Ziporyn/Zimpel/Zemler/Riley - Green Light (2015)

Ziporyn/Zimpel/Zemler/Riley

Evan Ziporyn - Bb clarinet, bass clarinet
Wacław Zimpel - Bb clarinet, alto clarinet, algoza

Gyan Riley - classical & electric guitar
Hubert Zemler - drums, metallophone

Green Light

MPT012

By Maciej Lewenstein

Evan Ziporyn (born in 1959) is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions and jazz. Quoting his web page: "He studied at Eastman, Yale & UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick and Gérard Grisey. He first traveled to Bali in 1981. Ziporyn joined the MIT faculty in 1990, founding Gamelan Galak Tika there in 1993 and beginning a series of ground breaking compositions for gamelan and western instruments". His collaborators include Nik Bartsch, Iva Bittová, Don Byron, Ornette Coleman, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Thurston Moore, Terry Riley.

Evan must have immediately found a common soul and chemistry with Wacław Zimpel, whose music in the recent years is slowly drifting toward ethnic jazz and world music. Gyan Riley (the son of Terry Riley) is "equally strongly present in the worlds of classical guitar and contemporary music". The three gentlemen, supported by te phenomenal and ubiquitous Hubert Zemler, met for the first time at the Studio Dworek Białoprądnicki in Kraków, where they recorded this material. A day later the quartet performed a live soundtrack to Edward Sedgwick's/Buster Keaton's "The Cameraman" at Kino Pod Baranami as a part of the XIVth Festiwal Kina Niemego (Kraków Silent Movie Festival).

As the liner notes explain, "Green Light" includes many influences: from Indian classical music, gamelan, East African music, early minimalism, klezmer, and so on. As for Zimpel, it is one of his "light weight" performances. Still the level of playing, compositions, arrangements and solos is absolutely top. 

I dig "Id Kiss Gale" by Evan for its discrete minimalist character. "Chemical Wood" and "Heavy Wings" are both joint compositions of the quartet and as such are the most open and free tunes - they constitute the artistic highlight of the album. "Infundybuła Chronosynklasyczna" is the composition of Hubert - a slow, repetitive ballad with delicate theme hold by the guitar, quiet clarinets "howls" and really fantastic on-going improvisation of drums and percussion. Gyan's "Melismantra" is an excursion toward the Indian and East African scales. Clarinets entries here are outstanding, but the rhythm guitar accompaniment and the guitar solo are also delicious. The closing "Gupta Gamini" by Zimpel is another highlight, lasting 12 minutes. It starts very lyrically, with light accords by electric guitar and a hymn like theme by the both reed players. This moon-like mood develops, but never becomes more aggressive. Only in the final 3 minutes Zemler starts to provide a more accented rhythm. The clarinets join then in the unison theme and continue with wonderful solos/duos until the end. Another great one from Zimpel !

Rheino De Rotten - Rheino De Rotten (2013)

Rheino De Rotten

Achim Escher - alto & baritone saxophones
Marek Otwinowski - bass & electronics
Peter Conradin Zumthor - drums

Kurt Grunenfelder - voice (5,12)
 

Rheino De Rotten

Hermetic Garage 2013

By Maciej Lewenstein

Rheino de Rotten plays on its debut CD the music inspired by Eugene Ionesco's Rhinocéros and the theatre play by Ursina Hartmann, performed in the late summer of 2010 by Freilichtspiele Chur. The music stands alone, however, perfectly. The CD is short (about 40 minutes), but it is a masterpiece from the first to the last note. It contains mainly free improvisations but with certain rhythmic order and structures; listen for instance to the second piece, "Hetze", with a very clear rock-like rhythm. The following "Elf" is more delicate, but also full of expression. "Funeral" and "Zerfall" combine breathtaking alto of Escher with equally amazing voice of Grünenfelder. "Neuralgie" has similar intensity as "Hetze" but employs radio samples from "Battles Of The Bands CBS Radio" from 1943. My favorites are the slow, more traditional ballad "Hinterblieben", and the closing free tune, "Monologue". The longest track, over 7 minutes long "Pusty pokój II", is also extraordinary. Highly recommended.

Saagara - Saagara (2015)

Saagara

Wacław Zimpel - alto clarinet, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, khaen
Giridhar Udupa - ghatam, konnakol, hand bass drum
Mysore N. Karthik - violin
Bharghava Halambi - khanjira, ghatam
K. Raja - thavil
Pramath Kiran - morsing

Saagara

MULTIKULTI MPF003

By Maciej Lewenstein

Wacław Zimpel is clearly very interested in world music and includes more and more elements of various kinds of folk and ethno music in his work. Saagara is an Indian quintet, but Saagara project is a genuine fully Wacław’s idea. When Zimpel went to India for the first time, invited by Giridhar Udupa, he has met the musician of the group. The first concert route in 2014 they played as a quartet; then in winter of 2015 the violin player Mysora N. Karthik joined the team.

Pramath Kiran, my personal friend, whom I met in Bangalore, recorded the group in his studio and played few notes and rhythms on morsing. Pramath is notable for collaborations with Michał Czachowski, and the story of our surrealist meeting at the Quantum Information Conference in Bangalore is described in Michał's entry. Another member of the team known from the Polish scene is "Ghatam" Giridhar Udupa, notable for recording the fantastic "Lechoechoplexita" with Leszek HeFi Wiśniowski. 

One might have an impression that this is an album, which in my book should have been filed in the entry "Wacław Zimpel with others". This, however, is a false impression: Saagara plays the music composed and arranged by Zimpel, employing the mixture of traditional / contemporary Indian music and Indian music based jazz. The best for me are the tracks with overdubbing on various clarinets, such as "Ya Maru", but "Avega" with fantastic vocal is also incredible. "Shikara" is the only track composed by Zimpel together with Udupa - it has also a very special mood, and incredible violin work of Karthik. Finally, I dig the closing "Hatsipaka" with my amigo Pramath, playing nice fragments on morsing.

There was this kind of artistic attempts before: John McLaughlin's Shakti was the most successful both artistically and commercially. Zimpel's project is of comparable quality and intensity. It is a clear masterpiece of this kind of music.

The Resonance Ensemble - Double Arc (2015)

The Resonance Ensemble

Ken Vandermark - baritone saxophone & Bb clarinet
Dave Rempis - alto & tenor saxophones
Mikołaj Trzaska - alto saxophone & bass clarinet
Wacław Zimpel - Bb & alto clarinet

Magnus Broo - trumpet
Per-Åke Holmlander - tuba
Steve Swell - trombone

Mark Tokar - bass
Christof Kurzmann - llooppTim Daisy - drums
Michael Zerang - drums

Double Arc

MW 936-2

By Maciej Lewenstein

My super short review on Facebook was: The Resonance Ensemble was Made To Break Territory Band. It was obviously invented for fun, but there is certain message in this sentence. There was always quiet a difference between the musical concepts and sound of Ken Vandermark's Territory Band and The Resonance Ensemble. Territory Band include always (or at least on the records that I know) Jim Baker on piano, which is very essential. There was a bass string section of Kent Kessler on bass and Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, who both frequently use the bowing technique. In Territory Band the reeds section is more saxophone oriented, whereas in The Resonance Ensemble clarinets are more exposed. Last, but not least, Territory Band included in their personnel electronics: for instance, Lasse Marhaug played on "New Horse For The White House" and on "Collide", notable for the participation of Fred Anderson.

On "Double Arc" my beloved Christof Kurzmann joins the Ensemble and that, of course, make its effect on the music. Kurzmann is one of the leaders of Made To Break, an incredible quartet with Ken Vandermark on reeds, Tim Daisy on drums and Devin Hoff on bass guitar. I saw them twice in concerts in Barcelona and I admire their CDs: "Provoke" and "Cherchez La Femme". I consider Kurzmann to be the most original and creative laptop player/performer I know! So in this sense the last album of The Resonance Ensemble breaks certain barriers that were separating it from other projects of Ken et consortes.

The set was recorded at the Manggha Culture Center in Cracow. "Double Arc", composed by Ken, consists of "Arc One" and "Arc Two", divided into 8 and 6 short or moderately long sections, respectively. There is a lot of collectively free improvised fragments (c.f. "Arc One, Section 1"), but also a lot of more traditional ones with a composed theme followed (or not!) by improvised solos or duos (c.f. "Arc One, Section 2"). As Ken explains in the liner notes, this is the longest piece he wrote since the mentioned "Collide", strongly inspired by his interests in film music: American action movies of the 1970s, the early period of New York School composers, like John Cage and Morton Feldman, the work of the "Midwest School" of improvising composers form the late 1960s and 1970s (in particular represented by the late Julius Hemphill), obviously American and European free jazz and later free improvised music, Gil Evans & Miles Davis collaborations, and... funk of the 1970s from the USA, Nigeria and Ghana. The piece is dedicated to the great late Polish composer, Witold Lutosławski, one of the Ken's favorite composers of the XXth century. 

Evidently this is the most conceptual and best constructed album of The Resonance Ensemble. For me it is a masterpiece, comparable to the highest achievements of this sort in the whole history of the contemporary jazz and improvised music, comparable to Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra "Ode" or Cecil Taylor's recordings with European Orchestra.