The six-piece Sestetto Internazionale, assembled and led by Berlin-based soprano saxophonist Harri Sjöström in autumn 2015, is unique in many ways, with six voices, six perspectives and six personalities. It's hard to find an ensemble like this twice, unless you happen to be there twice when this orchestra plays. Even then, the experience is, one might say, almost guaranteed to be different, as it is performed entirely on an improvisational basis.

Two soprano saxophones, violin, piano, quartet harmonica and turntables with electronics combined into a coherent composition does not sound very conventional. Three melodic instruments operating at high frequencies and three instruments creating a unified line of rhythmic harmony and melody, where it's nice to "go crazy". Still, these lines don't matter that much, and it's not worth thinking about any more.

As six world-class improvisers search for their own sonic levels and ranges, combining them in a symbiotic relationship, the important thing is to listen. So it's not about a single solo around a theme, but about collective playing, following and discussing with others to create a coherent interaction.

Sestetto Internazionale is a full-blown shaper of whirling sonic patterns, a wild, uninhibited, unpredictable, multi-edged, boundary-seeking, unbridled, wildly joyous sonic creature, like an untamed coyote in the desert in search of scavenging.

Jazz is an interesting area of music because of its many different styles and variations. Improvisation is one of the most controversial areas, at least from the listener's point of view. What makes it different is the freedom, the freedom to break out of the mould, the freedom from compulsion, and the fact that there is no penalty for mistakes, if they can be considered to exist at all. For the ordinary listener, at least, it is impossible to find any fault at all. On the other hand, the possibility of failure always lurks in the air. If the 'scratching' of a turntable results in needle scratches and scratches, there is certainly no penalty. It is, as it were, part of the job.

The success of the ensemble is usually the result of the audience's reactions and comments, and these feed the players into ever more exhilarating strokes. At almost 80 minutes, Live In Munich 2019 is, as the title suggests, a concert recording from which this success is outpaced by the cheers of the audience.

The album is divided into three sections played together by the entire sextet and three sections where all the players get to perform as a duo in their own individual interplay. The lengths of the tracks vary widely. The album begins with a single, almost 40-minute-long track, Quasars -1, where everyone rips through delicious textures in a multicoloured palette ranging from small chords to hard, powerfully rising contributions. Styles get bounced from mood to mood and sometimes the playing even has solemnly pompous symphony orchestral catchphrases.

After this long opening, we hear three duo pieces. Notturno, a nocturnal composition by Alison Blunt and Gianni Mimmo, shows how the model improvisational collaboration between two instruments, violin and soprano saxophone, creates a picture of how it could be part of a symphony orchestra.

The collaboration between pianist Achim Kaufmann and "ragpicker" Ignaz Schick in Anak - 1 creates a strangely powerful image of how the versatile use of turntables and electronic buzz alongside the basic instrument suddenly functions as part of an orchestral foundation.

Well, how about how the duo of Veli Kujala and Harri Sjöström's collaboration with the accordion and saxophone comes to life. It starts as a thoughtful, exploratory chat, but turns quite quickly into a defiant tantrum. Like a stalking feline, the word-beam slowly begins to strike, escalating into a loud brawl and fight. As the tension intensifies, the result is a gloriously dizzying and contradictory exchange that escalates into a vicious and furious argument. Ruthless mutual rancour and outrage heat up the emotions, with a brutal splatter and roar roaring through the wall of sound before the final explosion. The ritualistic climax felt as if an enraged lion had opened its maw and devoured the duo in the maw of its throat. The audience, too, erupted into huge roars of applause.

The last two tracks on the album, Quasars - 2 and Little Piece, are a free-form effort developed by the entire six-piece together. At nearly fifteen minutes long, the artistically conceptual Quasars - 2 first landscapes the sonic imagery in a softly luscious way. Outlining at first in a relaxed, murmuring style its unified alignment in sound formation, the playing gets a wind in its sails and a powerful lift as the right pieces find each other. Painting is reinvigorated and solar energy is ignited.

The sounds of the instruments blend effectively as the tonal range increases. The frenetic, turbulent rushing erupts erratically towards the end with a genuinely original, rosy creative force, where the fierce clash of juxtaposed sounds is internalised. It's like a battle of wits where a fiery shingle bursts into flames. A good breakaway bumps into the eye like a herd of wild bulls let loose in the streets of Pamplona in a bull run.

It's a pleasure to break away and end the journey with a scheming but amusing 'divide and conquer' technique, skirmishing in a tantrum-inducing gleeful way in the collective, unfinished hopefulness of Little Fire.

"Sestetto Internazionale's hour and 20 minutes of Munich sound adventure is a wonderfully sweet listen. Time passes easily without much thought and without any unnecessary squeezing, just letting the sonic whirlwinds take over.  The raucous rushing gravel sounds, hisses, coos, chuckles, rattles and rattles, crackles, thumps and bangs, splashes and splashes, thumps and thumps, whimpers and howls, find a surprisingly harmonious driving force, where despite everything, a certain rhythmic melodiousness and a coherent narrative whole can be found.

And yet another ‘Offene Ohren e.V.’ [The Open Ears Society] line-up at the MUG [Underground at the Einstein, Munich], programmed somewhere between the more experimental side of jazz and freestyle contemporary art music: the Sestetto Internazionale, put together by the Finnish soprano saxophonist Harri Sjöström. 
Half of the Sestetto consists of the Trio Internazionale – soprano saxophonists Gianni Mimmo and Sjöström together with the Finnish universal accordionist Veli Kujala, who had already impressed at the Einstein venue 3 years ago. 
The instrumentation of the other half is no less exceptional: the English Alison Blunt, violin, Achim Kaufmann from Berlin playing the piano, Ignaz Schick operating the turntables. 

It’s no exaggeration to say that this was a magical evening that took you beyond all established musical categories. The rapport of the six musicians – their somnambulistic awareness of each other – was obvious from Sjöström’s first delicate sax tones onward. Mimmo leads with a melancholic melody line, transforms it into animated passages, then accents from Kujala’s almost imperceptible quarter-tone accordion. The piano starts, Blunt takes on Mimmo’s melody and expands, followed by the first turntable samples that sound as if they simply can't help but glisten and twinkle at exactly this moment in time, in exactly this sequence. By then you are trapped, subject to the spell of these six musicians who most of all listen to each other. 
No-one plays to be the first, no-one needs to prove their ego, and yet there are six distinct individuals - weaving an acoustic fabric with feeling for detail, an infallible sense of how to develop this group composition, and with much humor. 

This first part, some 40 minutes long, gives rise to much anticipation for the duo miniatures promised to follow. The duos! Mimmo and Blunt tenderly swirl around each other unisono, diametric and emotionally charged in a veritable cascade of sound. Then piano and turntables carry us off to intergalactic aural spheres where jollity and drama indulge each other and every sonic development holds new surprises.

The Finnish duo tops: at first microtonal and intricate soundscapes that command utter concentration, only for the soprano sax and accordion to climb into a speedy dervish-like St Vitus’ dance that in the end leaves musicians and audience stunned, breathless and in awe. ‘You never know it before! You never know it before!’ Sjöström celebrates later.

Another sextet piece followed – this time frugal consonant and dissonant expansions of tone and interferences, repetitive sequencing reminiscent of the instruments’ linear moods and intonations that soon resolve into multi-melodious modulations. More than once the listeners are tasked to decide which of the complex and simultaneously evolving sound images to follow. 
Needless to say, the applause demands an encore – Sjöström announces ‘Pikku Pala’ (a little piece). 
As luck would have it, the public-service radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk recorded this highlight live: BR-Klassik will broadcast the concert on 14th June 2019. This music deserves to be listened to again. Just as much as attention should be paid to the Offene Ohren society’s spirited programming. 

Object lessons in micro and macro modifications from the duo of British-based violinist Alison Blunt and Italian soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo has the two improvising alone and as part of a mixed sextet. Each glimpse is representative.

Recorded in concert Live in Munich 2019 finds the established duo embedded within Sestetto Internazionale, alongside Finns, soprano/sopranino saxophonist Harri Sjöström and accordionist Veli Kujala plus Germans, pianist Achim Kaufmann and Ignaz Schick playing turntables and sampler, all of whom have extensive experience in Free Jazz and the Free Music. Curiously each CD begins with an extended track, which is also the longest on the disc. 

Sestetto Internazionale’s “Quasars #1” for instance is nearly 37 minutes in length. But playing it the six players quickly dispense with any sonic queasiness suggested by the unusual instrumental line up, craftily working out a musical détente. With processional piano dynamics advancing the narrative, the first third of the piece has dual saxophone trills and Blunt’s string pumps thickening the exposition while Kujala’s dry tremolo heaves decorate the unfolding line, Schick’s vinyl-sourced sampler echoes, shrills and shudders either strengthen or disrupt the interface – sometimes both at the same time. When the first section of layered polyphony arrives, the scrapping and clipping from Kaufmann’s keyboard suddenly turns to individualistic exploratory patterns. Distinctively this sequence reveals singular motifs among the layered narrative with Blunt’s smooth or sawing strings related to 19th Century impressionistic and folkloric traditions; Sjöström forthright saxophone trills reaching towards 20th Century mainstream Jazz; and Schick’s machines’ crackles, curves and drones hooked into the 21st Century. These contradictions are resolved in the final section when the multiphonic theme opens up to encompass loud rustles and whooshes from the accordion almost replicating rumbling vibrations from the turntables, backwards running piano keyboard clips and violin string sweeps melding. Meanwhile the saxophonists’ offer differing interpretations of the theme, as one constantly trills and peeps and the other slap tongues and reed sucks. Before “Pikku Pala”, the encore which is mostly group expression with reed smears, sampler yelps and piano plinks concludes the set, the penultimate “Quasars #1” confirms the six-part polyphony. Here pinched smears from dueling saxophones, high-pitched pulsations from the violin and accordion waver into pinched connection atop a continuo from rolling piano splashes.

The sextet disc is also notable for the jumping symmetry expressed on “Notturno” by Blunt’s sympathetic string scrubs and Mimmo airy reed trills presaging a calming connection.

Mimmo and Blunt comprises one third of Sestetto Internazionale, an occasional ensemble previously documented on Aural Vertigo (2015; Amirani), a disc of concert performances recorded in Finland, home base for another third of the group – soprano saxophonist Harri Sjöström and quarter-tone accordionist Veli Kujala. Rounded out by two exponents of Berlin’s vibrant improvised music community – pianist Achim Kaufmann and turntablist/sampler Ignaz Schick – the sextet has vast sonic resources, which they bring to bear on Live in Munich. It is useful to listen first to the three duets that make up the album’s mid-section, the swirl of Mimmo and Blunt’s contrasting with the push-pull of Sjöström and Kujala’s and Kaufmann and Schick’s. When these pairings mingle on three sextet pieces, the variants multiply, a necessary utility if an improvisation is to last more than a half-hour, which is the case with the opener, “Quasar #1.”This recording is a timely reminder of the vividness improvised music can bring to an otherwise gray day.

Nel Sestetto Internazionale (Sjostrom, Blunt, Kaufmann, Mimmo, Kujala, Schick) c'è una straordinaria capacità di adattamento alla relazione immaginativa. Per il nuovo cd Live in Munich 2019, i sei protagonisti dei suoni si riconnettono allo spazio e alla grandezza delle forme, un'immersione simulatoria nei quasars e nel concetto di grandezza, distinto sia nelle sue dimensioni potenti che nella potenza della rappresentazione di una visuale esigua.  Innanzitutto i due quasars, due lunghi pezzi improvvisativi che sembrano instaurare illustrazioni differenti: come sapete questi addensamenti di stelle che emettono frequenze sono prove di un cosmo che parla; nel primo di essi (Quasar #1) i musicisti si impegnano in un'iconografia del corpo celeste, che metta in evidenza luminosità, granulosità, esplosioni concertate, magnetismo: multifonia, toni gravi soprattutto al piano, glissando, estensioni costruite sulla velocità e sul graffio, acquisiscono nelle capacità dei musicisti nuova linfa, veicoli di un veloce attraversamento delle novità musicali che hanno accompagnato lo sviluppo dell'uomo in secoli; la fase centrale è misteriosa e acuta ed è propedeutica ad un finale in cui si assiste ad un "flusso" magnifico di suoni. Nel secondo addensamento (Quasar #2), un grande e prolungato multifonico, spettralmente carico più un sottofondo minaccioso acusticamente ricavato, impongono una visione guardinga, forse l'attualità di un messaggio: Kaufmann si inventa dei passi di pianoforte simili a dei tentativi di connessione (intesi come volontà di chiedere relazioni), finché il segnale non si fa esplosivo. Sono due improvvisazioni eccellenti, in cui ogni musicista crea sistema, energia ed informazione spettrale. In mezzo a questi due poli, si inseriscono 3 duetti, quello di Mimmo con Blunt in Notturno, una sorta di innesto di 2 misure musicali (soprano e violino) che vogliono non solo contemplare, ma anche indicare la grandiosità di una forma musicale che può essere rinnovata; poi quello tra Kaufmann e Schick in Anak #1, dove il piano a grappoli e l'elettronica campionata pongono enfasi sulla frammentazione, quasi come ricevere trasmissioni radio difettose nel segnale; e per finire quello tra Sjostrom e Kujala in No Niin, dove una forma fantastica di segmentazione al sax viene accompagnata da una fisarmonica che sbraita e apre acuti canali di comunicazione. Kujala guida anche il finale più breve di Pikku Pala (che tradotto in italiano dovrebbe significare piccolo pezzo), un concentrato caotico di emissioni, lasciato alla libera interpretazione degli artisti.
E' incredibile quanto questi musicisti riescono a comunicare all'ascoltatore: qui c'è una modalità per riepilogare il mondo attraverso la musica, usare la libera improvvisazione come una rivelazione che passa in rassegna gli idiomi di più secoli in una struttura libera: echi decostruiti ma intercettabili di barocco, jazz, dei turntables e della classica contemporanea, fino a reggere un profondo suono primordiale, di cui abbiamo ipotizzato l'esistenza.

In the International Sextet (Sjostrom, Blunt, Kaufmann, Mimmo, Kujala, Schick) there is an extraordinary ability to adapt to the imaginative relationship. For the new CD Live in Munich 2019, the six protagonists of the sounds reconnect to the space and the greatness of the forms, a simulative immersion in the quasars and in the concept of greatness, distinguished both in its powerful dimensions and in the power of the representation of a visual small. First of all, the two quasars, two long improvisational pieces that seem to set up different illustrations: as you know, these densities of stars that emit frequencies are proofs of a speaking cosmos; in the first of them (Quasar # 1) the musicians engage in an iconography of the celestial body, which highlights brightness, graininess, concerted explosions, magnetism: multiphony, serious tones especially on the piano, glissando, extensions built on speed and on scratch, they acquire new lymph in the skills of the musicians, vehicles of a fast crossing of the musical innovations that have accompanied the development of man over the centuries; the central phase is mysterious and acute and is preparatory to a finale in which there is a magnificent "flow" of sounds. In the second thickening (Quasar # 2), a large and prolonged multiphonic, spectrally charged plus an acoustically obtained threatening background, impose a guarded vision, perhaps the relevance of a message: Kaufmann invents piano steps similar to connection attempts (intended as the will to ask for reports), until the signal becomes explosive. They are two excellent improvisations, in which every musician creates system, energy and spectral information.
Between these two poles, 3 duets are inserted, that of Mimmo with Blunt in Notturno, a sort of graft of 2 musical measures (soprano and violin) that want not only to contemplate, but also indicate the grandeur of a musical form that can be renewed; then the one between Kaufmann and Schick in Anak # 1, where the cluster plane and the sampled electronics place emphasis on fragmentation, almost like receiving faulty radio transmissions in the signal; and finally the one between Sjostrom and Kujala in No Niin, where a fantastic form of segmentation on the sax is accompanied by an accordion that screams and opens acute channels of communication. Kujala also leads the shorter ending of Pikku Pala (which translated into Italian should mean a small piece), a chaotic concentrate of emissions, left to the free interpretation of the artists. It is incredible how much these musicians manage to communicate to the listener: here is a way to summarize the world through music, use free improvisation as a revelation that reviews the idioms of several centuries in a free structure: deconstructed echoes but interceptable of baroque, jazz, turntables and contemporary classic, up to holding a deep primordial sound, of which we hypothesized the existence.

Curieux ensemble par son instrumentation peu conventionnelle : la violoniste Alison Blunt, le pianiste Achim Kaufmann, l’accordéoniste Veli Kujala, deux saxophonistes soprano, Gianni Mimmo et Harri Sjöström (celui-ci aussi en sopranino) et aux platines et sampler, Ignaz Schick. Deux longues improvisations – compositions instantanées en sextet : Quasars #1 (36’48’’) et Quasars #2 (14’12’’). Une plus courte en final : Pikku Pikala (5’42’’) et trois duos pour relâcher la concentration des auditeurs après les 36’ et quelques du premier Quasars : Notturno de Blunt et Mimmo (7’26’’), Anak #1 de Kaufman et Schick (9’12’’) et No Niin de Kulala et Sjöström. À la base de ce Sextet International, la collaboration en duo depuis une dizaine d’année entre les deux saxophonistes, Harri Sjöström et Gianni Mimmo, et le duo de ce dernier avec Alison Blunt, dont le dernier album Busy Butterflies vient de paraître chez Amirani. Ce label dirigé par Mimmo avait publié le remarquable premier album de Sestetto Internazionale, the Helsinki and Turku concerts que je n’avais pas manqué de chroniquer en juin 2017. Dans Quasars # 1,initié par les deux saxophonistes, les fils conducteurs de la démarche individuelle de chacun des six improvisateurs se croisent, s’isolent, s’unissent par faisceaux éphémères, s’écartent lorsque l’un ou l’autre s’arrête de jouer. Des correspondances subtiles se créent ente le violon et le sax soprano ou l’accordéon au quart de ton. Le toucher précis du pianiste intervient en filigrane et réoriente le mouvement global,  les sons électroniques d’Ignaz Schick apparaissent et se meuvent comme des brumes flottant dans le paysage et rejoignent les clusters étirés de l’accordéon de Veli Kujala. Chaque musicien se place tour à tour au centre du champ sonore  et l’ensemble développe des alliages de timbres et de variations de dynamiques étonnants, certains instrumentistes évoluant à des vitesses sensiblement différentes.  C’est une belle expérience d’écoute. Intelligemment après ce long mouvement tout en densités et dérives, les musiciens proposent des duos brefs - vignettes épurées qui situent clairement la personnalité de chacun et le rapport musical qui les unit deux par deux, pour éliminer la tension avant un final relevé. Un album vraiment intéressant.