Conner Simmons: any sense of where we were gone [Sawyer Editions]. A floaty, mild-tempered expanse of soft – but not always gentle – sounds; curiously, the free-form feeling gains from being sorted into a modular structure of five compositions: two string quartets to open and close, with a larger central work for unspecified instruments, which in this case is a larger ensemble including voice. The three pieces are unified into a single work by two short interludes for bowed prepared piano, composed a year later but also apparently heard as a whole from the first performance, which is the recording presented here. There are fairly subtle electronic treatments throughout, designed to emphasise lingering tones and after-images. The outer quartets are marked by a lack of movement, with most of the changes coming from a small amount of harmonic expansion and some ramping of dynamics. In the central piece, titled explain it to itself as wind, the improvisation allowed to the musicians emerges slowly, tentatively, each producing sounds individually that take care not to coalesce into a single image, for listening in the moment as opposed to coming away with a clear impression. Simmons alludes to all the pieces drawing upon “postmodern fiction, obscure geometry textbooks, and poems about time” and quotes from Cortazar’s Hopscotch; in short, it’s a synthesis, albeit one that steers clear of Delibes and Saint-Saëns, not to mention Rose Bob and Alix Alix.
Wilson Tanner Smith: Perpetual Guest [Sawyer Editions]. Reflective solos on a harmonium, interspersed with some cello. The mood of cautious tranquility prevails throughout and Smith plays with simple, homespun diction. It’s the sort of thing we’re all sure we’ve heard somewhere before, not least because the music originates from a site-specific basis: “created in the abandoned Kreenholm Textile Factory complex on an island in the middle of the Narva River in Narva, Estonia, a stone’s throw from the Estonian-Russian border.” It’s the cosiest form of exoticism, with a hint of potential danger and sometimes with this kind of situational art it seems that one is hoping the situational pathos magically substantiates itself in the music – a form of implicit hauntology through psychogeography. None of that really matters though, as Smith’s approach to making music here is direct and unconcerned with intellectual justification. As such, the familiarity of it all locates this music securely within a nascent tradition of site-specific improv, where the practice and the craft take precedence over cleverness or subversion. Most importantly, Smith found the antique harmonium and restored it to working order himself, so it’s a perfect example of site-specific music and he’s earned the right to play whatever he damn well likes on it. Just as well his playing is studious and pretty.
Maya Bennardo, Erik Blennow Calälv, Kristofer Svensson: For a Lemon Tree [Another Timbre]. You may remember Bennardo and Svensson teaming up with percussionist Etienne Nillesen for Improvisation on Āsthita, January 2, 2024. This time around, we hear Improvisation on Prakāśa, June 10, 2024, with Calälv on bass clarinet replacing Nillesen on drum; Bennardo and Svensson continue respectively as before on violin and kacapi (I looked it up, it’s a Javanese zither). Svensson has devised the distinct tunings used in each of these improvisation, on this occastion using 11-limit just intonation, a scheme that stretches outside the bounds of what Western ears would normally consider as “in tune”. The improvisers are set rules on what modes to play within the scale and an overall shape but are otherwise free to play as they wish. As with the earlier improvisation on Āsthita, its companion piece, the trio play within the mode more than upon it, but there are differences. The greater range and sustain of Calälv’s clarinet allows him to form the harmonic backbone of the piece, using the lower registers sparingly. Svensson’s muted zither plucks out tropes on the clarinet’s long tones, sometimes leading, other times elaborating, while Bennardo threads a translucent harmonic layer between the two. It sounds wonderfully composed, in either sense of the word, with each displaying an instinct for when to remain silent, giving the music greater definition beyond an ornate drone. To illustrate the point, the album begins with For a Lemon Tree, which is a distillation of their acquired technique into a formal composition.
Maya Bennardo: rustlings [elsewhere]. The title could be a self-deprecating description of Bennardo’s style of playing, where she nudges her violin to the threshold of breaking up its tone into pure, whispering friction. Her two compositions here make use of this breathy style of bowing as a means of formal development, rising and falling between sounds that are nearly full of their pitch, to almost empty. The 23-minute dormant gardens i. is for violin and viola, played by the duo andPlay (Bennardo and Hannah Levinson). It resembles a horizon line cast with shadows in low sunlight, drawn freehand and rendered in long, feathered strokes. Small amounts of colouration and harmonising play over what strikes the listener as a single pitch which wavers and shimmers, establishing its presence through an apparent immobility that emerges through the constant microscopic activity. The work’s duration opens up the scale of this activity fom miniature to landscape, giving the small sounds greater seriousness. The 27-minute summer rustlings is Bennardo solo, the relatively dry acoustics exposing how little adornment there is to her playing other than through the sounds arising from within the instrument when subhected to her technique. On the microcosmic scale, there is plenty of technique to be heard. The piece falls into three sections with a coda: in the first she draws a line firm but pale, adding flecks of plucked strings to the constant, fragile bowing, figure and ground in the lowest possible relief. The second slowly breathes pitch into frail harmonics, nuilding up into fast arpeggios of high notes, still half whispered. The third is a long monophonic drone that then starts to generate a kind of internal polyphony out of the timbral changes in bowing technique, like a doubled voice. The coda is disarmingly simple. It’s a virtuosic work which impresses without feats of pyrotechnics or endurance.
Filed under: Music, Reviews by Ben.H
Tags: Conner Simmons, Erik Blennow Calälv, Kristofer Svensson, Maya Bennardo, Wilson Tanner Smith
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Three threes always
Sunday 2 April 2023
I don’t want to be nasty. Almost all the music I discuss here raises ideas that interest me and I want to engage with, even if I dislike it. I’ll usually delete the dismissive comments made in draft because I’m approaching these as an artist as much as a critic; nobody’s getting rich in this genre so there are no real mercenary or cynical efforts to dismiss as unworthy. Having said that, appreciating the craft of a piece of music is a different thing entirely from trying to give it the respect of considering it as a work of art. Keep this in mind if I carp that Bruno Duplant and Seth Nehil’s collaboration the memory of things doesn’t beat you over the head with attempts to be stunningly original in form or medium – most things don’t need to be. Not familiar with Nehil at all but Duplant’s work with him here has produced a trilogy of very slick aural collages, each about the same length, which allude to sounds rather than present them directly, much in the fashion pioneered by Brian Eno’s On Land. Anything too specific is overlaid with a patina of clicks and crackles, which will strike you as either too calculating to induce nostalgia or as a means to direct you away from ambient vagueness. It’s another marker of Duplant’s eclecticism in his musical practice, which values intellectual curiosity over a firm identity.
“Les Capelles documents the very first time Garazi Navas, Miguel Angel Garcia, Àlex Reviriego and Vasco Trilla played together as a quartet.” I’m always dubious of these things where improvisers get together and expect some magic to happen right off the bat. It puffs the spurious ideals of spontaneity and authenticity that hamper improvisation as a medium. No matter how good it sounds, you always wonder how much it better it could have been after some more work together. The above quartet play accordion, electronics, double bass and percussion respectively, all in that evocative style where everything sounds electronic even though it isn’t until the accordion shatters the illusion. As with the Duplant/Nehil album, there are three pieces here of equal length and I would take it as a compliment to the depth of the acoustic performance that it took me a while to get stright in my head which album was which. They do not bore, and it’s all played in a chapel in Barcelona so it sounds lovely.
I’m listening to a set of three pieces all about the same length (again?) by Erik Blennow Calälv, with pianist/composer Lisa Ullén, Finn Loxbo on guitar with Ryan Packard on percussion and electronics to accompany Calälv’s bass clarinet. They’re all experienced and judicious improvisers, so I presume there’s an openness to the scores to allow the slow but free interplay that flows through each piece. Each piece – Bi, In yo & Iwato – is apparently based on a traditional Japanese scales, but what with the overall texture and Ullén’s prepared piano goddamn it sounds just like Magnus Granberg to me. I mean, that’s great and all, but still. The smaller scale adds to a more accessible intimacy, so if you’re pressed for time then this album’s a good way to get a surrogate Granberg fix in more manageable chunks.
