Like a sonic kitchen-garden, “Here to Play” is a bit messy, homegrown
yet welcoming.
Neil Welch (tenor sax + effects), Kelsey Mines (bass), and Gregg Keplinger (percussion) have put together an engaging array of free play sounds. It’s best on big speakers–to capture the range of that double bass. This grouping is not quite a sax trio, because the relationship between the three instruments is much more egalitarian. Generationally apart, these 3 musicians have been important players in the current renaissance of creative music in Seattle, and this is their first release as a trio.
Neil Welch (the sax half of Bad Luck) can make his tenor sound like pitched air around a windbreak. He has full control of multiphonics, flutter and mouth noise effects, electronic pedals. Plus, he can create instantly engaging melodic lines–and then throw them away at will.
Kelsey Mines’ throbbing bass and bowing brings to mind the heavyweight (sadly departed) Dominic Duval–his sure, resonant sound; Mines’ is somewhere between Duval’s work with Joe McPhee on Trio X and his CT String Quartet. Mines’ interesting other project (Earthtoneskytone) with guitarist Carlos Snaider is a smoother affair, featuring angular compositions and abstract lyrics, strongest when they both sing. Here to Play is looser, less about prepared precision and more about communicating free expression as such.
My first exposure to the playing of percussionist Gregg Keplinger was on disk 1 of the unbelievably great Not Out for Anywhere on Sol Disk (2004), with Reuben Radding (bass) and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter – one of Carter’s very best outings, by the way. Keplinger can play the hits like he means them. His drumming smacks of Elvin Jones for whom he manufactured drums, once upon a time, but then he played a month or so ago at Café Racer in Seattle in a percussion duo (with Jen Gilleran) without any proper drum kit—all miscellany, cymbals and sticks and resonate objects (including, from Gilleran, metal gingerbread music boxes with turn-the-crank random). There was space and sensitivity, playfulness and glee. All that abundance shows up on Here to Play.
“Arwen’s Dance” is perhaps the strongest straight-ahead statement with multiphonic overblowing as the hymn, and free soloing all 3 at once. This tune rocks out, as does “King Kep.” There are moments in “Arwen’s Dance” where the whole band simply flies.
“Storyteller” parts 1 and 2 and “Sonic Wind” are open-form, searching numbers, the former featuring arco bass over miscellaneous crash percussion, the latter led by long-held multiphonic notes singing– like where the wild things are for real, and gentler than you’d have thought.
Adorno wrote of radical music that it should be a “herald of the threateningly eruptive, the ungrasped.” Here to Play is in that tradition—though as a tradition, a style, an approach to sound-making and collective improvisation, with a history, NAMES, forms and instrumentation, we have to take up the question of what this music means today for us. Maybe it is something less (radical), now, and all the greater for that, as it develops and matures. The roots are there. Now come the flowers and the fruits.
“I’d like to tell you as little as possible about this music...” (Fujiwara, liner notes)
Tomas Fujiwara knows how name his bands – The Hook Up, Triple Double and now we have the wonderfully titled 7 Poets Trio, another unique release from Parisian label RogueArt.
Opening with a rainfall of brushes, 'Blend' meticulously builds and blossoms as we try to place which instrument in the trio could be producing the sound of resonating water glasses.
The gracing beauty of Tomeka Reid’s cello draws out contextual atmosphere and a beckoning narrative but hold on – is that an electric piano now?
As the piece develops over its 18 minutes and segues into KP Mexican musician Patricia Brennan’s vibraphone becomes fully discernable in its acoustic rendering. Fujiwara’s patterns of evolving drumming slowly move to the fore – ever present, yet so subtle in their evocation – a whirring sewing machine of meshed, percussive complexity suspending the trio’s living tapestry of sound. As bowed cello moves to pizzicato – and with surprising bounce – Tomeka takes a solo of sorts as her lines cross-weave the intricate interlocking vibe-chimes and revolving drum shapes. These pieces were specifically conceived with the trio’s sound-personalities very much in mind.
'A Realm Distorted/Questions' leaps into action with a stop/start rhythm full of two-note stops, imbuing a kind of oblique chamber funk. Ms Reid stealth-walks her bass line then moves into a free-cello squall before the trio descend into full chiming breakdown, to near silence, finally arriving at an almost nursery rhyme-like theme – Ms Brennan vocalizing along as she explores her full tonal palette – before Tomeka closes the piece by artfully drawing melodies in the air.
Fujiwara opens 'Cruisin’ With Spencer' with a carefully constructed solo drum foundation, effortlessly mapping out a rolling sound web for Brennan to adorn with a shimmering of clear vibraphonic tones.
Fujiwara’s deceptively simple Brooklyn street walking beat carries Spencer with a tip-toeing urban swing that features some of Ms Reid’s most accomplished cello ‘bass’ playing committed to disc, thus far.
'Gentle Soul' begins as a more abstract affair – a trio improvised opening of drum skin, rustled papers, bowed strings and digital vibes. Pulling free of this textural mesh is a plaintive cello refrain of such warmth that it almost becomes a hook – one could dance or cry to this music.
At six minutes – and replete with a false-stop – Ms Brennan tumbles back in with a now distorted sound, turning her vibraphone into a 70s electric organ or flanged electric guitar (maybe even a touch of wah pedal in there) before a short coda ties up the last threads of this moving tapestry.
It is no surprise that every piece here is a dedication and Fujiwara has succeeded in creating a uniquely orchestrated sound for this clearly personal project. There is such generosity, restraint and warmth in both the writing and drumming that lucidly showcases such a diverse array of sounds from the other musicians – at times there could be 7 Poets at play – but always held tightly together with Fujiwara’s subtle percussive interlacing.
By Sammy Stein Live In Paris At Fondation Louis Vuitton is a solo release from Elliot
Galvin. Galvin has prodigious talent which early in his career maybe lacked
direction but not now. His confidence and experience have grown to such an
extent that he sets his own path and it is for others to follow if they are
able. Galvin plays entirely improvised, an aspect which in itself displays
the confident place from which he is now playing. His quick thinking and
understanding of two part arrangements, whether in harmony or as a
counter-intuitive but musically linked exploration shows his musicality and
ability to think in the moment. He has built himself a reputation as one of
the rising stars of European jazz and improvised music. He plays solo and
in trio, and is a key member of Mercury Music Prize nominated band
Dinosaur, and a free jazz duo with saxophonist Binker Golding. This album
assures him of his place not as a rising star but as one who is set for the
long haul.
For four albums Galvin’s critically acclaimed trio with bassist Tom
McCredie and drummer Corrie Dick has been the main focus and they have
achieved many great things. Elliot has proved he has quite the gift of
keyboards, along with an extensive arsenal of electronic and extended
acoustic sounds.
On this recording, we hear Elliot Galvin just on piano - no electronics, no
echoes, no tinkering - and it is a revelation in every sense of the word.
Stripped back, laid bare, the talent before the listener is personal, and
nothing short of brilliant in its creativity, lyrical story-telling and
musicianship.
The iconic Fondation Louis Vuitton building is a new cultural centre
designed by American architect Frank Ghery adjacent to the Jardin
d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne of the 16th arrondissement. Ghery’s
extraordinary glass sails float above the surrounding parkland. This live
recorded concert was described as being completely spontaneous, free
improvisation, an approach that matches the free-flowing lines of Ghery’s
architecture. That Galvin's strengths have moved beyond arrangement and
keyboard exercises is now crystal clear. Each of the tracks demonstrates
Elliot Galvin's ability to improvise to a very high level, and to express
his musical ideas into compelling and moving forms in the instant.
I asked Galvin about his feelings recording the album and he told me, " I
didn't expect this concert to become an album. I always wanted to make a
solo piano album, but it never quite felt like the right time. After I
finished this concert and listened back to the recordings it just felt
right, everything fell in the right place and I wanted to share it with
people because it sounded like me. Solo, improvised piano is where I feel
most at home, it's where I started when I was 6, just making things up and
seeing what I could create. In many ways it feels exactly the same now."
After initial applause from the audience 'As Above' begins suddenly and
without fanfare as Galvin launches into a thunderous opening run, followed
by series of gentler 4s over chords and a beautiful openness comes into the
music, the notes clear with definitive space between them, each placed with
the exactitude of an expert. It is beautiful, it is changing and it is
definitely challenging for the player. Galvin makes good use of the entire
keyboard and offers changes in rhythm and tempo yet there is a linkage
throughout the entire piece. The quietude of the middle section contrasts
with the opening and ending. What comes across in complete clarity is the
quality of the piano which Galvin is playing. Apparently this is a Steinway
of considerable age and quality, here possibly having one of the greatest
workouts of its life and the tone is wonderful. The thundering section
which follows the central respite is followed by another change, this time
open strings and echoing pedalled notes. It is a beautiful way to open the
CD.
'Time and Everything' begins as a quieter study with the (just in tune) top
notes of the piano being worked effectively over reverberating low notes
before there is a single repeated note which heralds the onset of a more
melodic line. This evolves into almost classical progressions and a
diversion of right and left hand which is staggering in its complexity, yet
delivered with the practiced ease of a master. The second half of this
track is pure beauty.
'Coda' is short, sharp and rather sweet as Galvin thumps out chords in
logical sequences on the piano with extended and shortened related gaps,
showing his timing as well as his playing is well honed. There is that
touch of madrigal style which is often part of Galvin's style inserted
again as well.
'For J.S.' is fun, lively and enjoyable. Galvin uses the spaces in this
piece almost as much as the notes which are played, creating an effective
and enjoyable effect. There is a lovely section where both hands are
running up and down scales in almost perfect opposition so they come
together, then veer apart yet it is all somehow connected. In the middle
section there is a clever run with the right hand taking a break-neck speed
down the keys, to be taken up seamlessly by the left hand so the full
extent of the keys are covered as a single run. The final section is
darker, heavier and atmospheric.
'Broken Windows' is eerily charged at the beginning with slow, gentle
higher end notes which are put together in pairs and triplets to impart a
sense of relaxed playing before the piece develops, and the sharps give it
that sense of glass broken, pieces falling and shattering, out of the solid
frame and onto the ground, drifts into minor keys adding to the effect. A
clever and well delivered piece with great atmosphere and nuance.
'So Below' is simply a clever, dexterous delivery of great improvised
music. It swings from light to heavy, offers thunderous lower notes with
trinkling lighter upper octaves and numerous bangs, plucks and slides over
the keys at different points. A highlight of the album - but not the only
one.
This entire album is another revelation from Elliot Galvin - this time not
only of a great pianist but also of a natural improviser, weaving patterns,
creating different landscapes and taking the listener with him on the
lyrical journeys he creates and travels through as he plays. What is
striking is the silence of the audience and the sheer business of the piano
as almost without knowing it the ears are assailed first with lightness and
joy and next minute by tumultuous hefty chord lines of volume and strength.
Listening to this musician you are taken someplace else, lifted and driven
- which is what great music does.
If all this was not enough this was not enough, I was trying to think what
was so different about this recording and it hit me - Galvin has introduced
an element of emotion and feeling- he includes soul, almost pathos. The
recording has caught a moment in time when Galvin was at his improvising
best, and he shared this with the listener - and it is a good thing.
This CD is impressive; it shows the maturity of this young musician who
feels as if he has been on the scene for a long time but is still
relatively young. The sense here is that Galvin is a musician who will
enjoy a long career in jazz, the only barrier to this is being if he
himself decides not to. Enjoyable, hugely engaging and such an impressive
performance. Elliot Galvin, in his quote to me said this sounded like him.
Well, I am glad he has done this solo recording and revealed just part of
the potential he has. For once, words fail to express the wonder felt at
this music.
Insub—previously known as Insubordinations Netlabel—is a label run by
long-time creative partners Cyril Bondi and d’incise (who sometimes work as
the duo Diatribes). Over the years, the label has released music from their
many multifaceted projects, as well as from other like-minded musicians.
The four albums released in 2019 spanned the spectrum of experimental
music, from one-man studio experiments to lengthy, orchestra-sized
engagements.
Michael Pisaro/Insub Meta Orchestra – Achilles, Socrates, Diotima (The Poem of Names, No. 2) (Insub,
2019) ***½
Magnus Granberg/Insub Meta Orchestra – Als alle Vögel sangen mein Sehnen und Verlangen (Insub, 2019)
****
These two long commissions highlight the considerable aesthetic space
that’s still available within the narrow ambit of minimalist, indeterminate
music. Michael Pisaro is a longtime Wandelweiser member, and while the
collective’s label has released work by Bondi and d’incise in recent years,
I’m not sure they’ve directly engaged with Pisaro’s music before now.
Magnus Granberg has an established working relationship with the pair, and
all three have performed each others’ work across several releases on
labels like Insub, Another Timbre, and Edition Wandelweiser.
The Pisaro piece shuffles awake with almost incidental sounds, the
28-strong Insub Meta Orchestra trying their best to sound a fraction of
their size. As the piece approaches its second half, some more-or-less
conventional orchestral swells appear, which gradually splinter into
shimmering spectral shards as the music becomes more dense and ominous.
It’s tempting to try to chase down the significance of the names in the
title or the relationship between this piece and “The Poem of Names” (the
third movement of 2018’s Shades of Eternal Night), but I
suspect these are fool’s errands. Knowledge of the process doesn’t
necessarily elucidate Pisaro’s work; how much of this is a result of
specific instruction or improvisation spurred by broad compositional
suggestions changes little for the listener. I get the sense that the
genesis of much of Pisaro’s music lies in the tension between arranging
some deeply private elements with others meant to invite interpretation.
Still, it’s not hard to hear in those opening moments the same weather
captured in the field recordings from Syros that were used in last year’s
piece: gusts of wind, or the surf rolling onto the shoreline. As with past
engagements with Pisaro’s work, I’m always compelled to listen, but often
leave feeling there’s an unbridged gap. There’s something inscrutable in
his music that I’m desperate—and always feel I’m failing—to understand.
In contrast, the Granberg commission felt easier to engage with and
ultimately to digest. It’s often quite beautiful music, but didn’t lodge in
my mind the way Pisaro’s does. The instruments are more individuated in
Granberg’s piece, which is moody but also brightly highlights the variety
within the ensemble. Diffuse shapes and hues phase in and out as activity
is passed between subsets of musicians. The silences and gaps serve a
structural, framing function, implying a ghostly pulse that keeps a feeling
of forward momentum. It’s a comfortable piece of music that can surprise in
its fine details, but in marked contrast to Pisaro’s unsettled spaces,
lacks the dangerous undercurrent of uncertainty. The Granberg is walking a
forest path in the long rays of the late afternoon sun; the Pisaro is
trying to make your way out in the dark as the rain sets in. Pisaro once
said in an interview that he was “deeply challenged by the idea of
silence,” which had “come to mean contingency” to him. How far to open that
door to contingency is a question to which both of these commissions offer
distinctive answers.
A Spirale & Chris Cogburn – Autocannibalism (Insub, 2019)
***½
A brief, precarious set crafted almost entirely from guitar and saxophone
feedback (the Italian duo of Maurizio Argenziano and Mario Gabola),
subtly—even imperceptibly—bolstered by Cogburn’s percussion and
electronics. “Autocannibalism” is an apt and slightly humorous description
for this medium, which is always at risk of running away from its creators
and consuming these fragile improvisations. The group’s approach is
interesting, in that they don’t create the expected long-form drones of
beating sine waves, but instead work in smaller gestures, relying on volume
control and proximity to ease short tones in and out of existence. I
imagine simply maintaining control of the feedback partly necessitates this
approach, and the result is more often a call-and-response dialogue that
juxtaposes tones of varying grit and clarity rather than a sustained effort
at timbre-building or teasing out harmonics. These snippets culled from
basement recording sessions are probably the only way this music can come
to life, but they’re of interest nonetheless.
The four short “L’Angland de St-Donat” pieces that beginAssemblée, Relâche, Réjouissance, Parade are studio assemblées of “bowed metallic objects,” electric organ, harmonium,
banjo and bass, and are softer, more elastic explorations of the lodes
d’incise has mined more energetically in groups like La Tène. Each presents
a ritualized constellation of small sounds around reedy harmonium and organ
drones. The longer “Le désir” pieces are stranger, but more effective. In
these works, resonating metal sticks are bowed over a background of detuned
organ recordings. The repeating three-note motifs that undergird “Le désir
certain” are deceiving, set against a pedal drone that makes them sound
slightly out-of-tune, creating a dizzying, destabilizing effect despite
their lockstep rhythm. And this is before you add in the skittering
bowed-stick improvisations, which sound a bit like uncooperative,
spacetime-warping violins. It certainly occupies a novel space, although at
15 minutes, it slightly overstays. “Le désir serein” relies on overlapping
sustained organ drones, creating weird, psychedelic pockets of dissonance.
Throughout, a steady repeating note sounds out, a guiding light providing
bearings in the dark. Of the two, it’s the easiest to become immersed in,
and is a pleasantly disorienting experience.
It seems every year there is at least one piano trio album that upends and
reinvents one of the oldest formats in the genre. In this case, it’s not
quite a trio, as the first transformational move made by drummer, composer
and bandleader Dan Weiss is to add a second bass player. But the result is
much more than the sum of its players, as Weiss and pianist Jacob Sacks are
joined by bassists Thomas Morgan and Eivind Opsvik together and separately,
the four together drawing on some of Weiss’s finest compositions to date.
Much was made, rightfully, of Weiss’s Starebaby, a fantastic album
of metal-jazz with a band I was lucky to see live at the Angel City Jazz
Fest a couple of years ago.
That band delighted several of u
s
and has apparently recorded its follow-up album. In the interim, however,
Weiss returned to one of his earliest groups, a trio with Sacks and Morgan.
And the group jumps right into the deep end with the nearly 20-minute-long
title track. The liner notes describes the subtle, gradual shifts of “Utica
Box” as “a la Morton Feldman,” but this is texturally different from
Tyshawn Sorey’s Feldmanian
piano tri
o
. In Weiss’s hands, texture rhythm, and melody warp in unpredictable ways.
In the opening minutes, the trio plus one balances Sacks’s piano with a
loping, hypnotic beat. The combination sounds like a backing track
custom-made for producer and rapper RZA. Later, when Weiss shifts into a
hip-hop/EDM-inspired rhythm, it’s Sacks who restrains the group,
maintaining a brilliant combination of timbre and tempo, as
the meta-commentary of the titl
e
provides a framework for Weiss, Sacks, Morgan, and Opsvik to meditate on a
seemingly linear melody from prismatic angles.
The album features three of these lengthier songs, “Utica Box” at the
start, “Orange” at its center, and “Bonham” as the closer. In a number of
ways, each one of these showcases Sacks’s mutability. He’s become one of
the foremost players, with an ability to push himself to remarkable limits.
Around the midpoint of “Orange,” he takes a 180-degree dynamic pivot that
opens the door wide for Morgan’s excellent solo. Separating each of these
extended tracks are relatively short excursions, “Jamerson,” “Rock and
Heat,” “Please Don’t Leave,” and “Last Time One More Time.”
“Last Time One More Time” is one of the more contemplative and evocative
songs on the album. The title, inspired by Weiss’s daughter, was,
interestingly, one of his large-ensemble compositions, reconfigured for
this quartet. I haven’t heard the other arrangement, but this appears to
have been completely overhauled, as it fits the two-bass voicing
beautifully. Morgan previously performed on David Virelles’s superb Mbókò, in a double-bass quintet with Robert Hurst, but he comes at
Weiss’s music from a completely different angle, and his duet with Opsvik
on “Last Time One More Time” is wonderful.
Throughout, I was repeatedly reminded of the album’s cover art, where an
outline of an orange contrasts with orange paint in the shape of a pear.
However Weiss does it (and it is an amazing feat), his music lives in a
binomial space, each half provided equal room to breathe and stretch, or
else both sides fold together into something like an orangear or pearnge.
It was only a matter of time for this group, with Mary Halv orson and Tim Berne, to happen. Before they all appeared on Formanek'sEnsemble Kolossus release, they'd had their fingers in each other's recorded pies. Formanek and Berne have worked since Bloodcount in the 90s, and the bassist and Halvorson make up two thirds of Thumbscrew. Berne has worked in small groups with Bill Frisell, Nels Cline and Marc Ducret so the genre bending Mary should be an intriguing guitar foil for his insistently probing syncopated lines. Also it's almost impossible to imagine their paths having never crossed in venues like The Stone or at festivals. So clearing busy schedules with other working groups led to this.
I was fully expecting to like this just fine for an initial statement from three musicians I enjoy, while still wanting it to have the more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts synergy that comes from extended interplay as a working group. This disc is truly Even Better than that; a fully mature sounding statement as a collective entity. Formanek composed all the pieces, except for Scott LaFaro's "Jade Visions" closing cut, surely with knowledge of how the lines would sound as played by the other two. And how each has the ability to maintain the rhythm in a drumless trio giving free rein for the others to venture hither and yon while veering away from a chaotic mess.
Things get off to a rousing start on "Suckerpunch" with Formanek and Halvorson playing a stop and go syncopated uptempo line before Berne enters with a slower counter melody which Mary joins up with before they go their separate ways, none stating the original motif but not straying completely away from it either, before ending it with a satisfying return. "Two Pillars" might refer to the saxophonist and guitarist framing the opening with parallel long tones. Berne has long had a haunting tone effectively employed on slower tempos and in this setting it's nicely augmented by the guitar through parallel fragile clear notes, or smeared with delays or shimmering reverb laden chords.
But kudos to the nominal leader (there's no "apostrophe s" as his group, per se, but he's obviously top billed) for these compositions enabling a blending of distinct talents while ebulliently holding up his end on bass. I've been a fan of Formanek for around thirty years but lately he seems to have reached a new plateau. In the last year and a half I saw him with Thumbscrew and a duet with his son, Peter; in both settings his bass was more aggressively out front, in a good way, than I'd previously recalled. But seeing the Elusion Quartet with Tony Malaby, Kris Davis and Ches Smith, where they transformed the compositions on their disc into something different and better, was the real stunner. Hopefully the Very Practical Trio can find time to tour and try to do something similar to this already very enjoyable release.
Ghosts was truly a welcome surprise. I have been following the Dutch duo Dead Neanderthals for years now. The band’s core, Otto Kokke on sax and René Aquarius on drums, has remained constant in personnel, but has transformed the project from a spazzy, blow-until-your-eyes burst act to a group focused on long, intense siren-sounds overlaying a steady, thudding percussive rhythms. The intensity is still there, but it is more focused than on their earlier efforts.
This transformation has taken place incrementally over the a few years and many releases. Some, such as the pivotal Body Horror and Polaris (both released by Utech in 2013), grabbed me right away. Much of the band’s work in between those releases and this one, however, has seemed like a study of extended tones and drum repetitions, sometimes in collaboration with other musicians (Nick Millevoi, Colin Webster, others). Although some of these albums really work (such as Worship the Sun), many give the impression that these guys have a big vision that they are searching for but have not yet realized. Ghosts might be that realization.
The two tracks on Ghosts, aptly titled “Bone Hill” and “Death Bell” deploy many of the same ideas as the band’s earlier releases. There are loud and tempestuous. It is often difficult to figure out if Kokke or Aquarius provides the propulsion. Both, members of the group, however, are slightly more restrained than on previous efforts. This is not quite the free blow-grindcore hybrid characteristic of Kokke’s and Aquarius’ early work. Instead, it is relentless, almost punitively so, but measured. It peaks just a few seconds into the first track, then transforms that peak into a panicked plateau.
Ghosts also sounds fuller than a lot Dead Neanderthals’ earlier work. Some of this is a result simply of better recording and mixing (cheers to Martin Wolterink) that abandons some of the punk-rock (or maybe Arthur Doyle?) ethos that fed the band’s first few EP’s. Much, however, also comes from the addition of Scott Hedrick on guitars and keys. Although the music here is that much more propulsive, that much more inspired than some of the digital-only releases that paved the way to it, it also has that much more sonic density. And that density makes it not just heavy, but also bright. Eerily, almost terrifyingly bright, but stunning nonetheless. Ghosts is available on digital and LP, accompanied by some beautiful, surrealist digital collage artwork by Pierre Schmidt.
New trio albums with French master of the double bass Joëlle Léandre, one with a new trio and another with a working one.
Robert Dick / Joëlle Léandre/ Miya Masaoka - Solar Wind (Not Two, 2019)
****½
Three master improvisers in their first ever recording session - New
York-based flutist Robert Dick and koto player Miya Masaoka, who also plays
assorted percussion instruments, and French Léandre, who also
vocalizes-sings, recorded on September 2018 in New York. The 12 collective,
acoustic free-improvisation stress the urgent passion of Dick, Léandre and
Masaoka to search for new timbres and voices, resisting to follow familiar
strategies and dynamics, until it is almost impossible to identify
instruments and their players. Still, this ad-hoc trio succeeds to sound
like a seasoned, working trio that has found its very own aesthetics.
Some of the concise pieces sound as if the draw inspiration from
extraterrestrial winds and ancient journeys as the first “Whispering of the
Stars”, where the trio acts like they are communicating with friendly aliens. But this
atmosphere soon changes on “Speed of Silence” when Dick explodes-vocalizes
through his flutes - glissando, bass and contrabass, while Léandre and
Masaoka intensify the stormy-chaotic vein. Léandre’s low-end bowing on
“Chronotype” and “How Old Is Your Shadow?” trigger like-minded sounds from
Dick and Masaoka’s bowed koto, solidifying the cryptic spirit of this
piece. You can marvel at the delicate, magical interplay of this trio on
the exotic, last piece “Adiabatic”.
Australian, New York-based pianist Marc Hannaford who contributed liner
notes to Solar Wind writes about the paradox of “attributing agency and
intention in spite of my inability to tell which musician is making which
sound. Furthermore, this paradox of disembodied-yet tangential interaction
emerges from lucidity rich musical textures in which textures sound
overlap, interfere, evade and encircle each other, rather than extreme
textural density. This recording reveals the lush, playful beauty of this
paradox”. And indeed, with each listening you may decipher another
enigmatic element from the imaginative, microtonal sonic universes that
Dick, Léandre and Masaoka construct and deconstruct instantly and
constantly, alone and together.
Tiger Trio - Map of Liberation (Rogue Art, 2019) ****
Another trio of master improvisers that features Léandre with pianist Myra Melford and flutist Nicole
Mitchell. The Tiger Trio,
titled after a saying of Orson Wells who boasted that he had “the great
honor of swimming in the company of a tiger”, gravitates towards dense,
free jazz textures than the abstract, extraterrestrial flights of the trio
of Dick, Léandre and Masaoka trio. Map of Liberation is the sophomore album
of this trio, following Unleashed (Rogue Art, 2016), recorded live over two
days at a gallery in 19 rue Paul Fort, Paris, and at Festival Jazzdor,
Strasbourg, both in France on November 2018.
The 11 free-improvised, acoustic pieces are titled as Buddhist virtues but
by no means call for passive, quiet meditation, more like a deep dive with
a hyperactive tiger. These pieces stand for a total commitment for the art
of free-improv, for passionate, poetic fury and the urge to be one with
one’s instrument and fully aware of the moment. But this trio also
expresses a profound - spiritual and emotional - need to to search for new
ways to confront one’s instrument and find in it new sounds and meaning,
alone and together.
You can feel how this trio suggests the right kind of “Courage”- as one of
the pieces is titled, for Mitchell, Léandre and Melford to abandon familiar
modes; to enjoy, playful “Compassion, as another piece is titled; or
experiment with troubling “Reflection” of the self and contemplate, in a
quite loud manner, the concept of “Emptiness”, or in reserved, thoughtful
manner the meaning of “Steadfastness”. All as a tight trio that has
explored its very own “forest of sounds liberated by the instrumentalists”
- to quote French journalist Fançois-René Simon who wrote the liner notes -
and has found its balanced communion. Now you can understand why the last
three pieces answer to the titles “Respect”, “Humility” and “Honesty”.
There’s a question once posed by John Cage that seems to invite an expanding variety of answers, something about what’s more musical, a truck driving by a factory or a truck driving by a music school.
Percussionist Zlatko Kaučič’s quintet adds another environment to the mix, a church, and has musicians standing in for other elements: bassist Silvia Bolognesi and three reed players: Michael Moore on alto saxophone and clarinet; Michael Colonna on clarinet and bass clarinet; and Albert Cirera on tenor saxophone. “All music is by” assigns the work to the five musicians, usually a sure mark of collective improvisation, though the music has qualities of thoroughness, reflection and inevitability that suggest it might all be notated and then rehearsed until it sounds completely natural. It often invites a long, slow inhalation followed by a similar exhalation.
The music is profoundly grounded, even to the extent that Kaučič lists his instruments as “ground sounds,” his various percussion instruments, some unidentifiable, laid on the floor of St. Martin's Church, in Šmartno, Slovenia. He’s a discreet presence, almost spirit-like, often making discrete sounds, isolated flurries, taps, rattles, brushes and cymbal sounds. His initial contribution to the sublime “September” sounds like off-hand knife sharpening. His duet with Bolognesi on “Mlaj” hovers between the invisible, the accidental and the sublime.
About that music school? Moore, Bolognesi and Colonna are all skilled free improvisers, highly inventive, disciplined musicians whose sonorities, intonation, evenness and attention to details of dynamics and inflection would delight an academician (at least one open to free improvisation in a church). The abilities to develop continuous and evolving form are at the highest level, and it’s a performance that in 1960 would have stunned Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell, two of the finest minds in jazz history and pressing, by degrees, towards a similar art, whether improvised or composed.
Albert Cirera? His presence, too, is sometimes discreet. He supplies concordant melody, rhythmic force and lightly overblown tones to the collective, including some that sound flute-like. He’s also capable of great subtlety, but when the three winds dance around one another with repeated rhythmic figures on the brief “Jutranja,” his contributions are the honks. On “Strehe” his feature amid Kaučič’s rattling metal, he’s playing hard-edged multiphonics—dissonant, industrial--with something rattling, likely foil or metal, on the bell of his horn. He follows with a high whistling line broken by occasional low-end rhythmic blasts. Coming to the fore, he’s the truck driving by the music school, the debris of an exploded factory falling on music school and church alike.
While the others play musical instruments, Cirera plays an irrepressible noise machine. It’s the element raising this music from perfection to something really great.
This review was long in the making, so I'll shorten it with some very high level appreciations about new solo cello albums.
Séverine Ballon - Inconnaissance (All That Dust, 2018) ****
We met French cellist Séverine Ballon already in 2011 for a review of her duo with Vincent Royer, performing music by Giacinto Scelsi. On this album, she presents her first solo work with own compositions. Despite her nationality, she studied cello with Joseph Schwab at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin and with Troels Svane at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck.
"Inconnaissance" is a real treat. Ballon dares go beyond tradition, and her courage takes her to areas of high musical risk, not by the complexity of the material, but by the explorations of sound, and their possible rejection by the audience. This makes her music not the most accessible, yet the active listening effort is really worth it. Her tone is raw at times, with double stops, high pitched flageolet sounds, multiphonics, scrapings and other inventive use of the complete instrument. Ballon has clearly left even contemporary classical music well behind her. Her CV mentions that she "is currently working on developing extended techniques for her instrument and finding appropriate notation". But it is more than just the instrument, as the liner notes write: "Everything is put under a microscope, allowing for sounds to be dissected and obsessed over. Variation comes through bowing techniques: Ballon is fascinated by the sounds that emerge before and after a 'normal' sound, as if defracting, refracting or diffusing light."
And it is even more than technique and sound resonance. It is also about the music, about the value of harmonies, about dissonance, about tension and playing with silence and volume.
Ballon's music has character, it has power, not because of its volume or physicality, but in its sensitive energy (the French would say "ça a de la gueule", but this sounds to irrespectful in this context), in its attitude of take-it-or-leave-it. It takes courage to go there.
Recorded 27-28 January 2018 at City, University of London
Lori Goldston - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Substrata, 2019) ***
American cellist Lori Goldston is comfortable to perform in any style, and she has done so, from classical to jazz, from performing with Chinese and Turkish orchestras to Nirvana, just to illustrate the breadth of her skills and also of the influences in her music.
On "The Passion of Joan of Arc" she gives an interpretation of possible film music of the silent movie by Carl Thedor Dreyer of the same name. For those who don't know, Joan of Arc is the real historical figure who fought for the French against the English in the Hundred Years War. She was eventually captured by a group of French nobles who fought with the English and burned at the stake.
Goldston's music is slow and reverent, and her cello played without extended techniques (she is not Okkyung Lee). She is accompanied by Aidan Baker on electric guitar and Andrea Belfi on drums and percussion. Both guest musicians offer sparse touches to her melancholy sound, adding dramatic effects and contrasts.
The album presents thirteen movements, for what could easily be described as one long suite, resulting in a very coherent whole, but with limited variation. It is only on a few of the pieces that she goes beyond her usual sound.
The performance was recorded in the Christuskirche in Bochum, Germany.
Lori Goldston - Things Opening (Second Editions, 2019) ***½
She shows a broader sense of variation on her recent "Things Opening". The album is less ambitious, more intimate and possibly better. Even if the playing is very contained - this is modern classical music after all - there are moments when she colors outside of the lines, both pizzi and arco, which is welcome to hear. On the A-side of the album she performs her own compositions/improvisations and on the B-side the music is composed by other artists: Jessika Kenney, Satchel Henneman and Julio Lopezhiler respectively. Kenney's piece is an interpretation of the muslim Call to Prayer, and interesting to hear the classical instrument absorb and work with Arabic sounds.
This album gives a better perspective on her skills as a cellist.
Goldston finds a like-minded cellist in Australian Judith Hamann, who perform two long improvisations on "Alloys". As its title suggest, they melt several metals together to form a new one.
This album is very slow, very dark and meditative. The two 26 -minute pieces evolve suite-like with changing names: "Silver, Amalgam, Mother Of Pearl, Felt, A Thin Piece Of Whale Bone" for the first track and "Carbon, Sitka, Rabbit Hide, Solder, Matter Attacking The Body". Both musicians dig deep into their instruments and souls to find a mesmerising and slowly shifting piece of art, exploring the full sound of their instruments. Even if its minimalistic approach lacks the energy and nervous agitation of free improvisation, I'm sure avant-garde lovers and cello lovers will find their interest here.
Maja Bugge is a Norwegian cellist, composer and teacher. "No Exit" presents a solo performance in the Standedge Canal Tunnel as part of Marsden Jazz Festival 2017. The tunnel is the longest of its kind in the UK, stretching for three and a half miles underneath the Pennines.
Bugge is a fan of the dialogue between instrument and the surroundings. Even if this does sound like a John Butcher concept, the music is not so. Bugge's compositions and improvisations are calm, precise, carefully performed with the occasional hint at a theme and the occasional exploration outside the known boundaries.
Obviously, this kind of music should also be experienced in the setting for which it was conceived to better understand the dynamics. The video below will give some idea about this.
Francesco Guerri - Su Mimmi Non Si Spara! (Rare Noise, 2019)
Italian cellist Francesco Guerri's album is presented as "contemporary jazz", which it isn't. Guerri is a wonderful cellist, with a very pure tone and broad range of capabilities on his instrument, and I guess that's also the weakness of this album. Guerri has composed all the music on the album, and he is very keen to demonstrate his skills, resulting in too much variety to be coherent. The title track is almost a classical piece, followed by a tune which could be the soundtrack for a silent movie full of pathos and drama, with "Paper" adding a real avant-garde piece with extended techniques, an almost compulsory pizzicato piece, called "Mimmi Resisti" or a cello version of rock 'n' roll, and the album ends with the even more out of place "Lester Tango" which is ... a tango. Guerri has technique. He now needs a producer to work on material with more quality and coherence to make his technique shine.
