Iskra 1903, "Chapter One", Paul Rutherford, Derek Bailey and Barry Guy in the Complete Recordings, 1970-72

Trombonist-pianist Paul Rutherford, guitarist Derek Bailey and contrabassist Barry Guy formed Iskra 1903 in 1970. "Iskra" is the Russian term for "spark", the "19" indicates the century they were in, and the "03" stands for the number of players involved. Chapter One covers the life of the outfit from 1970 through 1972, amasses the various released records the trio made for Incus and other labels, and includes some unreleased material as well (Emanen 4301). The three-CD set is a fascinating document, an uplifting listening experience and a bit of a landmark in avant improv loquaciousness.

All three by then had developed a vocabulary, a technical prowess in creating a music not of tonality and often not even of conventional tones. Bailey's prepared guitar and his unconventional use of harmonics and muted sounds formed a very original third of the tripartite orbiting of guitar, bass and trombone sound-color production. The trio used both amplified and acoustic versions of the instrumental output to further vary the timbral spectrum available to them. Each performance was an improvisation that maximized interactive dynamics in a music of semi-pitched and unpitched sounds.

They weren't the only ensembles doing this sort of thing over in Europe and there were overlapping affiliations with Evan Parker and others over time. Iskra 1903 were perhaps one of the most consistently productive units of the period and in their stylistic purity, one of the most innovatively radical.

Chapter One presents the trio in all their heady glory. The three disks give you a great deal to absorb, and not all of it is equally inspired, understandably. But the high points are exhilarating and at all times they strive with success to converse intelligently in a radical new music language. This is somewhat essential fare for those with an interest in the Euro-improv scene of those days. Recommended!

Desiring Machines, "MicroMeditations," Paul Hartsaw and Company's Poignant Essay in Pure Avant

Desiring Machines is an improvisa- tional quartet dedicated to realizing a pure sound poetics that avoids conven- tional musical phrases and periodicity for an abstract series of essays in sound color spontaneity. The electronics and live processing of Brian Labycz conjoin with the no-output turntable manipulations of Aaron Zarzutski to form the unconventional sound production half of the group; Paul Hartsaw on soprano, tenor and pocket trumpet & Kevin William Davis on cello work at advanced sound production techniques on conventional instruments.

MicroMeditations (MetastableSound 014) is the 2010 release of their music, which has the rigor of the later Stockhausen improvisational ensembles plus the AMM, MEV attention to space and semi-flatness of trajectory that owes something to the pioneering works of John Cage from the later '50s-early-'60s.

For this sort of thing to work, there should be keen attention and focus from all participants, a desire to interact without responding strictly in kind, a sure and imaginative sense of the sound color blend to be achieved at any given moment.

This group has all of that. They create a worthy tapestry of sound in 45 minutes of sustained inspiration. Nice job!!

Jazz Gawronski Plays Jaruzelski's Dream

A free alto-bass-drums trio comes out of a Venice-ian studio with Jaruzelski's Dream (Clean Feed 211). And what is the result? A long, most energetic set of improvisations with rock, swing and freetime flow. Franceso Cusa makes an impact with his energy drumming. Stefano Senni plies his bass with a sure sense of phrase and form. Piero Bittolo Bon often falls into repetitive phrases played with heat. That's what it is about. Mr. Bon's alto has insistency, consistency and focused variational persistency. It is his sense of structure that structures the freedom.

Now how he does that may lead some people to search for the emergency fire exit. But I suspect those sorts of people would not care for this music in any event.

It is singular, determined and overt in its overall thrust. It burns the candle at both ends and everywhere in the middle. It worries and exhausts melodic phrases and then just as willfully abandons them to move on to something new. And that's what saves the music from itself, as it were. It harps on something and then moves on, never overstaying its welcome like an overly emphatic conversatonalist at a cocktail clatch. Bon makes his point emphatically and moves on to the next station of party goers before he makes himself a bore. That's good.

This is music of interest. It is not typical of the free things out there right now. And it is controversial in how it goes about its freedom. Hey, why not shake things up a bit?

Mark Applebaum and The Metaphysics of Notation

Mark Applebaum has entered a new world of his own making with his The Metaphysics of Notation project. It is documented on a recent DVD of the same name (Innova 787). Only a DVD could begin to cover the scope of the project with justice, because the work combines visual art, installation, performance art and musical execution as a totality.

The central raison d'etre for the work was the creation of a 70-foot linear pictographic "score" (w/several hanging mobiles) that Applebaum created on paper by hand, black symbols proceeding from left to right as in a conventional music manuscript. The "score" is without the usual staves, and the notations Applebaum has made are in the form of a varied and elaborate series of pictographic images meant to flow from one to another as would standard notation. The symbols and graphic images sometimes approximate musical notation in the sense that they utilize note symbols on occasion, but graphically enhanced and without the staves as context. For the rest the score is filled with images that suggest a visual representation of an open-ended musical sound-world. Some of the images are abstract, some representational, but all sequence together in ways that suggest a series of musical events. The score is as much a work of visual art as it is a quasi-prescriptive set of abstract visual analogs to guide and direct individual content decisions made by musicians in any given performance.

The score was installed as a number of large horizontal panels (plus mobiles), on view for a year at the Cantor Arts Center Museum of Stanford University.

The DVD addressing Applebaum's work is in three parts. The first is a documentary about the project, with commentary from the composer and a number of composer-musician-musicologists either involved in the project's realization or familiar with the work's parameters. The documentary also introduces you to the score itself and its installation context.

The second part consists of recorded one-minute excerpts from the 45 performances held at the museum on a weekly basis, accompanied by stills of each particular performance. The musicians involved vary from a single soloist to a moderate sized ensemble. Each performance group was left entirely free to make whatever musical sounds they deemed appropriate in realizing the musical implications of the score.

The third part of the DVD consists of two slowly scrolling panoramas of the score itself, one lasting eight minutes, the other sixteen.

In the end I was left with an appreciation of the imaginative scope of Applebaum's project. The documentary raises questions about the borders of legitimacy or even intelligibility when it comes to such work. Is it music? Art? Installation? Improvisation? Performance art? It is all of that. The difficulty perhaps in this is that, since there is no right or wrong way to realize the musical potential contained in the score, since Maestro Applebaum does not provide anything in the way of specific musical directives or suggestions, anything goes in a given performance. There is no "proper" or "improper" performance, no "good" or "bad" version. That is problematic only in the sense that the status of the work remains completely open and ultimately neutral. It does not exist in some tangible sense aurally. This will bother some people. Essentially though, at least the way the project is set up, it is the interaction of visual stimulus of score as visual art, the natural reverberant ambiance of the museum setting, and the free improvisations of the respective musicians that work in tandem to create a kind of totalized art-music gestalt. The 45-minute series of excerpts of the various musicians at work affirm how different any given performance can be from another. It's fascinating to hear and see.

I find the DVD quite illuminating, Applebaum's project thought-provokingly beautiful visually and conceptually, and the music absorbing. I recommend this one very much. By the way you probably don't want to miss the one-minute excerpt of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra tackling the music!

Ursel Schlicht and Reuben Radding: Einstein's Dreams

Ursel Schlicht, pianist, composer, educator, we have seen via a number of postings here and on the guitar site; bassist Reuben Radding should also be no stranger to regular readers of my blogs. They both in their own way have strongly original approaches to improvisation, which their CD collaboration Einstein's Dreams (Konnex 5165) well attests.

This is a full set of improvisations captured live at Location One, NYC, in 2004. The two run through an inspired series of freely improvised spontaneous compositions. Interplay is excellent, while each manages to bring out a concern with sound and texture they both are known to espouse. The approach may be familiar but the outcome is not. I find Ursel's pianism to be of a very high order. She is ultra-modern without relying on what others have done for inspiration. Beautifully complex chords, melodic gems of irregular phrasing, dynamics, and an ever-inventive musical imagination is what she is about. Reuben is a perfect counterpart. He listens and creates consistently interesting counterlines. She takes in what he is doing and responds accordingly.

The Schlicht-Radding way is marvelously subtle yet never lacking in vitality.

This is so-called "free" music of a stubbornly self-determined sort. It goes where it may, not willy-nilly, but with a clear vision of what it can and does become.

Discover these two weighty improvisers on this disk and you'll be happy for the experience, I would think. I look forward to what the two of them will be doing in the near future. Bring in an equally inventive drummer and some kinetic magic is bound to occur. In the meantime the magic is there already, as heard on this fine offering.

Esther Lamneck, Tarogato; Roberto Fabbriciani, Hyperbass Flute

Not everything musically is what you expect. So sometimes you come to expect the unexpected. And in the case of Winds of the Heart, the album of tarogato and hyperbass flute duets by Esther Lamneck and Roberto Fabbriciani (Innova 239), you most certainly get it.

First let me just clarify that the tarogato is related to the soprano sax and has roots in ancient instruments used in Hungary, Romania and Turkey. The hyperbass flute is just that. If you've ever leafed through woodwind catalogs, you'll know such an instrument is not going to be cheap. But I digress.

Esther Lamneck plays the tarogato in ways that resonate with the Gypsy roots of the instrument. She gets into long snaky, freely unfolding lines that also suggest Coltrane's later work with the soprano sax as well as the current improvisations of Evan Parker. Mr. Fabbriciani uses the deep tones of the hyperbass flute to his advantage but also takes advantage of the overtone possibilities to get textured upper notes, and also uses a number of non-standard articulations and vocalising to realize a wide spectrum of sounds.

All that being said, this CD presents 14 short- to middle-length duets that concentrate on free avant expression. Esther tends to be fleet; Roberto more in the horizontally oriented longer-toned sound world. He also can get interestingly percussive tones by emitting short bursts of air into the instrument and letting it resonate. Either way the contrast between the two players works well.

I don't imagine this program will appeal to all. Those who embrace the free-er musics out there will be at home with it. This is a rarified sound universe. Those willing to take the time to adjust to it will find alternatingly exhilarating and meditative moments to savor in this unusual offering.

Rodrigo Amado's "Searching for Adam," Important New Improv Set

Rodrigo Amado needs to be heard by all those into the free thing. He's poised, filled with good improv ideas, and his new album, Searching for Adam (Not Two 837-2) shows it all off in a very good light. The band is an impressive lineup of New York's finest--Taylor Ho Bynam on cornet & flugelhorn, John Hebert, bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. The rhythm team has bold fire and dynamic energy to spare; Bynum is a stick of dynamite. He crackles, sizzles and sears his way through the set, truly on fire.

And Rodrigo? First off I love his old-school tenor sound. He channels Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and he channels early Archie Shepp's channeling of same. But the notes and phrases are Rodrigo's and they work together potently. On baritone the sound of Serge Chaloff comes to mind--gutsy or expressively tender from moment to moment. RODRIGO's notes, again, not a string of bop cliches. The BIG sax sound is not something many jazz departments out there seem to be teaching, so Rodrigo's sound is all the more rare these days, but all the more welcome. Sound is not something you can easily teach I guess, nor is the logic of a way of phrasing, sound and note-wise. So Rodrigo is doubly valuable in that he excels at both aspects.

The band has a clear direction and they go there. It's simply one of the best free ensemble disks so far this year. OK, the year is rather new, I'll grant, but I suspect I'll be saying the same thing come December.

Those who don't know Rodrigo Amado's music are missing out. This one is a great place to begin. Track it down and get down with the tracks. You'll be happy you did, I think.

Evan Parker, Peter Evans, "Scenes in the House of Music"!

Peter Evans is one of the very best of the new trumpeters in the free-avant zone. Evan Parker plays tenor sax and soprano in ways that have extended the music and he's done it for many years. The same could be said for bassist Barry Guy and drummer Paul Lytton. When they came together for a live concert in Portugal last year, anticipation among the audience must have been high. The new Clean Feed (196) recording of the concert, Scenes in the House of Music gives it to you straight-up. The expectations were justified. Fully.

Here are four superb free players pulling out all the stops, exploring textural-aural intensity and movement in ways few can approximate today. This is STRONG music and it will put all avant fans in a zone that has been reserved for the very best. Music, I mean. That's what this is.

Paul Hartsaw and Desiring Machines, "Is Heaven Secret?"

From 2005 comes a fully engaged avant improv offering by the collective ensemble Desiring Machines. Is Heaven Secret? (Metastablesound 010) brings together Chicago's Paul Hartsaw on tenor and soprano, Jim Baker on ARP synthesizer and piano, Anton Hatwich on bass and Brahm Fetterman on percussion-drums.

This is their first go-round and it's a no nonsense excursion into the outer realms. The group works together as a seamless whole, with Jim Baker's synthesizer work jagged and incisive, his piano full-fisted in a post-Cecil Taylor manner. Paul Hartsaw turns in a spirited and hard-hitting performance on tenor and soprano, and the Hatwich-Fetterman rhythm team plunges the band into the maelstrom with conviction and sensitivity.

The music can be thickly enveloping or more open and exploratory, alternately.

As you listen a number of times the conviction of the players in the avant style and their careful abandon convinces. This is improvisation of a high level. It is another great example of what's happening in and around Chicago today. Check it out.

Erosonic is David Mott and Joseph Petric; "Mystery Theatre" is an Aural Example of Why That Matters

We backtrack again today, so-called Black Friday (don't get me started on that boondoggle), to an earlier album by the duo Erosonic (David Mott, baritone, and Joseph Petric, accordion), Mystery Theatre (Victo 085).

This is what used to be known as "Third Stream" music, a combination of modern classical and jazz elements. The former comes out with the set of weighty and lucid compositions on the disk, most by David Mott, two by both musicians, and one by David Keane. These are harmonic-rhythmic workouts and the jazz element comes out in the drive and sound of the music, especially in David's baritone sound with its timbral and improvisational originality (see the other reviews of David's music on these pages), and in the places allocated for improvisation.

I'll admit I am not always an accordion fan, but what Joseph Petric does on Mystery Theatre makes me forget all of that. He is a real virtuoso and interacts with David on a high level.

This is music that has compositional thrust and brilliant performances.

Bobby Zankel, "Many in Body, One in Mind"

Bobby Zankel is older than I am. A little. Just a few years. This may not seem especially important to you, the reader, but it does have some effect on how I view him and his music. It means that his history encompasses a few years that mine has not, and from a musical point of view that formative period seems like a very critical one, culturally and developmentally.

I'll admit that heretofore I have not heard him. The liner notes to his Many in Body, One in Mind (CIMP 365) notes that Bob Rusch first recorded him in 1992 for the Cadence release Seeking Spirit (Cadence 1050). Where have I been? That's a long story. Suffice to say that where I was (and it wasn't jail, unless you think of particularly demanding work situations in that sense), I am there no longer and so have the chance to catch up on what I missed in the '90s.

And it turns out that Bobby Zankel is someplace that I am glad to have visited via this CD. It's a trio date with Mr. Zankel on alto, Dylan Taylor on bass (and cello) and Edgar Bateman on the drums. This is the advanced sort of free-improv kind of music and my first impression is that it comes out of and goes beyond the sort of thing Ornette and his followers were doing a while ago. Yet that is only a reference point. Zankel plays his own tune(s), both literally and figuratively. And once things get rolling, he sounds like he is footed firmly in the new age we live in, in a way that shows a fully developed improviser excelling at his art for our appreciation.

In the CIMP tradition of recording procedures, all of this is done live with two mikes placed strategically to capture the group in the full acoustic flush of their organicism. It works and works well, especially here, where all three seem to find a natural balance.

The compositional part of the date is filled with good blowing vehicles. As vehicles go these set up the improvisations to come with the right mood, the right rhythmic feel, the proper melodic-harmonic universe. Needless to say that's critical with a trio that does not include a piano or other harmonically oriented instrument.

What you have on Many in Body is a generous set of performances that highlight the three players in a relaxed yet intensive form. Zankel is a personal singularity. Now I know. You should check this one out too if you want to experience a lucid and eloquent voice in the music.

The Eldorado Trio (Sclavis, Taborn, Rainey) Takes No Prisoners

It seems like with so many interesting releases coming out of Clean Feed records lately that it might be easy to miss a few. The Eldorado Trio (Clean Feed 193) CD could be one of those, but it really shouldn't be. The disk features studio and live cuts captured last year in Porto, Portugal. Of the eight pieces featured on the release, five are by Louis Sclavis, who plays a very together soprano sax and bass clarinet throughout; the rest are collective group compositions.

This is some very impressive music of the avant-free improvisation sort. Sclavis holds forth with articulate poise and confidence; Craig Taborn is loose and inventive on the acoustic and electric piano; and Tom Rainey plays inspired drums. It is the band as a total unit, though, that makes for the most impressive impact. All three players are contributing in a direct way to the outcome of the performances. It's not a solo and accompaniment situation for the most part.

And what an outcome. This one gives you the art of improvisation at its most modern and advanced. It's not so much an energy honk-out sort of date as much as it is a reshaping of what is modern about modernity. But whew just hear this one and you'll get what my words only point to. The Eldorado Trio is a kicking ensemble!

Steve Swell with Roswell Rudd, 1996

We turn back the clocks today as those who follow the US time schedule did this past Sunday morning. Today we go back to 1996 and an album by the Steve Swell Quartet, Out and About (CIMP 116). It's a trombone summit of sorts between the leaders of two generations of avant expression. Steve Swell heads up the quartet and provides the blowing vehicles and Roswell Rudd joins that band as a key fellow front-liner. The unit is rounded out in effective fashion by bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Lou Grassi.

Maestros Swell and Rudd top the list of important players who work with the extroverted free approach to the horn. Mr. Rudd was one of the pioneers of the new thing and remains vital today; Mr. Swell has extended and built upon the over-and-out trombone approach that Rudd helped establish.

Out and About brings out the best in both. They seem to feel completely at home musically in one another's presence; they come through with excellent avant solos and double solos throughout. It's all of course serious but there is some humor there as well. Like on the number "Start Up," in which Steve has worked out a head melody using the rhythmic structure of "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," but decidedly not the pitches!

Out may not have been the first recorded meeting of the two bonemasters and they continue to get together musically, so it isn't the last. But is no doubt one of the best. It's a recording no adherent to out bonedome should forgo. A modern classic! See the Cadence link to find out more.

Bob Gluck's "Electric Brew" of Solo Piano and Electronics

A prelude-like moment for the piano, the sounding of a shofar horn and electronics set the stage for Bob Gluck's Electric Brew (EMF 069). It came out in 2007, and so it is most certainly not the flavor of the month. And it was not meant to be so. It is music for the long haul.

Bob plays a kind of improvised solo piano that has a particular sonority in mind regardless of where he is in his performance. He can go the jazz-derived improvisational route or hew more closely to the modern jazz sound. Or he can sound like he's coming out of an avant classical frame of reference. In any of these cases he remains his own person.

Electric Brew provides you with a great example of his musical personality. The piano comes across as the principal voice in his music. Electronics augment, contextualize or provide a second voice in the mix. In the case of the use of "computer-assisted" piano, the piano voice and its electronic manipulation go together. What's important is that the electronics are well-integrated and add much to what transpires. It never feels like they are an afterthought to the principal music-making.

Mr. Gluck has a fertile and richly complex musical imagination and it comes across well in this program. The music has an avant feel to it but communicates an ordered sonoral vision. The musico-structural architecture leaves the beams exposed, so to say, in that you can hear Mr. Gluck's structural sense in motion at most points.

It's very interesting music, a tour de force of advanced pianism and in its own way pioneering in its singular use of electronics. Very much recommended.

Evan Parker and Urs Leimgruber Lock Horns in Avant Duets

Essentially Evan Parker has over the 40 odd years of his public career sought to perfect a style complex that makes use of punctuated sounds, rapidly swooping slurred lines, enveloped phrasings and expanded timbral resources for the saxophone. By now he can be relied on to do what he does very very well, every time out. His execution and concept are masterful. But his single-mindedness of purpose also means that some of the surprise in the music has become diminished. So he keeps it fresh by varying the players he associates with on any given project. His prolific recorded output would seem to demand such a stance. And this way of going about it gives the Parker aficionado a good deal of variety in the overall sound of the ensembles he consorts with.

So we have a new one, Twine (Clean Feed 194) which pits him in a series of involved improvisatory duets with fellow reedman Urs Leimgruber. Both alternate between the tenor and soprano. The recording was captured live in Koln.

First off Urs certainly seems well suited for such a duet. He has a long track record of avant improvisational collaborations and has a style that fits what Even Parker does from angular phrasing to a richness and variety of timbre.

Second of all the structure and content of the duets is one of all-over density and continual flow. They get rolling on a pace and set of sound producing ideas and stay in that mode for some time, seeking to explore the sorts of possibilities that approach will reveal.

The results are rarefied whirlwinds of sound. Parker and Leimgruber get locked in and stay there. Now the question is whether you would find this music stimulating and how much of this sort of thing you are interested in hearing. I cannot give you that answer. It is cutting-edge avant improv, certainly. If you already have, say, 100 Evan Parker recordings, this may not add a lot that is new to what you already have. If sound-color oriented improvisations interest you and you don't have much exposure to the artists at hand, this is a good bet. If you like the idea of a bare-bones avant duet with two of the more successfully adventurous sax players out there, again this will be of interest.