In recent years, Macedonian experimental violinist, composer, and electronic sound architect Gligor Kondovski has been systematically expanding the semantic field of the violin – treating it less as a stable instrument and more as a volatile site of transformation. Much like on Floating Steps , where the violin functioned as a narrative trigger within an electroacoustic imaginary theater, Kondovski’s three new releases form a loosely connected cycle of defamiliarized musical situations: studio intimacy, ensemble architecture and live improvisational exposure. What unites them is not genre allegiance but a persistent effort to redefine context itself – to place sound inside carefully constructed yet deliberately unstable frameworks.
Rather than presenting stylistic variations, these albums function as three different dramaturgical environments in which Kondovski tests how composition, electronics and improvisation can co-exist without settling into habitual roles.
Gligor Kondovski & Vladan Drobicki – Inward (PMGJazz, 2025)
Inward unfolds as a subtle and introspective exchange between electronics and acoustic improvisation. Kondovski shapes the album’s core material through abstract electronic textures, understated soundscapes and sparse compositional cues that define the emotional and spatial contours of each piece. Rather than functioning as a backdrop, these electronic elements actively determine the music’s internal logic, setting conditions to which the acoustic voice must respond.
Vladan Drobicki, a trombonist with over thirty years of experience across numerous improvising ensembles, approaches this environment with remarkable restraint. His playing avoids assertive statements in favor of gentle, exploratory gestures that trace the edges of Kondovski’s electronic constructions. Long tones, subtle shifts in timbre and carefully measured silences allow the trombone to move in close dialogue with the electronics: following rather than leading, responding rather than shaping.
The result is music that unfolds gradually, emphasizing atmosphere, pacing and attention to detail. Inward is less concerned with dramatic development than with the careful articulation of space and the quiet tension between prepared material and spontaneous response.
Skrit – Sunday Connection (PMGJazz, 2025)
With Sunday Connection, Kondovski presents his quartet Skrit, joined by Filip Metodiev on electric guitar, Andrea Mircheska on double bass and Dario Cievski on drums. Here, the focus shifts decisively toward composition and ensemble balance. Kondovski’s writing provides clear structural frameworks that guide the music without constraining it, allowing individual voices to emerge while maintaining a strong sense of collective direction.
Metodiev’s guitar plays a crucial role in shaping the quartet’s sound. His tone is restrained and finely controlled, favoring clarity and nuance over overt expressionism. Rather than dominating the texture, the guitar weaves itself into the ensemble, offering melodic fragments and harmonic shading that subtly reframe the music’s internal relationships.
The rhythm section operates with notable precision and sensitivity. Mircheska and Cievski avoid conventional timekeeping roles, instead focusing on dynamic control, textural variation and measured propulsion. Their contributions are essential to the album’s overall coherence, ensuring that the music’s structural clarity remains intact even as it opens itself to improvisational flexibility.
Gligor Kondovski | Konstantin Hadzi Kocev | Martin Georgievski – Neo-Noir (AKSIOMA, 2025)*
Neo-Noir stands apart as the only live recording among the three and documents a rare trio configuration of violin, piano and electronics. Performed with minimal prior preparation, the concert captures Kondovski leading a group where the absence of predetermined form becomes a defining creative resource.
In this setting, Kondovski’s violin acts as a catalyst rather than a focal point, initiating shifts in direction, provoking responses, or withdrawing entirely to allow space for interaction between piano and electronics. Konstantin Hadzi Kocev’s piano work moves fluidly between sparse gestures and dense, percussive clusters, while Martin Georgievski’s electronic interventions fracture and recontextualize the acoustic dialogue in real time.
The music develops through accumulation, interruption and reorientation,
shaped by the immediacy of the performance and the trio’s responsiveness to
the moment. Neo-Noir emphasizes process over resolution, offering a
document of collective listening and rapid decision-making under live
conditions.
*Disclosure: the review for this final album 'Neo-Noir' is Nonevski's take on the album. He is the executive producer for AKSIOMA (the publisher of the album).
* * *
Taken together, these three albums present Gligor Kondovski not simply as a violinist operating within experimental jazz, but as an artist persistently questioning how and where music happens. Whether through abstract electronics, ensemble composition or live improvisation, Kondovski continues to treat sound as an unfinished object – open to reconfiguration, misalignment and recontextualization.
Much like Floating Steps, these works do not seek to resolve meaning but to invite attentive listening within constrained yet imaginative frameworks. They remind us that the most compelling improvised music often emerges not from excess, but from the careful cultivation of uncertainty.
---
Vangel Nonevski was born in 1977 in Belgrade. He completed his undergraduate, MA and PhD studies at the Institute of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje, where he discovered a somewhat twisted modus of listening to and writing about music. So far, he has published three books on remix and hip-hop music and culture. Hip-hop is the main reason he fell in love with “Great Black Music”, as the musicians in the AACM famously called it. Since 2012, he has been engaged as a professor at three universities, where he tries not to present himself as a know-it-all. He is the father of a lovely and happy child – Luka.
Negotiating Control and Openness: Three Albums by Gligor Kondovski also appeared on the Macedonian music site Mono-ton.
0 comments:
Post a Comment