Solo Cello

By Stef Gijssels

In our series of solo string instrument recordings, today brings an update on recent solo cello albums, an overview as a heads-up to readers rather than an analysis. 

Judith Hamann - Days Collapse (Another Timbre, 2020)

"Days Collapse" is a suite of four pieces for cello and electronics. The music was recorded in spring 2020 on the island of Suomenlinna in Finland during lockdown. 

Last year, Fotis Nikolakopoulos interviewed the cellist about her approach to music. I repeat this significant response, and I can recommend readers to read the whole interview for further insights: "I think that the mythology of the solo artist, the independent creator, the self made genius has not been a very helpful idea, and is very much a European settler-colonial kind of thinking about the making of creative work. We love the myth of our lack of dependence on things, but we’re much more interwoven than most people might like to believe. I think this is also part of why I call so much of my work ‘studies,’ that was kind of a way to try to resist that sense of composer as author. I don’t think any of the work I’ve made comes from a place of having some kind of singular idea or vision and working to realise that, it’s much more about working with the material from the inside out, and being porous, receptive to the kinds of trajectories and gestures and shapes and shadows which appear when you are open to them."

We add another of her quotes specifically about this album: "Since I started the project I have been thinking a lot about collapse as an idea, and it’s become a really important means of thinking with and through certain ideas and experiences. Collapse in the sense of this album refers to a buckling of structure, of multiple layers suddenly without division, and points to the overall experience of redrawing of inside/outside public/private/social spaces and perception of time in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Perhaps I’m being overly utopian here, but I now think collapse is not synonymous with disaster, it can instead be generative, creative, a way of making a new story or experience, a way of revealing, or retelling our perception of the world."

Her music has a very deep sense of gravitas. It is slow, well-paced and mixes ambient bird song with primarily bowed cello, electronics and humming. In reference to her quote, her music truly merges with its environment, reflects it, adds to it. There are no story-lines or narratives, just in the moment emotional and aesthetic creation. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Valentin Ceccaldi - Ossos (Cipsela, 2020)

Readers will know French cellist Valentin Ceccaldi from his collaborations with Chamber 4, with his brother Théo on violin, and with the Portuguese Luis Vicente and Marcelo Dos Reis. He is one of France's most prolific and versatile cellists, performing in a few dozen ensembles.

On "Ossos" (bones), his first solo album, he not only shows his instrumental skills, but also how to delve deep into emotional territory. ‘Enclume’ (anvil) is characterised by offering extremes from subdued to violent, with moments of drone-like intensity. ‘Marteau’(hammer) starts by touching raw nerves, with at times piercing sounds and repetitive single bowed notes, then moves into a quieter pizzi middle part, and ends in high tone bowed whispers, which sets the tone for the last track - ‘Étrier’(stirrup) - which is entirely built around these bowed whispers, played directly or through overtones, flutelike, with little development in the piece itself.  The entire album offers a fascinating listen, presenting a suite-like sequence that moves from dark and heavy sounds to featherlike lightness. 

The album was recorded in May 2017.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Paul de Jong - Spiral (Self, 2020)

Dutch cellist Paul de Jong is a sonic explorer, with great attention to the quality of his instruments and recording equipment, if we rely on his detailed description of it all. His cello was builte by Joannes Gagliano in Naples in 1800 and his bow by Eugène Nicolas Sartory in Paris in 1910. I think neither his cello nor his bow could have imagined the sounds they could produce in the hands of De Jong. There are barely any sounds on this album that could come from the cello as expected, but what does that even mean? Is there an expected sound from any instrument? 

De Jong is relentless in his search for sounds that hit hard and go deep. His song titles reflect his anger and frustration ("Rotzooi", "Troep", "Prul", "Geknoei", "Geklooi" ... could all be translated by "rubbish") with himself or the world or whatever. De Jong's musical universe will not be to everyone's taste, but it is coherent in its relentlessness. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Hannah Marshall - Clouds (Takuroku, 2020)

This Hannah Marshall's second solo album, after "Tulse Hill" from 2012.  The cellist is best known from her work with the London free improv scene, including collaborations with Veryan Weston, Trevor Watts, Alexander Hawkins, Alison Blunt, Dominic Lash, ... She is also a member of the Shoreditch Trio with Gianni Mimmo and Nicola Guazzaloca who were once so sweet to give me a private performance when it turned out I was the only member of the audience. 

On "Clouds", she offers us a very intimate expression of a lockdown situation, watching the world go by through the window, watching the clouds, or rather the clearings in the sky. As she mentions in the liner notes: "In some of the gaps you will hear the chair creak, the rain fall, the children at near by child-minders house. The slap and fall of strings, on fingers on wood".

Her playing is gentle, always pizzi and with a strong dynamic pulse, moving the music forward while still giving a sense of contemplative calm. 

The album is short, warm, relatively accessible and . 

Listen and purchase from the label. 

Lucy Railton - Lament In Three Parts (Takuroku, 2020) 

Lucy Railton is a classically trained cellist, educated at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She resides in Berlin for the moment. She is active in both the contemporary and experimental music scenes. In 2018 she released her first album, also for solo cello and electronics. Last year she released a composition by Olivier Messiaen for cello and organ. She also performs as a guest musician in Christian Lillinger's Open For For Society, Thomas Strønen's "Lucus" and on Kit Downes' ‎"Dreamlife Of Debris", the last two both on ECM. She also performed at the A L'Arme Festival in Berlin last week. 

Like Hannah Marshall's release, this one is short two, clocking around twenty minutes, but in contrast to Marshall, Railton's music is all bowed, with overdubs and electronic changes, slowly building the three laments that the title refers to. The laments are completely improvised pieces, with the processing done afterwards. No need to mention that the tone is inherently sad, drenched in grief. This album is fairly accessible, and departs from the more violent noise of her previous albums. The quality of the playing and the sound is excellent, and the music captivating and moving throughout. 

Listen and purchase from the label.  

Ulrich Mitzlaff - Transparent – Fluorescent Sound Fibres (Creative Sources, 2020) & Soliloque Sonore (Self, 2021)

Ulrich Mitzlaff is a German cellist who also resides in Portugal, and has been part of several Portuguese ensembles, such as the "Lisbon Improvisation Players", "Nuovo Camerata", and mostly "String Theory". 

The cellist performs on the crossroads of compositional concepts and improvisation, using a whole array of objects next to his cello. On "Transparent" he tries to perform the same piece twice, once on cello, once with a piano, and both with objects. The linear structure and the ominous atmosphere are perfectly captured in both pieces, although my preference would go to the more solemn and touching cello performance. 

The "Soliloque Sonore" also brings two improvisations, performed and inspired by the corona lockdown, in an effort to re-create ensemble interaction on his own: "all the sound sources that are used such as the violoncello, the voice, the sounds of shoes and the china type cymbal, substitute other absent but imaginary players". A lot is happening on these two pieces. They are more nervous and agitated, with a higher sense of urgency and immediacy, as if he lacks the time to say it all. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Fred Lonberg-Holm - Lisbon Solo (Notice Recordings, 2020)

It is still an honour that Fred Lonberg-Holm is the petrified subject of the last review of the Dutch version of this blog which I abandoned in 2007, and he will probably stay there until internet itself disappears (to be rediscovered by digital archaeologists centuries from now). 

We find the fierce Chicagoan on his fourth solo album in decades. His first solo album, "Personal Scratch" already dates from 1996. His second solo album, "Anagram Solos" was released in 2007 but with recordings from 1999. "Variance" dates from 2015. He is a small ensemble man in nature, preferring duets and trios with like-minded musicians. 

His style of playing is raw, direct and physical, and often, because the instrument is plugged in, also with feedback and pedals, adding unusual sonic possibilities to his playing. "Visceral" is possibly the word that best describes his approach. It touches you like a hard punch or striking a deep nerve. Lonberg-Holm describes the music on this album as "I like to think that my solo cello improvisations are a kind of non-denominational devotional music", and even if his solo performance is somewhat more gentle than other of his recordings, the sound is be far from what most people would consider 'devotional'. 

Next to his cello, he also performs on "unprepared" piano, to know the broken pianos that happened to be in the recording studio in Lisbon where the performance was made. It also leads to variety and surprises in the music. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Jakub Gucik - Vastitas Borealis (IPT, 2020)

Jakub Gucik is a young Polish cellist, member of the IPT Trio who released several interesting albums over the past years. This is Gucik's second solo cello album, and even better than "In Silva", his debut album. On "Vastitas Borealis", he brings us ten composed/improvised pieces inspired by the "northern waste" region on Mars, which is at the same time the deepest depression in our solar system housing the highest mountain too. 

Gucik's cello sounds distant, resonating in a larger space. His technical skills on the instrument are spectacularly good, briding all genres from classical to jazz and modern music, styles which he cleverly integrates almost seamlessly in his music, often used with different loops, creating multi-layered ensemble improvisations. Despite the uniqueness of his sound and approach, his music is still accessible and authentic. To his credit, he does not use his skills for showmanship but to deliver fascinating music, often organised around repetitive patterns that gradually shift and change in a Bach-like fashion. At times, as in the title track, this repetition of the core phrase may become a little too repetitive, but that's only a minor comment on an otherwise highly recommended album. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Helena Espvall & Fred Lonberg-Holm - FA #11 Borboletas Andarilhas (Flying Aspidistra, 2021)

"Borboletas Andarilhas" may mean wandering butterflies in Portuguese. Swedish cellist Helena Espvall now resides in Lisbon. Chicagoan cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm now lives in New York. Both cellists met 20 years ago in Stockholm before Espvall moved to Philadelphia. They have met each other across continents, at festivals. This is their first collaboration on record. 

"Bematistes Aganice" is an African butterfly, and a 20-minute long improvisation on this album. "Danaus Plexippus" is the scientific name of the monarch butterfly, and a 35-minute long improvisation on this album. Despite their different backgrounds, both musicians find each other on these two long exploratory improvisations, primarily because they give themselves fully, without restraint, but respectfully to each other. Espvall's solo music can be very 'noisy' and Lonberg-Holm can be raw and violent at times, but here their music is relatively accessible (even if this 'relatively' is still very relative) and relentlessly dynamic. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Guilherme Rodrigues – Cascata (Creative Sources, 2020)

Despite his appearance on 204 albums, this is only the first solo album by Guilherme Rodrigues, 

Surprisingly accessible at times, both when performed in pizzi or bowed; Rodrigues himself describes in the liner notes: "The album "Cascata" came from the need to share the total freedom of my person as a cellist. With nothing programmed, I arrived at the studio and played for almost two hours. It was fluid as a waterfall." The 23 improvisations range from 45 seconds to 4 minutes, each with a unique voice and technique, expressive and exploratory at the same time. 

The music was recorded in 2019, so not related to confinement. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Solo cello

By Stef

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.


Lori Goldston & Judith Hamann - Alloys (Marginal Frequency, 2019) ***½

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. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Maja Bugge - No Exit (Discus, 2018) ***

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.

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Okkyung Lee - Dahl-Tah-Ghi (Pica Disk, 2018) ****½

By Stef

Some years ago, I qualified South-Korean cellist Okkyung Lee as the Jimi Hendrix of the cello, because she manages to speak a language with her instrument that is richer, more expressive, more violent, more heart-rending than was thought possible before. Or to put it differently: every other cello you listen to afterwards sounds somewhat more simple and childish.

The album's title means "Moon Gliding", and that image may be confusing in the sense that it doesn't really reflect what you may expect to hear (such as a romantic night, or a spiritual reflection). The intertwined hands on the album's cover are more telling. In this 42 minute solo improvisation, Okkyung Lee demonstrates again the strength of her uncompromising and unique musical vision. The performance was recorded in the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum in Oslo, in June 2013 for a limited group of 30 people. The Mausoleum is a special place, and I share some pictures of its interior below, because they surely have an effect on the performance itself. The inside of the building is 'covered with frescos that depict human life from conception till death, in dramatic and often explicit erotic scences'.

If anything, Lee's improvisation is a wonderful reflection of this space, with its inherent agony and beauty, the contrasting pains of life and death, the howling of lust and pain, the unrelenting violence that interacts with subtle vulnerability. She uses a lot of drone-like repetitive phrases, harsh high-pitched powerful playing on several strings together, yet she also uses silence and slow moments to enhance the full resonance of the space, she makes her instrument laugh too, or weep like the whales, and all these as part of one long suite-like improvisation that is nothing less than "life expressed". There are moments when you want her to end the harsh sounds - and of course she doesn't, because that would be missing the point - there are moments you want her to continue what she's doing - and then she doesn't - of course not. It's raw, hard at times, yet what a listening experience! It will not leave you indifferent. And that's how it should be.

You get it all. Here.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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Clarice Jensen - For This From That Will Be Filled (Miasmah, 2018) ****

By Stef Gijssels

It's amazing that musicians release solo albums as their first album ever. A daring undertaking, but Clarice Jensen wouldn't be the first one. It's a courageous adventure: you're on your own. Any comment or criticism touches you, and you only. There is no escape behind an ensemble or behind others.

Clarice Jensen is a classically trained cellist from the Juilliard School, and artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). She is equally comfortable playing Bach's cello suites as recording and performing with pop idols such as Paul McCartney, Nick Cave or The Arcade Fire.

On this album, she does something else entirely, using effects and loops which hide the performance of the single instrument in long, almost ambient and drone-like developments.

The first track was co-composed with the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, and offers slow, almost meditative cello sounds, to which additional layers are added, some higher, some lower, creating a very spacious atmosphere. The second track, "Cello Constellations", blends no less than 25 multi-tracked cellos intersecting computer-generated sine waves, yet despite this, there is no wall of sound, but rather a fragile fabric of gliding tones, that slowly, very slowly develops and gets more momentum and power. The last two tracks, "For This From That Will Be Filled", are again carefully construed, with sounds that swell and subside like waves, mimicking the deep resonance of a pipe organ, majestic and massive, with repetitive cello phrases piercing through the backdrop, meditative and insistent, shifting into again a multi-layered foundation for its second part, intense and dark, slow and majestic, and out of this dense mesh, for the first time on the album a single cello improvisation can be heard, discernible and pure, accompanied by announcements from New York's Grand Central terminal.

Even if it's not remotely related to jazz, Jensen's musical vision, and her deliberate intent to create some new listening experience, will probably also please quite a number of our readers. It is meditative at times, and clearly inspired by composers such as Bach and Glass at moments, as well as modern ambient and electronics.

Worth listening to, alone, on a quiet evening.

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Solo cello

Elisabeth Coudoux - Some Poems (Leo, 2016) ****

German cellist Elisabeth Coudoux (née Fügemann) may not be known by many yet, but that will not take long anymore. She combines the solid technique of her classical training at the Carl von Weber Music School in Dresden with a strong-willed vision on improvised music. She is member of the Scott Fields Feartet, and of Zeitkratzer ("a perverse subversion of musical genres"), and several other ensembles, as the recently reviewed "The Octopus".

"Some Poems", her first solo project, is a winner. Like poems, the music is intimate, personal and deep, full of wonder and persistent discovery of one or the other musical aspect, as in the alternation between plucking and bowing on "Found Not", or repetitive phrases, as "In Sounding Bodies", leading to little surprises without loosing track of the direction she's taken. Her music is about her interaction with the instrument. It is physical, exploratory and interactive. She does not hesitate to go well beyond the boundaries of comfort, as in "In A Swaying Ship" or on "Besets" with its sliding overtones and out-of-tune instrument. Her music can be playful as "In A Faint Voice", of full of deep gravitas and shifting harmonies as on "Knut". At 2:24 on "Within The Sounding Body", you can hear faint pop music in the background (is it a car driving by, a mobile phone annoucing a caller? we don't know) but funnily it does not disturb the deliberate and electronically looped bowing of the piece, the only non-acoustic moment of the album.

I can only recommend this. She is strong. She has the skills, the character and the musical vision. This is her first appearance on this blog, but surely not the last one. Oh, and by the way, all the tracks together form a poem:

"A faint voice
found not
in sounding bodies

shaken boundary conditions
within the sounding body
in a swaying ship

Knut 
besets
me

Only time, no changes"


Fred Lonberg-Holm - Cabin, Cemetery, Forest (Flying Aspidistra, 2017)

Fred Lonberg-Holm no longer needs an introduction, but what is worth mentioning that his own label, called Flying Aspidistra, named after the George Orwell novel "Keep The Aspidistra Flying", has now put the entire catalogue on Bandcamp.  On the label, you will find other solo cello albums or string duets with Charlotte Hug, Carlos Zingaro, David Stackenäs. For those interested, he also has another Bandcamp website with even more music.

"Cabin, Cemetery, Forest" was recorded in 2009, and may have been released on CD before, although I couldn't find references to it. Now it's available digitally and that is good news. Lonberg-Holm is not a crowd-pleaser, and he even describes himself as an 'anti-cellist', applying a totally unconventional way of playing. His instrument groans, sighs, screams and sobs, sometimes in calm resignation, sometimes in full agony, but it never sings, it never dances, forget about harmony, peace and tranquility. The sounds are agitated, nervous, physical, full of turmoil and surprise, and move without an actual plan but pushed forward by the last-but-one sound in a kind of musical stream of consciousness. It is demanding listening, and I think you need the right context to give it the time it needs. If anything, no matter how often you listen to it, it will never sound familiar. And that's an achievement by itself, because that's where you need to be: out of your comfort zone.

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Matt Turner - Virion Impasto (Icker, 2015) ****

By Stef

The first time I heard an album with cellist Matt Turner, was on Ken Schaphorst's wonderful "Indigenous Technology", then some years later on the equally wonderful "To The Moon" with Jean-Marc Foltz and Bill Carrothers, two albums on which the cello's lyricism adds a great quality to the beautiful compositions.

In 1999 he released his first solo cello album "The Mouse That Roared", on which the instrument is still used in a very conventional way, bowed and very lyrical, even if he dares color outside the lines from time to time.

Now, on his second solo album, Turner overthrows all conventions, beginning by stripping the hairs of his bow, and playing the strings with the naked wood of his bow. Second, he does no effort at all to sound lyrical, quite to the contrary, his bowing results in dark, sometimes industrial sounds that resonate minimally yet have deep impact, sometimes even animal growls that unleash the most hidden side of the instrument, or repetitive washing sounds of waves coming out of the depths of its wooden body, or even some noise of basic organic 'humanness', you can wonder what it is or what it sounds like, but it is abstract and full of life, full of surprises, even if all the sounds are muted with a dryness that takes out all the fluidity that you associate the instrument with.

You cannot compare his playing to Okkyung Lee, that other iconoclast of the instrument, because Turner is not violent or exuberant or emotionally expressive, no, his approach is incredibly disciplined and focused, played with calm determination to bring other things to life than the instrument has ever done before.

You will need very open ears to appreciate the other sounds of the cello.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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Lori Goldston - Creekside (Bandcamp, 2014) ***½

 By Stef

Lori Goldston is a Seattle-based cellist, classically trained and "rigorously de-trained", as her bio describes it, and who made her caereer in rock music and film scores, being a member of the Black Cat Orchestra, and appearing as a musician on many albums, including David Byrne's "Feelings", on Nirvana's "Unplugged in New York", to name but a few.

Her first solo album contains "musings, explorations, meditations, ramblings and a spooky folk song", and it is indeed a compilation of very personal approaches both to music and to the instrument. Stylistically, the music is beyond any concept of genre: influences from classical music, rock and even drone music are apparent, Even if she integrates all these genres well, she does not seek out the boundaries of music, or the point at which known sounds offer something radically new (unlike for instance Okkyung Lee), but is clearly not the ambition, nor does she venture into the sentimental solo cello kitsch that you can hear so often (just listen to Maya Beiser's recent "Uncovered"). Goldston does her own thing, in a very honest and authtentic way. It is nice, beautiful and very pleasant to listen to.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Going Solo

A round up of some intriguing solo recordings that have come to our attention in recent months.

By Paul Acquaro

Vinny Golia - Solo (Gold Lion Arts, 2015) ****

Get it while you can! This treat of a tape release from Gold Lion Arts is a scant run of 75 copies. Featuring the always excellent Vinny Golia on singing bowls and various woodwinds, Solo is 30 intimate minutes of performance. Side A features an intense sax workout, that after reaching the apex, is followed by what sounds like a wood flute or recorder and then the clarinet (Golia has an amazing assortment of wind instruments). Side B is a continuation, where Golia breaks out the bass clarinet (always a joy to hear!). 

More info

Amy Reed - Gold Lion (Gold Lion Arts, 2015) ***½

Amy Reed is a guitarist and painter from Sacramento, California, home to the Gold Lion Arts performance space where she recorded this evocative solo guitar piece. Like some of her paintings, in which the abstract is met with precise strokes of paint and large open spaces, her extended technique solo guitar work takes advantage of similar motifs. The short tape release sees Reed creating an expectant atmosphere, pulling out all sorts of sounds from her instrument, from long pendulous swings to fine crackling bursts of bristling notes.

More info

Paulo Chagas - Live Solo (Plus Timbre, 2014) ****

Am I biased on this one? Sure, why not. I had the honor of writing liner notes for Chagas' album Solo Saxophone, which I enjoyed greatly, and so chances were low that I not enjoy this follow up live album. Recorded live in the studio, the tone is dry and the sound clear and the album captures Chagas’ imaginative playing in intimate detail ... and it all starts with a squeak. The intro track sets the mood and clears the palette. The follow up ‘Pentola' begins with a gentle melody as Chagas introduces rhythmic breaks and stops to give the music a certain buoyancy. The melodies unfold with their own internal logic, and though you may wonder where you are by the end of the tune, you have no problem knowing how you got there. Enjoy (it’s a free download).

Keir Neuringer - Ceremonies out of the Air (New Atlantis, 2014) ****

My colleague Stefan already reviewed this one a few months ago, but I wanted to revisit it as I have now had a chance to catch the saxophonist play a couple of times, each time coming away more and more impressed. Ceremonies Out of the Air really crept up on me slowly. The music comes from somewhere deep and personal, as its creation has a lot to do with the emotions surrounding the passing of his mother. While there are moments of mourning, the music rather is a huge, deep, breath that just pours generously out over the course of the double album.

Will Guthrie - Stepped Stoned (Astral Projections, 2014) ***½

Will Guthrie is a France based drummer who works with several different groups like the Ames Room and Ellwood & Guthrie, but who also has been amassing a body of solo work. I wrote about his last album Sticks and Stones and Breaking Bones in 2012 and am happy to be following up with Stepped Stoned. Side one of this tape release takes a while to pick up, about four minutes of nearly silent tape runs, with a small sound growing stronger until a strain of incessant clatter, atmospheric cymbals and ghostly kick drum hits fill the space. About five minutes into side two (a continuation of side one), Guthrie involves more and more of the kit, until hitting a peak and slowly coming down. A captivating listen.

Scott Munro - Monty (Bug Incision, 2014) ***½

Recorded live in Calgary, Scott Munro creates something otherworldly with his baritone guitar. It’s a morphing shape of sound, sculpted from feedback and scratches, drones and percussive hits. Track one is slow, ambient, lugubrious, playing out over fifteen minutes. Track two begins with scattered picking, like a shower of broken glass, and about 5 minutes he begins introducing drone tones and sharp edged tonal clusters. The song fades into white noise … haunting.

Wilhelm Matthies - Breathing (Dark Pebble, Blue Wave, 2014) ***

Something utterly intriguing about Wilhelm Matthies solo album is that he has developed his own instrument - the 'mosesa' - which is a stringed instrument and as you can hear, he uses a bow to pull out tones in range similar to a cello, but that seems to be about where the similarities end. The music is about breathing, it feels organic, and though it does not have a melody or tempo, it draws you in in an unusual way. I think the best thing to do is to experience it:

Erik Friedlander - Illuminations (2015) ****

This solo cello album is utterly gorgeous. Straddling a line between classical and world music, Friedlander digs deep into the instrument and delivers an album of stunningly beautiful melodies and captivating motion. The rich tone he gets from the cello is reason enough to hear the album. I just wanted to give this one a quick mention in this solo round up - Illuminations should be receiving a longer review on the blog soon.

Mirbeau - White Blues (s/r, 2014) ***½

Mirbeau is a guitarist living in Brooklyn. His solo EP recording is a crispy, crunchy, free form blast of guitar that should provides quick satisfaction to the thirsty sonic adventurer. Though he is referencing track names from Miles Davis' cool jazz period (Cookin, Walkin, Steamin, Relaxin), the four short tracks on White Blues are all his own.

Brian Chase: Bass Drum Drone 

A little while back, drummer Brian Chase, who works with the group the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs shared some solo percussion/drone music and video pieces that he had been working on. About the project, he writes "in the sound from one drum there are a near infinite amount of tones. Drums and Drones explores the space inside the sound of a drum". Enjoy:

From Drums & Drones. Music by Brian Chase, drummer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, video by New York video artist Ursula Scherrer.

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Okkyung Lee - Ghil (Editions Mego, 2013) ****½

By Stef

It isn't noise, it's something else, growing from the inside, something incredibly physical and emotional at the same time, like extreme bodily tension and nervous stress mutually reinforcing each other, with strings tight as tendons, muscles wired by the electrical discharges of neurons, full of anger and confusion, it's visceral and intense, hoping somehow for relief yet there is only one alternative, to build up more energy and more hypnotic dynamics of raw abrasiveness, of making bow and strings collide and tear and fight to express the thing that cannot be explained, that cannot be understood even, yet that needs to be said and brought out in the open, through wood and guts and hairs in fierce contempt for all that came before, giving birth to sounds that never touched air and ears before, like yawns and rumbles and shouts, screams and whispers, powerful and soft at the same time, fingers hammering and carressing, ....

.... in sum, she pushes herself and her instrument to the extreme, like the Jimi Hendrix of the cello, reinventing the instrument and its language.

An incredible statement, so radical that you either love it or hate it, but next time you'll listen to other conntemporary cellists, like Ernst Reijseger, or Erik Friedlander, or Vincent Courtois, or Daniel Levin, or even Fred Lonberg-Holm, you risk to find them too tender and traditional ....

Listen to "Meolly Ganeun", one of my favorite tracks on the LP.

 

Available at instantjazz.com.

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Daniel Levin - Inner Landscape (Clean Feed, 2011) ****

By Stef

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading the book "The Cello Suites" by Eric Siblin, a rock journalist who shares his pursuit of the essence of Bach's cello suites in a quite readable and informative book. He gives the background of Bach's life and the context in which the cello suites were composed, as well as their discovery by cellist Pablo Casals and the latter's life with the background of Europe's history of the 20th Century. A highly recommendable book about music that still hits the iTunes charts regularly, and Yo-Yo Ma's performance is on the number ten spot of all-time iTunes classical album downloads.

What Daniel Levin brings, is anything not Bach, far from it, improvising six pieces without any preconceived plan, like a "monologue intérieur", expanding on the ideas that pop us in his head, the surprises that come from the strings, the bow and his fingers. The biggest challenge for any musician in a situation like this, is to fall back on patterns or on automatisms in the fingers. Luckily Levin is too good an improviser to fall into that trap. His concentration and ongoing effort to go beyond this is remarkable, using all his skills and creativity to bring something new and fresh with every "landscape" as all pieces are called.

What he does have in common with Bach, is a great sense of austerity, quite cerebral at times, with no room for cheapness, loss of concentration or sentimentalism. This is music that requires several listens to really get into, because there are no patterns at all : you can have the traditional and familiar aesthetics of the bowed strings, yet the next moment Levin takes you into novel and uncharted territories, with high intervallic jumps, double stops, pizzi, glissandi of identical notes on two strings, from light touch to brutal noise, but he does it in such a subtle and sensitive way, that you feel welcome to join. This is mature and open-hearted music. A really strong album.

Buy from Instantjazz.

Click on the "Solo Cello" tag below to view more solo cello albums.

© stef

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Vincent Courtois - L'Imprévu (La Buissone, 2011) ****½

By Stef

Two years ago, French cellist François Courtois released the stellar "As Soon As Possible" with Ellery Eskelin on sax and Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, and also the somewhat disappointing "L'Homme Avion", a mixture of musical styles with African poetry, and a little bit too much of too much.

Now he's back with an album that is really focused on his key strengths : incredible skills on his instruments, full of lyricism and emotional power, and more importantly, a very subtle sense of musicality, minimalist, austere and deep.

Courtois' technique and compositions/improvisations vary a lot without losing coherence, ranging from the more classical pieces, with lots of inherent drama, like the phenomenal title track, to the more fun pizzi pieces such as "No Smoking", with other compositions more repetitive in nature (à la Glass, Reich, ...) or impressionistic with overdubs of several layers of recorded cello.

The end result is at times astonishing, especially in the more "classical" pieces, full of sensitive aesthetics, but regardless of the approach, Courtois is a superb story-teller, setting the scene, developing it, adding material, working toward peaks of intensity, nicely contrasted with moments of restrained beauty.

Buy from Instantjazz.

Below a somewhat older performance by Courtois that is rawer than this album

    

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Erik Friedlander

No doubt one of the most prominent cello-players in modern jazz, and an essential part of the overall sound of John Zorn's musical universe, Erik Friedlander has turned fifty, and for the occasion he brings us two albums. He has been searching for his own voice as a musician, hesitating between the jazzy "Broken Arm Trio", the more ambitious "classical" sound of "Grains Of Paradise", or the more modern studio work like "Block Ice & Propane", or avant-garde work as with Dani or Teardo. His work with the Masada String Trio is possibly the easiest to recommend.

Erik Friedlander - 50 Miniatures For Improvising Quintet (Skipstone, 2010) ****

Fifty short pieces of music are clustered in seven groups of seven pieces, plus one at the end to round it off. The structure is inspired by the "50 Gates Of Understanding": 49 days of self-evaluation and character development undertaken by Moses and the Israelites during the Exodus. After seven weeks, they were ready to receive the covenant, the "10 Commandments", on the 50th day. Apart from this being mentioned in the liner notes, I am not sure how this information is relevant for the music.

Sure, there are the obligatory klezmer influences, but the overall sound does not sound religious at all. And that's probably a good thing. The band is Jennifer Choi on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, Trevor Dunn on bass, and Mike Sarin on percussion.

Despite the incredible short length of the pieces, the overall result is quite coherent, with sometimes sudden unexpected violent intrusion in more sensitive pieces, but the contrast works well. Not only is the playing excellent, but Friedlander is full of musical ideas, sufficiently so to make the short snippets of music - sometimes quite structured, sometimes seemingly improvised - utterly compelling.

The only downside of the approach is the total impossibility to expand on any given idea, somehow crucial to jazz, reducing the identification of the listener with the music, or to say it differently, not long enough to allow the listener to become truly part of the music. Each time you start to be in the tune, it's already gone, evaporated, sucked up by the past. And that effect is possibly what it may feel like to become fifty: time flows by, ungraspable, and it's gone before you know it.


Erik Friedlander - Alchemy (Skipstone, 2010) ***½

Originally only released on vinyl, this album brings a collection of moody and sad pieces, primarily played by Friedlander on cello with overdubs, and with Teho Teardo on keyboards and guitar on "The Wrong Answers".The music is almost like a soundtrack, full of direct emotions and easy to remember themes, quite accessible and atmospheric. Friedlander's playing  - on especially the opening track - is absolutely fabulous. Against the quiet and softly plucked backdrop, his arco will drag you from dark deep tones to heart-piercing and precise high tones, all in one natural and effortless movement.

Several of the tracks are dedicated to or inspired by authors : Ken Follett, Robert Frost, Cormac McCarthy, John Berryman.

Luckily it is not all misery and sadness, pieces like "Wag" often a fun change, "Lee Av" is a gospel tune, and because of its predictable harmonics somewhat less interesting, "Folly" is a short piece with eery electronics.

It is good, but not essential in Friedlander's discography. 

Erik Friedlander - Aching Sarah (Skipstone, 2010)

A digital single, released earlier this year, and freely downloadable from the artist's website, with Erik Friedlander, cello, electronics and piano programming, Michael Leonhart on trumpet and mellophone, Trevor Dunn on acoustic bass, and Satoshi Takeishi on percussion. Nice and sweet.

Listen and/or download the track here.

Listen and download all albums from Erik Friedlander's website.


Watch a great solo clip by Friedlander

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Ernst Reijseger - Tell Me Everything (Winter & Winter, 2008) ****

More than ten years after his first solo recording, Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger is back with an album of the same intensity, albeit with improvisations that are much more mature and balanced. The first piece is relatively free, with birds singing in the background, with the cello sounding equally natural on pizzi. The second piece starts a little avant, but then moves into some arco playing with phrases that refer to Bach's cello suites in spirit, with repetitive hypnotism of Glass, but played in much more raw and piercing way, sensitive and hard at the same time. The third piece consists of strumming of several strings at the same time, guitar-style, with a repetitive rhythm and barely yet continuously changing harmonics, yet breaking the slow progress with increased powerplay in the middle piece, then falling back into more subtle approach. The fourth piece, "Tristan's Tune", starts more joyful, with a nice dancing melody, alternating arco with pizzi touches, yet then evolves into the deeper and darker regions for some wonderful arco playing, then resurfacing near the end, reclaiming the folky tune, yet a little scarred and battered. The last track, "Tell Me Everything", revisits the Bach-like approach, but then extensively, poignantly, even more powerful. You get the gist: lots of skills, borrowing from the classical heritage to jazz and avant-garde, lots of variations - both musically and emotionally, lots of musical creativity and insights. As I'm sure I wrote earlier, there are very few things that are more emotionally gripping and vulnerable than just one artist playing his instrument, in total freedom and control. Very few manage to keep it captivating, but Reijseger certainly does. He is an artist with a stories to tell, in his own voice, full of passion and ideas ... and the birds, they keep singing ....

Listen to an excerpt from "Tell Me Everything"




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Philip Glass - Songs And Poems (Orange Mountain, 2008) ***** & **

Many years ago I switched on the radio and I heard this repetitive violin sequence, which just kept repeating and repeating itself, with once in a while a little change: it was both hypnotic and ununderstandable. I was hesitating whether it was a stuck record that the radio channel did not notice, but that could not be it, because of those changes. I listened to the whole twenty minute piece, totally mesmerized. It was Philip Glass's "Einstein On The Beach", a wonderful record, a unique listening experience. One of the things that truly get me is what madness, what unbelievable concentration it must require from the musicians to play these lengthy pieces with so little variation. In the meantime, Glass became more famous than any other current classical composer, maybe next to Michael Nyman, because they both write film scores.

Now there is this "Songs And Poems", written for solo cello, and one not to be missed. Unlike many other Glass compositions, the music is hardly repetitive. There are repetitions of course, but then more Bach-like, as musical patterns to play with and explore. As can expected from pieces for this instrument, there is some melancholy to be heard, some dark feelings even, in the middle part and towards the end, but the overall trend is classical in its severe structural approach, its finesse and refinement. Wendy Sutter, also a cellist in "Bang On A Can", is absolutely fabulous on this album: precise, sensitive, and with a great sense of pace. Sutter plays on her "ex vatican stradivarius" from 1620, a unique instrument with a deep and very warm sound.

So far so good, then comes the cold shower: the last four tracks are no longer solo, but pieces from "Naqoyqatsi" that were not used in the movie, on which Sutter is accompanied by David Cossin on percussion and by Glass on piano. Those pieces create a bizarre musical conflict with the rest of the album. They are totally different in style and approach, more romantic, less austere, less dramatic.

I find it mind-boggling that labels can be so stupid and irrespectful, to musicians, but especially to listeners, to break the coherence of such a wonderful album. Nothing wrong with the last four tracks by themselves, but the context is totally wrong. It's like adding some unused Beatles '62 tracks to Sergeant Pepper's just because there was some space left at the end of the album! Who cares if the album is just thirty minutes long? As long as it's good! It drove me up the wall when I heard those additional tracks. And truth be told, I find the terribly kitschy artwork on the album cover as repulsive, and again in total contradiction with the quality of the music. But that should not deter you from buying this album. Do like me: re-record it and delete the last four tracks. You will be holding a true gem in your hands.

Listen and download (the first 7 tracks) from iTunes.


© stef

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