Author: Tyran Grillo

Toshio Hosokawa: Landscapes (ECM New Series 2095)

| Tyran Grillo

Landscapes

Toshio Hosokawa
Landscapes

Mayumi Miyata shō
Münchener Kammerorchester
Alexander Liebreich conductor
Recorded October 2009, Himmelfahrtskirche, München
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Toshio Hosokawa, born 1955 in Hiroshima, is a fisher of multiple ponds. On the one hand, he carries the torch of European modernism, having studied in Germany under Isang Yun and Klaus Huber. On the other, he professes a deep affinity for traditional Japanese music and Zen Buddhism.

Hosokawa

Landscapes is ECM’s only disc dedicated to the composer, who in three of the album’s four pieces employs the shō, or Japanese mouth organ. Here it is played by Mayumi Miyata. A pioneer in introducing the shō as a solo instrument in contemporary classical music, she plays a “concert” shō with a pitch range broader than its standard counterpart. It requires expert control of the lungs, including circular breathing and steady changes in dynamic intensity. In Miyata’s hands it sings like the very phoenix it was originally intended to mimic.

Miyata
Mayumi Miyata

As for Hosokawa’s music, it all too easily falls into an interpretive trap like so many characterizations of Japan in general, which tend to paint the culture as a uniquely enigmatic blend of the ancient and the modern. Yet such an image fails to acknowledge the immediacy of its creative arts, and in particular of Hosokawa’s sound-world, which for all intents and purposes seeks not a bridging of spaces and eras but a reckoning of their aesthetic and (sometimes) political intersections. In the latter vein, he has created massive works in memory of the victims of Hiroshima and the tragic tsunami/earthquake of 3.11. In the former we have this program of meticulous dreamscapes to whet our appetite for beauty. It is, however, a tainted sort of beauty, one not destined for the painter’s canvas but rather for the videographer’s resignation. In his liner notes, Paul Griffiths likens Hosokawa’s constructions to the amorphousness of clouds, and certainly we can feel that stretch of variation, play of sun and spectrum, and stormy grays manifesting throughout the program.

Landscape V, originally composed for string quartet in 1993 and later expanded to the current version for shō and orchestra, unfurls a veil as thin as an insect’s wing that conforms itself to the shō’s summery spirals. One might not expect breath through bamboo to mesh so well with the feel of horsehair drawn across strings, but in Hosokawa’s renderings at least they become harmony incarnate, the shō illuminating the flow of air through an orchestra’s sound holes. In this pairing one may hear voices, shifts of wind, the flow of water, the meeting of stones, and even the light of moon taking sonic shape. The music is, at the same time, crystal clear. It wears no pretension, puts on no airs. It is, rather, the full breadth of its titular landscape pulled through a wormhole of consistency, so that even the more explosive moments take form not as catharses but as opportunities for deeper contemplation.

The Ceremonial Dance (2000) that follows is for string orchestra only, but loses no texture in the shō’s elision. Its heart would seem to lie in the comportment of gagaku (traditional Japanese court music), which turns illusions of a floating world into hyper-articulate bodies. That being said, the “dance” is implied through effect rather than movement, hiding in the absent drum. There is a liminal quality to this piece, performing an indeterminable ritual of which the score is but a simulacrum.

Sakura (2008), for shō solo, acts as a prelude to a choral setting of Japan’s most ubiquitous folk song. Bearing dedication to the former music director of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Otto Tomek (who also commissioned the setting), it is intimate and drifting, more postlude than prelude, the afterimage of a fallen blossom’s path toward water. As luminescent as its chords are, they are also dappled by the shadows of an unbroken gaze.

Last is Cloud and Light (2008), which pairs the shō with a full orchestra, including some light yet impactful percussion. Like its predecessors, it never overwhelms with its style, but unpacks itself in real time with self-awareness and tactility. It enacts a sharing of spirit between water and air, between the shapeless and the shaping. Large brushstrokes of brass pull their hairs through ink, soaking up as much of the universe as they can before falling along with the rain into the pond where Hosokawa’s bob and lure continue their meditation, content in knowing that no fish need ever bite to bring meaning to their dangle.

(To hear samples of Landscapes, click here.)

Egberto Gismonti: Saudações (ECM 2082/83)

| Tyran Grillo

Saudações

Egberto Gismonti
Saudações

Camerata Romeu
Zenaida Romeu conductor
Alexandre Gismonti guitar
Egberto Gismonti guitar
“Sertões Veredas”
Recorded August 2006, Teatro Amadeo Roldán, Havana
Engineer: Jerzy Belc
Assistant:  Argeo Roque Bernabeu
“Duetos De Violões”
Recorded April and May 2007, Mega Studio and Cecília Meireles Hall, Rio de Janeiro
Engineer: Márcio Gama
Assistant: Guthemberg Pereira
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Saudações, of which the title means “salutations,” marks the welcome end of a 12-year ECM hiatus for Egberto Gismonti since 1997’s Meeting Point. Whereas on that record he explored his conservatory training in a set of lively orchestral compositions with Gismonti as piano soloist, the first of this two-disc follow-up consists of Sertões Veredas, a suite in seven parts for strings alone, while the second disc features guitar duets and solos with the composer’s son Alexandre.

Seasoned Gismonti listeners will know what to expect from the program’s latter half. In addition to renditions of classic tunes, including “Lundú,” “Dança Dos Escravos,” and “Zig Zag”—each a bouquet of nimble, sparkling exposition—the duo soars through a veritable résumé of Father Gismonti’s uniquely tender ferocity. From subdued (“Mestiço & Caboclo”) to slipstream (“Dois Violões”), the performances emit a veritable brocade of fire. Alexandre contributes two solos to the program: the gentle, cyclical “Palhaço” (by Egberto) and the original “Chora Antônio.” Alexandre’s animations make them both album must-hears. After a few jagged turns, notably in “Dança,” Egberto ends by his lonesome with the title track, an adroit little bee of a tune that settles in a flower of harmonics.

Gismonti & Son play with freedom of detail, all the while holding fast to an underlying pulse that distinguishes so much of Egberto’s writing. Concentrated as they are, any one of these pieces might expand to an album’s length without loss of potency. In a sense, this is the feeling behind the orchestral suite that begins the album. As always, Gismonti paints a world proper, a landscape of vivid memories, childhood impressions, and mature reflections—all tied together by a love for his homeland and its peoples. Subtitled as a “Tribute to Miscegenation” (Tributo à miscigenação) and played with vivaciousness by Cuba’s Camerata Romeu, it is a heartfelt tribute to—and preservation of—times and places clearly dear to him, all intermingling in a new continent.

The cornucopia of influences from which he has drawn is already apparent in the first movement, of which the spirit remains very much rooted in the composer’s guitaristic panache (even his pianism, heard elsewhere, turns the keyboard into an enormous, fretted instrument). More than the instrument’s mechanics, its immediate tactility carries over into the scores, which sound like magnified string quartets. Gismonti’s attention to the orchestra’s lower end is especially robust, the double basses providing pulse, melodic undertow, and soil for botanical riches above ground. The occasional cello line acts as a link between dynamic extremes, leaving the violins to pollinate, as they will. Each movement is a suite of its own, moving from high to low, slow to fast, loud to soft in a heartbeat. The most obvious references are to Stravinsky (Part IV), John Adams’s Shaker Loops (Part V), and even the romantic touch of a Mendelssohn (Part VI), leaving the final part, an ode to folk traditions and dances, to bask in the resolution of camaraderie.

Speaking of attention, Saudações is recorded with just the right balance of intimacy and mountainous space. Peak slope into a valley of riches, each more scintillating than the last. A treasure trove for Gismonti fans. Even more so for newcomers. Either way: leave your shoes at the perimeter and step into the circle as you are.

Marc Sinan/Julia Hülsmann: Fasıl (ECM 2076)

| Tyran Grillo

Fasıl

Marc Sinan
Julia Hülsmann
Fasıl

Marc Sinan guitar
Yelena Kuljic vocals
Lena Thies viola
Julia Hülsmann piano
Marc Muellbauer double-bass
Heinrich Köbberling drums, percussion
Recorded March 2008 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Guitarist and composer Marc Sinan, recently of the (sadly) European-only release Hasretim, made his ECM debut with Fasıl, an album of enduring originality and refinement. The title refers to a suite form used in both classical and modern Ottoman ensemble music, and which here would seem to nod in both directions. It’s almost unfortunate that the Turkish word should so closely resemble the English “facile,” for the music here is anything but superficial. By way of comparison, one might pair it with Jon Balke’s SIWAN, as Balke illuminates and draws out likeminded ethnomusical connections with care.

Siwan’s own fasıl tells the story of ‘Ā’ishah bint Abī Bakr (613/14-678), youngest and favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad. In this fresh musical context, her sentiments twirl and float by turns along a river’s current of rhythmic libations. Librettist Marc Schiffer weaves into those sentiments influences ranging from the Qur’an to ancient Persian poetry in search of common ground. Pianist Julia Hülsmann’s trio with bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Köbberling—the subject of such later albums as The End of a Summer and Imprint—flexes the project’s instrumental spine. They are joined by violist Lena Thies, Sinan on guitar, and the Serbian-born, Berlin-based singer Yelena Kuljic in the role of ‘Ā’ishah.

The album begins, as does any fasıl performance, with an instrumental “Peshrev,” which lowers us gently into the waters of this emotionally dynamic world. It is a world of comfort and challenge, a quilt of geographical distances made immediate by design. Other traditional movements include iterations of the taksim, an improvisational interlude which unspools purple braids from Hülsmann’s interpretive fingers. Through these run the finer threads of Sinan’s flamenco-esque strumming and Thies’s spirited bowing. Sinan augments these with two movements based on transcriptions of an imam (Islamic cantor) he recorded while conducting research for this project in Turkey. “Sure 6/51” and “Sure 81 Taksimi” revolve around Hülsmann’s rhythm section, guitar and viola taking respective turns in the lead.

Yet it is by virtue of Kuljic’s portrayal of ‘Ā’ishah that the album comes into its own. Beginning with the drawing of desire that is “This Bloody Day” and ending with the affirmative “You Open My Eyes,” her voice sheds light by which to see. She explores themes as wide-ranging as agency and politics (“Taking Leave”), the body as landscape (“The Last Night”), and, couched in the album’s most entrancing melody, the intertwining of lives under Heaven (“The Dream”). Sinan rocks a lovely fulcrum in the latter through a smooth, jazzy core, and lends his flexible architecture to “The Struggle Is Over,” carving a sliver of moon into the sky.

All in all, these are songs of holdings on and lettings go. The instrumental elaborations are thoughtful (and thought-provoking), unraveling richly dyed sacraments in sound. At their heart is a song entitled “The Necklace.” It is a pivotal moment, both in the lives of its characters and of this cycle as a whole. It refers to story recounted in the Qur’an, in which ‘Ā’ishah, during one of Muhammad’s desert raids, is mistakenly left behind when she goes looking for a lost necklace and returns to camp to discover that her caravan has departed without her. She is found by a nomad under Muhammad’s employ named Sufwan and taken to the next campsite, only to be met with gossip of infidelity. Unbelieving of these rumors, Muhammad takes his wife’s word on faith (albeit after a revelation from Allah confirms her innocence), and her accusers are summarily punished. It speaks volumes about a woman whose strength thrived in her resolve, in her resistance to a world of men, and in her refusal to let her integrity fade into the dunes.

Stefano Scodanibbio: Reinventions (ECM New Series 2072)

| Tyran Grillo

Reinventions

Stefano Scodanibbio
Reinventions

Quartetto Prometeo
Giulio Rovighi violin
Aldo Campagnari violin
Massimo Piva viola
Francesco Dillon violoncello
Recorded January 2011, Teatro Giuseppe Verdi, Pollenza
Engineer: Gianluca Gentili
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012), best known for his collaborations with Terry Riley and as an improviser and extended technique innovator on the double bass, was also a prolific composer, writing more than 50 works for strings. His first album for ECM owes its existence to Irvine Arditti, lead violinist of the Arditti Quartet and a longtime friend, and actualizes a dream that occupied the composer’s final years to the point of obsession.

Stefano Scodanibbio
(Photo credit: Alfredo Tabocchini)

The “reinventions” of the album’s title refer to his string quartet reworking of Bach, Spanish guitar music, and Mexican songs in a long-form suite of seamless, expressive character. Although, on the surface, three iterations of the Contrapunctus from Bach’s Art of the Fugue seem little more than slight deviations of their source material, they actually brim with harmonic ornaments and slow tempi that allow the listener to better scrutinize their pathos through Scodanibbio’s idiosyncratic lens. Rather than simply “re-imagine” the works of his interest, Scodanibbio turns them slowly in the hands, studying them as might a diviner a crystal ball, until they sing of their own accord.

The Bach references are the massive vertebrae of the suite, each cushioned by the Spanish and Mexican disks between them. The former take the name of Quattro Pezzi Spagnoli, but breathe as one unit. The pizzicato ornaments of “Lágrima” begin a stroll through elegant gardens, which with every step elicits new aspects from each melody in turn. There is already so much life in this music that Scodanibbio’s filtering would feel intrusive, were it not for his sensitivity, so that by “Studio” we may feel every detail as a song unto itself.

The five Canzoniere Messicano, on the other hand, come across more urgently with the opening “Cuando sale la luna.” Their life force swirls in the night, disturbing the reflection of a waning moon and etching out a dance along the water. Even the evergreen “Bésame mucho” (the most beautiful song ever written, in the composer’s estimation) leaves ripples in the mirror of its timelessness. “Canzone popolare: La llorona” ends this portion as if thrown in a bottle out to sea, a beacon for ghosts whose love of life keeps them haunting the pitch.

The performances by Italy’s Quartetto Prometeo are quiet, assured, and strangely uplifting—as much a quality of the music as of their playing. The cyclicity of both underscores the depth of Scodanibbio’s craft: no mere homage but a profound exercise in empathy.

Lake Street Dive Brings Down the House at Ithaca’s State Theatre

| Tyran Grillo

LSD

The initials of Lake Street Dive may spell LSD, but the music of this Brooklyn-based quartet is no hallucination. It’s as real as it gets. Especially real was the energy on Sunday night as, one by one, the band took to the State Theatre stage. Drummer Mike Calabrese established a beat, standup bassist Bridget Kearney locked in a groove and guitarist Mike Olson laid down a few chords before singer Rachael Price ignited the room like a barbeque grill as she launched into “Rabid Animal.” This tune, one of a handful off the new album Bad Self Portraits, raised the bar high for any other indie acts set to grace these parts in the near future. With their engaging cocktail of soul, rock, and Beatles-esque backbone, LSD brought professionalism to every twist and turn of an 18-song rollercoaster.

As was obvious to anyone there, Price is a natural born performer and by the seventh song (the addictive “Use Me Up”) had the audience on its feet and in the palm of her hand. Combining the follow-through of Amy Winehouse and the rasp of Betty Carter, her voice was sensual, hip and confident to the last drop. No small feat, considering that much of the Portraits material deals with themes of regret, surrender and, perhaps most of all, self-abdication. Whether in the title cut or the bittersweet “Seventeen,” the band’s suave rhythmic sensibilities — anchored by Kearney’s rooted bass lines — and lucid harmonies maintained a spirit of underlying propulsion even in the slowest numbers. Ballads as such were few and far between, and included the soulful spotlight that was “Just Ask.”

BSP

In spite of their all-around proficiency, LSD expressed little interest in instrumental soloing. Rather, they focused on maintaining a consistent sound that made even the less successful tunes shine with spirit. Of the latter, “Neighbor Song” was the only real expendable. This depressing tale of a lonely girl who laments her bachelorette-hood while listening to her neighbors make love upstairs quickly wore thin and, with each repetition of the chorus, felt just a bit uncomfortable. Then again, so did its protagonist. In any case, by the last song we were fully refreshed and enlivened by LSD’s stellar vibes. They have hit upon a special combination.

As rich it was, the concert might have felt incomplete without its opening act: Signature Sounds label mate Heather Maloney. Armed only with a guitar and a voice from on high, the New Jersey native — now based in Northampton, Massachusetts — was a study in contrasts. Her unique, sometimes-quirky songwriting concerned itself one moment with simple pleasures (“Nightstand Drawer”), morphing the next into an ode to pathos (“Dirt and Stardust,” a fan favorite). With delicate restraint at her fingertips, she told stories of old friendships (“Hey, Serena”) and, in the evocative “1855,” of an immeasurable love captured in a single photograph. In this song her playing was most alive, like ocean waves lapping over one another before a storm.

HM

Despite tempting comparisons to coffee house queens Aimee Mann or Ani DiFranco, Maloney’s closest analogue is perhaps Joni Mitchell, a point confirmed by her heavenly version of the chanteuse’s classic “Woodstock.” Even more remarkable was her closer, “No Shortcuts.” Hearing this Motown-inflected anthem emanating powerfully from her petite frame to the sole accompaniment of the audience’s stomping and clapping left us fully primed for the sunbursts that followed. Like a good novelist, she followed her voice and thoughts to their logical endpoints, leaving us nonetheless wanting more.

(See this article as it originally appeared in The Cornell Daily Sun.)

Marc Sinan: Hasretim – Journey to Anatolia (ECM 2330/31)

| Tyran Grillo

2330/31 X

Marc Sinan
Hasretim – Journey to Anatolia

Marc Sinan music, guitars, idea, concept and production
Traditional musicians from Turkey
Mustafa Boztüy darbuka, framedrum
Güç Başar Gülle oud
Ömer Can Satır kaval
Onur Şentürk kemençe
Erdem Şimşek bağlama
Traditional musicians from Armenia
Araik Bartikian duduk, zurna
Vazgen Makaryan duduk, zurna
Andrea Molino arrangement, conductor (DVD only)
Jonathan Stockhammer conductor
Markus Rindt idea, concept and production
CD recorded live July 2011 at Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival by Volker Greve and Holger Schwark
“Prolog” recorded December 2012 at MIAM Istanbul by Can Karadogan
Mastering: Volker Greve
DVD recorded Ocobter 2010 at Festspielhaus Hellerau
An ECM Production

Classical guitarist Marc Sinan, born in 1976 to a Turkish-Armenian mother and a German father, has over the past two decades attracted increasing demand as a soloist and collaborator, and dedicates his output to softening divides between genres, eras, and cultures. Hasretim represents the most significant evolutionary leap in his career as a composer. The result of a commission by Hellerau – European Center for the Arts Dresden and the Dresdner Sinfoniker, this video-musical journey traces Sinan’s heritage along the Black Sea coast to the Armenian border. More than that, it’s an invaluable archive of life and song on the Anatolian plateau, which he explored together with Dresdner Sinfoniker artistic director Markus Rindt in 2010. During the trip, Sinan was saddened to find that the preservation of folk music so prevalent elsewhere (viz: the Baltic states, Hungary, and Greece) was lacking in Turkey. Consequently, he took Hellerau’s commission as an opportunity to address the discrepancy, pooling a storehouse of traditional musicians and incorporating their art into a large-scale, contemporary piece of his own design. “I was quite nervous,” writes Sinan of the recording process. “Unlike musical field research, our project demanded much more than simply documenting the current state of the Turkish musical tradition regardless of its artistic merit. We were on a treasure hunt and would only rest once we stumbled upon something truly special.” As connections grew, so too did the availability of choice musical talent and the opportunity to capture it for posterity. Once satisfied with his bank of original recordings, to them Sinan introduced what he calls “decisive, subjective elaborations” in the form of both through-composed and improvised material.

Hasretim was originally conceived as an installation piece, with videos of these unrecognized Turkish troubadours (many of whom must balance their musical lives with working ones) projected onto five towering vertical screens at stage rear. Before them plays an assembly of European classical musicians augmented by traditional specialists from Turkey and Armenia. The latter bring their expertise to a veritable portrait of Asia Minor in sound as the oud, kaval, kemençe, bağlama, duduk, zurna, and frame drum hold their own alongside strings and winds. It is to ECM’s credit that its release should encompass both the audio on CD and the visual on an accompanying DVD. For while the music stands alone as a welcoming experience, to see the musicians (live and recorded) in their element, along with segues of candid scenes from Istanbul and beyond, brings out the project’s reach in most immediate terms. Both versions feature essentially the same personnel, with the notable exception of conductors: Jonathan Stockhammer directs the CD version, recorded live at the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival, while Andrea Molino, also the project’s musical arranger, handles the DVD performance, recorded at Festspielhaus Hellerau.

As indicated by the title, which means “I’m yearning” or “My desire,” Hasretim is a search for roots. Yet it’s also a spray of new foliage in the towering branches, nourished by Sinan’s unique ear for montage. The album is bookended by a “Prolog” and “Epilog.” One is a menagerie of harmonics, blips, and whispers that tightens like a spring, while the other pieces together footage of nearly all the recorded musicians in a chain of reprisals, ending as it began: with an attunement that spans multiple geographies.

Within this frame are five distinct “Tableaux,” each named after a Turkish city or, in the case of “Tableau II – Yayla,” for the mountain pastures where an old man (Haci Ömer Elibol) plays the end-blown kaval while his sheep animate the background. His call, for that is what it becomes in Sinan’s contextualization, inspires some upbeat interweaving. In contrast to the dark fiddling of “Tableau I – Ordu,” which details the face of singer Asiye Göl across all five screens, it more fully includes itself in the musical goings on.

Indeed, voices resound clearest throughout the program, even if certain instrumentalists do stand out for their charisma. There is Hüsseyin Altay on the tulum (Turkish bagpipe), joined by droning brass; the unforgettable Ismail Küçük, who sings and bows his kemençe in “Tableau III – Trabzon” from the back seat of a car, thus underscoring the film’s road movie feel; the duet of Ömer Parlak on kaval and Mesut Kurt (along with Göl, the youngest of those featured) on kemençe; and in “Tableau IV – Erzurum” the rhythmically savvy Aşik Eminoglu accompanying himself on the bağlama to invigorating effect. This same Tableau also cradles “In Memory of Vahide,” a 10-minute duduk duet that interpolates shadows into light. All of this buoys “Tableau V – Kars” as the most compositionally unified vision of live elements (especially in the percussion) and descriptive archival work.

In absence of any background information, one might never know that Sinan witnessed firsthand a loss of connection among contemporary Turkish musicians to their rich heritage, or that their art needed recovery in this regard. Neither was the counterpoint lost on him between the boisterous people and their peaceful, sometimes dreary, settings. Such contrast of medium and message informs every frame and staff of this multimedia treasure trove. Although awarded a special prize by the German Commission for UNESCO for its “inspiring and experimental confrontation between different cultures,” Hasretim is less about experiment than experience and anything but a confrontation. Rather, it is a book to which each new witness adds a page.

(See the article as it originally appeared in RootsWorld online magazine, where you may also hear samples.)

Dino Saluzzi Group: El Valle de la Infancia (ECM 2370)

| Tyran Grillo

El Valle de la Infancia

Dino Saluzzi Group
El Valle de la Infancia

Dino Saluzzi bandoneón
José Maria Saluzzi guitar, requinto guitar
Nicolás “Colacho” Brizuela guitar
Felix “Cuchara” Saluzzi tenor saxophone, clarinet
Matias Saluzzi electric bass, double bass
Quintino Cinalli drums, percussion
Recorded March-May 2013 at Saluzzi Music Studio, Buenos Aires
Production coordination: José M. Saluzzi
Recording engineer: Néstor Díaz
Mix and mastering: Stefano Amerio
Album produced by Manfred Eicher

Over the past three decades of his association with Munich-based ECM Records, Argentine bandoneón virtuoso Dino Saluzzi has built a new home, but through his output on the label has traced so far back down his old roots that with El Valle de la Infancia (The Valley of Childhood) he might at last have reached the center of the earth. Playing once again with his “in-house” band, last heard with slightly different personnel on 2006’s Juan Condori, he emotes seamlessly with brother Felix on reeds, son José on guitars, and nephew Matías on electric and upright bass. Guitarist Nicolás Brizuela and percussionist Quintino Cinalli round out the extended family portrait. As ever, Dino’s humble beginnings (his father worked on a sugar plantation and played the bandoneón in his spare time before becoming a noted composer himself) manifest themselves in every note, and he credits them with freeing his creative approach. Dino’s mastery is thus so organic that to name it as such barely renders a sketch of his capabilities, as evidenced by this latest excursion. As it turns out, the valley of his childhood is a bountiful place to be.

The program of Infancia juxtaposes standalone pieces alongside compact suites, all of which blend into a meta-narrative dotted by contemplative pauses. At its core, the music (mostly by Dino himself) thrives on warm, impressionistic feelings, so that whenever the band does cohere, the effect is dazzling. “Sombras” welcomes new listeners to one of the most recognizable sounds in all of modern South American music, and old listeners to a familiar, paternal squeeze of the shoulder. The title means “shades” and connotes a mission statement Dino has been crafting since he first laid hands on bellows. His bandoneón exhales magic so potent and with such familiarity, one would swear to have been born in the presence of its melodies. After an intimate introductory sweep, José’s guitar (occupying the mid-left channel) opens its currents and inspires Father Saluzzi to low-flying surveys. Cinalli’s brushed drums (there’s nary a stick to be discerned on the album) lighten the weight of their memory.

Biological linkages strengthen in “La Polvadera” and “A mi Padre y a mi Hijo” (For My Father and Son), each a coming together of such thematic clarity as to whisk the heart away on a cloud. Brizuela’s picking (mid-right channel) contrasts verdantly with José’s nuanced flutter and sway. The two guitarists combine beautifully over butterfly-kissed snare and cymbals in “Churqui.” Cinalli’s rhythmic details make the scenography all the more believable. His patter may be that of rain one moment, the next of a magician who excels in misdirection.

The album’s mini-suites usher in colors from adjacent plains, where crops give way to the tilling of a new generation. Ranging from two to five parts each, the suites cover a range of emotional stirrings and interpret tunes by a handful of late Argentine folk singer-songwriters among Dino’s own. Moods vary accordingly. From the dissonant rainforest activity and droning resolution of “Urkupiña” to the guitar-driven medley that is “La Fiesta Popular,” motifs find their way through thickest forest and driest riverbed alike. Even “Tiempos Primeros,” which nods deepest toward folk traditions, balances images of sleeping and waking in the final curlicue of wind.

The tripartite “Pueblo” captures the band at its purest shade yet. Its introductory guitar solo (“Labrador”), written and played to angelic perfection by José, preludes a nocturnally realized “Salavina,” the most famous zamba (not to be confused with samba) of Mario Arnedo Gallo (1915-2001). The subtle unity forged therein carries over into Part III, the quietly majestic “La Tristecita” by Ariel Ramírez (1921-2010). As throughout the album, each instrument holds its own in equal measure, serving the depth of restraint over the allure of drama. That said, Felix’s tenor casts an inescapable spell: jazzy, gritty, and tasting of soil. All of which labors to remind us that even the most ethereal prisms of art extract their light from the embers of that which came before.

(See this article as it originally appeared in RootsWorld online magazine, where you may also hear samples.)

Stephan Micus: Snow (ECM 2063)

| Tyran Grillo

Snow

Stephan Micus
Snow

Stephan Micus douss’n gouni, duduk, maung, gongs, tibetan cymbals, bavarian zither, sinding, steel-string guitar, hammered dulcimers, charango solo, nay, bass duduk, voices
Recorded 2004-2008 at MCM Studios
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For his 18th ECM meditation, German multi-instrumentalist Stephan Micus goes deeper into his travels, into his technique, and into himself. Among his usual bevy of means, the Armenian double-reed duduk—last heard on Towards the Wind—is now a central energy field, its song a balance to the cold. “I’ve always regarded snow as the essence of magic,” notes Micus in this album’s press release, and his impressionistic view of one of nature’s most enigmatic phenomena shines through with a glow all its own. The title track likewise harbors many warm bodies, despite the wintry theme. Two doussn’gouni (a West African harp that Micus debuted on Desert Poems), along with various gongs and cymbals, give the duduk a gentle berth for travel. Guided by breath, not oar, its intense presence rides toward frosty shores, singing of the ice as gateway and kissing the land with its solemnity. Also retained from Desert Poems is the sinding, another West African harp that blends with steel-string guitar, hammered dulcimers, and an ever-growing chorus of voices in “Sara.”

The duduk continues its tender mission across a “Midnight Sea” (accompanied here only by Bavarian zither) and into the arms of “Madre.” The latter speaks further in the language of strings and mallets, and both mix the reeds spatially, so that notes scale from left to right as they ascend. The album’s final track, “Brother Eagle,” features the bass duduk. Along with two sinding and fifteen voices, its near-ghostly sound feels spun from the very earth of which it chants. This marriage of glitter and darkening cloud, of moonlit sailing and glorious dream journeying, advances its subterranean walkabout lead by shadows toward the promise of sunrise.

Making its debut at Micus’s fingertips is the charango, an Andean double-stringed ukulele popularized by Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla. “Nordic Light” is a solo for the instrument, which in this context sounds more like some miniature koto that evokes its aurora with understated flame. Another solo begins “For Ceren and Halil” before being joined by seven more charangos, duduk, nay, sinding, and five hammered dulcimers in an eddying current of leaves and time until they reach the waterfall that makes one of them all. The album’s sole remainder is “Almond Eyes” (11 voices, steel-string guitar, maung), which offers some of Micus’s most impassioned singing yet.

It bears noting that the cover of Snow was painted by father Eduard Micus (1925-2000), a gestural painter who shaped his medium as his son shapes sound. It’s a naked glimpse into the musician’s upbringing, and proof that life is indeed a river that, once frozen, simply awaits the thaw of another realm.