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  Modus Vivendi 

Tom Prehn Quartet
   Tom Prehn (piano)
   Fritz Krogh (tenor saxophone)
   Poul Ehlers (bass)
   Preben Vang (drums)

Among the most interesting (and the most unduly obscure) of the Danish musicians of the 1960s is pianist Tom Prehn.  In 1963, Prehn assembled a band for a radio concert, and this became the Tom Prehn Quartet. The music for this LP was recorded in Copenhagen in ’67 and issued in a very small edition on the V 58 label – so named for Vestergade 58, the address of the cultural center where the band often performed.

Prehn notes that the band played much more on concert stages than in bars or clubs, and they played often on the radio and even on TV as early as ‘66. The record’s producer, Jens Okking, became a famous film star in Denmark and is now a member of the European parliament in Brussels. Another tangential tidbit about Tom Prehn Quartet: the sketch on the back of the cover is by artist Mogens Gissel, who, with Prehn and Ehlers, created a daily comic strip called Kosmo between ’65 and ’67. Kosmo was an odd character whose self-reflexive meditations on the paradoxical predicament of existence seem congruent with Prehn & company’s musical investigations. (We’ve included two of the strips here just to give a taste of Kosmo.)

The music on this record is startlingly original. When it was released, Tom Prehn Quartet garnered critical attention in the major Danish press, but it didn’t manage to make much impact too far outside of its homeland. Nevertheless, decades later it is still a remarkable document, effectively merging jazz energy with characteristics that wouldn’t fully emerge in European free music until later in its development.  Note, for instance, the organic collective improvisation on "Det va en søndag morgen" (it was a Sunday morning) – this is original free music of the highest calibre, quite far ahead (or maybe outside) of its time. Certain elements come from the realm of composed music. Indeed, in 1967, on the verge of formally finishing his studies, Prehn took lessons in composition from Earle Brown and Witold Lutoslawski, and the importance of the modernist tradition makes itself heard, particularly on Prehn’s highly unusual rhythmic study "Modus Vivendi." In some form, the Tom Prehn Quartet continued into the 1970s.

"It was more than just protest," Prehn says of their music in the ‘60s. "We were also in search of new landscapes. And I must say we did it with great joy!"  The message of Århus, 1967: four joyous cartographers boldly charting new landscapes, leaving behind a document that should force free music aficionados to rethink familiar maps 34-years later.

7 tracks in 35:53 minutes

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