Trzaska

Giancarlo Nino Locatelli
Tilietulum
We Insist! CD WEIN 30

Some define Jazz and improvised music as either inside or outside in presentation. Notwithstanding, architecturally these notable solo clarinet disks were both recorded inside, but one taka advantage of the spatial qualities of a small room in a venerable Polish edifice, while the other aims to create a sound picture of the verdant variants present in cattle grazing spaces in an Italian valley

Part memory and part multiphonics, Eternity for a While is a rare solo project for Polish clarinetist Mikołaj Trzaska, known for his film soundtrack composing and collaboration with the likes of Joe McPhee and Peter Brötzmann. The disc’s six tracks were recorded in the former prayer room of a Jewish funeral home in Słupsk. Measuring and emphasizing the spatial qualities and recollections embedded in the room, Trzaska, who also recorded and mixed the session, united overdubbed and live timbres created by his clarinets and added percussion allusions by intermittently striking immovable objects in the area. The mix fragments and reconstructs distinct textures.

Reminiscent of the sounds and scope of pastoral cattle grazing pastures in the Taleggio Valley, Giancarlo Nino Locatelli, who has collaborated with Alberto Braida, Barre Phillips and many others, constructs a sound picture on Tilietulum, with the album named for a tree located there. Also creating percussive elements while playing alto clarinet and shaking cowbells, Locatelli slides through 14 solo sequences which blend into one another.

While Trzaska often creates the equivalent of a clarinet choir by himself, blending clarion, chalumeau and in-between register resonations, this mixture of rasping and reflective tones is only part of the narratives. Frequently the overdubbing results in not only packed group timbres, but also cross pulsed or antiphonic sequences in which the contrapuntal output create individual distinctions. In these instances and elsewhere basement-pitched drones become constant ostinatos, while note-bending trills and protracted toneless breaths add brief interludes of graceful airiness to top lines.

Another leitmotif sometimes expressed relates to the history of the environment. The building is no longer used for its initial, function because of the fate of the majority of Polish Jews during the Holocaust. Sliding from altissimo cries to faint Klezmer suggestions during clarinet elaborations on the lengthy “Stump”, and an even more obvious shift from abstract reed honks and snorts to outright freylekhs-styled textures on “Shame In The Shades”, the textures memorialize how embedded Jews were in Poland, with that history shattered by that grim interlude of the 1930s and 1940s.

Pastoral where the other CD is metropolitan, Tilietulum begins with aviary chirps and has most of its sequences underlined by the clanging and ringing of cow bells. Resolutely acoustic whereas “Eternity for a While” is based around programmed implementation, Locatelli’s improvisations regularly include reminders of pure air moving through the horn’s body tube, before or at the same time as extended reed techniques are emphasized.

Many of the tracks are so wedded to one another that they slide into the subsequent ones and create a mini-suite. For instance “Tilietulum Quarta Pars”, “Tilietulum Quinta Pars” and “Tilietulum Sexta Pars” inflate the pealing of different cow bells until they’re silenced by overwrought horizontal reed overblowing. As Locatelli moves through extended techniques encompassing altissimo squeaks and impeded tongue slaps while humming into his mouthpiece at the same time, cowbell vibrations judder in the background until they become louder to designate a sequence change.

Something similar unrolls with “Tilietulum Septima Pars, “Tilietulum Octava Pars”,  “Tilietulum Nona Pars” and “Tilietulum Decima Pars”. Broken chords define the horizontal motion with low pitched snorts and high-pitched trills as well as note bending doits and dispassionate breaths. As cow bell reverberations, some of which resemble cracks against milk pails are heard, rustic suggestions are preserved. Nonetheless tightened reed slurps, air bubbling and flutter tonguing also emphasize the improvisations’ modernistic bent.

As shifts towards rustic memories match up with reed virtuosity during the concluding “Tilietulum Peroratio”, chalumeau and clarion register thrusts, tongue slaps and stops march into a climax that is as modernly horizontal as a farmer’s machine-made furrow without upsetting the homey circumstances in which the sounds replicate.

More than solo clarinet statements, each of these distinctive sessions project reed skills while subtly also referencing the geographical localities in which they were conceived.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Eternity: 1. Prushy, Prushy 2. Message In The Tea Box 3. Stump 4. Soia, Soia 5. Shame In The Shades 6. Icarus Be Phoenix

Personnel:Eternity: Mikołaj Trzaska (clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, movement, overdubs, mixing)

Track Listing: Tilietulum: 1. Tilietulum Prima Pars I 2. Tilietulum Prima Pars II 3. Tilietulum Prima Pars III 4. Tilietulum Secunda Pars 5. Tilietulum Tertia Pars 6. Tilietulum Quarta Pars  7. Tilietulum Quinta Pars 8. Tilietulum Sexta Pars 9. Tilietulum Septima Pars 10. Tilietulum Octava Pars 11. Tilietulum Nona Pars 12. Tilietulum Decima Pars 13. Tilietulum Undecima Pars 14. Tilietulum Peroratio

Personnel: Tilietulum: Giancarlo Nino Locatelli (alto clarinet, cow bells, voice, movement)