The latest installment of trumpeter Nate Wooley’s accretive “Seven Storey Mountain” project builds from ambience into cycling minimalism into a cathartic wall of sound, with a tender chorus of female voices, delivering a release that should powerfully activate the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Live concert in Berlin / ca. 50 min

Nate Wooley: “Seven Storey Mountain VI”
Trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley has been building the size and scope of this project through numerous iterations over the last decade, incorporating taped sections from previous versions into each successive installment. Last year he released the sixth and most impressive recording. The aim is always the same more or less, constructing a momentous structured improvisation that aspires to an ecstatic climax followed by a cathartic release, and “Seven Storey Mountain” achieves this goal brilliantly. Within the dramatic atmosphere of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Wooley presents the latest version of this epic with a knock-out line-up featuring some of his regular New York cohorts including violinist C. Spencer Yeh, and pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, with an impressive bunch of European fellow travelers such as pianist Håvard Wiik and drummer Steve Heather. Through a series of time-blocked sequences, the music grows from ambient calm into cycling post-Terry Riley minimalism, careening and building into a dense wall of freely improvised, almost psychedelic mayhem. The piece features several female voices, including section leader Megan Schubert, interpolating the words and melody from the proto-feminist Peggy Seeger song “Reclaim the Night”, and offering the haunting, defiant coda, “You can’t scare me”, borrowed from the Bobbie McGhee folk tune “Union Maid”.

Nate Wooley trumpet
Samara Lubelski violin
C. Spencer Yeh violin
Ryan Sawyer drums
Teun Verbruggen drums
Steve Heather drums
Susan Alcorn pedal steel guitar
Julien Desprez guitar
Ava Mendoza guitar
Bram de Looze piano
Håvard Wiik piano
Megan Schubert voice
Ayşe Cansu Tanrıkulu voice
Laura Winkler voice
Dora Osterloh voice
Friederike Merz voice
Christie Finn voice