Originally from Kingston, Ontario, saxophonist Peter van Huffel has been creating a growing body of work in New York and Berlin, much of it integrating improvised music, expanded jazz harmonies, and sometimes chamber music dynamics, like the subtle HuffLiGNoN with the Belgian singer Sophie Tassignon. His new group Gorilla Mask—Roland Fidezius, acoustic bass and noise, and Rudi Fischerlehner drums and percussion—marks a significant departure, moving toward a visceral expressionism. The models may be John Zorn or Tim Berne (their joint Spy vs. Spy project comes to mind) or certain groups led by Peter Brötzmann (the ones involving guitarist Sonny Sharrock or bassist Bill Laswell), but van Huffel has moved into an area where the specifics of originality and invention take a back seat to the authenticity of one’s commitment. That commitment is evident in every instant of the CD, in the nonstop fury of most tracks, the sustained insistent tempos and polyrhythms, and the martial squawk of Van Huffel’s alto, the trio fusing into a singular and complex machine that connects every note to every other note, and that can stop in a nanosecond.
Stuart Broomer has written extensively on music, mostly improvised, for both general and specialist publications, and his liner essays have appeared on CDs by musicians from some 20 countries. The author of Time and Anthony Braxton (Mercury, 2009), he is currently writing a fantasia on the life of Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips. He has been intermittently active as an improvising musician since 1965; his composition Found Theme for the Age of Reason appeared in Musicworks 112. He lives in Toronto.