Author: dbarbiero
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AMN Reviews: Gazzi Perciballi Moro – Rehearsal [Bandcamp]
It’s described as a demo recording of rehearsals put together for a series of upcoming live dates, but really there’s more to it than that. The recording of eight improvisations by the trio of percussionist Luca Gazzi, guitarist Luca Perciballi and cellist Annamaria Moro not only is a set of music worth listening to in…
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Baltimore SDIY Group 2019 Winterfest Concert One
The Baltimore SDIY Group announces its 2019 Winterfest Concert One, to be held Saturday, February 23, at the Electric Maid, 268 Carroll Street NW, Washington DC 20012. The concert is all-ages with a $10 admission. The concert is a tribute show to the memory of our good friend & music colleague, Keith “Fast Forty” Sinzinger.…
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AMN Reviews: Jakob Heinemann – Latticework [Scripts Records]; Matt Nelson – Starting [Eschatology Records ER-005]
As recently as sixty years ago, there was very little in the way of literature for the double bass as a solo voice; it was barely even considered a particularly musical instrument. (And don’t get me started on double bass jokes. As the ancient sage Jimmy Durante once said, I got a million of ‘em.)…
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AMN Reviews: Various Artists – Anthology of Contemporary Music from Africa Continent [Unexplained Sounds Group]; Maurice Louca – Elephantine [Sub Rosa SRV474]
The Unexplained Sounds Group, the netlabel run by sound artist Raffaele Pezzella, aka Sonologyst, has with its latest various artists compilation delved into the largely unexplored territory of contemporary experimental music from the African continent. For that reason alone the collection is worth hearing. But the music itself makes its own case for listening. The…
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AMN Reviews: Giuseppe Pascucci & Vito Pesce – Nikola Was Right! & Humasaurs [Plus Timbre PT083 & PT084]
Guiseppe Pascucci and Vito Pesce, both of whom play guitar and electronics, are collaborators on these two simultaneously released and complementary albums, both of which were recorded live September 2016-February 2017. Pascucci and Pesce’s individual bios on the label’s site are vague almost to the vanishing point—which in a way is consistent with their music:…
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AMN Reviews: Nathan Davis – Hagoromo [Tundra tun009]
The inspirations for Nathan Davis’ dance opera Hagoromo are the venerable Noh play of the same name, and the earlier legend the play is based on. The story that Davis adopts from these sources is one in which the marvelous intersects with the mundane: the hagoromo is a feather garment worn by the swan maiden,…
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AMN Reviews: Santi Costanzo – Autocracy of Deception Vol. 1 [Setola di Maiale SM3780]; Alan Courtis – Buchla Gtr [Firework Editions FER1122]
Two albums by guitarists Santi Costanzo and Alan Courtis show some of the many facets of sound obtainable from this versatile instrument, either alone or augmented by objects and/or electronics. Autocracy of Deception Vol. 1 is the first solo release from Santi Costanzo, a guitarist from Catania, Sicily. In group environments as well as solo…
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AMN Reviews: Bearthoven / Scott Wollschleger – American Dream [Cantaloupe CA21145]
Whether by design or by accident, the three Scott Wollschleger compositions performed on the trio Bearthoven’s American Dream album capture, in their spare beauty, the pervasive sense of uncertainty and disorientation so characteristic of recent years. This may not simply be something imagined: Wollschleger himself sees them as expressing an often contradictory set of emotions—“doom,…
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AMN Reviews: Catching Up With If, Bwana
Throughout 2018, If, Bwana—the experimental electroacoustic music project of Al Margolis—has been quietly releasing a series of works based on the often-subtle electronic manipulation of acoustic instruments. Margolis has long specialized in creating textural works of assemblage from sound samples or full recordings of instruments played by others—for example, bassoon, flute, cello and saxophone. On…
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AMN Reviews: Albert / Day / Kreimer – Mutations [Public Eyesore PE 142]
Mutations is the product of the virtual collaboration of sound artists and instrument builders Bryan Day of San Francisco and Jay Kreimer of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Marco Albert, an Italian-born musician now based on Oaxaca, Mexico. The three played together in Queretaro, Mexico, in 2018 at the Festival Internacional de Improvisación y Música Extrema, where…
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AMN Reviews: Marianne Gythfeldt – Only Human: Electroacoustic Works for Clarinet [New Focus Recordings FCR 220]
At first glance, the title of clarinetist Marianne Gythfeldt’s Only Human would appear to be ironic. The album is a collection of work for clarinet and bass clarinet augmented by electronics in various capacities; the resulting sounds are more than just what human breath produces when vibrating a reed. But in fact there’s no irony:…
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AMN Reviews: Massimo Discepoli – The Right Place on the Wrong Map [Depth of Field]
Finding oneself in the right place by the lights of the wrong map may mean, by analogy, creating a particular kind of music that maps oddly onto its genre. This, fittingly enough, is the case with multi-instrumentalist Massimo Discepoli’s The Right Place on the Wrong Map. (Full disclosure: Massimo and I collaborated on the recording An…
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AMN Reviews: Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Aequa [Sono Luminus DSL-92227]
Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has spoken of how, growing up in Iceland, she developed a close relationship to natural landscapes and an appreciation for the subtle changes in light and weather peculiar to a location sited between mountains and ocean. This sensitivity to the quiet drama of nuance carries over to her music, as shown in…
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AMN Reviews: The Coldwater Trio – Live at the Battery Books & Music [Bandcamp]
More than any other kind of music, collective free improvisation succeeds or fails largely on the strength of the chemistry binding its players together. It isn’t unusual for a free improvisational ensemble to play focused, coherent music its first time out, given a felicitous combination of sensibilities and skills. Live at The Battery Books &…
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AMN Reviews: Karoline Leblanc / Nicolas Caloia / Ernesto Rodrigues – Autoschediasm [atrito-afeito 010]
A release from the trio of pianist Karoline Leblanc and double bassist Nicolas Caloia, both of Montreal, and Portuguese violist Ernesto Rodrigues, Autoschediasm, recorded in June at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, is an example of discerningly improvised timbral polyphony. From the first instant Leblanc, Caloia and Rodrigues reveals themselves to be possessed of…
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AMN Reviews: Transient Canvas – Wired [New Focus Recordings FCR218]
On Wired the acoustic duo Transient Canvas—bass clarinetist Amy Advocat and marimbist Matt Sharrock—are indeed wired. Most of the seven pieces on the CD, which the duo commissioned between 2014 and 2017, supplement the basic reed and percussion ensemble with electronic sounds of one kind or another. Many of the compositions reflect the influence of…
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AMN Reviews: Scott L. Miller – Raba [New Focus Recordings FCR198]
The electronic and electroacoustic music on Raba represents an updating, in its own way, of ambient music by way of contemporary art music. As composer Scott L. Miller explains, the CD began as a retrospective of his work but evolved into a reworking of some old pieces along with the creation of new work. The…
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AMN Reviews: Kim Myhr – pressing clouds passing crowds [HUBROCD2612]
Few notions encapsulate the human condition more tidily than the notion of passage: of passing to different places or stages of life, or simply passing through in any of its literal or figurative meanings. On pressing clouds passing crowds guitarist/composer Kim Myhr has collaborated with poet Carolyn Bergvall on a suite of pieces touching on…
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AMN Reviews: Møster! – States of Minds [HUBROCD2577]
Møster! is a quintet of Norwegian rock and experimental musicians led by multi-instrumentalist Kjetil Møster. On States of Minds, a two-LP release also formatted for two CDs, Møster plays saxophone, clarinet, electronics, and percussion; the rest of the group includes Hans Magnus Ryan on guitar and electronics; Jørgen Træen on modular synthesizer and lap steel…
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AMN Reviews: Ogni Suono – Saxo Voce [New Focus Recordings fcr213]; Vinny Golia & Gianni Mimmo – Explicit [Amirani Records AMRN057/Nine Winds NWCD0346]
The pairing of the same or two closely related instruments, when done well, can make the claim of being something like the anti-homeopathy of music. Rather than using like to negate like, as is claimed by homeopathic medicine, the successful duet uses like to enhance like. Each amplifies the effect of each while helping focus…
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AMN Reviews: Kate Soper / Wet Ink Ensemble – Ipsa Dixit [New World Records 80805-2]
The junctions and disjunctions that bind and divide language and what we try to mean with it: this is an old and perennial problem for philosophy and one that provides the subject of Ipsa Dixit, composer/vocalist Kate Soper’s six-movement work for soprano and small chamber ensemble. The work, which was a finalist for the 2017…
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AMN Reviews: Alfonso García de la Torre & Guillermo Lauzurika / Ensemble Sinkro [Bandcamp]
Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital of the Basque Autonomous Community; it is also the home of the Ensemble Sinkro, a group playing acoustic and electroacoustic works by contemporary composers. The group was formed in 2005, although its roots reach back to the establishment of the Jesús Guridi Ensemble and the Electroacoustic Music Laboratory of the Conservatory…
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AMN Reviews: Aviva Endean – cinder: ember: ashes [Sofa 569]; Lea Bertucci – Metal Aether [NNA 108]
For better and for worse, “extended technique” describes the use of unconventional or nontraditional methods of playing an otherwise conventional instrument. There’s another sense in which the technical resources of an instrument can be extended, though, and one that’s more literal: the augmentation of the instrument with preparations, electronic devices, or the intervention of external…
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AMN Reviews: Reinhold Friedl / Quatuor Diotima – String Quartets [Bocian Records]
Berlin-based composer Reinhold Friedl (b. 1964) occupies an emblematic place within contemporary art music. As the latter has become increasingly open to influences from other genres and cultures, it has ample room for a composer like Friedl, who has worked with artists from worlds as diverse as punk and post-punk rock, free improvisation and noise.…
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