Misha Mengelberg/Han Bennink
Midwoud 77

LA RECENSIONE

Tell me Misha, tell me about the melody...

The melody...

The melody is like an “earworm”. If it sounds too good, it means it lacks a bit of evil. And if everything is too beautiful, it means it lacks a bit of ugliness. Art must always limp a little. Listen to Thelonious, if you don’t believe me.

Right, Thelonious...

You adored Thelonious and you took and melted him into your music like a lump of sugar.

Han, as a child, practiced the percussive art on a wooden chair. He still does it today. A chair sounds quite good when it creaks on floors or hits the dishes of a drum set.

But tell me, dear Han, is there perhaps something you haven't used to squeak, tap, extract sounds? “Well, I don’t know, maybe the butt of a camel”...

“And the balls of a donkey”

And screw anyone who thinks all this is just avant-garde nonsense, “it's the trains, the birds, the sounds of everyday life”.

...

Misha and Han...

The most successful of fantastic pairs, a perfect “combination of misunderstandings”. All accompanied by a sort of benevolent grin, “life is too serious a matter not to laugh about it.”

They called themselves composers of the moment. Not bad as a company name, right?

A kind of feeling of the absurd guided them, the desire to keep art and life together. One moment your thought is in the highest sky, the next moment you're peeing.

In short, a matter of improvisation. Don’t worry, though, there's no need to be alarmed. “You even improvise when choosing whether to take six or seven steps to reach the door or whether to scratch your head with one finger or two.”

...

I remember them in the night of time, a concert at the Rocca Sforzesca, I was about sixteen years old and I was completely ignorant of jazz. It was almost a mystical experience.

Misha weaving elusive skewed digressions, Han wandering the stage drumming on everything. Even just seeing them, one very small with the perfect jazz face, the other a sort of Nibelung. The philosopher and the warrior, just to understand.

They seemed like friends/enemies unaware of each other in a kind of undeclared war. Later I learned they lived in love and hate, a game where they took turns being Bip Bip and Vyl Coyote.

Or Sancho and Don Quixote...

But, as we already said, where there's too much good there needs to be a bit of bad...

And vice versa...

...

“Midwoud 77”

A nocturnal piano struggling with chaos. The sparkle of certain lunar marches. Questions without answers and stains on the walls.

Here and there magnificent raspberries.

Then, when at minute 21 the two seem to even play together, you can’t help but laugh a bit. Luckily it only lasts a moment.

Misha is a sort of Dr. Monk and Mr. Dada, Han is the constant interference. It would be avant-garde, but it’s as exciting as rock’n’roll...

Trallallà....