Laura Andel Orchestra

Doble Mano
Rossbin Records RS029

Completely inured to the challenges of contemporary composition, Buenos Aires- born-New Yorker Laura Andel writes pocket-orchestra pieces in which notated sounds blend with improvisation, as staccato and lyrical passages vie for supremacy. Doble Mano, whose title reflects the twinning of different orchestral groupings, raises the ante further by interjecting into the performance characteristic sonic fragments from the South American bandoneon and Indonesian gamelan.

With the slurs and discordance available from a prepared Fender Rhodes often used as an additional rhythmic source, Andel, who conducts here, strives for an appropriate balance between the rhythmic and melodic sections of this eight-part suite. Double bass, viola, piano, cornet and clarinet – plus squeeze-box – are arrayed to produce resolute cabaletta-like pulses, with the rattling and scraping timbral beats arrive from the vibraphone, gamelan instruments and electric piano – with Ursel Schlicht’s acoustic piano meditating between both solitudes. Enharmonic notation may even help balance this mirroring.

Multi-directional, Doble Mano proceeds along circumfluent paths. There are points for instance, where a trio interlude for traipsing viola runs, rattling gamelan bells and relaxed piano plinks could be a rustic eclogue. Several measures later the interaction is among metronomic piano string stops, accordion thumps and buzzing electronic wave forms – with the two self-contained section separated by contralto reed puffs.

Elsewhere the ratcheting gamelan tones are used as a multi-rhythmic backdrop. That happens for instance when cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s braying plunger tones and Raul Jaurena’s bandoneon pulsing evolve in double counterpoint, or when wide-ranging glissandi and singular pizzicato plucks from the string section meet Danny Tunick’s spiraling vibraphone pulse.

Slinky and built around contrapuntal displays, the eight-part suite becomes almost programmatic in its final sections. Evolving chromatically during Doble Mano (Part VII), there are points at which spiccato pops in different pitches from violist Stephanie Griffin and bassist Ken Filiano, clarinetist Matt Bauer’s affiliated runs, jokey accordion quivers and clanging percussion cumulatively suggest the plot line of one of those Meet the Orchestra exercises for young children.

Luckily just before the performance is buried beneath repetitive, indolent fragments from the massed ensemble, individuals redefine the final movement. Bynum’s slippery plunger work recalls the piece’s jazz-improv affiliation, while squeeze-box propulsion, dual piano thumps and ringing gamelan bells blend to confirm the rhythmic impetus which speaks to Doble Mano’s originality.

Leaving aside a breakdown of just how much of the suite actually is or isn’t completely through-composed, the CD captures a notable moment in Andel’s conducting and composing career. By utilizing the proven talents of many of the same musicians over the years, even more impressive work can be expected from her in the future.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Doble Mano (Part I) Doble Mano (Part I) 2. Doble Mano (Part II) 3. Doble Mano (Part III) 4. Doble Mano (Part IV) 5. Doble Mano (Part V) 6. Doble Mano (Part VI) 7. Doble Mano (Part VII) 8. Doble Mano (Part VIII)

Personnel: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Matt Bauder (clarinet and bass clarinets); Stephanie Griffin (viola); Raul Jaurena (bandoneon); Carl Maguire (prepared electric piano); Ursel Schlicht (piano); Ken Filiano (bass); Danny Tunick (vibraphone and gamelan instruments); David Simons (gamelan instruments) and Laura Andel (conductor

April 9, 2010

Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet

Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths
hatOLOGY 675

Making the transition from featured sideman to band leader, Brooklyn-based cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum is beginning to preserve the unique sound(s) of his group(s) on record. The (s)s are deliberate, because unlike the fabled jazz combs of the 1950s and 1960s, many of his bands are ad-hoc groupings organized for a specific date or recording project.

Yet as this notable live session indicates, Bynum, who has always been cognizant of career-building, has managed to lure a steady group of up-and-coming players as his first call seconds. The band on Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths is the same one with which he has been gigging since 2005, while he and most of the other members also interact in outside situations, including different Anthony Braxton ensembles. That likely explains the emphatic cooperation among the conetist, his Braxton band pal, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, with whom Bynum has recorded in a duo formation. The additional players – violist Jessica Pavone, who takes another chair in Braxton groups, reedist Matt Bauder, on call for New York and Chicago gigs, and guitarist Evan O’Reilly – add their talents to the three-part “whYeXpliCitieS”, the CD’s centrepiece.

Dedicated to Braxton and composed as a suite of modular inter-locking parts for various sized sub-ensembles, the description of “whYeXpliCitieS”, appears more forbidding than it sounds on CD. The initial variant concerns itself with contrasts between electric and acoustic instruments, as Halvorson’s fuzz-tone distortion builds into a wall of quivering oscillations. Meanwhile Pavone’s splintered and staccato lines carve their own space, as the cornetist releases plunger tones and the bass clarinet burbles in sympathy. Fujiwara’s low-key jangling and solid drags stay the course until rasgueado guitar licks push the theme onto the next track. With the guitar and brass operating in counterpoint, theme elaborations speed up and slow down the tune, despite interlocking vamps from Bauer, which adumbrate the next section with honks and striated note interpolations. Attaining climax in the composition’s third – and lengthiest –section, more guitar legerdemain is on show – probably from both plectrumists. One clinks Scruggs banjo-like runs, while the other could be playing a primitive hurdy-gurdy or a Hawaiian slack-key guitar. On top of these antipodal string clicks, Bynum showcases suction release with only his mouthpiece, then from deep inside his valves gradually constricts his output to strangled cries and horn shakes. As Bauder plays an obbligato of distinct note clusters, finale and fulfillment come with tough, downward slurred fingering from the guitar.

Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths’ first and final tracks show off Bynum’s skills playing unaccompanied, with stylistic tropes that range from Bronx cheers to bubbling lip spews and held notes. Besides “whYeXpliCitieS”, the most memorable track is “Look Below”. Dedicated to brass trombonist Bill Lowe – another influence on Bynum’s career, the short track is all bright and brassy. Encompassing open-horn expression, as well as altissimo squeaks and tongue-busters from the horns, it’s summed up traditionally enough with a shout chorus following a Fujiwara solo which makes prominent use of the bass drum.

Continuing to prove himself as an accomplished soloist, composer and band leader, Bynum’s future seems as assured as that of any contemporary improviser.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Open 2. Look Below 3. whYeXpliCitieS (Part I) 4. whYeXpliCitieS (Part II) 5. whYeXpliCitieS (Part III) 6. Geoffstown 7. Close

Personnel: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Matt Bauder (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Jessica Pavone (viola); Evan O’Reilly and Mary Halvorson (guitars); and Tomas Fujiwara (drums)

June 13, 2009

Reuben Radding

Fugitive Pieces
Pine Ear Music PME 002

By Ken Waxman

Proving his versatility once again, Brooklyn-based bassist Reuben Radding heads up a quartet dedicated to providing an American response to the sort of reductionist sounds usually associated with European and Japanese improvisers.

Not that there’s anything xenophobic about the pieces, pointedly linked to Canadian author Anne Michaels book, Fugitive Pieces “which our music has nothing to do with”, he writes. More generically, the seven pieces on the CD demonstrate that the restrained ethos, which Japanese call Onkyo can be adopted some players whose first alliance is with more demonstrative sounds.

Radding, for instance has recorded with hard blowers like saxophonist Daniel Carter and Wally Shoup, while percussionist Andrew Drury has recorded contemporary improv with his own band and composer Laura Andel’s large group. Conversely tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Matt Bauder plays with both jazz-improv combos and in a reductionist setting in his Chicago home town, while trumpeter Nate Wooley holds his own in one band with powerful trombonist Steve Swell, yet has also recorded a microtonal solo CD.

Despite this varied background, on Fugitive Pieces each ensures that individual statements are subordinated to group integration. Reduced to its hub, single strokes or pops from the rhythm section are on display along with brief solitary timbres from mouthpiece or reed. Most distinctively, a darkened, low frequency interface involving vibrating double bass strings manages to add a vibrating continuum to many tracks. Acoustic, yet with the properties of electronica, this recurring undulation defines the session as much as any upfront soloing.

Fugitive Pieces’ half dozen shorter tracks serve as extended preludes and variations on “The Gradual Instant”, the CD’s final tour-de-force, which takes up nearly 32½ minutes. Along the way they experiment with various – for the most part memorable – strategies. Drury, for example, scrapes and scrubs ruffs and cymbal lacerations or exposes skittering single tone drum pummeling, while Radding reveals a buzzy, woody bass resonation. Functioning with tag-time precision, Bauer and Wooley don’t let the differences between reed and brass affect their output. Rarely fortissimo, the oscillating vibrations that are as much spittle and hiss as breaths and timbre, these polyphonic modulations evolve and dissolve.

Again the watchword is connection, as on “Vertical Time” shattering and rolling percussion allows prolonged split tone squeaks from trumpet and wet tongue slaps from the saxophone develop into heraldic, brassy unison fluttering in double counterpoint over low-pitched arco timbres from the bassist. Eventually Wooley’s tremolo interface is interlocked with Radding’s restrained bowing, resulting in a protoplasmic shifting centre.

With all strategies writ large “The Gradual Instant” defines itself from the get-go with a concentrated rumbling pitch that could conceivably come from any one or any combination of instruments. Harsh drum stick force soon underlines the undulating line, extended with reed tongue slaps and mouthpiece osculating brass textures. As triggered bass echoes combine with delicately tapped drum tops and cymbals, a single vibrating vertical reed pitch interrupted by puffs of near motionless air from the trumpet until all nodes are concentrated in such a way that the combination appears to be polyphonic parts of a single larger instrument. As these duple tones slacken, intermittent percussive scuffs, drags and pops, low-pitched sul tasto double bass strokes force the horns’ distant echoing harmonies to take on extra vibrations, underscored in the finale by determined bass stroking recurring in definite intervals. Transformed to one ego-less entity, the ululations produced by all four gradually leech away to silence.

Perfectly timed and interlocking work show that the bassist and associates can memorably operate on low flame for more than an hour without losing the improvisational thread.

In MusicWorks Issue #96

November 21, 2006

SCOTT ROSENBERG

Creative Orchestra Music, Chicago 2001
New World # 80572-2

WALTER THOMPSON ORCHESTRA
Pexo - A Soundpainting Symphony
9Winds NWCD0234

Creating structures for ensembles of improvising musicians and voices is the thread that unites these two sessions. Scott Rosenberg and Walter Thompson have formulated different paths to creation -- the former by mixing improv and written material, the later by utilizing a composing-conducting system of gestured signals.

Although both methods are praiseworthy, neither disc is 100 per cent satisfying. That’s because application of the theory sometimes breaks down in the spontaneously recorded practice.

On the up side the music on these discs demonstrates that each man has already met a formidable challenge. Rosenberg, who usually plays saxophone with experimenters like Anthony Braxton, has created, adapted and conducts five longish compositions for an ad hoc mixed orchestra of 26 of Chicago’s top musicians plus a couple of West Coast ringers. PEXO, on the other hand, is the newest example of what Thompson, a woodwinds player and educator, who has taught the concept in the United States and Europe, calls soundpainting. The CD is the aural souvenir of how Thompson’s orchestra, which he founded in 1984, and includes instrumentalists, dancers, actors and visual artists, improvises material across all media as directed by Thompson. Counting actors, he manages to express the breadth of his vocabulary and vision with only 16 performers here.

Paradoxically, however, it may be the thespian vocal theatricality that retards full realization of his symphonic aspirations. Meanwhile, in his CD’s title -- CREATIVE ORCHESTRA MUSIC CHICAGO (COMC) 2001 -- not to mention some of the music here, Rosenberg proclaims the major influence from his former teacher Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music (GTM), as well as other composers like Morton Feldman and Muhal Richard Abrams. Yet if COMC takes its inspiration from Braxton, PEXO appears to take it from Bob Barker. No musician, Bob Barker has been host of The Price Is Right, the longest running and highest rated daytime game show in television history for more than 30 years.

PEXO’s nearly 19-minute, longest composition is named for Barker and while the entire album is described as an “abstracted sound version of a visit to a TV studio”. However, the need for dramatic color and expression for voices seems to have overloaded the game show aspect -- thus “Bob Barker”. With the mumbled words from the actors suggesting that an after-the-fact written libretto may have been a good idea, the few, rather banal, phrases that peep though the miasmic instrumental sound include “keep watching for your number”, “Peggy has won a love seat” and “I can’t believe I lost”.

At other points the actors make onomatopoeia out of Barker’s name and certain syllables, vying for aural space with tuba bottom blasts, massed horn ejaculations and baroque trumpet flourishes. Too often, though, the instrumental passages merely seem to comment on the words rather than creating their own POV. Even a crackling, pseudo Bird-like alto runs and a bass thump reminiscent of Oscar Pettiford don’t make strong enough impressions. Pumping horn lines and rock music-like percussion plops don’t seem like much when they’re coupled with near-hysterical laughter. Plus a more original thought would have been to accompany the cry of “no score” with something other than weepy violins.

Perhaps visuals allow the performers’ work to seem less like speechifying. However on disc, whenever with the thematic material is transmitted through a particularly fluid instrumental passage, the disjoined stops and starts in the performance appear to reflect actorly hesitation rather than pure improv. Only a few times does Thompson’s theory take root, as when a plunger trumpet growl amplify the emotions expressed by an actor bubbling out his lines.

Even the end track, “Two Talk Show Hosts” doesn’t seem to offer enough verbal articulation to reflect the title. A singular male voice appears to be too sinister for the affable host role. Meanwhile the false hilarity of laugher in varied cadenzas, tempos and pitches vying for space with speedy, dissonant slides, glissandos and cadenzas from the horns doesn’t so much suggest network TV as much as a production midway between word play and The Living Theater.

On COMC meanwhile, Rosenberg’s most serious misstep comes with “Toys”, which is described as reflecting playful and creative anarchy, with the band split into five groups playing with different “toys”. Written, rather than improvised, the ghost of Braxton’s GTM hovers over the entire performance, perhaps understandably since Rosenberg and a couple of the other musicians had recorded a GTM piece with the maestro two months previously. Despite its more than 18½-minute length “Toys” never really comes into aural focus, with everything from the repetitive reed accompaniment and its detour into march time in one section defeating the concept.

Overly thematic, and again with no improvisation, “Wash” is unconsciously akin to Bob Graettinger’s “City of Glass score” for Stan Kenton orchestra. For all of its nine- plus minutes the piece merely surges along in torrents of thick timbres … then just ends.

Far more impressive are Rosenberg’s other -- coincidentally newer -- compositions. “Forgetting Song” takes full advantage of the wordless vocalizing of Carol Genetti, an idiom mixer who has performed with composer Pauline Oliveros and drummer Michael Zerang among many others. Like Kate Hammond-Vaughan with Vancouver’s NOW Orchestra and unlike the actors on PEXO, Genetti fits ball-and-socket into the improvisations.

Singing expositions that include nonsense natterings, keening falsetto melisma and held notes that dip into a false basso range, she matches the billows, flutters and swells of the band members’ output. Most notable instrumentally are the equestrian clip clops from what appear to be bongos and congas played by a drum machine, showcased along with vibraharp pressure by the three percussionists. With a modulated mid-section of guitars, basses and the percussionists, the tune builds to a final denouement of light plunger brass and mellifluent reeds.

The other two compositions are thicker, but dense in a commendable fashion. They allow the pile up of strings, bass, reeds and percussion to deceptively augment the sound until they fracture the orchestral building blocks into organized chaos. However, these patterns of widely spaced intervals and short, colored interjections are so solid, that individual contributions are submerged into the whole, much as they are on PEXO.

Of course with 26 players on hand, the odd synthesizer oscillations from Jim Baker, reverb feedback from guitarists John Shiurba and Nathaniel Braddock and oboe punctuation from Kyle Bruckmann stands out. Still if any are extended techniques like flutter tonguing are put into play, it’s usually part of a group effort.

Still learning, Rosenberg, born in 1972 shows with CREATIVE ORCHESTRA MUSIC CHICAGO (COMC) 2001 that he’s well on his way to write memorable compositions. He’s still working his way through apprentice missteps.

Thompson, with a longer résumé, has compared his concept of soundpainting to flipping through 100 TV channels at random and creating meaningful patterns from the musical, textural, and visual associations. As good as some sections of PEXO are, it’s evident that a DVD multi-media presentation of his orchestra would be far more satisfying than this disc.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Creative: 1. Tehr 2. Wash 3. 7x with Sttm 4. Forgetting Song 5. Toys

Personnel: Creative: Todd Margasak, Nathaniel Walcott (trumpets); Jeb Bishop, Nick Broste (trombones); Megan Tiedt (tuba); Lisa Goethe-McGinn (flute); Kyle Bruckmann (oboe); Jesse Gilbert, Paul Hartsaw, Laurie Lee Moses, Todd Munnik Matt Bauder, Aram Shelton (saxophones and clarinets); Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Chris Hoffman, Drew Morgan (cellos); John Shiurba, Nathaniel Braddock (guitars); Jim Baker (piano and synthesizer); Kyle Hernandez, Elizabeth Kennedy, Jason Roebke (basses) Jerome Bryerton, Steve Butters and Tim Daisy (percussion); Carol Genetti (vocals); Scott Rosenberg (conductor)

Track Listing: Pexo: 1. Entrance 2. Prepare 3. Get Ready 4. Bob Barker 5. The Crowd 6. Two Talk Show Hosts

Personnel: Pexo: Rob Henke (trumpet); Sarah Weaver (trombone); Christopher Washburne (trombone, tuba); Jody Espina (alto saxophone); Michaël Attias (alto and baritone saxophones); Julie Ferrara (oboe and English horn); Rolf Sturm (guitar and synthesizer); Todd Reynolds (violin and conductor); Gil Selinger (cello); Jim Whitney (bass); Steve Rust (bass and electric bass); Andrea Pryor and Greg Stare (percussion); Leese Walker, Michael David Gordon, Christian Brandjes (actors); Walter Thompson (conductor)

April 5, 2004

MATT BAUDER

Weary Already of the Way
482 Music 482-1025

MATT BAUDER/JASON AJEMIAN
Object 3
Locust no. 38

Probably the biggest challenge facing listeners to reedist Matt Bauder’s two new CDs is figuring out how much of the music is composed, how much is improvised and how much is the result of studio manipulation. On the other hand you can merely allow the sounds to seep from your organ of Corti into your consciousness, reacting to them on a purely visceral level.

Bauder is one of the many young Chicago improvisers whose allegiance is as much with post-rock, contemporary classical and electro-acoustic drone as it is with jazz. Most of the players work in each others’ bands and a considerable number of them -- including at least three on the sextet date -- have played with the scene’s most prominent representative, saxist Ken Vandermark.

Yet considering that the duo with bassist Jason Ajemian features the two improvising with pre-recorded versions of their own sounds, and the sextet date is more about pitches and textures than composition, the way this music is approached makes even Vandermark appear as traditional as Louis Armstrong.

Consider WEARY ALREADY OF THE WAY. The defining of the four untitled tracks is probably the first more than 20-minute outing. Working with all-acoustic instruments, the band still manages to reconfigure and manipulate the sound in such a way that it often appears as if the oscillating tones and wiggles are coming from electronic treatments. In fact, a good five minute elapses before the breath suggestions from sound holes and body tubes finally morph into a gentle, unison cornet line from Todd Margasak, who has recorded with reedist Scott Rosenberg and Rob Mazurek, leader of the Chicago Underground bands.

Overlaid on top are clarinet tones from Bauder and Aram Shelton, who is one-half of the Grey Ghost duo. Underneath is strumming bumps and grinds from bassist Jason Roebke, whose trio features Shelton, and who is in a trio with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who contributes glissandos to this pieces, and who seems to be on every alternate CD from Chicago, including some of Vandermark’s sessions. In front of the cellist’s arching arco tones and bubbling brass continuum are tiny flutter tonguing from trombonist Jeb Bishop, another Vandermark sideman. As the reeds take on melodica textures, the entire output sweeps across the soundfield, coming in and out of focus like shimmering patterns in the desert sands.

Other tracks are less experimental with built up reed lines harmonized into a canon at one point and enlivened with tongue slaps at another. Working as much inside the tubing as from the bell, the cornetists advance muted ghostly echo that quickly vanish into the ozone layer, while plunger trombone sounds sometimes interrupt the too perfect symmetry.

Construction of distinctive thematic phrases voiced by the reeds reaches a climax on the final track where Bauder’s tenor saxophone keeps repeating an unvarying theme pattern that serves as the rhythmic undercurrent of the piece. Supporting first a plucked bass line and the by cello double stops, the ostinato gives the others freedom for Dixieland-like polyphony, with slurred reed bites from the altoist, blaring, open-horned processional music from the cornets and bleating ‘bone tones. After fusing into a single tone, mitosis takes place, with different instruments producing counterpoint to one another. As the grace notes fade, studio wizardry appears, as buzzes pulsate and orchestral suggestions float through the piece, diminishing in audibility ever so slowly so that first impulses and then fading echoes are left ringing in your ears.

OBJECT 3’s entire 31-minute piece includes undulating machine-like rustles, rather like the circular drones you’ll sometimes sense just out of earshot on AMM discs. Eventually you can be lulled into an almost dream-like trance as the bowed solid tones of the bass and reed trills dissolve into a single drawn-out dirge. Eventually the extended stopping from the bass gets darker, higher, undulating pitches from the reed vibrate more roughly until they approach siren territory.

Just when you’ve decided that you can’t tell whether the creation is studio static or single breaths, the two minidisks which have recorded the first half of the performance are put into shuffle mode and paradoxically more sound pitches enter the aural picture. Reed harmonies expand to presage saxophone quartet suggestions -- and the kazoo-like peep -- while the built up, unison arco basses coalesce into a solid organ-like tone.

Thought provoking in some senses, your appreciation of these experiments will still depend on how much melody and rhythm you want to jettison in your listening habits. Bauder and company will be heard from in the future. But as maturing musicians, it will be instructive to see if the sonic territory here will continue to be their only conclusion he -- and they -- draw as to how to create an original style.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Weary: 1. 20.05 2. 7:58 3. 8:21 4. 16:08

Personnel: Weary: Todd Margasak and Rob Mazurek (cornets); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Aram Shelton (alto saxophone and clarinet); Matt Bauder (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); Jason Roebke (bass)

Track Listing: Object: 1. Normal

Personnel: Object: Matt Bauder (tenor saxophone); Jason Ajemian (bass)

February 9, 2004