JOHN EDWARDS\/ CAROLINE KRAABEL\/ KHABAT ABAS (England\/U.S.A.\/Kurdistan-Iraq) at Cafe Oto, August 15, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was the first session of the Cafe Oto residency of the groundbreaking London bassist, John Edwards. With him in a daunting trio were Californian alto saxophonist Caroline Kraabel and the cellist from Kurdistan-Iraq, Khabat Abas, whose life in music includes playing with symphony orchestras as far apart as Iraq and Gothenburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a sweating Dalston night the sounds began with the dark humming of bowed bass and bowed electro-cello as if coming from subterranean places deep below the Cafe Oto’s stone floor, while over it Kraabel’s reed and voice simultaneously made continuous soft and siren-sounding notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon, Edwards’ bass became an uncanny, thumping drumset while Abas laid a wooden wedge over her cello bridge as her bow sawed on. Kraabel’s sudden saxophone screeches and Abas’ mallet blows on her strings in an instant took my mind to the agony of Gaza, as if horn and strings made harrowing empathy with its mothers and children. Edwards played with a bow in each hand, making powerful dark fire across the lowest regions of his bass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no domination. Each virtuoso was in complete adventurous and inventive accord with their trio-mates, as Abas stroked her strings so gently with her torn and withered bow it was like a lullaby for Gazan infants, until Kraabel’s saxophone made new, optimistic pace to create what sounded like a children’s song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What processes of music were here! The art of the musician is to make sounds which make meaning: the art of the listeners is to imagine and interpret that meaning in their own lives and the lives of others. Cellist and bassist were two drummers drumming, as strings became surfaces, skins, the bark of trees, while Kraabel’s horn sang, harmonised and told her stories, on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 At the end of the performance I told Abas and Kraabel that I thought I had heard and seen Gaza in their sounds in this ex-paints factory in the heart of East London. ‘I must play what I see in the way the world is,’ replied Abas. ‘You heard it too!’ Chris Searle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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2025 review of 2024 duo CD with John Edwards, Sparrowdance<\/a><\/em>. By Chris Searle, Morning Star<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Caroline Kraabel\/John Edwards HERE\u2019s an extraordinary record. It comes in a home-made, gingham cloth sleeve and a cardboard envelope with an inken, avian design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unity of John Edwards\u2019 bouncing, stepping, singing, plunging, sawing, percussive acoustic bass and Caroline Kraabel\u2019s sad, singing, somnolent saxophone somehow expresses the pathos yet resilience of London bird life. Sparrows can\u2019t sing, the songline goes, yet these two musicians give them a multilayered, reveried, throbbing voice which cries, observes and reflects, but never dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe sparrow interaction was a dream I had,\u201d says Kraabel. \u201cWe placed our music\u2019s sheets of notes in the garden, on the ground. The sparrows walked over them \u2014 in doing so they chose the best music, showing us which parts to discard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You don\u2019t hear many albums like this, so close to life and nature. Be quick though, there aren\u2019t many copies. Chris Searle, Morning Star, 17 February 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of Caroline Kraabel\/ Daniel Thompson\/ Max Reed trio CD, Still Dancing, 2024.<\/strong> By Mr Olivetti, Frequency.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guitarist and Empty Birdcage supremo Daniel Thompson continues his investigations into the improvisational world with a collaboration involving saxophonist Caroline Kraabel and dancer Max Reed. Now, if this sounds intriguing, you are right; because not only does Max bring a certain atmosphere to the proceedings, but his shuffling steps and purring vocal outbursts lend further dimensions to an already tasty sax and guitar interplay. If anything, his appearance gives Caroline and Daniel a further maypole around which they can entwine their subtle insinuations. There is also a lot of silence here and in that silence if you listen closely, you can hear the trio plotting amongst the room tone and random shuffles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The silence in the opening of the first section is injected with scuffs, strums and scattered honks, a scene setting as the players and Max prepare the room. Staccato bursts, the slide and stomp of bare feel on wood floor; you can imagine Max\u2019s movements, sidestepping the static musical outbursts as they try to finish one another\u2019s sentences with brief interjections. What sounds like breathing moves around the long stretches of silence and the atmosphere builds, drawing the imagination of the listener into the chase. Scraped strings, muffled yelps and the surge of breath and foot increase in intensity at certain moments before a wounded roar from the sax scatters the molecules, rearranging in inexplicable cutting motions and single guitar notes brushed with coarse chords. Is there a voice? Is it the sax? Does it matter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second section is far longer, Max\u2019s voice more apparent. There is more motion and the sax coaxed, more inclined to linger, drawing the voice, a distant wail along with it. Max is more animated, warmed up and drawing some angular work from Daniel, caressing and pulling at the strings in equal measure. Caroline joins in and it feels like a tag team, one taking over from the other, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Appearing and dissipating. Sax and voice duet as the guitar circles, sprightly, an awkward medi\u00e6val dance with sax and guitar poking one another, sax becoming more outraged before silence descends. Another plotting of the next wave that comes slowly and quietly, moments of semi-structure appearing and dissipating into the room tone. Yips of sax are accompanied by warm, gentle guitar as we descend towards a conclusion, the atmosphere edgy but convivial, the distance covered impressive and engaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An unexpected and unusual treat, Still Dancing<\/em> album pushes the boundaries of improv just that little bit further and keeps Daniel ahead of the game. Mr Olivetti<\/p>\n\n\n\n _________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of 2023 Pat Thomas\/ Caroline Kraabel CD whats wrong<\/a><\/em>, by Chris Searle, Morning Star<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Caroline Kraabel and Pat Thomas THIS is an album<\/a> of two loving sleeves: one of cardboard, one of patterned cloth. Inside them is a musical story by two revolutionary musicians from two continents: US-born saxophonist Caroline Kraabel and British pianist of Antiguan roots, Pat Thomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To describe their album as audacious is sheer understatement. Powerful sounds from the innards of percussive piano and multi-voiced horn peal out from its grooves as if both musicians are in a birthing room of sound, which is in fact Dalston\u2019s Vortex, where it was recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n whats wrong takes very careful, internalised listening. Its sounds speak critically of our world and its crimes and suffering, while showing in its compelling artistry the creativity and freedom urge needed to heal them. Not easy, but nonetheless beautiful, it cries out for hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is an album for all senses and seasons, and a vital prod for imagination and consciousness too. Chris Searle<\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of 2024 LP, Child Ballads: The Final Six, by London Experimental Ensemble (including Caroline Kraabel)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of 2023 Pat Thomas\/ Caroline Kraabel CD whats wrong<\/a><\/em>, by Phil Freeman, The Wire<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n whats wrong<\/em> is a set of four improvised duos between [Pat] Thomas and saxophonist Caroline Kraabel. Despite the force and volume they achieve at certain moments there\u2019s also a deep intimacy to their interactions. At one point, about four minutes into the first track, Kraabel pulls the horn from her mouth and emits a deep, pleasurable sigh, like a smoker after a deep drag. It\u2019s one of the most human moments I\u2019ve encountered, in what is already a deeply human form of music. Hearing it feels like eavesdropping. Kraabel shifts throughout the disc from deep, rawboned phrases to gentle hissing flaps of the valves [sic]. Thomas\u2019s playing, meanwhile, is sparse and dark-toned, seeming to recall the work of Matthew Shipp at times with its percussive single-note strikes. Rigo Dittmann, Bad Alchemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of 2023 Kraabel\/Nicols\/Hug Transitions Trio CD, On Dizziness<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong> By Rigo Dittmann, Bad Alchemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MAGGIE NICOLS – CAROLINE KRAABEL – CHARLOTTE HUG On Dizziness (Creative Sources, CS 786): The Zurich violist & vocalist tipped me off to this poetic, almost philosophical encounter between three ‘Canailles’, whose devilish and motherly relevance to Bad Alchemy is beyond question. Grand-‘Ma’ Nicols, always within earshot thanks to I Am Three & Me<\/em> and Siapiau<\/em>, has two kindred spirits born in the 60s at her side here, with Hug and also with Kraabel, with whom she played in the London Improvisers Orchestra<\/em> and is very familiar through “For Every Thing that Lives is Holy<\/em>” as a tribute to William Blake, or in \u201cNo Picnics<\/em>\u201d with John Edwards. Their program includes poetic-philosophical lines from the much-praised poet Jenny Xie, and covers the spectrum from ‘A violent stirring of the interior’ to ‘Unfolding the churns’, ‘Begin with disequilibrium’, ‘Slurred echoing eye’, ‘What gets poured inside is the outside’ and ‘A useful beginning’. Alto sax, viola, taps & three voices recommend dizziness, imbalance and doubt as opportunities. With polyglot magic formulas [their witches’ one-times-one] and, again and again in three voices, shamanic screaming and singing to scratchy, shimmering playing with strings, bow and reed, tinged with hoarfrost. Maggie and her fellow mothers even develop the magic of singing lullabies to dizzying spirits, with gentle glissandos and crow-motherly tenderness, with cooing, rumbling throats, creaky strings, blowing, piping, blissful onomatopoeia. Wispy sliding and cracking sounds up to nibbling and chirping altissimi, popping slap tongue, rough-throated vowels, vulture-tongue consonants, rapturous gibberish, strange birds and Cheshire cats united in beastly beatitude. In ‘Perhaps this is doubt’, a night-birdlike feeling covers up Hebrew sediment. ‘Slippery standard belief’ also overwrites commonplaces in a whirring and xenobird-like manner with other folklore, other AEIOU. So that finally to an elysian flageolet beatific bliss spreads out. [BA 124 rbd]<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of Abas\/Kraabel, 5 Communiqu\u00e9s<\/a><\/em>, by Stewart Lee for The Idler<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n American saxophonist Caroline Kraabel has recorded with [Maggie] Nicols. But on 5 Communiqu\u00e9s<\/em> she partners Khabat Abas, and it\u2019s difficult to unhear suggestions of silenced voices in the Kurdish Iraqi cellist\u2019s furtive responses to Kraabel\u2019s breathy, whispered work, the horn a living sound source rather than a stagnant repertoire receptacle. Sudden chittering suggests hasty communication of vital information, in snatched un-surveilled moments, as panic sets in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of Chris Corsano\/ Caroline Kraabel\/ John Edwards live at Cafe Oto<\/strong>, spring 2022, by Chris Searle, Morning Star<\/a>, June 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n … The next night it was Corsano, Edwards and the alto saxophone of Caroline Kraabel and the heaving breathiness of her sound, its squawks, squalls and groans fused with her wordless vocal chuntering, filling this one Dalston chamber like the sounds of tomorrow already heard tonight, with Corsano the sorcerer of percussion and Edwards\u2019 heart of strings setting all ears afire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of John Edwards\/ Caroline Kraabel Takuroku digital release Day\/Night<\/em><\/a>, by Stephen Chase<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sparks of ignition as grinding then shimmering tones abut each other glinting and hovering. Shades of Xenakis and Scelsi at their most earthy loom out from the bass. The saxophone, increasingly aided by vocalisations, makes tiny melodic ululations before the bass lurches into plucked riffing (is that a glimpse of John Paul Young\u2019s \u2018Love is in the Air<\/a>\u2019?), then freefalling into a searching slo-mo lacuna of feather-like movements. Gloves off<\/em>, as the track title states<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caroline Kraabel<\/a> and John Edwards<\/a> have been mainstays of the London improvising scene since at least the late 1980s: Kraabel known especially via her Resonance FM<\/a> programmes, pacing London\u2019s streets with saxophone (and at times, baby & buggy) in tow, and her 20-piece assemblage of saxophones and voices, the Mass Producers. Edwards has long been a \u2018go-to\u2019 bassist for touring musicians, featuring in numerous groups assembled by the likes of Evan Parker, Peter Br\u00f6tzmann, and Steve Noble, to name a few. Both have collaborated from time to time in groups such as The Remote Viewers<\/a> and the London Improvisers Orchestra<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kraabel and Edwards are also a couple and, confined to quarters like the rest of us during the Covid-19 restrictions, made this engaging album of two halves: gloves off<\/em>, and masks off<\/em>, recorded at midday and midnight respectively. \u201c\u2026we face things, including sound\u201d, they state in the liner notes. Free improvisation is very much about placing oneself in a situation without apparent recourse to reliable conventions; it\u2019s a precarious music (and it\u2019s tempting to add, for precarious times).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is music heard in close-up. The four walls of a home establishing a dry but warm acoustic. But to call it a response to confinement feels wrong somehow \u2013 here, especially on gloves off<\/em>, there are worlds opening up and a sense of limitless possibility as each player ups the ante.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Masks off<\/em>, made at the witching hour, is correspondingly crepuscular, like unsettled sleep. Though the dynamic level is a little lower the intensity of the music-making isn\u2019t any the less. The sax is even more than before a conduit for vocal tones and respiratory sounds. Respiration and intimacy are to the fore in this music, shaping the emergent phrasing in irregular micro-patterns. Edwards\u2019 bass is as much scraped and rubbed as plucked with both players moving towards the other\u2019s variegated timbres, whistling, whispering, rattling as trees bend and clouds billow and scud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kraabel and Edwards create a music of constant freewheeling invention but with a sharp weather eye open to navigate the twists and turns. The musicians not so much laying down paths as fell running together through thickets. Who knows what the neighbours thought?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can buy the record here<\/a> \u2013 50% of profits support the artist and 50% support Cafe Oto<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All tracks by <\/em>Caroline Kraabel<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>John Edwards<\/em><\/a>. Photo by R\u00e9gine Edwards. Artwork design by <\/em>Oliver Barrett<\/em><\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sparrow Dance
(Crosshatch Records)
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whats wrong
(crosshatch records)
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\u00a9 and\u21172020 John Edwards and Caroline Kraabel, PRS, all rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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