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