Mattie Barbier

Joe Fiedler
The Howland Sessions
Multiphonics Music MMO7

Adding unique takes to the challenge of creating a solo brass recital are Americans Joe Fiedler and Mattie Barbier. Each disc is singular since each session was conceived with a contrary goal. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first live solo performance by German trombonist Albert Magelsdorff, a Fiedler influence, the trombonist’s seven composition are a step away from, but also a reflection of his experience as part of the New York Jazz scene. Los Angeles-based Mattie Barbier, who is a non-binary academic and has improvised with the likes of Kevin Drumm, situates Threads’ five tracks within the electro-acoustic, New music continuum add euphonium sounds.

The Howland Sessions is the more straightforward of the two. Honoring the anniversary of Magelsdorff’s breakthrough on the concluding “’72”, Fiedler uses a combination of altered chords and multiphonics to intertwine growling scoops and brief melody glimpses to confirm Magelsdorff’s transitional role. The remainder of the tracks outline Fiedler’s own ideas. Dealing with a variety of brass techniques that encompass triplets, scoops, cadenzas, smears and shakes the trombonist announces himself with “The Jack Rabbit” conveyed with a combination of slurs and burbles, as vocalized breaths and double tonguing suggest an additional voice as the piece accelerates. It then ranges among plunger tones, beeps and peeps. Another innovation, reflected on “Stinger”, is manipulation of the Chicago Stinger mute to vibrate harsh and rhythmic shudders from the horn’s body tube. With swift fingering and some pseudo scat singing wide bore bubbling adds a touch of humorous flatulence to the pointillist improvisation.

Pointillism is frequently emphasized throughout as Fiedler strives to regularize the meeting points among deep brass scoops and aviary trills, with saliva-saturated tones often the bonding mechanism. At the same time his cornucopia-wide open horn work demonstrates that he needs neither mutes nor shortcuts to speak in different tongues as he plays. As he sprints from the highest to the lowest tones and from the grainiest to the smoothest timbres he’s able to layer the sound, with multiphonics and split tones enabling him to project up to three sound layers as he plays. Furthermore, while these experiments lack so-called Jazz-like swing, all include movement, with the trombonist careful to define the composition with linear footholds no matter how dissident earlier movements may be.

More spatial and distant, Barbier’s five-track disc was recorded making the distinctive acoustics of Rangley, Colorado’s The Tank part of the program. Form the first watery whooshes, reverberations share space with drones from the euphonium as strident shakes are expelled from the trombone. Among the earth-shaking volcanic explosions like the one that begins “floating wave”, despite scooped brass tones and the arid stretches of reflux growls, terse turns towards melody are sometimes heard. But just as quickly these alphorn-resembling grace notes are subsumed beneath heraldic buzzes which move from distinct ostinatos to dominate the entire aural space. Furthermore sustained tonal blasts may be weighty, but wriggled a bit from both horns allow Barbier to also source three layers of affiliated sounds. A track like “untitled III” includes repetitive breaths that divide into tandem whistles, whooshes and growls with both elevated and basement textures audible.

Still the most descriptive instance of Barbier’s achievements occurs on “filter”. Advancing from an almost programmed continuum, mated with slurred half-valve echoes from the trombone, concentrated metallic pressure eventually gives way to distinctive brass motifs. Sequentially either a shrill or a buzz is breathed, rippled or smeared by either instrument, projected to its widest possible space, razzed to barely audible then pushed to silence. It’s followed by the next output which vibrates through an identical cycle.

Each disc comprehensively reaches its goal of demonstrating all that can be created just with the variations from an acoustic brass instrument. Yet the strategies used and results attained are particular to each player.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Howland: 1. The Jack Rabbit 2. Otter Cam 3. Fiedlowitz Manor 4. The Long No 5. Stinger 6. Empire Trail 7. Sisyphean 8. ’72

Personnel: Howland: Joe Fiedler (trombone)

Track Listing: Threads: 1. untitled 2. filter 3. floating wave 4. untitled III 5. coda

Personnel: Threads: Mattie Barbier (trombone and euphonium)