Several Lights listed as one of the top 10 new Chicago releases of 2005 by Bob Mehr:
Three of the best young jazz players from the post-Vandermark generation -- cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, and drummer Frank Rosaly -- hooked up with Swiss tubaist Marc Unternahrer for this album of fluid and surprisingly cohesive free improv. The 19 tracks average around three minutes in length, and the gentle, deliberate music often feels guided by a single breath. Producer Griffin Rodriguez creates a roomy but intimate sound, so that the players don't crowd each other sonically but it's clear who's responding to whom -- every time you listen to this stuff you hear another subtle linkage or turn-on-a-dime interaction.
- Bob Mehr, CHICAGO READER, DECEMBER 23rd, 2005

Slow to get into, but richly rewarding, the music of the ChicagoLuzern Exchange is another byproduct of fruitful internationalcollaboration. Swiss tubist Marc Unternahrer was in Chicago aspart of a sister city program in 2002, when he met like-mindedmusicians cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson and drummer Frank Rosaly. This album is the result. Sensitivity is the hallmark of these free improvisations. By allowingeach piece to develop (or not) at its own pace, the finished tracks range in length from a mere 33 seconds ("One of Three") to nearly 13 minutes "Take the Place"), with shorter pieces dominating the hour-plus. There's the feel of a rarified and rather private con-versation among the group, a sense of a closed-in world on whichthe listener is intruding. Berman's dark tinged cornet and Jackson'ssometimes strangled sounding tenor share a deep rapport, and Unternahrer's virtuosic tuba slides right underneath and makes itselfat home. Rosaly is ultra-dynamic and ready for what the situation demands, fluttery on brushes one minute or pounding the toms the next."Several Lights" is a sometimes lyrical, sometimes discordant and occasionally rude ride, as the quartet, reveling in their freedom, explores the sonic possiblities of the instrumental combinations.The result is a totally honest and exploratory music, worth revistingmany times. - Stuart Kremsky CADENCE DECEMBER 2005

The Chicago Luzern Exchange brings together three young Chicago avant-garde jazz players—cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, drummer Frank Rosaly—and a Swiss. The Swiss, tuba player Mark Unternahrer, met the Chicago musicians through a "sister cities" exchange in 2002. He returned to the U.S. to record the group’s excellent new album Several Lights (Delmark). The Chicago Luzern Exchange creates their music as they play, and the first track “Slips” feels like the group is getting to know each other. They soon become a unit and play with unusual coherence for a free jazz ensemble. The Chicago Luzern Exchange often sounds like a single mind improvising. The group occasionally locks into an almost funky groove, for example when the horn players bounce lines back and forth like a sax quartet on “Our Thing.” “Soon Enough” sounds like two bop musicians playing runs in separate rooms, until Unternahrer enters with his tuba and string it all together. Most tracks on Several Lights are shorter than a pop tune. The brief songs show the group’s desire to craft a coherent improvisation, rather than string together indulgent solos and howling horns. Although Several Lights may be initially forbidding, the complicated music becomes more melodic and lucid with each listening. Let’s hope that Unternahrer gets back to Chicago soon to record another album of intelligent free jazz with the local boys. -Todd A. Price

At the HUNGRY BRAIN's first afterfest set, the Chicago Luzern Exchange makes its local debut as a full quartet. In April the three Chicago members -- cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, and drummer Frank Rosaly -- played a concert to celebrate the release of Several Lights (Delmark), but Swiss tubaist Marc Unternaher, whose presence in the band inspired its name, couldn't make it. So far Several Lights is holding up as one of the year's finest jazz records: the players deliver feather-stroke free improvisation that's so deft and intuitive is feels almost composed, casually combining the muted tones and understated gestures of 50s west-coast jazz with thoroughly contemporary rumbles, snorts, and whinnies. Peter Margasak - CHICAGO READER SEPTEMBER 1, 2005


Swiss tubaist Marc Unternährer provided the inspiration for the exchange noted in this foursome's moniker, but the group's album, Several Lights (Delmark), is ultimately a landmark for Chicago music: it's a fantastic album of free improvisation, one of the most powerful statements yet by the wave of post-Ken Vandermark players who gravitated here in the late 90s. Unternährer, a dazzling player whose extended technique on his unwieldy ax conveys a low, trombonely range and a great deal of blubbery-sound imagination, spent five months here in 2002 as part of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program, quickly hooking up with a large crew of local players. He played most often with cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, and drummer Frank Rosaly, and returned here last summer to record Several Lights with them. Considering that the quartet had no tunes and no preset melodic or harmonic structures, it's astonishing how compositional the tracks feel; the players clearly have a deep rapport, but it takes an especially refined sensitivity for so many serendipitous collisions to sound so harmonious. And unlike many free-improv players in Chicago, this group isn't ashamed to draw upon its collective love of jazz. Rosaly plays with a feather-stroke touch, dropping a hint of pulse here or a splash of color there, while Jackson's marbled tone expresses a lovely lyricism no matter how brusque or serrated his lines get. Berman and Unternährer play quicksilver, high-low brass games: the cornetist excels on the instrument's lower registers and scratches up his liquid high notes, while the tubaist simulates snatches of bass lines and blows floor-rumbling long tones that resonate with the snaking lines that Jackson and Berman produce. Unternährer was unable to make the trip here for the group's record-release show, but the remaining trio has enough ideas to chew on by themselves. Peter Margasak - Chicago Reader

More fine sounds of freedom via Chicago's Delmark label, Several Lights is improvised from scratch yet grounded in sublime sound choices. The four young players (Marc Unternahrer on tuba; Josh Berman on cornet, Keefe Jackson on tenor saxophone and Frank Rosaly on drums) have done their homework to get to ground zero. Unternahrer, from the Swiss city of Luzern, spent five months in Chicago in 2002, where he connected with the rest of the quartet. The legacy of the AACM, and especially the Art Ensemble of Chicago, informs and shapes their musical exploration. Most of the 19 tracks are quite short, elegant fragments of a conversation overheard and documented in real time. On a few occasions when the group decides to stretch out ("Soon Enough" at seven minutes and "Take the Place" at thirteen minutes) they treat time and space like a masterful gagaku ensemble. Highly recommended. John Goodman - Exclaim! (Canada) May 04, 2005

Several Lights is a dense program of chamber-improv, accutely attentive and teeming with timbral and melodic ideas. In relation to the title the overall feel is a somber chiaroscuro--lights emerging from darks. None of the musicians has settled into a comfort zone; they remain restless and bateared. The abundance of tracks of varying lenghts and flavors, with prosiac headings ("Slips", "A Little Paler, "Fairly Fast") suggest a specific taxonomic enquiry. Cornetist Josh Berman's shrewd yet wide-ranging approach betrays curatorial smarts. Though his cornet can possess decisiveness, when not instigating he prudently latches onto the prevailing wind or offers Lester Bowie-like gasps of faux fury or exasperation. Berman and Keefe Jackson share an absorbing simpatico, acting as foils rather than followers. Jackson has an impressive grasp of the tenor's textural capabilities and exploits this knowledge to vary his attack; one minute ripe or overblown, guttural or throaty, then poppy or wailful. He is particularly intense on "Five Handfuls" and the 13-minute "Take the Place". Frank Rosaly has rapidly gained props in Chicago as a composer/leader and show his musicality abnd restraint with deft brushwork and succinct colorations. Marc Unternahrer's tuba keeps a relatively low profile; he rises in the mix for the bass line of "Our Thing", the doleful into to "Take the Place" and the blatant flatulance during "Soon Enough". Michael Jackson - Downbeat June 2005 three and a half stars.

Take four highly trained young musicians in Chicago with avant-garde influences of groups like the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette Coleman, and active involvement in The Emerging Improvisers Organization and you’ll slowly form the picture of a group not bound by restrictions of the jazz status quo. The group’s name (The Chicago Luzern Exchange) is derived from three musicians from Chicago: Josh Berman (cornet), Keefe Jackson (tenor sax), Frank Rosaly (drums) and one from Switzerland: Mark Unternahrer (tuba). The nineteen "free improvs" on the recording create a patch-work of sounds and textures as opposed to conventional forms of music. The collaboration and individuality of each musician and their instruments is sparked by spontaneity and self expression. Imagine the beauty and distinct timbre of each instrument’s voice performed in cacophony yet uniformity, free solos without melody, but altogether harmonious. With no standard lines of melody the pieces are a challenge to absorb all at once but when taken individually shows the creativity and ingenuity each musician brings to the recording. A good example is witnessed on "Trouble" with acoustic sounds producing weird and wonderful noises, guttural slurs, that are are totally unrestrained. For free-minded and mature listeners only. Mark F. Turner – All About Jazz

It’s nice to hear music by white, Chicago-based improvisers that doesn’t wallow in the self-conscious heterodoxy that so often characterizes that scene. On Several Lights, Chicago Luzern Exchange—Marc Unternährer (tuba), Josh Berman (cornet), Keefe Jackson (tenor saxophone), and Frank Rosaly (drums)—engages in 19 short collective improvisations that emphasize ensemble interaction, subtlety of expression, and the spontaneous creation of coherent form. The group evidences a Webern-esque concern with the distribution of melody across the sound spectrum. Such improvised klangfarbenmelodie seems too essential to the group’s concept to have happened by accident. It comes off the slightest bit contrived, but the band gets lots of points from me for paying such close attention to matters of collective melodic and motivic development. None of the young, 30-something players are particularly distinctive, yet neither are they specifically derivative. There’s a prevailing coolness to this music. The band never gets very hot, but they are expressive enough within a tight emotional compass. The music’s best attribute is the due consideration paid every note. There’s little wasted movement. While there’s nothing rave-worthy about these performances, there is an organic musicality and a willingness to embrace beauty—attributes possessed in abundance by members of Chicago’s AACM, but too often thrown over by the city’s white experimentalists. Chris Kelsey - One Final Note 23 May 2005

With funding from the Swiss government, tubaist Marc Unternфhrer was able to visit Chicago and forge several collaborations, hence the blunt but apt group name. Among others, he's hooked up with improvisors from a younger than the established Vandermark crew; players with equal emotional distance from free jazz excitability and suave swing metaphors. In this case, free association is used as an agent of concise design (11 of the 19 pieces are under three minutes) or extended but focused simultaneous conversation, as loose individual rhythms criss-cross, converge and only occasionally congeal. Textural flexibility helps - Unternфhrer's wealth of tonal colours meshes perfectly with drummer Frank Rosaly's unobtrusive patter, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson's melodic twists and cornettist Josh Berman's pungent contemplation. The result is a non-flashy, forthright brand of lyricism that repays close attention. Art Lange - The Wire 256, June 2005

Those who love and those who loathe the avant-garde may come together after hearing Several Lights (Delmark) by the Chicago Luzern Exchange. The pro camp will enjoy hearing the unusual instrumental mix (tuba/cornet/tenor sax/drums) and marvel at the foursome’s decision to stir things up thematically, sometimes doing song fragments and other times doing complete tunes with identifiable melodies and pronounced solos like "Walls," "Soon Enough," and "Take The Place." The anti contingent will view the short snippets as outtakes that shouldn’t have made the disc and mourn the ensemble’s frequent abandonment of the conventional jazz structure in favor of lengthy collectively improvised sections and statements. Actually, there’s not as much dissonance or outside playing here as on many European avant-garde sets, though they aren’t averse to stretching out and challenging each other either. However, there are far more charm and substance than noise and fury on Several Lights, and tuba player Marc Unternährer, cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson and drummer Frank Rosaly ably display their skills on a 19-song program that is versatile, often surprising and frequently intense. By Ron Wynn - Nashville City Paper April 21, 2005

Chicago Luzern Exchange's Several Lights, another of the label's new releases, takes improvisation in an equally fascinating direction; the quartet's members use tuba, cornet, tenor sax and drums to make a joyously eccentric noise. Jim Bakker might not approve, but for these discs and others, Delmark deserves plenty of praise. Michael Roberts - Westword April 14, 2005 An arts exchange program sent tubist Marc Unternahrer from Luzern, Switzerland, to Chicago in 2002. There he hooked up with cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson and drummer Frank Rosaly. The Swiss presence notwithstanding, this band's spare, plainspoken style of free improvisation owes something, however distantly, to Chicago's AACM. Horns wheeze and sigh. Harmony happens. The band delivers phrases delicately as if laying them out side by side in a display case; and when they aren't layering short phrases over one another, they're all being quiet. All four members seldom play at the same time and much of the foreground is ceded to front line hornmen Jackson and Berman. Jackson drops the poker face and blows hard on the longest, best tune, "Take the Place," but the real charmers of this session reside in the rhythm section. Unternahrer is remarkably agile on the tuba and-free improv be damned-he's as likely to run stout counterpoint as he is to dog Berman with an upper-register flutter. All the while, Rosaly builds little cities of rhythm around his bandmates' earnest phrases. -Aaron Steinberg (Jazztimes July/August 2005)

While the work of Chicago free jazz faculty like Ken Vandermark has at times displayed the dynamic restraint of an unmanned fire hose, young lions Josh Berman (cornet), Keefe Jackson (tenor saxophone), and Frank Rosaly (drums) dim down the lights on their Delmark debut, allowing Luzern exchange student Marc Unternährer adequate space for his tuba. Stripped of the rhythmic obligations of the scary, old "oompah" role, these giants of the brass family can take up quite a bit of room. Instead, Berman and Jackon take the polka-dotted path on several outings, including "Soon Enough" and "A Little Paler." The latter, in what may be this collection's most overt fit of irony, opens with close-mic'd wheezing as the three horn players dip their toes into a cold improvisational pond, evoking images of not pale faces but a resolute purple: pale is the color of my true love's albuterol inhaler. Drummer Rosaly, as deft with details as he is tough, sits out on this track and a few others, but creeps back in on the rest of these takes with a methodical vengeance. His compositional flair, so tangible in recent performances with the Dave Rempis Percussion Quartet, brings order to the honking and squeaking that occasionally threaten to overtake a few of the experiments on Several Lights. And experiments, some of these certainly are: "Skidding" begins with the onomatopoetics of the three horn players, a sonic semblance of small craft wheels scraping their rubber treads on a gravelly tarmac. The end of the short piece, however, fizzles in a tangle of wheezing surrender, leaving a small mark as the album's least pleasant moment. However, amid the stew of bodily function sounds so faithfully reproduced, Unternährer shares what might be his signature chop: short, staccato pops of bass that sound more like an electric bass slap than they do anything used in marching band. A few of the songs on Several Lights sport a modal serenity that contrasts sharply with the frenetic downtown energy of much Chicago output, and songs like these, particularly "Someone came and took one of yours and left one of his," showcase the promise of this European-American summit as the combined talents and heritages come to fruition. Other moments, including Jackson's and Rosaly's solos, pepper the affair with reminders of the individual contributions of each player. Best of all, and perhaps owing to Griffin Rodriguez's warm production, Several Lights stands as a conversation between players who joined in a one-off exchange and magically sounded like an ensemble. Andy Freivogel - Dusted