AprilCadence2013

ALEXANDER VON
SCHLIPPENBACH,
SCHLIPPENBACH
PLAYS MONK,
INTAKT 207
REVERENCE / WORK /
INTERLUDE 1 / LOCOMOTIVE
/ INTROSPECTION I /
INTROSPECTION II /
COMING ON THE HUDSON /
INTERLUDE 2 / EPISTROPHY /
INTERLUDE 3 / REFLECTIONS
/ INTERLUDE 4 / INTERLUDE
5 / BRILLIANT CORNERS /
INTERLUDE 6 / INTERLUDE 7
/ PANNONICA / INTERLUDE
8 / PLACE TWICE. EPILOGUE.
56:20.
Alexander Von Schlippenbach
(p). November 22-23, 2011,
Berlin.
New Issues
139 | CadenCe Magazine | april May June 2013
the third part opens with a stretch of sassy, almost
sexy pizzicato and reeds opens up a pretty stunning
sequence of events: first a glorious piano/bass clarinet
duo (Dys is a real find on piano), followed by a craggy,
sawing mini-march that explodes and leaves folk fiddle,
farting electronics, and trombone in its wake. And
as you pay attention to Baker’s superlative solo, she
conjures up Bartok by way of Billy Bang nestled within
a sumptuous, buoyant swing section. The fourth part
opens with a spindly, almost Asiatic sounding strings
arpeggio, the foundation for a big funky groove that
Bowden simply tears up (and his tone, his tone!). The
suite continues with that level of invention and detail.
It’s followed by a buoyant quarter-hour rendition of
“Afrika Rising” that’s a real treat to hear in this context,
with marvelous polyphony, counterlines everywhere, all
centered around that irresistible pulse. It’s so grooving
and swinging that by the time Mitchell takes her solo, I
was reminded of James Newton’s bracing take on “Fleur
Africaine” (listen to that low brass do the counterlines).
This suite as a whole boasts a simply bracing mix of
idioms, with occasional shades of exotica, and Mitchell
has such a superb control over an ensemble of this size
and of every aspect of its instrumentation (no surprise,
then, that this performance immediately led to further
compositional commissions - huzzah!).
Jason Bivins
Like many free improvisers of his generation,
Schlippenbach has over the last decade not so
much softened his approach as investigated more
regularly some of the sources inspiring and sustaining
his instrumental approach. Like his sometime colleague
Aki Takase, his orientation to the monastic canon is
a distinctive one, neither self-consciously arch nor
overly reverent of the melodies. Certainly you can hear
this in his romp through Monk’s corpus alongside Die
Enttauschung, but on a solo disc it’s arguably harder
to pull off any kind of improvisational distinctiveness.
Here it’s done superbly, with clarity, invention, and real
feeling.
The twenty tracks are mixed up between