Eden/Loriot/Tantanozi

Committed to pure improvisation, the Eden/Loriot/Tantanozi trio has produced this seven-track creative music paragon that mixes minimalism with multiphonics. At the same time the tracks are terse enough so that inspiration always exceeds indentation. That probably because all  are experienced playing this and other creative musics.

Swiss Philipp Eden, who plays prepared piano here is a sound artists, a university piano teacher and has collaborated with the likes of Lotus Eddé Khouri and Christine Abdelnour. French-Japanese violist Frantz Loriot, has recorded with among many others Christoph Erb and Daniel Studer. Meanwhile Greek flutist Marina Tantanozi, who also teaches, has participated in projects involving dance, theatre and visual arts and plays in ensembles like the Insub Meta Orchestra.

There’s no visual or pedagogical elements in and raw, lift my eyes. Rather the trio highlights and tweaks timbres, pitches and dynamics in broken octave unity to gradual create melodic and rhythmic transformations. As early as “Kaiki” the first track, the intertwined harmonies soon splinter into angled sul ponticello string scrapes and downwards slides from Loriot alongside Tantanozi’s squeaking flute peeps, with wood slaps and bell-pealing implement judders on the piano’s internals strings from Eden. As the piece evolves however an underlying drone adds to the tonal vagueness until a horizontal pose is confirmed at the end.

These sorts of switches and turnarounds continue throughout the disc, with auxiliary resonations focusing the improvisations, whether they result from col legno string slaps, pressurized piano strains which affect tones from the instruments dampers and hammers or thickened bass flute blows. These timbral interchanges are propelled whether string splaying  is spiccato and scoured as on the title tune and paired with a tugboat-like bass flute honks, or layered as on “Vesse”, where its built up from soundboard buzzing and stopped keys from the pianist, flute tongue slaps and an viola ostinato that almost replicates the sound of an entire string section.

With contrapuntal textures and tone additions maintained for progressive and parallel results, the trio ultimately if slowly maintains unpredictable sound explorations while keeping a firm grip on horizontal creative advancement.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Kaiki 2. Curiosities 3. And Raw, Lift My Eyes 4. Vesse 5. Still Swirls 6. Unfixity 7. On A Thread

Personnel: Marina Tantanozi (flute and bass flute); Philipp Eden (prepared piano and objects) and Frantz Loriot (viola)