I had played earlier, and different bassists. Buschi Niebergall was there once. Once there was also a Berlin bass player, I remember, Werner Scheel—he’s still around now, but he plays Dixieland. Then there was a quintet with Alan Skidmore, Malcolm Griffith, and Irène. And then there was the beginning of the whole history with Rüdiger Carl, and their first quartet with Heinrich Hock and Arjen Gorter on bass. There’s a record of that. It then became a trio with Louis Moholo and Rüdiger and Irène. Then a duo with Rüdiger and Irène. So there were these combinations that kept going. The duo work went on for quite a long time, I think. And then it evolved into the COWWS Quintet, again with Rüdiger and Irène, plus others. That’s Irène’s FMP story in a nutshell.”
Gebers recalls that they were stopped at the border for a long time on their trip to Switzerland, and arrived in Nottwil at a late hour: “We had trouble finding something to eat. We just sat in a pub somewhere and explained the whole model, what we had in mind, what we wanted to do, and we made agreements. We talked about having the trio play in Berlin that year. That must have been in September ’69. Brötzmann and I traveled that summer and visited all the musicians to make agreements. It was basically the foundational trip of FMP. FMP had a different goal when we started it: the whole thing was supposed to be a management company. I was supposed to make sure the musicians had proper work and, looking back, I have to say I’m absolutely not well-suited for that kind of work. That’s why we let go of that idea very quickly. But at first we made management contracts with all the musicians. That’s why we were driving around. I was supposed to be the manager, that’s how the whole thing was planned.”
“In the early days, mainly the management part didn’t work out. Everybody was really enthusiastic and thought, ‘now we’re all going to be swimming in money, we have so much to do now!’ Of course it didn’t work out that way. But the two bigger projects did work: the Total Music Meeting and the Free Music Workshop. In the beginning, only Brötzmann and I worked on those projects. The collective wasn’t formed until October 1972. Until then it was always Brötzmann and I who did everything. But after that it got more comprehensive. The first records we released, except for European Echoes, they’re all Brötzmann records. We also put together the first programs at the Total Music Meeting. Irène was at the first Total Music Meeting in 1969, in the trio with Pierre and Kowald. Then she came with the quartet.”
The first FMP LP, European Echoes by Manfred Schoof, with Schweizer, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Fred Van Hove, Arjen Gorter, Buschi Niebergall, Peter Kowald, Han Bennink, Pierre Favre, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Gerd Dudek, Peter Brötzmann, Paul Rutherford, Enrico Rava, and Hugh Steinmetz, was the big debut, released with much fanfare in 1969, according to Gebers. “I was in Bremen when it was recorded there in June. And when we talked about it, Brötzmann suggested that we use the tapes. ‘Talk to Schoof!’ I don’t even remember who it was in Bremen at the time, but someone who was favorably inclined towards us gave us the tapes for free.”
In the 1960s, when he himself was playing bass, Gebers was always trying to find places to play in Berlin. That’s how the first Brötzmann concerts in Berlin came about, he says: “Bennink also asked me sometimes, and I’d try to find some work. There were a few places where you could do something from time to time. At times there were several groups. So, there was a trio I played in. Then there was a quartet with Rüdiger, in which I played bass. And Sven-Åke Johansson had various projects here and there. But every time Sven played could be the last time, because he did some crazy things sometimes. In this place, Litfass, once he was playing with a trio or a quartet, I don’t remember. Anyway, some violinist was playing the piano. The piano was then pushed through the bar, and behind the felt of the piano Sven-Åke had stuck some newspaper. When the piano was in front of the door, he set it on fire. The audience was standing there. At first there was applause, but then everyone looked at each other, realizing: that’s the exit, and it’s the only one. And that was the end of that. The pub owner, Manolis, said ‘I’m never booking you again!’ You had to be a little careful with Sven. He often pulled stunts like that.”
Rüdiger Carl got to know Gebers as early as the mid-1960s in Berlin: “We had a quartet together. He was always on the road and always producing something; he had his small clubs and the basement in the youth club. He was always on the move, and he introduced me to this new era of American free jazz and showed me some things that I didn’t know about, in my youthful ignorance. I had come to Berlin when I was 19, in 1963, and I’d already been connected to FMP for a while when Irène first got involved.”
“Jost Gebers probably heard about me from Brötzmann and Kowald. I often went to Wuppertal with Mani and Uli and played there,” says Schweizer. “Jost invited me to the second Total Music Meeting in 1969, with Pierre and Kowald. There was no hotel; we almost always stayed at someone’s home. I stayed in, certainly, more than twenty different apartments, with friends of Kowald and Gebers. There was a clique of friends who always came to the Total Music Meeting and put up the musicians who played there. These were fans who came to every concert, to the Academy, to Quasimodo; they were always there.”
In 1972, at the age of 21, the Swiss painter Bignia Corradini moved to Berlin, where, as part of the Junge Wilden (Young Wild Ones) movement, she exhibited her work in the legendary gallery on the Moritzplatz. From 1975 to 1982, Irène often stayed at her apartment on Krefelder Strasse, in the Moabit district of Berlin, when she came to play in the city.
Corradini: “In the room in Berlin we had the typical three-piece mattresses from the flea market, in case guests came. It certainly wasn’t the most comfortable—the room was a walk-through between two other rooms, and the individual mattress parts usually came apart while you were sleeping. But we were young, making art, and it was all about doing things and creating opportunities. Irène and I met in Zürich in the early 1970s. I remember that Irène came to my first solo exhibition in Zürich in 1975, and she also came to my exhibitions sometimes in later years. In the early 1970s I was painting pictures of women and landscapes and I was involved in the Women’s Movement. I admired Irène and I really liked her music. She played without sheet music; she improvised. When she plays with other musicians, there’s little talk beforehand and everyone is given plenty of space to play. I think we both work with an open concept. I see a certain parallel there. That interests me as a painter, because Irène is doing it in music. We all stand in relations and contexts, shaped by music history and art history. Tradition always plays a role, even for an autodidact like Irène. I listened to a lot of jazz back then and had various connections to the scene. And of course we went to the FMP concerts, which were important events. The stronger the Women’s Movement became, the more women came from Zürich to the concerts in Berlin. I remember cooking once for ten women who visited Irène in our apartment before her performance. She wanted to eat in the afternoon, not too soon before her concert at the Academy of Arts. So I took the day off and cooked spaetzle and ragout for everyone. I moved in 1985, but we’ve often seen each other since then at concerts. In 2003 Irène played a solo concert at my exhibition in Arbon, and in 2006 at LA VOUTA in Lavin, in the Engadin region. What I like about Irène is that in all the years I’ve known her, she’s been true to herself. I think Irène is authentic, clear, she’s a fighter, and at the same time she’s modest. I was reminded of all that recently, when we saw each other again when she played at the A L’ARME Festival in Berlin in 2015.”
“I was still young,” Schweizer recalls about the FMP years, “and at the time I liked it better than staying in a single room in a dirty hotel somewhere. I liked the people, I thought it was great to stay with them. Eventually the charm of that wore off; I got tired of it. Back then, we were paid something, but really very little. It was a very important time for me: through the FMP concerts I got to know all my colleagues and friends, the Dutch musicians, the English ones, and sometimes there were Black American musicians like Anthony Braxton and George Lewis. It was great.”
“Thousands of people came to the FMP concerts, it was a paradise. Free music was revolutionary music, and in Berlin our music got more radical. With Rüdiger in the quartet, it was completely free music. When Rüdiger realized that his Brötzmann imitation wasn’t getting him anywhere, he started playing more clarinet, and then accordion. That was more interesting for me than hearing him copy Brötzmann for two hours. Kowald once called this period of the music