Trio Carbon

Symbolically reflecting that the carbon element is an essential building block of life, members of the Trio Carbon create equivalent musical bonding during the less than 30-minute single track that is Black Heart. Rather than the title’s moody associations however, the piece instead unites joyously singular developments from three sophisticated improvisers. Austrian violinist Mia Zabelka constantly slides between improvised and notated sounds amplifying connections with everyone from free music’s John Russel to composer Pauline Oliveros. Meanwhile Poles, pianist Ola Rzepka, who also teaches improvisation, and electric guitarist Łukasz Marciniak, bring their experience interacting with multiple local and international improvisers.

Seemingly unstoppable and intricate the intertwined trio narrative creates a polyphonic meld that makes use of every resonation from items juddering on the piano’s internal strings plus keyboard stops; wavering drones, hard banjo-like clangs and coarse flanges from the guitarist; and angled glissandi from the violinist. Additionally, just past the midpoint, Zabelka accelerates the program even more by augmenting her multi-string fiddle strokes with cackling and clenched vocalization during which affiliated nonsense syllables are further fragmented and stretched.

While it sometimes seems that the others are scrambling to keep pace with the violinist’s  prestissimo strained sweeps, Rzepka’s key clashes and chording add sonic colors to the resulting tough concentrated group exposition, while Marciniak’s keyboard strums preserve the horizontal continuum underlying the narrative.

Collective and complex this three-fold extemporization create the music quality that compensates for any supposed lack of quantity in this truncated performance. There’s even a brief melodic pivot from the pianist in the penultimate moments before “Black Heart” climaxes with pinched and prestissimo stops from guitar and fiddle that confirm the program’s aggressive brilliance.

Musically confirming carbon’s strong but diverse elements, the trio on Black Heart propels a life-giving force at accelerated speeds without any musical or textural let downs.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1.  Black Heart 28:29

Personnel: Mia Zabelka (violin and voice); Ola Rzepka (prepared piano) and Łukasz Marciniak (electric guitar)