Benjamin Duboc

Primare Cantus
AYLCD 098-099-100

Burkhard Stangl

Hommage à moi

Loewenhertz loew 020

Howard Riley

The Complete Short Stories 1998-2010

NoBusiness NBCD 21-26

Roland Keijser & Raymond Strid

Yellow Bell

Umlaut UMADA 2

By Ken Waxman

Traditionally, holiday time gets people thinking about CD box sets as gifts. But merely offering multi-disc best-of collections hardly shows originality. Instead the most valuable multiple CD sets are collected because, like the talented players featured here, the musicians literally had more ideas than could be expressed on even two disc. Take Paris-based bassist Benjamin Duboc for example. Probably the busiest and most inventive player of his instrument in French improvised music circles, Primare Cantus AYLCD 098-099-100 www.ayler.com (7320470141892), a three-CD-set, highlights a different facet of his work on each side. A treat for double-bass fanatics the solo work on Disc 1, demonstrates that by also by using his voice, and extended techniques the spatial program not only expresses the fascinating bass timbres but does so in a way that the resulting sounds seem electronically processed although thoroughly acoustic. Meanwhile Disc 2 and 3 are equally excellent showing how his mature style adapts to input from radically different ensembles. Accommodating his jagged bowing and hearty string smacks to the vibrations from saxophonists Sylvain Guérineau and Jean-Luc Petit plus cunning percussion asides from Didier Lasserre, results is concentrated sounds that are as accommodating as they are opaque. The fifth untitled track for instance, perfectly matches low-pitched double bass arpeggios; while track 9 climaxes with majestic glissandi from both reedists mated with Duboc’s speedy string scrubbing that completes the initial challenge between the bassist’s strums from and subterranean snorts from Petit’s baritone plus fortissimo bites from Guérineau’s tenor. Pascal Battus’ guitar pick-up and the subtle introduction of field recordings give Disc 3 more of an electronic cast. Overall, with Sophie Agnel concentrating on fishing out unexpected note clusters from her piano’s internal string set and Christian Pruvost mostly propelling pure air from his trumpet, the thesis is timbre expansion not swing. For instance, the bassist’s concentrated ostinato underpinning Battus’ bottleneck flanges, the trumpeter’s strained grace notes and Agnel’s mallet popping on the strings creates mercurial dynamism. Additionally suggestions of billiard balls being racked or magnetic tape reels reversing provide unexpected tinctures in a sound field otherwise consisting of agitated bass licks, quivering piano strings and squealing brass. Overall, an aviary explosion from Pruvost, shaped by Agnel’s metronomic pitter-patter and Duboc’s pedal point is as exciting as anything recorded by Roy Eldridge with Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown.

So are the three CDs of improvisations from the well-matched Swedish duo of veteran Roland Keijser playing a variety of conventional and folkloric reeds in conjunction with Raymond Strid’s sensitive percussion output. Recorded live in a Stockholm club Yellow Bell Umlaut UMADA 2 www.umlautrecords.com (7319200000264) offers variety of moods and stratagems. Although Keijser – on piano –and the percussionist conclude with a stately reading of Monk’s Mood that’s all tremolo key clipping and drum rim smacks, most of the 32 tunes are far from the jazz cannon. Spegelsång for example finds Keijser on stuttering saxophone and Strid’s thumping martial beat deconstructing a folk tune as its initial tone rows are played upside down in its second half. On Sohini the reedist’s tootles are from trussed metal whistles and Strid’s drags and flams could come from a djembe intonation, while Keijser uses a supple South Indian venu flute to play a variant of the Swedish Varför frågar du/Varför svarar du

backed by snare shuffles and cynmbal rattles. The most impressive display of this cross-cultural improv is evident on the title tune plus Kvällskvarpa/Dansa med moss. On the former Keijser’s Sonny Rollins-like obbligatos transmogrifies an ancient fiddle tune into near-jazz, while the latter is kept linear by Strid’s paradiddles and ruffs as mid-range clarinet glissandi diffuse from snake-charmer-like trills to splintered runs.

Someone whose cognizant of Duboc’s plus Keijser’s and Strid’s influences plus many other notated and improvised tropes is Viennese guitarist Burkhard Stangl. Obviously no sufferer from false modesty, Hommage à moi Loewenhertz loew 020 www.loewenhertz.at (no UPC) presents 25 tracks of his oeuvre from 1993 to 2009 performed by groups ranging from duos to extended ensembles. Included are electro-acoustic compositions; notated and improvised music; an extended orchestral salute to English lutenist Robert Dowland plus more contemporary influences and associates. The most affecting pieces are those created for quasi-improvised ensembles spurred by soloists such as British saxophonist John Butcher or Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti. Konzert für Posaune und 22 Instrumente which seems to take its inspiration from Malfatti’s, microtonal vocabulary, contrasts flat-line, pressurized brass tones with an ensemble’s accelerating and vibrating polyphony. Highlights include slurred guitar fingering and the trombone’s incremental and widely spaced tongue slaps, squeaks and hollow-air vibrations. Quixotically, Concert for Saxophone and Quiet Players, featuring Butcher and a stripped-down ensemble is actually louder than the trombone concerto. Extended reed whorls encompassing tongue flutters and are contrasted with contributions from the “quiet players” which include static crackles, dial-twisting quirks and field-recorded bird chirps plus flute flutters and intermittent percussion beats. Post-modern harmonization of 17th Century vocalization and 21st Century instrumentation, My Dowland puts countertenor Jakob Huppmann’s ethereal voice in the midst of romantica string progressions plus sampled aviary chirps which become increasingly agitated although Huppmann and the string section remain languid and moderato.

Moving from orchestrations to a more singular but just as wide-ranging project is British pianist Howard Riley’s The Complete Short Stories 1998-2010 NoBusiness NBCD 21-26 www.nobusinessrecors.com (4779022072185). Extended essays in the art of solo piano, these six CDs present 74 tracks which range in length from slightly more than 1½ minutes to almost 7½ plus five novella length mediations from 2010. Someone whose interests include contemporary notated music as well as every variety of jazz Riley’s showcases are consistent as well as brief. One of the most affecting tracks is For Jaki on CD 2, a bouncy ditty with Tin Pan Alley suggestions that honors the late American pianist Jaki Byard. Similarly the title tune is kinetic as well as dramatic, equally emphasizing high-pitched tremolo lines as well as a grounded narrative. Concision on the other hand, vibrates on the percussive harmonics which can be plucked from and strummed on the piano’s internal strings, while the steady lengthening lines of Another Time show harmonic references to Lennie Tristanto-like Cool Jazz. Riley’s discursive stop-time frequently recalls Thelonious Monk as on the tellingly titled Roots and elsewhere. Nonetheless the extravagant dynamics he exhibits on The Opener are mirrored by his stentorian patterns on many other tunes, where Earl Hines-like walking bass notes and Cecil Taylor-like percussive runs vie for supremacy

Adventurous listeners on anyone’s gift list would appreciate any of these sets

-- For Whole Note Vol. 17 #4

December 10, 2011

Sophie Agnel/Bertrand Gauguet/Andrea Neumann

Spiral Inputs
Another Timbre at39

When is a piano not a piano? When it’s reduced to its basic frame and paired with live electronics, as Berlin’s Andrea Neumann does on this CD. At the same time, the input from Paris’ Sophie Agnel own piano further muddies the definition of the venerable instrument since she mostly prepares the strings with objects, stroking and stopping them as often as she plays the keyboard. Not part of this discussion-definition, but contributing mightily to the improvisation is Mulhouse’s Bertrand Gauguet, who in his turns, reduces his soprano saxophone interface to microtonal puffs, disconnected air expelling, flattement and whispered squeaks.

Dependent, as the title notes, on dynamic input from the three improvisers, the resulting four interlocking spirals downplay dynamics for the creative friction produced by intersecting patterns. Interest is maintained throughout by ever-shifting sonic pointillism.

None of the participants is a novice when it comes to this sort of cerebral sound strategy either. Neumann, for example, who also adds electronic devices to her playing this performance, has long been involved with promulgating microtonalism with players such as trumpeter Sabine Ercklentz and turntablist/electronics manipulator Ignaz Schick. Agnel’s collaborators range from baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro to sound sculptor Jérôme Noetinger. For his part Gauguet performs with a clutch of fellow experimenters including percussionist Lê Quan Ninh and synthesizer player Thomas Lehn.

On this session, Agnel’s low-frequency chording sometimes serves as the leitmotif for the four spirals which make up the CD. Whether it’s resonating timbres from the piano’s bass clef or lightly voiced and fungible treble tones, these keyboard sweeps and presses provide linear directions. Simultaneously she subtly undermines chromaticism with the friction resulting from the hammering and stopping of the piano’s internal strings. Meanwhile, as Neumann’s instrument is compressed into a piano-harp, her intermittent strums and descending plucks produce additional tinctures on this reductionist color field. At the same time a translucent quality is frequently present as well since Neumann’s electronic manipulations create motorized tweaks and twists, droning pulses and crackling flanges that exist perpendicularly to comment on the others’ work. Odd man out, with an oral instrument, Gauguet goes his own way to produces lip-bubbling air pressure, disengaged dog-whistles, aviary twitters and dissonant tongue fluttering. Although one of his sequences uses only key hammering and pad-popping to create an entire percussive interlude, his timbres subtly blend with the others’.

Although it may appear that communication among the three is at points more inchoate than intuitive, genuine sound cohesion is usually achieved. Without resorting to obvious and conventional harmonies, double and/or triple counterpoint exists during several interludes. The most palpable points of intersection result from unison note clusters arriving from each of the opposing string sets. As well, the saxophonist’s irregularly squeezed vibrations are most noticeable when Agnel’s voicing is most cohesive and connective. All of this faintly suggests the Jazz-like trope of reed expansion coupled with keyboard comping.

Spiral Inputs shouldn’t be listened to for Jazz echoes or, as a matter of fact, to find associations with other genres of music. Instead the CD stands on its own as a high quality example of low-key but intense liberated improvisation.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Spiral #1 2. Spiral #2 3. Spiral #3 4. Spiral #4

Personnel: Bertrand Gauguet (alto and soprano saxophones); Sophie Agnel (piano) and Andrea Neumann (piano frame and electronic devices)

November 15, 2011

Densités Festival

Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France
October 23 to 25 2009

A rural French hamlet in the Lorraine countryside isn’t the setting you imagine for a world-class festival of unadulterated Electronic and Free Music. Yet the Densités Festival in Fresnes-en-Woëvre – population 500 – about 80 kilometres from Nancy, is that. During three days in late October, the 16th Edition presented a sonic banquet of unstoppable Free Jazz, minimalist improv, sound installations, electro-acoustic meetings, poetry recitations and interactions between instrumentalists and dancers.

Equally fascinating were the duets between American bassist Barre Phillips and French dancer Emmanuelle Pépin opening night and French saxophonist Eddy Kowalski and the body movements of Alain Sallet the next. Both performances used wooden chairs as props, but while Kowalski rested in his to comment on Sallet’s elasticized movements, Phillips-Pépin were more proactive.

With the chair serving variously as body support, dance partner and booty to be used and or withdrawn from one by the other, Pépin also balances on it or swept the chair in circles – that is when she isn’t miming anger or marching robotically stiff-legged mocking the bassist’s sul ponticello squeals. For his part Phillips sometimes strums his four-strings guitar-like, scrapes the strings on the neck near the scroll while mumbling or yodeling. He seems to spend more time brushing the stage with his bow, dragging the bull fiddle across the floor or pulling sounds from the bass’s back and belly than sounding the strings.

On the other hand, except when Kowalski resonates his sax notes parallel to the ground or sticks the bell upwards, he doesn’t subvert his sonic role. He confines himself to simple pinched vibrato trills or propelled pure air through the horn’s body tube. In contrast, Sallet is in perpetual motion; at points crawling crab-like on his hands and knees, at others repeatedly leaping and grasping for something unseen; other times throwing himself down and up from the ground like a rag doll. Wobbling on bandy legs or exposing a hollow-legged gait with arms askew, Sallet suddenly pauses to pant dog-like, cough, retch, gasp, or, in response to a spiraling atonal line from Kowalski, dance a solitary tango. Finally as the saxophone whistles altissimo, Sallet leans backwards, slithering along the floor.

This sort of cross-platform improvising was expressed differently in two electro-acoustic meetings; one with German synth-manipulator Thomas Lehn, Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger and French saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet; the other a Gallic admixture of Sophie Agnel’s prepared piano plus the electronics of Lionel Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger. The later trio’s extended improvisation balances on sped-up and decelerated ostinatos from Noetinger’s electronics, which infrequently accelerate shrilly to interrupt the pianist’s lyricism. Prepared with plastic drinking glasses and rubber balls, the strings on Agnel’s piano echo smacked and stopped arpeggios, knife-blade scrapes and resounding wooden clanks. When he wasn’t recording piano sounds to play back in real-time unison with Agnel’s improvising, Marchetti manipulates a tape-wrapped, telephone extension among his equipment as if he’s a doctor using a stethoscope to probe a patient. In the performance, electronic loops, and flanges eventually give way to Agnel’s march tempo, Marchetti short wave-styled static and Noetinger rumbling what could have been a primitive blues tune.

Reversing the number of plugged-in and hand-held sound sources, Gauguet/Lehn/Hautzinger’s interface sounds no more or less acoustic than Agnel/Marchetti/Noetinger’s. However Lehn’s rumbling vibrations, quivering wave forms and occasional ring modulator-like clangs steady the improvisations, as Hautzinger complements the saxophonist’s unaccented puffs. Circumscribing his soprano saxophone in the air, Gauguet produces high-pitched reed bites as Hautzinger’s horn yelps and barks and Lehn burbles sound waves swollen to chunky vamps. Eventually the keyboardist’s jabs simmer unhurriedly as the horns’ double counterpoint dissolve into multi-syllabic, tremolo runs from the trumpeter and overblowing peeps from the saxophonist. Sonic equanimity is achieved when Gauguet’s over-extended rubato runs are superseded by pinging crackles and wiggling oscillations from the synthesizer.

Mostly unplugged connective voltage was on display via the Hairy Bones quartet of German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, the trumpet and electronics of Japan’s Toshinori Kondo, Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and Italian electric bassist Massimo Pupillo. Operating full blast, the reedist’s floor-shaking bawling and nephritic split tones are hypnotically matched by the trumpeter’s screeching tremolo pitches, the bass guitarist’s grinding flanges plus the drummer’s clobbering back beat that impresses head-bangers.

This wall of sound is occasionally breached when Kondo uses foot-pedal action to extend his triplet overtones or during Brötzmann’s unaccompanied breaks, where the sounds seemed to issue as much from his solar plexus and stomach limning as his lungs. During its Sunday afternoon set the quartet divides into duos or trios without slacking its sonic wallop. For instance, Pupillo’s thick strums match Nilssen-Love continuous stroking; Brötzmann’s altissimo cries face off with the rhythm section’s relentless beat; or Kondo’s pitched squeals join bent saxophone note for a balladic approximation. Smears, scrapes, rubs and trills shrilly echo during the set’s climatic moments, almost literally shaking the stage before concluding.

No stages are shaken during the festival’s other outstanding acoustic set a day pervious. Trumpeter Birgit Ulher from Hamburg and alto saxophonist Heddy Boubaker from Toulouse push foreshortened air current through their respective instruments, frequently pianissimo, but often studded with key percussion, tongue slaps and reed cries. Boubaker, who at times plays his horn at a 180 degree angle, also places his mouthpiece perpendicularly, the better to expel wide expanses of pure air. Ulher amplifies some of her mutes through a small radio, but the resulting splintered timbres and watery slurps don’t alter the minimalist note construction. Rewarding attentive listening, the two expose the partials and extensions of many notes with their laser-focused improvising.

More spectacular, but as dedicated to wringing the least obvious textures from his instrument(s) is Australian percussionist Robbie Avenaim. Theatrical in presentation, his solo set Saturday evening finds him seated behind a regular drum kit surrounded by four additional bass drums, three extra snares plus another drum stick hanging from a stand designed to strike the cymbals and snares beneath it. Using a motorized voltage controller, Avenaim programmed the auxiliary percussion to play a pre-determined rhythm, follow his live strokes or create random beats. Strokes, volume and tempi varied; while his soloing concentrates on rim shots, sizzle cymbal tonality, drum-top patterning and abrasive whacks on the drums’ unyielding sides.

Sonic inventiveness extends to a spatial installation, as Berlin’s Burkard Beins demonstrates Sunday afternoon in the foyer of the village’s ornate city hall. Plastic string was linked to Styrofoam boxes mounted on the walls at different angles, another box filled with flashlight batteries on the ground. Beins conjures alchemist-like unmistakable percussion and string timbres from the set up. By stroking, plucking, pulling and twisting the strings the contrapuntal results resonating through nearby speakers include extended textures along with designated tones. Resembling a marionette when his hands are simultaneously attached to more than one string, Beins is no puppet but in complete control. Highpoint of the performance is when he uses a sanding motion to rub together two Styrofoam boxes, about the size of transistor radios, to create first a low-pitched buzz for a few measures, then by moving them along the strings, cello-like sustained textures.

Verbal improvisation wasn’t neglected at Densités. During two very different recitals, Paris poet Damien Schultz dramatically demonstrates the onomatopoeic and homonymic qualities of various French words and phrases. Appropriately his poems are enlivened by word and sense play, with subtle layers of meanings.

The out-of-the-way location of Fresnes-en-Woëvre often made it feel as if the participants were trapped inside an improvisational bubble. Yet the majority of Densités’ performances compensate for any isolation.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #107

July 3, 2010

Quatuor Qwat Reum Six

Live at Festival NPAI 2007
Amor Fati FATUM 017

With sonic textures and timbres often as inscrutable as the band’s name, four of France’s most accomplished improvisers explore non-idiomatic sounds. This continuous, though segmented, performance is not only tonally mesmerizing, but also one which, through the use of extensions and techniques negate the differences between acoustic and electronic instruments.

A self-described “outlaw in jazz”, baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro has followed his own muse for decades, Here, his nephritic timbres and unexpected upward twists produce as many oscillations as the static loops and patches exposed from Jérôme Noetinger’s table-top electronics. Meantime, while Michael Nick’s string shaking, shuffle bowing and spiccato patterns extend the violin’s range, Sophie Agnel hardly touches the piano keys, preferring to create her own aesthetic with resonation, thumps and clanks available when internal strings are first prepared and then plucked, strummed or stroked.

Dazzling above all else is the centre section of this narrative where Noetinger’s motor-driven relation to musique concrete is transformed, with his output becoming as viscous and diaphanous as the others’ contributions. From among the furiously angled fiddle string sawing, defiantly acoustic continuous saxophone breaths and muscular string strokes which alter the piano’s action, arises a multi-faceted, multi-directional theme. In the countdown to the finale, it aurally exposes both the massed polyphonic texture as well as individual variations including reed spetrofluctuation, whining string dislocation and wave form feedback.

Although remembering Quator Qwart Reum Six’s odd moniker may be tricky, discovering its music is worth the linguistic brain-teasing involved.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #106

March 8, 2010

Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon

Ulrichsberg, Austria
April 30 –May 2, 2009

A site-specific performance that took into account the dimensions and machinery of a still-functioning 1853 linen factory; resounding interface between pulsating electronic and acoustic instruments; and a full-force finale involving a mid-sized band were among the notable performances at 2009’s Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon.

Remarkable as well as the consistently high quality of the 11 concerts that took place during the 23rd edition of this three-day festival, is the location: a farming and small manufacturing village of fewer than 7,000 people about 60 kilometres west of Linz, Austria.

Two years in the planning and the most spectacular – as well as demanding the most from the audience – performance, was Six Plus One’s “Weaving Sounds”. Utilizing the main space of Ulrichsberg’s linen mill, with machinery protected by yellow danger tape, but with enough looms, electrical cables, bobbins and bolts of cloth present to confirm this was a working environment, in many ways the setting was as important as the sonic result.

Yet the clutch of top-flight improvisers participating made sure the constant timbral pulsations were as riveting as the location and the players’ physical strategies. Swiss pianist Jacques Demierre was stationed on one side of the space, abutting an electronic set up encompassing mixing boards and computers, and manned by technicians. On the opposite side of the factory floor was German synthesizer player Thomas Lehn with his instrument connected to the electrical source for one of the largest machines. On identical raised platforms nearby were French clarinetist/vocalist Isabelle Duthoit and Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber; while Swiss violinist Charlotte Hug and singer and hand saw manipulator Dorothea Schürch created undulating tones and sul ponticello squeaks from positions on the cat walk above the factory floor.

With visual cues difficult, 60 miniature speakers placed strategically around the room enabled players to react to one another’s initiatives. If the warp and woof of their concentrated and jagged tones wasn’t stimulating enough, at points Demierre climbed on the piano bench to cue operation of one loom. Shuddering and screeching as the colorful cloth was stretched and sliced, the resulting mechanized clamor meshed seamlessly with fortissimo reed split tones, cascading synthesizer oscillations, strangled throat spewing and catgut gashing from the instrumentalists. Perception of particular passages whether banged out on a keyboard or sputtered from a reed player’s bell – as well as of the piece itself – was dependent on proximity, since most audience members changed positions several times throughout the concert.

Spatial issues didn’t figure into another electro-acoustic showcase by the French Qwart quartet two days previously. With tones bouncing off the stone walls of the Jazz Atelier, a former pig barn sturdily constructed in the 16th century, baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro’s circular-breathed growls and tongue stops vibrated so powerfully that he had to change reeds mid-set. Meanwhile violinist Michael Nick bowed abrasive spiccato, while Sophie Agnel’s timbre extension involved stopped piano keys plus strings weighted by Styrofoam cups and scraped with looped fishing lines. Providing both crackling and blurry ostinato plus broken octave expansions of the others’ textures with electronics including an e-bow and a camera flash was Jerome Noetinger. A percussive finale was created by Agnel repeatedly slamming the piano lid.

Despite concentrated electro-acoustic performances – including the slow build up of glissandi and looped drones from the Behavior Pattern trio of Austrians, cellist Noid and electronics whiz Ivan Palacky plus Japanese zitherist Taku Unami or the ambient Heavy Metal of extended and fortissimo thudding drones and whooshes from Americans, guitarist Alan Licht and cassette sampler Akli Onda – acoustic sets were often more satisfying. That is if performances were properly harnessed. New York trumpeter Pete Evans, for instance, dazzled with techniques that included brayed triplets, tremolo fluffs and excavated plunger tones. But his quartet showcase appeared never to climax – or end.

More down-to-earth were “Can You Ear Me”, a festival-commissioned tentet composition by French bassist Joëlle Léandre for a mixed Austrian strings-and-horns ensemble plus American percussionist Kevin Norton; and a hushed interpretation of Moron Feldman”s “For John Cage” by British pianist John Tlibury and Irish violinist Darragh Morgan

Equally proficient maintaining a jazz pulse with his standard kit, plus exposing pointillist coloration from struck marimba and vibraphone keys plus unattached sticks, gongs, rattles and cymbals, Norton’s rebounds and strokes sewed together some of the Léandre piece’s fissures, which strained in sections between the notated music orientation of some string players and the improv impulses of the horns. Alongside Léandre’s absorbing command of her instrument – which encompassed pumping straight time, sul ponticello string brushes and vocalized nonsense syllables – the most musically rewarding moments came when guitarist Burkhard Stangl re-directed whammy-bar-aided friction into staccato pulsations; and a section where every musician joyously shook bolo-bat versions of American Indian gourd rattles.

Ironically contrasting with the baroque gold-encrusted sculptures and pictures of saints on the wall of Ulrichsberg’s Pfarrkirche on the fest’s final day, Tilbury and Morgan’s reading of Feldman’s austere score appeared perhaps more coldly minimalist than it was. Certainly the pianist’s clanking single notes plus the violinist’s strangled split tones suggested two parallel courses that hardly intersected. Unrolling at a leisurely pace the result was almost mesmerizing, although it seemed as if the composition took a long time to get to an intermediate point.

More relaxed was a first-time improvisational meeting among Tilbury, Léandre and Norton the previous day. The pianist’s left-handed chord tinkles, which distinguish his contributions to AMM, were in evidence, as were the bassist’s col legno tones and the percussionist’s multi-directional strategies. When Léandre plucked pizzicato, Norton’s vibe strokes doubled her timbres. And when kinetic piano sonorities and string jabs in cello-range were prominent, the percussionist responded by stroking a collection of unattached cymbals, organized in size order. Other times Norton sounded a small gong or used a bow to saw on a small cymbal without ever making the gestures precious.

Precious was an adjective that would never be applied to Norwegian reedist Frode Gjerstad’s 12-piece Circulasione Totale Orchestra, whose sounds blasted the Atelier’s rafters as the Kaleidophon’s finale.

Besides Norton on vibes, the Scandinavian players were spelled by such long-time Gjerstad associates as American Hamid Drake and South African Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums, British bassist Nick Stephens, plus Americans reedist Sabir Mateen and cornetist Bobby Bradford in the front line. Each helped direct the intense Energy Music away from self-indulgence towards group cohesion.

Adding their strokes and paradiddles to a bottom further solidified by Morten Olsen’s percussion and Lasse Marhaug’s electronics, the non-European drummers built a backdrop impermeable enough to serve equally as foundation for chicken-scratch guitar licks and percussive hand-tapping from the electric bassist as well as the jagged, reed-twisting of Gjerstad and Mateen. Harmonized or alone – and often buoyed contrapuntally by Børre Molstad tuba burps or Stevens’ steadying strokes – the reedists zoomed from split tones to multiphonics, advancing improvisations in different pitches. As uncompromisingly atonal as Gjerstad on saxophone, Mateen distinguished himself with pastoral flute passages and stress-less clarinet trills. More iconoclastic still, Bradford maintained his modest and melodic composure even when the rest of the band played fortissimo.

Bradford’s molten creativity was cast in boldest relief however when the cornetist joined with a clarinet-playing Gjerstad for a demanded encore. With harmonies soaring so that they approached pure song, the unaccompanied duo also batted broken octaves back and forth. These timbres, simultaneously challenging and classic, neatly summed up the sort of unexpected sounds exposed at the annual Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon – and the festival’s abiding appeal.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #105

November 12, 2009

Sophie Agnel

Capsizing Moments
Emanem 5004

Accomplishing almost everything imaginable with her instrument’s keys, strings and construction short of capsizing the object, French pianist Sophie Agnel offers up a dazzling recital of solo prepared piano in three parts here. Nearly 51 minutes in duration, the three-part invention is neither edited nor transformed with any sort of electronic interface.

Paris-born and with extensive traditional and jazz education, Agnel’s raison d’etre is improvisation. A frequent playing partner of acoustic improvises such as baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro, she also partners wave-form manipulators like electronics specialist Lionel Marchetti. Agnel’s achievement on this CD is creating an original interface by mixing the microtonal and noise-making properties of New music with the aleatory freedom gained through improvisation.

All of part, her three “capsizing moments” encompass pecked keyboard patterns and creaking internal string-stopping mixed with unvarying, percussive chording. Metaphorically bringing karate-chop strength to her clipped and fanned key patterns, Agnel broadens her quivering, off-pitch textures with fishing line abrasions on internal strings – that bring out partials as well as the sounded notes – and sharp slaps on the piano frame and the bottom board for further coloring. Using the fortissimo power resulting from uniting processional and fungible key clusters to pump up the rhythmic accompaniment, Agnel dampens her climatic crescendos by piercing then with staccato whistles and rigid rapping on the external piano wood. With foot pedal pressure extending soundboard reverberations, additionally she produces brutal abrasions by weighing the vibrating strings with heavy objects such as ashtrays or slashing at the string set with rigid objects. The sonic results are wave forms that can sometimes swell to suggest massive church bell reverberations or maintain equilibrium by referencing the thumb-tacked action and dampers of Ragtime Revival prepared pianos.

Attaining a final elongated thematic variation, Agnel penultimate interlude turns from an adagio evisceration of the piano’s innards to more percussive undercover work. With objects she hammers on the wound bass strings so that the resulting beats contrast with the portamento runs she inflicts upon the higher-pitched unwound treble strings from the keyboard. Concluding with an intermezzo of pitch-sliding tonality, ocean-waves of glissandi are contrasted with contrapuntal whines and shrieks caused by foreshortened string stops. Finally, as silences bisect strident sonic invention, she replicates cello-like sul ponticello string strokes, daxophone-like whining and flattened key pulses.

As mesmerizing as a solo player as she is in a group situation, Agnel never capsizes her balanced improvisations during the many extreme – and exciting –

moments on this CD. She also confirms that with timbres assembled in a distinctive manner, an acoustic keyboard can be a textural source as much as a mechanism for formal musical narratives.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Capsizing Moments part 1 2. Capsizing Moments part 2 3. Capsizing Moments part 3

Personnel: Sophie Agnel (prepared piano)

October 11, 2009

Sonic Geography: Mulhouse, France

For MusicWorks Issue #101
BY KEN WAXMAN

During late August when some streets in Mulhouse, France take on a decidedly other-directed character associated with the Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) festival, it’s likely neither visitors nor locals realize the symbolic roots of the celebration, an integral part of the city since 1983.

Known as France’s Manchester, industry in this city of about 112,000 people in the Haut-Rhin region has been involved with the textile industry since 1746, when four locals founded the city’s first textile printing works. Annexed by France in 1798, Mulhouse was formerly a free republic associated with the Swiss Confederation. In the late 19th and early 20th century Mulhouse’s factories remained world leaders in the manufacture and marketing of printed cloth for both home and apparel, while students from around the world studied at the École nationale superieure des industries textiles.

Over the centuries the city also established enduring links with New Orleans, main port of Louisiana, from where cotton for its textile factories was imported. Isn’t it appropriate then, that one of Europe’s most sophisticated improvised music festivals should have this long-time attachment to the purported cradle of jazz?

Not that there’s any sort of languid Crescent City feel to this city, 30 kilometres northwest of Basel, Switzerland. Its distinctiveness comes from being a French city in close proximity to Germany and Switzerland. Annexed by Germany following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1918) and from 1940-1945, there’s a Teutonic bustle in the streets and a few restaurants where German-styled dishes such as baeckeoffe, meats simmered in wine, markknepfle, sausages with potatoes and spätzle noodles are available. Additionally, there’s that Swiss connection, and not just from visitors. As Adrien Chiquet, JAM’s artistic director notes: “The specificity of Mulhouse is that part of the supposed middle class works in Switzerland and earns a lot of money.”

This money means that Mulhouse is able to support artistic endeavors such as the Musée de l'Impression sur Étoffes (printed textiles) and the Musée National de l'Automobile de Mulhouse, initially located within a textile mill. There’s also La Filature, the theatre/opera house, which is dark throughout August.

In contrast, during JAM, day-time concerts take place in the austere 12th Century Chapelle St. Jean, midtown, and at night at Le Noumatrouff, an expansive rock club in the suburbs, next to the tram terminus. “Even if Le Noumatrouff is not so comfortable, it’s more appropriate for what I want to do,” confides Chiquet. “Free-Music has more to do with punk venues than opera houses.”

Considering that JAM now hosts rock-improv, and electronica as well as acoustic Free Music, proves his point. In 2007, for instance, the rock-influenced Alsacienne duo Donkey Monkey and the Basque punk-improv Billy Boa trio were featured along with improvisers such as computer manipulator Thomas Lehn, saxophonist Evan Parker and pianist Irène Schweizer. The affiliated Jazz en ville/À La Campage concerts earlier in August are more conventional. This reflects the festival’s origins as a standard summer jazz fest, which as recently as 1990 featured boppers such as flugelhornist Art Farmer. The improv concentration occurred two years later when founding artistic director Paul Kanitzer gave up direction of the cultural center to concentrate on JAM.

It’s not as if there are many well-known musicians of any stripe living in the area. Although since the Beatles-era there has been a militant alternative rock scene – witness the airport hanger-like size of Le Noumatrouff – but with larger cities like Basel and Strasbourg, France nearby, committed professional musicians move on. Rather than a musician, probably the most famous Mulhouse native was Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), the French army captain whose trumped-up treason conviction exposed the country’s latent anti-Semitism.

Still, JAM tries to encourage appreciation for music in the area. Over the years concerts have been held on the streets, in bars and shops and in 2006, even at the Bains Municipaux, with a multi-media soiree fluid including videos, dance, and an electro-acoustic group led by Parker.

Off season JAM also co-presents improv-rock and electronica concerts, organizes electronic music workshops and sponsors a year-long series at the Mulhouse conservatory where visiting improvisers work with music students and non-professionals. During the festival young players come from all over – about 30 per cent of them locals, estimates Chiquet – to participate in intensive improvisational workshops, which in 2007 were directed by Parker, pianist Sophie Agnel and guitarist Noël Akchoté. The previous year sound designer Jérôme Noetinger led similar workshops.

Expressing a profound improv ethos, Chiquet sees the expansion of local musical activities as the workshops’ and the festival’s underlying objective “I think that 35 years of creative music in Mulhouse – because of Paul Kanitzer’s activity – has produced a lot of musicians here even if, in the end, they don't play ‘improvised music’ but turn to rock, jazz, singing, electro, etc.” he affirms.

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Ken Waxman (www.jazzword.com) writes in Toronto and internationally about jazz and improvised music. This is another of his reports on the sonic geography of selected European cities.

July 2, 2008

Jazz à Mulhouse gives a loving French kiss to Improvised music

By Ken Waxman
For CODA Issue 337

Impressive saxophone and reed displays were the focus of the 24th Edition of Jazz à Mulhouse in France in late August. Overall however, most of the 19 performances maintained a constant high quality. This may have something to do with the fact that unlike larger, flashier and more commercial festivals, Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) is an almost folksy showcase for improvisation.

Located less than 20 minutes away by train from Basel, Switzerland, Mulhouse is a mid-sized city of 150,000 in eastern France long known as an industrial textile centre. Low-key, JAM is rather like the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), with better restaurants.

Except for an opening concert by French guitarist Noël Akchoté, which this year was in a crowded downtown club that looks as if its standard fare is pop chansonniers, all other shows take place in two wildly dissimilar venues. The mid-day solo piano series is showcased in the acoustically austere Chapelle St. Jean. Located in mid-town, it’s a 12th Century stone church with vaulted ceilings, bas-reliefs at eye level and two gigantic sun dials, high up on opposite walls facing the stage.

In late afternoon, a JAM-organized free shuttle bus takes the audience out to the suburbs near the streetcar terminus for evening shows at the Noumatrouff, an expansive, hanger-like space that is usually a rock club, complete with grungy washrooms and a beer tent. With a two-hour gap between early-and-late performances, audience members mix, mingle, chat, chow down on their own food or what’s available from a couple of vendors, and sample the local beer.

What follows is a selection of most of the festivals highlights, with mention of a few less-than-stellar performances.

Disappointedly in fact, Akchoté opened the festivities with a nearly listless solo set that skirted shoe-gazing pop jazz. The Swiss Lucien Dubois trio which preceded him, featured a break-dancing drummer, a bass guitarist warbling lachrymose ballads and was only notable for the leader’s reed prowess..

In the piano series, Belgium’s Fred Van Hove and Switzerland’s Irène Schweizer represent the first generation of Euro improvisers and France’s Frédéric Blondy and Sophie Agnel the contemporary ones. With his waves of long white hair Van Hover, 70, resembles a caricature of a 19th Century classical virtuoso and his playing seemed to reflect this. Concentrating on easy-flowing glissandi and heavy-handed echoing timbres he created a waterfall of upwards pitched timbres with dense centres that were then smoothed down into sharp individual notes. Without using the pedals he exposed low frequency percussive rhythms that literally made audience members jump, then concluded with a calmer theme variation.

Harder and faster in execution, Schweizer’s recital exposed a cyclone of sharp note-twisting vamps that slithered between very low and very high pitches with references to classical music appearing and vanishing in seconds, plus slapped keys and subterranean pitches reminiscent of Herbie Nichols. Schweizer’s heightened rhythmic sense came through even when she used mallets to poke at the piano’s innards. With a continuous ostinato, her solo was more jazz-like than Van Hove’s, quoting “Blue Monk” and what sounded like “Prelude to a Kiss”. Despite her 10-finger flourishes, she telescoped variations so that the piece’s head was recapped before the end.

After a vigorous late-night concert the day before with fellow Gallic improvisers cellist Martine Altenburger and saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, Blondy spent the first part of his recital exploring the nooks and crannies of his piano. With a mallet, a small cymbal and other implements he yanked buzzes, squeaks, pings and whistles from the strings. On the keys, he sometimes sounded like a combination of David Tudor and Knuckles O’Toole; on one hand creating high-frequency glissandi and suspended tones, and on the other alluding to “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Mumbling to himself and pulling faces while he played, Blondy’s frenzied key slashes, flying fingers and full forearm smacks led to an encore where his body language seemed to suggest that by nearly smothering the keyboard he could impale himself onto the sharp notes created.

A day earlier Angel, who along with Akchoté and British saxophonist Evan Parker, spent the week guiding and rehearsing separate student ensembles, was calmer than Blondy. More stately and sombre in her presentation than the other three pianists, much of her improvising focused on bottoming ostinatos and ricocheting timbres, as well as voicings that involved the piano’s wood as well as its keys. Paper clips, hard rubber balls and other objects were adhered to the piano strings before she began. During the course of her performance she would pluck a key then immediately stop it with a tool; create a series of lyrical patterns on top of vibrating drones, or wet her fingers with her tongue and apply those fingers to the piano strings. Climatic passages used the pressure of both hands to create throbbing, buzzing notes which worked their way into additional furtive arpeggios.

Masterful saxophone stylists were as well represented as keyboardists. Notable sets included one from British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant – with two unheralded but masterful French Free Jazz practitioners: bassist Benjamin Duboc and sensitive percussionist Didier Lasserre – who could be termed the discovery of the festival for a North American; Swiss soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, whose sparse adaptive unity with French pianist Jacques Demierre and long-time American expatriate in France bassist Barre Philips set a high standard for chamber improv; alto and soprano saxophonist Gauguet; and an utterly time-suspending set from Parker’s long-time British trio of drummer Paul Lytton and bassist Barry Guy augmented by Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández.

With Blondy in full Jerry Lee Lewis-like pounding form and Gauguet, a breath-machine using every variety of extended reed techniques plus altering his sound by pressing his bell against a pant leg or swaddling it in tin foil, it was Altenburger who provided lyrical, yet perfectly in-synch connective passages. More admirable than congenial, the overall impression the trio’s set left was that some levity would improve this impressive chops showcase.

Chant’s pant leg was also put to good use during a few of his bubbling, note-stretching solos as well. But his output of small gestures and concise tones plus the powerful thwacks and plucks of Duboc’s tuning-peg-to-spike and sensitive double-bow exhibitions were subtly overshadowed by Lasserre’s bravura percussion skills. Missing no necessary sonic despite using a miniature kit of one bass drum, one snare and one cymbal, Lasserre unveiled squeaks, pats and silences with his bare hands and a variety of mallets and sticks for a cross section of discordant yet complementary tones. Other praiseworthy percussionists were the expected – Lytton with Parker and long-time Free Jazzer German Paul Lovens in his two appearances – and the unexpected: Japan’s Makoto Sato, with his soft mallets and Butoh dancer cool. Unfortunately Sato was part of the Marteau Rouge trio, whose guitarist and synthesizer player’s droning jams and amp sludge were more appropriate for ProgRock freak-outs circa 1967 then a 2007 jazz festival.

Polyphonically connective, the Leimgruber/Demierre/Phillips set was probably the festival’s most unpremeditatedly visual. It featured the saxophonist slowly disassembling his tenor saxophone and methodically twisting and blowing through different parts; Phillips sawing on his bass’ shoulder with his bow and playing so passionately that the bow’s horsehair streamed; and Demierre’s jack-in-the-box leaps and elbow-on-the keys emphasis. Additionally, the pianist pumped out stubby contrapuntal lines and buzzy soundboard textures, perfect accompaniment for the saxophonist’s pseudo duck calls and animated circular breathing.

Climax of the festival was literally its finale, an intense, nearly 90-minute set by Parker, Guy, Lytton and Fernández. An exercise in controlled brutality, the surges of sound unified during three extended improvisations, which despite the breadth of technique on display found the four operating like a well-coordinated assembly line, with motifs and themes passed from one to another.

This was in sharp contrast to the Charles Gayle trio set that preceded it. Now exclusively playing alto saxophone, Gayle still overblows his characteristic squalls, squeaks and screams, alternately altissimo and with fog-horn-like echoes. But despite excursions to the piano where he seemed to delight in producing dissonant Monkish runs, and donning the slouch hat and clown’s red nose of his “Streets” character as he tried out Stride riffs, something was lacking. Perhaps it was because British drummer Mark Sanders was in the rhythm section along with Gayle’s regular bassist Gerald Benson. The disparity between the bassist’s low-key swipes and the drummer’s harder and thicker tones was obvious. Obviously uncomfortable Gayle’s attempted to solder this disconnect by animatedly barking out command and counting out “Giant Steps” with foot stomps before trading fours with the drummer.

Back to the Parker crew: whether it was the unseasonable heat in the auditorium, the late hour, or the privilege of watching master stylists at work, but most audience members stayed hushed – nearly mesmerized – during the proceeding. Aloof, Lytton busied himself displaying and manipulating various parts of his stripped-down kit; banging small hard objects on top of his cymbals when the mood struck; resonating woody tones other times, and massaging rhythmic surfaces with his palms and a variety of implements. Athletic and limber, Guy appears to have the ability to produce sounds from both the front and back of his bass, no matter where the strings are located. Not only did he slip, strike and slide along his strings, but he also shook the instrument itself, gathered its strings together for massive plucks and multiplied the available textures with two bows vibrating among the strings, plus thwacking on the string set with what appeared to be a drum stick.

Although Spanish, Fernández often applied body English to his arpeggios and chords and moved his arms crab-like across the keyboard. At one point he bounded from the piano bench to trap high-frequency tinkles at the top of the soundboard, then manually manipulated the string’ speaking length. At times he seems to be karate-chopping the keys into submission. This physicality was usually complemented by Guy smacking and tapping his strings at his bass’s southern portion beneath the bridge and Lytton creating a cluster of cymbal reverb.

Initially tongue-slapping and twittering long sweeping lines so that his soprano saxophone sounded like a piccolo, Parker filled his solos with circular breathing, verbalized honks and shouts. Always in control, his nearly endless streams of intense vibrated notes didn’t vary as he remained rooted on one spot while playing.

Other groups that made impressions earlier on, ranged from the gargantuan to the diminutive. In the first category was the 22-piece Lille (France)-based La Pieuvre band, the members of which were lead in a conduction by Oliver Benoit. The many-armed group, (“Octopus” in English) smeared and rappelled through accelerating crescendos, dark, dramatic pauses and a fog of buzzing and blowing. With blustering brass solos and a collective improvisation for its saxophone section, at time the Octopus seemed to suck all oxygen from the room.

Also notable were two duos: Kiff Kiff from Lyon, France and Germans Lehn/Lovens. Trombonist Alain Gibert and his son, bass clarinetist Clément, who are Kiff Kiff, played for the most part airy, “folkloric” tunes – sometimes with words – that brought to mind the original Jimmy Giuffre3. Nevertheless there was nothing effete about the improvisations, since when he wanted to, the older Gibert produced a roistering gutbucket tone, and the younger paid homage to Eric Dolphy in many of his solos. Still among five days of more-or-less “out” music, Kiff Kiff’s lightly rhythmic melodies probably sounded more Mainstream then they are.

No one could confuse the agitated improvising of drummer Paul Lovens and analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn with the Mainstream. A former pianist, Lehn uses his electronic instrument like a keyboard and lunges, swivels and sways as he plays. Divorced from too-clean electronic signals, his old-fashioned synth quacked like Donald Duck, expelled trumpet-like spetrofluctuation, buzzed, clinked and clanked.

Meantime Lovens – who the day before had a busier interaction with French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Anerican-born, German-resident vocalist Lauren Newton in a set that didn’t seem to gel – appeared more relaxed with Lehn and his playing more commanding. A photo of Lehn with his white shirt and narrow black tie, was prominently featured on the JAM program and posters and he wore this nearly traded-marked outfit each time he was on stage. With Lehn, whose input-output interface and triggered pulses were warm and humanistic, Lovens used a combination of single strokes and connective rhythms to cement moods..

The percussionist rubbed his snare top as Lehn plucked chords from his sythn, and hit his attached cymbals vertically and horizontally while sometimes spinning smaller, unattached others. A common trope was scraping a vertical drum stick on the ride cymbal creating a tone as constant as, but less irritating than, chalk on a blackboard. Textures from Lovens’ wood block were often exposed as were thumps from his bass drum. Overall, this unshowy exhibition of sensitive percussion styling was a festival trait he shared with Lytton, Lasserre and Sato.

A focus on music-making, not crowd pandering is what sets apart Jazz à Mulhouse from more commercial festivals Still, there was enough high quality audience-pleasing music to explain the respect it engenders.

January 9, 2008

François Couturier/Jean-Marc Larché/Jean-Louis Matinier

Music for a while
émvouvance

Sophie Agnel/Christine Wodrascka
Cuerdas cinq cent trente-cinq
émvouvance

By Ken Waxman
February 21, 2005

Ni l’une ni l’autre -- neither one nor the other -- is the French phrase that most readily comes to mind when listening to these two piano-intensive CDs.

Like many other musicians, neither the Couturier/Larché/Matinier trio nor the duo of pianists Sophie Agnel and Christine Wodrascka want to limit themselves to any one style of music. The strands of other sounds they choose to import into the overall jazz-improv interface of these discs are what make them distinctive and memorable.

For their part, pianist François Couturier, soprano saxist Jean-Marc Larché and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier relate most closely to the Southern European folklore imaginaire movement. Like fellow Gauls, clarinetist Louis Sclavis and tubaist Michel Godard plus Italian reedist Gianluigi Trovesi, the textures and timbres they prefer echo the pastoral creations of rural performers throughout the country. The 10 compositions they play here would fit right into a recital in La France profound -- or countryside -- that is if the players in those situations had the same technical command of their instruments and profound knowledge of musics ranging from classical to jazz as the members of this trio.

If the first threesome takes some of its inspiration from folklore and traditional classic music, then, Agnel and Wodrascka bring the tinctures and dissonance of contemporary classical, avant-garde and so-called New music to their dual take on jazz-inflected improv. Both phenomenally musically educated and music teachers as well, they aren’t afraid to take what they want from the most abstract sounds, even if it means preparing the piano and scraping the strings with e-bows.

Both pianists have a history of collaborations with various sound explorers. Agnel has worked with Lionel Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger on tapes and electronics and guitarist Olivier Benoit, Wodrascka in a drum-piano duo with Ramón López, another with bassist Yves Romain and as part of a larger group led by clarinetist Xavier Charles. Because of this, it’s difficult to ascribe the chiming inside piano work to either. Likely they split it up, though Agnel’s abrasive preparations have been pretty audible elsewhere.

Each of the CD’s somewhat enigmatically titled nine pieces has them switching lead role, accompaniment and pure noisemaking from one to the other. “Plomb Filé”, or “filed metal”, the longest track at just under 10 minutes, is unique in that it begins with all four hands buried deep within the bass clef, extending the harmonies with pedal pressure.

Soon, however, one pianist begins a muffled march through the thicket of chords and accents, while the other provides chromatic reverb from internal strings An incremental boost in intensity finds both becoming more abstract, as the balanced rails, bridges and even the frames of the pianos begin to vibrate. Cascading overtones soon sweep across the keyboard, as a concentrated ponticello buzz arises from the accented strings. Moving from lively mid-range, dual arpeggios, the output splits in two, with one player exploring the piano’s basement bottom and the other its attic high notes.

More obviously, “Résine” or “resin” in English makes use of scraped abrasions from a buzzing e-bow and echoing key frame smacks, coupled with a loosening of the action so that the so that the internal strings take on scalar, banjo-like qualities. As the clatter and dampened action recoils underneath, the other pianist creates steadily lengthened cadenzas.

“Spire” moves from foot pedal pressure and hammering on the wood for additional percussion effects from one pianist and darting arpeggios from the other, to almost overpowering, high-frequency double handed chording and powerful patterning from all 176 keys. Broken chords from both ends of the keyboard combine into Cecil Taylor-like dynamics, until the piece decelerates into quieter, slower-paced cadences.

Conventional romanticism isn’t completely ignored either. “Âmes en bois” (wooden souls), taken languendo, moves between Bill Evans-style impressionism and references to a low frequency “Round Midnight”. At points though, it could be less than one, rather than two pianos being sounded. Three-fifths of the way through, the two finally attach dampers and with rubbed squeaks and broken octaves produce dissonant miasma. All at once they seem to recover their focus and before the finale, double-timed piano cadenzas and cello-like internal string strokes are heard.

More formal, and with conspicuous references to the works of Mozart and Schoenberg, the Couturier/Larché/Matinier trio is also more involved with harmonics and theme recasting than Agnel and Wodrascka’s out-and-out experimental work. Pianist Couturier has worked with players as different as jazz-folkloric fiddler Dominique Pifarély and Tunisian oud virtuoso Anouar Brahem. Soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché has been in France’s National Jazz Orchestra as well in Brahem’s and Trovesi’s groups, while accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier has added tonal colors to projects by prominent French “folklorics” such as Godard and Sclavis.

Less in-your-face then the piano duo, the two chordal instruments and softer approach of the soprano saxophone mean that copious allusions to harmonic possibilities arise during the 10 tracks that make up this CD.

Not that they can’t loosen up, as the musicians prove on “Cruauté du contrepoint” and “Continuum”. The former is based on savage counterpoint with Morse-code-like stop-and-start fills from Matinier, Mexican-hat-dance squealing trills from Larché and dynamic cadenzas laid on with a heavy touch from Courtier. Dramatic and polyphonic, the piece builds up in excitement until the release arrives with a piano turnaround. Twitters from the reed bring out a romantic interlude of formalistic pianism until first the saxman, then the accordionist fragment the line. With the conspicuous sound of slapped fingers on the squeezebox keys providing percussion input, the piece ends with the saxman and accordionist trading phrases.

Squeezed and slurred accordion continuum propels the latter, and soon Matinier’s double chording is joined by a similar trilling and swirling reed exposition from Larché. With high- frequency piano lines jumping to a left-handed bass clef exposition, the reedist is emboldened to cry and squall multiphonics, leaving the accordionist to provide the continuum that ends the piece.

Larché may err more towards the former, but often the saxist’s tone is an uneasy amalgam of Jan Garbarek’s and Evan Parker’s. Those quasi-Nordic timbres are put to particular use on the 11-minute “À la recherche de l’étoile” (search for a star). Ghostly and atmospheric, the reedist’s overloud split tones meld into an elongated smear as Couturier provides dispassionate chording behind him.

Pushing forward with irregularly vibrated lines, Larché soon develops a definitive burr in his solo, presaging wiggling accordion bellows and slick counterpoint from the pianist. Creating an almost flute-like tone midway through, Larché’s pastoral output circles above the color field created from Matinier’s hardening notes. Finally as a coda, the initial theme reappears and is taken out with elongated, soprano trills, short piano keys clipping and wavering squeezebox runs.

Some other tracks seem excessively academic, as if the conservatory training of the three is coming to the surface, and they couldn’t imagine departing from the melody or proper designation of the compositions.

Yet formalism can have its rewards as well, as the trio proves on “Arnolds”, a composition based on a piece by Schoenberg. As phrases replicated from one of the Austrian composer’s piano studies are smuggled back and forth across the harmonies, it sounds as if Courtier and Larché are voicing and interpreting the piece as if they were Thelonious Monk and Steve Lacy. The reedist flutter tongues into kazoo-like territory, while the piano man varies his dynamics to provide accompaniment and a complementary melody simultaneously. Eventually the saxman squeals distant vibrations from top of his range as the pianist goes into straight time.

Glimpses into the newest improvised music from France, each of these sessions can be appreciated in a different way, Cuerdas cinq cent trente-cinq for its outright experimentation and Music for a while for its accommodation between romanticism and pure improv.

February 21, 2005

DENMAN MARONEY

Fluxations
New World # 80607

SOPHIE AGNEL/OLIVIER BENOIT
Rip-stop
IN SITU IS 237

Orchestral and monochordal at different times, the piano is the cornerstone of Western music because of its versatility. But this versatility sometimes limits its adaptability to more experimental music.

Over the second half of the 20th century composers and pianists decided that one way to overcome the keyboard’s innate conventionality was to prepare the strings with different objects. These two CDs -- one American and one French -- show how these preparations can be used in the context of improvised music. Each is vastly different. American Denman Maroney’s quintet is strongly allied to jazz, whereas the Parisian duo of pianist Sophie Agnel and guitarist Olivier Benoit leans towards free music and electronics.

Over the course of RIP-STOP’s four instant compositions Agnel and Benoit don’t so much play their instruments as extract sounds from them. The textures and patterns created owe more to what the copper, wire and steel strings of the two chordal sources are capable of than conventional playing. Both musicians have long been involved with similar experiments. The pianist has been part of bands featuring Lionel Marchetti on tapes and electronics and Jerome Noetinger on electroacoustic devices, as well as other formations with saxophonist Michel Doneda or harpist Hélène Breschand. For his part, Benoit has been in formations that range from his duo with alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet to his conduction of the 25-member Grand orchestre d’improvisation.

As early as “rs-1”, resonating plinks from within the piano and oscillating accordion-like tones from the guitarist’s reverb pedal extend the instruments’ tonal fields. Soon rolling, repetitive piano chords and scratching, buzzing fills give way to what appears to be objects pressed against the strings. These quiet internal rumbles are met by near-inaudible guitar resonation and string strikes and lead to almost complete silence.

Mechanized flat picking, together with scatter shot clinking on guitar strings alternate with fist-smashing bangs on the fall board plus low frequency chording on “rs-2”, the CD’s longest track. With the piano dampers muted, mechanical sounding textures appear, followed by right-handed vibrations from the keyboard itself. While this is going on, Benoit produces whistling timbres and note crackles that eventually coalesce into faint grasshopper chirps. Agnel’s response tops these teeny guitar clips with miniscule, single notes resonation that move inside and around the key frame and which are extended with pinpoint pedal pressure. “Rs-3” is more percussive on Benoit’s side, with his strumming on his heaviest strings. Slightly off-key note clusters and bell-like sounds from the keys encourage the guitarist to unleash accelerating feedback. Busy, distorted echoes take the piece out.

When “rs-4” appears, both musicians almost seem to become part of their chosen instruments. Benoit’s crashing guitar chords turn from shaking near-bottleneck to wood cracking, as if the guitar was being pulled apart piece by piece. For her part Angel appears to be rolling marbles onto the piano strings until her finger pressure drives individual notes deeper into the piano innards. Soon, singular sounds drone against the escapement and soundboard, causing sympathetic vibrations from the other strings.

There’s no sign of electronics on FLUXATIONS. Looking at the personnel, in fact, you could imagine that the six-part composition is being played by a standard jazz aggregation of trumpet, reeds, bass, percussion and keys. But the keys here are in the hands of Maroney, the piece’s composer, and manipulated on his “hyperpiano”. This involves working the keys with one hand, while bowing, plucking, strumming and striking the strings directly with the other hand using a variety of tools including copper bars, brass bowls, rubber blocks, bells, knives, mallets, plastic mashers, boxes and bottles.

Maroney, who has exhibited his skills in duet situations with guitarist Hans Tammen and in many bands with bassist Mark Dresser, has the bassman’s rock-solid time keeping helping here. Ned Rothenberg, who plays alto saxophone and bass clarinet, has collaborated with Japanese musicians in the band R.U.B., and explored all varieties of world and improv music. Drummer and vibist Kevin Norton leads his own bands and works with Anthony Braxton, while trumpeter Dave Ballou has been featured in the bands of Satoko Fujii and Andrew Hill.

One of those compositions that oscillates between improvised and written sections, “Fluxations” is just as impressive if you can’t figure out which section comes from Maroney’s pen and which is made up on the spot by the players. On “Part 4” for instance, after a drum roll brings the trumpet-led melody forward, brass shrills and bent notes presage a double tremolo of uneven piano note clusters. Rothenberg introduces a series of descending slurs that are then mirrored by the keyboard with a metal bowl pressed against the strings to produce ringing harshness. Next up is a whinnying horn line and plucked bass tones. Finally the pianist creates a nasal-sounding ending by sliding down the strings ponticello.

“Part 3”, at nearly 13-minutes gives the pianist plenty of scope to explore his instrument with two different touches. One is a double striding, harpsichord-like texture that gets faster and more diffuse as he jumps from one key tone to another and ends with a faint right-handed ruffle. The other evidentially takes place completely in the strings’ speaking length. Meanwhile, Maroney doubles the pulse fields with definite stopped action, Ballou responds with a muted trumpet wiggle and Dresser with a bowed bass line. Soon that line intersects with hocketing piano sounds and vibraharp shimmers. The bassist turns to stretches and scrapes, the vibist to resonating, four-mallet tones and the pianist literally strums his instrument’s inside strings.

On the other hand, the theme from “Part 2” is carried by pseudo steel guitar riffs from the piano as Norton -- on drums -- plays a careful shuffle rhythm and Rothenberg contributes sliding glissandos. Ballou then introduces a brassy, joyous trill that wouldn’t be out of place in a Mahler lieder. Eventually, Maroney pushes his keys so hard that the output move from doubled regular piano tone to stretched textures that could come from an African lute.

When all the rhythmic and harmonic possibilities have been explored the two-minute coda of “Part 6” is a contrapuntal exercise in opposing tones from the trumpet and alto saxophone, as the pianist chimes metronomic chords behind them.

Two digs into the inner workings of the piano from two different countries show that revolutionary timbres are still available from this Western World’s most traditional instrument.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Fluxations 1. Fluxations Part 1 2. Fluxations Part 2 3. Fluxations Part 3 4. Fluxations Part 4. 5. Fluxations Part 5 6. Fluxations Part 6

Personnel: Fluxations: Dave Ballou (trumpet); Ned Rothenberg (alto saxophone and bass clarinet); Denman Maroney (hyperpiano); Mark Dresser (bass); Kevin Norton (drums and vibraphone)

Track Listing: Rip-stop: 1. rs - 1 2. rs - 2 3. rs - 3 4. rs - 4

Personnel: Rip-stop: Sophie Agnel (prepared piano); Olivier Benoit (guitar and electronics)

April 12, 2004

AGNEL/MARCHETTI/NOETINGER

Rouge Gris Bruit
Potlatch P401

DIEB 13/KAHN/MÜLLER
Streaming
For4Ears CD 1343

Acceptance of electro-acoustic impulses seems to characterize much of the more interesting 21st Century European improvised music. Yet like the best sounds produced by influence-accepting free music, its hoary half-brother, electro-acoustic improv is most absorbing when it’s a hybrid. Too acoustic and it lacks the futuristic sounds of electronics; too electronic and it becomes an exercise in science or physics, not art.

Which is what makes these two CDs --recorded oddly enough in the same month -- praiseworthy. The performers have mated wiring and treatments with real time acoustic instruments. In each case the output yields its own logic and soon takes over your inner ear to such an extent that you begin to forget the passage of time. From France comes pianist Sophie Agnel, improvising for a little more than 58 minutes among the tapes and electronics of musique concrète composers Lionel Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger. While the turntables of Austrian dieb 13 (Dieter Kovacic) are meshed with the prepared percussion and treatments of Swiss-German drummer Günter Müller and American expatriate Jason Kahn for slightly more than 39½ minutes on the other disc.

Agnel, who got her start playing jazz and classical music, before turning to free improv with the likes of hurdy gurdyist Dominique Regef, guitarist Noël Akchoté and in a duo with fellow experimental pianist Andréa Neumann, is parsimonious in her choice and sounding of notes. Presumably creating inside and outside the box -- or at least the piano frame -- she never plays a chord where two notes would do or two notes when one would suffice. If a theme is introduced, it’s quickly subsumed beneath the crinkle and tinkle of electronics. Should a glissando appear it dissolves into intermittent buzzes or some Donald Duck-style quacks. Strumming and scratching strings inside the frame is sometimes used as well, but never for more than a few seconds.

Outside of the occasional shaded right handed treble tremolos, in fact, the only time the piano really stands out from the mix is when Agnel indulges herself by bearing down on the sustain pedal for a protracted interval. This CD after all, is a mixture of red, gray and noise (!) -- to translate the title -- which takes it silence as seriously as its clamor. Two of the tracks at 33 and 10 seconds respectively are nothing but noiselessness.

Between themselves, Marchetti who teaches at Université de Lyon and his long-time partner Noetinger, who is also a member of the 12-member electronics aggregation MIMEO (Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra) unquestionably make up for the silence. During the course of the piece, panoply of found and otherworldly sounds makes their appearance. Many times, the crinkle, tinkle and overall rumbles of the tapes and electronics broken by what could be sonar responses to the whirrs and bangs of setting up a space antenna or monitoring short wave broadcasts from the Mother Ship. Elsewhere will be something that appears to be a mechanical raspberry, a sequence of fowl noises (sic), a harmonica tone, a penny whistle, spinning tops and a bowling ball hitting the pins. The last brings out a pastoral semi-classical melody from Agnel. Bombs appear to be falling, video game players seem to be nosily racking up points and a crackling fire dissolves what could have been a human voice.

Although only nonsense syllables are audible when a voice shouts through a megaphone early in the proceedings, by “Après-midi” an English voice clearly repeats “you’ll get the message”. Repeats that is, until the scratch of metal on metal and piano tinkles buries the phrase within the background of what could be the bark of a mechanical dog. Constantly reoccurring keyboard notes presage the end with what are apparently the dying cranks of a machine finally winding down.

Dream-like mechanical buzzes and tones drive the second disc, which could never be mistaken for earlier percussion extravaganzas like (Buddy) RICH VS (Max) ROACH or Art Blakey’s ORGY IN RHYTHM. Despite the personnel, this is probably the quietest session involving two drummers ever made.

With a steadfast, regular pulse, unlike the ur-modernist aspirations of the preceding trio, many times the session appears to be the soundtrack for a trans-continental journey by fast train, with the louder outpourings reminding the listener of rail cars streaking past a level crossing. Every tonal shade must be carefully scrutinized though, so that the constant repetitive car crossing stays mesmerizing and not sleep inducing.

The three musicians are definitely set up to make the trip as pleasing and transparent as possible. For the past 20 years Müller has played a unique kit whose mobile pick-up and microphone system allows hand-generated percussion sounds to be modulated electronically. He has been associated with a raft of electro-acoustians, the best known of which is the POIRE_Z quartet. Another reformed percussionist, now domiciled in Zürich, Kahn has lived in Europe since 1990 and now uses the computer and live sampling software to amplify his kit. His playing situations have ranged from a duo with no-input mixing board player Toshimaru Nakamura to membership in expatriate American composer Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings. Most futuristic of the three, 28-year-old Dieb13, has been has rendering cassette players, vinyl, CDs and computer hard disks into instruments since the late 1980, and most notably has played in such Viennese aggregations as efzeg.

As the journey continues the tape machine hums and turntable rumbles begin to sound more transportation oriented. Almost every impulse could be the click of rail cars passing over the tracks, with the constant ringing of the train bell subsuming other sounds. Slowly moving in and out like the tide, the thumps, clatters, bangs and scratches meld together, with one composition melting into the next.

Is that the rumble of a motor you hear at one point or the buzzes and whistle of a locomotive, you wonder? Is that the crackle and sizzle of electronics slowing advancing or is it a video game in use in the lounge? And are those distinctive tempered scrapes arising initially from a gamelan or a vibraharp sample or is the tempered metal of a railroad tie adhering to the rail? At times it appears as if frog sounds or birdcalls have been adapted for the journey, while the few times a voice is heard, memories of air traffic control conversation intrude into the land-locked journey.

Noise, streaming, clatter -- each of these discs provide soundtracks for an overactive imagination as well as a way to shake up your thought process. Singly or together, they’re worth investigating.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Rouge: 1. 2. 3. 4. Après-midi: 5. 6. Epilogue: 7.

Personnel: Rouge: Sophie Agnel (piano), Lionel Marchetti (tapes, electronics), Jérôme Noetinger (tapes, electronics)

Track Listing: Streaming: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Personnel: Streaming: dieb 13 (turntables); Jason Kahn (drums, metals, electronics); Günter Müller (mds, selected drums, electronics)

March 29, 2002