Pat Thomas, JazzFest Berlin, November 2, 2025 © Berliner Festspiele, Camille Blake
(The second of three subscriber posts on Substack on this year’s Jazz Fest Berlin. The first two are longer essays on particular sets by Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer and by Pat Thomas, the third a more general overview of the festival.)
Thomas manifests absolute presence on stage: gregarious off it, on stage he is all business, sitting down and playing without the need of announcements or framing beyond the music itself. In an improvised solo set in the vein of the recent records The Solar Model of Ibn-Shatir and The Bliss of Bliss back to Nur in 1994, Thomas played what were essentially a series of short pieces: not quite miniatures, but relatively brief, each a study in a particular technique or texture. (One might call them études, perhaps.) Two were studies in rhythm and the harmonics that ring off a scraped or plucked piano strong, particular down the lower end of the instrument; the others focused on thick, splashy clusters and hand-over-hand runs dispensing with tonality as old news.
The full post can be read here.
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