The Brass Choir Nobody Mentions: Matthias Muche's BONECRUSHER at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Christ hangs above the band. Karl Hemmeter's risen Christ, cast in gilded tombac and more than four and a half metres tall, floats with outstretched arms against the blue glass of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. From the back rows he seems to be conducting the players below. They stand in a long line in front of the altar on this Sunday afternoon, each behind a music stand, with a large drum among the white candles and flowers on either side. This is the Jazzfest Berlin debut of Matthias Muche's BONECRUSHER, an orchestra of 11 trombones, snare drum and percussion. What it plays is a new music concert that happens to be part of a jazz festival, and the church makes it more solemn still.

The Berliner Festspiele programme note is keen to say that the group avoids "concrete references to military bands or the musical traditions of New Orleans funeral parades". It leaves out the obvious relative. A row of trombones in front of the altar cross of a Protestant church is, first of all, a Posaunenchor, the brass choir that many German parishes keep. The packed rows of wooden chairs look more like a service than a club, too.

Muche, a trombonist from Cologne, moves between composition and free improvisation, according to the festival. This afternoon, composition is in charge. He describes his music as dealing with "the trombone as a large collective instrument that mediates between breath, noise, microtonal harmonic fields, dense brass textures and shifting masses of sound". That is the vocabulary of contemporary composition, and the programme follows it. The pieces come from this year's album "Densities": Muche's drone piece "Butter", the episodic "Quarter" and "Up+Down", a study in microtonal glissandi by the Berlin trombonist Matthias Müller, who plays in the ensemble. There is also an arrangement of Johannes Bauer's tape piece "Brass / Breath / Brisk", with Etienne Nillesen and Rie Watanabe supplying the rhythm on snare and percussion.

Building an orchestra out of a single instrument is a good idea, and the ensemble pushes it as far as it will go. These trombones seem able to make every sound there is. Some of those sounds, though, make you wonder why it has to be a trombone at all, since another instrument would produce them more easily and do it better. The concert shows everything the trombone can do, and rather less of what that is for. Egon Eiermann's church still suits the music. Its double walls of concrete and glass keep out the traffic on Breitscheidplatz, and the room is tall enough for long held notes.

The objection concerns the music and the room together. The trombone, the programme note says, is usually thought of as "exuberant, brash and loud", and BONECRUSHER wants to stay away from all that. It succeeds, with noise taking the place of shine. But then little is left to rub against the solemnity of the place. Candles, a cross and a floating golden figure turn a serious composition into a devout one. Anyone expecting brass power or free solos at a jazz festival on a Sunday will find themselves listening in reverent silence rather than being carried along.

In Luther's Bible, seven trombones bring down the walls of Jericho. There were more of them at the Gedächtniskirche, and Gabriel Loire's glass held.

Matthias Muche's BONECRUSHER played the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, on 1 November as part of Jazzfest Berlin.