Kairos documents the second collaboration between Japanese-born, Ireland-based pianist Izumi Kimura and American, Switzerland-based master drummer, percussionist and vocalist, Gerry Hemingway, following Illuminated Silence recorded with master double bass player Barry Guy (Fundacja Słuchaj!, 2019. Kimura continued to work with Guy and recorded two albums for the same label in a quartet with Polish Artur Majewski and Spanish drummer Ramón López). The album was recorded in Kimura’s adopted hometown, Dublin, and in Hemingway’s adopted hometown, Luzern, in May and August 2022.
The title of the album, Kairos, the ancient Greek word for time, captures the unique and highly personal conception of Kimura and Hemingway of rhythm and time. And this conception is enhanced by the poetic description of American writer and poet Andrew Levy: “Our wish to expire resplendent with desire, the discovery of which we can not put off. To be part of unstoppable drift in time and thus operative imaginative trees becoming stars becoming space”.
Kimura and Hemingway can slow down time, almost into a stasis in the minimalist and contemplative opening piece “Dendrochronology”, and focus on suspense and the delicate, resonating timbres of the piano with the marimba and vibraphone, or the prepared piano and the drum set on the following, playful “Water Thief”. “Cloud Echoes” offers a dramatic, emotional story that enjoys a minimalist percussive pulse while the title piece focuses on a totally free and intuitive interplay, cementing the gifted and imaginative improvising skills of both musicians. Kimura and Hemingway do not just drift in time but shape and sculpt time in their imaginative, constantly shifting manners.
Hemingway’s “Day Into Night” frees time from any pattern and suggests open and sparse, echoing contours of elusive time, or an enigmatic and Sisyphean attempt to find an operative rhythmic pattern that maybe never achieved. Kimura’s brief “Chronostrata” articulates a powerful and intense, free jazz melody, and is the only piece that radiates relatively familiar dynamics. The most surprising piece here is “Rivertide”, an arrangement of the Bahaman-based, Pindar family's recording of "Take Me Over the Tide" matched with the Methodist hymn "At the River" as arranged by Charles Ives. Hemingway plays harmonica and sings beautifully and with great passion like a preacher, with Kimura, intensifies faithfully the gospel vibe.
Many wonderful and enchanting things happen when you let yourself drift in such an unstoppable tide. Or as Andrew Levy wrote in his poem: ‘...The thief of time sheltered by your body from all harm. / From memory from shadows this kind of pain. The ground is green, the ground is whatever color you wish it to be. / an orange-lined triggerfish. The smallest, discrete, Non-decomposable bell”.
2 comments:
https://youtu.be/GNcFjh3DGMg?si=amX3yGTtfoy7CkOa
Gerry Hemingway: Riverside” the video, and “Over the Tide” from the CD are not the same (the titles as well). The CD recording is only an arrangement of the Bahaman piece from the Pindar family, the video of what we called “Rivertide” is the mash up of these two hymns, each from very different origins - having in common that they are both about the passage of time - or about the liminal space between life and the imagination of death. Significant in “Rivertide” is how the Ives polytonalities flow into the Bahaman theme adding a second layer of relation and tension in this intersection. The video was a development from the the version on the CD, and came almost a year later than the CD recording.
https://youtu.be/GNcFjh3DGMg?si=amX3yGTtfoy7CkOa
Gerry Hemingway: “Riverside” the video, and “Over the Tide” from the CD are not the same (the titles as well). The CD recording is only an arrangement of the Bahaman piece from the Pindar family, the video of what we called “Rivertide” is the mash up of these two hymns, each from very different origins - having in common that they are both about the passage of time - or about the liminal space between life and the imagination of death. Significant in “Rivertide” is how the Ives polytonalities flow into the Bahaman theme adding a second layer of relation and tension in this intersection. The video was a development from the the version on the CD, and came almost a year later than the CD recording.
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