Sjöström, Floridis, Rodrigues, Casserley: Fields
Back in 2018, Finnish soprano and sopranino saxophonist Harri Sjöström recorded a series of improvisations with Lisbon’s Guilherme Rodrigues on cello. The music, released on the album The Treasures Are, was subtle and exhilarating...
Marlies Debacker & Salim(a) Javaid: Convolution
Pianist Marlies Debacker and saxophonist Salim(a) Javaid, both based in Cologne, have been long-time collaborators since meeting as students at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, where they both now teach. Debacker, originally...
Two types of absence and six mementi
Some thoughts about three new Setola di Maiale's CDs:
-Massaria/Kneer/Hertenstein: The Absence of Zero
-Mario Cianca Trio: Komuso
-Donatello Pisanello: Mementi
The Absence of Zero is the title of a long poem by Canadian poet R. Kolewe, published...
Impermances, reworkings and voices’ pandemonium
Some thoughts on three new CD of free improv:
-Ana Kravanja & Elisabeth Harnik: Vrtinci Minljivosti (Vortices of Impermanence), Creative Sources
-Cory Smythe: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Pyroclastic Records
-VocColours: 66, Tonkunkst Manufaktur
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Since last year, Slovenian...
Mirela Ivičević: Scarlet Songs
When speaking of her fundamental approach to composing, Mirela Ivičević, a Croatian native currently based in Vienna, has described herself as focusing on using as basic materials “bits and pieces of reality abducted from...
Anthony Cheung: Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions
It’s just as the title would have it. Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions, the fifth monograph album from composer Anthony Cheung, contains three works written for, or inspired by, film, sculpture, and closed...
Multiple perspectives of improvisation
Some thoughts on these new selected works:
-George Lewis, Recombinant Trilogy, New Focus Recordings
-Fred Frith & Ikue Mori, A Mountain Doesn't Know It's Tall, Intakt R.
-Jeremiah Cymerman & Charlie Looker, A Horizon Made of Canvas,...
Timothy McCormack’s Geological Soundscapes
Pull up an image of a karst and you’re likely to see a distressed, often vertiginous landscape of water-carved rock faces pitted with crevices and caves. Under the surface may be running water, but...
Beyond the Machine with Gonçalo Gato
The focus of much of the music of Lisbon-born, London-based composer Gonçalo Gato (b. 1979) is on the incorporation of computer algorithms into the compositional process. To judge from the work included in NowState,...
Italian reviews/Inserto recensioni improv Italia, part 1
The antinomy between composition and improvisation is often a false one; much contemporary improvised music, even when eschewing any pre-existing formal strictures or explicit structures, shows a predisposition toward a sensibility deeply molded by...
Notizie
John Mayall
Ricordo che negli anni della piena gioventù (forse 19 o 20 anni) fui preso dalla voglia di approfondire il blues, in un'epoca in cui...
