Long live the anti-capitalist music community

Karen Ng is a Canadian improvising saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist and promoter. Apart from her improvisation practice, she also performed and recorded with acts like Do Make Say Think, The Weather Station and more… Jonathan Farrell Horne divides his time between the US, Europe and South America, putting his guitar skills to work with The Young Mothers, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s (Exit) Knarr, Thor and Friends and the heavy-hitting drone rock ensemble Water Damage, to name just a fraction of his activities.
Touring with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Marta Warelis last year, Ng and Horne resonated so well musically that they decided to start a quartet together. They found the right fit in the Amsterdam-based rhythm-tandem of Aaron Lumley and Nasim López-Palacios -Navarro.

When we video-meet with Horne and Ng, they’ve both just landed in their home bases, Austin and Toronto. While we are struggling in Antwerp with the technical aspects of a 2026 video call, Karen and Jonathan hit it off, picking up the kind of conversation good friends have when they haven’t seen each other in a while. Not-so-small talk about family stuff and the little struggles that make up daily life. When we finally have our technical stuff sorted out, we overhear the end of the friendly conversation:

Karen Ng: So, you now get some time to be at home and chill?
Jonathan F. Horne: No, Ken Vandermark sent me seven crazy charts that I have tohave to learn in three days.

Let’s start with a boring but functional question. Can you both tell me how you ended up in the wonderful world of free music?

KN: Music came a bit as an accident to me – I didn’t take lessons as a kid. But in North American schools, there’s this very nerdy concert band situation. So, in high school, I joined the concert band, and quickly found out that music was great and fun, but it was really about the people around it. There was a bunch of us, we played concerts and travelled occasionally. After that, I went to university , and had a pretty weird time there. I’m very grateful for it, but like most of us, I have a slightly complex relationship with music education. But then, after school, there was a great venue, The Tranzac, with a community around it, where I met most of the Toronto improvising scene, and that’s where I started improvising. I ended up getting a grant to go and study with the ICP-saxophone section in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Which ICP saxophone players did you study with?

KN: I was lucky enough to study with all three of them: Michael Moore, Ab Baars, and Toby Delius. That was my first foray into the European improvisation scene. That would have been around 2015, so it still feels new to me in a way. When I started touring to all these cities in the US and Europe, I recognised what I knew from Toronto: all these strong communities around the music. That’s also what you see with Summer Bummer: what Koen (Vandenhoudt) and Christel (Kumpen) have built, is a family affair, you know. It’s as much about the people as it is about the music for me.

I guess we must go one step back. As a young player, starting with free improv must have been a leap of faith? Some great players will never become good improviseors. Do you remember your tipping point? When did you know you wanted to improvise, and had it in you to become any good at it at all?

KN: There was this saxophone player, Don Palmer, who had a trio with Jerry Granelli, a drummer who played in the Vince Guaraldi Trio. But he was also a great educator. At jazz school I was struggling with the fact that we all had to build the same vocabulary. Don’s trio was also playing standards, but in a super elastic way. So, studying with him was the first time I heard that vocabulary really being stretched and opening up to something more free. It was the first time I was in a musical situation, where there was a hypothetical space where I could be myself, and be many things. It was informed by jazz, but it was also exploratory.

Is there anything specific that you learned from the ICP-crew that we could still hear in your playing?

KN: Well, my good friend Brodie West – who’s an amazing saxophone player, studied with Misha Mengelberg, and played with The Ex in their horn section with Getatchew Mekurya – told me that, when I came back from studying with ICP, he could hear a shift in my playing. Not a specific sound, but just the time spent with these guys, staying at their house, eating all the food in their fridge…

It’s quite the crew to be dropped in, of course.

KN: All three of them are very different, too, you know. It’s really amazing to see the three of them together. So, I don’t even know how I would take a piece of their playing, because they’re so different. But I was very lucky to be able to spend time with them, and still continue to do so.

Your turn, Jonathan.

JFH: I started playing guitar when I was eight, around the time my grandfather passed. His name was Scott Mills, and he was a professional jazz guitarist, who played with Buddy Rich and Tommy Dorsey.

KN: What!?

JFH: He lived in Mount Vernon, New York, and was a member of the New York Musicians Guild. I remember trying to play his guitar when I was like two. He encouraged it by giving me a plastic guitar when I was three, which I would play in front of the mirror. I was self-taught, but I had a teacher who taught me how to figure out rock ‘n’ roll songs by ear. Later I got into The Ventures and discovered jazz through musicians like Dave Brubeck. Not much later I got into free jazz, and bands like Do Mmake Say Think, Tortoise, and other projects of Rob Mazurek.
I just tried to figure out my own sound, playing acoustically: improvising from the beginning, bowing my guitar, tuning it down and playing along to the garbage truck riding down the street and stuff like that… Surf rock gave me some chops, but I never had a formal study, I just played along with records.
I guess everything changed when I met Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. I picked him up from the Austin airport in 2007, right before he moved here, and met him and Paal Nilssen-Love, Håvard Wiik, Magnus Broo and Fredrik Ljungkvist in 2008. I wasn’t ready to play with these guys at that point, but I was hanging out with Ingebrigt, Mats Gustafsson and Joe McPhee in 2008, and just soaking it in, meeting people like Hamid Drake, William Parker and Ken Vandermark. And then, around 2010, I started playing with Frank Rosaly, and in 2011 The Young Mothers formed (Horne’s hip hop and grindcore-induced band with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Frank Rosaly, Jawwaad Taylor, Stefan Gonzalez and Jason Jackson, SB).
In 2014 I went to Europe to play Jazzfestival Saalfelden, and I’ve been able to tour Europe every year since. And now, at 43, I’m finally learning how to read music, because it helps dealing with the charts Ingebrigt and Ken Vandermark are writing for me.

You’ve made a giant jump from getting into free jazz to playing with Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark. But what was the first spark?

JFH: Definitely The Young Mothers. And I had a rock group in Austin called Plutonium Farmers, that Ingebrigt also joined. That was his first rock band. Around the same time, I met Cactus Truck and started playing with John Dikeman and Onno Govaert.
Around 2017, I ended up in the studio with Ingebrigt and Joe McPhee, and we just kept touring and recording. About three years ago I decided that I couldn’t afford rent in Austin anymore, so I packed all of my belongings in boxes in a storage space. And now I spend about half my time in Europe, and have started groups in Oslo. I’ve reformed that rock band I had with Ingebrigt in Austin, with Jonas Cambien and Olaf Moses Olsen from (Exit) Knarr in Oslo. I also formed a trio with Paal Nilssen-Love and Jon Rune Strøm, and more recently a quintet with Ken Vandermark and some members of The Young Mothers. I’ve had an affinity with the Norwegian music scene since I was a teenager. That’s why I volunteered to pick up Ingebrigt’s band Atomic from the airport in 2007, and all this stuff happened. It’s like Karen said, it’s all about the community: volunteering , being excited to hear the music and helping out where you can…

That is something that you will recognise at Summer Bummer as well.

JFH: I mean, I’m sitting here in Swans’ Thor Harris’ backyard, in one of two tiny houses he built for musicians. He gives me a roof over my head when I’m in Austin. To me, that’s the epitome of the anti-capitalist musical community.

KN: Yeah!

You have a very distinct guitar playing style. Who were the players you were looking up to, as a young man?

JFH: This is a crazy story. The one guitar player I was looking up to was definitely Nokie Edwards of The Ventures. But when it came to free jazz, I listened to saxophone players and drummers. And then, around seventeen, I discovered Nels Cline, and I was highly influenced by him and Sonny Sharrock. But then, eight years ago, I had this insanely tragic accident where my ring finger on my fretting hand broke. I’ve had nine surgeries since, and basically, I now have a left hand like Django Reinhardt.

I was afraid to draw the Django-analogy.

JFH: He’s my idol now! But basically, I lost a lot of my chops. I had to relearn to play the guitar nine times, over a period of five years. Ingebrigt saved my butt after my first surgery. We had a gig in Sardinia, where Luke Stewart, Joe McPhee, David Murray and jaimie branch were playing as well. They were all very encouraging. They forced me to be on the bandstand playing Ingebrigt’s music with two fingers. So, I actually found my own sound after the injury. Mentally I had to do two things at the same time: first I had to think more in advance of what I was going to play and prepare for it, and the second thing needed was complete and utter reckless abandon, , and just trusting. That’s how I actually found the sound I had been hearing in my head the whole time.

If Steve Vai would lose two fingers, he’d be up for a career switch, I guess.

JFH: He probably would just put the fan on it…

KN: (laughs loudly)

New Best Friend

Let’s talk about the quartet that you will bring to Summer Bummer

KN: Jonathan and I had known about each other for years, but we didn’t meet until last year at Cologne Jazz Week, when I was playing with Marta Warelis’ band Still Life with Lemons. And Jonathan was playing there with Ingebrigt’s (Exit) Knarr. After that, we had one more show, and Jonathan had a day off, so he joined us on stage. And then a month later, we met again at Ingebrigt’s festival in Austin. We were enjoying our time together so much that we thought that our band should be named New Best Friend.

JFH: There was an instant connection and friendship for sure.

KN: It seems silly that it took us so long to actually meet or play music together… But let’s not forget about the other friends. Our bass player Aaron Lumley is a fellow Canadian who now lives in Amsterdam. We both started studying independently in Amsterdam around the same time. And then Nasim, our drummer, is a new best friend. Nasim and Aaron have been playing together for a long time in Amsterdam.

I must say it’s quite hard to find online info on Nasim. Seems like he went offline, when he left Spain.

KN: Yeah, he’s from the Canary Islands, and I’m pretty sure he stems from a family of anarchists. He’ s a very present human though. He has this duo with Marta Warelis, Dust Bunny, that has an amazing energy.

You haven’t played together as a quartet yet, but I’m very curious about the outcome. Your solo music, Karen, is pretty meditative, while Jonathan’s most well-known output is pretty high energy, although there’s certainly a meditative aspect to the drone rock of Water Damage as well.

JFH: I have a feeling that there will be a very wide dynamic range. Guessing from our personalities, there’s going to be a lot of space – it will be pretty ego-less, and focusing on the mutual experience. I’ve come to a point in my career where I only work with people that I feel comfortable with personality-wise, in a shared respect and deep consideration for each other’s thoughts and presence. I think Karen and I inhabit a shared and wide world of playing modern folk to indie rock to post-rock to free improv and composed jazz-influenced music, and I think the concert will touch on a lot of that. That being said: I’m a big fan of Karen’s solo -record, but the first time we played together, I was immediately struck by how loud and powerful her saxophone playing is. It kicked my ass immediately – it was beautiful.
So, I mean, we’re definitely going to get fiery, but I think we’re also going to be confident. I’d be happy playing atmospheric, and setting up some drones, for more mantra-type, meditative stuff. And even if it doesn’t sound high energy, it will be a high-energy experience.

KN: That’s a good way to put it. The exciting and fun thing about this is that we really don’t know what we will sound like yet. But I can say that a friend recently described Nasim as ‘the Energiser Bunny’. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be loud, but it will be high energy, for sure.

Improvisation

Every musician has their own definition of what ‘improvisation’ is. All definitions – even David Toop’s – are inadequate, but I’d like to hear you guys’ take on it.

JFH: For me, improvisation is what I do every second. When I was interacting as a teenager with someone, I was using the same part of my brain as I do now when I play guitar. That idea opened up a lot of compassion in my heart and excitement for this day-to-day drudgery and having to deal with other people who I don’t know. So, I treat it as a constant ritual of having to deal with existence.

That’s more or less the definition that Terrie Ex explores in ‘Improvising’, his book about his hilarious travels around Africa.

JFH: Oh, I love that book!

What’s your definition Karen?

KN: The interesting thing to me is the unknown aspect. You’re sometimes improvising with people you don’t know. I guess I’m really taken by the trust and the vulnerability that you’re all agreeing on… Like: okay, there’s this space and we’re going to enter it. There will be conflict and there will be drama, but you’re entering a space in which you agree it’s ok to be vulnerable together and to react.

JFH: I also think it’s carrying the energy for reaction, even if it’s like a weird reaction… The worst thing you can do is shut down, like in any other kind of communication. (thinks) I don’t want to use the word ‘professionalism’, but there’s an identity we have as artists, where we’re at the point we can be comfortable with being uncomfortable and even upset, worst case scenario. (laughs)

KN: I think it happens more in these like jazz-jam-situations, where one person is really dominating, and you could shut down or just quietly do your thing in a corner…

That jazz-jam-situation, where a bass player is forcing a groove on all other players, is exactly what David Toop told me about in his take on a definition of what improvising is not, for last year’s Summer Bummer Magazine.

Improvising Solo

Both of you also play solo shows. What’s the main difference between improvising solo and improvising with others?

KN: Waw! Big difference. Jonathan, you go first…

JFH: Well, there’s a lot more composition in my solo gigs, because I really don’t have much of an opportunity these days to play my solo music. In terms of more improvised solo pieces I always feel incredibly uncomfortable and nervous, especially with my hand injury. So I usually put my guitar in a tuning I don’t know. That way I’m really out for lunch and I just have to go into it completely by intuition and be absolutely vulnerable. Because otherwise, I’m just going to psych myself out. Ironically, when I played solo in Antwerp in Rataplan, last year, I ended up doing some old Carter Family country songs. I don’t know where on earth that came from, but it was quite the opposite: it was like comforting and protecting myself. And then it was complete abstraction for ten minutes. I guess Diego (Faes, of Klankhaven records, SB) and I had spent a nice car ride to the gig together, and we had talked about country music and Appalachia and Tashi Dorji. So basically, I just tried to psych myself out of recognising my uncomfortable feeling and nervousness, and taking myself back home. (laughs)

I find it interesting that you detune your guitar to unknown territory, to ease yourself.

JFH: That’s how I compose, too. It’s gives me a fresh and uncomfortable starting position, and that inspires me.

Rudy Trouvé, a Belgian guitar player, switched to a guitar that was strung for a lefthanded player, when he noticed he was repeating himself.

JFH: Actually, I’m now doing the opposite. Since I’m left- handed, but I play guitar right-handed, and I know that, with my injury, at some point my left hand will stop working, I’m practising left- handed an hour a day now, to be prepared… So that, when my hand gives up when I’m like 60, I am ready to switch to left-handed playing.

Karen, what’s your take on solo -improvisation?

KN: Well, I’m never more out of my mind than when I’m playing solo – it’s absolutely terrifying to me. It’s a very vulnerable and scary thing. But I do trust that improvising solo is me at my most honest.
I’ve been playing solo acoustic sets for a long time – my first released material was a tape of solo improvisations. I made those when I came back from nine very inspiring weeks in Brooklyn. That was a documentation of that exact time: me at my most honest in 2018. But ‘Backwards Blue’, my most recent soloo -album is a collaboration with the producer and label head, David Psutka, who comes from the electronics world. This was a chance to do something a little more composed. Playing that music live has been interesting, because it’s like the opposite of what I usually do: I have to keep track of so many things – synth patches and stuff. That’s been a bit of a struggle because I feel I’m not as present in the way I would normally be in an acoustic solo improvisation.

Terrie Ex plays a lot of solo sets, but he waited until last year to release a solo album, because he thought anything solo above the ten- minute mark would end up boring.

KN: So interesting – I love it. I love these guys in The Ex so much… You spoke about the book… I was at their house and the jeep from the book is in the front garden. But I went there for this big party they throw every winter, and Emma makes food, and Lena’s there, it’s just amazing. But The Ex were playing, and there were like 30 of us jumping around in the living room, and the whole house was shaking. Terrie did all these very visible repairs in that house and I was thinking: is this the day that it will fall down? It’s amazing how much work they have done to the house, from the days as a squat… He’s a very inspiring guy.

JFH: It’s like Thor’s tiny houses…

KN: I guess that’s the improvising part? We’re just kind of throwing it all together…

Kabas

Both of you will be joining the Belgian band Kabas, for Kabas Sun Dog. What do you know about that band?

KN: I know nothing, I just listened to the music and trust Koen totally.

And what does it take to say ‘yes’ to such a question?

JFH: I trust them. Whatever Koen and Christel suggest, I’m game for.

KN: Well, certain things of a festival format sometimes can feel very transactional: you sweep in, you play, you leave… Over and over, every day, and you don’t even remember where you have been. So, I really appreciate Koen and Christel having thought about this, with the opportunity to stay the entire festival, eat good food, and meet new people. Because: I really don’t know that many people in Antwerp, and what better way to meet new people, than to play someone’s music. It really didn’t take much from me to say yes to this, it sounds like it will be a nice time.

It feels different than the situation in which an organiser just asks the musicians that will be present anyway to form new ad hoc -combo’s, just to fill up the line-up as cheaply as possible.

KN: Yes, it does, that’s stuff that I really dislike, because it’s that transactional thing again. That situation literally just happened to me last weekend. But in the case of Summer Bummer, it feels different, because they’re really caring people. I was not worried for a second about that when they asked us to join Kabas.

JFH: For me it comes down to wanting to be challenged, not being challenged logistically.

Hometown scenes

Karen you’re from Toronto, Jonathan, you’re from Austin. That’s two cities with big music scenes. What Karen does with the Weather Station and Do Make Say Think, reminds me of the Chicago-scene, where an artist like Circuit des Yeux works with the guys from Bitchin Bajas, and Jeff Tweedy and Wilco engage with free musicians like Macie Stewart. Is that something you guys recognise from your home towns?

KN: I think Toronto and Chicago are similar cities in many ways. We share this comedy history, with shows like ‘Second City’ and ‘Kids in the Hall’, to say just one thing. And I think what the Wilco-legacy is to Chicago, Toronto has a similar thing with Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think, which is where a lot of my touring started, with those guys. That brings me back to this venue, The Tranzac, which is just an impossible place. ‘Tranzac’ stands for ‘Toronto, Australian, New Zealand Club’, so it originally was a place for Australian and New Zealand expats to watch football and get wasted. But then one day the guy just got tired of that, so he began booking music, and all the weirdos started bringing in their jazz bands… There’s at least two sets a day: bluegrass, singer-songwriters… And in between changeovers, a lot of mixing up is happening. Groups like The Weather Station, or an artist like Andy Shauf, they know that there’s this community of musicians there that are kind of down to do whatever… I’ve only ever seen that at the same strength in Chicago, where there’s also a really good mix. It may have to do with size: we’re not as big as Berlin or NYC, so you can play with your Dixieland project and then go play with a rock band the same night.

How about Austin, Jonathan?

JFH: Well, uhm… I moved to Austin in 2004 with a band that broke up immediately after, and everybody moved to New York. But I immediately met Chris Cogburn, Sarah Hennies, Sandy Ewen and Alex Coke, who used to play with Willem Breuker. And Thor Harris, of course, who was touring with Bill Callahan at the time, with a band called Shearwater. Austin has so much musical history: Willie Nelson, the 13th Floor Elevators, Freddie King… But geographically we’re just isolated. There’s an incredible infrastructure – we have sixty venues and we’re probably the only city in the US with health insurance for musicians…
There’s a lot of experimentalism too, although that’s less known: people like more eaze and claire rousay from San Antonio. And there’s Robert Glasper from Houston and Jason Moran and Eric Revis… Ingebrigt was a catalyst for that scene for sure, when he lived here for eleven years. It’s just… It’s Texas, and we’re in the centre of the beating heart of the devil of the US here. So, we’re all reacting to that together. We have a very strong community. It’s a shitty-ass place, to be frank, but at least it creates good art…

I always thought that Austin was a bit more progressive than the rest of Texas.

JFH: It used to be, but that has changed. We don’t tax billionaires, so Austin has become the new tech hub and now Elon Musk and Joe Rogan live here, and there’s all these self-driving cars everywhere. You have to earn like a hundred thousand dollars to live comfortably here by now…

I wasn’t going to talk politics, but here we are. When I spoke to Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly last year, they were planning a tour of the US, and despite Frank being a citizen, they were absolutely afraid to go there, because of their shared Latin roots.

JFH: I’m so glad for Frank that he moved to Amsterdam! And I’m not far behind him. I’m gonna try and be in Europe this time next year. But for now, I’m in Thor’s backyard and everything is fine. (chuckles)

The backyard is always the last place where they come searching for you, I guess. But let’s talk about more cheerful stuff. You’re both avid users of melody. Some of your colleagues in the free scene would rather sell their mothers than play a melody.

JFH: I’m preparing for an outlaw country tour in Belgium, the Netherlands and England with Garrett T. Capps and Little Mazarn. That kind of playing informs my free improvisation: I can quote from that vocabulary and adapt it to a free music setting, just like I adapt my improvisational skills to the very cut-and-dry chord progressions of bluegrass and country. I feel like they both feed each other. My goal has always been to have a Ventures guitar tone, playing free jazz saxophone licks. My heart and brain are constantly in between those two worlds. I don’t want to only play free for the rest of my life, but I sure as hell don’t want to play songs for the rest of my life, either.

KN: Amazing! I think that if I only wanted to improvise, I’d have moved to Berlin a long time ago. But I love melodies. Melodies are the fucking best, you know?

JFH: Yeah!

jaimie

Karen, you have a background in organising festivals and concert series yourself.

KN: That happened naturally: musicians want to organise and rally and try and help others coming through their city and house them. I was part of a Toronto collective, and then I started a festival with my friend Tad Michalak. It’s now evolved into a concert series, but it’s still called Tone Festival. Terrie and Andy from The Ex are going to be here in a few weeks for that. It grew out of the need that it’s very hard to tour Canada: everything is far apart here… Later it turned into a job: I worked for the Guelph Jazz Festival for four years, and then a fifth year as the artistic director. It’s a very humbling job: a lot of hard work, especially when you’re someone that cares deeply, which I do, and as Koen and Christel do. There’s like a billion moving parts that you’re juggling all the time. The key for me is to keep things simple and smaller… Now, Summer Bummer is a lot of music, but the infrastructure is very different than, say, what Pitchfork Festival was doing. There were so many venues involved and a huge staff… So, when I see a festival like Summer Bummer, where there’s time and room to have a meal, and you can stay for the whole weekend, that’s something else. I’ve played larger festivals, like Pitchfork, and it feels like shopping in a mall. And I don’t want to take anything away from the amazingness of these festivals, but I’m really more and more appreciating these sorts of smaller, more grassroots things… Having some time and space to be a human, and being able to communicate and connect with the people you are there with – , that’s the ideal.

You both played with the fiercely missed jaimie branch. She’s someone that will forever be spoken about and remembered at Summer Bummer. Jonathan, Mette Rasmussen told me the story of how jaimie came to haunt the (Exit) Knarr recording session, right about when you guys were recording a tribute to her.

JFH: We were in the studio outside Oslo, recording the piece ‘Breezy’ and all of a sudden, the power went out and the recording got erased. And we were all like: that’s her, that’s jaimie. Yeah, it was amazing. My fondest memory of jaimie is probably her walking behind me and putting her leg between the back of my knee to trip me up… But she also told me that me playing with half my hand was very inspiring to her. To hear that, from her, meant the world to me.

KN: I played the quinceañera – the special fifteenth birthday for Latina girls, a bit like our sweet sixteen – for jaimie’s dog, Patton. She threw him a party, and it was the most amazing thing… It was at a record shop in Red Hook, NYC, and there was food and decorations, and the whole neighbourhood came out… We’re all still really happy for any of the time we had with jaimie…

Karen Ng & Jonathan Horne interviewed for Head to Head / Summer Bummer 2026 by Stijn Buyst
© Sound in Motion vzw