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amsterdam . berlin . moscow losoncy
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EWR
2122/23 CD boon, sijstermans, cater, singh, losoncy, hauer, shirokov, vriezen the same ensemble: sasha elina (voice, flute), kirill shirokov (piano, electronics) dante boon (fender rhodes, piano), seamus cater (concertina, harmonica), heather frasch (flute), koen nutters (doubel bass), germaine sijstermans (clarinet), rishin singh (trombone) gaby losoncy |
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>> squidco.com audio excerpt: ► germaine sijstermans - M (22:23) ► seamus cater - tree space: the trees they are growing high (07:24) ► dante boon - for what (08:46) ► kirill shirokov - a dream (05:01) ► samuel vriezen - linking (10:21) amsterdam . berlin . moscow
musicians: CD1 the same ensemble: sasha elina (voice, flute), kirill shirokov (piano) (1, 3, 4, 5) dante boon (fender rhodes, piano) (2, 5, 6), seamus cater (concertina) (2, 5), heather frasch (flute) (5) koen nutters (double bass) (2, 5), germaine sijstermans (clarinet) (2, 5), rishin singh (trombone) (5) CD2 the same ensemble: sasha elina (voice, flute) (2, 3, 4), kirill shirokov (piano, electronics) (2, 4) dante boon (piano) (3, 5), seamus cater (harmonica) (3), koen nutters (double bass) (3), germaine sijstermans (clarinet) (3), gabi losoncy (1) virtual meetings this double album, curated by dante boon, was realized under pandemic conditions, musicians sit- ting in their cities, in their homes, not quite able to play together. so it features forms of together- ness that are not quite together. it is a portrait, not quite of a scene, but showing links between scenes, related interests, a musical sensibility at work in the world today. there are songs. the same ensemble, the moscow-based duo of sasha elina and kirill shirokov, describes their work as "experimental chamber pop in the form of a new music duo". dante himself has played keyboards in the dutch rock band the scene, and his vocal music shows an ongoing affinity with the form. amsterdam-based composer and singer/songwriter seamus cater’s tree space: the trees they do grow high is based on an 18th-century folk song, as recorded by peter bellamy, but maps the materials onto a score in the form of a tree that musicians explore. there are ensembles formed of musicians who have never met. members of the same ensemble, amsterdam’s dnk ensemble, and berlin’s konzert minimal have recorded parts to be mixed together by a composer. if the parts have similar materials, echos happen spontaneously, like multiple perspectives on the same ideas, from all over the world, happening in various rooms. tiny differences in tuning become unexpectedly expressive this way – rishin singh’s trauermusik in fact asks musici- ans to tune their a individually at anything other than 440. similar surprises happen in kirill shirokov’s 2019ix26 with its mesmerizing gradual shift of pointillist harmonies. germaine sijstermans’s m, recorded in the regular way, also has three sub-ensembles interpreting the same material (a sequen- ce of dyads) each in their own way, but breathing together, complementing each other’s forms of resonance. there are responses to more distant times and circumstances. josef matthias hauer, the “other” inventor of twelve-tone music, is present in a radical arrangement by shirokov. choices of texts betray affinities with great poetic voices from the past: blake, thomas, herbeck, whitman. but the tracks also are of their moment – the score of for what by boon, a lament in dyads, mentions june 2020 as its date of composition, when the world was gripped by protests against the infuriatingly unjust death of george floyd. at that time, too, tighter was contributed by sound artist gabi losoncy, the one artist on this album whose music practice isn’t explicitly connected to the others somehow, appearing like a sympathetically resonating world apart within the world that is this album. what links all these tracks together? because they do connect – i hear the album as one whole in which the pieces flow into one another, talk to each other. but i can’t say for sure how this works, even though my own piece is called linking. this was written in 2019 for tom johnson’s 80th birthday; it is a set of cards for any ensemble to play, in which musicians each get different cards with motives of up to three notes on them, and try to link these together using common pitches. dante has chosen to play this as an ensemble of one; listening, you can trace the polyphony as it unfolds, motives enter and are discarded, voices meeting at the unison or in another octave. that’s playing piano: even when you can’t get together with other voices directly there’s always whole ensembles of them under your fingers. another kind of virtual meeting. samuel vriezen
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