NU Music 4

Performing under the moniker NU Music 4 for the first time, Mats Gustafsson and Goran Kajfeš join former Don Cherry collaborators Christer Bothén and Okay Temiz as a new quartet, sprung from a vibrant and cross-cultural array of styles, instruments, and sounds. NU Music 4 takes its cue from the open-ended possibilities of Cherry’s “collage music,” synthesizing global cultures and styles through organic and improvisational play. The quartet will perform their own original suites and compositions—alongside works by Cherry and others—that coalesce and disperse as spontaneous and unbounded forms, influenced by free jazz, radical rock, and ethnic music from across North Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Scandinavia, and elsewhere. With its exuberant and motley arrangement, often incorporating solo, duo, and trio play, NU Music 4 and its members strive for an open music rooted in curiosity, camaraderie, and togetherness. A legendary Turkish percussionist, Okay Temiz moved to Sweden in the mid-1960s and helped spark interest in non-Western music there and beyond. He performed with Cherry, and as a trio with South African bassist Johnny Dyani, over the next decade; formed the widely-acclaimed Oriental Wind ensemble; and, since returning to Turkey in the late 1990s, has continued to shape global sounds through his records, collaborations, and workshops. Christer Bothén is a key figure in the Scandinavian creative scene, traversing free jazz, folk, and experimental music. He met Cherry in the early 1970s, and even taught him the traditional Mali donso n’goni, an instrument Bothén learned to play while living with Malian hunters—and that will feature here in NU Music 4’s debut. In his more recent output, Bothén has, among solo ventures, participated in and led an array of iconic ensembles, including the Bitter Funeral Beer Band, his Bolon Bata group and its later Bolon X iteration, alongside a range of collaborations. Completing the quartet are two driving forces in the Swedish and international creative jazz and improvised music scenes: Swedish berserk saxophonist and flutist, and member of The Thing, Fire!, and The NU – ensemble, Mats Gustafsson, and the Croatian-Swedish trumpeter, and player in Oddjob, Nacka Forum, Subtropic Arkestra, and Tropiques, Goran Kajfeš.