoft, Paul Lytton, Chris Potter, Hamid Drake, Akira Sakata, Tony Malaby, and many other.

Franz Hautzinger
Detours often lead to more thrilling goals because they open up new perspectives. Franz Hautzinger has taken long and bendy detours and turned to many dead ends, he has spent years without instrumental activity and has made a hopeful new start. All this, those victories and defeats, this “History from the Total Crash to ‘Emergency Individualism’”, as he himself described it, made Franz Hautzinger the highly profiled musical personality that he is today.
Born on March 11, 1963 in Seewinkel, Burgenland, a Hannibal Marvin Peterson concert at Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf was the young trumpeter’s “awakening experience”. He studied at the Jazz department of today’s Art University in Graz from 1981 to 1983 until lip palsy forced him to take a six year total break from trumpeting. After moving to Vienna in 1986 he started in 1989 to explore the trumpet in his very own and un-academic way. He became attached to the circles around Christoph Cech and Christian Mühlbacher, played in the Big Band “Nouvelle Cuisine” and the octet “Striped Roses”; the CD “Zong of se Boboolink”, which he recorded with saxophonist Helge Hinteregger and which was influenced by sampler collages was the first personal CD statement. His 10 month stay in London provided new ideas and contacts, amongst others Kenny Wheeler, Henry Lowther, John Russel, and Steve Noble. Hautzinger assimilated the stimuli in very different ways: in „Regenorchester“ („Rain Orchestra“) with its changing instrumentation, in the quartet with Helge Hinteregger, Oren Marshall and Steve Noble as well as in the trio “Speakers’ Corner” with guitarist Martin Siewert and drummer Wolfgang Reisinger.

Lukas König (*1988) studied at Gustav Mahler Konservatorium in Vienna, Anton-Bruckner University in Linz and HKB in Bern. He was given the “Hans Koller Price- New York Scolarship” in 2009, the Bremen Jazzpreis and Bawag P.S.K. Next Generation Award in 2014 (with Kompost3). Klangforum Wien premiered his composition Stereogram1 at Konzerthaus Vienna in 2018 and in 2021 he was chosen to be artist of the Shape Network. In addition to performances at festivals worldwide he collaborated with Reggie Washington, Malcolm Braff, Steven Bernstein, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Audrey Chen, Julien Desprez, Chris Pitsiokos, Moormother, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Briggan Krauss, Dorian Concept, Leo Riegler, Freya Edmondes, Peter Kutin, Nik Hummer, Michael Fischer, Shahzad Isamaily, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Elliott Sharp, Almog Sharvit, Brandon Seabrock, Adam O’Farrell, David Leon, MC Sensational, Elvin Brandhi, Petter Eldh, Otis Sandsjö, Klangforum Wien, Bilderbuch, Hoover Le, Martin Siewert, Franz Hautzinger, Maja Osojnik, Wolfgang Puschnig, Thomas Gansch, Andy Manndorff, David Murray, Die Strottern, Wolfgang Mitterer, Jon Sass, Otto Lechner, Patrice Heral, Guem , Raphael Preuschl, Paul Urbanek, Phil Yaeger, Wolfgang Schiftner, Martin Eberle, Sixtus Preiss, Manu Mayr, Clemens Salesny, Clemens Wenger, Jazzwerkstatt Wien, Greenwoman, Ensemble für neue Musik Zürich, Koenigleopold, Bilderbuch, 5KHD, Klangforum Wien and many more.

Austrian musician Lukas Koening is primarily a drummer. But there’s a lot more than percussion happening on his latest solo album, Buffering Synapsis (opal tapes), from sputtering noise to fractured circuit breaking to creepy horror-soundtrack ambience. Using electronics and pedals along with his cymbal, Koening lets his imagination fly, leading to fascinating juxtapositions between tracks and sometimes even inside them. Despite the stylistic whiplash, Koening manages to instill his music with a sense of purpose, never blasting forward blindingly or tripping over himself to find a new sound. As a result, static churn, whirring spasms and terrifying echoes are like branches of the same highly-engaging musical tree.In recent years Koenig’s solo work has repositioned itself toward a stuttering, data moshed version of the solo drummer. The imagery of brain tissues micro and macro being loaded, reloaded and exploded with data, time stamping and pure kinesis as conjured by the title of this album could not be more apt. With this recording an almost cartoon like level of intensity is sometimes reached through movement and movement alone. This is a music re-animating the "solo" drummers album while re-collecting it's history of new-complexity, lowercase, Bertoia-esque metal manipulations and all out free jazz fire music. Never drab or stuffy its cybernetic, hyper technical but above all; only accomplishable at the speed of thought. It's intrinsically human music. Deploying double kick drum played in stroboscopic clusters, hyper-tactile cymbal work, table top electronics and FX pedals to mute, melt and mutilate his flailing limbs and ocean like tam tam bathing. Buffering Synapsis is a tiny view into the creative world of an incredibly exciting and unique musician. (Texts by Opal Tapes + Marc Masters)