AMN Reviews: Unknown Shore – The House of Memory [Fundacja Sluchaj]

Unknown Shore is the trio of Sardinian musicians Adriano Orrù (double bass) and Silvia Corda (piano), along with Portuguese bass clarinetist João Pedro Viegas. On The House of Memory, recorded in Lisbon in May of 2019, this basic trio is supplemented by strings: Carlos “Zingaro” on violin, and Helena Espvall on cello. The album’s liner note quotes Steve Lacy’s observation that an improvisation undertaken by a quintet borders on entropy; what’s needed to avoid catastrophe is sensitivity and the ability to listen and leave space. Fortunately, all five musicians demonstrate these latter skills, along with the necessary intuitive sense of composition that keeps these performances coherent and uncluttered.

In fact, the expansion of the trio to a quintet not only doesn’t result in chaos, it offers opportunities for sound-painting with additional shades of instrumental color as well as for building more fully elaborated contrapuntal structures. Crucially, the quintet’s ability to break down into smaller subgroups helps keep overall textures from congealing into a muddy monotony, and facilitates a clarity of line. Empty Nest, for example, features pizzicato strings alone in an airy interplay, while Searching for the Wild Horses, with its duets for piano and pizzicato bass and piano and cello, not only alludes very obliquely to classical chamber music, but plays on the timbral complementarity of strings and keys. The title track, from the cascading piano notes – part melody and part ostinato – that open it and serve to frame its ongoing development, to the contrapuntal encounters that flesh it out, beautifully epitomizes the fine chemistry that holds these five voices together.

Daniel Barbiero