LAURA ANDEL ELECTRIC PERCUSSSION ORCHESTRA

In::tension:.
Rossbin RS 022

As involved with the tonal textures of electronics as her previous project was with the sound variations from brass and reeds, IN::TENSION is another potent demonstration of Laura Andel’s compositional abilities.

The Buenos Aires-born, New York-based, woodwind player and composer extends her parameters on IN::TENSION:. by utilizing the timbres available from electric guitars, percussionists and prepared pianos. Just about the only stand-alone acoustic instruments are Taylor Ho Bynum’s cornet and Harvey Wirht’s drums.

Bynum and Wirht, plus Ursel Schlicht who plays acoustic and prepared piano here, and Kyoko Kitamura who extends her vocalization with electronics, are the only carry-overs from Andel’s horn-heavy 2003 SOMMAMBULIST project. There were also 14 musicians that time out, while only 10 are involved with IN::TENSION:.

Although this CD too mixes composed and improvised sections, there’s no back story as there was for the earlier project. At least one assumes that, although there are points at which Kitamura’s mumbling, yodeling and warbling imply that a tale might be part of the original plan. Grouping the musicians into various cells of similar instruments, Andel also plays with the rhythms and repetition implicit in minimalism. Possessing the most easily identifiable sounds, Schlicht and Bynum come across as the most upfront soloists, though the bravura broken chords often emanating from Carl Maguire’s accordion shouldn’t be downplayed.

Most of the tracks feature oscillating electronic patterns that flutter as distorted guitar riffs, keyboard patterning and layered scraped and rubbed percussive claim portions of the sonic space. Results may be a fortissimo climax of fuzztones, high frequency pianism and conga-drum like beats or, in contrast, polyphonic pitches that enjoin theremin whistles, whinnying grace notes from the cornet and quivering accordion diminishment.

While much of the rest of the CD appears to rely on détente between minimalism and improvisation, “Part VII:: Ecos:.”, the touch-over-12 minutes longest track introduces ritual as well. High-frequency thrusts from Schlicht make common cause with foreshortened thumping tones from the massed percussion of David Simons, Andrew Drury and Harvey Wirht, plus resonating reverb from Joel Harrison on electric guitar, Khabu Young on electric baritone guitar and Kenta Nagai on fretless electric guitar. Decorated with pregnant silences, Kitamura’s vibrating squeals and throat melisma are doubled with electronics in such a way as to suggest foreign language phrasing. Meantime as the guitars’ flange, her yodels are mated contrapuntally with Bynum’s tones plus offbeat ruffs and doubled flams from the drummers,

Fortissimo squeeze-box looping, clipped guitar phrases and filtered feedback, prepared piano hammers, plucks and slides and high-pitched, but muted chromatic riffs from Bynum make their appearance elsewhere, as do percussion intervals that suggest gong reverberation, bell ringing and steel drum patterns. From time to time, the vocalist also steps forward with ghostly howls.

On one hand related to the orchestral conductions of organized improvisations such as Butch Morris and Masashi Harada, and on the other the execution of Anthony Braxton’s cyclic Ghost Trance Music, Andel and her crew create a fascinating and unique take on group sounds.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Part I:: Noticias:. 2. Part II:: Resonancias:. 3. Part III:: Descuido:. 4. Part IV:: Caídas:. 5. Part V:: Puntos:. 6. Part VI:: Dos:. 7. Part VII:: Ecos:.

Personnel: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Joel Harrison (electric guitar and electronics); Khabu Young (electric baritone guitar and electronics); Kenta Nagai (fretless electric guitar and electronics); Ursel Schlicht (piano and prepared piano and electronics); Carl Maguire (prepared fender Rhodes and accordion); David Simons (theremin and percussion); Andrew Drury (percussion); Harvey Wirht (drums); Kyoko Kitamura (voice and electronics); Laura Andel (conductor)

May 22, 2006

LAURA ANDEL ORCHESTRA

SomnambulisT
Red Toucan # RT 9322

Occupying that mid-range between jazz and classical music, Laura Andel is a composer to watch, as much for her audacity as for her conception.

Argentinean-born, she’s a woodwind player who first received a degree in tango performance in Buenos Aires, then studied jazz composition and film music in Boston, and has since written for large and small ensembles in Boston, New York, Germany and Venezuela. Cinematic, with swathes of jazz and South American rhythms and quirky orchestral instrumentation, SOMNAMBULIST is a nine-part, 46-minute suite that tries to compress all her influences and studies into a definitive whole.

Disjointed in parts, the ghostly-sounding program music raises the age-old question of how much was actually written and how much improvised by her first-class soloists. With so much happening in this work that depicts a sleepwalker and her dreams, there are times that formalism threatens to outweigh the improvisations. Overall though, the suite manages to resolve as many queries as it raises

By the second track, the Eurocentric conception built on viola, theremin, accordion, electronics and flute meets a heavily rhythmic guitar vamp, an unvarying drum beat, high-pitched strings and harmoniously sonorous bass clarinet and baritone saxophone tones. The sleepwalker’s confusion may then be represented by the insect-like buzzing of voice, electronics and viola, succeeded by plunger trombone, vibraphone pressure and honking woodwinds and brass. Vocalist Kyoko Kitamura’s voice wiggles, burps, screams and cries in a subsequent outpouring that sounds more like the nightmares of the certifiably insane then someone suffering from repose disquiet.

Soon quasi-classical influences predominate, with very legit-sounding viola glissandos, circling, clicking piano keys and ethereal flute tones. As discordant transitions arise, almost too much happens at the same time. The bass trombonist buzzes through the piece with a jet-plane-like drone, the accordionist introduces an expansive tango rhythm manipulating the squeezebox bellows back and forth to maximum expansion. Whistling cuts through all this as the drummer introduces splashing jazz rhythms with echoing percussion lines. Eventually the motif is tossed from one instrument group to the next encompassing muted brass, Sam Furnace’s honking and slurring baritone saxophone and vibes-accordion counterpoint, until it lands in Oscar Noriega subterranean bass clarinet.

Rubbed drum heads introduce overblown saxophone slipsiding and brass flurries, as the vocalized breaths sustain throughout this section, while the strings buzz like worker bees, the accordion squeezes discordantly, the clarinet reed shrieks and the distinctive wavering theremin modulations suggest the cosmos.

Finally, as the horns advance a vaguely Far-Eastern theme on top of ghostly piano chords, a single triangle peal sounds sharply, as if it is an alarm clock bell rousing the sleeper from slumber. Kitamura’s mumbling and murmuring imply the sleepwalker has awakened; though instrumental voices such as high intensity piano tremolos from Ursel Schlicht suggest that the potential for other nocturnal experiences still exist.

From a slightly earlier session featuring a different group and vocalist, the penultimate and final tracks offer small-scale versions of Andel’s preoccupations. With the same mixture of influences and performed in a similar manner, the orchestral condensation merely extend what has gone before.

It will be interesting to see what else Andel can do with her fecund musical imagination. If future releases are as notable as this one -- and she recruits as sympathetic improvisers -- she’ll be definitely move from the promising to the consummate composer category.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: SomnambulisT:[1. Entering 2. Procession 3. Mosca 4. Noise Machine 5. Drops 6. Whale Singing 7. Fugue 8. Breathing Machine 9. Waking Up] 10. In The Midst 11. Murmur

Personnel: Laura Andel Orchestra (New York) [Tracks 1- 9] Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Julie Kalu (bass trombone); Jamie Baum (flute and electronics); Oscar Noriega (clarinet and bass clarinet); Sam Furnace (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ursel Schlicht (piano); Kenta Nagai (fretless guitar); Stephanie Griffin (viola); Carl Maguire (accordion); Reuben Radding (bass); Danny Tunick (vibraphone); Pamelia Kurstin (theremin); Tatsuya Nakatani (drums); Kyoko Kitamura (voice)

JCA Orchestra (Boston) [Tracks 10 and 11]: Keiichi Hashimoto, Scott Aruda [track 10], Mike Peipman [track 11) (trumpets); Bob Pilkington, David Harris (trombones) Jim Mosher (French horn); Jim Gray [track 10] or Ted Skeene [track 11] (tuba); Hiro Honshuku [track 11] (alto flute); Jeremy Stein [track 10] (flute); Jim Hobbs, Jeremy Udden (alto saxophones); Phil Scarff (tenor saxophone); Hans Indigo (baritone saxophone); Art Bailey [track 10] or Jed Wilson [track 11] (piano); Rich Greenblatt [track 11] (vibraphone); Norm Zocher (guitar); Rick McLaughlin (bass); Harvey Wirht (drums); Jerry Leake [track 10] or Taki Masuko [track 11] (percussion); Rebecca Shrimpton (voice)

August 25, 2003