Switzerland’s Intakt label last recorded homegrown jazz piano star Irène Schweizer and South African drums colossus Louis Moholo-Moholo together in 1986, when Swiss banks were helping to prop up South Africa’s apartheid system, and Moholo-Moholo can be heard chanting “free Mandela” in the background.
Nearly 30 years later, on the third night of Intakt’s 12-day festival at London’s Vortex, their absorbing story resumed in a different political and musical world. Schweizer’s admiration for Moholo-Moholo and his mutual embrace of her – as both a free-jazz pioneer and a sister who befriended him in the toughest times – glowed as warmly as ever.
Schweizer began without preamble in cascades of keyboard-length descents and waywardly stomping chords, while the drummer initially cantered alongside in breezy flutters and chatters, before answering her daintier, child-song diversions with stubborn crashes and bumps. The joyous dances of the late Dudu Pukwana’s South African townships themes came and went; a ruggedly tender ballad mixed lyricism and percussive muscle; a military tattoo propelled Schweizer into jangling, Mose Allison-like swing; and cat-and-mouse free-improv games found the septuagenarian pair at their most playful.
When Zurich saxophonist Omri Ziegele joined them for a more tightly tune-based set on South African songs, the conversation began cautiously, but Ziegele’s mix of caustically hooky thematic playing and explosively whooping top-end dissonance was soon met, considered and trenchantly embroidered by his watchfully inventive partners.
