Two Moscow Gigs for Two Dark Jazz Ensembles

What’s in a name? If you’re part of the Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, a seven-person group whose members are spread throughout Europe, then a title should be something that adequately sums up the brooding mixture of hissing electronics and smoky barroom piano that the band deals in.

“I always liked the name Kilimanjaro — apart from it being a colossal mountain, it just oozes mystery,” said Jason Köhnen, one of the group’s founders, in an e-mailed interview, ahead of the group’s show at Dom on Saturday. “The kind of sound we were making and wanted to continue making was dark, cinematic, jazz-related music. Hence Darkjazz.”

Köhnen, based in the Netherlands, founded the group in 2000 with fellow Utrecht School of Arts graduate Gideon Kiers. The pair spent a while using their musical backgrounds — Köhnen on piano and double bass, Kiers on drums and electronics — to create film scores for classic movies like F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” and Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.”

In 2004, Köhnen was invited to a musical project in Holland called Playlab, which involved a series of musicians collaborating all day for an improvisational performance the same evening. There he met U.K. trombonist Hilary Jefferey, was struck by his playing and invited him to join the Ensemble. Jefferey was friends with Swiss cellist Nina Hitz, who was also soon folded into the group. While on tour in France a few years later performing as his so-called “hardcore electronics” act Bong-Ra, Köhnen shared the stage with French multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Cegarra and was so impressed with her skills — she plays xylophone, flute and piano and uses electronics to manipulate her voice — that he asked her to join as well. A few more acquaintances brought the last two members into the band — Dutch guitarist Eelco Bosman and U.K. violinist Sarah Anderson.

With such a range of styles from members who are scattered across a continent, one would think that it could be difficult to keep a band together, but Köhnen explains that they make it work with the help of an increasingly useful musical tool called the Internet.

“The main composing is done by Gideon and myself. We originally started TKDE as a producers’ duo and continued laying out the mainframes of compositions after the Ensemble was gathered,” he said. “Nowadays, we still work the same way, we lay out some sketches and the other members add their touch to what we have written.

We mostly work via the Internet. Sending sketches of tracks in Ableton [a software recording program] and letting each other member add their thing.”

The result is remarkably cohesive for a group with this type of working method. On their most recent, self-titled album, tracks like “Lobby” unfold from a simple cello melody into a clatter of sampled percussion and white noise, while “Adaptation of the Koto Song” sticks to the soft piano and rich bass lines most associated with jazz. These arrangements promise to be quite a spectacle live — especially since the group has no live drummer, which is often the one element holding a crew like the Ensemble together.

“Gideon is the ‘beats’ man of the group. We used to combine live drumming with beat sequencing. Unfortunately he is not an octopus — so it was basically not doable to combine these two disciplines live on stage,” explained Köhnen. “At the moment, he sequences the beats on stage, so there are no drums. It’s a bit odd sometimes for people to watch a band without a drummer, but our music depends a lot on digital processing of our rhythms.”

Köhnen himself has performed in Moscow before as Bong-Ra, and he hopes that the Ensemble’s first performance in the country (as well as one on Friday at Mosproyekt from the equally tongue-twistingly named Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, an improvisational side project consisting of Ensemble members) will be as well-received.

“The people at the shows [in Moscow] seem to thoroughly enjoy themselves, and it’s really pure compared with my homeland Holland, for instance, where people are somewhat spoiled,” he said. “I would say my Moscow shows have been some of the most memorable ones I have done.”

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble performs Saturday, Feb. 13, at Dom, 24/4 Bolshoi Ochinnikovsky Pereulok. Metro Novokuznetskaya. 953-7326, www.dom.com.ru. The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Ensemble performs Friday, Feb. 12, at Mosproyekt, 6 Vtoraya Brestskaya. Metro Mayakovskaya. 694-0936, www.msprkt.ru.