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CD Review, File Under?, jazz

The Song is You – Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch on ECM (CD Review)

The Song is You

Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch

CD/LP

ECM Records

 

ECM Records has begun resuming production of their releases as vinyl LPs. This is the first I am reviewing. As one expects from ECM, its sound quality is superlative. Those who remember ECM’s vinyl releases in the pre-CD era will welcome this return. In addition to production values, another aspect of ECM’s curation ethos is bringing together artists from their roster to make music together. Both trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Fred Hersch have created memorable releases for ECM. Pairing them is an inspired choice. The Song is You features songs by each artist, improvisation, and several standards. 

 

“Retrato em Branco e Preto,” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, is given a rhythmically pliant rendering, with Rava’s solo swinging in sultry fashion and Hersch providing a subtle outline of the Bossa Nova, comping with generously attired harmonies and playing  a solo cut from the same cloth as the trumpeter’s. When Rava rejoins, the dance picks up slightly and he crafts a solo built out of mid-register melodies. 

 

An improvisation follows, with Rava playing dissonant lines with trills while Hersch creates treble register material, single lines, glissandos, and tremolos. Rava deftly deconstructs the pianist’s material. The final section is spacious, with piano jabs and sixteenths in the trumpet slowly moving to a final, held harmony. George Bassman and Ned Washington’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” continues the musical contest. Once again, one is struck by how quickly both players can assimilate each other’s material and craft an overarching idea. “The Song is You,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, begins with overlapping cascades of melody. Howling upper register playing from Rava is responded to by Hersch with alternate scales in the upper register; whole tone, the diminished scale, and dissonant tremolos. After this exploration, the two take up the tune in traditional ballad form. The coda returns to the former, outside, demeanor. 

 

Two originals follow. Hersch’s “Child’s Song” is a Latin ballad with a gentle melody. Rava plays it with fetching lyricism, then takes a slow solo. The piano notes outline the tune just behind the trumpet, and then take up a limpid minimal ostinato. Midway through, Rava and Hersch perform a chromatic descent, followed by a disjunct trumpet cadenza. Gradually there is a return to the ballad texture, a countermelody appearing in Hersch’s left hand, followed by thick chords and a single line melody. Hersch’s own cadenza slows the tune down and accompanies it with mixed interval chords. Rava rejoins for a final chorus that gently brings the piece to a close. Rava’s “The Trial” is begun by Hersch with punchy two-voice counterpoint. Rava enters, taking up the main melody, which juxtaposes nicely with Hersch’s invention. All too soon, the duo complete the piece with a mischievous cadence. 

 

Hersch takes a long solo on Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso,” using its undulating lines to craft a sinuous solo. Rava joins, bringing out the blues quality of the tune. Hersch responds in kind, comping to give the trumpeter room. Eventually the two split up the tune, creating a pendulum of melody. The closer is another Monk tune, “Round Midnight.” Hersch approaches the tune playfully, warping the tempo, playing trills, and crafting imaginative chord structures. At the end, Rava once again brings the tune back down to earth to finish.

 

Rava and Hersch are a simpatico pairing. One could envision them continuing in a duet context or adding some more of ECM’s roster to the activities. Hooray for vinyl.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Pop

Radical Romantics – Fever Ray Returns (CD Review)

Radical Romantics

Fever Ray

Mute

 

It has been nearly six years since Plunge, Karin Dreijer’s last album under the moniker Fever Ray. Equally well known for their band The Knife, on which they collaborate with their brother Olof Dreijer, Karin has made distinctive electronic music for over twenty years. Their latest, Radical Romantics, is a welcome return. In gestation since 2019, it is some of the finest work released by the Fever Ray project.

 

Another welcome return is one of collaboration. Olof helped to produce some of the recording and co-wrote four of the songs, the first collaboration between the siblings in eight years. Other co-producers and performers include Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), experimental artist and producer Vessel, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt, and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma. Long-time collaborator, Martin Falck, joined Dreijer in creating an impressive visual corollary to the recording. Indeed, Radical Romantics is a project in which videos and artwork are a strong component, not the promotional devices that they so often are for other releases. 

 

The first four songs are a set written by Karin and Olof. “What They Call Us” started life some time ago as material for two unrealized movie soundtracks. Thrumming live drums alongside drum machine, an insistent synth riff, and electronic interjections demonstrate the number of iterations of the genesis of “What They Call Us.” However, this working approach is not uncommon on Radical Romantics. The end result, like much of the rest of the album, is music chock full of multifaceted layers, as well as far flung allusions in its lyrics. Another tune the siblings co-wrote, being supported by a video, is “Kandy.” It has an irrepressible “Whoo” vocal ostinato, an alto register lead vocal, and squirms with synth melodies. Tabla on “Shiver” and hand claps and a bass drum on “New Utensils” provide fulsome grooves. Both also feature modular synths that create a swarm of glissandos. Karin’s vocals encompass a variety of colors and superlative control. Gone is the stridency that typified some of their work in the Knife, replaced with a supple upper range and honeyed lower register. When they want to, as on “Even it Out,’ a steely edge appears.

 

The hit single, thus far, is “Carbon Dioxide,” on which Vessel helps to craft a club track with a soaring vocal by Karin and strings by Sakhi Singh and Seb Gainsborough. “Carbon Dioxide” includes an unusual tune, the Baby Elephant melody. Like many of Radical Romantic’s songs, the backstory recalls a diverse selection of inspirations and influences. Fever Ray has said they wanted the music to,  “Have the feeling of when you first fall in love …to be nice, happy, full of everything, extra everything. The Baby Elephant melody is the happiest melody of all time. The track contains wording from 1 Corinthians 13:1 because those words made a great impact when hearing them in Kieślowski’s Blue film. And a line from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s, Gift from the Sea.” 

 

Another standout is “Even it Out,” on which Karin collaborates with Nine Inch Nails. Reverberant vocals create a texture over which a second line, a rousing chant, is placed. NiN supply a terse electric guitar, bending notes, and an alt-rock drum pattern. The song imagines settling scores with your child’s bully, a feeling many parents have likely had (hopefully, as here, it remains a fantasy). Reznor and Ross also assist on “North,” which Karin describes as “stillness after collapse.” As its title suggests, there is a chilly atmosphere, with whispered vocals, a syncopated rhythmic loop, and an architecture of overlaid synths. Mining their father’s record collection, Karin got to know Bob Marley’s music. On “Looking for a Ghost,” a line from Marley’s “Satisfy My Soul” appears alongside an unlikely compatriot – a Porno for Pyros snippet – as well as words by the eminent Swedish author Barbo Lindgren.

 

“Tapping Fingers” is a sad song, one that Karin suggests is the saddest song they have written, about trying to communicate with your partner, listening for a morse code message in their tapping fingers, repeated over and over again as they fall asleep. Vocals in octaves, a descending chord progression with fat bass underneath, and regular synth punctuations adorn the song. The final track is seven minutes long, but makes much with a small amount of material. “Bottom of the Ocean” consists of Karin performing repeating vowels that echo with long repeated bass tones underneath. It is a suitable denouement to cool down from an album of imaginative instrumentation and excellent songwriting. Recommended. 

 

  • Christian Carey
by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Guitar

Voyageur – Ali Farka Touré (CD Review)

Voyageur

Ali Farka Touré

Work Circuit Records

 

The late Ali Farka Touré (1939-2006) was one of the most venerated of West African guitarists. His work combined the musical culture of his home country Mali with that of other African styles, including frequent collaborations that extended his work’s reach. Touré had a belated introduction to First World listeners, via a solo record that came out in the 1980s, when he was in his fifties. By 1994, Taking Timbuktu had won him a Grammy, with more awards to follow, including a Grammy for the posthumous release Ali & Toumani.

 

When material is released posthumously, it is fair to question the wishes of an artist, who is not there to weigh in on edits, production choices, or song selections. World Circuit Record’s Nick Gold has tried to ameliorate this by producing the record with Ali’s son Vieux Farka Touré. In addition, a longtime collaborator, vocalist Oumou Sangaré, is included on selected songs.

 

Voyageur’s recordings span fifteen years, and were made in a variety of locations:  Timbuktu, West Hollywood, California, concert halls in London and Tokyo, and tiny villages strung out on the Malian riverside. Sangaré’s contributions, notably the single “Cherie,” in which the vocalist and Touré perform a rousing duet, and the quick-syllable riffs of “Sadjona,” are standouts. On the former, singing in octaves with Touré, who also creates a loping polyrhythmic groove and fluent guitar solo, the vocalist provides various inflections distinctive to West African vocal styles. The latter is a showcase of vocalism at its most virtuosic.  “Safari” is equally diverting, Touré’s guitar-playing placed front and center, the artist riffing with abandon over background musicians, percussionists prominent among them. 

The diversity of recording locations provides a panoply of contexts in which to experience Touré’s music, and he adapts himself to each situation seemingly effortlessly. An excellent place to start, with a catalog of releases to further explore. Recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Julia Holter and Spektral Quartet record Alex Temple (CD Review)

Behind the Wallpaper

Alex Temple

Spektral Quartet: Clara Lyon (violin), Theo Espy (violin), Doyle Armbrust (viola), Russell Rolen (cello); Julia Holter: voice

New Amsterdam Records

Out this Friday, March 3rd, via New Amsterdam Records  is composer Alex Temple’s cycle Behind the Wallpaper. Vocalist Julia Holter joins the Spektral Quartet in this song cycle inspired by Temple’s gender transition. 

Holter, as always, is a marvel, with expressive, liquescent singing throughout her soprano voice’s range. The Spektral Quartet is given a variety of styles to play, from doleful lyricism reminiscent of Shostakovich’s string quartets to post-minimalism. The musical smorgasbord reminds me in places of Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters. Temple is fluent in marshaling these materials. Behind the Wallpaper deals with a significant event in Temple’s life, yet her touch is light and lyrics affirming. Recommended.

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Oracle – Joanna Mattrey and Gabby Fluke-Mogul (CD Review)

Oracle

Joanna Mattrey, Gabby Fluke-Mogul

Relative Pitch Records RPR1143

 

In their first collaboration, improvisers violist Joanna Mattrey and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul create music that combines drones, microtones, and extended techniques. Mattrey also plays stroh violin, which includes an attached horn that serves as a resonating chamber. Performing the aforementioned sounds on the stroh creates far out results.

 

Each piece on the album is titled, “The,” followed by a single evocative word. Wayward lines and multi-stop pizzicatos begin “The Vision,” which are then followed by pizzicato glissandos accompanying a bluesy riff. Improvisations vacillate between these two demeanors, with greater sustain accumulating. The piece settles, only to be followed by the eruptive “The Trinity,’ with a howl of over-bowing and various methods to elicit scratching and non-pitched noise. “The Potion” returns to pitched sounds, with a duet between repeating patterns and glissandos. 

 

“The Switch” explores the lower register and quasi chitara strumming. As an antidote to all the upper register violin prior, Mattrey explores scordatura low tuning on her viola and supplies cello-like sounds. The texture gradually thins out, with glissandos and pizzicati dueling for primacy. “The Switch” ends on a sustained, bass register note. “The Child” begins most quietly, with upper register over-bowing, harmonics, then continues with pizzicato multi-stops versus a delicate altissimo melody. The delicate contrast with previous selections is welcome. While there is no steady pitch center, the duo play thirds and sixths and a modal melody. This isn’t to last, as hails of pizzicatos supplement it. Things remain soft, but string noise, circular glissandos,  and wood thwacks, with the occasional harmonic, create an entirely new atmosphere. This crescendos, and the noise quotient is upped, only to suddenly shift to quiet harmonics. Like so many of the pieces on Oracle, the music may be improvised, but the players are experienced enough to shape the musical narrative seamlessly.

 

“The Womb” is Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul at their most scary. The use of glissandos, sotto voce noise, and a  voice-like, panting line that predominates its opener could be licensed for a horror movie: why shouldn’t free improvers get some of the dough? Parlando whimpering is accompanied by an upper register fiddle followed by squealing string noise. This moves into a drone section of repeated plucked notes and microtonal sustained double stops. The monster’s voice returns, slighter higher, making it even more frightening. Just when you think the piece has hit its zenith, Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul quickly pull back to soft harmonics, only to build to a conclusion that howls with fury.

Oracle closes with “The Blade,” in which clock-like wood blows and a viola drone that gradually moves between three pitches and then is replaced with a high register squall. A number of ostinatos are juxtaposed, some pitched, some extended techniques, with the one constant being the rapping on wood. Like a broken clock coming apart, the material dissolves, with a pizzicato heartbeat ticking and altissimo harmonics and scratches gathering toward the close, an acerbic descending flourish. 

 

Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul have hit things off from the beginning. One hopes their musical association will continue.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Anthony Cheung on Kairos (CD Review)

Anthony Cheung

Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions

Ueli Wiget, piano, Ensemble Modern, Franck Ollu, conductor;

Ensemble dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor;

Ensemble Musikfabrik, Elena Schwarz, conductor

Kairos Music

 

Anthony Cheung is a prolific composer whose music is situated astride spectralism and second modernity. This is his fifth portrait CD, his first for Kairos, and first of music that accompanies extra musical media. While these sources of inspiration are pivotal components for the music’s genesis, it stands on its own as an audio recording. The works are performed by three top flight groups, Ensemble Modern, conducted by Franck Ollu with piano soloist Ueli Wiget, Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski, and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Elena Schwarz. 

 

Visual artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) made sculptures out of wire mesh. A line can go anywhere (2019) is a three-movement piano concerto inspired by Asawa’s work. The first movement’s title, “Wound Wire,” points out the connection between piano strings and Asaway’s wires. Harp-like piano arpeggiations and descending color chords are met by tumult, often riding just below the surface, that periodically erupts into repeated brass verticals. The piano enters a swirl of percussion and brass glissandos and shakes. Wind solos imitate the piano’s gestures with a dovetailing effect, and the movement ends with softer, angular attacks from soloist and ensemble. Wiget does a stalwart job matching the dynamic of the ensemble without ever overplaying. His imitation of the attacks of other instruments is noteworthy. 

 

The second movement, “Weightless/Sustained,” begins with the soft dynamic that ended the first movement. A second keyboard, tuned down a quarter tone, as well as microtones from the ensemble, serve to blur the piano’s music, creating a haze of overtones. Not to be outdone, the piano thrums low bass notes followed by birdsong-like flurries. Gongs and chimes further complicate the atmosphere, and descending wind lines are juxtaposed with the piano’s now ubiquitous birdsong and taut, quickly, repeated verticals. Once again, a denouement closes the movement.

 

The piece’s finale, “Woven Wire – Homage to Ruth Asawa” is a clever rendering in sound of the sculptor’s working method. The piano contorts a single line solo, let’s call it wiry, while metallophones also provide a taste of Asawa’s metallic medium. A plethora of glissandos in the various sections of the ensemble, as well as periodic stabs from winds, enhance this impression. A final section finds the piano playing repeated notes while boisterous brass and punctilious percussion attacks create a vibrant accompaniment. The piece closes with string glissandos surrounding final punctuations from, successively, piano and percussion. 

 

The Natural Word (2019) is based on the work of author Sean Zdenek, who has researched the use of closed captions in television and film. Zdemek observes that sound captions are selective. Since not every sound can be included, the editor must decide what to foreground and what background noises to select. The Natural Word doesn’t include captions spoken aloud, but rather uses a collection of them, taken from Zdenek and expanded by Cheung. The composer then found analogous film clips to score. The result is a series of short contrasting sections, many of which use coloristic orchestration: seagulls are depicted via altissimo glissandos, pattering rain by percussion, upper register plucked piano, and harp, and so on. Cheung does not just seek to imitate sounds, but in juxtaposing them, mine their cultural reference points. Thus, he shuttles between disparate scorings like jump cuts, but the piece is a cohesive whole.

 

Null and void (2021) was composed for the soundtrack of a short silent film Stump the Guesser, created by the Canadian filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galin Johnson. In his liner notes, Tim Rutherford-Johnson describes the film as having a “surrealistic, absurdist tone,” and being inspired by the Russian poet and dramatist Daniil Karms (1905-1942). Cheung responds to the material, and to Karms’ aesthetic, with nearly everything but the kitchen sink: Harry Partch’s instruments, thunderous, motoric percussion that references Russian futurism, swing-era jazz brass, with wah-wah mutes, glissandos, and altissimo stabs, and a pistol firing (there is a game of Russian roulette on screen). I would greatly like to see how it syncs up with the film, but null and void as an aural document has a beguiling sound world. 

 

Cheung’s partnership with Kairos continues to expand, encompassing a variety of techniques and inspirational material. Accompanying videos of these pieces would be welcome – dare we hope for a DVD release?

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Renaud Capuçon and Martha Argerich on DG (CD Review)

Beethoven, Schumann, Franck

Renaud Capuçon, violin; Martha Argerich, piano

Deutsche Grammophon

 

Three violin sonatas by great nineteenth century composers, all in A, grace this recording by violinist Renaud Capuçon and pianist Martha Argerich. Longtime collaborators, the duo sound seamless in these performances. They create detailed renditions, faithful to the scores but keen to put their own stamp on the pieces.

 

The first movement of the Schumann exemplifies this approach, with the performers digging into the main theme and unspinning  legato lines in its development, the tempo treated flexibly. In the second movement, an Allegretto of considerable delicacy, Capuçon and Argerich provide shading between its major and minor sections that create a chiaroscuro effect. The final movement is dazzling, with Argerich’s right hand and the violin doubling in a fleet duet. Emphatic chords and sforzandos punctuate the music, which culminates with a heroic cadence.

 

Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata is one of the most prized in the violin-piano literature, and Capuçon and Argerich play it with powerfully delineated dynamic contrasts, exquisite attention to phrasing and articulations, and a sense of familiarity by dint of long association with the piece. Every time one or the other player stretches out, they know that the other will be there to support them, even catch them. The breaths provided by subtle ritardandos and slightly extended rests are part of what gives the performance a special character. Beethoven’s music isn’t meant to be motoric, but more timid performers sometimes play it that way. The second movement, an extended set of variations. The F major theme, as so often for this key in Beethoven, has a simple, limpid quality. Despite its length – over sixteen minutes – the music is shaped with a keen awareness of its overarching form. After the piano leads off, the violin takes a turn in the foreground with ornate soprano register embellishments. A minor section mid-movement lends the music a melancholic flavor, with keening accentuations doubled by violin and piano. A return to the major key references the beginning, with florid ornaments even more present. The major key persists in the last variation, the longest in the movement. It is slow and grandiose, with a cadenza-like piano introduction. The violin enters with trills and the two render the tune in a call and response duet that brings the movement to a warm conclusion. It is followed by a presto sendoff, a sonata rondo. Once again the length of the movement is significant and the jaunty theme is subjected to many different permutations and harmonic underpinnings. The playing is virtuosic, displaying Capuçon and Argerich at their fleet-fingered best. 

 

César Franck’s Violin Sonata, composed in 1886 when the composer was sixty-three, is an example of  late Romantic treatment of chamber music. Sinuous melodies, denied resolution again and again, suggesting the influence of Wagner’s operas. There is a winsome character to the first movement’s tune that is affecting. With the change in style, one is afforded a different sense of the musicians’ playing. Argerich displays a sonorous, muscular tone and Capuçon complements this with a steely sound of his own. The second movement, an Allegro, is where the dramatic conflict of the sonata occurs. It is followed by a recitative and fantasy, which stretch phrases nearly to their breaking point in mournful melodies. The ambiguity of harmony and interwoven rhythms move the piece to the other side of the romantic divide, reminiscent of Johannes Brahms. The sonata comes full circle, returning to an allegretto tempo for the final movement. The beginning’s descending thirds are offset later by shimmering altissimo duets. Juxtaposed are A minor, in boisterous passages, and the more lyrical exploration of A major. Cascades of piano arpeggios,  scales and supple variations of the tune by the violin build the piece to a rousing finish. 

 

There are many recordings of these pieces. Few display the lived-in quality and consummate sensitivity of Capuçon and Argerich. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz, Piano, Pop

Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles (CD Review)

 

Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles

Brad Mehldau

Nonesuch Records

 

Pianist Brad Mehldau is a chameleon-like figure, able to play music in many styles and a creative composer. He excels at finding new standards, recent pop songs that benefit from jazz treatment. The Beatles’s songbook is among the most durable in the pop canon, having endured numerous revisionings, some inspired and, sadly, some insipid. Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles is strongly inspired. 

 

A live recording that consists of ten Beatles songs and a David Bowie encore (“Life on Mars”), the audience is warmly enthusiastic. Other pianists who mine pop for new standards, Herbie Hancock, Ethan Iverson, and Christopher O’Riley to name just a few, each bring their own approach to the task. Often, the original’s arrangement is discarded for flights of fancy. Mehldau sometimes stays true to the Beatles’ recordings. I Am the Walrus’ adheres to as much of the psychedelic bounty as two hands can manage. “For No One” is riff-filled during its instrumental breaks, but keeps true to the verse and chorus and its beginning and conclusion.

 

Elsewhere, Mehldau uses the songs as springboards for improvisation. “I Saw Her Standing There” is given a rousing rock ‘n roll treatment with a bluesy solo. “Golden Slumbers” is adorned with post-bop riffs. “Your Mother Should Know” gets a swing shuffle treatment, while “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” sounds in places like Thelonious Monk has visited the stage. “Here, There, and Everywhere” is moving in its restraint, played by Mehldau with a rubato approach that begins true to the original, then adds modal jazz’s parallel planing of chords and dissonant extensions that add surprise to the  tune. 

 

The Bowie encore is performed with poignancy alternating with virtuosic octave passages. Interestingly, instead of embellishing the chord structure, Mehldau strips out a few passing chords to keep the changes in a more Romantic vein. 

 

Above all, Mehldau displays curiosity and affection for the songs themselves. The Beatles will continue to inspire different approaches to their music. Future interpreters would do well to keep Your Mother Should Know in mind as a touchstone for how it should be done. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Minimalism

Mivos Quartet Plays Steve Reich (CD Review)

Steve Reich: The String Quartets

Mivos Quartet

Deutsche Grammophon

 

Steve Reich wrote his three string quartets for the Kronos Quartet, who have premiered, recorded (for Nonesuch), and continued to champion them. With Kronos still active, why does another quartet record these pieces? Mivos Quartet makes a strong case that there is room for other interpretations of Reich’s string quartets.

 

I remember well being at the Carnegie Hall premiere of Steve Reich’s piece for string quartet and multimedia WTC 9/11, performed by Kronos Quartet. Its incorporation of sound recordings, a dead phone line, air traffic controllers, and those trying to escape the building, was harrowing. Like his first quartet, Different Trains, Reich creates instrumental motives out of spoken word passages, imitating their contour and imparting pitch. The final movement, in which Jewish prayers are said over remains from the site, is extraordinarily moving. By the end of the work, many in the audience were visibly shaken by its visceral impact. Kronos has since recorded WTC 9/11, in a gritty rendition reminiscent of the energy of the live performance. 

 

Mivos plays with equal poignancy, but also with  a laser beam clarity that brings an entirely different palette of textures to bear. The recorded voices too have been remastered to emphasize incisiveness of utterance. Even with the constraints of overdubbing and vocal samples, there is freshness to Mivos’s approach to phrasing, taut and lithe. 

 

Triple Quartet features three quartets overdubbed throughout the piece (no vocal samples). Mivos play up the polyrhythms that festoon the work. Just when you think the groove is interlocked for good, Reich throws another intricate rhythmic relationship into the mix. Lest things become too motoric, glissandos and solo turns enliven the texture. Triple Quartet doesn’t have the narrative arc that defines the other pieces here, but it is a fine piece of abstract music 

 

Different Trains is an iconic work. At the beginning of the Second World War, Reich was shuttled back and forth on trains between separated parents. The “different trains” are those destined for the death camps in Poland. Its first movement features voices from Reich’s train rides, a porter, and governess, and clangorous train sounds. As in WTC 9/11,  Reich creates melodic phrases that mimic the contours of the sampled speeches. The second movement is terrifying, with speakers who are survivors of the Holocaust describing their trips on trains to the death camps. Air raid sirens are added to the train sounds, which move on a different polyrhythmic pathway. The final movement describes the end of the Second World War, bringing voices from America and Europe together to consider what has transpired. The last section moves from the emphasis on rhythm to a major key cadence accompanying the description of a deportee with a beautiful voice. One of the masterpieces of the late twentieth century, Different Trains is a piece that delves into issues of ethnicity and religious persecution that are, sadly, all too present in today’s society.  

 

The renditions by Kronos are irreplaceable, but Mivos creates compelling complementary readings. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

The Clarinet Trio on Leo (CD Review)

The Clarinet Trio

Transformations and Further Passages

Jürgen Kupke, clarinet; Michael Thieke, alto clarinet, clarinet; Gebhard Ullmann, bass clarinet

Leo Records LR 921

 

Gebhard Ullmann is celebrating his sixty-fifth birthday with the release of three albums, Transformations and Further Passages on Leo among them. The Clarinet Trio are a superb group of improvisers, Jürgen Kupke and Michael Thieke are eloquent foils for Ullmann. Unlike some other Ullmann outings, where he clearly leads the proceedings, this is a context in which everyone collaborates and gets to take solo turns. In fact, three of the tracks are solos, one for each member of the trio. While some pieces are improvised, much of the music-making here is based on compositions by European jazz composers.

 

“Collective #13” is one of the former, and finds the musicians exploring tone colors overlapping in a compound melody, vibrato and overblowing creating a shimmering texture. Upward glissandos and a howl from the bass clarinet punctuate the close of the piece, which concludes with a distressed unison detuned with subtle pitch bends. 

 

In Joki Freund’s “Cleopatra,” a bebop moto perpetuo with the tune overlapping dominates. Likewise, “Virtue,” by Manfred Schoof, explores a swing ballad with tasty changes and a bit more tension in the solos. “Set ‘em Up,” by Albert Mangelsdorff, is a quicksilver bebop tune, harmonized by the trio with great suavity. Once again, when two players drop out, the remaining soloist performs in a more experimental vein. Eventually, “Set ‘em Up” moves into a skronking trio before a more traditional outro. 

 

“Tension/Varié,” also by Mangelsdorff,  initially combines free passages with a jaunty heterophonic refrain, then there are long stretches of sustained notes and mercurial flurries. The tune slowly emerges again from the texture, leading to a new section of chorale-like gestures. A loping accompaniment gives the tune, now floridly embellished with howling altissimo gestures, a Middle Eastern feel. The denouement combines the rhythmic groove with the previous chorales. “Tension/Varié” is a wide-ranging and satisfying musical journey.

 

There is a liveliness and puckish sense of humor, even in pieces that allow all three clarinetists to caterwaul with abandon. “Get Up, From Now On,” by Karl Berger, has a bluesy riff that is explored for much of the piece. But there are free jazz breaks where the trio trade licks and howls. The juxtaposition is surprising, but left turns such as these seem to be the trio’s calling card. 

 

“Solo 1,” performed by Thieke, traverses the compass of the alto clarinet in jangling lines that are punctuated by stentorian low notes. Ullmann’s “Solo 2” begins delicately with whiffs of birdsong, only to be ruptured to wakefulness with fortissimo bass notes. Microtonal interpolations close the solo, a brief essay with a bounty of material. It segues into Rolf Kühn’s “Don’t Run,” which fleshes out the experimental gestures of Ullmann’s solo. Mangelsdorff’s “Theme from Vietnam” crests and subsides in waves of interactive melody and bent notes. It is followed by Kupke’s “Solo 3,” in which disjunct lines are delicately deployed with repeats of the head motive. It is an enigmatic close to an exploratory album. It makes one eager to hear more of Ullmann’s sixty-fifth birthday celebrations.

 

-Christian Carey


by Christian Carey