Gwen Laster New Muse 4tet

Kommun
Kalpa
Thanatosis THT 42

A quarter of the way through the 21^st Century strings-focused creative music projects are no anomaly. With string specialists increasingly familiar with aleatory and improvised  music the days when players such as Stuff Smith or Fred Katz were anomalies are long over. With this amplification of composers’ and arrangers’ sonic palates, stark differences among these projects have also been created. The Swedish Kommun sextet interpreting the single hour-long Kalpa track for instance is a masterful exploration of lower case, improvised minimalism. As deft and taking up the same amount of time, American Gwen Laster’s New Muse 4tet’s Keepers of the Flame has seven mid-range tunes in which to propel its mixture of improvisations that encompass Jazz, Blues, notated and spiritual influences, with a direction towards social activism.

Another attribute that distinguishes these discs from earlier strings projects is that the groups are unafraid to blend strings with instruments prominent in other genres. Under the leadership of Swedish guitarist Finn Loxbo, who is also a member of Dog Life and Fire! Orchestra, Kommun includes pianist Lisa Ullén and drummer Ryan Packard as well as violinist Anna Lindal, cellist Leo Svensson Sander and bassist Vilhelm Bromander, all established players on the Stockholm scene. Led by Laster, an academic who has also recorded with Charles Burnham and Ken Filiano, the New Muse 4tet encompasses percussionist Andrew Drury, a constant creative music presence in New York; violist Melanie Dyer, who has also recorded with Chad Fowler and Filiano; and cellist Teddy Rankin-Parker whose expertise has been as part of groups like International Contemporary Ensemble and Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble.

Mostly played adagio and somewhat hushed, Kommun’s melodic transformation is built up from pointillist guitar plucks, stopped piano key clips, and concise sweeps and bow frog or col legno taps from the three string players. This tonal and rhythmic ambiguity means that only gradually do dynamics advance enough so that new melodic patterns appear alongside the initial theme. Evolving in broken octaves, jagged guitar frails, string buzzes and drum whumps are individually isolated to enliven the slow harmonic changes  with silent pauses before and after the piano’s singular clips and clanks, reflective string vibrations and occasional bell-like echoes and infrequent rubs against unyielding wood and metal also featured. Rarely louder than polite conversation, “Kalpa” reaches a turning point two-thirds of the way through as string timbres become more audible with antiphonic intersection among metallic guitar twangs; scrubs and rumbles from the cello and bass; and the violin’s and viola’s vibrating crackles set off by damper-stopped piano keys and foreshortened drum pops. The final sequences are divided between multi-key piano continuum, distorted adagio string swipes and guitar string slashes. Swelling from broken-chord ambulation to stretch across the entire sound field, triangle pings, spiccato string swells and wooden clip crescendo are then cut off just as quickly.

More wedded to the song form, with, speedy high string stops, Drury’s paradiddles and ruffs and frequent walking bass lines from Rankin-Parker, the tracks on Keepers of the Flame are rife with rhythmic motions, but avoid outright swing. Many sequences depend on harmonized actions where polyphony results from layering a pressured ostinato cello drone with whimpering higher-pitched string pulses which include wide-open melodic vibrations.

Unlike Kommun which is concentrated group music and swallowed percussion patterns within a blended exposition, the New Muse 4tet has space for solo flights. “Drishti” for instance is Drury’s feature where sweeping string pops surround ratamacues, hand slaps and bell ringing from Drury, with the theme expressed both percussively and by the string trio.

The lists towards abstraction in Drury’s solo track is expressed in greater – and group – detail on “Asamondo”. Here the percussionist’s nerve beats, wood rattle and press roll pressure is intensified with the cellist’s rhythmic thumps as Laster and Dyer imply melodic smoothness that move forward with such lyrical intensity that romantic inflections are emphasized. Eventually a lilting narrative that encompasses cello thumps, a drum backbeat and answering sweeps and glissandi from the violist and violinist end the piece.

Other sequences accentuate string trade-offs between sul ponticello squeaks, harsh staccato rubs and pizzicato plucks that together define linear association. Variations of techniques and harmonies expressed earlier also figure into the concluding group improv “Shoreline”. However the intersection of these approaches with instrumental consensus and discord are more crucial than the scattershot of words and phrases voiced by either Laster or Dyer.

String cooperation with other instruments and genres can take many form with equally memorable results. That’s proven with these sessions.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Keepers: 1. Keepers of the Flame 2. Black Sun Shifting 3. Drishti 4. Foraging for Freedom 5. When Peace 6. Asamondo 7. Shoreline

Personnel: Keepers: Gwen Laster (violin); Melanie Dyer (viola); Teddy Rankin-Parker (cello) and Andrew Drury (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Kalpa:  1. Kalpa

Personnel: Kalpa: Lisa Ullén (piano); Finn Loxbo (acoustic steel string guitar); Anna Lindal (violin); Leo Svensson Sander (cello); Vilhelm Bromander (bass) and Ryan Packard (drums)