Volume 27 Issue 7 | May 20 - July 12, 2022
Schafer at Soundstreams; "Dixon Road" at High Park, Skydancers at Harbourfront; Music and art at the Wychwood Barns; PODIUM in town; festival season at hand; Listening Room at your fingertips; and listings galore.
Schafer at Soundstreams; "Dixon Road" at High Park, Skydancers at Harbourfront; Music and art at the Wychwood Barns; PODIUM in town; festival season at hand; Listening Room at your fingertips; and listings galore.
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Ten of the <strong>12</strong><br />
pieces are originals<br />
by Hennessy,<br />
Cancura and<br />
Herring while<br />
Barshay provides<br />
two arrangements.<br />
All the tunes are<br />
lively and melodic<br />
and infused with the energy of good friends<br />
making music together.<br />
The opener, Play, is an up-tempo song<br />
they use to open their concerts. I›m Here<br />
to Stay is an off-kilter blues with a stuttering<br />
melody. Cancura’s tenor solo is funky,<br />
funny and occasionally aggressive while<br />
Hennessy’s trumpet solo is contrastingly<br />
melodic, quoting from the song’s theme and<br />
infusing other snippets as it builds. Herring’s<br />
If Charlie Haden couldn’t write a song to<br />
bring world peace, what hope is there for<br />
me? has a mournful Mingus quality, with<br />
its lengthy melody played by the trumpet<br />
and saxophone, and includes an intriguing<br />
bass solo.<br />
New Dreams, Old Stories is an album full<br />
of catchy songs that reveal more complexity<br />
with repeated listening. The solos are<br />
varied and intriguing and the rhythm work<br />
by Herring and Barshay is both solid and<br />
inventive.<br />
Ted Parkinson<br />
Emigre and Exile<br />
Arcomusical<br />
Panoramic Recordings PAN25<br />
(arcomusical.com)<br />
! Led by American<br />
percussionist/<br />
composer/scholar<br />
Gregory Beyer,<br />
the Arcomusical<br />
ensemble features<br />
the berimbau, the<br />
Afro-Brazilian<br />
musical bow instrument.<br />
Its lyrical strings make a beautiful<br />
sound all its own, difficult to describe in<br />
words yet easy to listen to! Arcomusical has<br />
been expanding the berimbau’s traditional<br />
sounds by commissioning and performing<br />
contemporary chamber works for solo/<br />
ensemble berimbau and other instruments.<br />
This, their third release, was recorded safely<br />
through multi-tracking in the pre-vaccine<br />
summer of <strong>20</strong><strong>20</strong>.<br />
Jeremy Muller’s Singularity (<strong>20</strong><strong>20</strong>) is a<br />
storytelling berimbau ensemble work introducing<br />
the listener to such beautiful sounds<br />
as melodic wide-pitch patterns, strums and<br />
volume changes from traditional to new<br />
music tonalities. Beyer plays all instruments<br />
spectacularly in his three compositions that<br />
showcase his extensive berimbau expertise.<br />
Fios e linhas (<strong>20</strong><strong>20</strong>) for berimbau and percussion<br />
instruments has an upbeat colourful vibe<br />
pulse and high-pitched berimbau sounds<br />
above mallet instruments. Berimbau Duo<br />
No.3 “for Adam and Jess” (<strong>20</strong>07/<strong>20</strong>18) resonates<br />
with berimbau repeated notes and<br />
ringing low notes, performed by Beyer and<br />
Anthony Cable. Berimbau Solo No.4 “Sakura<br />
Park” (<strong>20</strong>06/<strong>20</strong>19) is two-part, from rhythmic<br />
to atmospheric. The six-movement title track<br />
Emigre and Exile (<strong>20</strong>19) features its composer<br />
Matt Ulery on acoustic bass with berimbau<br />
sextet in repeated figures, ringing strings and<br />
high-pitched melodies from classical to jazz<br />
to pop sounds and more. Alexandre Lunsqui’s<br />
berimbau sextet Repercussio (<strong>20</strong>06/<strong>20</strong>14)<br />
adds percussive scrapes and bangs to this<br />
instrument’s timbres.<br />
All performers and compositions are<br />
perfect. I am so pleasantly surprised how<br />
much I enjoy these enlightening berimbau<br />
musical sounds!<br />
Tiina Kiik<br />
Something in the Air<br />
It’s All About the Bass ...<br />
in Duo Configurations<br />
KEN WAXMAN<br />
Despite its infrequent celebration in a few pop songs and prominence as a funk band<br />
groove maker, the double bass in both acoustic and electric configurations doesn’t get<br />
much respect. Usually relegated to brief solos, its movement to the forefront has only<br />
been accepted and confirmed with the loosening of rules in creative music. Also, because free<br />
music has no instrumental hierarchy, the shibboleth as to which instruments constitute a duo<br />
is jettisoned, as the following bass-affiliated sessions demonstrate.<br />
Working up from the expected lower parts of the scale on Conduits<br />
(Relative Pitch Records RPR 1135 relativepitchrecords.com) are baritone<br />
saxophonist Cath Roberts and double bassist Olie Brice from<br />
the United Kingdom. Although capable of projecting the<br />
subterranean textures associated with their instruments as they do<br />
at times during the three extended tracks here, wide-ranging timbral<br />
preference is also on tap. Screechy timbres, spetrofluctuation, tongue<br />
slapping, reed bites and thick vibrations from the saxophonist are<br />
complemented, confronted or stabilized by the bassist playing arco<br />
or pizzicato. Peering is the most realized instance of this. Opening with Roberts propelling<br />
harsh shakes down the scale to wallowing lows, Brice’s arco concordance switches to harsh col<br />
legno slaps as a sweeping response to her sudden leaps to altissimo peeping. Additional reed<br />
snarls and snorts are shaped with spiccato string pressure, culminating in responsive duo<br />
sequences as the finale. Brice’s echoing string plucks, alternating with arco asides, are more<br />
prominent elsewhere. Yet whether the sequences evolve lento or presto, high-pitched or low,<br />
with multiphonics or in carefully thought-out single notes, warm bass strums confirm the<br />
partnership and each tune’s linear movement. Although it isn’t apparent, because of COVID<br />
restrictions, the disc was created during one session in real time over the Internet. Despite<br />
being confined in different places, each player responds adroitly to the other’s improvisations.<br />
A variation of that inventive COVID-created situation with a more<br />
common bass duo configuration is Thread of Light (Fundacja Sluchaj<br />
FSR 02/<strong>20</strong>22 fsrecords.net). Pianist Satoko Fujii recorded melodies<br />
and improvisations at home in Kobe then forwarded ten sound files<br />
to bassist Joe Fonda in New York. After studying them during several<br />
weeks of careful listening, Fonda ingeniously improvised the bass<br />
parts. Rather than decoration however, they come across as unified<br />
and purposeful, like a carefully conceived addition to an already<br />
existing edifice. If you didn’t know the scenario, there are tracks which suggest Fujii is<br />
following Fonda’s lead. This occurs on tunes such as My Song and the concluding Between<br />
Blue Sky and Cold Water. The former is introduced by bass reverberations that echo down the<br />
scale and end with distinct string thumps as distant tones are shaken from the piano’s sound<br />
board. Fujii’s piano-key stopping and string rattles evolve beneath the bassist’s elaboration of a<br />
straight-ahead melody on the final track, culminating in a Romantic-styled duet with guitarlike<br />
strokes from Fonda and keyboard dusting from Fujii. When she moves to the bass clef the<br />
connection is cemented. Playing flute on Wind Sound, Fonda again states the theme, while his<br />
double-tongued arabesques lean into the pianist’s high-pitched soundboard vibrations. Finale<br />
is a dual atmospheric drone. All through the disc the two project faultless dialogues, with<br />
lightning quick interaction as if they were playing side by side. Fujii’s hesitant comping or<br />
62 | <strong>May</strong> <strong>20</strong> - <strong>July</strong> <strong>12</strong>, <strong>20</strong>22 thewholenote.com