Solo Violin

 By Stef Gijssels

As usual we present an overview of solo albums, this time on violin. Again, there's a variety of approaches to the instrument and to music, from the 'pure' classical sounds over raw explorations to multilayered electronically processed music. Regardless of the approach, all albums are worth mentioning, especially because of the strong musical characters of the artists, who, each with their own vision of what the instrument may deliver, show us unexpected aural vistas. 

Mark Feldman - Sounding Point (Intakt, 2020)

Mark Feldman is possibly best known for his collaborations with John Zorn's Bar Kokhba ensemble or the Masada String Trio, or from his collaborations with Chris Potter. On our blog we have especially reviewed his many collaborations with his partner pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. It was also on Tzadik that he released his first solo album in 1995, called "Music For Violin Alone", and we had to wait a long time indeed for his sophomore solo album. "Sounding Point" is excellent by any measure. Feldman's compositions are closer to modern classical music than to jazz, and his technique is often astonishing. 

Despite the gravitas, austerity and intensity of many of the pieces, he is also a master at not taking himself too seriously, as he can interject some moments of fun too. He uses overdubs on some tracks, such as the Ornette Coleman composition "Peace Warriors", on which he sounds like an ensemble all by himself when playing the theme. "Maniac" and "The New Normal" are my favourite tracks, the former characterised by a repetitive theme, the latter by the highly unusual extended flageolet sounds. 

Fans of violin and of Feldman, should listen to this. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Yasmine Azaiez - Everyday Things (Sirulita, 2019)

Tunesian violinist Yasmine Azaiez is the surprise in this list. This is her second solo album, next to two performences with Agustí Fernández. It is no surprise her second solo album is also released on the Spanish pianist's label. 

She describes herself as a Classical musician, a Middle Eastern improvisor and a Free Jazz improvisor: "Each note I play exhibits my love of extended techniques I have worked on over the years, my respect I have for the musicians who have inspired me, and my unique {perhaps bizarre} style of playing. As a person, I am dark, glamorous, curious, and quirky. And thats exactly how I intend my music to be. Enjoy my nonsense".

On "Everyday Things" she presents her music as very adventurous and eclectic, indeed bringing together sounds and approaches from various genres and times, in a very intense and uncompromising way. That last part is really to her credit. She will not be a crowd-pleaser, but the character of her music will hopefully give her wider exposure to fans with open ears. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Frantz Loriot - While Whirling (Thin Wrist, 2021)

French-Japanese violist Frantz Loriot is a third-generation classically-trained musician, who has tried to "unlearn" his schooling to find his own creative voice. "While Whirling" is Loriot’s second solo album after "Reflections On An Introspective Path".  

As we have mentioned in earlier reviews, this voice is radical and uncompromising in its timbral and musical explorations, bringing listeners into uncomfortable territory, requiring from them the same approach of letting go of the known to experience entirely novel sounds coming out of his viola. Despite the unusual sound, his improvisations are measured, well-paced, skill-fully navigating silence and coherent in their intent. Wether the howling foghorn on "On The Lawns Of Insomnia", the skittering scratching on "A Throbbing Whisper" or the high-pitched whistling on "Smiling With Unseen Weight", the listener moves from one sonic surprise to the next, participating in a kaleidoscopic change of emotional colour. 

The liner notes mention his indebtedness to Barre Philips, Joëlle Léandre and David S. Ware for their approach to music and sound. From what I understand it actually means to give yourself fully, both physically, emotionally and intellectually. As the liner notes mention "Loriot supplemented his understanding of music’s force with realizations of vitality, awareness, and danger". Clearly, these three qualifiers are present here. 

The eight tracks of the album are titled by the lines of an Eliot Cardinaux poem: 

The world lifts the heart
while whirling
through westless rains
on the lawns of insomnia
a throbbing whisper
smiling with unseen weight
those exiled belongings
of many others whirling. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Sarah Bernstein - Exolinger (577 Records, 2020)

We reviewed American violinist, vocalist and poet before, with her quartet and her collaborations with Kid Millions. With "Exolinger" - which is also her moniker for solo performances - she releases her first solo album. Bernstein's sound is heavily processed through live electronics, resulting in layers of music that cannot always be perceived as coming from a violin, but that is the last of her worries. Her focus is on the music, on its uncanny, eery and sometimes dark ominous voice. The music speaks of despair and loneliness, in a loud, extravert way. She gives a total musical performance that is rich and compelling. Purists of the violin may not find much to their liking here, but fans of uncompromising and infectious music will find a lot to savour. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Stanisław Słowiński – Solo Violin Avantgarde (Infra Art, 2020)

Polish violinist Stanisław Słowiński demonstrates his skills on his second solo album. I am not sure what happened with the production of the album, but I would recommend interested listeners to skip the first track "Soul" (or is the third? there are apparently other versions circulating), and go directly to the second and folllowing pieces. It may be a question of taste, but the opening track with all its overdubs, its sentimental sense of drama and cheap crescendos is not something to my liking, and it may put many "avant-garde" listeners off. The other tracks demonstrate why Słowiński  received so many awards during his young career. You can hear that he may effortlessly play Bach's partitas as well as jazz and avant-garde. 

His compositions are interesting and wonderful to listen to, because it all comes so naturally and lyrical to him. At times he uses overdubs as on "Reflection". 

Fascinating music by a true virtuoso. 

Gabby Fluke-Mogul - Threshold (Relative Pitch, 2021)

Gabby Fluke-Mogul is a young American violinist who has so far released three solo albums in the past two years. Their sound is very special and unique: raw and abrasive, unpredictable and inventive. It is in-the-moment improvisation without compromising for audience expectations. Their improvisations are all musical narratives, following their own logic and story-line, with often unexpected turns and twists but coherent overall.  

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Phil Wachsmann - Writing In The Water (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2020) 

The first name coming up when thinking of violin in free improvisation is without a doubt Phil Wachsmann, whose first album already dates from 1973, and who is credited on no less than 270 releases (according to Discogs). We can thank Corbett vs. Dempsey to have re-issued this album, originally dating from 1985. 

It shows us Wachsmann in great shape and creativity, using his instrument and electronics in their widest array possible, moving easily from classical to noise as if genres and agreed musical notions did not exist, demonstrating that he is one of the true masters of the instrument in improvised settings. The original album mentions "solo violin coupled variously with live electronics and pre-recorded tape to provide a panoply of sounds, including, towards the end of the long title piece, suggestions of the ghost in the machine."

To my knowledge this is his one of his two solo albums, together with Chathuna from 1996. 

The music was recorded live during a performance at the Actual Festival, London on 7 September 1984.

A must-have for fans of freely improvised violin. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Biliana Voutchkova - Seeds Of Songs (Takuroku, 2021) 

Bulgarian violinist Biliana Voutchkova was also inspired/encouraged/forced by the pandemic to release another solo album. 

Her words say it all: "Seeds of Songs is a kind of aural chronological retrospective of the year of Corona. For the first lockdown months which started back in March 2020, my creativity literally froze. When all my concerts and activities got canceled, faced with these shocking at the time situation, I lost motivation to work or produce anything and lured myself into the pleasure of sudden free time, connecting daily to the beauty of spring. I slowed down, observed, and I listened - to the world within and outside, to my thoughts, my heart, my mood, my close and distant surroundings, to the sounds heard each day and night at my home, in the presence of no one besides my children… my listening became deeper, undisturbed, conscious, lovable. And before I even knew it, it connected strongly to the process of creation of this album."

The long single track on the album is actually a collage of snippets of sound, vocal pieces, violin, ambient sounds and objects, put together into one narrative or musical suite. Some moments are gut-wrenching, some closer to noise, others more intimate and subdued. 

Only digital version available from the label. 

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Samara Lubelski - Partial Infinite Sequence (Relative Pitch, 2020) ***½

By Keith Prosk

Samara Lubelski generates polyrhythms of pulses through effects-laden violin shredding on the solo Partial Infinite Sequence. For decades, the multi-instrumentalist has collaborated with alternative and experimental jazz and rock royalty like God Is My Co-Pilot, Tara Jane O’Neil (plus The Sonora Pine), Thurston Moore, Marcia Bassett, Bill Nace (who contributes the cover art), and Nate Wooley (who contributes the liner notes). Carving out a singular, often electric voice on the violin that is more rooted in folk and noise and pure sound than jazz or classical, deftly demonstrated on Partial Infinite Sequence.

From the first seconds, the sound is drowned in amplified delay-based effects. Phasing and reverberating. The feel is ghostly in its wails, cavernous in its echo, psychedelic in its altered acoustics, battish in its erratic flitting squeaking, cosmic and nocturnal. The acoustic input is most often a rapid fiddling, reducing the characteristic sustain of the violin to nearly discrete peaks and valleys of a wave, obscuring its timbral identity. The processed acoustic signals explode into electric pulses at different times behind them, not so much recognizable waves but more closely percussive echoes. And all this on a substrate of some almost inaudible longform phaser, like the hum of the amp. So there’s at least three lines heard, though at times four or five as delay seems to multiply pulses of different frequencies. It is a dense and rapid polyrhythm to pick apart.

I suspect the two tracks, both seventeen and a half minutes, are like two takes. This is labeled as free improvisation but there’s certainly a firm set of conditions for this music. The instrumentation, the technique, the effects, the time, the result. If Lubelski actually follows the idea of a sequence, it would be interesting to hear additional parts to better characterize the distinct natures of these two parts. For now, Partial Infinite Sequence showcases a dense conceptual construction of rhythm that’s well worth continued exploration from both listeners and the musician.

Partial Infinite Sequence is available on CD and digitally.

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Sarah-Jane Summers - Kalopsia (Dell Daisy, 2019)

By Stef

Sarah-Jane Summers may not be a familiar name. Classically trained, member of the Bozzini quartet, she is also trained in the typical Scottish Highland's type of folk music. She lives in Norway and is married to Finnish guitarist Juhani Sivola, and her musical output combines all this. This means that you may be in for some surprises.

"Kalopsia" is a solo album, with the artist playing both viola and violin, and consists of fourteen solo improvisations that clock around two to three minutes each. The first four tracks offer very modern, avant-garde soloing that explores timbre and adds rhythmic and technical complexities making them a fascinating listen. On the fifth track, Petrichor, she delves into folk music, sweet and gentle, like a lullabye, and it is the only composition that is not directly adventurous or avant-garde. It is is followed by Susurrus, a dark piece, barely recognizable as emanating from a violin, with muted scrapings creating an uncanny sense of dread, a comparable approach to the much deeper tension on the strings of Letophobia. Hiraeth is a multilayered melancholy piece.

Meraki is built around a repetitive phrase on several strings with a high-pitched tone dancing around it. Its title is a Greek word that describes what happens when you leave a piece of yourself (your soul, creativity or love) in your work, and this works is quite well illustrates her approach.

Each of the fourteen musical miniatures that she offers us here has its own character and story, and her art is so strong that despite the shortness of the improvisation, she manages to make it compelling and gripping.

Her first solo album, Virr, received positive acclaim. I think this one is even better.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

 

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Solo Violin

By Stef Gijssels

Solo violin albums come in many shapes and forms, from the austere acoustic classical sounds to the most opaque multi-layered electronically enhanced wall of sound, performed again by a range of musicians with different skills, classically trained or iconoclasts who turn their sense of music into something new. Regardless of their angle of approach, the music can be fascinating.


Tiago Morais Morgado - 2 Solos,  Cálice (Requiem Para Um Sonho) (Nachtstück Records, 2018)  Basket Of Loose Recordings (extended version) - Viola Solos (Nachtstück, 2017)

One of the most prolific iconoclasts of the moment is computer scientist Tiago Morais Morgado, hailing from Braga in Portugal, and without a doubt one of the most passionate musicians around. I think he only gets beaten by Noël Akchoté in the number of Bandcamp recordings that you can download, now released through his own Nachtstück label. Morais Morgado is a collector of ideas, a transformer of known phrases - Bach comes through especially in repetetitive chordal arpeggios - yet he pushes the boundaries into a raw and authentic avant-garde delivery, with respect, with vision and sensitivity. The advantage of the 'digital only release' is that the music is not confined to a material context. Some 'albums' have only a few short tracks, others - such as the aptly titled 'Loose Recordings' - have more tracks than a CD could contain. 

All this results in a music that is incredibly captivating, welcoming and disorienting. The "2 Solos - Collection of Improvisation for Viola and Electrionics" album for instance starts with solo acoustic violin, digging into the classical heritage, and gradually the sonic environment becomes harsher, more direct, less pleasant, yet more expressive, with additional violins being dubbed in, evolving on the second track towards a one-man symphony orchestra sounding like a trip to the end of the universe. The two relatively short tracks take the listener from a very intimate sensitivity to an overwhelming and overpowering distance. Amazing ...

The "Basket of Loose Recordings", with the shopping cart on the cover, brings no less than 27 pieces, between one and six minutes long. The violinist's sound is acoustic, dubbed, with ambient sounds such a road traffic or crickets thrown with great effect. His sound is mostly raw and austere, building repetitive phrases upon repetitive phrases, once in a while adding more sentimental romantic vibratos or scraping sounds as if the strings are being stretched to breaking point with the bow used as a lever under the strings (my interpretation). In many of the pieces the same ingredients re-appear in slightly different forms, showing the artist's efforts and try-outs. Should all this be recorded and made available? Well, the quality and the passion and the vision are so great that even these bits and pieces all in a row make for interesting listening. 

"Cálice (Requiem Para Um Sonho)" is a short album released earlier this year with five pieces totalling eleven minutes of music. All the pieces are very intimate and close to the listener, hypnotic and dramatic at times, always intense and unpredictable. 

You cannot but admire the man's passion for music, and his relentless search for his own sound and expression. It's about him and his instrument, and it's clear that the last thing he cares about is what people might think of his music, he's not here to impress or show off, or even to demonstrate his skills, he's on a solitary journey, playing and perfecting his art somewhere in his room, all by himself and his violin, recording it, and sharing it with us. And we can only be happy to hear it all. A real treat. 

Benedict Taylor - Solstice (Nachtstück Records, 2018)

This must be the British viola player's 7th solo album. Taylor is a classically trained musician, who added some years of formal education in ethnomusicology. In contrast to his current work as a composer for film and theatre, his solo performances are much more idiosyncratic, personal investigations of sound and texture. His playing is austere, harsh even, and complex, often played on several strings, and he appears to love the physical resistance of his bow against the strings, as much as he likes glissandi. This exploration results in a kind of parlando discourse, as if he's speaking with his viola rather than sing with it. You get to hear personal stories, that hesitate, stop, continue, stutter and go in different directions. This will not be to everyone's taste: it's the kind of music that deserves full attention by the listener, and that's a good thing.


  Laura Schuler - Elements And Songs (Veto, 2018)

She picked up violin lessens at age seven, and quit her classical training at age sixteen, fed up with it, until she was asked to perform in a band and just play music by ear. That pleased her and gradually she started to recognise the value of improvisation and of her instrument as more than just strings and a bow. Now, German Laura Schuler releases her first solo album on the Swiss Veto label, and also has a new album with her quintet.

Her music is audacious and very personal. She sings along with her improvisations, she performs with very high intenity, adding percussion once in a while.

The music on the album is inspired by the 'I Ching', the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, also offering the names of most tracks: "Kün" is the receptive earth, 'Dui' the joyous lake, "Xun" the gentle breeze, 'Qian' the creative heaven, "Li" the bright fire.

Schuler's music is creative, very special and unique in its own genre, yet at the same time inviting the listener in with gentleness. She loves her violin, and lets it show the myriad of sonic possibilities that it has to offer, from classical lyricism to more atonal modern work or outlandish explorations beyond the known. Listen and enjoy.


Irvine Arditti -  Caprices (Aeon, 2017)

This is a little outside of the music that we generally write about, yet worth mentioning in this list. Irvine Ariditti is the legendary leader of the Arditti Quartet, one of the leading contemporary classical string quartets, but his solo album stands out from this work, offering performances of compositions by Boulez, Elliott Carter, Emmanuel Nunes and Salvatore Sciarrino. The interesting thing is that these compositions were written specifically for Arditti to perform. The stylistic differences between the four composers are quite obvious when listening to the album, but Arditti's incredible skills on the instrument, and his personal interpretation of the material keeps the album very coherent and strong.

Recommended for fans of modern music, and of the violin.


Olivia De Prato - Streya (New Focus, 2018)

Another classical violinist on our list here is Olivia De Prato, Austrian-Italian but now living in New York. She is the founder and member of the Mivos Quartet. On this album she takes her art a step further, and much further than Arditti, if only because of the use of electronics. The music is also composed, but by some of the most avant-garde classical composers of the moment: Reiko Füting, Missy Mazzoli, Taylor Brook, Ned Rothenberg, Victor Lowrie, and Samson Young.

Her approach to the music is gentle and forceful. She plays with precision yet dares color outside the lines, by having a very physical attack of her instrument. Her playing is a pleasure to listen to, even if her choice of the different pieces is quite wide in terms of sound. Especially the last composition by Missy Mazzolli is of a totally different nature, a mellow and overly dramatic piece that sounds like a full orchestra with choir, and is in too much contrast with the rest of the album to make it really coherent.

Maria da Rocha - Beetroot & Other Stories (Shhpuma, 2018)

This album was reviewed earlier this year by Gregg Miller, but I just want to add my appreciation for her music, and we end where we started: in Portugal. Da Rocha's use of electronics offers a more cinematic and dense music than you would expect from a solo violin album, but that makes her music probably even more interesting. One of the most admirable aspects of her art is its singular vision: a wall of sound is created that hovers between minimalism, ambient, drone and classical without chosing sides, but rather merges into deeply resonating sonic waves with a strong emotional component: dark fear ("Lost", "Vertigo") and dreamlike sequences ("Diving", "Melancholia"), and the unsurpassed "Le Fenix" that creates deep emotions that are not yet named.

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Maria da Rocha - Beetroot & Other Stories (Shhhpuma, 2018) ****

By Gregg Miller

Really gorgeous; a combination of bitter and sweet, electric and acoustic, elegiac medieval and of the moment. A solo effort, Portuguese musician Maria da Rocha, based in Berlin, plays synthesizer and violin with various processors and pedal effects. She also plays viola on one track. There is not a whit of silence on the record, always the synth coats the sonic background like an underpainting, over which da Rocha improvises her sorrow and grit.

If we were looking for a genre, this recording would be more or less modern, minimal classical, but for the electronic effects, some rhythmic, but mostly not, which say: “electro-acoustic.” Not spacious like Cardew’s Treatises, it feels more like the backtrack of dance music if we were to remove all the pulse, time, and chords. Mostly the recording is experimental in the sense of testing out a narrow, refined range of tones and timbres. She paints sonic landscapes. It’s not pretty, nor particularly foreboding. We’re neither dancing, nor lying down. Standing still, the landscape changes incrementally, and if we notice the changes, it is usually too late. The sound leaves impressions of dry leaves or, at other times, of water being sucked down a hole or washing over one’s mind, or of autistic machines at war with themselves, or of totalizing moods and the struggle for release, tone drones and the power to make and unmake them. It is a balancing which is neither painful nor saccharin, never the same, but never self-distracting. It might just be urban film music: Portraits of stark longing and finitude, and a grace that is permitted to us, we fallible humans.

The record opens (Lumen) with crackling electronically generated energy and power, a couple slow blasts of space invaders, which cools to a pitch of processed violin echo, underchant and reverb. Slow synth crescendos with crunchy weather, objects beaten. Shifting higher synth over lower register acoustic long tones, a short motive cycle quieting to the peaceful low of train chugging and wind.

The second track (Wave) offers soft pulses, subtle alterations, variations of tone and off-kilter, full but subtle bass pedal with occasional major assertions of a very classical, lovely violin line. Enter something like a card stuck in bicycle spokes which turns into an algorithmic pulse— head-bobbing if not fully danceable. Sustained electric highs, lows, rhythmic pulls in the mids. It feels like the ocean, but a machine ocean, an encompassing somewhat claustrophobic world bordering on brittle. The highs and extreme lows pull away, the bicycle stops spinning, only to re-enter and we’re left with the throbbing middle propelling us forward like a ship’s engine.

The music continues like nature’s algorithms. The brief third track (Diving) in one long motion rents the mind like a cello on fire. Bristling, roiling heat and love and anguish. In the fourth track (Lost), the violin cries over a sputtering, air vibrating into a close hollow sending out a pitchless flutter. She scrapes the strings with her bow, a haunting, jagged line descends and fades to a couple of life-support beeps.

The promo material accompanying the CD supplies some background with respect to a story of a beet and a witch, and perhaps those icons enable the music-making. On the reception side, as the record moves along, what he have is a mood. Serene but energized; calm but with intent, sometimes advancing a warning. There is no panic, but there is longing, desire, and danger.

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Biliana Voutchkova - Modus of Raw (Evil Rabbit, 2016) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

Biliana Voutchkova is a classically-trained violinist-vocalist-composer-free-improviser, who describes beautifully her art in a short poem:

…my house is this huge wide
land of music,
with many rooms and many
open spaces,
with comforting cozy beds of
notes to rest on,
with cushy pillows of
silence all over,
with slow showers of sounds to
soak my body in,
with boiling tea pots at dark
corners seducing me
with their lovely melodies to sip from
their complex, but simple pleasure,
with loooo-oo-ong corridors of everlasting drowns
where entering eternity
comes natural...
there, in that house, i live my
exuberant life...

Voutchkova comes from a family of Bulgarian musicians, spent 14 years studying in the United States, where she expanded her interests in contemporary music and improvisation, and now resides in Berlin. She performs new works by contemporary composers for violin, often written specially for her, and works with performances work, reaching into the realm of dance and movements. She has collaborated with many innovative ensembles as Ensemble Modern, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Zeitkratzer and the composers-improvisers Splitter Orchestra, co-founded her dance-music groups GRAPESHADE and OSM (Open Sound & Movement collective) and performs regularly with clarinet player Michael Thieke (the duo released Already There, Flexion records, 2013).

For many years Voutchkova refused to release any of her improvisations, “believing that the live experience is so strong and vivid that it can never be recreated by a recording”. But on the summer of 2015 she was invited to a residency in the Swiss alps, where she enjoyed enough free time to think about her work and how she would like to continue. Being in nature all day also contributed to her decision to channel this creative energy and inspiration into a recording of playing solo constantly for about three hours, later edited down to the Modus of Raw.

Each of eight pieces suggests distinct ideas and sonic territory, all focused on her constant investigation on expanding the sonic possibilities of the violin while using an array of commanding, extended techniques, with her expressive voice. Voutchkova's art is totally personal, uncompromising, embraces chaos and weird, raw sounds and immediately gravitates for the most wildest terrains, but on the same time it is totally captivating with its great sense of invention and poetic playfulness. She moves freely from a disturbing drone, explored on the title-piece, to the twisted, layered melodies of the tensed and dramatic “Songs of Anxiety”, to a hyperactive blending of colliding bowing techniques on “Memory imprints” and sketching abstract sounds on exotic-sounding “Chaos & Beauty”.

The last two extended pieces offer more varied improvised strategies. “Gratitudes and sorrows” borrows techniques and ideas from the rich legacy of Norwegian hardanger fiddle, but juggles with the overtones and overlapping sounds in a complete different manner. Voutchkova fuses these sounds into a series of intense, strange-sounding yet equally-tempting shamanic dances. “Poschiavo medley”, after the Swiss Alpine town where she resided, weaves gently the local sounds of the city and nearby nature into a playful soundscpae where Voutchkova’s violin and voice attempt to assimilate with the winds, bird calls, church bells, patiently coloring and morphing the peaceful scenery with imaginative, new sounds and songs.

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Solo violin

By Stef

Solo violin, like solo cello, brings me back to Bach. As a kid, I was fascinated by Bach's Sonatas and Partita for Solo Violin, something my father, who was a classical music addict, found bizarre because he couldn't believe that the music's austerity and almost mathematical rigour would please someone my age. He had this Yehudi Menuhin album that I listened to with extreme pleasure. To me, it was the most jubilant music I had ever heard, pure and singing like no other music I knew. It was much better than all the other orchestral Bach stuff that my father adored. I liked the purity, the intimacy, the clarity, the simplicity maybe, and certainly its level of abstraction, doing away with all the superfluous, reducing music to its bare joyous essence. It had no intention to overpower me like the symphonies or concertos, quite to the contrary, it was uplifting, much closer somehow to me, and easier to identify with. To this day, solo violin albums attract me, for that reason, and let's start with a Bach album, totally out of my league, but still highly recommendable because it takes some more steps than you would expect.


Yuki Numata Resnick - For Ko (Innova, 2016) 

On this album, classical violinist Yuki Numata Resnick uses the Bach violin partitas as a springboard to extend the her approach to modern composers Caleb Burhans, Andrew Greenwald, Clara Ian- notta, and Matt Marks. Fans of Bach will probably be disappointed by these more modern additions, and not spontaneously be attracted to a piece with the title "Dead Wasps In The Jam Jar" or "Trunket's Sarabande", which is the tale of a monkey recited by her, and which lasts a horrifying eleven minutes. 

But her playing is absolutely wonderful and I think her choice of the more modern composers creates a great bridge between past and contemporary music without creating a conflict of style (apart from the monkey story!).


Biliana Voutchkova - Modus Of Raw (Evil Rabit, 2016)

Bulgarian violinist Biliana Voutchkova is probably more known in classical avant-garde circles than among the readers of this blog, but she shouldn't. In fact, again we can credit a free improv label such as Evil Rabbit to present us music coming from a different background. Voutchkova started playing the violin at the age of four, and accumulated all the classical awards that go with the training towards virtuoso level, releasing her first album at the age of sixteen.

On "Modus Of Raw", she shows her skills on the instrument, but after having unlearned all the key automatisms of the training. Her playing is unlyrical, not here to please, not here to bring what you expect, but offering a deeper, more vulnerable quality. The voice on her instrument is soft and wooden, resonating in multiple strings multiphonics, sometimes moving, sometimes hypnotic. She is so far away from classical violin that it's hard to describe the music, which is uniquely her own, offering an immediacy of experience that is further enhanced by her spontaneous singing that once in a while accompanies her instrument. The music is raw and pure at the same time, trying to catch the paradoxes that underly authentic emotions, suggested by titles such as "Chaos & Beauty", "Gratitude & Sorrows", "Songs of Anxiety".

A strong album.


Irene Kepl - Solo (Fou Records, 2016)

This album was reviewed earlier by Eyal Haruveni, so I won't go too much in depth, apart from re-iterating that it's worth looking for if you have open ears for new sounds on the instrument. Kepl is also classically trained, with ideas and music that are equally exploring as Voutchkova's, even her playing is in the higher regions, a little less abrasive, a little more fluid, maybe a litte less daring, a little more welcoming, although at times full of maddening intensity and lyrical beauty ... but don't take this in the classical sense, the motto still is : "Dancing on the edge is the only place to be" ... and that's where she recides, as should you ...

Fans of solo violin pieces should definitely try to get a copy.


Ilan Volkov - 16.2.17 (Otoroku, 2017)

Ilan Volkov is not known for his personal performances, as he is better known as the Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the Chief Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Interestingly, the Israeli conductor, also plays the violin, and in a style which might surprise his regular listeners. His CD output consists of Janacek, Schubert, Smetana, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Bloch, Strauss ... but then last year he released "Usurper with Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Eran Sachs and Ilan Volkov", categorised as non-music on Discogs, and showing a completely different face of the esteemed conductor. To be clear: his music is like a smash in the face, unnerving,  agitated, and as the label says, his "bow rasps and tears his un-tuned, un-tamed violin into fizzing electronic realms", but the references to AMM or Ute Kanngiesser or even Zorn are wrong. 

Volkov goes beyond this: his music is as irritating as it is interesting, it is destined to shock, its very 'raison d'être' is to destabilise and unsettle the listener while bringing something meaningful at the same time, a music that oscillate and shimmers, that sends electroacoustics waves through your ears and brain, sharing emotions that range from the nadir of despair to the zeniths of anxiety. 

Listeners with open minds, open ears and strong nerves will appreciate his music, and probably wonder where Janacek, Schubert, Smetana, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Bloch and Strauss have gone ...


Vanessa Rossetto - Rocinante (Bandcamp, 2017)

We all know Rocinante, the horse of Don Quixote, described in Wikipedia as "awkward, past his prime, and engaged in a task beyond his capacities". Obviously, the name also refers to Vanessa Rossetto, so there may be some self-mockery involved, although we don't know. She is an American composer, improviser and painter. She uses primarily chamber instrumentation, field recordings, electronics and a wide array of different objects exploring them through extended and traditional techniques and other methods of her own devising. She has had no formal training and only started with music in her thirties. She does not consider herself an improviser because she works hard to get the music the way it sounds, working on ideas, collecting sounds and then putting everything together in a longer whole. 

The music is a one-hour long discovery of sound, generated from a viola, cello and objects, drone-like, eery, industrial at times, quiet rustling at others, with the absolute impossibility of identifying the instruments she's using, although gradually, after about fourty minutes the sound of a bow on resonating strings becomes discernable, followed by silence, or barely audible silence because a faint sonic mist remains, gradually swelling again to an audible volume. 

She has released several solo albums and cassettes before, but mostly with musique concrète, sound snippets captured in real live circumstances and glued together into a larger collage, with rhythm and shifting colors and shadings. 


Stanislaw Slowinski - Solo (Self, 2017)

Another surprise comes from someone who has gone through substantial training on the instrument, and laureate of various violin prizes and competitions in his homeland Poland, such as the Grand Prix of the 39th International Junior Jazz Competition Jazz Juniors, Laureate of the Audience Award at the 1st International Zbigniew Seifert Jazz Violin Competition, Laureate of the Cracow 2014 Creative Scholarship, nominated in the categories "Violin" and "New Hope" in Top Jazz Forum readers. Next to being a member of the Sinfonietta Cracovia and the Krakow Chamber Orchestra, he also has his own bands, the Stanisław Słowiński Quintet and the J.A.S.S. Trio. 

On this short EP, he brings three pieces, with a strong foundation in classical music, but then moving it into today's sonority and dynamics, subtle, sensitive and controlled. I'm not sure how to classify the genre - not jazz, not free improv, not classical - but I'm sure you'll like it. 

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Angharad Davies - Six Studies (Confront, 2014) ****

By Stef

Listening to music is probably one of the strangest things in life, and when you listen a lot, you get used to newer things, different sounds that may be off-putting to many, yet that have an unmistakeable magic for others. This is one of those albums, that, despite their obvious simplicity, of one violinist playing alone, improvising alone, offers a entrancing complexity and artistry that goes far beyond the mediocre.

Angharad Davies uses extended techniques, like springs, plastic pegs, nail files, and other objects to limit and expand the sound of her violin, yet that is by itself neither unique nor the condition for good music - often even to the contrary - yet she makes it work, by the relentless intensity her music, the repetitive quality of the phrases, that barely move from their single tone center, yet offer timbral shades and slight variations in attack, that become enchanting after a while. This is minimalism, with fragile beauty and a wonderful contrast of lightness and gravitas. She calls them "studies", and maybe that's too humble a word for the performance, because even if there is some experimenting involved, the overall sound, the control and the end result can stand on their own.

In all honesty I prefer the album to the Youtube clip presenting its launch performance.

Jennifer Allum - Live Solo At Café OTO (FMA, 2014)

This short EP or fifteen minute free download gives a performance by violinist Jennifer Allum at Café OTO in London last year. Her sound is raw and harsh compared to the violin sounds of Angharad Davies, more physical, with shorter more powerful use of the bow, jumping off the strings in repetitive figures, that change ever so slightly, rarely playing one string at a time, but creating chords and phrases, sometimes even with a folksy undertone - but don't think you can dance on this music - and using dissonance as the key ingredient to her improvisation.

You can download it here for free.

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Borah Bergman & Stefano Pastor - Live At Tortona (Mutablemusic, 2009) ****

Piano and violin duets are quite rare in jazz, but this album shows that the format has something to offer. This duo is even more unusual because of the two musicians' idiosyncratic styles. Although considered a free jazz pianist, Bergman actually makes an amalgam of musical styles, being as versatile in classical modes (as on the last track), ragtime, blues, accompaniment for silent movies, romantic moments and pounding and swirling avant-garde. Not only does he do it all in one piece often, but even with both hands playing in different styles and epochs. And the great thing, he infuses his music with the occasional hint and moment of humor. Stefano Pastor is also in a different category: he plays the violin but the "voice" that he gives his instrument is unique: it sounds deep and full, something holding the middle between a clarinet and a soprano. I wondered before how he achieved this, and the liner notes solve part of the mystery : he uses "extremely rigid electric guitar strings" on his violin, which, with lots of practice, made him achieve this warm sound. His tone is more melancholy than Bergman's, yet it forms the perfect complement for the piano, and the way both musicians interact, dance around each other, mirror phrases and co-create, is a joy to hear. While their journey on this album indeed covers lots of ground, it still has a great balance between relatively accessible and "out there" moments, and maintaining a nice sense of intimacy all through the performance. The sudden sounds of the local church bell gives it an extra dimension of closeness and proximity.


Stefano Pastor - Chants (SLAM, 2009) ***

Earlier this year, Stefano Pastor also released a solo violin album, or almost, because he overdubs some tracks with guitar and mandolin. His music is improvised, on known themes, full of warm intimacy as said above, drenched in Italian folk and jazz tradition, full of melancholy, yet at the same time free as the wind. Not everything works though: five of the ten pieces have vocals, and sometimes move into totally different forms and styles, especially the last track. That being said, the album is a very daring and personal musical statement.

© stef

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Solo violin

Because I listened earlier today to L. Subramanian's solo violin album, I thought I would add a short memo  on the topic of this rare kind of performance.

Gunda Gottschalk's Wassermonde, dating from 2004, is one I recently discovered, and also highly recommended for the more adventurous listeners.

Here is a limited list of jazz solo violin albums.

• Mark Feldman - Music For Violin Alone
• C. Spencer Yeh - Solo Violin
• Polly Bradfield - Solo Violin Improvisations
• Zbigniew Seifert - Solo Violin
• Leroy Jenkins - Solo Concert
• Leroy Jenkins - Solo
• Billy Bang - Distinction without a Difference
• Billy Bang - Commandment
• Gunda Gottschalk - Wassermonde
• Stefano Pastor - Chants 
• Jesse Zubot - Dementia
  

In the international classical music, L. Subramaniam - "Three Ragas For Solo Violin" can be recommended, as do of course some of the real classic works by Bach, Paganini and Bartok. Add to that Eugène Ysaÿe, Paul Giger for the more modern composers and performers.

More ideas are welcome.

Thanks
stef

© stef

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Zbigniew Seifert - Solo Violin (Polonia Records, 2008 re-issue) ****

Apart from Leroy Jenkins' Solo Concert from 1976, I do not think that there are many solo violin albums that fall within the broad "jazz" genre. You could also argue that Polly Bradfield's "Solo Violin Improvisations" from 1979 is jazz. Now Polonia re-issued this album by Polish musician Zbigniew Seifert. Seifert was a classically trained violinist whose musical world opened when listening to Coltrane. He switched to sax shortly, then moved back to violin, trying to capture Coltrane's timeless expressivity and open esthetic. On this album, you can hear this Coltrane influence, together with a modern classical touches and even some European folk. His improvisations range from the very abstract to real rhythmic jazzy, from sad to joyful. On two tracks, he dubbed some additional violin, as a kind of background support, or even drone. Seifert died in 1979 at the age of 32 and he did not leave that many records. If you search for this record on internet, download links can be found all over the place.

PS - I got the additional information that Billy Bang released a solo violin album, "Commandments" (No More Records 1997), as did Malcolm Goldstein "Live In Fire In The Valley" (Eremite 1997). Thanks Pedro for the info!

Watch a rare video-taped recording of Seifert:

© stef

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Maya Homburger - plays J.S. Bach and Barry Guy (Maya, 2008) *****

I grew up with Bach (dad) and Louis Armstrong (mom). Classical music and jazz, and especially free jazz, are more related than some people would want to accept. Often the string players or string ensembles are the first to agree with this, for obvious reasons. Especially violinists and cellists. Once in while a pianist too, but it's often an either/or situation. Jarrett played both, so did Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, but neither of them integrated jazz and classical, they kept their output as separate releases. But that's not what I mean. Classical music, and especially baroque music and free jazz are really close relations : the music has an unadultered purity, a directness combined with instrumental virtuosity, musical wealth (anything goes), and emotional strength. The only difference that the first is fully composed and the other fully improvised (and even one and the other are not entirely true). "Bang On A Can" already moved in that direction, but what Maya Homburger does here, is really strong. Yes, she plays Bach, but how, reverent, but different than the original, without hesitating to slow down the process, to bring a really idiosyncratic performance. She starts with Bach violin sonatas, then moves into the lengthy middle part, Barry Guy's Aglais, then ends with Bach's partitas for solo violin.

A risky endeavour. But the result is brilliant.

I know it's not jazz. Nevertheless, it's brilliant.

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