REVIEW (001-019)

REVIEWS (001-019)

> reviews on elsewhere 020-030
> reviews on elsewhere 031-040

Guy Vandromme - Bruno Duplant: l'infini des possibles (elsewhere 019-2)

Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (11/3/2021)
Ben Harper's review in Boring Like A Drill (10/27/2021)
Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (10/5/2021)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (12/4/2021)

Jordan Dykstra / Koen Nutters - In Better Shape Than You Found Me (elsewhere 018)

John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (11/7/2021)
Peter Margasak's Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp: October 2021 (11/3/2021)
Connor Kurtz's and Keith Prosk's reviews in harmonic series (10/1/2021)
Ben Harper's review in Boring Like A Drill (10/27/2021)

Michael Pisaro-Liu - Tombstones (Barbara Dang & Muzzix) (elsewhere 017)

John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (10/11/2021)
Ben Harper's review in Boring Like A Drill (10/27/2021)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (12/4/2021)
Adrián Demoč's review in Hudobný život magazine - July-August 2022 issue (August 2022)

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016)

Thomas Mellish's review in The Squid's Ear (11/5/2021)
Marc Medwin's review in Dusted Magazine (7/14/2021)
Vanessa Ague's review in the August issue of The Wire (7/13/2021)
Greg Bod's review in Benzine Magazine (8/6/2021)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (8/4/2021)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (7/19/2021)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in Salt Peanuts (6/29/2021)
Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (6/16/2021)
Claude Colpaert's review in Revue & Corrigée n°129 (9/22/2021)

Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015)

Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (9/13/2021)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (9/7/2021)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in Salt Peanuts (7/30/2021)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (7/19/2021)
Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (6/22/2021)
Keith Prosk's review in harmonic series newsletter (7/1/2021)
Claude Colpaert's review in Revue & Corrigée n°129 (9/22/2021)

Jürg Frey - l'air, l'instant - deux pianos (elsewhere 014)

Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (2/19/2021)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (12/19/2020)
Alex Mayle's review in Tone Glow's writers favorite albums from October-December 2020 (12/16/2020)
Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (11/27/2020)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (10/30/2020)

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013)

Claude Colpaert's review in Revue et Corrigée (July 2021)
Franck Mallet's review in Musikzen (2/20/2021)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (12/19/2020)
Bill Meyer's review in Chicago Reader (11/30/2020)
Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (11/14/2020)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (10/30/2020)
Peter Margasak's Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: October 2020 (10/26/2020)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (1/26/2021)

Melaine Dalibert - Infinite Ascent (elsewhere 012)

Marc Medwin's review in Fanfare Magazine - Issue 44:3 (Jan/Feb 2021) *To read the review, a paid subscription is required.
Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (12/26/2020)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (12/19/2020)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (10/30/2020)

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011)

Everything Is Noise's list of Album of The Year #52 (1/26/2021)
Ian Mathers’ review in Dusted Magazine's Mid-Year Best-of List (7/8/2020)
Stuart Derdeyn's review in Vancouver Sun (3/31/2020)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in Salt Peanuts (4/19/2020)
Arthur Krumins' review in Dusted Magazine (3/18/2020)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (3/14/2020)
Michele Palozzo in Esoteros (2/29/2020)
Spencer Cawein Pate's review in The Light of Lost Words (2/22/2020)

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010)

Thomas Tamvakos' review on FB (12/30/2020)
Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (5/9/2020)
Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (4/30/2020)
Steve Smith's review in The New Yorker - 'Going On About Town' classical music section (3/20/2020)
National Sawdust Log's Ten recently issued albums to buy today on Bandcamp (3/20/2020)
Peter Margasak's review in Daily Bandcamp (3/3/2020)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (2/27/2020)
Michele Palozzo in Esoteros (2/12/2020

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009)

Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (6/13/2022)
Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (1/2/2020)
Marc Medwin's review in Fanfare Magazine *To read the review, a paid subscription is required.
Derek Walmsley's review in The Wire (November 2019 Issue)
Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (11/6/2019)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (9/14/19)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (7/28/2019)
Darren MacClure's review in Toneshift (6/21/2019)
Matt Sargent's favorite album of 2019 in Textura (1/1/2020)

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008)

Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (9/22/2022)
Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (1/2/2020)
Derek Walmsley's review in The Wire (November 2019 Issue)
Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (9/26/2019)
Peter Margasak's review in Bandcamp Daily (9/3/2019)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (7/28/2019)
Darren MacClure's review in Toneshift (6/21/2019)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (9/14/19)
Ben Taffijn's review in NIEUWE NOTEN (8/7/2019) *original article
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (6/22/2019)

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007)

Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (1/1/2020)
Derek Walmsley's review in The Wire (November 2019 Issue)
Marc Medwin's review in Dusted Magazine (9/10/2019)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (7/28/2019)
Darren MacClure's review in Toneshift (6/21/2019)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (9/14/19)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (9/6/2019)
Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (8/31/2019)
Michèle Tosi's review in Res Musica (8/29/2019)

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen - Works on Paper (elsewhere 006-2)

John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (3/4/2019)
Ben Harper's review in Boring Like A Drill (3/18/2019)
Peter Taber's review in Dusted Magazine (2/27/2019)
Steve Smith's review in National Sawdust Log (2/1/2019)
John Lewis' review in The Guardian (2/1/2019)
Jeph Jerman's review in The Squid's Ear (3/23/2020)
Nick Storring's review in Musicworks fall issue #134 (Sept. 2019)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (6/2/2019)
Daniel Persson's review in Discreet Music Blog (in original Swedish) (5/11/2019)
Brian Olewnick's review in Just Outside (3/16/2019)

Stefan Thut - about (elsewhere 005)

John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (12/7/2018)
Brian Olewnick's review in Just Outside (11/13/2018)
Darren McClure's review in Toneshift.net (10/23/2018)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (3/14/2019)
Frans de Waard's review in Vital Weekly (10/13/2018)

Clara de Asís - Without (Erik Carlson / Greg Stuart) (elsewhere 004)

Marc Medwin's review in Dusted Magazine (10/31/2018)
Peter Margasak's review in Bandcamp Daily (10/30/2018)
Adrián Demoč's review in Slovak classical music/jazz magazine Hudobný život (3/11/2019)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (12/7/2018)
Brian Olewnick's view in Just Outside (11/12/2018)
Darren McClure's review in Toneshift.net (10/23/2018)
Frans de Waard's review in Vital Weekly (10/13/2018)

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003)

Front page review in Rate Your Music (1/19/2020)
Michele Pallozo's review in Esoteros (12/29/2019)
Adrián Demoč's review in Slovak classical music/jazz magazine Hudobný život (3/11/2019)
Nick Metzger's review in The Squid's Ear (2/7/2019)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (12/7/2018)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (12/28/2018)
Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (12/10/2018)
Brian Olewnick's review in Just Outside (11/10/2018)
Darren McClure's review in Toneshift.net (10/23/2018)
Bruce Lee Gallanter's review in Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter (10/19/2018)
Frans de Waard's review in Vital Weekly (10/13/2018)
Jack Davidson's review in Noise Not Music (9/29/2018)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere 002)

Michele Palozzo's review in Esoteros (1/1/2020)
Dionys Della Luce's review in Inactuelles, musiques singulières (10/29/2018)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (8/11/2018)
Peter Margasak's review in Bandcamp Daily (7/6/2018)
Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (2018)
Want List for Marc Medwin [2018] in Fanfare magazine
Dolf Mulder's review in Vital Weekly (9/21/2018)
Brian Olewnick's review in Just Outside (8/8/2018)
Masanori Tada's review in Jazz Tokyo (8/4/2018)
Clive Bell's review in The WIRE (November issue 2018)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3)

Roger Batty's review in Musique Machine (11/25/2018)
Thomas Millroth's review in OrkesterJournalen (11/14/2018)
Bill Meyer's review in Dusted Magazine (10/1/2018)
John Eyles' review in All About Jazz (8/11/2018)
TJ Norris' review in Toneshift (9/21/2018)
Dolf Mulder's review in Vital Weekly (9/21/2018)
Eyal Hareuveni's review in The Free Jazz Collective (9/1/2018)
Brian Olewnick's review in Just Outside (8/8/2018)
Bruce Lee Gallanter's review in Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter (7/27/2018)
Andrzej Nowak's review in Spontaneous Music Tribune (9/10/2018)
Clive Bell's review in The WIRE (November issue 2018)

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant: 'Lettres et Replis' (elsewhere 008) by Dionys Della Luce in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (9/22/2022)

Je vous élégie d'ailleurs...

Je peux bien vous l'avouer, chers amis. Pour moi, le français Bruno Duplant est l'un des plus grands compositeurs vivants. J'ai récemment défendu son magistral triple CD, L'Infini des possibles, également sorti chez Elsewhere Music. Je reviens vers un disque antérieur, paru en juin 2019 sur le même excellent label. À nouveau, la rencontre entre un pianiste et le compositeur. Cette fois, c'est le pianiste néerlandais Reinier van Houdt, régulièrement présent sur ce blog, qui compose et réalise d'après les partitions de Bruno Duplant.

Trois lettres, trois replis. Les partitions de Bruno Duplant prennent la forme de trois lettres personnellement adressées à Reinier van Houdt, contenant des séquences de lettres réparties sur la page. Les "replis" sont à prendre dans un sens deleuzien de "pli", ou d'incertitude. Les partitions laissent une large place à l'interprète, c'est pourquoi on peut comprendre l'interprétation de van Houdt comme une lecture et une réponse aux propositions de Duplant. Le pianiste réalise la partition avec des enregistrements multicouches de piano. Il écrit ceci notamment : « Les Lettres s'apparentent à une mélodie épelée et lue en tous sens propulsée par la mémoire et le regard. Les Replis sont connectés aux harmonies d'un lieu alors qu'ils s'infiltrent et se déroulent à travers les trous métaphoriques faits par l'écriture, disposés linéairement à nouveau avec les enregistrements d'une promenade le long de la rivière qui traverse ce lieu. » Heureusement, l'intelligence du propos et les attendus théoriques de la démarche ne nuisent pas à la musique que nous entendons...

Comment rendre compte d'une telle musique ? Comme toujours, je choisis l'approche sensible. La première chose qui me frappe, c'est la constante réinvention du piano, entre piano "normal" et piano préparé. La lente "Lettre 1" égrène des notes, jouant de multiples juxtapositions entre graves et aigus, notes normales ou éclatées, assourdies, résonantes ou effilées. La notion classique de mélodie n'a plus court, et pourtant se redessine un filigrane fascinant d'éclats, de frappes lourdes, qui retient l'attention, tant chaque note inattendue semble là à sa place, dans l'écoulement hasardeux. Les "Replis 1" s'enfoncent dans des épaisseurs de bruits de terrain pour y trouver une esquisse de mélodie sublime, d'une bouleversante mélancolie. Le piano se tient au bord de la déréliction, du rêve énorme de la vie, parcouru de frissons résonnants, tel un funambule incertain qui continue pourtant d'avancer dans sa vision intime. C'est d'une beauté désolée et fragile, l'écho décanté d'un paradis, perdu, peut-être, car ne sommes-nous pas finalement dans un post-romantisme débarrassé de toutes ses postures, ramené à une simplicité lumineuse.

Le brutal début de la "Lettre 2" surprend, tout en frappes sèches aux frontières de la dissonance. Lettre incisive, le piano sonnant comme un piano préparé. L'autre piano, habituel si l'on peut dire, reste en retrait derrière les résonances amplifiées ou non. On marche sur des roches pointues, on trébuche, mais on avance, dans une levée de sons translucides ou opaques, dans un paysage sonore extraordinaire, absolument fracturé, unifié par le tapis des harmoniques. D'une minérale splendeur ! Bruits de terrain à nouveau en "Replis 2", fugitif retour au monde qui s'évanouit derrière la petite mélodie des "Replis 1". Très vite, le ton change, plus dramatique. Le piano grave se fait sépulcral, les sons d'ambiance dessinent un monde fantomatique. Tout menace de sombrer, un peu bancal, reste le piano sur le fil du silence.

On croit entendre le cliquetis intermittent d'une machine à écrire derrière le piano impérial, légèrement tintinnabulant, chutant dans des bourdons graves étalés. La "Lettre 3" est la plus parlante, péremptoire, agressive dans ses attaques sourdes, abrupte, puis elle semble se détendre, laisser davantage de place à ce qui serait du chant, un hymne... à l'envers, hanté par le bas, troué de trappes aiguës. Elle se laisse happer par les silences, réduite à des éclats de silex et des remontées de drones. Les "Replis 3" commencent à égalité entre bruits de terrain, assez maritimes (tous ces bruits ont été enregistrés dans le port de Rotterdam, le jour du centième anniversaire de la naissance de John Cage...), et piano venu d'ailleurs, puis le piano s'impose, à deux voix, une grave et lourde, l'autre fragile et timide, avec des flux de résonance pour les relier peut-être. C'est un dialogue intérieur, aux accents dramatiques, comme un lamento méditatif arraché au néant, et qui y retourne, submergé par les bruits du monde extérieur, les sirènes des navires, non sans quelques sursauts de piano assourdi dans les graves, aplati par la Fatalité ?

Deux artistes majeurs d'aujourd'hui écrivent parmi les plus belles œuvres de notre temps. Un disque sublime, absolument sublime !

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro-Liu 'Barricades' (elsewhere 009) by Dionys Della Luce in Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (6/13/2022)

(English translation via DeepL)

Why write a review on a record released almost three years ago? Because it is a great record that I had missed, and because it is significant to the editorial policy of this beautiful record label founded in 2018 by Yuko Zama, Elsewhere Music. The label is dedicated to new trends in contemporary music and has ambitions to support works specifically written for it. 'Barricades' is emblematic of this very singular catalog. Composed by Michael Pisaro (Michael Pisaro-Liu since 2020), an American guitarist and composer born in Buffalo in 1961, with an abundant output, and also director of composition and experimental music at the famous CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), it is performed by the composer himself on electronics and by Israeli pianist Shira Legmann on piano.

Thirteen studies for piano, some with electronics, and two electronic interludes. "The title refers to François Couperin's "Barricades Mystérieuses" - and the technique of overlapping, interlocking voices, creating a thicket or web-like texture. I have loved the music of Couperins since college, but it was when Shira sent me some of her favorite music to play, and Les Barricades Mystérieuses was among the scores, that the idea for this piece began to crystallize. The process of writing and working on the piece with Shira was to watch the barricades, which I imagined as a network of twisted vines, unravel," writes Michael Pisaro. What is striking from the first study is the use of electronics as a natural extension of the piano. Relying on the harmonic resonances of the instrument, it amplifies them, extends them, until they become curved, indeed. Twisted, as the composer says, transformed also until giving the impression of another instrument, totally strange. The piano draws melodic sketches based on well separated notes, the electronics rushes in the interstices, not for an overbidding, but for a dialogue of equal to equal. The tempo is often quite slow. These are meditative, stripped-down studies. Of a great luminous purity. Resonant islands, with a light melancholy, like prayers of thanksgiving.

This music touches me deeply, because it seems to me that it is all interior, that it comes from the soul, in its simple apparatus, dressed in diaphanous, undulating draperies, as in the interlude No. 1. Sometimes, as in the seventh study, we are at the frontier of a decanted minimalism, with mysterious loops that are a bit Debussy-like. What a joy this music is, with its unbelievable delicacy and unparalleled dreamlike power! Etude 8 is one of the many miracles of this recording, weightless, vaporous, Morton Feldman distended, restrained...

The next etude, faster for once, unfolds like a snake, then resolves itself into enigmatic interrogations. The longest, study ten, with more than ten minutes, takes the form of a very slow march, hollowed out by low notes, haloed by a whimsical electronic comet, made up of fine oscillations, muffled passages, interiorized resonances. The term "thicket" used by the composer seems to me to suit this long drift, which sometimes accelerates in the second half, with really magnificent bushy resonances.

And what about the Etude Eleven, pure piano, an incessant movement towards the light? Moving, sublime... The wave movement of the etude twelve, with its overlaps, its great waves, is of a fascinating beauty. The second electronic interlude extends these great waves of immense diapric oscillations on a moving background of drones: dark majesty!

It is the hour, the supreme hour, it rings and rings, wrapped in its sparkling electronic trail, chants a magic dance, the nuptial ring is in its center, in its setting of silences and resonances. It is the thirteen study, nervalienne:

The Thirteenth returns... It is still the first;
And it is always the only one, or it is the only moment;
For are you queen, O you! the first or the last?
Are you king, you the only one or the last lover?...

First stanza of the poem "Artemis" by Gérard de Nerval.

A masterpiece which intimately marries piano and electronics, without the electronics ever suffocating the instrument (as too often!), but multiplying its splendors.

(original text in French)

Pourquoi rendre compte d'un disque paru il y a presque trois ans ? Parce qu'il s'agit d'un grand disque que j'avais manqué, et parce qu'il est significatif de la politique éditoriale de cette belle maison de disque fondée en 2018 par Yuko Zama, Elsewhere Music. La maison se consacre aux nouvelles tendances de la musique contemporaine et ambitionne de soutenir des œuvres spécifiquement écrites pour elle. Barricades est emblématique de ce catalogue très singulier. Composé par Michael Pisaro (Michael Pisaro-Liu depuis 2020), guitariste et compositeur américain né à Buffalo en 1961, à la production abondante, par ailleurs directeur de composition et de musique expérimentale au célèbre CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), il est interprété par le compositeur lui-même à l'électronique et par la pianiste israélienne Shira Legmann au piano.

Treize études pour piano, certaines avec électronique, et deux interludes électroniques. « Le titre fait référence aux « Barricades Mystérieuses » de François Couperin – et à la technique des voix qui se chevauchent, s'emboîtent, créant une texture en forme de fourré ou de toile. J'adore la musique des Couperins depuis le collège, mais c'est lorsque Shira m'a envoyé quelques-unes de ses musiques préférées à jouer, et Les Barricades Mystérieuses était parmi les partitions, que l'idée de cette pièce a commencé à se cristalliser. Le processus d'écriture et de travail sur la pièce avec Shira consistait à regarder les barricades, que j'imaginais comme un réseau de vignes tordues, se défaire. » écrit Michael Pisaro. Ce qui frappe dès la première étude, c'est l'utilisation de l'électronique comme prolongement naturel du piano. S'appuyant sur les résonances harmoniques de l'instrument, elle les amplifie, les prolonge, jusqu'à les rendre courbes, en effet. Tordues, comme dit le compositeur, transformées aussi jusqu'à donner l'impression d'un autre instrument, totalement étrange. Le piano dessine des esquisses mélodiques à base de notes bien séparées, l'électronique s'engouffre dans les interstices, non pour une surenchère, mais pour un dialogue d'égal à égal. Le tempo est souvent assez lent. Ce sont des études méditatives, dépouillées. D'une grande pureté lumineuse. Des îles résonantes, à la mélancolie légère, comme des prières d'action de grâce.

Cette musique me touche profondément, car il me semble qu'elle est toute intérieure, qu'elle vient de l'âme, dans son simple appareil, vêtue de draperies diaphanes, ondoyantes, comme dans l'interlude No 1. Parfois, comme pour l'étude sept, nous sommes aux frontières d'un minimalisme décanté, avec des boucles mystérieuses un peu debussystes. Quel bonheur que cette musique d'une délicatesse inouïe, au pouvoir onirique sans pareil ! L'étude huit est un des nombreux miracles de ce disque, en apesanteur, vaporeuse, du Morton Feldman distendu, retenu...

L'étude suivante, plus rapide pour une fois, se déploie comme un serpent, puis se résorbe en interrogations énigmatiques. La plus longue, l'étude dix, avec plus de dix minutes, prend la forme d'une marche très lente, creusée de graves, auréolée d'une comète électronique fantasque, constituée de fines oscillations, de passages feutrés, de résonances intériorisées. Le terme de "fourré" employé par le compositeur me paraît convenir à cette longue dérive, qui s'accélère parfois dans la seconde moitié, aux résonances buissonnantes vraiment magnifiques.

Et que dire de l'étude onze, du piano pur, un mouvement incessant vers la lumière ? Bouleversante, sublime... Le mouvement de vagues de l'étude douze, avec ses chevauchements, ses grandes ondes, est d'une fascinante beauté. Le second interlude électronique prolonge ces grandes ondes d'immenses oscillations diaprées sur un fond mouvant de drones : majesté sombre !

Il est l'heure, l'heure suprême, elle sonne et sonne, enveloppée de sa traîne électronique étincelante, scande une danse magique, l'anneau nuptial est en son centre, dans son sertissage de silences et de résonances. C'est l'étude treize, nervalienne :

La Treizième revient… C’est encor la première ;
Et c’est toujours la seule, ou c’est le seul moment;
Car es-tu reine, ô toi ! la première ou dernière ?
Es-tu roi, toi le seul ou le dernier amant ?…

Première strophe du poème « Artémis » de Gérard de Nerval.

Un chef d'œuvre qui marie intimement piano et électronique, sans que jamais l'électronique étouffe l'instrument (comme trop souvent !), mais multiplie ses splendeurs.

Jordan Dykstra / Koen Nutters - In Better Shape Than You Found Me (elsewhere 018) by Peter Margasak on The Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp Daily - October 2021 (11/3/2021)

As with the Cooper/Bradshaw work above, this two-way collaboration between Jordan Dykstra and Koen Nutters was also made remotely during lockdown in 2020. The core of the piece is a piano composition Nutters was working on when Dykstra approached him about making a piece together. The stark piano chords and scales, separated by long chunks of silence, were filled in by Dykstra without upsetting the essential architecture of the work. Among the material deftly inlaid by Dykstra are field recordings of birds made during those early days of the pandemic, both untouched and time-stretched. It evokes those days when it seemed as if wildlife reclaimed some kind of primacy in urban areas suddenly silenced by the lack of commuting and socializing, adding astringent viola lines, floating melodica chords, resonant three-note crotale patterns, pitch-pipe tings, and sustained piano drones made with an e-bow.

The piano part may form the essence of the piece, and it could function on its own as an ultra-minimal Wandelweiser-type excursion, but Dykstra’s sonic flesh really ups the ante, adding an ever-shifting array of unconventional harmony and sonic disruption so that the music teeters between calmness and subdued terror. The hour-long piece arrives in several discrete sections, separated by brief silences, as if each new movement provides a new perspective on familiar material. It demands total immersion, but the effort is more than worth it.

Michael Pisaro-Liu - Tombstones (Barbara Dang & Muzzix) by Eyal Hareuveni on The Free Jazz Collective (12/4/2021)

American composer Michael Pisaro-Liu is known for minimalist pieces of long duration with pauses of silence, associated with the Wandelweiser composers collective. Tombstones focus on one of the most exceptional works of this prolific composer, a cycle of songs composed by Pisaro-Liu between 2006 and 2010, journeying into experimental pop with pieces that are "experimental or indeterminate but still a song", or songs that came together more or less by themselves.

Pisaro (he add Liu to his surname after his marriage to artist Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu) took fragments from pop music, country and blues, isolated an idea, cut up the melody, slowed it down or removed it at all, placed it in different instrumental contexts, and allowed the musicians to make their own decisions. With this kind of chance process, he created the cycle of “stolen songs” (his term), and compared this method of work to the one of fellow-American experimental composer Christian Wolff; where sometimes you have the materials, but not the order in which they occur. He released these experimental songs on limited-edition vinyl by the Human Ear Music in 2012 (and a year later on disc), with an ensemble of nine musicians including vocalists Julia Holter (a former student of Pisaro) and Lisa Tolentino and pianist Tashi Wada. Pisaro produced this recording and played guitar on it.

The new version of Tombstones is played by the French, Lille-based six members of the Muzzix musicians collective under the artistic direction of the Lille-based pianist Barbara Dang, who has developed in the last decade a set of experimental pieces by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, Jürg Frey and Pisaro. The Muzzix ensemble features main vocalist Maryline Pruvost, guitarist Ivann Cruz (of the TOC trio), drummer Peter Orins and trumpeter Christian Pruvost (of the French-Japanese quartet KAZE). All the seven musicians add vocals, spoken voices and whispering to their arsenal of instruments. These musicians have plated Pisaro-Liu, especially for his composition “Radiolarians” (2018), written for the Grand Orchester de Muzzix which gathers about thirty musicians. The new version was recorded at Théâtre Le Colombier in Les Cabannes in 2020 and the recording was mastered by Pisaro-Liu.

The eleven songs are played in the same order as the original recording. Dang & Muzzix enjoy the high degrees of freedom that Pisaro left for the performs. They blur furthermore the pop, country and blues roots of these strange but arresting songs and dress them in a chamber, sparse, quiet and ethereal arrangements, austere but lush and intimate ones and often punctuated by silent pauses, framing this cycle of songs in line with the works of the Wandelweiser composers. The direct and natural vocal delivery of Maryline Pruvost and the vocal arrangements on songs like “A Stranger” highlight the poetically nuanced fragments of these songs. Christian Pruvost’s trumpet and Maryline Pruvost’s vocals on “New Orleans” sound now like a distant reflection on the plights of this city, and nothing like New Orleans early jazz or blues music. “Stop” sounds now like an exotic and delicate Far-Eastern song. Perhaps the song “I didn’t say anything” captures best the essence of this brilliant cycle of singular songs, the suggestive and highly poetic suchness of every note, each found sound, broken lines or melodic fragment, as this song repeats the line: “You never say anything, but you keep coming back to it”. Dang even says that she wanted music close to “something natural… no voluntary sound event, no climax, no drama, everything could appear as accidental”.

Jordan Dykstra / Koen Nutters - In Better Shape Than You Found Me (elsewhere 018) by John Eyles on All About Jazz (11/7/2021)

As is true of so much music released in 2021, Covid-19 and the lockdown played vital roles in the creation of In Better Shape Than You Found Me, the first album by the duo of American composer & violinist Jordan Dykstra and Dutch composer Koen Nutters. Having previously had an interest in one another's work, and hung out together in Amsterdam—where Nutters organised a concert of a Dykstra work—in early 2020, when Nutters was in NYC for a gig, Dykstra proposed that he and Nutters collaborate on a piece. The pandemic meant that collaboration involved the two sending material back and forth between them. At the time, Nutters had been working on a piano piece "with chords, scales and lots of long silences," and Dykstra on "a lot of ambient soundscapes using field recordings as the basis of their foundation." Inevitably, the back-and-forth exchanges meant that both these elements became crucial ingredients of the joint work entitled "In Better Shape Than You Found Me," the hour-long piece which comprises the full album of the same name.

For many listeners, perhaps the most important information about the piece is that its one-hour running time does not mean it becomes an ordeal or a survival course. Instead, it contains enough variety and detail to sound fresh and vibrant throughout. While there are sounds—of instruments and other things—which recur, that never becomes wearying, as they give a structure to the composition. Alongside frequent interjections from piano, one of the key elements that is repeated is a field recording of birds. Dykstra reports that he made the recording of night birds singing in Brooklyn; he found that because of the lack of cars or loud transport on the roads during lockdown, native animals were singing again and could be heard better. Yes, as this album demonstrates, every cloud has a silver lining...

Dykstra and Koens were so pleased with this jointly-composed piece that they retro-composed a score of it so that it could be performed as heard on this album. In August 2021, a quartet version of it was performed at KM28 in Berlin by Dykstra, Manuel Lima, Lucy Railton and Hannes Lingens, with performances in other cities being discussed. Yes, we have not heard the last of "In Better Shape Than You Found Me." This one looks set to run and run...

Guy Vandromme - Bruno Duplant: l'infini des possibles (elsewhere 019-2) by Michele Palozzo on esoteros (Italian/English) (11/3/2021)

In the devouring chaos of the contemporary world, qualifying as a composer is he who is still able to find the space, time and clarity to listen to himself, only later channeling this feeling – albeit to a small extent – into the musical work. But what about the performer? In the post-classical era the relationship between the two parts can no longer be one-sided: the equal role of of the author and the performer is established, where the former offers nothing but a sketch, a skeleton not of how the piece is, but of how it can be, while the latter is invested with the even more onerous task of filling the deep, intentional gaps that run through the score.

In this sense, the étude becomes the means to give a provisional form to the possible, the sine qua non of an uncertain and yet, paradoxically, completely crystalline expressive outline. Here’s the essence of Bruno Duplant’s reductionism, him being open like few others to the idea of a profoundly participatory musical creation: the notation on paper, consequently, must take on the characteristics of a map, a tool for orienting precise though unrepeatable gestures, entirely immersed in the present moment of execution.

The twelve pages of “L’infini des possibles” present themselves as rows of mute letters, lowercase characters from ‘a’ to ‘g’ coinciding with the notes of the major scale, the expanse of white keys that covers the length of the piano. In the absence of other explicit parameters, the periods and empty spaces between the letters become in turn an alphabet of silence, the mirror in which the minute sound events are reflected and prolong their existence. Thus the white welcomes not only the acoustic process of decay, but also the cumulative memory of what by its nature is ephemeral, suspended in a real time that cannot return.

In the individual “translation” offered by pianist Guy Vandromme, not only does another emblematic proof of “vertical” virtuosity take place – the weighting of touch as a crucial quality in order to identify oneself with these radical expressive domains – but one may also indirectly experience the “solitude of the long-distance runner” who passes through every degree of dynamics with equal dedication, from a luminous presque rien to the darkest, most unquiet impulse of the soul, although always played “soberly, slowly and with a sweet melancholy”, as suggested by Duplant.

And it is only in the midst of listening that the étude also reveals itself as a neo-romantic evocation, the reference to an entirely inner music in whose flow appear echoes of Debussy and Mompou, Ligeti, Palestine and Feldman, invisible and indivisible traces of a lived-through experience of music that, like the high tide, rises from the innermost folds of scores otherwise hermetic, outwardly devoid of any graphological whim or detail.

With the twilight of the gesamtkunstwerk utopia, composers like Duplant seek the beauty and truth of human feeling in the unfinished, halting at the threshold beyond which the boundless horizon of possibility can be glimpsed. From the vertigo of the unexpressed work, the performer draws a distillation that will always be the first and last iteration of its being present: a humble, invaluable gift through which art gently intertwines with life, and with it shines of an ever-new radiance.

Michael Pisaro-Liu 'Tombstones' (Barbara Dang & Muzzix) (elsewhere 017) by John Eyles on All About Jazz (10/11/2021)

Here we have a recording with a history, one which needs to be told in order to set it in context. "Tombstones" is the collective name of twenty songs composed by Michael Pisaro between 2006 and 2010 (before his marriage to Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu led to his surname change to Pisaro-Liu). In 2012, eleven of those songs were released on a collectable limited-edition LP by the Human Ear Music (HEM) label, followed in 2013 by the same recordings on an HEM CD, both being credited to Pisaro. On that album, recorded in San Francisco, in 2010, the songs were performed by a nine-member ensemble of whom six were credited with vocals or spoken word recitation, Pisaro himself being one of the latter.

At the time of those releases, it was reported that the "Tombstones" songs were inspired by fragments of songs, including some by Lennon, McCartney, Dylan, Jay-Z and Robert Johnson; some commentators referred to Tombstones as Pisaro's pop album, one even drawing a comparison with David Bowie's Pin Ups> (RCA, 1973). Despite such comments, repeated listening to the HEM releases revealed no obvious lyrics or melodic fragments that were attributable to the named sources; Pisaro may have been inspired by them but he had not "borrowed" from them. And, although a Pisaro pop album may have sounded fanciful, "Tombstones" sounded right at home in his canon.

Fast forward to June 2020 at Theatre Le Colombier, a performance space in Les Cabannes, north-west of Albi in southern France, where the Lille-based pianist Barbara Dang and six other members of the Muzzix collective recorded the pieces, with Muzzix member Maryline Pruvost as the main vocalist. Yes, that is correct; Dang & Muzzix recorded exactly the same eleven songs (in exactly the same running order) as were released in 2012, rather than attempting any of the remaining nine. Maybe they decided to leave those nine for a follow-up album? Although playing the same compositions, Muzzix do not copy the HEM versions. In particular, the decision to have just one lead vocalist was a good one as it gives this album a rather more unified feel than its predecessor. Pruvost's voice is pure and true, at times calling to mind those of her fellow Elsewhere labelmates The Giving Shapes. Pruvost's voice is accompanied throughout by Dang's piano, with other instruments and voices being used sparingly as punctuation and coloration; sometimes this leads to pregnant silent pauses—very Wandelweiser. As they are sung (or, in some cases, most notably "I didn't say anything," recited) these compositions qualify as songs, but they have none of the hallmarks of pop songs—verses, choruses, middle-eights et cetera... Having accepted that, as a whole this album makes compellingly beautiful listening in its own right.

Pisaro-Liu afficionados will find plenty here to satisfy their addiction. Curious newcomers can begin here, knowing that it will probably make them addicts too. On this evidence, all will hope that Dang & Muzzix get around to tackling the remaining nine "Tombstones" sometime soon.

Michael Pisaro-Liu 'Tombstones' (Barbara Dang & Muzzix) (elsewhere 017) by Ben Harper on Boring Like A Drill (10/27/2021)

Michael Pisaro-Liu (fka Michael Pisaro) walks an eccentric path between conceptual process (cf. ricefall) and free-flowing wanderings that follow a concealed narrative. In Tombstones, this approach is atomised: a collection of twenty “experimental-pop” songs, each made from the slenderest of means. Each song may be concise or extended, to extremes if desired, and arrangements are left open. For this album, the ensemble Muzzix under the direction of pianist Barbara Dang perform eleven songs, the same selection recorded by a different ensemble some nine years ago which I haven’t heard and so can’t compare.

The titles, and thus lyrics, derive from popular songs, but any vagaries or digressions are constrained by the miniaturist approach to each composition. In each song the singer, usually Maryline Pruvost, rarely exceeds a couple of words, a couple of notes. The initial impression recalls Jürg Frey’s 24 Wörter. As often with Pisaro-Liu, his musical language is too inconsistent to induce a ‘minimal’ state of quiescence in the listener’s mind, leaving the song sequence’s success to depend upon the gemlike settings of the instrumentation. This is evidently left largely in the hands of Dang and Muzzix, who alter texture and colouration in fresh and unexpected ways, with an approach that is gentle but firm when making such potentially isolated and disparate elements cohere, yet also prolonging moments of chamber music from the same material. Ultimately, the album as a whole is required by its concentration on single words and sounds to balance between the hieratic artifice of its construction and the expressive substance of its contents, leaving to the mercy of the listener’s mindset whether it aspires to profundity or to preciousness.

Jordan Dykstra / Koen Nutters - In Better Shape Than You Found Me (elsewhere 018) by Ben Harper on Boring Like A Drill (10/27/2021)

I’m sure I’ve never heard of Jordan Dykstra or Koen Nutters before. Their new Elsewhere release is a joint composition by the two composer/performers. This is usually grounds to be wary of an insider’s muso-fest but thanks to recent efforts by groups like Eventless Plot I’m not more hopeful. That hope is rewarded here. In Better Shape Than You Found Me is precisely one hour of music that ebbs and flows as though excerpted at random from a constant, natural process. Like nature, the only readily discernable structure or pattern is what may be observed, an impersonal, consequential logic that creates its own context and meaning as it goes on. A spare duo for piano and pitch pipes or viola is backed by soft drones and noises which drift in and out of focus, eliding between pure sound and documentary. Like Luc Ferrari under heavy sedation. An ascending scale interrupts, from time to time. Perhaps events are grouped into subtly distinguished episodes, or perhaps there are merely pauses. More likely, sometimes there is simply silence that emerges to the fore. A sense of place is created, but one where the mood or the tone never settles and so makes place into a lifelike thing.

Jordan Dykstra / Koen Nutters - In Better Shape Than You Found Me (elsewhere 018) by Connor Kurtz and Keith Prosk on harmonic series (10/1/2021)

The first thing that this album's artwork reminded me of was abstract filmmaker Daïchi Saïto's latest work, earthearthearth. The film starts with faint, orange horizons appearing and disappearing from the screen, shifting and flickering. That aesthetic idea of repeating appearance and disappearance is a big part of what made that film great, and it's a big part of what makes this album great as well.
It's enchanting to hear how these elements patiently come and go, slowly but surely working through the composition's cyclical, geometrically pleasing structure. In simpler sections I feel nostalgic for the louder, fuller moments, but comforted by the leisurely pace of the insistent piano and various soft acoustic textures which warmly embrace while feeling fragile enough to sink away at any moment, which they always do. Returns to the central drone are reassuring but off-putting – it's quite dissonant, almost ugly, really. But as I hear it again and again, under the influence of repetitive nostalgia, it somehow feels just right.

More than anything else, what I love about this album is the atmosphere. Plenty of composers from this patient school of contemporary music have shifted emphasis from pure experimentation to ambient-esque atmospherics, but few have done it this well. The atmosphere here is complex, dark, creepy yet pleasant. It's like a forest path at night with shimmers of moonlight shining through the trees, with small musical creatures lurking in the shadows and a triumphant, rotating lighthouse which shines a harsh, eerie light over and past the listener five times through the piece's hour duration. The path eventually leads to a train which conveniently takes the listener back home, but even then there's a little music, some left-over traces to be heard and remembered.

It's only taken about a week for In Better Shape Than You Found Me to become my most heard album of the year. There's something about that barely lit forest path that keeps me coming back, never offering to reveal itself but inviting me deeper and deeper into a menacing atmosphere which never harms me, only ever leaving me in better shape than it found me. - Connor Kurtz

Jordan Dykstra (viola, pitch pipe, crotales, piano ebow, electronic programming, field recordings) and Koen Nutters (piano programming, field recordings) realize a joint composition that appears as a converging structural wave on the hour-long In Better Shape Than You Found Me.

The gentle pace and duration of the piece induces a faulty memory but recurring soundings recognized as repetitive enough reveal a sturdier structure. Step-pattern crotales melodies seem to signal not the beginnings of changes but that something has already set into motion. First hammered piano keys and chords sometimes allowed to reverberate, sometimes muted, truncated, in phasing relationships with swelling ebow sines, their pulses together braiding and occasionally extending each others when not separated by significant silences. And then sustained soundings of pitch pipe and viola, their similarly rippling pulses in similar phasing relationships. These two independently developing duos eventually bridged by a step-pattern scalular piano melody that itself may contain some reflection of the crotales. All these undulating soundings closer together and converging towards a peak density close to the center of the piece like a wave packet compressed on the sea shelf, mixing and blending a bit, the reverberant piano chords, ebow, and viola a trio for a time, only to slowly crash and dissipate to the piano and sine duo distanced with generous silence. Just as the soundings appear to mirror each other, in their movements and their relationships and their wave swells and pulses, so silences appear to mirror the soundings in some way, containing as many identities as instruments in the hiss of recording nothing, a kind of tunnel whistle, ethereal hooting like circulating air, a quiet night teeming with critters calls, and pure silence. - Keith Prosk

Guy Vandromme - Bruno Duplant: l'infini des possibles (elsewhere 019-2) by Dionys Della Luce on Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (10/5/2021)

(English translation via DeepL)

On the lookout for the Infinite

In contemporary music, it happens more and more often that the interpreter, instead of being satisfied with reproducing a score or interpreting it according to his or her sensibility, is associated with the creative process by the composer, who grants him or her a margin of freedom. L'Infini des possibles is the fruit of such a co-creation, to the point that the name of the composer disappears from many sites! The composer is the Frenchman Bruno Duplant, whom I am surprised not to know, although he is the author of an immense work, dozens of records. The Belgian pianist Guy Vandromme, an interpreter of Erik Satie and John Cage in particular, threw himself into this adventure, fascinated by the score, and it would be necessary to modify my expression, invented on a well-known model: "à piano gagné"! The collaboration between the two men was close. If the directions were clearly indicated by the composer, the contribution of the pianist redrew the choices. The composer's indications and the score of the first etude will help you understand the project of this cycle of twelve etudes.

How to suggest the infinite? This is Bruno Duplant's challenge: thanks to a deployment of possibilities arranged in twelve different colors from the lightest to the darkest. The rhythmic and harmonic choices are reduced to the extreme. Guy Vandromme insists on the singularity of the project, which makes these studies incomparable to those of Chopin and many others, even those of Cage or Ligeti. Now that you know everything a curious listener needs to know, it's time to get to the result...

Many contemporary works, in different artistic fields, are carefully presented, full of clever concepts. This seductive envelope does not guarantee the quality of the result. It happens too often that it is only a mask. Let's say right away that this is not the case for this vast cycle. One can, I would even say that one must forget all that I have just written, all the intentions of the designers. What counts is the answer we, as listeners, give to very simple questions: do we like the music? Does it arouse emotions in us, states of consciousness that bring us something we didn't have, or that help us to progress in our own ways? Let's be clear: this is not music for the hurried listener. Certainly, one can listen to the studies separately, each one between almost nine minutes and fifteen minutes for the longest, already quite long formats. One can. One feels very quickly that one is somewhere on the side of Morton Feldman, a Feldman who would no longer drift in a labyrinth. Study n°1 is a march suspended on the edges of silence, extremely slow, which sets down each note and lets it resonate. The listener is invited to a contemplation of sound in which he suspends his own being. Listening presupposes this stripping down, this asceticism which, alone, can meet that of the interpreter, the soul on the edge of the keys, the gesture of a delicate, attentive precision. If you get past these eleven inaugural minutes, the disc will delight you with its purity, its freshness: "the playing will be sober, slow and of a sweet melancholy" indicates the composer. This slow sobriety washes us away from the ordinary world, gently transporting us into an ecstatic state at the antipodes of the imagery linked to this beautiful word "ecstasy": to be out of oneself, in a supernatural tranquility. The relatively lively Etude n°3 does not break the climate, but rather roots it in the duration with a new vigor. There is no sluggishness or hurry in this music of magnificent intensity. What is melancholy here? Nothing else but a serenity indifferent to the agitations of the outside world. A serious meditation, the only one capable of prolonging these spiritual exercises. A song sometimes finds its way in, musical memories perhaps, as in the study n°4, quickly brought back on the thread of a thought concerned with sounding the silence, with extracting its quintessence.

As if the infinite could only be grasped in the decantation, in the interstices of a cautious advance to the edge of the resonances at the end of this fourth study. Guy Vandromme shows the patience of an angel, having to repress all temptation of virtuosity to become the celebrant, that is to say the celebrant, the vigilant inspired of an office haunted, Bruno Duplant confides to us, by Mallarmé, Perec, and I would add Borges - I leave aside Bachelard and Cage, also mentioned by the composer. Why this tapestry of letters if not to catch the infinite between the meshes of the net? In the same way that the Mallarméan whiteness, the oulipian peréciennes combinatorics or the borgésiennes letters were the weapons to make emerge, to trap the Work, supreme condensation, dreamed avatar of 'the Infinite. The study n°5 lets perhaps hear the rests of the original big bang, the low noise of the infinite, its memory turned in derision by the mischievous splashes of the mediums and the highs. However, it ends up giving the impression of a new balance, of a will to embrace extremes by overcoming old antagonisms. The longest etude, the sixth, benefits from this, with its fifteen minutes, its obstinate interrogations, its comings and goings from the sepulchre to the light without losing a sovereign calm, despite a brief acceleration towards the end. Noble conclusion to a first Book, if one borrows a term of rigor for the most famous study cycles."

With the beginning of the second disc, the writing becomes tighter, the notes come closer together, drawing lines, quasi-melodies. From this point of view, etude n°7 contrasts sharply with the previous ones, in spite of some returns of the old erratic pattern. The notes agglomerate, jostle each other, the harmonics become entangled, the piano starts to rumble. What a tumult! What a storm that raises these unexpected - or, for other listeners, too expected - surges? We have passed to the other side of the austere meditation. Outbursts, low notes struck with a roar, sharp high notes: the etude n°8 is of a new dramatic density, yet held, so dignified, tenacious. The resonances take on an affirmed relief, drawing peaks and abysses, platiers of drones. The coming of the Darkness is more and more sensitive. Study n°9 seems to stumble down a staircase, one thinks fleetingly of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata. The light calls like a memory that one leaves while sinking irremediably in harmonic circles more and more vast. It does not give up, draping itself in long, semi-vague resonances to accompany the slow immersion of the bass in a sheet of drones with impressive resonances. The following study, n°10, seems more peaceful, threatened by paralysis. Everything is in suspense. We float in a mist that slightly diapers the high and medium notes, while the low notes are muffled. Where are we exactly? Somewhere beyond the conflicts, in a stretched waiting. Massive, flattened bass notes : the study n°11 is more stubborn, disturbing, with dark cracks, like an anger turned against itself. Basements of hell with very low vaults, sinister gaols that a few strands of half-light do not manage to illuminate at the end. Sealed destiny? The study n°12 expresses a surprising rebirth, a new beyond. The notes surge in a quasi strumming à la Charlemagne Palestine. The energy circulates in a lively flow, never ceasing to bounce in a robust joy, fringed with the dark dress of concatenated harmonics. What is infinity, if not this new departure, this escape which answers that of n°7? The shade is impotent to bury the light, more radiant than ever and which can now abandon itself to a soft quietude...

Let us not forget to say a few words about the piano used: a rare Steinway C from 1896, with sumptuous sonorities and deep resonances. The instrument is decisive. Handled with marvelous sensitivity by Guy Vandromme, who is at one with it to express all its beauties, it contributes to the success of this masterly cycle, perfectly recorded. An inexhaustible work!

Divagations...

The score is reminiscent of the perforated mechanical pianos. One is tempted to see in it a truncated text, which should be restored in its entirety by filling in the spaces with the absent parts of any score, to paraphrase and divert the Mallarméan formula. One can also play at reading a text hidden among other letters, a sort of palimpsest. I read there for example a possible hidden message, the motive in the carpet: that Face à Cage (s)'efface (l)e gage. By "pledge", one should understand the cage of conventional music, frozen in the score, enclosed in its finish. The open, airy score opens up to the infinity of possibilities...
All of a sudden, I read at the end of the score of the study n° 12: fa(çon) d'ê(tr)e (l)à."

(Original in French)

À l'affût de l'Infini

Dans la musique contemporaine, il arrive de plus en plus souvent que l'interprète, au lieu de se contenter d'avoir à reproduire une partition ou de l'interpréter selon sa sensibilité, soit associé au processus créatif par le compositeur, qui lui accorde une marge de liberté. L'Infini des possibles est le fruit d'une telle co-création, au point que le nom du compositeur disparaisse de bien des sites ! Le compositeur, c'est le français Bruno Duplant, que je m'étonne malgré moi de ne pas connaître, alors qu'il est l'auteur d'une œuvre immense, de dizaines de disques. Le pianiste belge Guy Vandromme, interprète notamment d'Erik Satie et de John Cage, s'est lancé à piano perdu, si j'ose dire, dans cette aventure, fasciné par la partition, et il faudrait pour l'occasion modifier mon expression inventée sur un modèle bien connu : à piano gagné ! La collaboration entre les deux hommes a été étroite. Si les directions ont été clairement indiquées par le compositeur, la contribution du pianiste a redessiné les choix. Les indications du compositeur et la partition de la première étude vous permettront de comprendre le projet de ce cycle de douze études.

Comment suggérer l'infini ? C'est un peu le défi de Bruno Duplant : grâce à un déploiement de possibles disposés selon douze couleurs différentes de la plus claire à la plus sombre. Les choix rythmiques et harmoniques sont réduits à l'extrême. Guy Vandromme insiste sur la singularité du projet, qui rend ces études incomparables aux études de Chopin et de bien d'autres, même de celles de Cage ou Ligeti. Maintenant que vous savez tout ce qu'un auditeur curieux doit savoir, il faut en venir au résultat...

Bien des œuvres contemporaines, dans différents domaines artistiques, sont soigneusement présentées, bardées de concepts intelligents. Cette enveloppe séduisante ne garantit en rien la qualité du résultat. Il arrive trop souvent qu'elle ne soit qu'un cache-misère. Disons tout de suite que ce n'est pas le cas pour ce vaste cycle. On peut, je dirais même qu'on doit oublier tout ce que je viens d'écrire, toutes les intentions des concepteurs. Ce qui compte, c'est la réponse que nous apporterons en tant qu'auditeur à des questions très simples : la musique nous plaît-elle ? suscite-t-elle des émotions en nous, des états de conscience qui nous apportent quelque chose que nous n'avions pas, ou qui nous aident à progresser dans nos propres voies ? Disons-le tout net : ce n'est pas une musique pour l'auditeur pressé. Certes, on peut écouter les études séparément, chacune entre presque neuf minutes et quinze minutes pour la plus longue, déjà des formats assez longs. On le peut. On sent très vite qu'on est quelque part du côté de Morton Feldman, un Feldman qui ne dériverait plus dans un labyrinthe. L'étude n°1 est une marche suspendue aux arêtes du silence, d'une extrême lenteur, qui pose chaque note et la laisse résonner. L'auditeur est invité à une contemplation du son dans laquelle il suspend son être propre. Écouter suppose ce dépouillement, cette ascèse qui, seule, peut rencontrer celle de l'interprète, l'âme sur le bord des touches, le geste d'une précision délicate, attentionnée. Si vous franchissez le cap de ces onze minutes inaugurales, le disque vous ravira par sa pureté, sa fraîcheur : « le jeu sera sobre, lent et d'une douce mélancolie » indique le compositeur. Cette lente sobriété nous lave du monde ordinaire, nous transporte en douceur dans un état extatique aux antipodes de l'imagerie liée à ce beau mot d'extase : être hors de soi, dans une tranquillité surnaturelle. L'étude n°3, relativement animée, ne rompt pas le climat, elle l'enracine dans la durée avec une vigueur nouvelle. Ni mollesse, ni presse dans cette musique d'une intensité magnifique. Qu'est-ce que la mélancolie, ici ? Rien d'autre qu'une sérénité indifférente aux agitations du monde extérieur. Un recueillement grave, seul capable de prolonger ces exercices spirituels. Un chant parfois se fraie un chemin, des souvenirs musicaux peut-être, comme dans l'étude n°4, vite ramenés sur le fil d'une pensée soucieuse de sonder le silence, d'en extraire la quintessence.

Comme si l'infini ne se saisissait que dans la décantation, dans les interstices d'une avancée prudente au bord des résonances de la fin de cette quatrième étude. Guy Vandromme y fait preuve d'une patience d'ange, devant refouler toute tentation de virtuosité pour devenir le célébrant, que dis-je le célébrant, l'inspiré vigilant d'un office hanté, nous confie Bruno Duplant, par Mallarmé, Perec, et j'ajouterais Borges - je laisse de côté Bachelard et Cage, également mentionnés par le compositeur. Pourquoi cette tapisserie de lettres si ce n'est pour y attraper l'infini entre les mailles du filet ? De même que la blancheur mallarméenne, les combinatoires oulipiennes peréciennes ou les lettres borgésiennes étaient les armes pour faire surgir, pour piéger l'Œuvre, suprême condensation, avatar rêvé de 'l'Infini. L'étude n°5 laisse peut-être entendre les restes du big bang originel, le bruit grave de l'infini, son souvenir tourné en dérision par les éclaboussements espiègles des médiums et des aigus. Elle finit toutefois par donner l'impression d'un nouvel équilibre, d'une volonté d'embrasser les extrêmes en dépassant les vieux antagonismes. Ce dont profite la plus longue étude, la sixième, avec ses quinze minutes, ses interrogations obstinées, ses allées et venues du sépulcre à la lumière sans se départir d'un calme souverain, en dépit d'une brève accélération vers la fin. Noble conclusion d'un premier Livre, si l'on emprunte un terme de rigueur pour les cycles d'étude les plus célèbres.

Avec le début du deuxième disque, l'écriture se resserre, les notes se rapprochent, dessinent des lignes, des quasi mélodies. De ce point de vue, l'étude n°7 contraste nettement avec les précédentes, en dépit de quelques retours de l'ancienne trame erratique. Les notes s'agglomèrent, se bousculent, les harmoniques s'enchevêtrent, le piano se met à gronder. Quel tumulte ! Quel orage soulève ces déferlements inattendus - ou trop attendus au contraire pour d'autres auditeurs ? Nous sommes passés de l'autre côté de l'austère méditation. Des éclats, des graves assenés avec grondement, des aigus tranchants : l'étude n°8 est d'une densité dramatique nouvelle, encore que tenue, si digne, tenace. Les résonances y prennent un relief affirmé, dessinant des pics et des abîmes, des platiers de drones. La venue des Ténèbres est de plus en plus sensible. L'étude n°9 semble trébucher dans la descente d'un escalier, on pense fugitivement à la Musica Ricercata de Ligeti. La lumière appelle comme un souvenir que l'on quitte tandis que l'on s'enfonce irrémédiablement dans des cercles harmoniques de plus en plus vastes. Elle n'abandonne pas, se drape de longues résonances semi-voilées pour accompagner la lente immersion des graves dans une nappe de drones aux résonances impressionnantes. L'étude suivante, la n°10, paraît plus apaisée, guettée par la paralysie. Tout y est en suspens. On flotte dans une brume qui diapre légèrement les notes aigües ou médiums, tandis que les graves sont assourdies. Où sommes-nous au juste ? Quelque part au-delà des conflits, dans une attente étirée. Graves plaqués, massifs : l'étude n°11 renoue avec la n°9, en plus têtue, inquiétante, avec des fêlures sombres, comme une colère retournée contre elle-même. Sous-sols de l'enfer aux voûtes très basses, geôles sinistres que quelques brins de demi-lumière ne parviennent pas à éclairer sur la fin. Destin scellé ? L'étude n°12 exprime une surprenante renaissance, un nouvel au-delà. Les notes déferlent en un quasi strumming à la Charlemagne Palestine. L'énergie circule à flux vif, ne cesse de rebondir dans une allégresse robuste, frangée de la robe sombre des harmoniques concaténées. Qu'est-ce que l'infini, sinon ce nouveau départ, cette échappée qui répond à celle de la n°7 ? L'ombre est impuissante à ensevelir la lumière, plus radieuse que jamais et qui peut maintenant s'abandonner à une douce quiétude...

N'oublions pas de dire quelques mots du piano utilisé : un rare Steinway C de 1896, aux sonorités somptueuses, aux résonances profondes. L'instrument est déterminant. Manié avec une sensibilité merveilleuse par Guy Vandromme, qu'on sent faire corps avec lui pour en exprimer toutes les beautés, il contribue à la réussite de ce cycle magistral parfaitement enregistré. Une œuvre inépuisable !

Divagations...

La partition ne laisse pas de faire penser à celles, perforées, des pianos mécaniques. On est tenté d'y voir un texte tronqué, dont il faudrait rétablir l'intégralité en bouchant les espaces avec les absentes de toute partition, pour paraphraser et détourner la formule mallarméenne. On peut aussi jouer à lire un texte dissimulé parmi d'autres lettres, une sorte de palimpseste. J'y lis par exemple un possible message caché, le motif dans le tapis : que Face à Cage (s)'efface (l)e gage. Par "gage", il faudrait entendre la cage de la musique conventionnelle, figée dans la partition, enfermée dans son fini. La partition ouverte, aérée, s'ouvre à l'infini des possibles...

D'un seul coup, je lis à la fin de la partition de l'étude n° 12 : fa(çon) d'ê(tr)e (l)à.

Guy Vandromme - Bruno Duplant: l'infini des possibles by Roger Batty on Musique Machine (12/4/2021)

l'infini des possible is a two-CD/ digital download release that brings together twelve solo piano pieces from prolific French composer Bruno Duplant. Each is decidedly sparse, fragile and stripped, though there is a fair bit of variation over the disc's runtime- as the pieces scores are made lowercase letters (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) with spaces in between- meaning the pianist has an openness to their interpretation the work.

The release appears on US’s Elsewhere Music- and I’m reviewing the double CD version of the release. The two discs come presented in a mini gatefold- fitting the sound within this is very minimal with on the outside a white cover, featuring small black texts and a light grey and white boxes- with the front one of these featuring a series of blurred black lines. Inside we get the tracklisting/ credits on one side, on the other a write up about the album's pieces. Not sure how many were pressed of these, though I wouldn’t imagine it’s a huge pressing- so if this is your thing, act sooner than later by heading here.

The twelve tracks were composed in 2019- and these take on them were played by Belgium based pianists Guy Vandromme in his home studio between March and May 2021. All the tracks were played on Steinway & sons C-grand piano, which was made in 1896- and the instrument certainly has a beautiful tone and clarity to it, but of course, it’s down to having a talented and careful player to hand to get the best out of it, and Vandromme certainly is that.

Each disc features six tracks- and these each run between eight and fifteen minutes- with they only really ask on Vandromme playing been that it remains sober, slow and sweetly melancholic- and the tracks certainly tick all of those boxes. Though that said the pianists debated/ discussed the playing of these 12 pieces by a series of in-depth discussions with Duplant over a two year period.

On the first disc, we move from the slow bounding-then- reverberations of “étude no. 2” with its blend of lightly climb and forlornly hopeful mid-range notation and sudden lower darts. Onto the sparsely darting-to-spaced regal sweetness of “étude no. 4” which alternates between eerily spaced mid key shifts and harmonically elegant note clusters. With the first disc playing out with the longest track here- the spot on fifteen minutes of “étude no. 6” which finds lightly sustained mid to low notation going against higher felt patterns.

On the second disc we start out with the creepily higher note cascading and uneasy mid-range flourishes of “étude no. 7”. As we move on we come to the bonding low end meets tight tolling highs of “étude no. 10”- which from time to time hints at a lightly climb and sad melody. Onto the doomed rolling strikes meets mid-ranged darting agility of “étude no. 11”, with the disc being topped off with the slowly galloping mid to high ranged key runs of “étude no. 12”.

l'infini des possible is a fine and varied collection of solo paino works- which both highlights Duplant’s talent as a creative composer, and Vandromme talent as daring-yet-always technically precise pianists. Certainly, of interest to anyone who enjoys sparse, yet inventive solo piano work.

Guy Vandromme - Bruno Duplant: l'infini des possibles (elsewhere 019-2) by Ben Harper on Boring Like A Drill (10/27/2021)

I’m glad that this thing is two hours long as it gave me the chance to come around to it without having to start over. Bruno Duplant’s l’infini des possibles is a set of twelve piano études written in a style that seems baldly simplistic and devoid of inspiration. The score is made of sequences of letters naming notes, all white keys, with stops and spacing to suggest phrases and occasional indeterminate embellishments hinted at through use of accents, apostrophes and uppercase. The pianist Guy Vandromme’s masterful realisation of the score starts out sounding pretty much exactly like that. As you might expect, sounds are isolated as single notes and played with equanimity that suggests overreliance on fashionable reverence for the material’s purity.

It’s a pleasure to hear this initial state change with each successive étude. The accompanying notes tell us that Vandromme “intensely studied these 12 pieces via in-depth discussions with Duplant over two years” and the musical results bear this out with a set of throroughly developed and deeply considered piano pieces, both in the characteristics of each étude and in the overall form of the complete set. The idea of the étude asserts itself as Vandromme takes the unprepossessing score and turns Duplant’s implied markings into various examinations of harmony, texture, articulation and register, starting from the simple and tending towards the complex. The initial arbitrariness implicit in the strings of note-names become a strength as Vandromme exploits the white-note vagaries to form each étude into a new shape and patterning of sonorities. It appears to be an ideal partnership between composer and performer.

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Thomas Mellish on The Squid's Ear (11/5/2021)

Night Blossoms is formed of tracks that were recorded by Dalibert across a three-year period. The first two tracks, 'a rebours' and 'windmill' (all the song names are stylized in lower case letters) were recorded in 2019. Both 'eolian escape' and 'sisters' were recorded in 2020, and 'yin' and 'yang' were recorded in 2021. Notably, 'yin' and 'yang' feature contributions from the ambient and minimalist stalwart David Sylvian. The track 'a rebours' shares its name with an infamous fin de siècle novel. In the novel, the narrator — a disillusioned and misanthropic nobleman — recalls their various hedonistic endeavors. As the novel progresses, we learn that the narrator is an aesthete, who is someone that gives total primacy to sensibility and aesthetics. Value itself, for an aesthete, supervenes on aesthetic experience. Fittingly, Dalibert's 'a rebours' is a decadent piece. Tentative musings evolve into emboldened retrograde sequences. These sequences, which are interwoven with ringing atonal delays, form an opulent tonal tessellate. When listening to this song, I cannot shake the image of some supine, catatonic aesthete nodding their head and waving their hand to it. Contrasting 'a rebours' (the aesthete's national anthem), we have 'windmill,' in which soporific sequences are replaced by something more effervescent — more alive. Swathes of Lydian scales climb and clamber over one another. Metronomic low notes attune these fluttering rhythms, accentuating the vicissitudes of tone.

In 'yin' and 'yang,' we see Dalibert and Sylvian working in tandem. Both of these tracks consist of notes from only one pentatonic mode: 'yin' consists of notes from the pentatonic mode of F-sharp, whereas 'yang' consists of notes from the pentatonic mode of C. Despite this restricted domain, Sylvian's embellishments allow scarcity and paucity to feel full and effusive. Using ideas redolent of his work in When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima, Sylvian's "electronic shadows'' lend extension and depth to otherwise beleaguered sounds; notes hang and loom like sonic stalactites, with movements that cast ripples and waves throughout the mix.

Unlike the first three songs, the last three songs are not played on a muted piano. As such, during the second half of Night Blossoms, one becomes aware that the various rhythmic interplays are not as cohesive as before; there is an incipient sense of sonic conflict and harmonic dissonance. This comes to a head in 'sisters,' which is the track sandwiched between 'yin' and 'yang.' Taking the form of a canon, voices dance in and out of phase with one another. This track takes the form of both grand polyrhythmic swells, where the individual voices all coalesce seamlessly, and moments of atonality, where notes jostle and jolt one another.

Through Night Blossoms, Dalibert dissects the notion of tone. On the one hand, we have the piquant tones created by Dalibert's deftly orchestrated scales and movements. On the other hand, we have the inimical tones created by Sylvian's modulations of Dalibert's more forlorn and languid playing. In both cases, listeners will find themselves like the hypothetical aesthete I posited earlier, nodding their heads and waving their hands to each track.

Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015) by Bill Meyer on Dusted Magazine (9/13/2021)

Wind And Light is Elsewhere Music’s second production of music by Anastassis Philippakopoulos in a little over a year. Given that Philippakopoulos can work for up to a year one a single, brief composition, one wonders if this breakneck release schedule has wiped out the Greek composer’s backstock of music. If so, he might suggest that the eager listener take a breather; it’s hard to imagine music more unhurried than what can be heard on this CD.

The album has been structured to alternate pieces from two sessions that were recorded three years apart. In 2016, the Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey came to Athens to record Philippakopoulos’ numbered songs for clarinet, which aren’t really songs at all, but solo clarinet pieces. “Song 4 for Clarinet (2009)” introduces a hushed, patient dynamic. It is made up of long tones, which Frey sculpts into discreet shapes interspersed with palpable silences. He is a controlled, zero-flash player, and he fashions each note into a sonic analogue to a polished piece of dark wood. This is exactly what the music requires, which is probably why Philippakopoulos turned to him in the first place. The two men are both members of the Wandelweiser collective, post-Cage-ian musical community that strongly values silence and quietness, and does not shy from consonant tonalities.

“Piano Piece (2013)’ follows. On Philippakopoulos’ first Elsewhere disc, Piano Works [https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/616845424472555520/melaine-dalibert-anastassis-philippakopoulos], Melaine Dalibert plays the keyboard, but here, the composer does it himself. His touch is less decorative than Dalibert’s. If you played them back-to-back, Philippakopoulos sounds undemonstrative by comparison. But the unfussy precision of his articulation gives way to exquisite contouring of the silences between the notes. In that respect, he and Frey are well matched, and their simpatico approaches give the album a consistent mood as it toggles between instruments for five more tracks. While Piano Works feels like a bright morning sun streaming through the windows, Wind And Light feels more like a summery dusk, almost imperceptible in its changes. (Bill Meyer)

Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015) by Roger Batty on Musique Machine (9/7/2021)

Wind And Light is a seven-track CD, which offers up extremely sparse and pared-back modern composition for piano and clarinet written by Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos So it’s very much an album for both a quiet space and quiet contemplation.

The CD appears on Elsewhere Music- a label from Jersey City USA, who focuses on releasing quietly compelling improv, modern composition, and modern classical music- with artists on the label such as the wonderfully talented French composer/ pianist Melaine Dalibert. The CD comes presented in a mini white card gatefold- this features a cover painting of a hazed/ barren desert landscape by Greek artist Maria Filippakopoulou, and the picture fits nicely the sparse quality of the music with-in.

The players here are Anastassis Philippakopoulos on piano and Swiss composer Jürg Frey on clarinet. We get four tracks for clarinet, and three for piano- with these evenly blended over the album's length. The compositions here date from between the years 2009 and 2018, with each running between three and eight minutes apiece. The flow/ feel of all the tracks is fairly similar, so as a result the album really plays best as one long and sadly lulling ride.

We have the slow haunting 'n' felt note pattern darts of “Piano Piece( 2013)”, which uses both space and natural reverb to rather eerier-to- sparsely enchanting effect. There’s the gentle swelling and hovering clarinet tones of “Song 8 For Clarinet (2012)”, where silence and space are used in a wonderful disciplined/ effective manner, as you try to recall how the patterns are varying as we move along. Or fragile and fraught mid-to-high key strikes and reverb simmer of “Piano Piece (2018b)” where you can make out drifting sub-tone mysteries from inside the instrument itself from time to time.

In conclusion, you’ll have to enjoy extremely pared-back and lulling modern composition to get the most from Wind And Light. It’s a release you have to let you self-slow down to, and lightly drift along with the sparse & skeletal repetition of the music- becoming accustomed to the subtle shifts, use of reverb, and use of space/ silence within the compositions.

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Marc Medwin in Dusted Magazine (7/14/2021)

Do schoolchildren still read The Wind in the Willows? They should. Listening to this music brings to mind the tiny cleansing breeze proffered by Pan. It ensured, following the little otter’s rescue, that Mole and Rat weren’t to remember their encounter with that fabled piper at the gates of dawn, mitigating the impression which would most certainly have shaped their lives and burdened their hearts. Only the impression is left, as with so many of the finest moments on pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert’s Night Blossoms. As with his other releases, Dalibert breaks boundaries difficult to define but easy to hear, rendering and dissolving their polarities with a new iteration of his already luminous language.

Quietly, with determination and a form of actualization obviously won through strength of will, Dalibert is reshaping his conceptions of tonal center and, more important, of development, both within a piece of music and between works. His new disc demonstrates that these changes encompass sounds well beyond our analytical abilities, given the current state of vocabularies relating to Western European Art Music. Watch that language fail to describe even the subtlest sounds here, like those resulting from the piano sonority governing the first three pieces. They were recorded on a muted upright, affording a drastically modified sonic picture in which the piano is transformed into a harp, a distant dulcimer or a keyboard instrument from another age. In combination with the music’s algorithmic nature, familiar to any Dalibert devotee, this timbral shift opens onto an entirely new vista of the moods resulting from tone and overtone in vibration and flux. The overtones dissolve in a way that conjures ghosts of their fundamental pitches, rapping them in a kind of doppelganger mystery, each a cosmos in creation before being discarded. Of particular timbral interest is the shimmering “Eolian Scape.” The overtonal melody generated from the rapidly repeated opening pitch is then augmented by the emergent and piquantly shifting tonal centers. While each morphing rhythm is clear and present, the muted strings release richly perfumed clouds of modal harmony, as on the gently undulating “Windmill.” The bittersweet merging of sonorities carries over to the album’s second half, especially when the music is more obviously combinatorial, as with the interlocking two-piano texture of the canonic “Sisters.”

Bookending “Sisters,” we hear two pieces distilling and resituating Dalibert’s art via collaboration. Its minutely carved steps and glacial arcs receive electroacoustic input from David Sylvian, who also titled the album and provided the artwork. In “Yang” and “Yin,” even the polarizing concept of collaboration does the music’s unity little justice. Each piece is limited to a scale — “Yin” pentatonic and “Yang” diatonic — but is then bathed in what Dalibert calls electronic shadows. That they certainly are, inhabiting the tone environments in each key stroke, but the relationship transcends even the light-and-shadow duality. It seems that each “shadow” utterance derives from the piano recordings, each manifestation placed in time-altering juxtaposition with the others to form a network of stillness creating but simultaneously defying motion and gravity. The protoplasmic harmonies opening “Yin” ooze and elide, only gradually settling, and never quite completely, on the piano’s rich pentatonic domain. A bit of dissonance is constant, or at least recurrent, shadows in the light of discovery and translucent revisitation. “Yang”’s electroacoustic alter-ego combines literal note repetition with the distant mechanical workings of an existence only just audible, a reverberant ghost in various states of non-action.

Beyond the serialized elements of action and interaction, bolstering the hum, buzz and softly luminous articulations, only foregrounded at a key moment in the music’s wisely slow unfolding, is the sound of the room itself. It’s most readily apparent after it has vanished, about a minute before “Yin”’s conclusion. A nearly imperceptible but palpable lifting occurs, as if a door opens, a pane of glass has been rolled back or walls have suddenly dissolved. In that moment of clear light, a reflection remains whose import eschews time and verbiage. Its substance distills and embodies but never reiterates all preceding events. In its elastic seconds resides a frozen moment of gentle exhalation, subtly sweeping away all but the peace of imminent silence.

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Vanessa Ague in the August issue of The Wire (7/13/2021)

Elsewhere Return Visitors by John Eyles in All About Jazz (7/19/2021)

As the Elsewhere label's third anniversary, in July 2021, closely followed the June release of its fifteenth and sixteenth albums, it seemed an appropriate time to look back. In a way, those two albums tell a large part of the story as, together, they feature three musicians who are all return visitors to the label, Anastassis Philippakopoulos appearing on his second Elsewhere release, Jürg Frey on his third and Melaine Dalibert on his fifth. And, given that the label has already issued two separate Piano Series, each of three albums, it is not surprising that eleven of the label's sixteen albums to date feature piano music, with the two considered below forming part of that total.

Lest it might seem that Elsewhere is dominated by a few musicians, let us not forget a whole string of one-off album releases which debunk that notion—the label's first release, the triple disc Blurred Music by violinist Biliana Voutchkova and clarinetist Michael Thieke, the experimental, risk-taking double CD Works on Paper by Gil Sansón and Lance Austin Olsen, and the beguiling songs on Earth Leap Up by the Canadian female duo The Giving Shapes, to name but three...

Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015)
2021

Greek composer and pianist Anastassis Philippakopoulos' previous Elsewhere release, Piano Works, released in February 2020, featured twelve of his pieces for solo piano, played by Melaine Dalibert. including the three on Wind and Light. In addition, the album Hannesson, Boon, Philippakopoulos (Editions Wandelweiser, 2019) contained versions of four of the Greek's piano pieces, played by Dante Boon, including "Piano Piece (2017)" and "Piano Piece (2018b)," both also on Wind and Light. So, recordings of the three piano pieces on this album have been heard before, and interesting comparisons can be made between the versions played here by their composer, recorded in February 2019, and past recordings.

However, there is far more to this album than its three piano tracks. Sensibly, those piano pieces alternate with four songs for clarinet, written by Philippakopoulos between 2009 and 2016, and played here by Jürg Frey in recordings dating from September 2016. The way the tracks are ordered almost makes it feel as if the shorter piano tracks are being used as sorbets between the four courses of clarinet. Given the differences between piano and clarinet, the pieces for the two are distinctly different too, clarinet notes being sustainable for longer and able to slowly rise to a peak then fade away. One beauty of this album's running order is that such differences can be appreciated better because of the juxtapositioning of the two instruments.

Jürg Frey has observed, "I hear the clarinet as the breath of a human being, and the piano as the sounds in the landscape I hear from a distance...I didn't expect something like that in the context of an album, a poetic relationship between the human and the landscape." Altogether, like a good movie, this album is best appreciated as a whole, from start to finish.

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016)
2021

On Night Blossoms Melaine Dalibert plays six of his recent compositions, dating from the years 2019 to 2021. As with other recent Dalibert compositions, those here are not overlong and are strong on melody, making them very easy on the ear.

Dalibert had said that, since his composition of Ressac (Another Timbre, 2017), he had thought about adding a kind of electronic shadow to his most minimal compositions. That idea led to a noteworthy development, which may prove significant; on two of this album's tracks—the neatly titled "Yin" and "Yang"—Dalibert is not completely solo but is joined by David Sylvian who is credited with "sound contribution," shimmering, echoing electronic shadows of piano tones, which give depth and atmosphere to the pieces. The overall effect is stunning and makes those two tracks the album's best, despite considerable competition from the album's longest piece, "Sisters" which is sandwiched between them.

So far, with things such as cover art, Sylvian has played an important backstage role in the success of Elsewhere but, to date, these are his only recorded contributions on it. In the past, he has recorded with an impressive catalogue of collaborators, including Jan Bang, John Butcher, Werner Dafeldecker, Sidsel Endresen, Christian Fennesz, Arve Henriksen, Jaki Liebezeit... On this evidence, Elsewhere would do well to record an album of Dalibert and Sylvian together soon. Another success from the label.

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Greg Bod on Benzine Magazine (8/6/2021)

A la découverte du pianiste Melaine Dalibert avec “Night Blossoms”

Au-delà des genres et au dessus de ce monde, le pianiste français Melaine Dalibert continue d’échafauder une œuvre d’un autre temps, d’un futur à construire avec une musique qui doit autant à Federico Mompou qu’à l’Acousmatique. Night Blossoms, son dernier disque en date (avec la participation de David Sylvian sur deux titres) est une pure merveille !

Le néo-classicisme qui est très en vogue ces derniers temps dans le monde du Rock Indépendant n’évite pas toujours certains pièges. Nos oreilles habituées à l’efficacité de la Pop acceptent sans déplaisir des mélodies et des jeux parfois à la limite de la facilité. Bien sûr la virtuosité est loin d’être un signe d’un grand génie mais force est de reconnaître que certains disques de piano solo égrènent des pièces instrumentales paresseuses, des copies plus ou moins assumées de grandes références. Combien de petites pousses sans saveur pour un seul Max Richter ou un seul Nils Frahm ? Le problème de l’école néo-classique c’est que parfois elle emprunte peut-être plus aux codes de la Pop qu’à celui de la grande musique, ce qui n’empêche pas toujours une certaine suffisance de la part de certains musiciens. On préfèrera l’humilité d’un Chris Hooson de Dakota Suite qui reconnaît ne pas savoir lire la musique mais parvient à nous bouleverser avec ses mélodies arrache-cœur (avec ou sans Quentin Sirjacq).

Melaine Dalibert n’appartient pas à l’école néo-classique, il n’appartient pas non plus à l’école minimale ou encore à la contemporaine. Il est plus à la charnière de plusieurs genres qui font de sa musique un objet sonore singulier et unique. Aussi bien compositeur qu’interprète d’œuvres du répertoire relevant de la musique contemporaine d’auteurs comme Gérard Pesson, Giuliano D’Angiolini, Tom Johnson ou encore Sébastien Roux, Melaine Dalibert a également collaboré avec Will Guthrie, Manuel Adnot, Sylvain Chauveau ou l’Ensemble O. Jamais sectaire dans son appréhension de la composition, Melaine Dalibert intègre aussi bien dans ses pièces instrumentales des éléments relevant de la Pop que des motifs répétitifs pas si éloignés de ceux d’un Terry Riley. Se refusant à une posture élitiste de repli sur soi, le pianiste français décloisonne les genres et les sensibilités assumant sans problème une forme de classicisme dans le propos, quelque chose qui relève de l’académisme confortable. Ne voyez pas dans cette notion d’académisme quoique ce soit de péjoratif, Melaine Dalibert s’appuie sur des fondations solides, sur un patrimoine pour atteindre une forme de force novatrice discrète.

Vous qui êtes intimidé par la musique contemporaine, ce disque vous est destiné. Vous ne trouverez pas de posture ou de savant calcul sur chacune des sept pistes qui constituent Night Blossoms. Pourtant, cette collection de pièces instrumentales, collision possible entre compositions confectionnées à l’aide d’algorithmes et de silences minimalistes, ne tombe jamais dans une forme de facilité, la musique de Melaine Dalibert est toujours une suite de méandres et de chausse-trappe, de trompe l’œil, de clair-obscur et de faux-fuyants. Il y a dans le jeu de piano de Melaine Dalibert comme un son fin de siècle à la manière du pianiste et compositeur espagnol Federico Mompou, on pensera souvent à l’écoute de Night Blossoms aux Paysajes ou aux Impressiones Intimas de l’auteur espagnol. Cet auteur espagnol qui fût comme une passerelle entre l’époque de Debussy et l’ouverture à la musique contemporaine. Melaine Dalibert est de cette même action, à vouloir fédérer l’envie d’harmonie d’un Satie avec la dissolution rythmique d’un Gorecki. Comme le piano de Dalibert est aussi bien mélodique que percussif, on ne sera pas surpris de croire entendre des mélodies issues de la Gamelan Music comme sur le superbe Eolian Scape.

De l’école estonienne, Melaine Dalibert a conservé la leçon que la musique n’est là que pour illustrer le silence. Prenez ce petit moment de suspension dans l’éternité qu’est le titre inaugural A Rebours. Cette ouverture, de par sa concision et sa chute abrupte ou comme en pointillés ou en points de suspension, vient irriter notre capacité à nous sentir frustrés. La musique de Melaine Dalibert n’est jamais cérébrale ou par-trop intellectuelle mais au contraire, elle vient suggérer, elle laisse deviner des sensations microscopiques à l’échelle d’un frisson sur notre peau. Par cette redécouverte de la frustration, on revient dans un territoire d’enfance où tout semble accessible, où rien n’est impossible.

Night Blossoms est aussi illustratif, s’appuyant sur la force métronomique du vent qui semble être le fil conducteur de tout le disque. Melaine Dalibert dans ses motifs répétitifs cherche à traduire cette puissance invisible qu’est le souffle de la Terre, l’irradiant Windmill en est une belle image. La suite Yin et Yang avec la contribution sonore discrète mais décisive de David Sylvian transporte les paysages de Dalibert encore ailleurs, dans une forme de déliquescence de la chose harmonique, dans un long plan séquence autour d’une seule et même note déclinée à l’infini. Ces ambiances pourraient être contingentes des climats du Dropped Piano (2011) de Tim Hecker. Ce que David Sylvian apporte à cette partition sonne comme une évidence dès la première écoute, on connaît cette propension chez l’auteur de Secret Of The Beehive à aimer faire se tendre une note jusqu’au bout du silence au point que l’on finit par ne plus savoir ce qui tient de la note ou du silence. On se plait à imaginer ce que donnerait une collaboration entre l’Akira Rabelais (ami proche de l’ex Japan) de Spellewauerynsherde (2004) et le pianiste français tant on croit reconnaître dans les notes graciles du piano les voix étranges et les lamentations des chanteuses islandaises. La pièce la plus longue du disque, Sisters n’est pas sans évoquer les travaux de Lubomyr Melnyk, en particulier son KMH: Piano de la Musique dans le Mode Continu (1979) pour cette technique commune aux deux musiciens du jeu ininterrompu, une manière de jouer au piano des notes complexes appuyés par des résonances générés par la pédale et des jeux de changements d’harmonie.

Night Blossoms est un disque magique et envoutant qui masque sa complexité avec une belle élégance derrière un soupçon d’évidence. C’est aussi un geste généreux qui s’offre tout de suite à celui qui passe, à celui qui entre.

Greg Bod

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(English translation via DeepL)

Discovering the pianist Melaine Dalibert with "Night Blossoms

Beyond genres and above this world, the French pianist Melaine Dalibert continues to build a work of another time, of a future to be constructed with a music that owes as much to Federico Mompou as to Acousmatic. Night Blossoms, his latest album (with the participation of David Sylvian on two tracks) is a pure marvel!

The neo-classicism which is very in vogue these last times in the world of the Independent Rock does not always avoid certain traps. Our ears used to the effectiveness of the Pop accept without displeasure melodies and games sometimes at the limit of the facility. Of course, virtuosity is far from being a sign of great genius, but we have to admit that some solo piano records contain lazy instrumental pieces, more or less assumed copies of great references. How many small, tasteless pieces for a single Max Richter or a single Nils Frahm? The problem with the neo-classical school is that sometimes it borrows perhaps more from the codes of Pop than from those of great music, which does not always prevent a certain smugness on the part of certain musicians. We prefer the humility of Chris Hooson from Dakota Suite who admits he can't read music but manages to move us with his heart-wrenching melodies (with or without Quentin Sirjacq).

Melaine Dalibert does not belong to the neo-classical school, nor does he belong to the minimal or contemporary school. He is more at the crossroads of several genres that make his music a singular and unique sound object. As much a composer as an interpreter of works from the contemporary music repertoire by authors such as Gérard Pesson, Giuliano D'Angiolini, Tom Johnson or Sébastien Roux, Melaine Dalibert has also collaborated with Will Guthrie, Manuel Adnot, Sylvain Chauveau or the Ensemble O. Never sectarian in his apprehension of composition, Melaine Dalibert integrates in his instrumental pieces elements of Pop music as well as repetitive motifs not so far from those of Terry Riley. Refusing an elitist posture of withdrawal, the French pianist decompartmentalizes genres and sensitivities, assuming without problem a form of classicism in the subject, something that comes under the heading of comfortable academicism. Don't see in this notion of academism anything pejorative, Melaine Dalibert leans on solid foundations, on a heritage to reach a form of discreet innovative strength.

You who are intimidated by contemporary music, this disc is for you. You won't find posturing or clever calculation on each of the seven tracks that make up Night Blossoms. However, this collection of instrumental pieces, a possible collision between compositions made with the help of algorithms and minimalist silences, never falls into a form of easiness, Melaine Dalibert's music is always a series of meanders and traps, of trompe l'oeil, of chiaroscuro and of red herrings. There is in Melaine Dalibert's piano playing a fin de siècle sound in the manner of the Spanish pianist and composer Federico Mompou, one will often think of the Paysajes or the Impressiones Intimas of the Spanish author when listening to Night Blossoms. This Spanish author who was like a bridge between the time of Debussy and the opening to contemporary music. Melaine Dalibert is of this same action, wanting to federate the desire of harmony of a Satie with the rhythmic dissolution of a Gorecki. As Dalibert's piano is as melodic as it is percussive, one will not be surprised to hear melodies from Gamelan Music as on the superb Eolian Scape.

From the Estonian school, Melaine Dalibert has kept the lesson that music is only there to illustrate silence. Take this little moment of suspension in the eternity that is the inaugural title A Rebours. This opening, with its conciseness and abrupt or dotted fall, irritates our capacity to feel frustrated. Melaine Dalibert's music is never cerebral or overly intellectual, but on the contrary, it suggests, it lets us guess microscopic sensations on the scale of a shiver on our skin. Through this rediscovery of frustration, we return to a childhood territory where everything seems accessible, where nothing is impossible.

Night Blossoms is also illustrative, relying on the metronomic force of the wind that seems to be the thread that runs through the whole record. Melaine Dalibert in his repetitive patterns seeks to translate this invisible power that is the breath of the Earth, the radiant Windmill is a beautiful image. The suite Yin and Yang with the discreet but decisive sound contribution of David Sylvian transports the landscapes of Dalibert still elsewhere, in a form of deliquescence of the harmonic thing, in a long plan sequence around a single note declined to the infinity. These atmospheres could be contingent of the climates of Tim Hecker's Dropped Piano (2011). What David Sylvian brings to this score sounds obvious from the first listening, we know this propensity of the author of Secret Of The Beehive to like to make a note stretch to the end of the silence to the point that we end up not knowing what is the note or the silence. One likes to imagine what would give a collaboration between Akira Rabelais (close friend of the ex-Japanese) of Spellewauerynsherde (2004) and the French pianist so much one believes to recognize in the graceful notes of the piano the strange voices and the lamentations of the Icelandic singers. The longest piece on the disc, Sisters, is reminiscent of Lubomyr Melnyk's work, in particular his KMH: Piano de la Musique dans le Mode Continu (1979) for the technique shared by the two musicians of uninterrupted playing, a way of playing complex notes on the piano supported by pedal-generated resonances and harmony changes.

Night Blossoms is a magical and bewitching record that hides its complexity with a beautiful elegance behind a hint of obviousness. It is also a generous gesture which offers itself immediately to the one who passes, to the one who enters.

Anastassis Philippakopoulos - wind and light (elsewhere 015) by Eyal Hareuveni in Salt Peanuts (7/30/2021)

Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos has been a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2003. His compositional aesthetics are very personal, associated with the surroundings of his life in Athens, and balance between Western and Eastern musical traditions. You can find in his music a unique blend of stoic minimalism, the warm colors of modern romanticism, and the introspective depth of silent meditation.

«wind and light» is Philippakopoulos’ second album for the elsewhere label, following last year’s «piano works». It is dedicated to the founder of the Wandelweiser composers collective, Antoine Beuger, and present seven compositions of Philippakopoulos. Four are clarinet pieces, inspired by the nature in Greece, performed by Swiss composer-clarinetist Jürg Frey, and recorded in Athens in September 2016. The piano pieces were performed by Philippakopoulos and were recorded in Athens in February 2019. The cover painting of a Greek village was done by Philippakopoulos’ sister and painter Maria Filippakopoulou.

The clarinet pieces are called songs and piano pieces were composed between 2013 and 2018. These minimalists, serene and almost transparent pieces suggest brief, austere melodies amid generous silences, and all let the sounds float and linger on. Frey’s clarinet sounds like the breath of a human being in deep meditation, and often sounds like the shakuhachi flute, associated with Zen Buddhism – and is the elusive windy element in nature. Philippakopoulos’ piano suggests a distant perspective that captures wider landscapes – the soft lights. But the wise sequence of these delicate pieces highlights the poetic manner in which these pieces correspond and compliment each other and create a profound and immersive listening experience. Or as Frey calls it: «a poetic relationship between the human and the landscape».

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Roger Batty on Musique Machine (8/4/2021)

Night Blossoms is the 7th full-length album from this highly talented French pianist and composer. It’s a six-track CD release that finds the Frenchman once more offer up a highly compelling and entrancing collection of tracks- that are both moodily felt and beautifully played.

The release appears on Elsewhere Music- a US label that focuses on quietly compelling improv, modern composition, and modern classical music. The CD comes presented in a mini card gatefold- this features a series of abstracted and hazed circles, which nicely picks up the often cascading and circular feel of many of the tracks with-in. So, a nicely sparse-but-effectively arty bit of packaging.

The album opens with the light and bright shambling vibes like notation of “a Rebours”- which very much brings to mind moments of joyful if time hazed memories of childhood wonder and simpler times. With Dilbert wonderful blurring the piano keys into a warming and lulling cascade of sound.

As we move through the album we come to the taut and pacy toning flow of “Eolian Scape”- which is built around both seemingly constantly churning rush of mid-range keys, which ever so often are darted by sudden ripples of subtle harmony and dramatic build. There’s the rolling persistence and almost galloping wall of sound like feel of “sisters”- with Dalibert imparting his playing with a feel of both urgent machine-like repetition and earthy locked swagger- like an old west pianist doing their take on duelling banjos.

The album is finished off with the wondering felt and delicate “Yang” with gently and lulling darts of mid-to-high notion, which is quietly nestled in reverberations and knocking ambience. A heart-melting & beautiful end to this rather wonderful album.

Once again Night Blossoms highlights why Dalibert is one of the most effortlessly talented and subtlety creative pianists at work today. The compositions and Dalibert's playing are as always immaculate, yet deeply felt and nuanced. Certainly, the albums is one of the lullingly enchanting highlights of 2021, and if you enjoy any type of piano music this is a must!

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Dionys Della Luce on Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (6/16/2021)

Sixth album of the pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert, Night blossoms presents six new compositions from 2019 to 2021. Four for solo piano (1 to 3 / 5) and two with the intervention of electronics by David Sylvian, who also chose the title of the album and made the cover (it is the fourth for Melaine).

The first three pieces for solo piano are like hors d'oeuvres, and at the same time reminders of the aesthetic components of the composer's universe. "À Rebours", if it is an indirect (unintentional?) homage to Joris-Karl Huysmans, is based on the binary coding of a retrograde sequence: it is a softened echo of the dizzying "Litanie" on Infinite Ascent (2020). The muffled piano to avoid the possible saturation linked to the rapid repetition of motifs (on the first three tracks, by the way) contributes to a hushed atmosphere, as if the motifs were taking place in a rather narrow interior space, the spatial equivalent of the algorithmic writing employed, of an austere rigorism. "Windmill" is faster: the mill turns quickly in a Lydian fashion its suite of short motifs. As with the first, the muffling of the piano, its limitation, gradually gives me a small impression of suffocation. I know that these are nocturnal flowers, the title warns us, but don't we breathe more widely some nights? I wait for a breath... "Eolian Scale" finally takes off, another algorithmic piece, but closer to the minimalist spirit, with a beautiful intricacy of polyrhythmic patterns. One forgets (not totally...) the muffled instrument, seduced by this fluid beauty, the litanic vertigo of this piano in continuous mode, if I may say so, thinking of Lubomyr Melnick. I leave aside the piece 4 for the moment...

Fortunately, here is "Sisters", the piano that sounds freely. A long canon that overlaps motifs, the piece refreshes with its lyricism, its changing colors, its vaguely danceable undulation. What a superb piece of trance, with a magnificent orchestral thickness!

Since Ressac, Melaine Dalibert dreamed of associating an electronic counterpoint to his minimal algorithmic compositions. David Sylvian fulfills this wish on the couple "Yin" / Yang" (pieces 4 and 6). I will skip the technical details and simply point out that they derive, the composer tells us, from the same algorithm. The electronics envelop the piano in a diaphanous trail, extending the discontinuous notes and their resonances by a very fine network of echoes and sonic accidents. Turbid, torn, delicately sculpted textures add a sensual, mysterious dimension to these two meditations with a solemn hieraticism: are we not walking in a Japanese temple garden on a full moon night? Two very beautiful successes of a great sound refinement!

My favorite night flowers : 1) "Sisters" (5) / "Yin" and "Yang" (4 and 6)

2) "Eolian Scale" (3)

If the first two pieces, muffled bluettes, do not discourage you, you will be rewarded by the following: four nocturnal flowers blooming between the West and the East!

Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (6/22/2021)

Ithaca. At night, Penelope’s song merges with that of sirens swimming along other distant shores: it is the echo of a journey never undertaken, buried in the mythological memory of the Mediterranean. A sea of mute, unsolicited sounds, always present and therefore perceived as silence. Here, perhaps, lies the meaning hidden in the white – never empty – spaces of Anastassis Philippakopoulos’ scores, a quintessence of the reductionist aesthetics related to the Wandelweiser collective. With him, another one of its paradigmatic exponents, Swiss maestro Jürg Frey, who visited the Hellenic area in 2016 to record the solo pieces composed by his Athenian peer, whose limpid notation has become, over time, one and the same with the horizon, a fractioning of the ideal continuity between the expanse of water and the sky.

So simple as to become transparent, the title of this shared work alludes to its founding elements: the clarinet is by definition the wind, the breath of nature, while the piano keys are rays of light; two incorporeal but perceptible presences, to the point of shaping and disrupting the landscape they cross.
With a linear, only slightly interrogative pace, Frey intones the hushed cantabili of the soul without a shadow of resonance, reabsorbed by the unreal stillness of the moonlit marina. Philippakopoulos absolutizes the mutable mirror of the waves, overlapping its ripples until they result in a smooth board; one cannot perceive its color, only the complementary geometries of the chiaroscuro that it spontaneously welcomes on its surface.

Once again, therefore, I cannot help but feeling led towards a metaphysical elsewhere by these pages of desolate splendor which, just like photographs, always allude to what lies beyond the frame, to the continuation of the reality beyond it. Thus, in immersive listening, there’s no need to wonder if and when the song will fade, since its slender melodic trajectories will nonetheless continue to reverberate in our imagination.

Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015) by Keith Prosk in harmonic series newsletter (7/1/2021)

The clarinet pieces are measured, repatterning melodic cells of tones and breath separated by measured, generous silences. The piano pieces are similarly so but the rich reverberations of the instrument illuminate unsounded spaces. Their sequence alternates. It’s difficult to escape thinking about the material of silence when listening to the wandelweiser collective. The alternating pieces can frame unheard and heard sound or silence and sound as dialectic. Like the protean gradients of temperature and pressure ensure there is wind even when it is still. And like photic actions of reflection and refraction ensure there is always light even when it is dark. These pieces might ask you to sense sound where there is silence. Especially during the clarinet pieces, the listener might engage deeply to feel out the limits of their senses, hear how much of sound lingers in silence compared to the piano. I think that meditative state transposes to the rest of the music and lends a special gravity to the sounded melodies.

Additional interpretations of the piano pieces can be listened to on Melaine Dalibert’s Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works and on Dante Boon’s hannesson.boon.philippakopoulos.

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013) by Claude Colpaert on Revue et Corrigée (July 2021)

Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016) by Eyal Hareuveni in Salt Peanuts (6/29/2021

French contemporary composer-pianist Melaine Dalibert keeps experimenting with compositions that are based on his mathematical concepts, his long-term pursuit as a composer, evoking the work of minimalism pioneer Morton Feldman. His sixth solo album «night blossoms» feature six new compositions from 2019-2021, and like his previous albums enjoy the artwork of David Sylvian, who also conceived the title of the album and contributed sounds to two pieces. The album was recorded at La Soufflerie, Rezé, France in March 2021.

The first three compositions are played on a muted upright piano in order to control the harmonic saturation, affected by their minimalist and intimate atmosphere and their repetitive patterns. The opening composition «A Rebours» is based on a binary coding of the retrograde sequence, and repeats a simple, lyrical theme again and again. «’Windmill» is based on a cellular automaton that generates patterns on a Lydian scale, and suggests a more urgent and tense mode, but still a minimalist and introspective one. The third piece «Eolian Scape» is a toccata-style piece that makes a chain of different and subtle polyrhythmic states progressively integrating all the notes of the modal scale. These short compositions offer a sense of being out-of-time and into a deep dream state of mind.

The latter three compositions are more complex and intriguing. «Sisters» was originally written for two pianos, and takes the form of a canon, with the patterns of different periodicities superimposed, creating an undulating polyrhythm that gradually changes harmonic colors. This minimalist piece with its Steve Reich-like methodical and highly disciplined progression suggests a ritualist, trance-like texture.

«Yin» and «Yang», with delicate electronic counterpoint by Sylvian, are complementing pieces based on a random melodic thread running through the keyboard, with a zigzag of rising and falling musical intervals but following strict rules. Only the notes of the pentatonic mode of F-sharp mode (black keys) were played in «Yin», while only those of the pentatonic mode of C (white keys) were played in «Yang». The subtle electronic sounds add an enigmatic, resonating depth to the quiet, sustained and atmospheric sounds of the piano. These most beautiful, meditative pieces offer the listener a surprising, comforting shelter for being lost in sounds, time and space.

Jürg Frey - l'air, l'instant - deux pianos (elsewhere 014) by Bill Meyer on Dusted Magazine (2/19/2021)

When you put two pianos together, there must surely be a temptation to see how much sound you can get out of them. Swiss composer Jürg Frey does the opposite on the two compositions that make up this CD. Each is so sparse that an inattentive listener might think they are hearing one patient pianist, when in fact they are hearing a pair of deeply skilled interpreters. The task assigned to Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon is to place their notes in such precise relation to each other that they can influence each other’s pitches without interfering with them. Each musician is, as the title “toucher l’air (deux pianos)” (2019) suggests, inducing a slight disturbance in the atmosphere, lightly pressing transitory shapes into the silence that absorbs each note. “Entre les deux l’instant” (2017/2018) allows the two pianists to decide how closely they will match paces as they trade the roles of melodist and accentuator. Immune to gauche temptation, Frey seems drawn instead to see how much attention and how little sound it takes to accentuate the beauty of silence.

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013) by Franck Mallet on Musikzen (2/20/2021)

Métamorphose du nuage
Shira Legmann, nouvelle interprète privilégiée du piano de Scelsi

Le matériau minimal de l’Italien Scelsi (1905-1988) fruit d’improvisations pianistiques retravaillées fait la part belle à l’interprète, chargé de « voyager à l’intérieur du son » pour le projeter dans l’espace – afin de « formuler sa propre syntaxe, créer du sens » (Legmann). Une écoute différente, en porte-à-faux avec le style dominant d’après-guerre, d’autant plus dans cette Suite n° 9 « Ttai » de 1953, dont les neuf mouvements « expriment le Temps en mouvement » (Scelsi), inerte (I), liquéfié (II), méditatif (III, IX), diffracté (IV), lisse (V), obstiné (VI, VII) ou pure vibration (VIII). Pour cette partition plutôt populaire – sauf erreur, il s’agit de la cinquième gravée sur disque – qui doit « être écoutée et jouée avec le plus grand calme », l’Israélienne Shira Legmann restitue pleinement cette modulation infime, légère et irréelle comme un nuage. D’essence plus scriabinienne, bien que de la même époque que la Suite n° 9, les Quatre illustrations sur la Métamorphose de Vishnu se rattachent à une première manière, au chromatisme musclé (I) et à la dynamique échevelée (II) – ce qui n’empêche pas la pianiste de faire respirer toute la spiritualité du « duo » des figures mythologiques Rama et Avatàra (III) ainsi que les silences évocateurs de Krishna et Avatàra (IV). Un adieu, pièce posthume de 1978 (confiée à Marianne Schroeder qui la créa à Darmstadt, en 1988), égrène avec lassitude une ultime mélodie, comme de funéraires et debussystes Pas sur la neige qui se fondent pour mieux s’évanouir sous les doigts experts de Shira Legmann.

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(English translation via DeepL)

Metamorphosis of the cloud
Shira Legmann, new privileged interpreter of Scelsi's piano

The minimal material of the Italian Scelsi (1905-1988), the result of reworked piano improvisations, gives pride of place to the performer, who is charged with "traveling within the sound" to project it into space - in order to "formulate its own syntax, create meaning" (Legmann). A different kind of listening, at odds with the dominant post-war style, all the more so in this Suite No. 9 "Ttai" of 1953, whose nine movements "express Time in motion" (Scelsi), inert (I), liquefied (II), meditative (III, IX), diffracted (IV), smooth (V), obstinate (VI, VII) or pure vibration (VIII). For this rather popular score - unless I am mistaken, it is the fifth one engraved on disk - which must "be listened to and played with the utmost calm", the Israeli Shira Legmann fully restores this minute, light and unreal modulation like a cloud. Essentially more Scriabinian in essence, although from the same period as Suite No. 9, the Four illustrations on Vishnu's Metamorphosis are related in a first way, to the muscular chromaticism (I) and the dishevelled dynamics (II) - which does not prevent the pianist from breathing in all the spirituality of the "duet" of the mythological figures Rama and Avatàra (III) as well as the evocative silences of Krishna and Avatàra (IV). Un adieu, a posthumous piece from 1978 (entrusted to Marianne Schroeder, who premiered it in Darmstadt in 1988), is a weary final melody, like funerals and debussy Pas sur la neige, which melts and fades away under the expert fingers of Shira Legmann.

Jürg Frey - l'air, l'instant - deux pianos (elsewhere 014) by Eyal Hareuveni on The Free Jazz Collective (12/19/2020)

More than twenty years ago Swiss composer and clarinet player Jürg Frey articulated his unique compositional approach in an essay titled Architektur der Stille (Architecture of Silence), focusing on how the physical relationships between sound and silence can affect our perception of space and time:

“In Silence, a space opens, which can only open when the presence of sounds disappears. The silence which is then experienced derives its power from the absence of sounds we have just heard. Thus periods of silence come into being, and then the physicality of silence.

There are pieces in which the absence of sound has become a fundamental feature. The silence is not uninfluenced by the sounds which were previously heard. These sounds make the silence possible by their ceasing and give it a glimmer of content. The space of silence stretches itself, and the sounds weaken in our memory. Thus this slow breathing is created between the time of the sounds and the space of silence”.

l'air, l'instant - deux pianos features two compositions for two pianos, both realize magnificiently the equisite Architecture of Silence approach: “Entre les deux l'instant” (2017/2018), premiered by Dutch pianists Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon at Splendor Amsterdam, and “toucher l’air (deux pianos)’ (2019)”. Both were recorded by Houdt and Dante Boon in the presence of Frey in Amsterdam in September 2019. French artist Sylvain Levier's minimal artwork resonates with Frey's extremely subtle yet profoundly captivating sonic vision.

The first piece on this album, “toucher l’air (deux pianos)”, was composed in close connection to “Entre les deux l'instant”. This piece consists of seven minimalist movements, Feldamn-esque in its spirit, written for two parts for the two pianos, and van Houldt and Boom play each part at the same time with subtle similarities but in different tempos. The interaction between the two parts is only vaguely shown in the score, giving this piece an elusive but strong poetic sense of openness and closeness, loneliness, and intimacy.

The following piece, the 34-minutes “Entre les deux l’instant”, is more ethereal and silent than “toucher l’air (deux pianos)”, and consists of two parts: Melody and List of Sounds. Melody begins with Van Houdt, then continues with Boon, going back and forth between the two pianists to the end. When one pianist plays Melody, the other plays a note(s) from List of Sounds given in order in the score but slightly later and softer than the sounds of Melody, like adding a slightly ‘off’ shade to it. The two parts are played simultaneously by two pianists but the timings are flexible, up to each pianist to decide, not pre-arranged nor intended to coincide precisely, but allowing each sound to resonate fully and beautifully. Again, This kind of elusive atmosphere never let the music fall into familiar patterns of time and space, but suggests similar, profound meditative tranquility.

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013) by Eyal Hareuveni on The Free Jazz Collective (12/19/2020)

Israeli pianist Shira Legmann dedicates her second album for the elsewhere label (following her collaboration with composer Michael Pisaro, Barricades, 2019) to the Italian eccentric composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988). She explains her fascination with Scelsi music with “his unique syntax of musical phrases, and the freedom he allows for the pianist in shaping them. By using minimal thematic materials and small shifts of articulation, all in a free time-signature environment, Scelsi offers a platform for the pianist to play with gravity points, resulting in the internal logic of syntax and meaning”.

Legmann performs three compositions of Scelsi. These compositions derive from improvisations - as Scelsi saw himself as a medium who received musical messages while meditating and improvising. These diverse compositions were recorded live in Tel Aviv in 2014 and 2019, “where there is also an element of risk, surprise and spirit”. David Sylvian contributed the cover photograph, echoing the mystic and profound beauty of Scelsi's piano works.

The first composition is the nine-movements “Suite No.9” (1953), titled also as “Ttai”, after the eleventh hexagram of the ancient Chinese book of divination, I-Ching (“The little one goes, the big one comes. Heaven and Earth unite, the image of Peace”. John Cage also used this book for compositional decisions). Scelsi described this composition as "a succession of episodes which alternatively express time - or more precisely, time in motion and man as symbolized by cathedrals or monasteries, with the sound of the sacred 'Om'", and advised that this suite should be “listened to and played with the greatest inner calm. Nervous people stay away!”. Legmann captures beautifully the mystical and enigmatic world of Scelsi, himself a Zen Buddhist, including the recurring attempt to balance between emotional turmoil and poetic peacefulness.

The second composition, the four-movements “Quattro illustrazioni” (Four illustrations) (1953), is more dramatic and at times even chaotic, referring to the four illustrations of the metamorphoses of the Hindu deity Vishnu, as described in the Bhagavadgītā. Legmann enjoys exploring the ecstatic and sensual storms and the freedom to celebrate the full sonic spectrum of the piano. The last and short “Un Adieu” (1978/1988), considered as Scelsi’s last composition, is a meditative and melancholic piece, described by Lehmann as “a funeral march” where “the music asks the pianist to keep walking and not look back”.

Remarkable work.

Melaine Dalibert - Infinite Ascent (elsewhere 012) by Eyal Hareuveni on The Free Jazz Collective (12/19/2020)

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by Thomas Tamvakos (12/30/2020)

Remarkable discographies of 2020 with words music created by Greek composers

For those who know the composer and pianist Anastasis Filippakopoulos (Paris, 1969) and his important musical creation, the release of "Piano Works", his third personal discography from elsewhere music (based in New Jersey, USA .), came as the culmination of the recognition of his value as a composer. With twelve - short duration, from 2 'to 4'- piano compositions of the period 2005-2018, the beloved composer demonstrates to everyone the mastery of his personal musical language. Abstract, poetic, minimalist writing that the audience moves between three dimensions, sound, silence and time, components of an experiential testimony that leads and is guided by the demands of an inner introspection (as Panagiotis Theodosiou wrote on the TaR.gr website.)
After all, this peculiar writing brought him to the international group of composers Wandelweiser who move in the New Simplicity and create in the context of atmospheric, minimalist and post-minimalist music, always having as a model the 4’33 ’of the unique John Cage.

The composer, as he emphasizes, chooses monophonic melodies to express himself where the phrases are connected to each other by "proportions" that he subjectively and gradually discovers. The "absence" of intense action and mobility in your musical speech (characteristic of its minimalism, after all) is determined by the inner necessity which is the necessity of melody. All these would be content gaps if there was no harmonious coupling of music creation with the interpretive approach. The French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert shouldered the most ideal way to perform the wonderful piano creations, possessing a similar musical style of writing as a composer. Its smooth play, lack of haste and absolute control of the sound effect bring the desired result. Thus, the minimalist speech of An. Filippakopoulos emerges as something unique, hypnotic and rightly brought many praises (as in the weekly New Yorker magazine). Listening to the discography overturns the many potentially negative views on minimalist music and changes the facts that this music may move us to the end of 2020.

Excellent discography in every way.

(English translation)

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) was listed in Everything Is Noise's list of Album of The Year #52 (1/26/2021)

Harpist/vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist/vocalist Robyn Jacob are the duo The Giving Shapes, and this is all you’ll hear. A piano, a harp, and two vocals. The richness and beauty the two artists create with a rather limited palette of elements is nothing short of a miracle. Sophisticated and compelling arrangements, and wonderful vocal harmonies show an imaginative vision of the musical world one can find in Earth Leaps Up. An inimitable journey through mythical realms.

Melaine Dalibert - Infinite Ascent (elsewhere 012) by Dionys Della Luce on Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (12/26/2020)

When Inspiration transports minimalism!

Pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert from Rennes (biographical note here) confided to me about his fifth solo album: "My latest album is undoubtedly more instinctive than the previous ones. "Composed in 2019 and recorded in December of the same year on a Steinway piano in the chapel of the Conservatory of Rennes where he teaches, these eight pieces are indeed less apparently built on mathematical procedures such as algorithms. Nevertheless, in spite of their melodic core and expressiveness, they have a minimalist perspective, which excludes neither lyricism nor a form of harmonic grace.

"Introduction" combines the fluidity of tightly repeated notes in strumming with the dramatic counterpoint of low notes that powerfully chant this vigorous entrance, whose elongated loops draw a short, haunting melody.

As its title indicates, "Flux / Reflux" comes and goes like a sea, in a graceful yet at the same time serious movement like a quest. The melody of a fragile beauty has accents a la Philip Glass, unceasingly repeated. It always rises, stubbornly, until it melts with softness. "Grasses in Wind" is agitated with a rapid, constant quivering, to the point of being as if disheveled. A strange incantatory lullaby, "Lullaby" seems to be trapped by its motionless and repeated arpeggios, widened into insidious ellipses.

And it is "Litany"... the magical and probable return of algorithms, the most rigorous and wildly lyrical title, brother of old songs like "En abyme" on Melaine's first album, Quatre pièces pour piano. It is a call, a spiral staircase in an endless dungeon, an infinite ascent that could serve as a sound illustration for some of Constantin Brancusi's works. When pure mathematics is clothed in Light and Spirit, the bells ring, carrousel and chime, the elevation levitates, the flaming body suspended beyond all contingencies. A bewitching absolute!

The appeasement returns with "Horizon", to the gripping melancholy. Its poor chords follow one another unhurriedly, punctuated by low notes, before a furious part, a deaf and hammered out runaway, then a return to a meditative calm dug out of resonant depth. The contrast with "Piano Loop", an agitated swell of tangled loops in the purest minimalist tradition, is stunning, with iridescent textures and expressive, almost languorous bubbles.

"Song" responds to "Introduction" with its powerful dynamism, its expressive melody that unfolds in large irresistible circles.

Who said that minimalism lacked soul, lyricism, ardor?

My favorite titles: 1) "Litany" 2) "Flux / Reflux", "Lullaby" and "Piano Loop" 3) Everything else!

(English translation. The original French review below.)

---------------------
Quand l'Inspiration transporte le minimalisme !

Pianiste et compositeur, le rennais Melaine Dalibert (notice biographique ici) me confiait à propos de son cinquième disque solo : « Mon dernier album emprunte une voie sans doute plus instinctive que les précédents. » Composées en 2019 et enregistrées en décembre de la même année sur un piano Steinway dans la chapelle du Conservatoire de Rennes où il enseigne, ces huit pièces sont en effet moins apparemment construites sur des procédures mathématiques comme les algorithmes. Il n'empêche que, en dépit de leur noyau mélodique et de leur expressivité, elles s'inscrivent dans une perspective minimaliste, ce qui n'exclut ni le lyrisme ni une forme de grâce harmonique.

"Introduction" combine la fluidité de notes répétées de manière serrée en strumming et le contrepoint dramatique de notes graves qui scandent puissamment cette entrée vigoureuse, dont les boucles allongées dessinent une courte mélodie lancinante.

Comme l'indique son titre, "Flux / Reflux" va et vient comme une mer, d'un mouvement gracieux et en même temps sérieux comme une quête. La mélodie d'une beauté fragile a des accents à la Philip Glass, incessamment répétée. Elle remonte toujours, têtue, jusqu'à fondre de douceur. "Grasses in Wind" est agitée d'un frémissement rapide, constant, au point d'en être comme ébouriffée. Étrange berceuse incantatoire, "Lullaby" semble prise au piège de ses arpèges immobiles et répétés, élargis en ellipses insidieuses.

Et c'est "Litanie"... le retour magique et probable des algorithmes, le titre le plus rigoureux et le plus follement lyrique, frère d'anciens morceaux comme "En abyme" sur le premier album de Melaine, Quatre pièces pour piano. C'est un appel, un escalier en spirale dans un donjon sans fin, une montée infinie qui pourrait servir d'illustration sonore à certaines œuvres de Constantin Brancusi. Quand la mathématique pure se revêt de Lumière et d'Esprit, les cloches sonnent, carrousel et carillon, l'élévation lévitation, le corps qui flambe suspendu par-delà toutes les contingences. Un absolu envoûtant !

L'apaisement revient avec "Horizon", à la mélancolie prenante. Ses pauvres accords se suivent sans hâte, ponctués de notes graves, avant une partie furieuse, un emballement sourd et martelé, puis un retour à un calme méditatif creusé d'une profondeur résonnante. Le contraste est on ne peut plus accentué avec "Piano Loop", houle agitée de boucles enchevêtrées dans la plus pure tradition minimaliste, et d'un effet magnifique, avec des irisations de texture, des bulles expressives presque langoureuses.

"Song" répond à "Introduction" par son dynamisme puissant, sa mélodie expressive qui se déploie en larges cercles irrésistibles.

Qui a dit que le minimalisme manquait d'âme, de lyrisme, de fougue ?

Mes titres préférés : 1) "Litanie" 2) "Flux / Reflux", "Lullaby" et "Piano Loop" 3) Tout le reste !

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013) by Roger Batty, Musique Machine (1/26/2021)

Here we have a fourteen track piano-based release that focuses in on moodily gloomy-to-boundedly angular modern classical/ minimalist composition. This album features three piano works by Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 "Ttai" (1953), Quattro illustrazioni (1953), and Un Adieu (1978/1988), with each been played with great clarity and emotion by Israeli concert pianist Shira Legmann. The release appears on US label Elsewhere- available as either a CD, or high quality digital download- I’m reviewing the CD version of the album.
The CD is presented in a fittingly moody black & white gatefold- which takes in on its front cover a picture of dirty & broken piano keys, with inside the gatefold full track listings, recording details etc.

Shira Legmann (born 1981 in Aachen, Germany) is an Israel-based concert pianist who has a wide repertoire – with her playing moving from Baroque, onto contemporary and experimental music. She is also an interdisciplinary artist who creates new compositions and soundtracks based on graphic novels, animation, and video art. Going by her discog listings she only has two releases to her name- and these start in 2019, though clearly from her wonderful rich & nuanced playing she has been a pianist for many years.

The three works here are composed by Giacinto Scelsi(1905-1988)- an Italian composer, who also wrote surreal French poetry. He’s known for composing music based around only one pitch, then altered it either by microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, or changes in timbre and dynamics. In his lifetime he collaborated with the likes of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown- with his work been influence on the likes of Ennio Morricone, Tristan Murail and Solange Ancona. He composed work for piano, wind & string- both orchestral & chamber based. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t aware of his work before this CD- but I must say I was very impressed with his distinctive sound, which is both atmospherically moody & darting in its attack. And I’d say if you enjoy 20th-century modern classic composition- you’ll be equally taken by this release.

The CD’s first nine tracks take in 1953’s Suite no 9 Ttai- each of the tracks run between two and five minutes, and they are built around a series of pace & keyboard shifting compositions. These nicely move between broodingly bounding, moodily cascading, dartingly felt and shiftily angular- they are unpredictable & at the same time perfectly built-in their clever & richly nuanced unfold. And even after many plays, I’m still surprised by the truly inspired shifts in Scelsi composing.

Tracks ten to thirteen are taken up by Quattro Illustrazion which was also composed in 1953- each of the four tracks run around the three-minute mark. The feel here is a lot more angular & darkly bullish/ unsettling in its flow- as the tracks blend together tight key stabs, lulling–yet-brooding dwells, and fraught pattern runs. Again very unpredictable-yet-highly focused composition.

Lastly, we have track fourteen which is Un Adeieu which was dates from 1978/ 1988- this runs just shy of the six & a half minute mark. The track moves between mournful wonders, sudden bounding bass flows, and felt-if-angular darts. A wonderful uneasy & unpredictable finish to this release.

Legmann's playing is masterful in both it’s shifting passion, rich clarity, and balanced precision. These are difficult/ complex compositions for the listener's ear and mind to fully comprehend- let alone for the person playing them

All told this is a rather marvellous release- with distinctive & daring compositions, played wonderfully with a nicely presented mini gatefold. If you enjoy any piano-based sound- be it modern classical music, minimalism, or modern composition- you’ll be needing to pick this up. And I’ll be most certainly looking at tracking down more of Giacinto Scelsi work; as well more of Ms Legmann’s playing. (1/26/2021)

Jürg Frey - l’air, l’instant - deux pianos (elsewhere 014) by Alex Mayle on Tone Glow's writers favorite albums from October-December 2020 (12/16/2020)

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Jürg Frey is the most consistent composer in the Wandelweiser collective. However, I wasn’t particularly excited when I first heard about a new Jürg Frey piano album because the instrument has always felt like a weak spot for him. It was a surprise, then, when the latest Elsewhere batch came out and l’air, l’instant - deux pianos became my favorite of the batch and is becoming one of my go-to modern piano albums.

Split into two pieces that were composed in relation to each other, the works here share a common theme: two piano lines in a state of quasi-linkage. The music, performed by Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon, conjures up very strong visualizations for me: two streams running parallel, neither connected directly but following similar paths. The closer you look the more differences you see; the water in one stream is traveling slightly faster and the other curves at a minutely different angle. At a few points you can almost make out places where the rivers run in perfect sync, though it might just be your brain making connections. This description not only describes the inner workings of the music but also the overall structure of the album, as both pieces feel like they’re treading the same but distinct ground.

The first piece, “toucher l’air” (touch the air), is split into seven movements and was informed by the composition of the following piece, “entre les deux l'instant” (between the two moments). On this piece, Frey exposes the romantic side of his style, akin to the work of Anastassis Philippakopoulos. Chromatic figures are seemingly traded between the two piano players, subtly shifting between them. The two piano lines are slightly out of phase, however, so the effect feels blurred across time, the inexactness inexplicably heightening the relationship between the two pianos. It’s through the differences that the connection feels clearer. There is a simple beauty to the melodies that are tossed around throughout this piece that makes the whole thing work without feeling like an academic exercise.

“entre les deux l’instant” is a more enigmatic piece for me, though no less brilliant. Like the album as a whole, duality seems to play a central theme: the pianists bounce around the “Melody” while also alternating between playing from a “List of Sounds.” They modulate each as they see fit so as to not make the composition stilted. The second repetition of the “Melody” is altered in a way that reminds me a lot of the cover of the album: slight off-white and grey shades. Like the first piece, there’s a lot of back-and-forth between the two pianists, more direct this time, but still distorted during the passing.

I particularly like how the album as a whole feels like a macrocosm of the ideas presented in the pieces themselves, giving the album a cohesion not often found in classical music. Dante Boon and Reinier van Houdt are both excellent interpreters and improvisers on this album, giving Jürg Frey’s ideas the nuanced playing they deserve. Sylvain Levier’s artwork and Yuko Zama’s design pair nicely with the works, and this is something Yuko Zama should be praised for more often. I’ve talked with her before on the design on The Earth and the Sky and it is very clear that she understands how the look and feel of an album affects your perception of it, particularly when it comes to abstract music. Everything culminates into this multifaceted and beautiful album. - Alex Mayle

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013) by Bill Meyer on Chicago Reader (11/30/2020)

The music that Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi wrote during the middle of the 20th century predicted minimalism and spectralism, but its forms and sounds remain distinct from those later developments—and from most other European classical music. Born in 1905, he started composing music in the late 1920s and arrived at his mature style after experiencing a catastrophic emotional breakdown in the Iate 1940s. Unable to benefit from available psychiatric treatment, he recovered following lengthy episodes of playing single notes on the piano, which led him to shed 12-tone composition and other complex forms in order to engage directly with pure sound. Each movement of his best-known work, Quattro Pezzi su una Nota Sola (1959), uses just one note, though it’s scored for a 26-member chamber orchestra—he creates variety with groupings of players in unisons and octaves, shifts in dynamics and timbre, microtonal fluctuations, and other techniques.

Scelsi composed the two suites for solo piano that make up the bulk of this new CD during his “second period” of writing (from 1952 till 1959), and each expresses his interest in Eastern spiritual practices without resorting to direct quotes from Chinese or Indian musical styles. On Suite No. 9 “Ttai” (1953), which lasts more than half an hour, resonance and repetition extract om-like approximations of continuous sound from small handfuls of notes. The more compact Quattro Illustrazioni (1953), which depicts the metamorphoses of Vishnu, is similarly economic but more dynamic, building to bold crescendos during the second section, “Varanda Avatara,” and letting harsh tone clusters decay during the fourth part, “Krishna Avatara.” Israeli pianist Shira Legmann sustains complementary focuses upon the micro and macro dimensions of these pieces, using continuous, minute differentiation of attack to enrich discrete passages while maintaining firm control over each composition’s narrative arc. The album closes with Un Adieu (1978-1988), one of Scelsi’s final works. First performed at his funeral in 1988, it distills the materials of its predecessors into a mournful but unbowed articulation of loss.

Jürg Frey – l’air, l’instant – deux pianos (elsewhere 014) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (11/27/2020)

Why four hands? At what historical moment, for what purpose did two musicians sit at the same piano, or put two of them side by side? Except for domestic or theatrical divertissements, normally such an arrangement satisfies the need for an expansion of harmonic solutions, or an equitable sharing of complex rhythmic and melodic architectures: limiting ourselves to the late twentieth century, the range spans from Messiaen’s “Visions de l’Amen” and Boulez’s “Structures” to the circular motion of minimalist suites such as John Adams’ “Hallelujah Junction”, up to the threefold extreme of Steve Reich’s “Six Pianos”.

In the midst, as in many other cases, lay an enlightened vision capable of redefining the time horizon of music, sealing a relationship between sound and silence diametrically opposite even to its coeval avant-gardes: John Cage and Morton Feldman spontaneously traced the coordinates of a poetics of reduction which in our day finds in Jürg Frey one of its most sensitive and refined interpreters, he himself having recently approached writing for two pianos.

But while Cage would have reached so radical an essentiality only with his late number pieces (“Two2”, 1989), it was actually Feldman who first laid the foundations of that objectifying and rarefied aesthetics – as if perpetually suspended – which still exerts an inexhaustible influence on the composers of the Wandelweiser collective; a repertoire, which, unsurprisingly, has already been presented in dedicated albums via the Another Timbre imprint. Inscribing itself in Elsewhere’s ‘piano series’, instead, is this premiere recording by the Dutch Dante Boon and Reinier van Houdt, among the reference pianists in relation to the “vertical virtuosity” called for by reductionist scores.
Entering this isolated expressive domain, a pair of musicians no longer find themselves sharing a structure, a scheme with a precise narrative or conceptual character, but more simply an acoustic and mental space, a virgin soil in which to plant the seeds of a minute and ephemeral blossoming, the most transparent and impersonal form of the verb ‘to be’.

It is a timidly incremental development, in fact the one drawn by the seven movements of “toucher l’air (deux pianos)” (2019), animated by delicate gestures and overlappings of slender melodic lines, complementary in their ever-changing time lag. From the third movement onwards, the crisscross counterpoint becomes alternately more present and regular, like a water surface that ripples under the influence of a silent breeze, and then again smoothes out in a colorless yet supremely melancholic stillness. The winter of the soul has an inconstant breath, gleams from its own solitude and intensifies in it: the last movement – a necessarily putative conclusion – is the pure distillation of an effulgent and uncorrupted beauty, a pinnacle as close as possible to the yearned transcendence.

Based on a specific process of executional interaction, yet open to indeterminacy, “Entre les deux l’instant” (2017/2018) seems to play out the intimate anguish of an encounter struggling to happen: slightly less incorporeal than in the previous piece, the two pianos seek after each other among the strokes of single keys and crystalline chords, as if braving through the unknown whiteness that separates the signs on the pentagram in order to briefly reach the other. ‘Between the two, the instant’: extremes that perpetually attract and skim each other, moving forward at the arbitrary rhythm of inner life through the irresolution of a complete sentimental abstraction. It’s the pointillistic enucleation of a romantic epos in slow motion, filtered by the white mist that shrouds all of Jürg Frey’s impalpable sound poetics, once again effused in an essay of sublime expressive grace.

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (11/14/2020)

Every valuable listening should be, in its own way, dedicated. Even for the most assiduous music lover, the temptation and the opportunities to get distracted are always around the corner: yet, in some cases, music itself is the antidote raising the threshold of attention, the magnetic force that makes us regain consciousness and even seems to push us beyond its limits. And if, on the one hand, the entire editorial line of Yuko Zama’s Elsewhere represents an exhortation – if not an actual education – to deep listening, so too Giacinto Scelsi’s mystical and unclassifiable oeuvre is able to exert each time its own uncanny form of seduction, unhinging any sense of familiarity to access a dimension of absolute formal and expressive alterity.

The three pieces selected for this collection are just a few testimonies of a history of piano literature “forgotten by heart”: an inspiration absorbing the energies and the marked pathos of the classical age by osmosis to transfer them into scores apparently extraneous to any canon, ideally placed in a liminal and uncontaminated space between the long wave of late romanticism and the integralism of post-Webern avantgarde.
With a similar disposition to oblivion, to the “lucid passivity” professed by the Italian composer, both the interpreter and the listener should approach these pieces: inviting silence and absorption, clear-mindedly entering the spirit of Scelsi’s visionary and totalizing improvisations, whose subsequent transcription on paper would later on be reclaimed by collaborator Vieri Tosatti.

The medium of this “channeling” is the talented Israeli Shira Legmann, already protagonist on Elsewhere of the first recording of “Barricades” (2018-2019), Michael Pisaro’s cycle of electroacoustic etudes, but who also proved to be equally in tune with Bach’s Partitas for harpsichord, which became famous in the piano versions by Glenn Gould. And although the imperfect sound grain of the live recording is distinctly perceived, the effort of transference and the overwhelming passion of Legmann’s renditions are not affected in the least, ensuring a listening experience of rare emotional power.

The album’s main piece is the “Suite No.9” (1953), further identified with the word “Ttai”: it’s the eleventh hexagram of the I-Ching, the Chinese ‘Book of changes’ which John Cage, in that same period, began to use as a method of divination for his aleatory scores. “The little one goes, the big one comes. Heaven and Earth unite, the image of Peace”, reads the oriental text in response to the random toss of the coins, as if to tell us that in the transient flow of existence one can always experience times of relative prosperity, a favorable resolution which often, however, must pass through a necessary destabilization, the unexpected upheaval of one’s own certainties.
This would explain, in fact, the decidedly heavy mood of these nine movements, capable of reconciling the fury of the elements with a pensive and tormented lyricism: it’s the swashing of an interiority inexpressible if not by the abstraction of the notes, vehemently entwined or overlapped within small intervals, with sporadic encroachments into the upper register which evoke the tolling of bells, sometimes lulling, other times abrupt and searing. The dramatic outbursts flowing from Scelsi’s hands exhibit, in several cases, surprising assonances with György Ligeti’s “Musica Ricercata” – coeval with the Suite but first performed in public only in 1969 –, a programmatic exercise in style taking cue from just two notes, progressively added up until the twelve of its last segment.

The darkly obsessive character of the suite is propagated, with less afflatus, in the following “Quattro illustrazioni” (‘Four illustrations’): also dated to 1953, they refer to the Metamorphoses (or avatāra) of the Hindu divinity Vishnu, as described in the Bhagavadgītā. By lingering on the different and nervous repetition of motivic figures comparable to mantras, in just under fifteen minutes peaks are reached of violent and transforming ecstasy – relived by Legmann with formidable enthusiasm –, to finally sink into a vortex of abysmal irresolution. It’s the uncorrupted fruit of a meditative state capable of evading any conscious will, solely transpiring the alternating currents of the inscrutable chaos that dwells in the soul of its bodily vessel.

Twenty-five years later, “Un Adieu” (1978) seems to constitute its natural epilogue: a fit of nonetheless unquiet melancholy that reveals, in filigree, the shadowy profile of the reclusive Count Scelsi, an outsider by vocation in life and an increasingly cult figure after his death in 1988. His influence on contemporary music is by now undeniable, as well as transversal, and this also thanks to the commitment of independent labels (no longer only European) who didn’t fail to recognize the singularity of his transcendental poetics.

Elsewhere Piano Series No. 2 by John Eyles on All About Jazz (10/30/2020)

When Elsewhere released its three-album Piano Series No.1 in the summer of 2019, the All About Jazz review of it concluded as follows, "This Piano Series consists of three distinctively different recordings, any one of which would have attracted attention and plaudits in its own right. It is a measure of the quality of the series that it is impossible to single out one of the three as being the best of the bunch; they are different but equal. Roll on Series No. 2..."

In autumn 2020, the label released Piano Series No. 2 and, uncannily, that quote applies to these three albums just as much as it did to the 2019 ones; the only alteration would be, "Roll on Series No. 3..." Series 2 features three pianists from Series 1—Melaine Dalibert, Shira Legmann, and Reinier van Houdt plus Dante Boon who joins van Houdt on a two-piano performance on l'air, l'instant-deux pianos . Unlike Series 1, on which Michael Pisaro was heard on sine tones alongside Legmann's piano, the only sounds heard on Series 2 emanate from pianos. Pure and simple...

Melaine Dalibert - Infinite Ascent (elsewhere 012)

Of Elsewhere's first fourteen album releases, four feature French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert, as do the label's first two download-only singles released in March 2020. On his previous release on the label, Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano pieces, Dalibert was playing compositions by the Wandelweiser member named in the title, but on Infinite Ascent he has returned to playing his own compositions as he did on Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour (Elsewhere, 2018) and Cheminant (Elsewhere, 2019). The contrasts between the music on his four Elsewhere albums serve to illustrate Daliberrt's versatility and the evolution of his playing and composing. Infinite Ascent—an evocative title conceived by David Sylvian, who also contributed the cover art—comprises eight pieces ranging in length from about one-minute-and-a-half to almost six minutes, thirty-four minutes altogether.

On his shift away from extended compositions such as the hour-long title piece of Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour Dalibert has commented, "I wouldn't have thought it two years ago, but I started to step aside from my algorithmic systems to write very intuitive music, kind of pop-songs. It is surely a transient phase, but it seems to me to be necessary so as not to lock myself into certain procedures. It's very important for me to feel free to write outside of any academy or tradition." Compared to the spacious, deliberate, resounding music of the hour-long piece, these compositions are far fuller and brisker. While they may not match Dalibert's description "kind of pop-songs," it is easy to see his point as they are more up-tempo and melodic, maybe even "catchy." Interestingly, "Maelstrom" (YouTube below), one of the Dalibert singles, was recorded in December 2019 at the Infinite Ascent sessions but Melaine decided not to include it on the album as he thought it was a bit different from the other 'song-themed' pieces. However, despite the stylistic contrasts between different Melaine pieces, they are all part of the same rich tapestry.

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013)

Although the German-born Israeli pianist Shira Legmann is also an interdisciplinary artist who creates new compositions and soundtracks based on graphic novels, animation and video art, having collaborated with artists from the fields of plastic art, dance and design, she is best known as a concert pianist who frequently performs in Europe, Israel and USA. To date, it is this side of Legmann which has been showcased on Elsewhere. Legmann has a broad repertoire stretching from Baroque to contemporary composition as exemplified by her first Elsewhere release with Pisaro and this one featuring three compositions by the underrated but influential Italian Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988).

On live concert recordings, dating from 2014, in Tel Aviv, Legmann plays two extended Scelsi compositions from 1953—near the start of his so-called second period—the nine-part "Suite No.9 'Ttai' " and the four-part "Quattro illustrazioni." These pieces are tailor-made to highlight Legmann's talent as a pianist; while technically perfect, her playing invariably gets the emotional temperature just right and eloquently conveys their stories. Anyone unfamiliar with Scelsi would be well advised to make this their starting point. Fittingly, the album concludes with the shorter "Un Adieu" recorded in Tel Aviv, in June 2020, Legmann once again getting under the skin of the piece and capturing its mood perfectly.

Beguiling as she is playing other composers' pieces, some time soon it would be good to hear some of Legmann's own. Next time maybe? Until then, this album will do very nicely, thank you.

Jürg Frey - l'air, l'instant - deux pianos (elsewhere 014)

Irrespective of the label it appears on—be it Elsewhere, Erstwhile, Edition Wandelweiser, Another Timbre or even Irritable Hedgehog—Jürg Frey's name on a recording long ago became a guarantee that it would be both interesting and enjoyable, whether he was credited as player, composer or both. Frey's second Elsewhere release l'air, l'instant—deux pianos is the latest example of this. On it, he is credited as composer and his music is played on two pianos by van Houdt and Boon. The hour-long album features two compositions written for two pianos, the seven-part "Toucher l'air (2019)," and "Entre les deux l'instant (2017-8)."

Right from the first notes of the album, it is clear that we are in very different territory to either of the albums above. The music bears the unmistakeable hallmark of Wandelweiser, Frey being a long-standing member. The stately pace and the spaces which allow every note to be clearly heard from beginning to end are as distinctive as fingerprints. The two pianists (Boon himself being a Wandelweiser member, of course) are ideally suited to the task of playing Frey's music and they do not disappoint, sounding totally tuned into each other's brainwaves and to Frey's intentions. Altogether, simply exquisite.

Roll on Series 3...

Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: October 2020 by Peter Margasak (10/26/2020)

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013)

Israeli pianist Shira Legmann has demonstrated a wide-open aesthetic in recent years, previously recording for the Elsewhere imprint on a performance of Michael Pisaro’s album Barricades, which she followed with an impressive self-released recording of Bach’s Partitas 1, 3, and 4. This new collection is devoted to works by the enigmatic Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi. He developed his pieces through improvisation and often recorded his work to tape and instructed his assistants to transcribe the performances. This practice injected an additional layer of uncertainty into his scores, some of which, like the nine wending movements of “Suite No. 9,” were written without a fixed tempo. That innate volatility convinced Legmann to record most of this languorous album live in concert rather than in a studio.

In the press materials for the album she credits the composer with sharpening her focus as a musician: “Taking the freedom in shaping a musical syntax, for example in Bach, Haydn, or Feldman’s music, while respecting their written score, became my main focus and interest as an interpreter.” Indeed, she deftly inhabits these mercurial pieces, especially on the opening work, of which the composer said, “This suite should be listened to and played with the greatest inner calm. Nervous people stay away!” But these performances are hardly placid even if they are meticulously pitched, rife with a churning kind of ebb-and-flow between agitation and serenity.

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) was picked as one of the Dusted Magazine's Mid-Year Best-of List (7/8/2020)

Arthur Krumins said, “You feel like you’re being carried into a dream, familiar yet strange.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

"There’s just something nice about a record where, a few minutes after putting it on, your partner suddenly remarks “you know, this is very calming”. It’s not that the work of Robyn Jacob (voice, piano) and Elisa Thorn (voice, harp) is soporific or somehow uninvolving, more that there’s a somehow centered kind of deliberateness with which they approach these songs that feels oddly reassuring. The way their voices often echo lines (or slightly altered lines) back at one another can feel vaguely Stereolab-ish, but rather than the coolly pulsing, layered grooves (and transient noise bursts) of that outfit, the simplicity of the arrangements here feels direct and clean and often comforting. But it’s the type of comfort that lets you see the difficulty you’re trying to tackle head-on, not the comfort that swaddles you away from having to deal with the world. It’s more bracing than lulling, in other words, and frequently beautiful at that."

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by Dionys Della Luce on Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (5/9/2020)

Time is getting longer / between two worlds / forever *

A member of the Wandelweiser collective of composers since 2003, the Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos perhaps lets speak in the twelve pieces for piano of this disc an aspect of his deep personality, far from all the quarrels, all the chapels which artificially divide the field contemporary music. This is the French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert who performs these short, quiet pieces, like the sprawling and shivering sea whose photography adorns the two interior sides of the album. Two sets are offered to us: seven "annual" pieces (from 2013 to 2018, with a doubling for the last year 2018, then a cycle of five pieces called "Five piano pieces". The titling brings to mind the abstract paintings of a Mondrian or other moderns who have given up on indicating a meaning, a reading, an interpretation. Music says nothing other than itself, but I don't know if we can still speak of minimalism here. loop, of obvious repetition, not this cult of the full which is often the driving principle of minimalism, in spite of its principle, "the less is the better", but one less declined until dizzy in long rooms. I prefer to speak of minimal music, music that is deliberately poor in appearance, because it refuses all virtuosity, all brilliance. It is internalized music, decanted, which gives each note a primordial importance. In the "annual" pieces, there is no note overlay, no counterpoint. The notes are shelled, as one casts a rosary, or even a komboloï, to relax, occupy the fingers. Each room is thus a pure surface, as indicated by the photo-montage of cover. But a vibrant surface of harmonics. The space between each note is that of the path from harmonics to silence. So each room is in its ambulatory way, in an interior cloister where everything rings out to delight the attentive ear. We can consider that these are spiritual exercises aimed at concentrating on the essential, the beauty of the sounds which cross space. Each sound is an island, each set an archipelago. The notion of structure is no longer suitable, first because it often implies complexity, and then because there is no sense, of direction required in the tension of a return of pattern, of figure. Anastassis Philippakopoulos erases all traces of development, all dramatization, to immerse us in the pure sparkle of what is happening, step by step, patiently. In his own way, by his ascetic counting, his approach gives the listener his freedom, because he has nothing more to expect, his intellect is useless to him, he has only to let himself be carried away, only let yourself be invaded ...

The "Five piano pieces" seem at first to break with the sovereign calm of the previous ones. The first, without renouncing the juxtaposition of the notes, plays with powerful contrasts between bass and treble, the notes are tackled with strength, but the resonances which connect them defuse potential conflicts, so that the second comes to sketch melodic lines , changes the distances between the notes to bring them closer sometimes. It is the dawn of a song in a clear morning, an invisible bird at the tip of a branch. The third is like a glimpse of sparse rough rocks in a Japanese garden, from which we exit by a modest path of small slabs. The fourth gives for the first time an impression of speed, but it is for better it seems to deconstruct it, in ironic sentences, open again to the annihilation of sound. Short loops of two notes appear in the fifth, immediately broken, reduced to a regular swinging of the bell which the silence floods.

The weather

was filled

wings

in infinite

rivers *
----------
* Quotes by Giacinto Scelsi , taken from L'Homme du son (Actes Sud, 2006)

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine (4/30/2020)

When Melaine Dalibert set out to record this album, he could not have foreseen the moment into which it would emerge. It was recorded during a single session at a church in Brittany, and no one executes a program of compositions as well as he had done these without spending significant time to select, study and learn them first. Moreover, in the pianist’s own work as a composer, he practices patient development. Dalibert has spoken of letting a piece spend several months in his head, mulling it over while he runs or rides the train, before he first sets pencil to paper to write it out. He did not compose the pieces on Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works, but it is reasonable to assume that he applied some of his own preparatory process to the tasks of readying and executing this project.

And yet this album, which was recorded on July 24, 2019, and released on February 20, 2020, is both descriptive of the moment we find ourselves in right now and prescriptive of how to survive it. In April 2020, many nations are trying to slow the advance of the COVID-19 virus by instituting more or less severe degrees of societal shutdown. Around the world, people are confined to small spaces. Each of the 12 pieces on this album, which is devoted to solo piano compositions by Anastassis Philippakopoulos, leaves a correspondingly small footprint; the shortest lasts 2:19 and the longest, 3:32. To live around each other under such circumstances, it helps not to impose, and Dalibert plays each piece gently enough not to rattle anyone on the other side of a thin wall. In a time when no one knows how long the hand sanitizer, yeast, and toilet paper must last, this music models the husbanding of resources. Dalibert lets the notes ring and decay, judiciously sculpting one sound’s fading with pedals before moving on to the next one. And in a time when it behooves people to think before they act, lest they or someone else suffer grievous or fatal consequences, Philippakopoulos’ compositional method models deliberate decision-making. It took him up to a year to write each piece, pondering and singing back each bar for weeks as he considered which note should follow its predecessor.

The Athens-based composer identifies with the Wandelweiser collective, a post-Cage-ian community of composers and musicians who respect silence as much as sound, and it shows in the ways he finds for either element to expand and contract in dynamic relationship to each other. Like certain of his Wandelweiser fellows, and unlike a lot of progress-oriented composition from the past century, he’s not averse to writing a frankly beautiful melody. But he’s also a devotee of poetry, particularly haiku. His parsimonious determination to make each act within a brief sequence of symbolic actions signify its own essence, and also transform the events that precede and follow it, transfers haiku’s virtues intact to the musical realm. (4/30/2020)

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) by Stuart Derdeyn on Vancouver Sun (3/31/2020)

The Giving Shapes is a new collaboration between genre-hopping harpist/vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist/vocalist Robyn Jacob. Both busy on numerous fronts in the local music scene, the duo’s debut album, titled Earth Leaps Up, was recently released on Elsewhere Records.

Blending the musicians’ classical training, unusual songwriting sensibilities and love of heady, expansive, atmospheric pop, the nine-song album is a standout effort.

The record is also proof that good things come to those who wait. Particularly when you bring together one artist with a love of chords and another with rhythm at the forefront.

“The Giving Shapes came together more than anything out of my desire to work with Robyn, who I had kind of been courting as a friend and collaborator,” jokes Elisa Thorn.

“We had both gone to school together at UBC, but we weren’t friends because we were too cool to be friends with anyone at music school. Over the years, we shared peripheral social circles and I had so much respect for what she did musically, that I wanted to work with her.”

Thorn had also made the creative decision to only work with people that she also really cared about outside of their musical chops. The thinking being that this would be one more step forward towards making great music and missing the drama that is often associated with creating it. She also knew her love of melody and harmonics would pair perfectly with Jacob’s advanced sense of rhythmic and pattern-based composing. Because both players maintain extremely full schedules, it took time to get the project in motion.

Then, in the fall of 2017, both artists were at the Banff Centre for the Arts and The Giving Shapes came together.

“We didn’t have any clear vision at all when we started working together,” says Thorn. “But I knew Robyn was someone who shared my work ethic, kind of a no-BS approach with a just-go quality. Even though it was the first collaborative songwriting that either one of us had done, it turned out to be very easy, although we have very different writing styles.”

Those two writing styles come together beautifully, as each player’s strengths seems to compliment the other’s in songs such as the ambient opening cut Dousing, jazzy Upstream and avant-pop “single” Tessellate. This latter tune not only showcases both musicians’ instrumental prowess, but makes clear that both are exceptional singers capable of crafting mesmerizing mini-choirs of vocal harmonies. Fans of neo-orchestral electronic artists such as Agnes Obel, FKA Twigs and Nico Muhly will find much to appreciate in The Giving Shapes.

Jacob credits the amount of other collaborating that the two had done prior to forming the project with providing a spark in the songwriting. While not going into the shaping of the sound with clear agendas, they were able to enter into creating with clear understandings of each other’s composing assets.

“Before we were writing together, we were pretty much collaborating in every other way but that,” says Jacob. “We were supporting each other’s projects, organizing events and other music initiatives together, such as the Bitch Tapes mixtape featuring womxn-identifying artists. When we finally sat down to write music and lyrics with one another — which had been a very solo thing for me up until then — it was really easy and really cool.”

Although the group started in 2017, the many other demands on their time meant that the process took time. Recorded with engineer Chris Gestrin, the album was finished in 2019.

“It all came together naturally, where we would get together and pore over lyrics and ideas and then go back to our home studios and put things down,” says Jacob. “Looking back at the finished songs, it’s often quite hard to know who contributed what in many cases. Which was sort of what we wanted it to be.”

“It took a bit longer to get it released, as we needed to find the right label,” says Thorn. “We took quite a bit of time, as it was both of our first time working with a label. I think we found the right fit with the owner, Yuko Zama, really being someone with strong opinions and a real affinity for the music.”

Given that this is art-pop, it’s only fitting that the cover of Earth Leaps Up is as bright, shimmering and vibrant as the music found on the record. Thorn says the cover was another part of the creation that just “fit.”

“The cover is by a fantastic contemporary artist based out of Powell River named Meghan Hildebrand, who I feel like I have been emailing for years to ask about using some of her artwork for an album,” says Thorn. “It always ended up going in a different direction, but this time it was the right project to use and we both agreed. For a time, we even entertained only writing songs that related back to the cover painting, but that didn’t last.”

That concept probably would have interrupted the flow of what appears to have been a thoroughly enjoyable process for both artists. It’s understandable that neither one would want to get bogged down in details when the music is being made so well. They are both very busy.

Jacob leads the quintet Only A Visitor, pegged by CBC Music as one of the 10 Vancouver acts to watch. In 2019, the group released Technicolour Education to strong reviews. Music from the album is being used in a collaboration with artist Nancy Tam and the Jump Jump Go ensemble that examines the history of the Chinese diaspora in Western Canada. Titled Double Happiness: Detour This Way, the show’s scheduled Music On Main performances have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Thorn released three different albums in 2019. Her band Elisa Thorn’s HUE released both Flowers For Your Heart and The Other Side: Afterlife Sessions (live) with guest Toronto-based vocalist and soundscapist Laura Swankey. Thorn also put out the more electronically oriented Selenotropic. Only shortly before enforced self-quarantine was announced for travellers, Thorn was in Stockholm with a project led by Vancouver-based violinist/composer Meredith Bates. The musician laughs that the COVID-19 shutdown arrived at a time when “sleep was in short supply.”

Now well rested, as someone who gigs constantly she’s wondering what’s next. Naturally, The Giving Shapes release show on April 18 has been cancelled. This hasn’t stopped the two from continuing to exchange music for what might be a next record or from pursuing some general zaniness.

“We decided a few days ago to make the next project making some weird costumes that relate directly back to the cover art, so that we just become one big colourful blow-up,” says Thorn. “Hopefully, these could be a part of the performance when the day comes that we are able to perform again.”

For the moment, The Giving Shapes is the “most rehearsed” project either musician has ever been involved in. That release show is going to be a burner.

(*The same interview article appeared in The Province and London Free Press.)

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by Steve Smith on The New Yorker - 'Going On About Town' classical music section (3/20/2020)

With tension on the rise, “piano works,” a mesmerizing new collection of a dozen brief pieces by the Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos, offers a needed refuge from turmoil and anxiety. Philippakopoulos is a member of the Wandelweiser Collective, a loosely knit international aggregate whose members are bound by their fascination with the philosophical weight and dramaturgical potential of silence. Each of his compositions, ranging from two to four minutes in length, reflects long months of labor and notes selected with a jeweller’s exactitude. The album begins with seven works written between 2013 and 2018, in which single notes hang like pearls in monodic strands; in the first of “five piano pieces” (2005-2011), stark, dissonant clusters register with an almost shocking impact. Melaine Dalibert, himself a composer whose works similarly deal in patience and space, is an ideal interpreter of such beguilingly modest music, and this sensitive recording lets every detail resound.

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) was included in National Sawdust Log's Ten recently issued albums to buy today on Bandcamp (3/20/2020)

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) by Eyal Hareuveni on Salt Peanuts (4/19/2020)

The Giving Shapes – the Canadian, Vancouver duo of harpist-vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist-vocalist Robyn Jacob – offers a new sonic avenue in the new music catalog of the elsewhere label. This classically-trained, genre-defying duo was formed in 2017 and triangulates sensibilities of folk, singer-songwriting (with the obvious, seminal echoes of the British one of Robin Williamson and co.), art-rock songs of Björk or Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood (but also of Norwegian vocalist Susanna Wallumrød collaboration with Swiss baroque harpist Giovanna Pessi) and contemporary music of American violinist-vocalist Caroline Shaw and Bang on a Can co-founder-composer David Lang.

«Earth Leaps Up» is the debut album of the duo. The Giving Shapes cleverly merge familiar and accessible elements with clear, experimental tendencies. Thorn and Jacob also know how to blend the acoustic, timbral qualities and sonic palettes of the harp and the piano and how to weave the melodic themes of Thorn with the rhythmic sense of Jacob. These songs are wrapped in an intimate, ethereal-celestial atmosphere that is not shy from being emotional.

The nine songs flow leisurely and gently but only repeated listening reveals its many secrets. Thorn and Jacob have developed a rare kind of true, collaborative performance that sounds totally organic and often letting the songs sound as may fit larger ensembles. Their warm vocals and rich harmonies keep overlapping and merging into each other. Their strong melodic sensibilities (check «Gravity»), innocent and patient delivery and subtle elements of drama (best captured in «Sightlines») and introspective emotions (“Faces”) sketch a complex yet friendly vision, openly optimistic but one that sounds as feeding on a peaceful, spacious nature, as you can found in British Columbia.

The Giving Shapes, no doubt, already have shaped their very own sound universe. Now it is your turn to take this beautiful gift.

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) by Arthur Krumins on Dusted Magazine (3/18/2020)

The Giving Shapes fuse neo-classical songwriting, minimalism and chamber folk in this debut release. The duo, formed by pianist Robyn Jacob of Only a Visitor and harpist Elisa Thorn, differs slightly from Jacob’s earlier project. Though it layers similar melodic lines and harmonies over avant jazz-pop, the pace of The Giving Shapes is more suited to a sit down concert. The interplay between their two voices as they overlap creates a collage of images that lend a feeling of exploring nebulous ideas with their incantation. There are no obvious effects layered over the basic elements of their two voices with piano and harp cascading in halting riffs that echo back and forth between the instruments. The closeness to live performance, paired with the complex and detailed nature of the compositions, creates a mood of visionary introspection.

At the beginning of “Dousing”, the piano striking gently percussive intervals in a reverberant sound stage recalls Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports. The ambient quality is further emphasized by the tone of the vocal delivery. The voices of Thorn and Jacob soar effortlessly as they harmonize in a clear yet hushed manner. The overall effect is like the word “gentle” personified.

The longest piece on the album, “Upstream,” begins with an unhurried harp melody, which when joined by Jacob’s piano falls somewhere between a folk and jazz ballad, like a more reserved Joanna Newsom. After they explore this theme and trade impressionistic lyrics back and forth the instrumentation takes a proggy shift to a galloping pace before returning to its meditative centre. Throughout the album, the duo uses unconventional song structures that still retain passages of verse and that have a sense of flow. The musical backdrop is given room to breathe, and the comforting side of the sound has a sleepy charm.

Earth Leaps Up does have a few moments of crescendo, such as the swell at the end of “Gravity”. But the album doesn’t attempt to go beyond its chosen array of moods. It’s the subtle changes in which instrument takes the lead, which voice dominates in a given line keep your attention engaged and carried forward with the groove. You feel like you’re being carried into a dream, familiar yet strange. Because the lyrics read like fragments of poetry, this collection retains its mystery while being constructed from easily discernible elements. The Giving Shapes have crafted a coherent and carefully composed world of sound.

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) by John Eyles on All About Jazz (3/14/2020) ****½

Two years and ten releases after Elsewhere was inaugurated, some of the label's aficionados may have thought they knew what to expect next. If that were the case, a few people could be surprised when they hear Earth Leaps Up for the first time. Formed at the Banff Centre for the Arts, in 2017, The Giving Shapes is a collaboration between harpist and vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist and vocalist Robyn Jacob, who met in 2007 while they were each studying for a degree in classical music at the University of British Columbia. (So, this album is another release by Canadians, in the aftermath of Another Timbre's Canadian Composers Series.)

Despite their classical music degrees, the music made by The Giving Shapes is neither classical nor contemporary composition. Instead, Earth Leaps Up comprises nine songs, composed by The Giving Shapes, ranging in length from three-minutes-and-twenty-seconds to just over six minutes, forty-one minutes altogether. Throughout, Jacob and Thorn accompany themselves on piano and harp, both of them also singing.

Their voices are pure and true, hitting every note and harmonising together effortlessly, without any of the hallmarks of classically-trained voices—rolled r's and suchlike—nor (ignoring some wordless harmonising at the end of the title track) the scatting habits of jazz singers nor the power and volume of rockers. Partly, the latter is because the songs do not deal with such rock topics as love, loss or jealousy, so no upswells of emotion need to be conveyed; the two are far more adept at communicating subtler emotions; song titles such as "Gravity," "Sightlines" and "Tesselate" give a feel for the territory the lyrics cover, "Tesselate" concluding with a call-and-response between the pair singing the words "intuition," "basic rhythm" and "tessellation."

Perfectly complementing the vocals, the piano and harp complete a rich soundscape which belies the fact that there are only two players involved. The playing goes way beyond being accompaniment, as the pair add intricate fills and filigree details throughout. Altogether, all four elements fit together ideally, so that nothing seems lacking and any addition would be gilding the lily. Although The Giving Shapes cite influences including Nico Muhly, Bjork, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and Bang on a Can's David Lang, none of those gives a potential listener any idea of what they should expect from the duo's music. Although the music is easy on the ear throughout, in no way is it easy listening or wallpaper music, being far more interesting and innovative than those labels suggest.

Interestingly, each of the pair cites the influence of the other on the music. Thorn: "Robyn is an endless inspiration to me in all the things that she does"; Jacob: "I like Elisa's integrity and devotion to her artwork, and her attitude in general as a musician and an artist. Also, it is a privilege to be able to make art with one of your best friends." Altogether, it sounds as if we shall be hearing plenty more from The Giving Shapes in the coming years. Good news.

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by Peter Margasak on Daily Bandcamp (3/3/2020)

The French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert possesses an exquisite touch and engagement with his repertoire. On this new album he tackles the stripped-down music of Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos, a key member of the post-Cagean Wandelweiser Collective, tracing out the delicate, sparsely mapped notes from a dozen contemplative, spacious miniatures.

The pieces are built around austere melodic fragments, all of which hang pregnant in the air, unfolding carefully before the next pattern drifts in. In every case the pianist’s timing and use of pedals enhance the resonances of each note. Dalibert never rushes, letting each tone ring out and luxuriously decay into eerie silence before moving forward. There’s a hint of Erik Satie’s melancholic beauty in the music, but Philippakopoulos prefers to reduce his elegant themes to their raw essence, trusting in the way his elliptical lines generate a quietly enveloping atmosphere. What might feel ascetic at first glance blossoms into a gorgeously meditative environment, transformed by Dalibert’s impressive sensitivity.

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (2/29/2020)

First significant detour from the territories explored so far by Yuko Zama's Elsewhere , the record debut of the vocal-instrumental duo The Giving Shapes (harpist Elisa Thorn and pianist Robyn Jacob) offers a pleasant stylistic diversion without sacrificing the refinement and the high quality composition represented by the American label. Earth Leaps Up seems to collect the legacy of the ambitious Timbre - a harpist herself, no longer heard of after her magnum opus from 2015 Sun & Moon - in reconfiguring an essential and intimate version of her richly baroque chamber folk.

Like the angelic voices of Elisa and Robyn - often divided into offset vocal harmonies - the two classical instruments refer to each other as if they actually were the horizontal or vertical translation of the other: the ample natural resonances allowed to their minimalist patterns, sometimes mindful of the "Electric Counterpoint" by Steve Reich ("Dousing"), they create the illusion of a floating cloud of sounds in which the specular melodies playfully chase one another in a perpetual circular motion.

The intoxicating sweetness of certain Japanese inflections ("Upstream", "Shadow's Hue") is only a fleeting latitudinal grip for a music that resides outside of any geographical or temporal coordinate, woven with the most loving care in a completely pacified mental space, preserved in the luminous quiet of those spring afternoons that the artistic expression has always aspired to eternalize in its romanticized splendor.

Certainly the preciousness of these nine tracks lies also and above all in their being able to communicate to anyone without conceptual intermediaries, by virtue of a studied simplicity that flows from the undoubted compositional dexterity of the duo but aims directly at emotions, wrapping us in an embrace that evokes and at the same time comforts the fragility of our dormant inner child.

Such a touching and stylistically accomplished debut could well have appeared in the catalogs of way more renowned modern classical labels, but the "disinterested" entrance of The Giving Shapes in the Elsewhere ranks ends up giving further and authentic prestige to both parties. Moreover, only in this way will we be sure that at least the most demanding connoisseurs of contemporary music will not miss this gem.

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by John Eyles on All About Jazz (2/27/2020) ****½

This album is the tenth released by the Elsewhere label since its launch in the spring of 2018. It is the third of those ten to feature the French composer and pianist Melaine Dalibert. Whereas on the previous two albums, Dalibert played his own compositions, here he performs piano compositions by the Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos who has been a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2003 and had his first Edition Wandelweiser album Solo Pieces issued in 2005.

Where Dalibert's own compositions have often included clusters of notes and made use of the piano's sustain pedal, Philippakopoulos' piano pieces lean more towards single notes which are allowed to resound and fade away before another is played. Philippakopoulos' own sleeve notes to Solo Pieces consisted of nine couplets which may have expressed his thoughts on composing but also described some of his work. The first couplet was: "music that allows sounds to sound: to die away, completely, into silence"—which could be a quote from the Wandelweiser manifesto, if such a thing existed; it certainly describes the music here perfectly.

The Philippakopoulos compositions here date from 2005 to 2018 and, at the time of recording, in July 2019, represented his most recent works for solo piano. They are all comparatively short, with running times between two-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half minutes, all twelve together lasting thirty-five minutes. Remarkably, it is reported that Philippakopoulos can take up to a year to compose one such short piece, as each note represents a decision, one which is weighed and evaluated.

The album hannesson.boon.philippakopoulos (Editions Wandelweiser, 2019) included recordings of the four most recent Philippakopoulos piano pieces, from 2016 to 2018, performed by fellow Wandelweiser member Dante Boon (who is rumoured to have an Elsewhere release of his own on the way). Comparisons of Boon's performances to Dalibert's make fascinating listening; while there are differences—Boon often lets notes resound longer, so his versions tend to be longer than Dalibert's, for instance—both players are first rate.

Taken altogether, the music on this album makes a great advertisement for economy; there is not a wasted note throughout nor an incorrect decision by either Philippakopoulos or Dalibert. It is music which can be listened to again and again ad infinitum without losing its power to enthral and fascinate. Another stunner from Elsewhere.

The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011) by Spencer Cawein Pate on The Light of Lost Words (2/22/2020)

The Giving Shapes, a Canadian duo comprised of the harpist / vocalist Elisa Thorn and the pianist / vocalist Robyn Jacob, make the most aesthetically beguiling and emotionally compelling music I’ve heard in some time; their songs live in the slipstream between pop and classical, composition and improvisation, the individual and the collective. With the release of their remarkably assured and auspicious debut album, Earth Leaps Up (on the always-exceptional label Elsewhere), The Giving Shapes have immediately leaped into the first ranks of my favorite living musicians. (Fans of Joanna Newsom and Julia Holter are sure to enjoy this album as much as I do.)

While Thorn and Jacob have only been formally collaborating as The Giving Shapes since 2017, listening to Earth Leaps Up gives the impression that they’ve been playing together for a lifetime–such is the intricacy of how their voices and instruments curve and entwine and braid together. Their approach to harmony and hocketing is prismatic, as indicated by the title of their lovely “Mirror and Echo”: Jacob and Thorn flow effortlessly between singing in exquisite unison to splitting, refracting, and reflecting the melody back and forth. There are so many moments of understated yet heartstopping beauty and grace to be found within nearly every track: the stately and gentle instrumental passages in “Dousing,” whose wandering notes fall like soft rain; the overlapping vocals and interlocking contrapunctual melodic lines of “Tessellate”; the tempo shifts in “Upstream,” which transforms from a lullaby into a rallying cry; and the piano arpeggios and koto-like harp in “Shadow’s Hue” (my favorite track on the album). Thorn and Jacob’s lyrics are smart, poetic, and unapologetically feminist (especially in the affecting MeToo-esque narrative of “Gravity”). Although often abstract, their imagery is nevertheless grounded in the grandeur of the natural world, the changing of the weather and the seasons, the shared sensuality of the body, the exuberance of the unfettered voice.

Despite its sonic palette of just piano, harp, and voice, Earth Leaps Up never becomes monotonous; its stylistic diversity encompasses everything from passages of choral music to inflections of jazz. Considered as an organic whole, the album reminds me of the celebrated metaphor of the tangled bank in the closing paragraph to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: “It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.”

Earth Leaps Up is a work of surpassing elegance, quiet confidence, and generosity of spirit (making The Giving Shapes’ name most apt). Its surface delicacy conceals deep reserves of emotional intelligence and inner strength. As Darwin put it, “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (2/12/2020)

"Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note ... And don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it." If this precious maxim offered by Mark Hollis applied to every musician, it should be all the more true for those who practice reduction as the only possible aesthetic, in the opposite direction to the experiential hypertrophy of the world.

In the context of the most radical minimalism, each sound cell has a specific weight above the average: that's why Anastassis Philippakopoulos' short scores enacted such a simple and powerful aura, where the natural resonance - the white space of the pentagram - has an equal value with respect to the notes, of which it collects and combines the shadows and dissolves them in the air.

The Elsewhere label run by Yuko Zama welcomes the Greek composer in its catalog not only for elective affinity - he too has been part of the Wandelweiser collective since 2003 - but also by virtue of the direct link with the already known Melaine Dalibert, featured here for the first time as a performer only. Two specular poetics, as can be understood since the first minutes listening to the 'piano pieces' dated from 2013 to 2018: they're also equal in their marine inspiration, the slow breaking of the undertow (" Ressac ") and the horizon cut in half by the sky, also shown in the photo collage on the cover.

Laying one's eyes on the vast flow of the waves, forgetting their sound and reimagining it from within: as for the unavoidable partiality of the framed image, the present moment of Philippakopoulos' music also implies that which is beyond its extremes, it has no enclosed beginning nor end in that it does not narrate, but only contemplates, and in said contemplation its meaning is fulfilled.

No doubt influenced by the common nationality, thoughts spontaneously return to the imperturbable sequence shots of the master Theo Angelopoulos, except that the composer's "gaze", forgetful of historical time as well as that streaming before us, seems to truly exist only in the fleeting instant in which the fingers of the pianist awaken it, in a parenthesis ideally detached from the troubled human events that have taken place over the millennia.

But this should not mislead us in considering Philippakopoulos' practice as an absolute abstraction, an artifice hatched to conceal the feelingfrom which these pieces unfold: unequivocally they are, in fact, motifs of the soul comparable to those of Zbigniew Preisner, apt to give voice to the inexpressible through slender but vibrant musical figures, outlined just enough as to not make them completely impalpable.

After a path followed in single steps, strenuously limited to only one key at a time, by contrast the attack of the "Five Piano Pieces" (2005-2011) is perturbing and almost violent in its direct juxtaposition of low and high registers, sudden thrusts that evoke the sinister pace of Ligeti's "Wanted Music". So at last a latent romanticism makes its way and tends to characterize the five fragments with greater determination, infused with a sentiment sometimes tormented, sometimes subduedly melancholic; only the last piece settles once more in a colorless limbo, a pacification of oriental ancestry that in just two minutes brings the poetics of Philippakopoulos back to the territories of the post-Cagean avant-garde - a "return to order" which, however, does not cease to question the fragile balance between the temporal dimension, sound and silence.

The symbiotic identification of Melaine Dalibert, by nature in full familiarity with the aesthetics of the composers of quiet , leads us to the discovery of an author still little known but to whom the climate of contemporary music will not fail to give prestige in the years to such as. For its part, Elsewhere continues virtuously along the editorial line which, less than two years after its foundation, has already imposed it as a point of reference in the discographic scenario of an increasingly less elitist sector, originating from and being aimed at a sensitivity whose character is virtually universal.

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen - Works on Paper (elsewhere 006-2) by Jeph Jerman on The Squid's Ear (3/23/2020)

Gil Sanson and Lance Austin Olsen are both artists who work in sound as well as graphics, and this 2-disc set is a blending of these disciplines. Each artist chose a graphic score by the other to interpret, in two separate renderings each. Luckily for us, parts of the scores in question have been reproduced on the cover. They are both complex, layered affairs, as is the music produced from them.

Sanson's first pass at Olsen's "Pra Min" (subtitled "Works On Paper") opens with an electric humming soon joined by crackly textures and what sounds like a field recording of rain. Tones are introduced, along with the voice of Alan Jones, who ponders a vegetarian conundrum. Distant, warbly music is just barely audible with louder plucked guitar notes. "England won the world cup, and the hotel burnt down." Hisses and piano notes from an older recording of Sanson's roll by, and fresh sounds and textures are introduced frequently, varying in presence and volume. The voice samples that keep cropping up are not used in a narrative way, but are rather just another layer of the whole, perhaps a bit too focused on idea and therefore a bit jarring, but they pass quickly. Later the textures become more electronic in nature, as drones and serrated hums ebb and change timbre. The second pass, subtitled "Fail Better" (and which was actually recorded first), is sparser, using fewer components. The quiet/loud juxtapositions are more extreme as well, and this time the voice is singing rather than speaking, albeit very briefly. Around five and a half minutes in there's a really nice section of guitaristic fumble backed by super loud room ambience, before things thicken up considerably, with sweeping tones, melodica discords and distant traffic sounds. The big difference here is that there are no sampled or pre-recorded music, perhaps the whole piece was recorded in one pass.

Olsen's two interpretations of Sanson's "Meditations" are presented on the second disc, again in reverse order, and again one version is considerably thicker than the other. "Meditations #3" opens with a slowed down found cylinder recording of a choral work which sounds rather spooky to me. Gradually other textures creep in, including a section of an older Olsen work, "Craig's Stroke", with its repeated admonition "don't hit me". Electronic squiggles and fuzzy tones accompany. A single repeated chord clangs out against a rolling wooden grinding sound, before a more complex section consisting of select bits of earlier sounds swells up. On the whole it seems that introductions of new material happen more slowly in this piece, and (to this listener at least), there is more of an emotive, even cinematic, feel. Perhaps almost narrative in an alien way. "Meditations #2" is a bit less complex, with Olsen listed as playing only guitar and amplified objects, but just as dense and immersive as the previous piece. Throbs and wheedling peeps repeat, giving the whole a cyclic feel, while crackle and whirr are added over the top. Things thicken as a low drone is introduced, the objects taking on a castanet-like timbre. A big chord that resembles an organ rises and falls. Controlled feedback and a beautiful swelling low end the piece.

It would be interesting to find out how these gentlemen went about translating the painted collages into sound, but barring an actual conversation we'll never know. Perhaps a quote from Gil Sanson might be helpful though: "At some level, I find no distinction between painting and sound making. The processes are similar in essence and they seem to come from the same place."

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) in the front page reviews on Rate Your Music (1/19/2020)

Very, very gradually evolving call-and-response music between a sparse few instruments and silence, creating something achingly beautiful and wistful. 60 Pieces of Sound is a revelation, reminding me of the reason why I explore the avant-garde; fascinating ideas executed so marvelously that it almost seems simple, almost obvious in retrospect. While giving off the appearance of being tense, it couldn't be further from the case. Each instrument sounds like it's longing for something out of grasp, everything combining into one beautiful texture as it yearns for more. The silence that answers is breathtaking and meditative, threatening to go on for longer but acquiescing to the rest of the chamber in the end and allowing the piece to grow off of it. Forgive me if I don't have the words to sufficiently describe this; to put it simply, I've never heard anything so captivating.

L'âme est sans retenue II is more grounded, yet sonically seems to capture a more abstract feeling, as bass clarinet melds with field recordings in a way that allows them to be nearly indistinguishable in the best of ways; one element simply could not work without the other. The call-and-response style perfected on the first track is found here too, and while it possibly goes on a tad longer than necessary, it's no less striking. One could make the argument that what it's made up of makes it even more interesting, if anything. Endlessly replayable, soothing your heart every time. (4.50 stars Decibelle)

Shira Legmann / Michcel Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009) was chosen as Matt Sargent's favorite album of 2019 on Textura (1/1/2020)

"An album that I've spent time a great deal of time with this year is Michael Pisaro's Barricades (elsewhere records, 2019). A set of variations on Couperin's Les Barricades Mystérieuses, the album is for solo piano, performed by Shira Legmann, with a sensuous electronic accompaniment that I haven't quite heard before in his music. The electronics, a series of sine tones and spectral images of the piano, radiate from the instrument as a ghostly presence, sometimes emerging to centre stage in the form of electronic interludes."

Matt Sargent (#13 Classical: Separation Songs, Cold Blue)

"The almost magical mechanisms of the piano are explored on a trio of new releases from New Jersey’s Elsewhere label."
- By Derek Walmsley, The Wire (November 2019 Issue)

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007)
Reinier van Houdt / Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008)
Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009)

The piano is so mysterious a machine as to be almost miraculous. 88 mechanisms transmit the weight of fingers to individual strings. Intricate levers let notes sound and be damped with infinite variations of touch. With the sustain pedal, a player can create shifting layers of sound far beyond the possibility of human hands. The piano blueprint of hammers hitting strings was a quantum leap forward from the plucking method of the stiff, formal harpsichord. Loud, soft, clean, messy, agile, lazy: the piano can do it all.

The instrument’s wooden box conceals a Brownian motion of complex, chaotic collisions, which is one reason why it is a notoriously difficult instrument to mimic via a synthesizer. John Tilbury, writing about Morton Feldman, described the sound you get from a piano as “situational” – that is, always different. The piano should be considered not as an instrument, but a musical network, as powerful as a pipe organ, a modular synthesizer, or an Max/MSP patch. To take another perspective, you could compare it to the internal combustion engine, another feat of engineering that contains and magically channels the power of explosions.

These three releases by the young and exacting New Jersey composition label Elsewhere dive into the depths of the instrument, though they are still just a tip of the iceberg. Elsewhere works closely with composers and performers, using the possibilities of mobile recording and digital collaboration to take performances outside of conventional recitals into ad hoc spaces, intimate encounters, and all kinds of fascinating grey areas. While many modern composition labels are burdened with the legacies of canonical composers, these are new musicians and fresh projects, the vibrations of now rather than the dead weight of historical expectation.

Cheminant, a selection of compositions by French pianist Melaine Dalibert, is a warm stream of harmonious ripples that echoes the graceful postclassical music of Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, Jóhann Jóhannsson, etc, but the economy and precision, combined with Dalibert’s calm hands on the keys, put it on a whole other level of beauty. The notes change slowly, step by step, suggesting an interest in mathematics hinted at in titles such as Music In An Octave and From Zero To Infinity. The notes that accompany the album describe the music’s effect as like vertigo, but it feels more rooted and internal to me, more like slowly panning across an epic landscape. From Zero To Infinity, at just four minutes long, creates the same effect in miniature, a sparkling jewel which presents different aspects each time you revisit it. Listening to music like this is like a drug experience, a soft, secret space removed from the rhythms and disjoints of everyday life.

Barricades is a multi-part composition exploring Michael Pisaro’s enduring interest in maze-like structures, which he interrogates with electronic tones between sustained piano notes. There’s a lovely blurring of Shira Legmann’s acoustic into Pisaro’s electronic sounds, captured at studio space at Pisaro’s Cal Arts on the West Coast. Lasting over an hour long with just a couple of brief interludes, the listener starts to feels trapped rather than liberated between those long notes.

Reinier Van Houdt and Bruno Duplant’s Lettres Et Replis takes the dialogue between composer, performer and instrument to new heights of collaboration and cross-talk, and is the best of the discs here. Pianist Van Houdt interprets and responds to Bruno Duplant’s conceptual score, creating a series of so-called letters and replies that are full of thoughtful pauses and elegiac spaces. Along the way, layered pianos, field recordings and what sounds like jerry-rigged piano preparations vie for attention at the edge of your perception. It’s a process which at times feels more akin to decomposition than composition, as the instrument itself is minutely examined and seems to break down into ever more fascinating parts. It’s like disassembling a wind-up music box and marvelling at the mysterious pieces which make music and motion possible.

Composition in music these days is not just an arcane practice of staves and scales; anyone can organise sound and control time from the calm space of the laptop or the studio. The experience of listening to these discs echoes the kind of deep focus and bodily immersion you might find in Objekt, Mark Fell, Jim O’Rourke, Taku Unami, Autechre, etc. Anyone in love with the textures of sound, and the possibilities of patterns and movement, will find touchstones here, and the piano is the playground that makes it all possible. (Derek Walmsley)

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007) by Marc Medwin on Dusted Magazine (9/10/2019)

"The myriad and pulsing tones imbuing a church bell sounding"

There is no composer more completely enraptured by sonority than Melaine Dalibert, but his simplicity can be deceptive. These piano pieces, written between 2017 and 2019, are no mere exercises in motion and stasis, though both evolve and revolve within each work, often evoking that elusive and liquid moment when day becomes night. Dalibert has achieved the remarkable feat of presenting the tonal language as both traditionally referential and “other,” rendering it both absolutely relevant and somehow piquantly obsolete.

Motion, or lack thereof, or maybe it’s motion’s strange and elaborately masked bedfellow, the one we call repetition when no other word will suffice, solidifies the fluid worlds of Dalibert’s harmonies. Unlike previous releases on Another Timbre and Elsewhere, we are afforded the opportunity to hear his language unfold in pithy miniature, as on the surprisingly brisk “Percolations,” dedicated to Elsewhere curator and owner Yuko Zama. Pointing out post-Ligetian pitch addition, minimalist rhythmic tendencies or shifting harmonic anchors straight out of progressive rock’s heyday would be far too pedestrian, not to mention a bit of a blow below the belt, but listen to those harmonies and rhythms evolve! Each note becomes an anchor, and the piece moves quickly enough so that each anchor becomes one note in something approaching the melodic complexity of counterpoint. The fact that Dalibert brings the whole thing back to the open fifth on which it began is as astonishing as the harmonic byways he explores to get there. Dalibert’s performance — he’s a wonderful pianist — is rife with subtle accents, and whether or not they’re in the score, they give this piece written solely for the right hand additional layers of rhythmic and tonal complexity. “From Zero to Infinity”’s range is even further simplified as it climbs from two opening pitches toward a colorful chord both familiar and alien in its near non-resolution, but again, each tone becomes an internal voice as almost-melodies mutate in overtonal kaleidoscope.

What I am not articulating is paramount to the listening experience, and it isn’t for lack of an attempt. What chance does the willing and able listener really have of describing a waterfall’s sonic layers, or the myriad and pulsing tones imbuing a church bell sounding? To these ears, the disc’s standout composition is the absolutely spellbinding “Music in an Octave.” Someone should put together an analysis of this glacially moving study in sonority type, something along the lines of related chord groups and the permeable boundaries of tonal center. Even having said that, they do not add up to the effect this masterpiece of churchy textures manages with every aggregate’s bite, bloom and decay. Those open to experiences of the mystical variety may be at home in this luminescent garden of flickering upper partial flame. The piano is recorded and mixed in such a way that the various components of each tone foreground themselves even as they evaporate, but they only constitute the minutia of a form closer in large-scale intent to a movement from one of Roland Kayn’s vast electroacoustic canvasses. Both composers relish note implications as they manifest along a superficially facile but secretly serpentine path. The recording is of the utmost importance. Only recently are piano timbres being captured so that each detail, even those normally imperceptible in the concert hall, is placed front and center in the listener’s perception.

It is fitting that David Sylvian is credited with mixing advice. As Dalibert has radicalized harmony, surreptitiously building internal melodies of its components, Sylvian has radicalized melody by deftly and completely recontextualizing it, casting it in an entirely new landscape of timbre and tone. Cheminant inhabits territory similar to Sylvian’s quietly groundbreaking Manafon, on which tonality is also present but, remarkably, absented, or perhaps absented, negating itself in long-range. Would it be too bold to suggest that a collaboration between these two musical visionaries might be in order? (Marc Medwin)

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009) by Bill Meyer on Dusted Magazine (11/6/2019)

"Instead of adding elaborate figures, he adorns the piano with decaying swells
and sine tones. And instead of fitting parts so closely that they lock together,
Legmann’s cleanly articulated lines span empty spaces like power lines."

Barricades takes its name from “Les Barricades Mystérieuses,” a composition by the Baroque composer and keyboardist, François Couperin. The work of Couperin and his family, whose members played the organ at the church of Saint Gervais in Paris for several generations, is a long-time favorite of Pisaro’s. But the instigation for writing music inspired by Couperin came when Pisaro found out that he shared this affinity with Shira Legmann, an Israeli pianist whose repertoire encompasses music of the Baroque era and the late 20th century. He wrote the fifteen piano studies that make up Barricades, and played the electronics that appear on certain of the studies and two purely electronic interludes. And he recorded it himself at The Wild Beast, a concert hall located on the CalArts campus where Pisaro teaches.

While Pisaro wrote the piece, he did so in consultation with Legmann, and he’s written of the experience as being “one of watching the barricades, which I pictured as a network of twisted vines, unravel.” While the music is made up of ornaments and interlocking patterns, both of which are defining devices of the Baroque era, they have been abstracted. Instead of adding elaborate figures, he adorns the piano with decaying swells and sine tones. And instead of fitting parts so closely that they lock together, Legmann’s cleanly articulated lines span empty spaces like power lines.

The pattern is a spacious web, bounded but barely solid. This redirects the listener’s attention from the watch-like action of your average Baroque to the individual turns of the gear; put another way, the focus is on the manipulation and decay of each note rather than the precise action of a machine made of notes. While this discussion has focused on process, it’s quite possible to appreciate this music without doing so. Instead one can appreciate the elegance of Legmann’s clean arcs, as well as the quietly strategic way that Pisaro shades and smudges them. (Bill Meyer)

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008) by Bill Meyer on Dusted Magazine (9/26/2019)

Do not let yourself be tricked by the homophones. Lettres et Replis does not translate as Letters and Replies, but Letters and Folds. Still, let’s let the monolingual English reader’s likely first association lurk on the page, because this album is all about the unpredictable consequences of putting words out there.

This music originates with ideas set to paper, but they’re not your usual notes and staves. Composer Bruno Duplant’s approach to composition could not be more personal. He writes a musician a letter, and the musician plays the letter. For Chamber and Field Works 2015-17, Duplant the invitation that he sent to Taku Sugimoto doubled as the score. This time he sent three pages of text to Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt, who used what he found on them to fashion three “Letters” and three “Folds.” Each letter is a layered realization of prescribed notes, played quietly and layered as van Houdt saw fit in a recording studio. The layering enabled him to insert precisely selected preparations (notes modified by an object on the strings), and also to juxtapose note combinations that otherwise could only be played by a musician with the arm span of a gibbon. But while the combinations are many and unusual, the yield music that is not dense; you could fly through its spaces like a bird. Van Houdt saves all his heaviness for the foot that rests on the sustain pedal, which makes certain bass notes roll on and on, and otherwise plays with gentle consideration.

Fold, as the word is applied here, is not a bend in the page, although the use of that word ensures that you will think of one. Van Houdt explains the concept in a text on the record’s Bandcamp page: “Trois replis d'incertitude’ (2018) are also three letter-form scores but with the notion of ‘repli’ (meaning ‘fold’ in a Deleuzian postmodern baroque sense as well as ‘withdrawal’ of incertitude and reactionaries toward the neglect of ecology, humanism, and culture.” The folds seem to be reactions comprising thoughts and feelings that are influenced by an awareness of what is happening and not happening in one’s time; in other words, knowing everything we know about what people willingly ignore in this era of accelerated change and destruction, we fold like poker players who have run out of chips and just don’t want to know what’s being dealt in the next hand.

Such dark thoughts certainly correspond to the brooding, ruminative quality of each “Replis,” and if a listener ponders the concept of the word while listening, such thoughts, it can’t help but influence their experience of the music. In addition to piano, van Houdt layers field recordings that he made on John Cage’s 100th birthday (September 5, 2012). Knowing their origin will further provoke the listener to think of this music as being with a certain lineage, one they might already be thinking about given the sculpting influence of preparations upon certain piano notes. And knowing that these sounds sat in storage for six years before van Houdt applied them to this music may help one to think about the temporal space that can be contained within a “Replis.”

Phrases from the “Lettres” reappear in each “Replis,” creating a feeling of connectedness that holds its sprawl music together and gives each play through the feeling of inhabiting a bounded zone of sound and time. There’s wordless poetry in the distance, both temporal and pitch-wise, between the notes, and a rich blend of familiarity and not-knowing in the hints of traffic and nature that course through each “Replis.” While there’s a lot to be gained by pondering the ripples of influence and event that Duplant initiated when he wrote his letters, the sound of this music is so gorgeous that it holds up just fine without any meta-awareness. (Bill Meyer)

Elsewhere Piano Series No.1 by Eyal Hareuveni on the Free Jazz Blog (9/14/19)

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere, 2019) ****½

The concept of Barricades began to crystallize when Israeli pianist Shira Legmann sent American experimental composer Michael Pisaro a list of her favorite music and included Les Barricades Mystérieuses by French Baroque composer François Couperin (1668-1733). Legmann’s wide repertoire encompases not only compositions from the Baroque but also Olivier Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, György Ligeti's keyboard music, Morton Feldman’s late repertoire and Giacinto Scelsi's piano music. Pisaro himself loved the idea of composing a web-like texture that refers to Couperuin’s polyphonic technique of overlapping and interlocking voices.

Pisaro compared the process of composing and working with Legmann on Barricades to “watching the barricades, which I pictured as a network of twisted vines, unravel.” Barricades consists of thirteen “studies” for Legmann’s piano with some sine waves played by Pisaro himself, who adds two interludes where he plays the sine waves. The album was recorded by Pisaro at CalArts, California on March and April 2019, later mixed and mastered by Pisaro.

Pisaro’s subtle, ethereal sine waves sound as organic extension of Legmann’s clean and supple piano presence. Legmann navigates wisely the enigmatic atmosphere of Barricades as if she is determined to blur the transparent sonic barricades between the dramatic and the cool and restrained, between the emotional and the cerebral or between the distant and what may be considered close. Her “studies” with Pisaro’s eerie “interludes” suggest a fragile balance between these somehow abstract concepts. Together, these pieces reflect the very nature of Barricades, a poetic attempt to create a captivating network of sonic vines that grow in their own accord and intensify by their inner logic; a network of pieces that not only echoes the French Baroque but also flows in a unique, fragile equilibrium. A dreamy and hypnotic, Feldman-esque equilibrium between the concrete and the imagined, the acoustic and its electronic extension, the earthly and the celestial.

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere, 2019) ****

Cheminant presents the diverse aesthetics of French pianist-composer Melaine Dalibert. This is the third solo piano for elsewhere, following his first one for the elsewhere label that focused on one, extended composition, Musique pour le lever du jour (2018), and his debut one, Ressac (Another Timbre, 2017). The five pieces on Cheminant, all composed by Dalibert between 2017 and 2019 and recorded in Saint Maugan, France in February 2019, can be considered as studies in different schools of minimalism. These pieces reflect Dalibert’s interest in questioning how the harmonic shifts could affect the listening experience with subtly evolving chords through a scale or different tones, creating a similar state to vertigo.

The first four pieces of Cheminant are dedicated to colleagues and friends. The opening one, “Music in an octave”, is dedicated to David Sylvian who designed the artwork and advised about the mixing, and corresponds with Sylvian’s latest, poetic abstract-ambient works with its prolonged, resonating and meditative sounds. “Percolations (for right hand)”, for elsewhere founder, artistic director and producer Yuko Zama, is a rhythmic piece that sound as if it dances around itself until losing any sense of direction, “From zero to infinity”, dedicated for American post-minimalist composer Peter Garland, returns to a slow, minimalist mode that calls for another meditation about the accumulated effect of such listening experience. The longest, 21-minutes title-piece is dedicated to Dutch fellow pianist and composer Reinier van Houdt and expands even further and wider the enigmatic meditative ambience, as the highly disciplined delivery of single notes, their resonating sounds and their overtones float slowly through the deep space of the recording studio, gently disappear within each other. Dalibert performs this study in deep meditation with great control and exquisite beauty. The last piece “Étude II” is an exception with its up-tempo, almost playful insistence on repetitive hammered chords.

Reinier van Houdt / Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere, 2019) *****

Lettres et Replis captures a unique correspondence - literally - between French composer Bruno Duplant and Dutch pianist-composer Reinier van Houdt. This correspondence combines three Lettres (2017) - letter-form scores personally addressed from Duplant to van Houdt and containing letter sequences distributed across the page, with three more Trois replis d'incertitude (2018) - three letter-form scores but with the notion of 'repli' (meaning 'fold' in a Deleuzian postmodern Baroque sense, as well as 'withdrawal' of incertitude and reactionaries toward the neglect of ecology, humanism, and culture).

Duplant's realization of these ‘reading’ and ‘replying to' scores scores also reflect French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé's notion of textual space and chance, leaving a large room for the interpreter-performer. “The Lettres are connected to a melody spelled out and read in all directions propulsed by memory and gaze”, says van Houdt. “The Replis are connected to the harmonies from a place as they permeate and unravel through the metaphorical holes made by writing, linearly arranged again with recordings of a walk along the river that traverses this place”. The Replis also contain field recordings by van Houdt made on John Cage's 100th birthday on September 5, 2012 along the Maas Harbour in Rotterdam.

This mysterious, contemplative and delicately nuanced piano solo kind of correspondence is performed majestically by van Houdt. He lets the translucent overtones and rich resonances offer a sweet melancholy and nostalgic colors and shades, and only “Lettre 2” adds a fragile dramatic undercurrent to to the quiet exchange of cryptic thoughts and ideas. The words are morphed into a highly personal, suggestive language where “destruction and meaninglessness precede all possible worlds”.

You can trust van Houdt. He sure does know how to draw you into his fascinating musical world.

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008) by Peter Margasak on Bandcamp Daily (9/3/2019)

A gorgeously meditative yet vividly-present project — a kind of musical correspondence — Lettres et Replis was conceived and initiated by French sound artist and composer Bruno Duplant. In lieu of standard-issue scores, Duplant sent personal letters to the record’s featured musicians (including the revered Japanese guitarist Taku Sugimoto); all but the notes in the musical scale (A B C D E F G) were removed from these letters, leaving plenty of gaps of varying spaces. Apart from an instruction to play softly, with a sense of nostalgia, seriousness, and suspension, it was left to the performers to decide how to interpret them—duration, attack, and chordal choices.

The Dutch pianist Reiner van Houdt created multi-layered readings of the letter scores, playing in a recording studio as well as his home. His three renderings are marked by a sublime touch, a Satie-esque delicateness—tracing elliptical, ruminative melodies of remarkable tenderness, rich in overtones and ambient noise. Van Houdt advanced the project further by creating three corresponding reply pieces drawn from the same library of piano recordings edited and layered with field recordings he made along the harbor in Rotterdam on John Cage’s 100th birthday on September 5, 2012, exquisitely and subtly pushing his responses to the letter scores toward an exterior space, as lapping water, distantly passing boats, and muffled fauna gently commingle with patiently decaying notes.

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen 'Works on Paper' (elsewhere 006-2) by Nick Storring in Musicworks fall issue #134 (Sept. 2019)

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007) by Roger Batty on Musique Machine (9/6/2019)

Cheminant is the latest collection of works from French pianist/composer Melaine Dalibert - who has a knack of creating often stark, yet moody & memorable piano work. This recent release comes in the form of a CD on modern composition/ modern classic label Elsewhere Music - the CD appears in a rather striking dark green mini gatefold, that takes in various abstract patterns/ shapes.

Dalibert stared releasing work in 2015 with the self-released 'Quatre Pièces Pour Piano' - this saw him severing up a selection of tributes to composer/ musicians he respected, like Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi who is known for her performances of the works of both Feldman & Cage. In 2017 he released 'Ressac' (on Another Timber) - this was a two-track affair, offering up one shorter and one longer compositions - and this was where I first became aware of his work. Last year saw the release of 'Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour' ( also on Elsewhere) which featured a single hour track of simplistic, yet entrancing piano music. With 'Cheminant' he returns with a selection of five tracks, and just like his first release, all but one of these tracks are a tribute to people he respects, or have been impactful in his work.

The disc opens with the just over thirteen minutes of “Music in an octave” (for David Sylvian) - this built around a very careful spaced, considered, and skeletal line of piano notes, that weave out a rising 'n' falling pattern, which is both captivating and haunting in it’s subtle melodic yet - atmospheric path. Next, we move onto two short pieces - we have the rich and rapidly cascading weave of buoyant, yet felt notation of “Percolations (for right hand)” which is a tribute to Yuko Zama, who runs the Elsewhere label. And “from zero to infinity” (For Peter Garland) with it’s hauntingly path of notes, that seem to become starker & receding in their seemingly closing-in patter-nation.

The second to last track is the title track, and this is the longest piece here at just over the twenty-one-minute mark. This is for dutch composer and pianist for Reinier van Houdt - and once again we get a lulling and decidedly slowed weave of harmonic, yet slight fraught notation. Much of the track seems to be edged by a subtle ringing & golden sustain, which nicely edges the work with a feeling akin to gently warming autumnal sunlight on the skin.

The final track is "Étude II"- and this runs at just over the eleven minutes. Here we find Dalibert creating a track of bright tolling urgency, as he surrounds us with an almost glowing and hacking mesh of piano notes. The piece finishes the album off in a busy, yet slightly troubled manner- which brought to mind some sort of manic personality high.

With Cheminant Dalibert expands both the scope, depth and mood of his compositions, as well as his skillful control of the piano. It truly is a spell-binding and varied collection of pieces, which I can see appealing above and beyond the normal modern classical/ modern composition audience. (Roger Batty)

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007) by Dionys Della Luce on Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (8/31/2019)

By typing the title of the article, the name of the composer and the title of the album, I made a slip, revealing (of course). The album was titled Chemin Faire , a reference to Jacques Lacarrière's beautiful book published in 1974, subtitled "A Thousand Miles Across Today's France". I do not know if Melaine thought about it, but it's the same idea of paths that we follow as we go along the way, here over the notes. There is no urgency, we take our time. The first title, "Music in an octave", is followed by isolated notes, resonant, for thirteen minutes. The notes as islands that do not form archipelago, which appear and disappear. A very slow walk, one foot forward, then another only when the echo of the first has already dissipated. This is not an ascent or a descent, we do not feel any effort. It is a lifting of harmonics, an appeased listening, each time a little ecstasy, the miracle of an ephemeral advent. We stay inside an octave, the octave as a path that we must not deviate. Within the finite octave, there is virtually infinity, perhaps it is the lesson of this path of humble lights.

The second title, "Percolations (for the right hand)", evokes infiltrations, a porosity between sound layers that succeed each other at high speed, mix, intertwine to the point of forming a shimmering casting paradoxically almost motionless. It is a bright brook illuminated by the sun which shimmers on the stones of the bottom, a snake sound which captivates us in its circles of money, a splendor that one would like inexhaustible ...

"From zero to infinity", variation of two modules of four notes, awakens more directly the idea of a stubborn walk, perhaps a long ascent, the two modules overlapping, crossing each other. We advance little, but we advance, we know that one can go very far, just let yourself be carried by the light that emerges at every step, never exactly the same, always exciting.

The eponymous title, a little over twenty-one minutes, explores a path less obvious than the previous ones. This is the title closest to the universe of Morton Feldman , while the three previous ones could be related more or less to a minimalist approach. Let's hear: I'm not talking about compositional techniques, I know Melaine uses algorithms, and so on. What interests me is the effect on the listener. Here, the kind of stupor provoked by a sound universe that plays on memorious reconciliations and subtly foils them, while being of a rigor as far as Feldman is concerned. No ghostly wandering in "Cheminant", a labyrinth at once tight, stifling, and releasing at the bend of a note, a resonance, a real mystery. We do not move forward, each probe note looks for. It is a spiritual exercise, a climb to Carmel where every surge is a fragment of pure beauty removed from the unfathomable.

With the Etude II, the disc returns to a minimalism almost frenetic based on canons of loops which, I say it immediately, suits me quite as well. I am so happy that a French composer is exploring these continents that the Americans have added to our ears! Sometimes we get closer to the "strumming" of a Charlemagne Palestine , a great carillonneur before the Lord who loves the tireless hammering of a note or several. So the piece takes a hallucinatory turn that allows us to take off austere ecstasy proposed by the previous pieces. Beautiful flight! (Dionys Della Luce) *English translation

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant by Michèle Tosi on Res Musica (8/29/2019)

Pianist and composer, composer and pianist: the two activities that Melaine Dalibert practices in parallel interpenetrate and complement each other. This third monographic CD under the fingers of the interpreter-composer digs the furrow of minimalism in which his work is written.

There is therefore little material at the source of the five recent works in this album: in Melaine Dalibert's work , the first musical idea is subject to the determinism of algorithms, programs built by the composer himself, and without the recourse of the composer. computer, which govern the process of advancing the material. In Music in an octave - for David Sylvian , the chord-tuning that delimits the resonance space is given in multiple configurations, according to the envisaged fractal system and a slow march that invites deep and internalized listening. The resonant space is always circumscribed in Percolations (for right hand) - for Yuko Zama , a more playful piece subjected to another energy. It is the interval of fifth in its permanent oscillations which is here deformed with the envi, with effects of bumblebee, even very attractive chimes. The combinatorial is renewed in From zero to infinity - for Peter Garland, where the melodic line is thickened and arbitrarily stopped in its progression. Time is long and immersive listening in Cheminant - for Reinier van Houdt , which gives its title to the album. "I'm very interested in the ability of the listener to perceive the systems that organize writing," the composer told us during an interview . He plays with our expectations in this "cavatine" where he proceeds to the melodic and rhythmic permutations of an incise of four ascending notes, of which it is perhaps easier here to detect the process. In the American style, with this energetic and galvanizing pulsation that crosses all the writing, Etude II focuses on the effects of light and dynamics according to the spaces-stamps envisaged. Dalibert also focuses on the effects of resonance and the resulting acoustic illusions: so many sensitive and personal ways to listen. (Michèle Tosi) *English translation.

Elsewhere Piano Series No.1 by John Eyles - All About Jazz (7/28/2019)

Although its three July 2019 releases came out within a year of Elsewhere's very first album, bringing the first year's total to nine recordings, the fledgling label already feels like a well-established marque with its own distinctive identity and style. This batch of albums reinforces that in several ways. Firstly, the three albums together bear the collective title "Elsewhere Piano Series No. 1," the inclusion of that "No.1" radiating confidence that there will be more series to follow; such self-belief and faith in its audience have typified Elsewhere from the start, exemplified by its first album being a triple-disc set of live recordings.

Secondly, such a series is reminiscent of those the Another Timbre label regularly releases (recent examples: its Canadian Composers series or Violin + 1 series) as a way of letting listeners compare and contrast musicians' approaches, and attracting them to recordings they may otherwise have bypassed. In a similar way, it seems that Elsewhere will also be looking to broaden listeners' horizons. A year on, it is clear Elsewhere is building on solid foundations...

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007)

With the release of Cheminant French composer and pianist Melaine Dalibert achieved the honour of being the first "return visitor" to Elsewhere; this album is the successor to the label's second release Musique pour le lever du jour which featured Dalibert playing one sixty-one-minute composition, with his use of note clusters and the piano's sustain pedal producing an impressive and memorable performance.

Rather than covering the same ground again, on Cheminant he performs five shorter pieces, totalling fifty-two minutes. Dalibert shows a spirit of generosity by dedicating pieces to David Sylvian who created the album's artwork, the label's proprietor Yuko Zama, composer Peter Garland, and pianist Reinier van Houdt (see below). Across those four pieces, ranging in length from four-and-a-half to twenty-one-and-a-half minutes, Dalibert's writing and playing is readily identifiable as the source of his previous album, the music displaying the same fascination with sound and a willingness to let notes resound and linger in the air; one can almost visualise Dalibert savouring the beauty of what he has written.

The fifth piece, "Etudes II," dates from 2017, and is in stark contrast to the preceding four, from 2018-19. Although it reveals the same care and attention to detail, it is performed at a brisk tempo and does not allow notes the same space to resound; consequently, its eleven minutes flash by and seem guaranteed to set toes tapping and to send listeners back for more. Yes, the whole album is well up to Dalibert's usual high standard.

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008)

The joint credit for Lettres et Replis is fully justified by its music. The six tracks—three "Lettres" and three "Replis" ("repli" translates as "fold," not "reply")—are performances of letter-form scores by France's Bruno Duplant, personally addressed to Dutch pianist-composer Reinier van Houdt, containing letter sequences distributed across the page. As so often, listeners do not get any glimpse of the scores themselves, so are in no position to judge the realisations on the disc. But Duplant's scores are not prescriptive, and left a lot of interpretation open to van Houdt as the performer.

The three "Lettre" tracks are effectively van Houdt's replies to Duplant's scores, in which he multi-layered his piano sounds. In "Lettre 1," he makes extensive use of the extremities of the piano keyboard, which would have been physically difficult, if not impossible, without multi-layering; the piece soon becomes a dialogue between the high and low ends, with some movement away from the extremes but no rapprochement between the two. Houdt allows plenty of space for the music to breath and notes to resonate, imbuing the piece with an impressive sense of drama. Although significantly different, "Lettre II" shares many of that track's strengths including its sense of space and drama; with many of the notes sounding damped, at times it gives the impression of prepared piano. "Lettre III" is different again, but is unmistakably of the same family, the three hanging together beautifully as a threesome.

The three "Replis" pieces are sufficiently different from the "Lettres" to be distinguishable but, like them, work together as a group. On each of them, van Houdt combined his piano recordings with field recordings he made on John Cage's 100th birthday, September 5, 2012, along the Maas Harbour in Rotterdam, a combination which works well and produces some distinctively memorable passages. As with the "Lettres," these three have a consistent sound and style, largely down to those field recordings, which colour each of them. "Replis III," at nearly thirteen minutes the album's longest track and its closer, typifies the three and merits special mention; opening with the sounds of an outdoor field recording, it soon adds deep rich bottom-end piano which creates an atmosphere that persists throughout the piece, one that will conjure up different emotions for different listeners, all of them dark, melancholy and persistent. All in all, a haunting piece that brings this excellent album to a fittingly fine conclusion.

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009)

"Instead of confining a listener within a small individual universe of the composer or the performer, Pisaro's piano pieces seem to take the listener to another dimension or another space -with some mystic power of induction, beyond the limited space that the solid, vertical texture of the piano sounds generally tend to create."

There was a certain inevitability about Elsewhere releasing a Michael Pisaro recording. Not only has Yuko Zama been involved with Erstwhile during the years when Pisaro had a steady stream of albums released by the label, she has also been the designer on many of Pisaro's releases on his Gravity Wave label. In addition, Zama has sung Pisaro's praises in her reviews; the quote above coming from her review of Fields Have Ears (Another Timbre, 2010) for her blog View from Elsewhere. (Incidentally, each of the nine Elsewhere releases so far has included at least one musician who has featured on Another Timbre.)

Barricades consists entirely of the sixty-three-minute title composition, written by Pisaro in 2018-19 for the Israel-based pianist Shira Legmann after he discovered that one of her favourite pieces of music was the 1717 harpsichord piece 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses' by the French Baroque composer François Couperin. Listening to Pisaro's fifteen-part composition, the most immediately obvious connection to Couperin's piece is its arpeggiated style, and its title "Barricades," maybe intended as a clue. It features Legmann's piano with Pisaro himself playing background sine tones, with those tones being the only sounds heard on the composition's two interludes, creating a dramatic atmosphere. On the thirteen studies that form the main body of the composition, piano and tones combine together effectively, creating music that encompasses a range of moods and emotions, and will be well received by established Pisaro aficionados and newcomers alike.

This Piano Series consists of three distinctively different recordings, any one of which would have attracted attention and plaudits in its own right. It is a measure of the quality of the series that it is impossible to single out one of the three as being the best of the bunch; they are different but equal. Roll on Series No. 2... (John Eyles)

Elsewhere x 3 by Darren MacClure - Toneshift (6/21/2019)

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007)

The Elsewhere label continues in its pursuit of issuing minimal and experimental music, covering composition and improvisation. The three most recent releases reviewed here all share a specific aesthetic, namely the piano.

Returning to Elsewhere for a second release, the French composer Melaine Dalibert delivers five exquisitely sparse pieces, four of which are dedicated to other artists working in the field of experimental music, including the head honcho of the Elsewhere label, Yuko Zama.

The opening salvo, Music in an octave, is for David Sylvian, who also happens to be the designer of the artwork for this release, and others on the label. It’s a languid, mellow affair, the silences between notes becoming ever longer and more pronounced. The perfectly titled Percolations is for Zama, and is fluid and playful, in contrast to the preceding track. It’s a nice jolt for the listener, a beautiful melody encircling around itself. This variation is evident throughout the album, and on the title track Dalibert lets the woody tones of the piano drift, with slow release times creating miniature drones that softly attach themselves like moist webs between the notes.

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008)

Bruno Duplant wrote scores to Reinier van Houdt, who in turn “read” them and responded in turn with a realisation first of the “letter”, then his own response. The album therefore consists of three letters and three replies, each pair best listened to as a set, a communication between the two artists and manifested by van Houdt. Lettre 1 and Replis 1 connect robust playing and warm harmonics with a muted comeback that underlies the piano work with a washed-out smog of field recordings that definitely add an interesting dimension. Each set adds subtle variations in regard to the field recordings, the most notable being Replis 3, which begins with waves crashing on a shore before bright piano notes sparkle among the surf and an airplane which drones overhead.

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009)

Another collaborative work, this time featuring an extended piece composed by Michael Pisaro which has been divided into thirteen short studies performed by Shira Legmann (with some electronics by Pisaro). Again, the piano is very much at the fore here, but there are more overtly electronic pieces too in this collection. There is a clean, yet organic quality to Legmann’s playing that allows each piece to breathe and stretch out. Besides the set of studies, there are also a pair of interludes that use electronics to interpret Pisaro’s original, featuring swelling sinewaves and on Interlude No. 2 some beautiful processing that transforms it into a magical slice of modern ambient.

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (1/2/2020)

The past as an archive and treasure trove of infinite discoveries, a retroactive immensity within which the intuitions of the finest minds that have succeeded one another can be relived and reimagined. The course of the centuries has perpetuated the most brilliant inventions as well as, in certain cases, the enigmas that the figure of the artist has always enjoyed plotting at the expense of his audience.
Such is the case of a rondo contained in the VI Order of the pieces for harpsichord by François Couperin (1668-1733): Les Barricades Mystérieuses is a polyphonic interweaving of melodies that take hold with studied delays from each other, in a whirling carousel of rhythms and harmonies in perfect balance within which, however, spontaneous and fleeting dissonances also arise.

It would be difficult to imagine a link between the opulent ornamentation of the Baroque style and the reductionist aesthetics of Michael Pisaro, one of the true masters of the radical avant-garde collective Wandelweiser. Yet the fascination for such an eccentric musical charade has bridged the historical distance between the two composers, finding in the cycle of piano studies Barricades (2018-2019) a fascinating contemporary parallel.
After the symbiotic bond established with the talented Reinier van Houdt – interpreter of the integral the earth and the sky (Erstwhile, 2016) and the sound poem Shades of Eternal Night (Gravity Wave, 2018) – Pisaro finds a new ally in the German pianist Shira Legmann, not by chance fluent both in the Bachian period repertoire and in the complexity of the modern languages of Messiaen, Ligeti, Scelsi and Feldman: in retrospect, a crucial conditio sine qua non for the deep understanding of the concept and spirit of Barricades.

“The piano and its double”, one might think in hearing, since the first minutes, the artificial extensions and inversions made by Pisaro on the resonant strings. As in his time Luigi Nono put in dialogue the live performance and the reworking of the same tape by Maurizio Pollini (“… sofferte onde serene …”), so the American master brings out the purity of Legmann’s acoustic sound amplifying it through a parallel simulacrum, a discreet shadow which nevertheless ends up undertaking a supporting role in the delineation of a “foreign” and timeless musical dimension, not easily divisible in minimal stylistic terms.
In fact, although predominantly clear and caressing, the melodies on the pentagram are also somewhat “dry”, deployed in an atmosphere of voluntary solitude which makes their coordinates uncertain: it often becomes almost impossible to discern the measured baroque patterns from the interrogative tone sequences of Feldman (No. 7, 9, 12) or the pacified grace of Satie and Sakamoto.

In addition to the direct interventions on Legmann’s audio source, one of Pisaro’s distinctive figures is added, namely short waves: these soft and perfectly linear tones are in all respects the “counterpoint” of the melody, a continuous bass that balances the elegant volutes of the piano with a stable pitch complementary to them (No. 4, 10, 13). The two interludes to the études, on the other hand, are pure environmental abstractions that seem to cover the piano with a thick blanket of fog – short dreamlike glances beyond the threshold of a deforming mirror.
These, in essence, are the “enigmas” by means of which Pisaro embodies the role of a postmodern Couperin, once again fully capable (apparently without effort) of making his own influences and suggestions historicized and of channeling them into a vision exclusively of his own.

After Cheminant and Lettres et Replis, with Barricades ideally comes to a close a praiseworthy triplet of piano-themed publications by Yuko Zama’s Elsewhere, which just a year after its foundation already boasts a catalog of classic-contemporary alterities with a clear and coherent curatorial imprint. It will take some time before the “high” culture recognizes in these vast post-Cagean drifts the newest and most authentic frontier of today’s composition.

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008) by Michele Palozzo on Esoteros (1/2/2020)

One must always keep an eye on the margins of the musical avant-garde, where some of the most difficult challenges of contemporary production are still undertaken without clamor, with a devotion equal or superior to the “great classics”, by authors as well as performers. In today’s art of the piano, figures such as Reinier van Houdt and R. Andrew Lee have distinguished themselves for their strenuous commitment alongside the post-minimalists and the Wandelweiser collective – the “composers of quiet”, as Alex Ross put it.

The prolific French author Bruno Duplant is not part of the latter circle, despite having collaborated with several artists related to it. In fact, over the course of a decade he has become a recurring element of the most radical improvisational research, an experimental fringe that intends musical creation as a constant dialogue with silence (or the illusion of the same).
Following the omnipresent spirit and the controlled alea of the enlightened John Cage, over time the new musical composition has left more and more space to the interpreter, in many cases making him an actual co-author of the pieces, no longer intended as rigid schemes but rather as meager instruction manuals aimed at triggering the performer’s sensitivity and sonic inventiveness. Thus was born the remote dialogue between Duplant and the aforementioned Van Houdt, placed at the two ends of an “hermetic” correspondence expressed in sequences of letters scattered on a sheet, a blank map of a creative process yet to be imagined.

In the three “Lettres” the textual characters are translated on the piano into isolated “phonemes”, tonal microcells which in the (probably randomized) juxtaposition made in the studio by Van Houdt become the details of a richly decorated melodic plot, with anomalous details derived from the preparation of the strings. From the first to the third letter the unfolding becomes gradually more enigmatic, as if it were intended to evade meaning more and more resolutely.

The “Trois replis d’incertitude”, on the other hand, are not intended as answers to the relative missives, but rather as “folds”, as theorized by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze (which in turn took up the baroque thoughts of Leibniz): reality as a stratified plane crossed by space-time diagonals, “intersections, inflections through which philosophy, the history of philosophy, history, sciences, the arts come into communication” [*]. Compared to the anti-narrative nature of the twin pieces, the replis have the appearance of dramatic nocturnal meditations of vaguely romantic memory, also arranged in the order of an ideal descent into darkness – in this case perceptual rather than semantic – interspersed with field recordings carried out along the port of Rotterdam on the day of the Cagean centenary (September 5th, 2012).

Conceptual art is often thought of as something rigorous and detached that has little or nothing to do with the emotional sphere. It was therefore a happy occasion when Bruno Duplant’s authorial “surrender” and Reinier van Houdt’s profound sensitivity were able to (not) meet and give life to a sonic and spiritual harmony that belongs unequivocally to both.

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007) by Michele Palozzo - Esoteros (1/1/2020)

In the middle of the 20th century, while the cultured European avant-garde beat the impervious paths of serialism, the New York School was searching with increasing freedom for a transcendent dimension of sound, time and the space that it inhabits. It could have been a “transfigured” physical place, like the Dream House by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, or, as in Morton Feldman’s long compositions, a totally imaginary non-place, a mental horizon manifesting itself through just a fragile and unusual weaving of notes and silences.

So far, the quiet suites of the French pianist Melaine Dalibert have expressed the need to re-instate the right weight on each key, each chord ringed in extended sequences designed to lose the temporal perception and consider the individual acoustic phenomena in their bare and primitive form. After his debut on Another Timbre (Ressac) and the inaugural publication of the Elsewhere label (Musique pour le lever du jour), Dalibert continues with the latter and gathers five works in Cheminant – some of which can be identified as “studies” – with a more varied style, although all inevitably linked to the minimalist imprint that characterizes all his work.

The self-explanatory “Music In An Octave” – dedicated to David Sylvian, once again also responsible for the graphic design – is an exercise in expressiveness within the limited margins of a single octave: like a still life is tinged with lights, shadows and colors always new at each time of day, so the combined chords on the adjacent keys outline a motionless yet ever-changing sound figure, whose contours dissolve within a few seconds and then revive themselves in an almost imperceptible variation, aimed only at emphasizing its quiet presence.

With a completely different vivacity, the right hand draws the rapid aquatic reflections of “Percolations” – with a dedication to Yuko Zama, founder of Elsewhere – whose spiraling mill also develops around the grafting of a single major key, an inheritance of the additive processes typical of early Philip Glass and John Adams’ piano pieces (“Phrygian Gates”, “China Gates”). Of a similar inspiration is the final “Étude II” which, by means of the same pulse-like hammering of the keys, obtains dense and luminous accumulations of resonances, remindful of Charlemagne Palestine’s “Strumming Music”.

The short “From Zero To Infinity” is dedicated to the American composer Peter Garland, a regular 4/4 in which dissonances insinuate themselves so slight as to inspire a sense of impalpable restlessness beneath the “geometric” surface of the piece.
At the end comes the fulcrum of the publication to which it gives its title, dedicated to the pianist Reinier Van Houdt: in the pointillistic manner of the late Feldman, the “Cheminant” suite weaves hieratic ascending quatrains, each of which differs from the previous one for a single note, as well as for the order of the sequence and its intervals; twenty minutes that enjoy the perfect balance of a mathematical formula – where the commutation of the elements keeps the result intact – together with the sublime lightness of a Japanese haiku, the poetic form of a reality and a feeling captured in their purest and most essential features.

It’s in passages like this that the discreet revolution of Melaine Dalibert continues to manifest itself in a crystalline way: music “simple” in theory but insidious in practice, as it requires absolute discipline and dedication for each sound gesture, microcell of a potentially infinite picture that leaves only to the listener the privilege of abandonment, almost of the annulment within a tonal dimension mantled in ivory splendor.

Reinier van Houdt / Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008) by Ben Taffijn on New Nuts (8/7/2019)

Performing a composition can be seen as a communication process. The composer expresses himself through his composition, the performer responds to this through his performance. And no matter how much the composer tries to steer the performer - and some composers go very far in this - it always remains a combination. Of course you can also play with this fact, as composer Bruno Duplant and pianist / composer Reinier van Houdt do at 'Lettres et Replis', published by Elsewhere .

Duplant sent Van Houdt letters, containing the notes for six pieces. Three are called 'Lettre' and three 'Replis', the latter has a philosophical undertone and stands for 'withdrawal'. And then feel free to read that in a broad context, read the neglect of ecology, humanism and culture. The scores of Duplant reflect, says Van Houdt: "Mallarmé's idea of textual space and opportunity, which leaves a large space for the interpreter / performer." An opportunity that Van Houdt seizes with both hands. He says about that: “I have composed my achievements around the basic principles of reading and writing. The letters are connected with melody, spelled and read in all directions, propelled by memory and gaze. ”

Piano sounds are what we get here, in several layers in the three parts 'Lettres' and supplemented with self-made field recordings in the three parts 'Replis' . This is where a true dialogue is established between two artists.

That "reading and writing" is immediately reflected in "Lettre 1". As if the nuts fall into place spontaneously, alternately high and low specimens find their way, cross each other, find their place in relation to each other. 'Replis 1' is a lot more sober, as if Van Houdt is working on a sentence in his letter, word for word, here note by note. The result is that the notes get the chance to dissolve into nothing. 'Lettre 2' is more dynamic and more experimental, you can hear here how ingeniously Van Houdt manipulates the sound of his piano. The field recordings that Van Houdt made in the Maashaven in Rotterdam on the hundredth birthday of Cage actually add something to 'Replis 2', creating a somewhat melancholy atmosphere that fits the cautious game. 'Lettre 3', like the other second parts 'Lettre', has something unruly, but at the same time this is the most melodic of the three, although Van Houdt allows the necessary disturbances. The undertone in the relatively long 'Replis 3' is obscure, thanks in part to the wave of sound played in deep lows, which keeps coming back as an undercurrent. But it fits in with this special cycle of musical letters. (Ben Taffijn) *English translation from Dutch review.

Reinier van Houdt / Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008) by Roger Batty - Musique Machine (6/22/2019)

Lettres et Replis is a piano-based album that shifts between elegant harmonics and often discordant angularity. The release comes in the form of the six-track album - that’s available as either a mini gatefold packaged CD (ltd to 500 copies), or a digital download- both can be purchased from Elsewhere’s website.

The albums tracks where initially written by French composer/artist Bruno Duplant, then Dutch pianist/composer Reinier van Houdt realized & played the pieces. Theses works, at moments see up to three layers of piano tracks, as well as in places unbalancing layers of field recording haze. All creating an album that sits in a fairly odd sonic place- somewhere between the delicate & harmonic Satie like composition, and edgy/ busy John Cage like prepared piano work.

The album opens with “Letter 1”- and this is the second-longest track here at just over the eleven-minute mark. To start proceedings we get a slow, lulling & fragile piano melody- but as the track progresses we slowly but surly get the addition of at first slight off angular shifts, then as time goes on these are added to by stabbing tinklings, sudden darting mid-range notion, and high note mimicking of pattern notation. It’s certainly a fascinating, and at first jarring counterbalance - but as you get familiar with the concept of the tracks you get more & more sucked into the contrasts.

Track number three is “Lettre 2”- and this begins with a persistent & fairly violent selection of tight to & muffled piano glunks- these are decidedly discordant, and slight pitch-shifting in their attack. As the track moves on we get smaller & playful clusters of more higher noted key work- and as we get into the main of the track, these two elements start to creating an almost jerking groove.

The six & final track is "Replis 3"- this twelve-minute & forty-seven-minute track stands as one of the most disturbing & unpredictable moments here-as we start with what sounds like very muffled road field recordings. As the track moves on we get the blend of doomed & slowed low-end note hits, high pitch picks & darts, as well as later on more harmonic mids. By the final quarter of the track, we have shifts between muffled train recordings, and more manic low end clunking

Lettres et Replis is very much an album of(often violently) colliding sonic contrasts. And the juxtaposition of these is what makes the whole thing so fascinating and rewarding- yet another very worthy release from Elsewhere. (Roger Batty)

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen 'Works on Paper' (elsewhere 006 -2) by Eyal Hareuveni - The Free Jazz Collective (6/2/2019)

How abstract, visual art is translated into graphic scores and vice versa? Venezuelan composer-visual artist Gil Sansón and British, Vancouver-based composer-painter Lance Austin Olsen attempt to answer this kōan in four imaginative textures.

Neither of Sansón and Olsen are ordinary musicians. Sansón is a self-taught composer who defines himself a “lifelong music student”. His musical origins are in rock, avant rock, classical music, contemporary music, and electro-acoustic improvisation, and his music is not governed by dialectics and shies away from rhetoric or representation, narrative concerns or virtuoso playing. Olsen is known for his abstract large-scale works, where the surface is endlessly reworked, with each subsequent piece forming a record or narrative of ongoing discovery. Through this process the viewer experiences an inextricable link between the activity of producing the work as well as the sense that they are seeing but one element in a lifelong pursuit. He began working with sound in 1997 and released limited-edition album on his label Infrequency.

Sansón and Olsen began to work together, long distance, in 2014 when Olsen painted the cover of Sansón's Immanence, A Life (Makam, 2015). Soon both decided to enhance their profound, mutual understanding to collaborative musical projects through realizations of each other's graphic scores or paintings. Their first collaborative piece, Sansón’s graphic score for “A Meditation on the History of Painting”, was released on Olsen's Dark Heart (Another Timbre, 2018). Works on Paper offers four new collaborative works: On the first disc, recorded in Caracas, Sansón interprets two variations of Olsen's painting-graphic score "Pra Mim (2016)"; On the second disc, recorded in Victoria, British Columbia, Olsen offers two variations of his interpretation of Sansón's graphic score “Meditations (2017)”.

Sansón plays on Olsen’s “Pra Mim #2 - Works on Paper” and “Pra Mim #1 - Fail Better” variations the acoustic guitar, melodica, violoncello, electronics, objects and field recordings, samples the voice of America sound artist A. F. Jones, as well as excerpts from two compositions of his own, performed by pianist Dante Boon, and excerpts from experimental Dutch composer Antoine Beuger's “Monodies pour Mallarmé”, performed by soprano Anna Rosa Rodriguez. Sansón manages to arrange all these contrasting medium and transform-paint all into a multilayered, kinetic and colorful texture. This rich, expansive texture still sounds intimate, delicate and quite mysterious.

Despite the geographical distance, the distinct methods of composing-painting, and different backgrounds in musical aesthetics, Olsen’s variations explore like-minded inner worlds. Olsen plays on Sansón’s “Meditations #3” and “Meditations #2” (part of the graphic score is captured on the cover) lone, un-tuned guitar, amplified objects, shruti box, samples, including found wax cylinder recording, and excerpts from his work “Craig’s Stroke” performed by vocalist John Luna and organist Debora Alanna. The atmosphere on these sonic meditations-sound paintings is more intense and tensed but also more austere and compassionate, as if envisions a dark, threatening future.

Every listening to this unique work of art may bring completely different answers, all insightful and all valid, to the kōan of Sansón’and Olsen. (Eyal Hareuveni)

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen 'Works on Paper' (elsewhere 006-2) by Daniel Persson - Discreet Music Blog (in Swedish) (5/11/2019)

Elsewhere drivs av Yuko Zama, här finns en intervju där hon förklarar varför hon startade sin etikett. Hon är även väldigt iblandad i Erstwhile med sin man Jon Abbey och Gravity Wave. som drivs av Michael Pisaro. Jag rekommenderar i princip allt på dessa etiketter, men nu handlar det om Works on Paper. Gil Sansón är från Venezuela och Lance Austin Olsen från Kanada. Deras första samarbete började när Olsen målade omslaget till Sansóns ‎Immanence, A Life.

Både Olsen har även på med måleri och grafisk konst och det var så de började samarbeta, sedan började de göra musik ihop. Först en låt’ A Meditation on the History of Painting’ från skivan Dark Heart på Another Timbre (ännu en etikett som är en musikalisk släkting till ovanstående etiketter).

Works on Paper består av fyra spår på drygt 30 minuter vardera. Det är två tolkningar av de gör av varandras verk. Det är ett långsamt kollage av field recordings, röst, akustiska instrument och samplingar. En av årets finaste skivor. (Daniel Persson)

Gil Sansón/Lance Austin Olsen 'Works on Paper' (elsewhere 006-2) by Brian Olewnick - Just Outside (3/16/2019)

Last year, Another Timbre released a superb collection of pieces from Olsen, 'Dark Heart', which included an amazing work based on a graphic score of Sansón's called, ' Meditation on the History of Painting'. This two-disc set is a kind of extention of the process begun there and it's just as rewarding.

To get the technical details out of the way, Sansón and Olsen prepared graphic scores. Olsen is an accomplished painter and, to some extent, treats his visual work as a kind of potential musical score so in his case, it was "simply" (nothing simple about it) one of his works. I think--I could be wrong--Sansón's was constructed with the idea of aural realization in mind. In any case, the scores were sent to each other, Sansón residing in the troubled city of Caracas, Venezuela, Olsen in Victoria, British Columbia, and they each produced the two renderings we have here.

Where to begin to describe these complex, dense but transparent works? One thing that struck me over the course of both of these disc is each musician's astounding sense of sound, of how crisp, lucid and three-dimensional everything sounded. There were times when I felt one could almost disregard the context and simply wallow in the gorgeousity of the sound world. The sets were mastered by Taku Unami; I imagine he deserves some credit here. Each offers two interpretations of the other's score. Sansón's 'Pra Mim #2 - Works on Paper', begins with a fine example of the sonic vividness I was referring to, a range of prickly raindrops (?) over a background hum, great separation, before we hear text read by Al Jones. This text is curious. No reference is given and it sounds somewhat fragmented (it resurfaces throughout the piece, with iterations of the odd phrase, "sailing on concrete"). I get the sense of a son's remembrances of his veteran dad, a difficult person, whose prejudices and life-views have been to some extent transmitted to his son (the section on "Rhodesia, or whatever the fuck it's called now that the Mau Mau have taken over") It's spoken deadpan, largely uninflected, a counterweight to the vibrant soundscape surrounding it, which also includes other works by Sansón, for instance a lovely piano piece played by Dante Boon. The music just flows past, the text eventually lapping itself. The music maintains consistency while constantly expanding and exploring new byways. The second version has some threads attached back to the first, including "sailing on concrete", this time sung, as it were, in ghostly fashion. Sansón limits his resources here, concentrating on guitar, melodica and field recordings, creating a slightly less dense, though still rich and active sound-world. I should mention how much of an affinity I find between the music in both of these pieces and the Olsen painting, which is reproduced inside the CD sleeve; impossible to pinpoint, but the feeling is there. 'Pra Mim #1 - Fail Better' is dreamier, still gritty but wafting more than flowing, smoky, a perfect offset to its companion piece.

The Sansón score with which Olsen works, reproduced on the cover and interior, looks to be a collage with multi-colored plastic material text and ink marks. On 'Meditations #3', we first hear a distorted recording of a Baroque (?) choral work, possibly a mass? This segues into a haze of electronics in which we encounter what will be a repeated refrain, a man saying, "Hold me. Don't hit me.", imparting a tragic air--one immediately thinks of current church-related scandals, especially given the opening sounds. Olsen creates a swirling vortex around this poor creature, with echoes of the chorus, harsh shards of guitar, shruti box and any number of amplified objects, again an example of the enormous, transparent/granular depth achieved. There's an ebb and flow here, the sounds attenuating into icy slivers, a lone, ambivalent guitar chord like an alarm, then a complete cessation. When the music returns, we're still in a church atmosphere, but more warped, even subtly nightmarish, with twisted voices, errant bells and sinister, crunches like footsteps on gravel. The sense of foreboding continues, siren-like wails and dire hums coursing through the grimy clatter and wraith-like voices. 'Meditations #2' is chillier still, with odd ray-gun, zapping effects scattered over a low, ominous throb. The drone of either the sampled organ (played by Debora Alanna from another of Olsen's works, 'Craig's Stroke') or the shruti box becomes prominent, creating a huge space between it and a series of sharp clicks, as of glass marbles against a ceramic surface. The piece kind of splays out from here, as though released out of the confines of the crypt into the town outside, rustling separating from hyper-low thrums, bell-tones from soft pops from guitar strums, each meandering off, the zaps heard behind, still menacing but slightly less so.

A marvelous set, four extremely strong, well-conceived and imaginative works. Highly recommended. (Brian Olewnick)

Gil Sansón/Lance Austin Olsen 'Works on Paper' (elsewhere 006-2) by Ben Harper - Boring Like A Drill. (3/18/2019)

Feels like I’ve been away forever. I got a bunch of new albums I want to talk about and a superb Alvin Lucier concert I went to last week, but right now I have to say something about this new release by Gil Sansón and Lance Austin Olsen. I got all excited about Olsen’s music last year, with his visual approach to making music. A real artist, y’know? He makes paintings, some of which function as musical scores, and takes a very collage-type approach to his recordings.

On his Another Timbre CD last year, Olsen produced a multitracked realisation of a graphic score by the Venezuelan artist Gil Sansón. I’d described A Meditation on the History of Painting as “like painting, a synthesis of gesture and editing, with traces of the two processes preserved in the medium”. On this new album, Works on Paper, Olsen and Sansón give an extended presentation of their technique of creative exchange. Disc 1 features two realisations of Olsen’s painting/score Pra Mim, recorded by Sansón in Caracas. On the second disc the roles are reversed, with Olsen in Victoria, Canada recording two realisations of Sansón’s graphic score Meditations. For two hours, the air teems with tantalising connections, potentialities.

As with painting, the fabric of the music hovers between fragments of narrative and unspecified affect. It’s an elusive music, part radio drama, part collage, part pure sound. The sense of meaning is always present, both in content and form, but is left to the listener to find for themselves. Sampled music, taken straight or manipulated, combine with field recordings, musical instruments, isolated phrases spoken or sung and mysterious electronic clicks and buzzes. Similarities between the two artists abound, inviting further connections and comparisons to be made between the two minds at work, one in British Columbia and the other in Venezuela. The sounds are captured beautifully. Within each realisation, certain elements repeat, or seem to. Everything becomes suspended in a dream-like state, fully aware but inexplicable.

The pieces have been sequenced so that words, spoken or sung, appear less and less as time goes on. Pieces end on extended hiatus, with aural figuration giving way to empty spaces, alive with background sound. The final Meditation is wordless, with Olsen interpreting Sansón’s score with layers of sparse, amplified sounds and guitar. The album’s an ideal follow-up to last year’s Dark Heart release. (Ben Harper)

Stefan Thut - about (elsewhere 005) by Roger Batty on Musique Machine (3/14/2019)

About is a just shy of hour-long example of extremely sparse, pattern-based, but very subtle altering modern composition from German composer, improviser & Cellists Stefan Thut. This is the fifth release on up & coming American modern composition label Elsewhere Music- and it’s presented as a CD in a gatefold sleeve.

Thut has been writing his own composition since around the early 2000’s- with his works performed in Russia, the Netherlands, Japan, and Germany. He’s released works on labels such as Edition Wandelweiser, Intonema, and Moving Furniture Records- and has thus far put out around twenty full-length releases.

The piece here features six players in all- we have Ryoko Akama - electronics, Stephen Chase - Guitar, Eleanor Cully - Piano, Patrick Farmer - Metal Percussion, Lo Wie - Tingsha, and Stefan on Cello. Despite this fair collection of player, the composition is extremely pared back, sparse & reduced in its feel. The piece is built around a series of plucks, saws, twangs, and simmers- which are fed out in a decidedly spaced & controlled manner- mostly the instrumental tones are often played on their own, with the next tone appearing as the first had faded. Though at times it feels like it’s going to suddenly pick up in both depth & pace- aside from a few subtle diversions it’s all kept extremely pared back.

There is really no melody to talk of here, though the whole thing has a rewarding even flow to proceedings. I can imagine this must have been very hard to play- as each tone is often very compacted & controlled- through from time-to-time there are subtle flourishers of off tones. I’ll have to admit initially plays through of this left me somewhat unimpressed, due to the extremely narrow range of tones here- but I persevered, and have come to find it rewarding in it’s stark & narrow unfold- with even more plays offering up new subtle details. (Roger Batty )

Slovak classical music/jazz magazine Hudobný život had CD reviews of Jürg Frey '120 Pieces of Sound' and Clara de Asís 'Without' (Erik Carlson/Greg Stuart) by Adrian Democ (3/11/2019)

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen - Works on Paper (elsewhere 006-2) by John Eyles in All About Jazz (3/4/2019)

Coinciding with the first anniversary of the formation of the Elsewhere label, its sixth release maintains the high standards set by the previous five. If anything, the two-CD set Works on Paper may be slightly more experimental, even risk-taking, than its predecessors—none of which could ever be described as safe.

First, some history. Back in the late 90's, guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Han Bennink agreed to each record something and then post it to the other one, who would then play with the recording and record the results. The end results were the albums Post Improvisation 1: When You're Smilin—credited to Han Bennink + Derek Bailey—and Post Improvisation 2: Air Mail Special—vice versa—(both Incus, 1999). In late 2017, the two old friends Christian Wolff and Antoine Beuger produced something similar for the album Where Are We Going, Today(Erstwhile, 2018) with Beuger making a recording which was then sent (electronically, not by mail) to Wolff who added his contribution to it, the end results being mixed by Taku Unami; as that album's sleeve note says, "A silent dialogue with an absent partner."

Works on Paper is subtly different to, but firmly in the footsteps of the above albums, as it also fits that quote's description. It features two men who are both visual and sound artists, Venezuela's Gil Sansón and London-born, Canadian-resident Lance Austin Olsen. The pair first collaborated when Olsen painted the cover of Sansón's CD releaseImmanence, A Life (Makam, 2015). Respecting and understanding each other's work, the two soon started to collaborate, making musical realizations of one another's graphic scores or paintings. Olsen's 2018 album Dark Heart, which was part of Another Timbre's impressive Canadian Composers series, featured a realisation of the Venezuelans' 2017 graphic score "A Meditation on the History of Painting."

For Works on Paper, Sansón and Olsen each made realisations of one of the other's graphic scores. Disc One features two Sansón versions of Olsen's 2016 piece "Pra Mim," recorded in Caracas, Venezuela, from 2017-18; with a pleasing symmetry, Disc Two has two Olsen versions of Sansón's 2017 piece "Meditations," recorded in Victoria, British Columbia, from 2017-18. Commendably, the album sleeve includes images of each of the graphic scores, so that listeners get to see the images that stimulated the sounds they are hearing. Each is a beautiful artwork but, as with many graphic scores, the images do not prescribe what should be played in response to them, but leave it to the musician's discretion and creativity. Noticeably, Sansón and Olsen both produce two versions that differ considerably from each other, one featuring them playing alone and another with considerable use of samples to fill out the soundscape. (Listen to the YouTube clip below, for an example of the latter.)

Given their past collaborations, it is unsurprising that Sansón performing Olsen ends up sounding remarkably similar to Olsen performing Sansón. The two are subtly distinct but sound very alike. Their soundscapes are uncluttered, ensuring that all the component sounds can be appreciated clearly and distinctly. Neither of them attempts to construct a narrative, instead leaving the juxtaposition of sounds to be appreciated for its inherent beauty. In effect, each of these fine visual artists is literally painting with sound. The end result is an album that runs for over an-hour-and-three-quarters, one which is able to grab listeners' attention and hold them spellbound, no matter how many times they listen to it. (John Eyles)

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen - Works on Paper (elsewhere 006-2) by Peter Taber in Dusted Magazine (2/27/2019)

Works on Paper, the newest release on Elsewhere Music, presents a joint work by Venezuelan Gil Sansón and Canadian Lance Austin Olsen. Each sound artist provides two interpretations of his collaborator’s graphic score. Like a letter that arrives already opened, the album’s disjointed, subdued ambiences present something intimate that nonetheless brings distance itself into focus as an unsettling object of attention.
On Sansón’s two tracks, unfussy fades move through a series of impressionist tableaus. “Pra Mim #2 – Works on Paper” enters with the quietest of drones underpinning a mix of rain and typing. English-language spoken word punctuates the moment, before a move to spare guitar plucks and what could be a recording made in a public plaza. The piece builds to a tropical shower at two-thirds through, perhaps applause, and layered, anxious spoken word fragments giving way to silence. “Pra Mim #1 – Fail Better” starts with bare electrical self-noise and manipulation of the recorder, gradually adding bowed metal textures and vocal snippets.
Olsen’s entries exhibit greater density. Down-pitched choral music begins “Meditations #3”, quickly accompanied by pleading vocals, lending a sense of impending violence. An eventual eruption of feedback squawks, rustling noises, reverberant object manipulations is at once hallucinatory and cathartic after the preceding restraint. “Meditations 2” presents synthetic squeals against a backdrop of amplified ventilator shaft ambience and low hums. An organ-like drone gradually moves the track into a more subdued passage and finally into environmental noise.
The title Works on Paper can be read two complementary ways. The first draws our attention to the device of the graphic scores as an interface between composer and sound collagist. The second suggests an untested idea, waiting to be cast out into the world to see what comes back. The mode of collaboration engaged in by Sansón and Olsen either aptly reminds us of the limits of a subject’s agency and the inevitably mediated relationship we have with others. Tense, disconnected biographical reminiscences against indifferent environmental noise or the manipulation of nearby objects amidst coldly reverberant spaces make the album’s most intimate moments feel fraught. Elsewhere, the lowercase murmur of devices, traffic, climate-controlled atmospheres envelops much of the album in infrastructure, calling to mind the vast concatenation of people and things required to convey sound, image or artist between Caracas and Victoria. (Peter Taber)

Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen - Works on Paper (elsewhere 006-2) by Steve Smith on National Sawdust Log (2/1/2019)

Think about how you respond to looking at a work of abstract visual art. What elements do you fixate on the most? The colors, or lack of them? Light, or its absence? A feeling of volume, or of emptiness? A sensation of motion, or of complete stillness? Nearly all of those quantities and qualities might come into play; what’s certain is that your own personal response is unlikely to duplicate exactly that of another viewer.

Now, imagine using that work of art as a musical score. In effect, that’s what’s happening on Works on Paper, a beautifully mysterious new release from the consistently edifying young label Elsewhere. The album, issued as a two-CD set and in a variety of download formats (including high-resolution lossless files), presents the newest developments in an ongoing partnership between two unique and distinctive creators: Gil Sansón, who resides in Caracas, Venezuela, and Lance Austin Olsen, a London-born artist based in Victoria, British Columbia.

These artists represent different generations and life experiences. Sansón, born in 1970, has fashioned an impressive oeuvre of electro-acoustic work, drawing upon improvisation, text scores, graphic scores, digital collage, and more. “His audio work,” one recent biographical blurb said, “emphasizes the nature of sound and its capability to transcend stylistic boundaries.” Olsen, born in 1943, came to sound art relatively late; in a 2014 essay, the writer and concert producer Jesse Goin enumerated “Olsen’s half-century of painting, 40 years of zazen, and 15 years of musical practice”—“footprints of my journey,” in Olsen’s words. A great deal of his work, though certainly not all of it, has been documented by Infrequency Editions, the label Olsen founded in 2001 with his longtime artistic partner and collaborator, Jamie Drouin—yet another composer and visual artist. (Goin wrote that essay, incidentally, to accompany Scores & Markings, a fascinating collection of works created by sound artists, including Drouin, in response to Olsen’s visual scores.)
A connection between Sansón and Olsen, which had started as a long-distance collaboration in 2014, grew closer when a painting by Olsen served as a wrap-around cover illustration for Sansón’s splendid 2015 recording, Immanence, a Life.

Their first true joint creation, A Meditation on the History of Painting, came in 2017: Olsen used field recordings, amplified copper plate and engraving tools, a wax cylinder recording, guitar, voice, and even an amplified iron park bench to realize Sansón’s graphic score. The piece was issued in 2018 on the album Dark Heart, a crucial introduction to Olsen’s music, released as part of the consistently illuminating Canadian Composers Series on the English label Another Timbre. (The redoubtable listener and writer Brian Olewnick, in a characteristically perceptive review, helpfully describes Sansón’s score and textual pointers.)

Works on Paper expands on that initial collaboration’s fascinating, elusive abundance. The first disc features two distinct realizations by Sansón of Olsen’s Pra Min, a 2017 visual score consisting of a sequence of collages. For “Pra Min #2 – Works on Paper,” Sansón employs acoustic guitar, melodica, cello, electronics, amplified objects, field recordings, and samples—of the pianist Dante Boon playing two Sansón compositions, and of Sansón’s own performance of an Antoine Beuger composition with the soprano Anna Rosa Rodriguez. Crucially, Sansón also employs A.F Jones – the sound artist and recording engineer who facilitated last week’s album of the week, Alloys – who delivers in plainspoken manner a narrative of unknown origin, detailing rich but fleeting impressions and snatches of memories.

It’s a lot to take in, but Sansón deploys his palette with the same attention to color, contrast, and detail that Olsen used in fashioning the score. That’s not to suggest Sansón’s performance is a literal translation of Olsen, but rather an accurate impression of qualities evident in Olsen’s art. It’s also not the only available interpretation of the score—not even by Sansón himself, who uses his own voice, electric guitar (unplugged and plugged), melodica, amplified objects, electronics, and field recordings in “Pra Min #1 – Fail Better.” This alternate view of Olsen’s score shares some features in common with its disc mate, but feels more intimate and tactile (claustrophobically so at times), with harder and coarser surfaces and textures.

Disc two likewise features two interpretations by Olsen of Meditations, a 2017 graphic score by Sansón, part of which is visible on the album’s front cover. In a fitting instance of symmetry, the first version you hear is more elaborate, populous, and self-referential; the second more solitary and bare. “Meditations #3” opens with a sample from an old classical recording – a men’s ensemble from an opera, I presume, though determining just what has proved elusive – rendered gelatinous through pitch alteration and other manipulations. Aural components in this realization include guitar, shruti box, amplified objects, wax cylinder recording (presumably the source of the men’s chorus), and samples from a recording of his own graphic-score work Craig’s Stroke.

Around three minutes in, the acoustic expands and grows more present; “Okay, don’t hit me,” Olsen says, unemphatically—a motif that recurs elsewhere in the piece, both prominent and not. As in Sansón’s visual collage, with its wolflike crimson figure spattered like a blood stain above a supine block of text, Olsen’s music renders indistinct notions of foreground and background, focus and context. Common to both score and interpretation is a heady sense of dislocation and everything-at-onceness. “Meditations #3” grows edgy and coarse midway through, sharp contours lending a feeling of anxiety that never wholly departs. The work’s final minutes seem to hold tension and resolution in tenuous equilibrium.

As on the previous disc, the second track on this one – “Meditations #2” – is starker, sparer, and more uneasy than what came before it. Olsen limits himself to guitar and amplified objects, though some echoes, flits, and squelches defy easy assignment to any particular sound source. Not quite 10 minutes in, droning sustained chords begin to supplant the nervous, itchy sounds that started the piece. These long tones hold sway for a meditative nine minutes or so, after which the insect music returns to close the piece.

Needless to say, the four performances featured on Works on Paper can be enjoyed simply as richly detailed, lucidly balanced, grippingly paced sonic excursions, with no heed paid to the elaborate relationships between these artists and their idioms. But for anyone interested in aural manifestations of visual stimuli – and especially in gauging how artists who know their collaborators well still can produce wildly varying responses – this beautifully produced release will provide endless contemplation. To borrow an idea from Heraclitus, the set offers compelling evidence that you can’t view or hear the same art, twice. (Steve Smith)

Gil Sansón/Lance Austin Olsen 'Works on Paper' by John Lewis
in The Guardian (2/1/2019)

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) by Nick Metzger on The Squid's Ear (2/7/2019)

120 Pieces of Sound marks Swiss composer Jürg Frey's first release for Yuko Zama's impressive elsewhere records. The album includes two Frey pieces, "60 Pieces of Sound" and "l'âme est sans retenue II". The latter track is what initially attracted me to the album, as I really enjoyed the first part which was released by erstwhile records in 2017 as a six hour, five disc collection (there's a third part as well, and though I haven't yet obtained a copy yet, I intend to do so). However, after hearing "60 Pieces of Sound" I'm as much enamored with it as with the second track. Both pieces are excellent examples of Frey's work, and they nicely complement and contrast each other. Frey recorded "60 Pieces of Sound" with Boston ensemble Ordinary Affects using traditional instrumentation, while "l'âme est sans retenue II" is based on field recordings taken around Berlin with undercurrents of Frey's barely discernable bass clarinet. The common ground of the two recordings is the artist's use of protracted silences to differentiate and accent the movements, thus creating a sort of aural non-zero sum game.

On "60 Pieces of Sound" Frey and cellist Laura Cetilia play the pitches of the melody over which the rest of the Ordinary Affects ensemble is free to play a pitch of their choosing. This combined with the silences presents an aggregate that is both harmonious and dissonant, depending on the undetermined pitches selected. The long pauses give the resulting chords room to breathe and decay, creating space and softening the edges (especially when the chord comes off as particularly dissonant). The melody itself, while buried and slowly developing, gives the piece a sense of forward motion and advancement, and I'm not sure that it would work as well without it. Of the piece "l'âme est sans retenue II", I am reminded of sleep during travel. Drifting off and then coming to, the sounds familiar and consistent but slightly different after each pause. These disparate (I use this term extremely loosely here) sounds are tied together with a light undercurrent of bass clarinet which is almost transparent unless you know what you're listening for. In contrast to the first part of "l'âme est sans retenue" the pauses here feel fairly uniform in length, and the sounds presented on the field recordings feel a bit more homogeneous, making for a more meditative (if that's possible) listen.

All in all the record is a very satisfying listen, combining a (relatively) melodic ensemble piece with Frey's more experimental (again, relatively) approach to composition on the second half. Kudos to Yuko Zama for getting the second part of "l'âme est sans retenue II" in the hands of the listeners and for her curatorial talents in general, as her label has released some exceptional music thus far. A most welcome release from a label we'll all be watching closely in the coming years. (Nick Metzger)

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) by Michele Pallozo - Esoteros (12/29/2019)

Rather than sisters, Erstwhile and Elsewhere are two “spouse” labels, just like their founders and artistic directors, Jon Abbey and Yuko Zama, have been for years. What unites them is a devout and sincere passion for the most radical areas of minimal composition and improvisation, as well as their coherence and a particular taste for an extremely accurate and detailed design. Elsewhere was founded in 2018, almost twenty years after the other, but despite being in the same vein it has already acquired its own graphic and stylistic identity with six publications dedicated to music of a deeply reflective and contemplative nature – including the latest glowing suite for solo piano by Melaine Dalibert.

By virtue of a common sensitivity and direct proximity over the years to the Wandelweiser collective to which he belongs, Swiss composer Jürg Frey was an almost obvious choice for the catalog of Zama’s newborn label, whose “120 Pieces Of Sound” offers a significant corollary to the monumental Erstwhile edition of l’âme est sans retenue I (2017, ErstClass 002-5). Two more tracks, then, to investigate the fragile and mutable relationship between sound and silence – the latter continuing to prove impossible outside of its creation in the studio and the subsequent fixing inside the artificial and finite context of the physical support.

“60 Pieces Of Sound” (2009), composed for an indefinite number of musicians, is performed here by Frey himself on clarinet with the American ensemble Ordinary Affects, in the form of a mixed quartet for viola, cello, keyboard and electric guitar. Every brief musical intervention, followed by a silence of roughly the same duration, sees the clarinet and the cello dictating a single sustained tone, to which the other members respond in unison, without the use of the vibrato, in indeterminate pitches; the fleeting and delicate harmonies seem to originate from nothingness, they sprout and withdraw effortlessly, like modest and totally distinct sound epiphanies.
Each “piece” seems to abstract the last lines from a hidden larger composition, or the final verse of a poem we don’t need to read entirely to grasp its essence anyway, it being reduced to the minimum terms and encapsulated in an acoustic identity of a few seconds that, combined with a specular void, elevates its quiet lyricism by contrast.

“l’âme est sans retenue II” (1997-2000) is in perfect continuity both with the first chapter of the series – of a total duration of six hours – and with the preceding work in this collection: if on the one hand, in fact, a regular alternation between minute sections of presence and absence of sound remains, on the other the concept of silence is again and more markedly problematized. The excerpts of field recordings that make up the single track are divided mainly between the immaculate airiness of open spaces and so-called ‘room tones’ (the continuous “buzzing” of rooms, often rendered perceptible only by the microphone filter itself); within these paintings, already close to the achrome, Frey intervened adding a tone of bass clarinet that almost completely merges with the faint surrounding soundscape.
In this way the piece stimulates the sensory perception on several levels: the labile boundary between the manifestation of such “apparent voids” and the total absence of frequencies continually challenges us to readjust our auditory focus, paying a level of attention that the acoustic pollution of everyday life has gradually made us unaccustomed to. The radical art of Frey thus returns to open tiny windows through which we can rediscover our ability to discern and decode the most modest sound phenomena, furrows of existence subtracted from the second plane of sensitive experience and saved – in part, at least – from their extremely ephemeral nature.

In this recent publication under the Elsewhere brand relives the fascinating oxymoron for which sound finds its ennobling through silence – be it real or approximated –, lapping on what could qualify as the most extreme frontier of today’s experimental composition. Outsiders by vocation, artists such as Jürg Frey will survive the judgment of time as the pioneers of a singular poetics of the essential, much more relevant than it appears today outside of its still narrow circuit.

New Releases from Jürg Frey, Clara de Asis, and Stefan Thut by John Eyles - All About Jazz (12/7/2018)

If you were told that a record label's latest batch of three albums were by Jürg Frey, Clara de Asis and Stefan Thut, and then asked to identify the label, which one would you be most likely to choose? Many in-the-know music fans might be likely to opt for Another Timbre or maybe Wandelweiser or INSUB, none of which is the correct answer. In fact, albums by those three musicians constitute the second batch of releases from the Elsewhere label, following hard on the heels of its two impressive debut recordings released in July 2018.

No newly-formed record label arrives with a ready-made identity or reputation in the minds of music lovers; such things evolve over time, based on a label's releases, particularly in its early days. So, its third, fourth and fifth albums could prove to be important to Elsewhere and to our opinions of it...

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003)

Although its proprietor Yuko Zama has been keen to stress that Elsewhere will be her label, independent of her husband Jon Abbey's Erstwhile label, for which she continues to work, this Jürg Frey release blurs the boundaries between the two labels somewhat. Frey has two previous releases on Erstwhile, notably the five-disc epic L'âme est sans Retenue (ErstClass, 2017) which consists entirely of the six-hour piece "L'âme est sans Retenue I"—the longest of Frey's career. It was constructed by Frey in 1997-98 from field recordings that he had made in a Berlin park earlier in 1997, interspersed with periods of silence. It had never been issued prior to the ErstClass album.

Now, as one of its two tracks, 120 Pieces of Sound features "L'âme est sans Retenue II," which has a similar structure but only plays for forty minutes. Apart from their different durations, the only difference between the two is that the shorter one includes occasional subtle use of bass clarinet. Curiously, "L'âme est sans Retenue III," the sixty-six-minute third part of Frey's composition, was released back in 2008 on Radu Malfatti's B-Boim label, so anyone wishing to hear the complete work would need to acquire three separate albums on three different record labels. If that all sounds too complicated, rest assured that "L'âme est sans Retenue II" stands alone as a track in its own right and is a good way to sample the entire piece, particularly its contrasts between the mysterious, atmospheric field recordings and the silences which frame them.

That track is only half the story of this album, though. Its other track, the 2009 composition "60 Pieces of Sound," is in total contrast, being performed by the quartet Ordinary Affects joined by Frey himself. The quartet's instrumentation of cello, electric guitar, keyboards and violin allied with Frey's clarinet produces a soundscape that is an ambiguous blend, with hints of a conventional string quartet shading into a more contemporary sound. As such, it is ideally equipped to give an engaging performance of the piece's sixty chords, punctuated by silences, a structure which complements that of the album's other track, giving the album a pleasing sense of symmetry.

Clara de Asís - Without (elsewhere 004)

Following closely on the heels of the Clara de Asis release Do Nothing (Another Timbre, 2018), Without is an ideal complement to that recording as it highlights different facets of de Asis' music and gives a more detailed picture of it. In particular, where the earlier album consisted of six shorter tracks performed on guitar and percussion by de Asis herself, Without is very different, just featuring the forty-three-minute title track, which was written in 2018 for and performed by the duo of Erik Carlson on violin and Greg Stuart on percussion.

This realisation of the piece is characterised by the togetherness of Carlson and Stuart's playing, which itself owes a debt to the precision of de Asis' composition; by all accounts, she "gave a precise framework for the position and the duration of each sound section and each silence, as well as a rough outline for the texture and the volume of each sound, the use of tone or noise (or tone-noise), and the materials for the percussion." Of course, Carlson and Stuart are experienced players, not androids, so their own inputs are as important as those of de Asis; in other words, credit is due equally to each of the three. For the listener, the end result is a slowly-evolving but varied soundscape in which every note from both players can be heard perfectly throughout; it makes for relaxing listening which can be repeated time and again without ever becoming stale. A collective triumph.

Stefan Thut - about (elsewhere 005)

It is very fitting that a recording by the Swiss cellist and composer Stefan Thut completes this second batch of releases from Elsewhere, as many of the words already used to describe the fledgling label and its music are just as appropriate to Thut's works—ambiguous, innovative, meditative, open, restrained, subtle... to name but a few.

All of which is eloquently illustrated by the music on About, which amounts to the hour-long title track; composed in 2017, it was performed by a sextet of Thut himself on cello, with electronicist Ryoko Akama and four others chosen by him, and recorded at the University of Huddersfield in September 2017. In typical fashion, Thut's composition does not just require the sextet to play their instruments; his score instructs three performers to make percussive, ringing, and electronic sounds while three others play short high-register pitches on their musical instruments according to written scores, paying particular attention to the decay of sound in the subsequent silence. It also includes activities in between playing the sounds, such as walking about (hence the title "About") the space, and uttering monosyllabic words quietly in their own languages. Put all of that together, and the resulting piece fits the list of adjectives above, and sits well alongside the albums from Frey and de Asis.

Yes, five releases in, Elsewhere is already establishing its own distinctive sound and style (compare these three album covers for evidence) and looks set to go from strength to strength. (John Eyles)

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) by Roger Batty - Musique Machine (12/28/2018)

120 Pieces Of Sound presents us with two thirty-to-forty-minute examples of moodily sparse- to- dread filled & dark modern compositions from Swiss composer and clarinettist Jürg Frey.The release comes in the form of a CD on Elsewhere Music- the up & coming US modern composition/ modern classical label.
First, up on the disc we have a composition from 2009 entitled “60 Pieces Of Sound”-this thirty two minute work brings together Frey on clarinet, Laura Cetilia- Cello, Morgan Evans-Weiler- Violin, J.P.A. Falzone- Keyboard, Luke Martin- Electric guitar. The work is built around the players creating a series of sustained drones that are broken up by drifts of complete silence- the drones are laid out in very slowed & considered two-part melody, which gets slowly revealed over the tracks length. The piece creates an interesting effect in the listeners mind- to begin with, your eager for the silence between the sustains to shorten, and disappear- but as time goes on you seem to slow down to the broken pace of the work- readying oneself for the dips in nothingness, as the sustains are half-way done. It feels akin to seeing a stark landscape picture cut apart out & spread wide on a large wall or surface- your mind first moving from one piece to the next trying to join together the pieces as one flowing picture in ones mind's eye. The sustains start & end with hints at the identity of the tone of each instrument- but really the five instruments are brought together to create a simmering bleak & fairly unified glow.

The second track "L’âme est sans retenue II"- was composed & worked on between 1997 & 2000. This the longer of the two tracks coming in at the forty-minute mark- it’s built around a blend of field recordings & Frey’s Bass clarinet. Here once again silence is used in the composition, but instead of more considered & regular use of the first track, here it’s a lot more random/ at times jarring in its application. Between the lull Frey places blocks of rushing searing- that could be either amped-up air con. Fan sounds or rain recordings, and bass bound Clarinet sustains. The whole composition has a murky & grimy sort of dark black industrial ambient feel to it unfolds, and instead of the bleak broken melody line of the first track we get blocks of seared grimness- that rather brought to mind a more slurred later day Scott Walker take on soundscaping. With carefully repeated listens you start to make out more sustained & pared blocks of sound, and this nicely deepens the overall atmosphere of the whole composition.

120 Pieces Of Sound highlights Mr Frey skill at utilizing silence & blocks of sound- giving the listener two very different perspectives on the balance between the two states of sound & non-sound. This is the second release I’ve been impressed with this year from Frey, the other been the excellent Early To Late ( on Another Timbre)- which saw him doing a split release with Stockholm based improviser/composer Magnus Granberg. So I’ll certainly be keeping my out eye for new work from Frey, as well as digging into his back catalogue. (Roger Batty)

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) by Bill Meyer in Dusted Magazine (12/10/2018)

People look for patterns in events; it’s just what our brains do. That human function both completes and connects the two compositions that comprise 120 Pieces of Sound. Swiss composer/clarinetist Jürg Frey began the process of conceiving “L’Âme Est Sans Retenue II” in 1997 when he made some field recordings in a Berlin park. Over time he arrived at a notion to divide the material into excerpted recordings interspersed by passages of silence.

You might surmise from the numeral II that he made more than one composition from that material; this piece is the third to be released in a-chronological order since 2008. On “II,” unlike its predecessors, the six hour-long “L’Âme Est Sans Retenue I” (ErstClass, 2017) and the more manageable single-disc “L’Âme Est Sans Retenue III” (B-boim, 2008), Frey contributes sound as well as shape to the field recordings. He has tucked subliminal bass clarinet tones, which are often hard to pick out but which subtly harmonize with the essentially non-musical sound, into 30 discrete scraps of sound. The original recordings consist of natural outdoor sounds and distant human activity, some of it moderately distinct, some of it soft gray noise that seems to vibrate in time with Frey’s horn, a far-off automobile or some indiscernible city sound. In between the scraps are silences, which invite the listener to register sound event while limiting how much time they have to process it.

Frey composed “60 Pieces of Sound” in 2009. Unlike “L’Âme Est Sans Retenue II” it is meant to be played by musicians, with two instrumental voices adhering to a scored melody while a third voice is asked to harmonize with them. The choice of how to do so is left open, with the caveat that the third party plays what they deem to be appropriate. For this version, which was recorded in 2017, Frey and cellist Laura Cetilia play the score. Violinist Morgan Evans-Weiler, keyboardist J.P.A. Falzone, and electric guitarist Luke Martin, who alongside Cetilia are members of the group Ordinary Affects, share the role of third voice. What makes this piece a natural counterpart on disc is that it is also broken into 30 sounds and 30 silences. The musicians creep through the piece one chord at a time, bounding each with quiet intakes of breath and a varying span of silence. The silences turn each chord into a discrete textural event much like the ones in the disc’s other piece. The events, of course, are quite different. Instead of soft gray noise, they are carefully polished episodes of harmony.

The pacing of the piece fragments the melody so that it is not heard but is felt as an implied logic that is decoded by your brain’s determination to fill in the cracks. Situated on the same CD, the two compositions invite the listener to zero in on the details of each sound event. (Bill Meyer)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) by Roger Batty - Musique Machine (11/25/2018)

Blurred Music is a three-CD release that offers up three separate performances that smudge the line between drone, modern composition, and improv. Each performance runs between forty minutes & just over the hour mark, and each is a fairly, shifting & eventful sonic trip.
The release brings together Bulgarian composer and improviser Biliana Voutchkova on Violin & voice. And Berlin-based composer & Improviser Michael Thieke on Clarinet. Each performance here was recorded in December 2016, in a different American city- and really each is different & varied enough from each other, to make the whole thing worthy.

Blurred Music is packaged in a fold-out mini card gatefold- this features abstract & different coloured shapes spread out over an off-white backdrop. Inside we, of course, get a track listing & recording details, but we also get a short write-up about the concept of the release, and how each performance blurs together pre-recorded, improvised & manipulated elements.

So the first discs piece was recorded in Chicago, and comes in at just over the fifty-minute mark. It jumps straight in with a churning & noisy blend of circling honks & violin saws- this start has an almost wonky industrial feel about, but fairly soon the pace & manic-ness is slowed as we get slow circling passes of tonally wavering pipes & drunken string simmers- and at this point we are only five minutes in!. As we move through the track, we go from extremely busy & seared blends of horn & string play, onto more considered & placed breathing, scratching, and groanings. Through to sadly harmonic simmers, that slowly bend & wavering out of tune, onto sudden skipping & darts of both horn & string. Though the piece is most active- there is seemingly both logic & sense in the flow of the work, and the more harmonic elements are rather moodily moving.

Disc two takes in a recording Philadelphia, and this is the shortest piece here at just over the forty minute mark. This starts off very slurred, unwell & unsettling with the pair stretching out their joint tone sustains into these sourly opening drone drifts. By around the third minute we get a sudden galloping & sawing string work pick-up, but just when you think the pace is going change for good the horn work slides back in once more slowing & souring everything. Later on, we move to the brightly creepy blend of chatting high pitched vocal sounds, rapid neck picks, and wavering painful drone simmers. As the track moves on the pained & uneasy feel is retained as we get blends of buzzing saw tones, weird manic breathings, and drone forks. Of the three pieces, I’d say this is the most searing, sour & at times noisy.

The third & final disc takes in a performance from New York- this is longest here at near the hour & ten-minute mark, and it’s also the most sonically varied. Starting from solemn & angular mood begins, which sees a haunting blend of bleak saws & balance effect pitch descents. Onto rapid & jittering sways of playful micro honks, neck scuttles, and weird vocalizing. Through to slowly build banks of string & horn hover. Onto to wishful & high pitched mixes of wavering harmonics, twitching neck play. Through the atmospheric blending of rising ambient horn melody & slight pitch strained string work.

Each of the performances has its strengths, but I’d say of the three, the second more seared & noisy is my favourite-as I just really enjoy everything they do on this track, and the sourly sear-ness they create here.

In summing up I can’t say I enjoy everything on here, and at times it seemed like the players lost their way somewhat, but there where enough effective/ enjoyable elements here to say that if you enjoy the place where modern composition, drone & improv meet then I’d give Blurred Music a try. (Roger Batty)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) by Thomas Millroth - OrkesterJournalen (11/14/2018)

Improvisationer varvas med strukturerade partier, och även digitala inspelningar av duon läggs till under spelets gång. Den oskärpa som uppstår har inget med vanlig förtätning eller klimaxtänkande att göra. Biliana Voutchkova och Michael Thieke är ute efter något helt annat. Jag hör långdragna vävar där instrumenten ligger tätt intill varandra, skär sig i de svaga kurvorna. En ström av ljud böljar försiktigt i något som först liknar en rörelse framåt, men snart stannar upp i ett ljudrum. Plötsligt något som liknar en melodi eller liknande böjning av ljuden. Bara för att åter tystna och låta av musik likt en intensiv andning fortsätta. Snart träder minsta skimmer fram. Kvar: två kroppar som andas och doftar.

Och som själva titeln på albumet anger är det ägnat åt oskärpan. Det är inte så konstigt som det låter. Eller: det hörs som lösliga kanter och oskarp riktning. Eller ännu tydligare: den retoriska ytan har slitits av tidens obehagliga retorik som är nog så skarp i sin förankring i liberaldemokratisk förträfflighet som endast kolliderar med populistiskt bludder i fyrkantig skärpa. En språklig bild som vi alltmer vänjer oss vid ty den hör vardagen till. Inte underligt då att Voutchkova och Thieke valt att utgå från språkkritiske Wittgenstein som ju tyckte det var dags för oskarp konst då vi vant oss vid all denna bedrägliga skärpa.

Det är ett höräventyr genom ett ljudlandskap där musikerna bitvis kollrar bort sig själv och måste söka i dimmig oskärpa. Knappt har jag lyssnat klart för andra gången och stoppat in de tre skivorna i det ljusa varmt strukturerade fodralet förrän jag ser att här har någon tänkt. Rättare sagt bolaget Elsewheres formgivare och producent Yuko Zama har lagt plattorna så att de möts och jag blir varse de minimala skillnaderna i vithet mellan dem. Tänk att kunna höra så skarpt denna svindlande oskärpa att den också syns. Jag lägger på än en gång – det här är en nödvändig musik som bara kommer att fortsätta som oskarp motstämma till all tidens skarpa lögnaktighet.
(Thomas Millroth)

Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) by Brian Olewnick - Just Outside (11/10/2018)

One of those recordings, an exceedingly thoughtful and beautiful one, where describing the elements isn't difficult but getting across the effect on the listener seems next to impossible.

There are two works presented here, structural cousins of each other, perhaps. The first, '60 Pieces of Sound' (2009), is performed by the ensemble Ordinary Affects (Laura Cetilla, cello; Morgan Evans-Weiler, violin; J.P.A. Falzone, keyboard; Luke Martin, electric guitar) joined by the composer on clarinet. I was fortunate enough to hear this group play this very piece in Boston about a year ago; I believe this recording was done just a few days afterward. There are indeed sixty sound elements: thirty tones played by the ensemble, each lasting about twenty seconds and thirty stretches of silence, each lasting about ten seconds, played alternately. That's it. But there's so much more. I gather, from having watched the fine, short documentary you can see about Frey (Part 1, Part 2) that the harmonies chosen were arrived at intuitively, in other words, what would sound appropriate after the one just played (and the silence). But the choices seem so right, so necessary. They inhabit a relatively narrow spectrum, but Frey discovers such a bounty of tones, relationships, subtle dynamic shifts, etc., that I simply sit in wonder. The unisons are tight but not overly so, like the ragged edge of good watercolor paper; the silences are full, often ending with indrawn breaths. I find myself constructing brief little shards of narrative between any two sound segments: a darker turn here, some hope there, a complication arising, etc. but any such turn very, very subtle. A truly living music.

For 'L’âme est sans retenue II' (1997-2000), Frey once again uses periods of sound and silence, though their durations (over the course of forty minutes) vary. The sounds are field recordings made by Frey (as well as, per the credits, some bass clarinet, though I admit to having difficulty picking it up for certain; there are points where I think I hear it, if it's pitched fairly high), the silences are complete. There's an overall fine woolliness to the sounds. Sometimes, it seems as though the source is exterior, sometimes inside, here with a super-deep, rumbling bass spine, there with wispier elements, now and then with ghostly vestiges of what might be human voices. As with the previous work, the sounds occupt a territory that's roughly consistent--one gets the sense they could be excerpts from a single evening's work (they do connote nighttime to this listener), the recordist quietly ambling from location to location. Again, the shifts are discreet: a mild lessening or increase of dynamics, a slightly different timbre, slight in envelope but infinitely large in detail. Perhaps it's from the title ('The soul is without restraint') but there is, in fact, a sense of exposure, of opening oneself up to the world, pausing to consider what's been heard/seen (the silence), opening up again. So human.

A wonderful recording, yet another in the seemingly (happily!) unending stream of such from Frey. (Brian Olewnick)

Clara de Asís - Without (elsewhere 004) by Brian Olewnick - Just Outside (11/12/2018)

Prior to this release, I'd known de Asís as a guitarist but here she's in the role of composer. Violinist Erik Carlson and percussionist Greg Stuart offer a reading of her 'Without', a piece that strikes me as more complex and, to me, more difficult than I would have guessed at first blush.

'Without' is made up of a number of sections which, I think one could say, generally move from grainier and more abrasive to less so, though not in an obvious path and by no means always. It leaps right in with the violin offering high, needle-like harmonics with what sounds like numerous objects being roughly rubbed and tossed on a bass drum. Four minutes in, this abruptly shifts to a low vibraphone pulse; there's some other, obscure activity, probably ancillary sounds made by Stuart. Carlson entires, again pitched high but somewhat cleaner, a kind of Tony Conrad line weaving through the vibraphone cloud. This is followed by solo violin, a single note, held for about eight seconds, repeated by itself until joined by a clear, high bell, the pair heard in an irregular series with a decent amount of silence. I have the impression of an object with two main aspects being viewed from various angles, in differing light conditions. There's relatedness but a certain amount of apartness. This, for me, creates something of a challenge in hearing the piece as a whole, but it's a very enjoyable challenge, surely more an issue for these ears than anything amiss on the part of de Asís. Some 32 minutes in, there's an especially lovely sequence with vibes and lower, though still sandpapery, violin that serves as a kind of oasis after a demanding journey. This merges into isolated, low plucks on the violin, soon accompanied by clear wood block strikes, a pattern similar to that of the violin/bell sequence heard earlier. The blocks accompany a sustained violin tone very similar to that which began the work, closing it out.

Rigorous, spare, only occasionally luxuriant, 'Without' is a fine, demanding recording. (Brian Olewnick)

Stefan Thut - about (elsewhere 005) by Brian Olewnick - Just Outside (11/13/2018)

A piece realized and recorded live in Huddersfield by a sextet consisting of Ryoko Akama (electronics), Stephen Chase (guitar), Eleanor Cully (piano), Patrick Farmer (metal percussion), lo wie (tingsha--small Tibetan cymbals) and Thut (cello).

In his notes printed on the inner sleeve, Thut writes, "while being together they enjoyed leaving time and space for each other". I haven't seen the score, but I'm guessing there may have been text instructions to that effect, or at least including that kind of consideration as a means of operating. The sounds throughout the work, which lasts almost an hour, tend toward the soft and percussive, beginning with a clear, crystalline bell strike (the tingsha, perhaps) and continuing with single plucks of the cello and guitar, strikings of piano keys (fairly high in the register) and discreet electronics. More often than not, they don't overlap each other, leaving plenty of space, although the silences, while common, don't last much more than 10-15 seconds. One of the intriguing things about the music is how relatively evenly spread the sounds are--thin but always within range, as though small items had wafted down from some height but managed to arrange themselves with only the barest of overlaying, something landing in all areas but leaving much ground uncovered. Some delicate clatter emerges, now and then a woman's quiet voice, here and there, a man's. The basic character is maintained throughout, "steady-state" in a sense, very much like observing a natural phenomenon--leaves falling comes to mind. Oddly meditative.

There's not too much more to say. 'about' is entrancing, lovingly performed. I've listened to it a number of times and will be drawn back again--a perceptive, human work. (Brian Olewnick)

Clara de Asís - Without (elsewhere 004) by Marc Medwin - Dusted Magazine (10/31/2018)

What is the allure of absence? Why are those taken with what we’re still calling the avant-garde, demonstrating a startling lack of precision, regularly confronted by what we equally sloppily still call silence? Maybe the sonic overload faced daily by many, the onslaught of timbral information bludgeoning perception from morning exit to evening reentry, has re-radicalized the notion of a place of something approaching and approximating a space for reflection. As demonstrated in the 43-minute Without, the fourth release on Yuko Zama’s Elsewhere label, Clara de Asis writes music that might be described as inhabiting such a space, one where possibilities flourish as realized potentialities, the place where sound constantly wends its way toward silence, or where the silence is just on the point of transformation into sound.

The soundstage is simply set. Two musicians, violinist Erik Carlson and percussionist Greg Stuart commence on opposite sides of it and slowly reverse positions as the music unfolds. Its trajectory contrasts bowed, struck and plucked sounds of varying length and brevity, solo and in tandem, but, characteristically of Asis’ sound worlds, each is luminously clear, and many are rife with overtones, especially Carlson’s translucently bowed pitch that begins and concludes the piece. Even the multivalently breathy and sometimes steamily sibilant timbres Stuart conjures from bowing or caressing who knows exactly what objects emerge with stunning clarity and intricate detail. To assert that the music is performed by a violinist and percussionist, while accurate, would constitute an inadvertent feeding of misinformation to the unsuspecting. The players form a small and sonorously fluid ensemble rather than anything approaching a conventional duo. Anyone who knows Carlson and Stuart’s work, either together or in other contexts, will be aware of their attention to each sonic moment and the vast array of technical and imaginative prowess they bring to each event.

To my ears, what holds the music together, and it coheres remarkably well despite a steady juxtaposition of disjuncture and recurrence, is the trajectory of each sound in its surrounding space. The scoring seems, from a listener perspective, to foster such precise placement of sonority that even its sometimes lengthy absences take on shape, an almost pictorial form. they are neither the stratified silences of AMM nor the alternately expectant and contemplative places of semi-repose that Antoine Beuger or Jurg Frey might offer, or rather, they don’t serve exactly the same purposes. It could be that Asis’ silences are closer to the poignant understatement Harold Pinter really wanted in his pauses, anticipating, implying if not directly embodying motion. Via a wonderfully evocative title and her excellent choice in performers, Asis allows absence and presence their starkly defined and deeply poetic symbiosis. (Marc Medwin)

Clara de Asís - Without (elsewhere 004) by Peter Margasak - Bandcamp Daily (10/30/2018)

Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: October 2018

Clara de Asís is a Spanish guitarist and composer living in Marseilles, France, and her music explores sound in its purest, most abstract forms. She’s a prolific performer, but she wrote Without for two excellent American experimentalists: violinist Erik Carlson and percussionist Greg Stuart, both of whom possess deep affinities for her concerns, the instrumental vocabulary to bring them to life, and the improvisation flexibility to flesh out her schematic score. The composer provides a detailed framework for the musicians, mapping out the placement and duration of specific passages, with looser indication of textural ideas, volume, and percussive materials, but in its execution both Carlson and Stuart are required to make many of their own choices. Over the course of 44 meditative, opulently grainy minutes, the musicians carve out extended passages of elusive long tones and weighty silences. Stuart deploys bows on a wide variety of objects of metal, wood, clay, ceramic, and glass, constantly altering the timbre and bite of his frictive machinations—whether high-pitched sine-like tones or swirling rustles—creating both collisions and synchronicities with Carlson’s meticulously pitched violin. There are a few fleeting noh-like moments where instruments are plucked and struck. The musicians impart a dazzling sensitivity to the piece, moving through the score with unhurried grace to arrange the compelling studies into a beautifully austere, moving experience. (Peter Margasak)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere 002) by Dionys Della Luce - Inactuelles, musiques singulières (10/29/2018)

1:01:33 : c'est la durée de la dernière composition du pianiste et compositeur Melaine Dalibert. Après Quatre pièces pour piano (2015) et Ressac (2017), il poursuit son exploration des formes liées à une écriture algorithmique, cette fois une forme un peu plus longue encore que les presque cinquante minutes de la pièce éponyme du second enregistrement. La composition est constituée de motifs de deux à neuf notes, entrecoupés de silences relatifs, dans la mesure où la pédale enveloppe l'ensemble d'un halo spectral d'harmoniques. Le tempo semble stable, les motifs reviennent, s'entrelacent, à tel point qu'on n'est jamais certain d'entendre les mêmes séquences, ce qui crée une impression de flottement, d'irréalité. Chaque motif devient alors comme l'équivalent de l'une de ces images du monde flottant chères à la tradition japonaise du mono no aware, « l'empathie envers les choses ». C'est ainsi peut-être que se comprend le titre, Musique pour le lever du jour : musique pour que le jour se lève, il incomberait à la musique cette tâche primordiale de nous délivrer de la nuit. Ce serait l'aube indécise, cette zone frontière entre la nuit et le jour, avant que le soleil ne sorte ses rayons. La musique est une incantation, elle appelle le soleil, elle le précède. Elle est hiératique, elle se tient sur le seuil ; en même temps elle est nimbée du monde des rêves auxquels elle adhère encore, prisonnière de l'ancestrale fascination de la nuit. Elle est désir d'éveil, et nostalgie de l'ombre engourdissante, dissolvante. Aussi ne cesse-t-elle de se lancer, essaie-t-elle de prendre des aspects claironnants, mais une timidité la retient, une pudeur, si bien qu'elle se tait. Elle se sent bien, là, tranquille. Elle se voit bien se substituant et à la nuit et au jour, pour toujours, dans l'abolition de la course du temps qu'elle suspend indéfiniment. Sur le seuil, dans la semi-obscurité ou le demi-jour, elle vit son heure de gloire, inaugurale et souveraine de l'éphémère. Le piano est devenu portique de cloches ivres de sonner encore et encore et de s'écouter ré-sonner. Plus rien n'a d'importance, que le son produit par la frappe, sa propagation qui instaure le temps véritable, le temps pur d'avant les horloges, non froidement mesuré mais sensible. Un temps humble, succession d'attaques/frappes et de lents déclins, chargé déjà des souvenirs proches des notes précédentes, un temps qui baigne comme un peu au-dessus de sa naissance et de sa mort renaissante, un temps qui lévite dans l'abolition de toute presse. Le pianiste est ce nouveau Narcisse se mirant dans les rides du bassin limpide qu'il frappe et refrappe, fasciné, amoureux de l'image sonore annonciatrice de la pleine lumière à venir, trop heureux de s'en tenir là cependant dans l'enfantin plaisir des recommencements délicieux, de la réitération jamais tout à fait la même, toujours quelque peu imprévisible, chargée parfois de bruits à la limite du perceptible venus de très loin ou de tout près (eaux lointaines, frottements sur les touches, etc. liés à l'enregistrement ?) qui lui confèrent une épaisseur émouvante justement parce qu'elle approfondit encore l'à peine dansante apparition/disparition du son instrumental et de sa traîne d'harmoniques enchevêtrées, feutrées par la tonalité mate du piano. En somme, cette heure nous conduit à savourer l'évanescente beauté multiple de l'éphémère, à nous perdre en elle pour nous ressourcer. Paradoxe pour une musique "savante"... ce qui précède rendant compte comme d'habitude du point de vue de l'auditeur. Pour en savoir plus sur les intentions du concepteur, vous trouverez la référence d'un entretien en anglais avec Melaine Dalibert plus loin.

Le soleil acceptera-t-il enfin de se lever ? Serons-vous vraiment prêts ? Et si nous restions là, dans l’écoute perpétuelle de l’aube indécise ? (Dionys Della Luce)

Jürg Frey '120 Pieces of Sound' / Clara de Asís 'Without' / Stefan Thut 'about' by Darren McClure - Toneshift.net (10/23/2018)

The first thing I noticed about Elsewhere, the new label curated by Yuko Zama, was the similarity between its logo and that of Erstwhile Records. It’s no surprise then to discover the connection between the two: Zama had previously worked for Erstwhile for 15 years as a designer, photographer and co-producer. This new label is now her own project, assisted by her husband, Erstwhile’s Jon Abbey in an executive producer role. Zama’s statement of intent is to release modern classical music that takes cues from the past but is refracted through a very contemporary lens. She hopes that other types of music will also be included, “as long as it feels real and genuine, or something that seems as if I were hearing it in the wind from elsewhere”. And this sense of “elsewhere” extends from the label’s name to it’s output, music that is at once interior and exterior, familiar yet otherworldly.

The first two issues on the label covered live both improvisation and composition, and this blurring between such distinct practices is where Elsewhere seems to thrive. A set of three new releases this month are poised to explore these intersections in further detail, each covering different but not unconnected terrain.

The first of these is 120 Pieces of Sound by Jürg Frey. Comprised of two long pieces, the CD documents Frey’s unique approach to contemporary classical music, incorporating “lists” into his compositional process. These lists might include words, chords or other nodes to be connected and contextualized through the structure of the music. These connections invariably bring out melodies and patterns, extending outward and developing into larger systems. The first piece here, “60 Pieces of Sound”, sees Frey joined by a cast of musicians from the Boston-based ensemble Ordinary Affects. One of those members, Laura Cetilia, plays cello as counterpart to Frey’s clarinet in two-part melody that creates strange harmonics, slightly dissonant but retaining a calm clarity. These chords are stretched into elongated shapes, before dissolving into silence, like a breathless pause, before appearing again and repeating the process.
The second piece, “L’âme est sans retenue II” was written for field recordings and bass clarinet, and contains a similar structure to its preceding track on the album. Sounds and silence swing back and forth, but in slightly longer durations than “60 Pieces of Sound”. However, the silences are less absolute, each time the music dies down, a faint drone hovers in the periphery of the audio space, like a luminous thread attached to each louder part. The field recordings add a lot of texture here, complementing the clarinet with a tactile rumble that creates a deeper atmosphere than the first composition. Occasionally, a trebly ping appears, maybe a pitched recording or another found sound, which feels like a little shard of light escaping from the darker drones.
Apparently, these two pieces were not actually directly related, their similarities being more of a coincidence than design. But I think this illustrates Frey’s system of composition and its success in its score. Having these two works presented together affords the listener an insight into Frey’s approach to pitch, harmony and structure.

Elsewhere’s next release is Without, composed by Clara de Asis. Written for Erik Carlson (violin) and Greg Stuart (percussion), this 43-minute piece again finds sound competing with silence. The strings of the violin are stretched and smeared against the back drop pulverized percussion, separately occupying a stereo channel each. This creates a satisfyingly spatial experience, especially on headphones. At time the quieter passages in this composition contain low spectral hums and drones that haunt their space before the bowed strings make another appearance. Other times these points are filled with almost imperceptible sounds. Percussion is smudged, blurred and textural with cymbal sounds being scraped into ever-evolving soundscapes. There is an organic quality in the piece, one that shows a looseness in Asis’s original composition that allows the players a certain amount of leeway in their performance. This freedom to improvise over the score is a theme these new Elsewhere editions tends to embrace.

The third and final release from the label is by the Swiss composer and cellist Stefan Thut. About was written by Thut for a sextet for a concert series commissioned by Ryoko Akama. Herself and Thut were joined by four other musicians, incorporating cello, electronics, guitar, piano, tingsha and metal percussion. This releases features the biggest cast of players in this set of three Elsewhere CDs, but sonically it is by far the most minimal.
After a minute and a half of silence, the first sound in the hour long piece appears with the ringing of a bell. From this point, the other sounds emerge slowly, the chasms of silence between them being longer than the expressed sounds themselves. The performance also included a lot of physical movement by the performers, as they paced around the space, playing notes in different areas. In fact, the title About refers to “walking about”.

As with all these Elsewhere releases, there is a Zen-like focus on the details within the silence. Thus displays this notion in his idea that, as he says, “something vanishing creates a state of pure attentiveness”. This extends to the performers being aware of the decay of sound as it fades into yet another pool of quietness. There may be a lack of sound in these quiet parts, but they are full of expectation. (Darren McClure)

Jürg Frey – 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) - Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter (10/19/2018)

Featuring Jurg Frey on clarinet with Ordinary Affects: Laura Cetilia on cello, Morgan Evans-Weiler on violin, J.P.A. Falzone on keyboard and Luke Martin on electric guitar. Jürg Frey is a member of the Wanderweiser Composition Ensemble, a collective of composers who deal with their own aesthetic of minimalist music. Mr. Frey has some dozen discs out on the Erstwhile and Edition Wanderweiser labels. This disc features two long works by Mr. Frey: the title work which performed by the Boston-based ensemble: Ordinary Affects with Mr. Frey joining them. The title piece deals with 60 chords to be played by the ensemble which are followed by a similar duration of silence. I attended a Keith Rowe book release gathering and solo performance last Saturday morning (10/13/18), which was filled by a discussion about and questions answered by Mr. Rowe. Rowe mentioned that “music is not acoustic”, which I asked him to explain. His rather enigmatic answer seemed to mention that music is more than the sounds we hear, it is the intent of the composer ands how we perceive what we hear that are involved as well. This is inspired me to think more deeply about the way music affects us.
Listening to this piece, it is the silences in between the music that gives us time to consider what we have just heard. The music sails in and sounds like an island or raft floating on the soft waves. Each time the music appears, a different combination of instruments and textures changes the mood or vibe slightly. It takes some time & patience to absorb and consider this music, realizing the way it does change and affect our perception.

The second piece, “L’âme est sans retenue II” (“The soul is unrestrained”), is for bass clarinet and field recordings. The bass clarinet is buried within the field recordings and mostly unrecognizable. A similar duration of the sounds and silences alternate with each other like the first piece on this disc. Hence, time is stretched out as we listen closely to the subtle sonic manipulation of the field recordings. Each island of sound(s) evokes a different feeling or vibe. Distant thunder, rustling wind, a train or perhaps just wandering ghosts, each sound is carefully placed upon the silence. I am currently sitting in my kitchen contemplating life, the soft humming of a space heater across the room whirs. Impossible to tell when this disc ended and when I was still concentrating on the other sounds. This disc did inspire me to list closer to the sounds in my environment. (Bruce Lee Gallanter)

Jürg Frey '120 Pieces of Sound' / Clara de Asís 'Without' / Stefan Thut 'about' by Frans de Waard - Vital Weekly (10/13/2018)

This is the second batch of releases by Elsewhere Music, a new label run by Yuko Zama, who has been designing and producing for Erstwhile Records and Gravity Wave, and now has Jon Abbey from Erstwhile as her executive producer. I am not sure if it is all as serious as this sounds. The goal is to release "mainly contemporary work which has classical music aesthetics at its roots, but it may not have to strictly belong to the area of contemporary classical music". Perhaps that explains why I recognized some of the names involved, both from the composers as well as the performers.

I started with the piece 'Without' composed by Clara de Asís, and performed by Erik Carlson on violin and Greg Stuart on percussion. Apparently the score gives a precise framework for the position and the duration of each sound section and each silence, as well as a rough outline for the texture and volume, the use of tone or noise and the materials for the percussion, "but a large part of the score was open for the two performers' freedom". The whole piece lasts forty-three minutes and in that time frame the two players move about with a variety of approaches and materials. In her own solo music Clara de Asís is someone we know how loves a more drone like approach (see the review of her release 'Uno Todo Tres' in Vital Weekly 1030) and that interest is translated here by these two players There is throughout a slightly more sustaining approach to be noted in several sections, save for the third and the last which is just based on single sounds. The opening section is the loudest of all the section, and here the performers seem to be applying electro-acoustic methods to the instruments, using the surfaces with objects and scan them. From there on the sections become gradually more and more silent, but the music never dies or goes below the threshold of hearing. There are silences between the various sections (and I admit I have no idea if de Asís would call these sections, but I do), which add to the tranquillity of the piece. It is, most of the time at least, a very quiet piece of music and as such it has a very Zen like character.

Stefan Thut is no stranger to these pages (for instance Vital Weekly 1138, 1083 or 1076) and he belongs to the Wandelweiser group of composers, which is, in case you don’t know, music that is very quiet and usually with more open ended scores to interpret by the players. Here we have 'About', which was commissioned by Ryoko Akama, in her role as a curator for Ame. The piece was performed by Akama (electronics), Stephen Chase (guitar), Eleanor Cully (piano), Patrick Farmer (metal percussion), lo wie (tingsha), and Thut (cello) and recorded at the University of Huddersfield. "His score instructs three performers to make percussive, ringing, and electronic sounds while three other performers play short high register pitches on their musical instruments according to written scores, particularly paying attention to the decay of sound in the subsequent silence. It also instructs parallel activities in between playing the sounds; walking around the space, and uttering monosyllabic words quietly in their own languages". It is a long quote but then you know what this nearly one hour piece of music is about. This is indeed very much the kind of Wandelweiser music you would expect from Thut. An endless stream of isolated sounds on all of these instruments in what seems an endless amount of variations. By accident I had this on repeat and as I was lost reading a book I didn't notice that this was on repeat and somewhere after more than two hours I realized I was still listening to the same release. I was then thinking if that was a good or bad thing. I wasn't paying full attention, which I guess is never a good thing, but then perhaps that was then a sort of Zen like experience, which is maybe a good thing. Perhaps. I very much enjoyed the spatial and spacious quality of the music, especially with those occasional bell like sounds, kinda like short cut wind chime. Excellent release.

Jürg Frey is also a Wandelweiser composer and he has two pieces here. First there is ''60 Pieces Of Sound', as performed by the Boston based ensemble Ordinary Affects (Laura Cetilia, Morgan Evans-Weiler, J.P.A. Falzone, Luke Martin) on cello, violin, keyboard and electric guitar, with Frey on clarinet. This piece deals "with two instruments that play the pitches as written in the score forming a two-part melody, and an open instrumentation part for any instrument(s) or sound maker(s) as 'the third voice.' Each of the 60 chords played by the ensemble is followed by a similar duration of silence". Here the cello and the clarinet play the pitches and it is a beautiful piece of quite strumming and every time it sounds the same and different at the same time. Hard to tell what the keyboard does here, though. As the piece progresses over its thirty-two minutes, the music becomes a little more expansive and it keeps changing throughout. 'L'âme Est Sans Retenue II' is the only piece on these three releases in which the composer performs himself solo and Frey picks up a bass clarinet and has field recordings, the latter edited first and then the bass clarinet to fit along the playing. Everything is quite low (as in bass, not necessarily in volume) and makes up both a wonderful as well as most curious piece of music. This piece also has starts and stops and count also to sixty, hence the title of the release. Both are quite different yet they fit together very well. (Frans de Waard)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) by Bill Meyer - Dusted Magazine (10/1/2018)

Biliana Voutchkova is a Bulgarian violinist and vocalist who is active in both new music and improvisational circles who currently lives in Berlin. Michael Thieke is a German clarinetist who lately splits his time between Berlin and Rome and his involvement between jazz and improvisational ensembles. He’s also played semi-popular pop with the Magic I.D. They’ve performed together for over five years and released a couple other discs, one on their own and the other with electro-acoustic media artist Roy Carroll. Blurred Music steps up their profile in imposing fashion.

The title of this triple CD signals both intent and result. It comprises three complete performances from their US tour of December 2016. On each, the two musicians interacted with pre-recorded material, which bounds their interactions in ways that blur the boundary between composition and improvisation. They can choose to double the recording, play a response to it, or find a blank place to improvise without it. In concert, it would have been possible to observe the duo’s interactions and have some idea of what they were choosing to do. But the inevitable abstraction of recording means that one can listen with blithe ignorance or curious attention, but never really know exactly what is happening. There are moments each musician closely harmonizes with her or his recorded counterpoint, and others where they play an adjacent pitch, which interacts with the first to generate beating tones. They also engage in duets with their recorded selves; at one point during the Philadelphia set some woody long tones, a pizzicato thicket and some brisk knocking on the violin’s body nicely generate a sonic image of a complete bush.

In content, you could say that this is semi-improvised chamber music. But since at any moment you have music that was recorded in one room being played back in another while two musicians interact with each other, the recording, and the environmental circumstances of three rooms in different cities, you could say that it’s music of many chambers. And since you are listening to a recording, you could take it a step further and say that it’s music for your personal chamber, and simply bask in the complex play between unabashedly radiant and dryly prickly timbres. Whatever you call it, it provides a sonic satisfaction that delivers on the founding intent of Elsewhere Records. Label head Yuko Zama is married to Jon Abbey of Erstwhile Records, and her aesthetic input has shaped that imprint for years. But where Erstwhile prioritizes ongoing formal advancement, Zama has set out to develop an outlet for music that is beautiful as well as radical. That boundary is just one more that gets artfully smudged on Blurred Music. (Bill Meyer)

Jürg Frey – 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003) by Jack Davidson - Noise Not Music (9/29/2018)

Lots of incredible albums came out last year, but few can claim the same amount of scope and ambition as Jürg Frey’s massive L’âme est sans retenue I, released as a five disc set on Erstwhile. Anyone intimidated by that composition’s nearly six-hour run time may find a more digestible presentation of similar concepts and ideas in 120 Pieces of Sound, which comes out next month on Erstwhile’s newly formed sibling label elsewhere. The disc presents two performances of Frey’s compositions. Stylistically, “60 Pieces of Sound” and “L’âme est sans retenue II” aren’t exactly similar. The former, composed in 2009 for an indefinite amount of performers, is a string-based piece performed by Frey on clarinet with the Boston quartet Ordinary Affects, and consists of 60 chords interspersed with pauses of silence of roughly equal length. The chords range from beautiful and calming to tense and unsettling, with the silences providing pregnant anticipations as the musicians ready their instruments to play the next chord. “L’âme est sans retenue II,” similar to the first installment, is performed solely by Frey using field recordings accompanied by bass clarinet. The sounds are different but the structure is almost indiscernable from “60 Pieces of Sound,” giving the two pieces a wonderful kinship, with the murky beauty of the “L’âme…” segments complementing the heavenly, tensile drones of “60 Pieces of Sound.” This is by far one of my favorite works I’ve heard from Frey, hitting the same spots as 2010’s Weites Land, Tiefe Zeit: Räume 1-8; and while it obviously doesn’t compete with “…retenue I” in scope it’s a wonderful release for new and old appreciators of the composer’s work alike. (Jack Davidson)

Debut Recordings On The Elsewhere Label by John Eyles - All About Jazz (8/11/2018)

"One helluva way to launch a new record label."

After initial publicity about it in the preceding February, July 2018 saw the release of the first two recordings on the Elsewhere label. Each of the albums is available on CD in a limited edition of 500, as well as on unlimited edition digital files. The discs are attractively clad in sleeves with artwork (which digital customers get on JPEG) by David Sylvian, who is also credited as co-producer of the first release alongside the founder of Elsewhere, Yuko Zama.

Zama is the spouse of Jon Abbey, proprietor of Erstwhile records; she has been involved in Erstwhile as photographer, designer and co-producer for fifteen years, and with the Gravity Wave label for eight years, experience that means she is well prepared to run her own label. While Abbey is credited as the executive producer of both these Elsewhere releases, the label is unquestionably Zama's own, set up in January 2018 after Sylvian had alerted her to the recordings featured on the label's first album...

Biliana Voutchkova , Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (Elsewhere 2018) - All About Jazz (8/11/2018)

Blurred Music features three live recordings made in a nine-day period by the duo of Berlin-based Bulgarian violinist Biliana Voutchkova and German clarinetist Michael Thieke, during their December 2016 US tour. Recorded in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, each one gets its own disc, lasting fifty, forty and seventy minutes, respectively. The Voutchkova-Thieke duo dates back to 2011, and first recorded together in 2012 for the fine album Already There (2013, Flexion), meaning that the two have had plenty of experience playing and improvising together.

The methodology employed by the duo on these recordings justifies the album title. Firstly, not everything we hear was played live on the nights in question. Digital recordings of the duo, performing material composed or structured in advance, were played at the performances. Secondly, the players then improvised with those recordings, within a framework restricted by the pre-recorded material. So, the end-product on the discs blurs the boundary between composed and improvised music as well as the one between pre-recorded music and that performed live.

It is a credit to the two players that the niceties of that methodology soon seem of incidental importance; listening to the recordings, the depth and richness of the soundscape immediately make it obvious that this is not just one violin and one clarinet playing at a gig but something else entirely, a quartet of two Voutchkovas and two Thiekes. Anyone familiar with Thieke's past groupings—particularly The Clarinet Trio, The Magic I.D. or The International Nothing, to pick but three—will not be surprised by such innovative methods; they are his forte, and in Voutchkova he has found a kindred spirit; the two sound as if they instinctively understand one another, live or recorded.

This album's masterstroke (also true of AMM's 2018 Matchless album An Unintended Legacy, incidentally) is to include three distinctly different concerts, giving each one a disc of its own. Such juxtapositioning emphasises the subtle variations between concerts, due to the room, the players' moods, the audience and its reactions to the players. Even rigidly scored music varies from performance to performance, but music with an improvised component far more so. As their very different durations indicate, the three nights produced completely different results; this was obviously not a tour where each night's concert followed a well-rehearsed plan to the letter. They began differently, developed and ended differently. The only constant across all three was the quality of the playing and the players' reactions which were exquisite in every way. One helluva way to launch a new record label!

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (Elsewhere 2018) - All About Jazz (8/11/2018)

Given all of the above, it would have been very easy for Musique pour le lever du jour to either be overshadowed by Elsewhere 001 or to be carried along in its slipstream. It is a testament to the quality of Melaine Dalibert's album that neither of those fates await it; had it been released on a different label at a different time, its music would surely have commanded attention and attracted positive comments.

A classically-trained pianist who now teaches in Rennes, Dalibert still has a comparatively small discography; before Musique pour le lever du jour his most notable releases were solo and trio realisations of chamber pieces by Paris-based Italian composer Guiliano d'Angiolini on Cantilena (Another Timbre, 2016), and solo piano recordings of two of his own compositions on Ressac (Another Timbre, 2017). As the dates suggest, Dalibert is on a roll, which makes the current album timely and welcome.

The music consists of a solo piano realisation of the title composition, which lasts over sixty-one minutes. As on Ressac Dalibert uses the piano's sustain pedal most of the time, so that notes resound long after they are struck. Rather than playing single notes and waiting for each to die away, Dalibert plays notes close together in clusters of five, six or seven so that the first of the cluster is still resounding when the last is played; he only plays another cluster when the last note of the previous one is close to fading away. Therein lies one of the album's main fascinations; the piece is continuous without any significant silences, but for the majority of the time the listener is hearing the overlapping notes resounding and interacting in subtly different ways as they fade away.

Dalibert has selected the notes of each cluster so that the resounding notes combine well, often producing overtones and occasional shimmering effects. The notes are so well chosen that the entire piece feels like an object lesson in harmony, not in a dry, academic way but a far more enjoyable one. Clusters are occasionally repeated without losing their impact. Recorded at Dalibert's home, the entire album feels welcoming and intimate, the kind of piece that cries out to be played again and again. This album's title, which translates as Music for the Daybreak, is ideally suited to the optimistic feel of the music itself and to an album launching a new label.

On the basis of Elsewhere's first two releases—and the next three which will feature Jürg Frey, Clara de Asis and Stefan Thut, respectively—the label already looks to be an impressive presence in the areas of modern composition, improvisation, innovation and experimentation. Elsewhere is a label to watch, for sure. (John Eyles)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (Elsewhere 2018) by Peter Margasak - Bandcamp Daily (7/6/2018)

Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: July 2018

French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert has gained attention for his performances of works by melodically oriented minimalists like Peter Garland and Michael Vincent Waller, but in the last couple of years his own compositions have been reaching a wider audience through his dazzling 2017 album on the British imprint Another Timbre, Ressac. Musique pour le lever du jour is his eagerly anticipated followup to Ressac, and like the pieces on that previous album, the hour-long titular work deploys algorithms as a structural tool, building what Dalibert calls “space-time blocks” to suggest the stretching and compression of time. The music also draws upon the unpredictability of the natural world, such as the way a drop of water triggers surprising ripples when it strikes a larger liquid body. This gorgeous epic unfolds slowly, with ringing overtones fusing but never muddying the foreground of the single-note patterns Dalibert continually spreads out. He considers it an “endless piece,” with no obvious beginning or end. Instead, the focus is placed upon how each delicate phrase follows the next, with lots of repetition and subtle phrase modifications producing a Morton Feldman-like splendor: restrained, ineffable, and gorgeous. In fact, it’s almost advisable to treat the performance as an immersive experience, savoring the unhurried melodic patterns and allowing the rich harmonic effects to wash over oneself as a kind of meditative bath. (Peter Margasak)

Want List for Marc Medwin [2018] on Fanfare magazine

Amidst so much garbage riding Minimalism’s coattails, a new release on a brand-new label, appropriately called Elsewhere, emerges like a breath of fresh air. Melaine Dalibert is one of those rare composers who can make each note speak volumes. Musique pour le lever du jour is an hour-long odyssey through the wonderful and awe-inspiring world of the truly minimal utterance, the tone which becomes part of a cell, the cell morphing into another version of itself and all engaging in a marathon game of hide and seek. Very simply recorded, the room, piano, and recording device form a serendipitous triangle out of which timbres of marvelous richness flow. For those patient enough to abide it, there has never been a more appropriate time for such direct and layered beauty. - Marc Medwin

Melaine Dalibert - Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour [Elsewhere Music - 2018] by Roger Batty - Musique Machine

Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour( Music For The Daybreak) is a soothing, hypnotic, though slightly melancholic solo piano work. Over it’s just over hour runtime we get a series of repetitive/ simplistic notation that has a fairly harmonic & hopeful flavor to them- all of this creates both the feeling of slow changing grandeur, and the longing mystery & sadness of time its self.
This release comes in the form of a CD- and it’s the first release on New Jersey-based label Elsewhere Music- whose mission statement is to release contemporary work which has classical music aesthetics at its roots, but may not strictly belong to the area of contemporary classical music. The release comes in mini gatefold- this features different colored & different thickness lines, and black pyramid shapes against a dark blue background- all nicely creating an abstract, yet effective bit of packaging.

I first became aware of this French pianist/composers work with last years Ressac ( on Another Timbre)- this release highlighted the Frenchman’s ability to create starkly beautiful & haunting piano music- that had both mood & melody, without been in any way twee or contrived. And I’m pleased to report that Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour is up to the same standard & quality of Ressac.

The piece finds Dalibert playing out a series of simplistic & repeated notation- these initially have a fairly hopeful, warming & pleasing feel to them. But over time & repetition, they start to become more melancholic, forlorn & haunting. The patterns are played in a fairly steady mid-range speed- though there are effective pauses after each cycle, and these are nicely dipped with moody drifting reverb. Throughout the patterns remain fairly fixed in their harmonic pitter/ patter- lacking say the more angular moments of a Feldman composition, but instead brought to mind the same vibe of say William Basinski work- but of course without the tape decay/ manipulation.

I’d say as a work Musique Pour Le Lever Du Jour is more sparser piano ambience than modern classical minimalism. And I must say it’s rather pleasing & soothing in it unfolds- but what makes it most interesting is the way the repetition seems to shift the mood from fairly bright & hopefully, to slight more forlorn & sad setting. I’m looking forward to hearing more work from Dalibert, and this new label too- as they clearly have a great ear for selecting work to put out. (Roger Batty)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001) by TJ Norris - Toneshift (9/21/2018)

I’m catching up with this set of live performances which is also the first release from new imprint on the block, Jersey City’s own Elsewhere. The limited edition set features Berlin-based duo of Bulgarian violinist Biliana Voutchkova and German clarinetist Michael Thieke. Recorded in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York in 2016 it boasts lovely 6-panel gatefold cover artwork by none other than David Sylvian.

We first travel to Chicago on the first disc. The space is cleared with some fidgety actions by the pair. In between the sawing and air pops is a drone flare that dis/appears with odd timing. The stage is set for this fifty minute singular work to unfold in what appears like a melancholy overture at first. “Improvised parts alternate with fields of pre-structured material…virtually identical fragments of the live performances synchronize simultaneously with the playback.” The instruments, both known for their ability to create sounds as voluptuous as they can be shrill, seem to be in a hardy conversation that doesn’t skip a beat, even without a beat structure at all. That’s right, this is going raw, without percussion. The tweets and tweaks of notes writhe above the contorted melody in such a curious way. If you like way out jazz mixed with contemporary cut-up classical your ears will be dancing in disquietude.

It’s been less than ten minutes in and these guys are circulating the space, following each other, in both opposition and in concert. There’s this loose feel that suddenly tightens and shifts dramatically when you least expect. I particularly like when there are those few and between moments of very intimate solo playing where, for instance, you can hear Thieke’s raspy last breath like a hissing snake, or where Voutchkova’s bow sounds as though its whittling down its last fiber. In these moments you can hear effects like gurgling birdcalls that are likely vocal treatments and amped breathing. There are resilient moments of heavy fiddling, and when its layered it becomes interestingly unbalanced. I’m momentarily reminded of Sun Ra somehow.

In Philadelphia (CD2) their atmospheric sound is tuned in, glaring bright. Here they make sounds that are slightly more cosmic, with slight alterations, drawing fine lines with a gray air about it. The performance starts off much more understated and chilly than the previous. Voutchkova picks at her strings in short plunks that sound like pecking, this is further visualized by the additional bird snaps and flaps. The sound board mix is perfect, you can easily hear tiny chattering of finger movements along with the way in which their playing fills the surround of the space itself. They jig and play with micro-effects until colliding in a stringed call to action, with its sharp pitch and wiggly aftermath. This is an introverted set projected outwardly with a certain fearlessness.

Then CD3 takes us to their performance in New York which seems to pick up almost exactly where they left off in the Midwest. The disc includes four additional short excerpts from each of the performances which offer some sweet focal spots. It’s the longest of the three performance, with more of an abstract classical feel. That is until the deep field sounds start to emote, they are in the thick of it and contend by offering a peculiar prepared sound. The instruments chirp in flux until they let go with a sudden, cavorting and extended wail. This then shifts into lower tones followed by a pleasing and lengthy respite of small sound effects: cracks, sloshes, and other acoustic bending.

This is a very physical record. I’m unsure how they created thtrain chugging sounds but that alongside the squiggly strings make for a uniquely playful portion nearly forty-five minutes in. They bring the long horns and singular squeaky pops with warbly voice into the final minutes, leaving an uncertain stillness in the room. (TJ Norris)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) by Dolf Mulder - Vital Weekly (9/21/2018)

Elsewhere Music is a new label and here we introduce their first two releases. The label is initiated by Yuko Zama, who worked years for Erstwhile and Gravity Wave, before deciding to start her own label focusing mainly on “contemporary work which has classical music aesthetics at its roots, but it may not have to strictly belong to the area of contemporary classical music”, Zama explains. She makes a very promising start with these two releases that have artwork by David Sylvian. ‘Blurred Music’ is a very daring one: a three double bill of improvised music by a Berlin-based duo. Happily not just a duo but one of violinist Biliana Voutchkova and clarinettist Michael Thieke. They work together since 2011. They did a lot of concerts in the past and already released a CD, ‘Already There’ for the Swiss label Flexion Records. Also I want to commemorate the outstanding solo debut by Voutchkova; ‘Modus of Raw’ (see Vital Weekly 1069), released by Evil Rabbit in 2015. ‘Blurred Music’ features three of their live concerts recorded during their 2016-US-tour in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Long extended improvisations of respectively 50, 40 and 70 minutes, recorded in a time span of 9 days. “The music’s structure creates a blur; improvised pats alternate with fields of pre-structured material in which digital recordings of the duo are duplicated by live performance”, they explain in the liner notes. Happily I didn’t find myself trying to detect what was pre-recorded and what was added later. In the end this is not interesting and signifies one is not engaged in listening to the music. No, I was overwhelmed by the passionate intensity and unity of their music. Their conversations have substance and are full of nuance and subtleties that matter. They play with small motives, timbre, drone, micro-tonality. Technically both are very skilled, using extended techniques without moving away from the original sound world of the instrument. The violin remains a violin. Because of their play with their own pre-recorded improvisations, they create intentionally a blur, but not for its own sake, as some interesting effect. It is a means for creating some very vivid and urgent musical conversations.

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere 003) - Vital Weekly (9/21/2018)

Melaine Dalibert is a new name to me. He is a French composer and pianist from Rennes of rising fame for his compositions for piano, as well his interpretations of works by Gérard Pesson, Giuliano D’Angiolini, and melodically oriented minimalists like Peter Garland, Michael Vincent Waller, among others. So far his music is released on two albums. The self-released ‘Quatre pièces pour piano’ (2015) ‘Ressac’ issued by Another Timbre in 2017. ‘Musique pour le lever du jour’ (2017) is a one-hour-composition, recorded in march this year in his home studio. Likewise as Waller, Dalibert composes in a minimalist style with an openness for melodic aspects, using algorithmic procedures that he developed in his composer. With his new work he creates a work that evokes the experience of a giant space or a stretched out continuum in time. With sparse single notes he creates patterns that invite to a meditatively and unintentional listening. The music is introspective and calm. Like stepping on stones in the river of time. The recording is absolutely excellent. The resonances and overtones are beautifully captured on this transparent recording. (Dolf Mulder)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere 002) by Michele Palozzo - esoteros (1/1/2020)

I am increasingly convinced that minimalism can not be defined as a style or an easy label: it is first and foremost a mindset and a direct consequence of modus operandi , designed to redefine the time of existence and art seen as indissoluble entities. It is this aspect that makes music as essential as that of the Breton pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert, who in one year has in fact found a home in two independent labels on the other side: the English Another Timbre (" Ressac ", 2017) and now the newborn Elsewhere curated by Yuko Zama - producer and designer who has always been involved in the projects of the American Erstwhile, directed by mate Jon Abbey. The artworkof this second catalog number is signed by David Sylvian, admirer of the radical avant-garde represented by them, and which he now affirms himself in his sporadic musical projects.

The bright horizon that stands out in the quiet scores of Dalibert could not be described better than with the image of a perpetual dawn: and indeed there is no better time, in the space of twenty-four hours, to fully enjoy this shimmering splendor, whereas the reverberation of the sun's rays becomes tangible through the single keys ringed during the long passage, without exception to what appears as a discipline of the spirit as well as a precise choice of writing.
Similarly to the pianist R. Andrew Lee in the interpretation of November (1959), the minimalist fluvial prototype of the geeky American pioneer Dennis Johnson, so also Dalibert manages to alternate and juxtapose the sequences of changing tones on pentatonic scales, which with the use of the resonance pedal always find new points of contact between the respective shadows that gradually propagate in the acoustic space.

Cradled and mesmerized by such a simple prodigy of contemporary expressiveness, in the "Musique pour le lever du jour" we encounter more nuances than would be expected.Dedicated to the Belgian pianist Stéphane Ginsburgh, a prestigious performer of the work of Morton Feldman published by Sub Rosa, the suite of Melaine Dalibert adds another important piece to the foundations laid in these years by "composers of quiet" (Alex Ross), humble exponents of a renaissance that still few recognize and appreciate but that perhaps, in retrospect, will leave a significant mark in the music to come. (Michele Palozzo, English translation from the original Italian review)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) - The Free Jazz Collective (9/1/2018)

Violinist-vocalist Biliana Voutchkova is an experimental artist who spans the widest possible range of sound and movement. The Berlin-based, Bulgarian musician-composer-improviser, who has worked with innovative contemporary orchestras as Ensemble Modern and Zeitkratzer, keeps extending her sonic, physical and technical capacities, evolving into a highly individual musical language.

Very few free-improvisers have such a passionate advocate as iconic art-rock vocalist and sound artist David Sylvian. Last year he did the artwork for an album by Voutchkova, German clarinetist Michael Thieke (from the duo The International Nothing and the group The Pitch), and Irish Roy Carroll who plays on electro-acoustic media, As Found (Sound Anatomy, 2017). But Sylvian's enthusiasm for the music of Voutchkova and Thieke continued and he asked Erstwhile Records’ Jon Abbey to release more music of this duo. Eventually, Abbey’s wife, photographer-designer-producer Yuko Zama, decided to found her own label, Elsewhere Records, and to release a triple-album of Voutchkova and Thieke live performances as the first statement of her label. Sylvian did again the artwork.

Voutchkova and Thieke have been working together since 2011, both collaborate in Berlin’s Splitter Orchestra, and the duo released a limited-edition (170 copies) debut album, the live Already There (Flexion, 2013). Blurred Music offers a deeper, more detailed and varied insights into their rich and intimate aesthetics. Voutchkova and Thieke create intentionally a blur; improvised parts alternate with fields of pre-structured material in which digital recordings of the duo are duplicated by live performance. Virtually identical fragments of the live performance synchronize simultaneously with the playback, unavoidably giving rise to blur in the temporal dimension, in the rhythmic, timbral, and motivic variations, and in the microtonal interpretation of individual pitches. The live portion of the duplicated material is still improvised, but within a framework purposefully restricted by the pre-recorded material, the intervals between which are indeterminate. To the listener’s perception, what is being composed in real time blurs into what has been structured in advance; the difference can be registered only after an interval, if at all.

These complex compositional and improvisational strategies become insignificant when listening to Blurred Music. You can either trust Sylvain's refined taste or simply surrender to the magnificent sonic universes of Voutchkova and Thieke. Soon enough you may find yourself drawn again and again to their addictive duets, wishing for more and always discovering new nuances and ideas. Voutchkova and Thieke offer an arresting journey through sounds and sounds within sounds, increasing their and ours, the listeners, sensitivity of perception. Their sonic explorations are sketched with quiet intensity, reserved but passionate dynamics, adventurous, inventive spirit and austere beauty. Both carefully deconstructs the conventional, sonic spectrum of their instruments into subtle particles that flow organically, creating a completely new language on their own, somewhere between tonality and atonality.

Each of the three performances, all recorded within nine days on December 2016, has its own distinct atmosphere. The “Chicago”, recorded at Carr Chapel, begins with a restless tone poem but soon Voutchkova and Thieke develop a gentle, compassionate intimacy, courting and teasing each other with intriguing, dissonant sounds. Often Theike’s ethereal multiphonics merge into Voutchkova’s soft overtones and suggest a vibrant, sonorous texture. Surprisingly, the duo even spices its busy conversation with fragments of folk songs and elements of contemporary chamber music. “Philadelphia”, captured in Aux Performance Space, uses the resonant hall beautifully to weave patiently layers upon layers of sustained sounds, floating and flowing majestically in space. This piece alternates freely between a quiet and highly disciplined drone soundscape, stressing the microtonal precision of Voutchkova and Thieke interplay, and a lively, tense and open conversation between the two. “New York”, recorded at Experimental Intermedia, is the most complex one, shifting constantly from a meditative, chamber texture to a searching, restless mode, still, a playful one; then to a static drone entity that gently vibrates with microtonal waves; and to an intimate, inventive talk between old comrades and again to a contemplative and berathy, almost silent texture before concluding this engaging saga with Voutchkova and Thieke singing a beautiful melody that allow these two kindred souls to dance around each other and sing-play-chant-meditate in their very own expressive language. (Eyal Hareuveni)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du hour (elsewhere 002) - Just Outside (8/8/2018)

In essence, Dalibert's wonderful, hour-plus solo piano composition is a kind of process music, but one where its structural aspect can, if desired, be easily ignored, the listener perhaps choosing to simply be wafted along by the sumptuous, lingering tones.

One hears sets of single notes, evenly played. They arrive in sequences of 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9--I don't think there are any "5's" or anything greater than nine, but I could be mistaken. The sustain pedal is held down throughout. The rests between the phrases are, I believe, equivalent in seconds to the number of notes in the preceding phrase. The lengths of the phrases appear to occur randomly but are, in fact, generated by Dalibert's use of the Thue-Morse sequence, a mathematical theory well beyond my meager comprehension skills but one which, when used in certain ways, results in numbers that converge on the fractal curve known as the Koch Snowflake. There is a fine sense of repetition inextricably meshed with irregularity. The notes chosen, per Dalibert, "are only second major, third minor and fifth (or their reversal), in equal repartition so that the general color is diatonic, very slowly modulating."

What, then, does one hear? If I'm to make references, I sometimes think of it as halfway between a Tom Johnson work and the approach used by La Monte Young in parts of 'The Well-Tuned Piano', albeit without the retuning (!). There's a quasi-similar feeling of drifting, of floating while at the same time the soft rigor of the structure constrains too much wayward movement. The clearly struck notes (from a peek at a couple of pages from the score, often flatted) both stand forthright and, via the sustain, effervesce and dissolve into one another. Within each sequence, the notes tend to follow a similar pattern, enough so that it always feels familiar, perhaps previously heard, but really just slightly different; the same general environs but via differing glances. Also barely heard, but always a plus for this listener, is the distant sound of a street and what seems to be flowing water, as though from rain down a gutter; I love the sense of immersion this provides.

The music itself is watery--apparently clear on the surface, disappearing when examined very closely. One can listen to the structure, try to grasp its fractal nature or can just surrender and be borne along, irritation setting in only when the disc ends. In the interim, one floats.

Excellent, intelligent and rapturous work. (Brian Olewnick)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) - Just Outside (8/8/2018)

'Blurred Music' is technically the first recording from Yuko Zama's very exciting new Elsewhere label. I wrote earlier about Melaine Dalibert's release, the second in the imprint's early catalog; it was a single disc and, for me, easier (in one sense, anyway) to grasp. Here we have three CDs, three live recordings from within the space of nine days in December, 2016, each with its own complex character. I found it tougher to grapple with but, ultimately, just as rewarding.

I've known and greatly admired Thieke's clarinet playing and composing for some time now, particularly as involved The International Nothing, his clarinet duo with Kai Fagaschinski, and The Magic I.D. with Fagaschinski, Christof Kurzmann and Margareth Kammerer. I was much less familiar with Voutchkova's violin work, though what I had heard led me to "place" her more in the jazz-based free improv camp rather than the quieter, smoother territories often investigated by Thieke, so I was curious and even tentative about this combination. It was only belatedly that I realized I actually possessed an earlier collaboration, 'Already There' on Flexion (2013), which I enjoyed a great deal at the time; the problem with hearing too much music: one forgets things one shouldn't--need to revisit it.

In any case, I came into this with notions both accurate and false. The methodology used here is fascinating. There's a base of pre-taped material. The duo sometimes attempts to duplicate these sounds (the "blurred" aspect arising upon the inevitable failure to do so precisely) and sometimes improvises along with/atop it. There's more to it than that and I may not be understanding it completely. The at-home listener, however, can only rarely distinguish between the taped and live sounds, so experiences the music as a two violin, two clarinet quartet. The first portion of Chicago is rather active, even frenetic, tending more toward the kind of movement I'd associated with Voutchkova--very gestural and virtuosic, with Thieke (unusually, in my experience) following suit, his clarinet a-bubble and not above the occasional shriek. But soon enough, the music splays out into thick, taffy-like lines, slowly settling into various lovely forms of stasis, then spinning out once more into a soft but energetic space with spit-out breath sounds and quietly strangulated vocals and pizzicato attacks. There's more of this kind of back and forth on the first disc, 'Chicago', than on the others and for my taste, the music works better the less raucous it is, but that's perhaps more on a micro-level. Listened to as a whole--a more difficult task, more so over three discs--it fits in quite well as a "chapter".

'Philadelphia' picks up, a week later, where 'Chicago' left off. In fact, I found myself wondering if the underlying tape might be one long session, returned to at the point which the previous concert ended. I've been remiss in remarking how simply gorgeous the meld of violin and clarinet (or two violins and two clarinets) is. That's brought home near the beginning of this set, the strands intertwining licorice-like, creaminess and grit, so great to wallow in. After my first listen-through, I had the impression that 'Chicago' was the most active and intense section, but I was over-simplifying. There's plenty of intensity on hand in Philly. For just one example, there's a portion that begins some 25 minutes in that's like being among a set of buzzsaws--pretty spectacular, ultra-intense music. Even the quieter moments are somewhat harrowing.

The New York set, recorded at Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia loft, runs to 70 minutes, a good deal longer than the prior two (about 50 and 40 minutes, respectively). Part of my fascination with this release is the embedding of three fairly long sets into one (as I hear it) extremely long one. This begins with layers of extended tones, the kind of laminal approach that I find very satisfying, allowing the listener to directly experience variations in pitch and timbre and construct relationships for himself. They slowly dissolve into a kind of warbling keen, pitched high, birdlike, before tilting back into relative consonance, where it lingers for a delightfully long while, fluctuating and quavering. Midway through, there's a quiet nest of pizzicatos and muted squeaks and breath tones. Here, and later as things quiet down even further, the integration of the tape with the live performance is utterly seamless. The set is perfectly paced, always riveting, concluding with hazy, uncertain lines that point toward future music.

A really fine, complex and unusual release, and a superb initial outing for Elsewhere. (Brian Olewnick)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere 002) - Jazz Tokyo (8/4/2018)

This Melaine Dalibert's 61-minute long piano piece refreshingly brought me a paradigm shift in the way of listening to piano music to focus on the harmonic overtones. If you listen to this piece in a conventional way of focussing on the direct tones of the piano, you would miss something important. With this piece, Dalibert introduced me to a new way of listening to piano music in which the harmonic overtones are blended carefully to form the music with the composer's perfect control, instead of letting us focus on the transition of the direct piano tones dominating how the music develops. The reverberation of the harmonic overtones is the key to appreciate this beautiful piano piece. (Masanori Tada)

The Astonishing Debut of the Elsewhere Label - Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter (7/27/2018)

Anyone who reads this newsletter regularly knows how much admiration I have for the Erstwhile label. Labelhead, Jon Abbey, has long had a vision for the label, both musically and presentation-wise. Hence the consistency of everything he released over some two decades. Mr. Abbey’s longtime partner, Yuko Zama, has also been involved in Erstwhile, designing covers for several of their releases. Ms. Zama has also nurtured friendly relationships with a number of the musicians on Erstwhile and has decided to start her own label, which is called Elsewhere. The first two releases on Elsewhere have just been released and this is a cause for celebration. Both of these two new discs are superb, you can tell how much work and consideration went into these discs. The cover art for both was done by vocalist/experimental composer, David Sylvian, who is also a serious listener and supporter of Erstwhile and Elsewhere.

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3)

As I listen to each of these three discs for the second time, I noticed that overall sound/balance is different at each performance. The sound in the room, placement of mic’s and subtle playing of each of the two musicians all factor into the distinctive results. I had to turn up the volume at times to hear the subtle textures and manipulations. On Disc 1, I hear mostly acoustic clarinet and violin weaving their way together in waves or fragments. I am currently reading the thick new book about Keith Rowe, written by journalist Brian Olewnick. This is most appropriate since guitarist & composer, Keith Rowe, is a guiding light for the Erstwhile and now Elsewhere labels. The clarinet and violin sound perfect together since both have a certain warm, wooden sound and often create careful drones, making it hard to tell who is playing which sound. I know there are some written parts here which make it hard to tell where the improv ends and the written parts begin. The vibe or flow has a mysterious sense of synchronicity, a current that runs throughout, which can be felt by those sympathetic to the magic forces within. There is quite a bit more going on here that one might imagine. The duo slowly yet consistently shift through many different layers, melodic and abstract fragments are in constant motion, making the results both fascinating and unpredictable. I am currently on Disc 2 and remain transfixed. A grand toast to Yuko Zama for her inspired efforts. (Bruce Lee Gallanter)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3) - Spontaneous Music Tribune (9/10/2018)

The process of free improvisation in music is undoubtedly a phenomenon of practicing this art. An issue that is particularly intriguing seems to be the moment of the beginning of this process, and perhaps even what was possibly done before this fact. Scenarios, frameworks, predefined structures of a larger whole, can make oral statements about the nature of improvisation. Or maybe the decision to go 100%. Today we reach for the latest album of our favorite violinist Biliana Voutchkova made in the company of one of her most frequent musical partners, clarinettist Michael Thieke. It is called Blurred Music and contains material from three concerts of the duo which took place in December 2016 in the United States (the publisher is the new American label Elsewhere Records). The record contains improvised music, supported by previously recorded, pre-defined musical structures, which were played live during the concert (in our words - some of the sounds come from the so-called playback). According to the artists themselves, contained in the liner notes, sometimes even both streams of sounds (live and reproduced) contain twin materials. Quoting: Almost identical fragments of live performance and reproduced sounds synchronize with each other, which inevitably causes them to blur (blurred!) In the time dimension, rhythmical, color and in the microtonal interpretation of individual tones. The listener is primarily interested in the final result. This - let's warn ahead - is extremely valuable, because today we can put Blurred Music on the list of the most interesting events of the current year. The reviewer, during a detailed listening session of three discs, searched for these predefined structures. However, he was not effective enough in this work (see the text below). On the other hand, does the perception of these fragments have any particular meaning for the reception of the entire recording? Let it remain a rhetorical question. A bit of bookkeeping - Biliana plays the violin and uses the voice, Michael plays the clarinet. We do not know exactly who and how allows the predefined structures to be heard. Three concerts (data below) last a total of over 160 minutes.

December 7, 2016: Carr Chapel, Chicago

A bow at the edge of the strings, a delicate wail of a warm clarinet. Single sounds beautifully spill into the stream of the first evening of this evening sustained piece. The beauty of silence, the durability of passages, the metaphysical quality of the acoustics of the spectacle. Contemporary chamber music that is burning with emotion, strongly contaminated by the irresistible need for improvisation. 5-7 minutes is the first example of a stimulating imitation of both musicians. From the point of view of the clarinet, "sound like a violin" is probably not a simple procedure. The narrative sparkles with the fire of mutual interactions. In the background, duplicated sounds (at least this is suggested by the intuition of the reviewer), which only support what is most important - a tedious process of detailed, even molecular, improvisation. Great sounds that do not need verbal reasoning and conceptual assumptions. After 10 minutes, long distance tunes return, brilliantly descending almost to the level of silence. A pinch of sonoristics as part of the author's commentary. Noises and murmurs, like a new dimension of fuzzy music. Biliana's voice and throat! At 20 minutes prychy and scabs, fingers on strings and nozzles. 24 minutes - another passage of high, long sounds - sustained beauty! Imitative sound homogeneity. The attempt to get out of the drone clinch is almost noisy. This pair of musicians is capable of any artistic volatility. Fire music! At the next stage, again falling into the area of silence, she smacks an executive genius. Sonore in the tube, Biliana whispers, a whispering imitation. After 37 minutes, a new step into the dense drones (probably not without playback). Spots (blurs) of sounds soaring towards the sky, they can be loud, with a harsh aftertaste of psychedelia. Another beautiful ejaculation! Strings and reed in one tune! At the finale, a bit of mutual banter, Biliana's voice and the dance spin of the clarinet. Repetition that stimulates an extremely sensual reverberation.

December 14, 2016: Aux Performance Space, Philadelphia

From the first second the musicians are agile in a resonating multitude. Singing, oneiric, depressive, soaked in a painful moment of sadness. The strings tremble, the clarinet cries. Modulated passages in close quarters full of mutual imitation. An impressive sustained symphony! The agile passage of the clarinet to the sonorist position. The violin is right behind him. Both instruments in a breakneck process of searching for falsehood, dirt, sounds that are to hurt. Blurred narration, which is looking for the bottom, dead point of reference. The musicians go deeper into the texture of the sound (microtones?), divide them into fours and expose them to applause. Minor interaction, minimalism in practice. After 12 minutes, more energy in the movements of the musicians - voiceless lips, sonorous shadow, healthy reactions, microbiology of sounds. Narration thickens, Biliana's harsh voice adds pepper and emotion - a filigree meta scat on the pastel griffin of hot violins. Dance of the bow around the slender clarinet horns. Each minute of the concert brings something new to our perception of blurred music. 20 minutes - a new portion of violin sonorities in the high register, just above the surface of the humming exposure of the clarinet. 25 minutes - a wonderful, almost noisy thicket of micro sounds (I guess it was not that loud yet!). Chamber noise! Chamber industrial! And the resonating descent into silence. A multi-minute symphony of falling sounds, which begins to pulse slightly at the end. True live ambient! Post-electronics without amplification. Miracles for miracles (playback?).

December 15, 2016: Experimental Intermedia, New York

Similarly to the previous concerts, we are welcomed by a gently subdued passage of small sounds. The violin flows high, the clarinet is just below it (playback?). The drone philharmonic, the whispers of nonexistent cupolas, a bit of the necessary repetition. Beautiful, rather unusual clarinet sound, a small steam engine. Dialogues, interactions. Sounds that start to take shape. A lot of singing, dancing and joy - how far we are from the myths of the previous day! 13-14 minutes - music brilliantly loses its tonality, the narrative smudges like a paint on the canvas of a drunken painter. Joy disappears, reality looses focus. The anxiety of the moment and the sounds that are sticking in bushy drones. Post-electronics without electricity, probably the most beautiful moment of this record. It's not stains anymore (blurs), but the ocean! After a few minutes of these standing drones, for a moment the party of violins emerges, which does not sound like a violin. It seems that the philharmonic on a sharp pitch stopped the time! This series of unbelievable, lasting passages has already exceeded 10 minutes! Ingenious in its non-linear simplicity! The exit from this narrative clinch takes place through more traditional violin sounds and strong sonarism of the clarinet. Silence - this is an obvious solution. However, it does not last too long - the musicians propose a new hand. The power of short, broken, cut phrases. It seems that we are on a truly microtonal level. 32-34 minutes - magic sonore on both flanks! Dancing strings, shivering jets! Shortly after, the instrument of Biliana begins to sound ... like a small tabla. Michael's flash of glass sound. Delicacy, microbiology of sounds. Sensory music? 40 minutes, it is in turn silent silence and murmur - Biliana's lips, jaw of the clarinet. Or maybe it's just the same breaths of still living musicians? 48 minutes - glassy, polished strings in opposition to a small steam engine. And again, a bold step towards looking for a common acoustic drone. The narrative gains strength, here it is simply a folk taste, and after a while ... looses its rather sophisticated tonality. Go down, step up. 56 minutes is a study of charming repetition (playback?). Voice, nozzles, individual phrases, ambient sounds (?). The acoustics of the spectacle's space take on an almost ideal shape. 65 minutes - rehearsal of a new narrative on the part of Biliana (with voice). The clarinet seems to be a bit coquettish. On the side of the violin the power of additional sounds (playback!). Violin like voice, voice like violin! Time to search for the final silence - the senses of attention and focus explode. Beauty in a flash! (Andrzej Nowak, English translation from the original Polish review)

Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music, Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour - The WIRE (November issue 2018)

REVIEWS (001-019)

​Guy Vandromme - Bruno Duplant: l'infini des possibles (elsewhere 019-2)

​Jordan Dykstra / Koen Nutters - In Better Shape Than You Found Me (elsewhere 018)

​Michael Pisaro-Liu - Tombstones (Barbara Dang & Muzzix) (elsewhere 017)

​Melaine Dalibert - night blossoms (elsewhere 016)

​Anastassis Philippakopoulos / Jürg Frey - wind and light (elsewhere 015)

​Jürg Frey - l'air, l'instant - deux pianos (elsewhere 014)

Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni / Un Adieu (elsewhere 013)

​Melaine Dalibert - Infinite Ascent (elsewhere 012)

​The Giving Shapes - Earth Leaps Up (elsewhere 011)

​Melaine Dalibert - Anastassis Philippakopoulos: piano works (elsewhere 010)

​Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009)

​Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere 008)

​Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere 007)

​Gil Sansón / Lance Austin Olsen - Works on Paper (elsewhere 006-2)

​Stefan Thut - about (elsewhere 005)​

​Clara de Asís - Without (Erik Carlson / Greg Stuart) (elsewhere 004)

​Jürg Frey - 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere 003)

​Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere 002)

​Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere 001-3)

Reinier van Houdt - Bruno Duplant: 'Lettres et Replis' (elsewhere 008) by Dionys Della Luce in ​Inactuelles Musiques Singulières (9/22/2022)