Udo Schindler/Max Arsava/Gunnar Geisse

Udo Schindler/Erhard Hirt/Ove Volquartz
Shifting Types of Amazement
FMR CD 719-0125

Reminiscent of those 1950/1960s Prestige record sessions where selected New York musicians would churn out high quality one take Jazz sessions almost daily are these extended improvisations organized by Krailling-based multi-instrumentalist Udo Schindler. Recorded on sequential days in June 2024, his trio associates are different on each. Schindler is featured in a trio on both discs. Playing cornet, soprano saxophone, plus both bass and contrabass clarinets on Sightings and Stratifications he’s joined by Max Arsava manipulating piano, tapes, sampler and objects and Gunnar Geisse’s laptop guitar and virtual instruments. The next day on Shifting Types of Amazement, his bass and double bass clarinets are matched by Ove Volquartz, playing the same instruments, and Erhard Hirt’s guitar and computer.

Expressing the least guitar-like textures on both discs is Geisse, who has worked with Christofer Varner and  Ignaz Schick, while Hirt has played with Paul Lytton and Harri Sjöström. Arsava has also recorded with Schick, while Volquartz  has recorded with Yoko Miura and Thanos Chrysakis. Schindler of course has made a career of improvising alongside seemingly numberless musicians.

The interface on Sightings and Stratifications’ massive part 1 and shorter coda that is part 2 depend as much as the percussion-like pressure exerted by Arsava’s and Geisse’s expanded instruments as the lighter tones from their so-called real instruments. Meanwhile Schindler runs through a panoply of tones from brassy plunger flatulence to dissected soprano saxophone flutters followed by chalumeau snorts and snores from the contrabass clarinet. Bringing all parts of the piano into the mix from resonations on the instrument’s wood to keyboard clips, Arsava often cuts off overdone reed extrusions, but insects with swelling guitar string frails to create high-and-low pitched backing for muted brass blows or quicksilver cornet yelps.

Besides barely perceptive electronic wavering, the three often work out a subtle do-si-do between upfront and backing textures. That means that Geisse’s organ-like pressure, Arsava’s dynamic piano patterns or Schindler’s subterranean, but ingeniously measured tongue slaps, altissimo cries or freed smears are sequentially featured. Despite frequent pivots to reverses, dissonance and metallic timbres, billowing expressions maintains a fluid horizontal perception slightly under the surface,

Shifting dynamics the following day, the single track that makes up the second disc by definition plays up the chalumeau pitches from both basement-textured reeds. However like stains on mahogany, Hirt’s string flanges are also there to thin the ongoing exposition. Expressed in interludes, there are sequences when the guitarist’s stop/start picking advances above undulating reed breaths. Other times concentrated and overlapping reed tones divide enough so that one player creates light, straight-ahead clarion refractions, while the other part of the broken octave evolution involves resurgent low-pitches breaths stacked up as comprehensive vibrations, It’s at these points that the guitarist’s chiming strums and constant frails add a third contrasting line. Darting in and out of full aural hearing is juddering concatenation that adds a fourth timbre to the program with occasional organ-like pulses and programmed mechanized patterning.

Ascending to a tougher stance on the track’s penultimate section, multiphonic dual reed expressions with basso yawns and puffs plus altissimo snarls are met by Hirt’s e-bow propelled string stabs and clangs. Eventually whining guitar flanges and moist reed basement pitches give way to a softer, linear climax that, slightly pushed by computer oscillations. fades into singular notes and stops.

Two allied but almost completely divergent trio recitations demonstrate the breath of Schindler-affiliated improvisations, More and even more diverse sessions can be expct4ed in the future.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sightings: 1. Sightings and Stratifications – 2nd Investigation for Trio – part #1 2. Sightings and Stratifications – 2nd Investigation for Trio – part #2

Personnel: Sightings: Udo Schindler (cornet, soprano saxophone, bass, contrabass clarinets); Max Arsava (piano, tapes, sampler, objects) and Gunnar Geisse (laptop guitar, virtual instruments)

Track Listing: Shifting: 1. Shifting Types Of Amazement Low_Tone_Basics #2

Personnel: Shifting: Udo Schindler and Ove Volquartz (bass, double bass clarinets) and Erhard Hirt (guitar and computer