Willi The Pig : Live At The Willisau Jazz Festival

This album documents a continuous, 48-minute live performance from 1975 by this international quartet, fronted by Danish alto/soprano saxophonist Tchicai and Swiss pianist Schweizer and rounded out by German bassist Buschi Niebergall and South African drummer Makaya Ntshoko. The music here is quietly (and occasionally not so quietly) intense free jazz that, despite some turbulent moments, never becomes fully explosive or over the top like a lot of post-Cecil Taylor/John Coltrane free jazz tends to get. Tchicai's tendency either to play quietly or at least not to scream has much to do with this restraint. In any case, there is a consistent, worrisome tension at work that, coupled with Tchicai's sour-toned alto and soprano playing and the somewhat hazy quality of the actual recording, gives the album a somewhat unappealing surface. Those who dig beneath that surface will find some stellar interplay (as expected with musicians of this caliber) along with several moments of reflective, almost meditative beauty; however, the second half of the piece does stall for a few minutes, as it seems to lose direction when Tchicai puts down his horn. A worthy, but not quite standout release, Willi the Pig is better left to established fans of Tchicai or Schweizer, or of more cerebrally inclined free jazz as a whole. [Note that the CD reissue was mastered from the LP -- not the original tapes -- so the CD had to be divided into two tracks, with a brief fade-out at the end of track one and a fade-in at the beginning of track two.] ~ William York, All Music Guide