Carlo Mascolo & Thollem McDonas – Quattro frecce e buonanotte

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American, globe-trotting, pianist-synth player-vocalist Thollem McDonas calls his improvisations that often turn into instant compositions “post-classical circus punk world jazz free music, for people and everyone else”. His irreverent, exploratory approach fits perfectly with the Italian, Puglia-based trombonist Carlo Mascolo who focuses on searching the timbral spectrum of his instrument, often prepared with different pipes, and with an array of extended techniques (with breath, mouth, tongue, and voice).

Quattro frecce e buonanotte, a colorful Italian expression that can be translated into ‘Hazard lights, good night’, documents McDonas and Mascolo’s recording session at Waveahead Studio in Monopoli in May 2022. It was recorded after these two improvisers performed at a few Italian towns where McDonas held workshops.

Mascolo plays on this free improvised session the no-input trombone and often produces otherworldly, electronic sounds while McDonas plays piano and synth and processes his vocals. Both McDonas and Mascolo are imaginative and fearless improvisers who are not shy of sounding strange or eccentric and are always eager to take unpredictable risks.

The freewheeling music fits McDonas’ irreverent and expansive definition of his instant compositions. On the five pieces, McDonas and Mascolo sound like kindred souls or modern-day shamanic sonic priests who use sounds – all sounds – to create their ever-expanding and constantly transforming musical universe. A magical, often hallucinogenic, and subversive universe, that flirts with folk music, and symphonic music. It is an absurdist and provocative but arresting universe that serves as entirely new stimuli for everyone’s imagination but insists on erasing all borders on its territory.

Carlo Mascolo (no-input trombone); Thollem McDonas (piano, synthesizer, vocals).

Articolo precedenteSusan Alcorn Lobato
Articolo successivoECLAT Festival
Eyal Hareuveni is a freelance journalist based in Jerusalem, Israel, and a reviewer for The Free Jazz Collective and the Scandinavian website Salt Peanuts.