Moment's Notice
Reviews of Recent Media
(continued)
Iancu Dumitrescu
Ansamblul Hyperion
Corbett Vs. Dempsy CvsDCD115
At a certain point in Western Art Music history, what might be called extra-musical sounds merged with their instrumental counterparts. While a linear origin story is difficult to trace, Vivaldi’s birds (The Four Seasons) and Berlioz’s thunderstorm (Symphonie Fantastique) certainly illustrate the continua leading to the sounds imbuing this remarkable reissue of music by four intrepid Romanian composers. Yes, Iancu Dumitrescu, Otavian Nemescu, Stefan Niculescu, and Corneliu Cezar craft compositions that might be labeled “spectral,” but that Procrustean descriptor does little justice to the wealth of timbre and bifurcated tone constituting a shared syntax in exquisite development.
On one level, what was captured in these seminal recording sessions is a dialogue between acoustic sound and various technologies. Its most literal manifestation occurs in Nemescu’s “Combinatii In Cercuri.” All sonorities are in motion alongside and against each other to form an evolving tapestry of skewed repetitions and juxtapositions. The instrumental sounds traverse the soundstage while more obviously electronic interjections remain spatially static even as their resonances curve and arc. Underneath the rhetorical diversities, a coarse timbral unity is gradually experienced, first fashioned of liquid non-pitches and later of tones relating to the shards floating on its surface. The occasional anomaly, like the thrusting home of a sharp vocal fragment at 7:20, is a non-sequitur, an aberrant drop in the ocean of disparity. The liner notes suggest that the composition had a new electronic component, added for this debut recording. Cezar’s “Rota” (1976) travels something of a similar path but involving a dialogue of ethnicities. The game is not given away by instrumentation, as it’s obscured, a blueprint for so much of what would occur in the Hyperion Ensembles later recordings. Again, electronic and acoustic sounds coexist but are treated in more obviously similar fashion, sometimes to the point of indistinguishability. The piece’s second half fragments and then reunifies, and there is a deliciously raw, or direct, quality to the sound highlighted, somewhat ironically, by what is a superb production.
The other two works approach dialogue from a subtler perspective. Niculescu’s “Sincronie” (1976) spreads over the soundstage from a vibraphone arpeggiation to encompass various percussion, piano, winds, and solo strings in their most conventional modes until a pattern emerges at 3:03, something akin to the sound of Javanese gamelan. An astonishing moment of transitional revelation at 5:17 recontextualizes the acoustic/electronic dialogue. After a sustained third, what might be either traditional percussion modified or electronically produced timbres meant to imitate percussion break the near-silence. Though previous material then returns, the tremolos and sustains resonate in a different way.
The piano is played by Iancu Dumitrescu, who also conducts the Hyperion ensemble, which he founded in 1976. He is the moving force behind this project and the Edition Modern label, now seemingly inactive. His piece, the stunning “Movemur et Sumus,” was composed in 1978. As far as I can determine, it makes its first digital appearance here. Again, solo strings abound but rife with overtone and harmonic, each tone ablaze with the possibility of continuous fragmentation and mutation. Chord, pitch, and all in-between burst any preconceptual bonds as each springs to life with an immediacy and vast vitality matched only by the most minuscule bowing articulations and, ultimately, support from crystalline bowed percussion. Terror and beauty are as difficult to parse as each fundamental is from its constituent components. As would be the case so often and into the 21st century, the Hyperion Ensemble performs with a sonic signature whose unique presentation, an aggregate of individual approaches, is equaled only by the now-similarly veteran Apartment House. Dumitrescu’s efforts alone make acquisition of this reissue essential for anyone interested in sonic innovation, but all four works, not to mention the fraught context of their Electrecord release, justify the disc’s place in the Corbett Vs. Dempsy catalog.
–Marc Medwin
Nick Dunston
COLLA VOCE
Out of Your Head OOYH027
Double bassist Nick Dunston has developed from in-demand sideman for forward-thinking luminaries like Dave Douglas, Mary Halvorson, Vijay Iyer, and Tyshawn Sorey into a wide-ranging composer in his own right. Dunston relocated to Berlin after releasing two albums on Out Of Your Head Records, Atlantic Extraction (2021) and Spider Season (2022), and another for the label Fun In The Church, Skultura (2023). On COLLA VOCE (with the voice), Dunston draws from the poetic and folkloric texts of Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Ted Chiang, Richard Hugo, and Gabriel García Márquez for the libretto to what he describes as an “Afro-Surrealist Anti-Opera.” In the album liner notes he asks, “What if the blue that I see is different from the blue that you see?” One thing listeners can expect from Dunston is the unexpected.
Assembled from sessions recorded in Berlin and New York, Dunston employs a 13-member crew that includes the American JACK Quartet, a Berlin-based electro-acoustic ensemble, his own upright bass and electronics, and four vocalists: Sofia Jernberg; Friederike Merz; Isabel Crespo Pardo; and Cansu Tanrikulu. Unlike his previous records, which he considers documents of working bands, this effort is more of a studio collaboration between Dunston and producer Weston Olencki, who remixed the 13-part program using live processing, with additional post-production by Dunston.
The JACK Quartet, one of America’s most adventurous and virtuosic string ensembles, excels at exploring dualities: composed and improvised music; acoustic and electronic sounds; and instrumental and vocal elements. Dunston layers the quartet’s visceral contributions with his own ferocious bass playing, merging them with the Berlin-based ensemble. Working with Olencki, Dunston uses electronic treatments to edit and blend in the quartet of daring vocal improvisers (hailing from both sides of the Atlantic), who alternate between language and pure sound.
Although densely layered, many pieces feature only subgroups of the full ensemble, which recur in bewildering combinations. Strained strings wax and wane alongside mechanical drones, shuddering vibrations, backwards processing, and sped-up flanges, while vocals are rarely harmonized. Instead, the voices elicit an astonishing range of expression, from breathy cooing, incomprehensible mumbling, and throaty ululations to jabbering moans, mewling gargles, and hysterical screams, climaxing with increasingly high-pitched and deliriously orgasmic cries. The program attains orchestral dimensions by the finale, where metallic distortion and processed samples augment slapped and bowed strings, while the vocalists whisper, croak, and soar.
Dunston has crafted a dazzling suite of electrifying extremes, where lyricism is fragmented into a panorama of kaleidoscopic textures. Revealing a singular vision. COLLA VOCE is not for the faint of heart but rewards attentive listening, revealing new layers over time.
–Troy Collins
FURT
non-fiction
Self-released digital album
The electronic composition/performance duo FURT was formed by Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer in London almost 40 years ago. Since that time, they’ve released a number of recordings as both the core duo and extended ensemble on labels like Matchless, psi, and, over the last few years, as self-released digital-only releases. Their latest release, non-fiction, came about when the duo was invited by Walter Pratti (a co-collaborator in Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble) and Tempo Reale (an electronic music research, production, and educational center, based in Florence, Italy) to participate in a series of live soundtracks for silent films. That project led to their decision to revise the structure and materials into a piece for concert performance captured here from a live recording from the NEXT Festival for Advanced Music at A4, Bratislava.
Utilizing electronics, samples, and real-time processing, Barrett and Obermayer develop complex, evolving systems that percolate with dense washes of sound intercut with sprays of harsh sonic shards. Over the course of the 38-minute piece, the two shoot sounds across the sound plane. Squiggled oscillations, stuttered and glitched blasts, percussive patterns, and gestural smears careen along with jump-cut precision. Both members of the group have a background in composition which comes through in their structural approach. Barrett refers to that balance of structure and freedom as “seeded improvisation” where predetermined material forms a foundation for spontaneous interplay. In listening, picking apart what might be predetermined and what improvisational elements arise from those foundational elements becomes irrelevant. Instead, the duo’s collective responses and intuitive manipulations of source material along with triggering of their extensive sound palette both in reaction to and in opposition to those materials shape the hyperkinetic trajectory of their improvisations. One can only strap in and hold on as their music caterwauls along.
–Michael Rosenstein
Barry Guy
Plays
Maya MLP 2401
Savina Yannatou + Floros Floridis + Barry Guy + Ramon Lopez
Kouartéto
Maya 2402
The iconic, always creative contrabassist/composer Barry Guy has gifted us with two intense, bountiful records. Plays documents several decades’ worth of his solo performances of composed works. Kouartéto spotlights one of his most bracing recent groups.
The double LP features a series of experimental pieces for bass, which – alongside his own furious growth as a player and composer – trace back to the 1970s. It’s a marvel how good these recordings sound, and the music is consistently jaw-dropping. The program opens with Luca Lombardi’s “Essay” (1975), a furious range of arco techniques and varying dynamics. There’s nothing notebook-y about this or any of the other pieces. They are, whatever the balance of score and improvisation, opportunities to hear the full range of Guy’s ideas and technique. Both are simply vast. Overtones speak their own language. There are forests of percussive ideas (even working the tuning pegs on occasion). And several pieces also call for Guy’s vocalisms, quite nice. Guy has always had such touch and fluidity in his playing, and you can really dig into these qualities on Xenakis’ “Theraps,” not least during its gorgeously spectral ending. There’s a similar feel on the dark and ruminative “Memo 1” (penned by Bernard Rands), with sublime descending lines that unfurl at length. Guy is equally compelling on denser, more percussive pieces like Hubert Stuppner’s “Ausdrucke – Rondo fur einen Clown,” with its spindly sharp lines lacerating your brainpan (headphones recommended!). John Anthony Celona’s “Voicings” is a marvelous feature for Guy’s own voice integrating with extended bass techniques. Perhaps fittingly, my favorite of the lot is the closing track, Guy’s own “Anaklasis.” It’s like a symphony for dragging and scraping, with a bow bounced continually with real force. Plays is an absolute tour de force.
The quartet on the second recent Maya release refers to themselves as the Hydra Quartet, based on the location of this splendid recording. Guy and percussionist Ramon Lopez have plenty of experience together, and the presence of vocalist Yannatou and clarinetist Floridis makes for a lyrical, creative grouping. They deliver a program of fairly short pieces, many with the full quartet but with plenty of duos and trios as well. From the first moments of “Ydra 1” it’s exciting music. Vocalist Savina Yannatou has an extraordinary range of techniques, hushes, croaks, and a fondness for digging into earthy folk melodies (an instinct flashed throughout, but explicitly the focus of “Ydra 6” (a Greek lullaby), “Ydra 11” (alternating between Greek and Hebrew melodies), and the closing track, an Albanian traditional tune performed exuberant in duet with Floridis. There’s a terrific range of sound overall, and it’s delightful to focus in on different details with each listening. Dig the flinty, metallic exchanges between Guy and Lopez. Or listen to the quartet move from dense fog to brimming exuberance. They can sizzle and shout, moving from drum punctuations to laminal washes, from a chorus of skittering insects to a unison moan. Top marks.
–Jason Bivins
Steve Lehman
The Music of Anthony Braxton
Pi Recordings PI106
Considering Anthony Braxton’s vast catalog of work produced since the late 1960s, it is surprising how few musicians have tackled his compositions. Of course, it is understandable considering that Braxton has put such a distinctive stamp on his pieces in various instrumental groupings. Steve Lehman is in a unique position to not only put together an ensemble to play Braxton’s music but to work with them to develop a collective, personal take on things. He studied with Braxton at Wesleyan and was part of a number of his projects for a decade starting in the late 1990s and since then has gone on to create a body of work as a leader and side person that ranges from small groups to music for octet to trans-cultural hip-hop improvisation to large ensemble with electronics. For this project, Lehman explains “I knew I wanted to connect Anthony’s music with new audiences and make a case for his small group music as a really indispensable part of the jazz canon. So, that meant being really discerning about the repertoire and making a conscious effort to work with musicians outside of Braxton’s orbit who could bring new perspectives to the music.”
Lehman started with long-time collaborators bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid, adding in tenor sax player Mark Turner. He also chose Braxton’s pieces from the 1970s which were originally recorded solo and in small groups with musicians including Kenny Wheeler, George Lewis, Dave Holland, and Barry Altschul. Here, Braxton was beginning to explore a language that grappled with the intersections of angular lines and pulse structures with open options for number of players as well as instrumentation. Lehman explains it this way, “All of these Braxton pieces present really creative and innovative ideas about what you can do with a small ensemble of improvisers ... It’s really different from what we normally hear in the standard modern jazz format. But it’s also inextricably connected to those roots.” It’s a testament to this group that they delve deeply into the pieces while exploring those inherent “roots.”
Recorded live in Los Angeles over the course of two nights, the recording pairs the Braxton pieces with two Lehman originals and Monk’s “Trinkle, Trinkle.” Things kick from the start as the group sprints through Braxton’s “34a,” cycling through the skewed motifs and then opening them up with Brewer and Reid’s countervailing pulses driving the snaking, synched reed lines. The group takes their time establishing the flow of the piece, moving through sections of hurtling solos by Lehman and Turner and collective inversions of the thematic material. Lehman’s “L.A. Genes” is informed by Braxton’s strategies while staking an informed approach to free post-bop modernism. Braxton’s “40b” follows which the composer notes as “medium to fast line for solo extension (chords optional).” Brewer starts things out with an extended, melodically abstract solo before hitting on the percolating pulse of the piece. Drums and reeds enter and cunningly begin to unwind the serpentine theme with solo statements volleyed back and forth between Lehman and Turner that resolve into morphing ensemble reconsideration.
The group winds their way through the fast pulse, stop-time line of “23b” paired with the shifting pulse line of “23g” with aplomb, tying Braxton’s language back to the coursing melodic momentum of bop while fully embracing his shifting layers of cycling rhythmic abstraction. Lehman’s solo here is particularly dazzling. The repetitive line of “23c” follows with a succinct reading resplendent with tenacious tension. Lehman’s “Unbroken and Unspoken” opens with intersecting lines by the two reed players navigating their way over the bounding free trajectory laid down by bass and drums. “23e + 40a” begins with slow, sinuous grace taking a hard shift to exploded march-time to close things out. The set ends with a labyrinthine refraction of Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle,” starting with a freely improvised reed duo before the drums and bass join in for a stomp through the classic tune. Lehman reflects “I think the Monk piece really solidifies the idea of a kind of continuum of radical experimentation that permeates the entire jazz canon, and Braxton is a huge part of that. It’s something I’m incredibly proud to be connected to.” That dedication to experimentation and the continuum of jazz tradition as personified by Braxton’s music defines this release. Rather than simply a tribute album, Lehman, Turner, Brewer, and Reid seize on these ideas and extend them with their own unique visions.
–Michael Rosenstein