Vassilis Tsabropoulos piano
Recorded March 28, 2002 at Megaron, Dmitri Mitropoulos Hall, Athens
Engineer: Nikos Espialidis
Executive Producer: Manfred Eicher
Akroasis confirms Vassilis Tsabropoulos as a pianist whose talent is as deep as the ocean but who is content exploring single drops of it. Of those drops we get eight in Akroasis, which follows his intriguing ECM debut as jazz artist with a collection of improvisations built around, and in response to, five Byzantine hymns. The latter are Orthodox staples, and in their re-imaginings here chart new plains with a feeling of eternity. The first three, and in particular “Axion Esti,” gently showcase Tsabropoulos’s knack for evocation. Shifting from emerald to topaz, they bring a lofty yet intimate architecture into being. Cascading as they do from such great heights, the melodies quaver behind veils of their own mist, folding and refolding into increasingly visual arrangements. Certain others (namely: “Anastasis”) brim with optimism under cover of low-grade fever, dances of molecules and light that yield songs of ethereal cast. Their gifts flow like Sunday morning into a vestry which, though empty, nevertheless sings with the pregnancy of its shelter. Like the music reverberating between its walls, it cares not for fleeting objects or soundings but for the prism of heavenly care into which they feed.
Tsabropoulos’s own compositions flush the ears of toxins via rolling currents, gazing upon the shapes of their divine interest as if they were impressed with icons in relief. “The Secret Garden” best shows his rigorous classical roots, evoking Ravel, Mompou, and de Falla in a blush of twilight. Don’t let the title mislead, however. Although the temptation to link these billowing streams to some invisible mystery is strong, they are firmly rooted in the realities of their creation: a coming together of body, instrument, and element. “Interlude” further illuminates the detail of Tsabropoulos’s artistry and shows a player starkly attuned to the value of spacious play. Its waves of pause and reflection are overwhelming in their subtlety, rendered all the more honest against an occasional sprinkle of dew in the higher register. The beauty of this album can hardly be overstated, if only because it is so understated, and nowhere more so than in the concluding “Prayer,” which like all that comes before it glistens with the innocence of its birth. We can feel Tsabropoulos thinking out loud, as if with an arm around us in brotherhood and peace.
Although comparisons to, for one, his duo project with Anja Lechner would seem inevitable, and despite the album’s decidedly sacred slant, to my ears it is more closely analogous to The River. That latter effort between pianist Ketil Bjørnstad (perhaps as close an analogue as one can find at the keyboard) and cellist David Darling brims with the same aquatic grace and expresses that grace through likeminded depth of production, clearly mapped even in the most heavily pedaled regions. Tsabropoulos’s relationship to this music is that of cloud and lake: one creates the other and, in being created, reflects the creator in kind. Thus, the album cover, in both incarnations, becomes an icon unto itself. Neither is positive and neither is negative. Both are nothing without the breath of life to be seen and, above all, heard.
<< András Schiff: Leoš Janáček – A Recollection (ECM 1736 NS)
>> Michael Mantler: Hide and Seek (ECM 1738)
Annette Peacock vocal, piano The Cikada String Quartet Henrik Hannisdal violin Odd Hannisdal violin Marek Konstantynowicz viola Morten Hannisdal cello
Recorded January and April, 2000 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
we play our own music we sing our own song I make my own music for right or for wrong
With these words, Annette Peacock reveals the shape of an acrobat’s heart, a portrait of a consummate artist. In her voice of voices is a world of wisdom, poised like a golf ball atop a tee—only instead of soaring down the fairway it sinks deep into the earth and marks its passage with remainders of relationships, dreams, travels. Previously represented on ECM as a ghostly compositional force to be reckoned with (viz: Paul Bley’s Ballads and Marilyn Crispell’s tribute record Nothing ever was, anyway), after years of preparation in response to a label commission Peacock at last spread her fan, nestling her voice and pianism in a bed softened by the presence of the Cikada String Quartet.
(Photo by Alastair Thain)
The bed metaphor proves apt, for in her plush, if sometimes distant, textures Peacock invites the listener into a space canopied by sheets. With an imploring yet never desperate tone, she turns experience into diary and diary into melody. More than personal, these songs are personified, each a character on a stage whose name is love. In this respect, piano and string quartet work like a giant heart, translating blood into life as might the poet turn breath into light. The instruments churn soil for every vocal flower, piano loosing handfuls of descriptive raindrops to water them. Some of those flowers are supple (“Over.”), while others are fallible (“u slide”); some liberated (“b 4 u said”), others wedded to time (“ways it isn’t”). More often, however, Peacocok is content mining the interstices of indecision for valuable emotional ore, unraveling a genuinely honest songcraft along the way. Heaviness of subject matter aside, there is an ethereal quality to her framework that turns questions into reality by shrouding them in fulfillment.
The lyrics say only what they need to say. Be they the open communications of “weightless” or the fresh wounds of “Free the memory,” one can expect a minimum of dress, for indeed the more one listens, and in spite of an intense physicality, the more the body becomes immaterial and passion reigns as emptiness. Peacock’s distinctly lilting cadences draw upon a stark cinema, thrown onto the screen by a projector of innocence. With a single utterance she can gut your expectations and fill them with conversations, at once profuse and fragmentary with age. Against these, “Camille” is a relatively mysterious turning of the mirror, catching just enough luminescence to clarify what is under the microscope.
The comet tails of Peacock’s surroundings are laden with affect. They turn like a mobile above a crib, connecting one galaxy to another with a rug weaver’s eye. The Cikadas brush lithely across her paper, erasing as much as they inscribe. For the most part, their gestures are bowed, although the rare pizzicato bloom (“The heart keeps”) lets its fragrance be known. Such moments take the album’s stream back to its course like an unsure lover back to the skin, to the warmth and closeness in which this music so wholeheartedly believes. The quartet also provides reprieve (in relation to the density of its surroundings) in “Unspoken,” floats us into “Safe” (the pianism of which becomes a speech act), and haunts again in “Lost at Last,” colored in lapsed time.
ECM has done quiet and significant work in extolling the virtues of jazz’s most intriguing songstresses, among them Sidsel Endresen, Norma Winstone, and most recently Judith Berkson. Yet with this release the label has unwrapped a significant gift indeed, one that keeps on giving the more you let it in.
<< Robin Williamson: The Seed-at-zero (ECM 1732)
>> Charles Lloyd: The Water Is Wide (ECM 1734)
Vassilis Tsabropoulos piano Arild Andersen double-bass John Marshall drums
Recorded January 2003 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Classical pianist and late jazz bloomer Vassilis Tsabropoulos turned heads with his ECM debut, Achirana, for which he redefined the piano trio under the leadership of bassist Arild Andersen and guidance of drummer John Marshall, both improvisers of proven stamina and invention. Whereas Tsabropoulos’s playing felt at times muddied and inattentive to negative space on that nevertheless enchanting record, this sophomore effort ushers us into a new and vibrant chapter with “Straight.” Immediately one can tell in this Tsabropoulos original that its composer has already tapped into the qualities of a fine improviser, treating his hands more like feet engaged in dance, leaping and bounding their way through turns of phrase. The transformation is obvious in the way he listens, in Andersen’s duly spirited soloing, in Marshall’s vintage sound. That feeling of metamorphosis is even more palpable in “Choral” and in “Simple Thoughts,” both rustling, leafy scenes, picturesque yet open to darkness. And in “Cinderella Song,” Tsabropoulos elicits gobs of soul from the rhythm section, carrying the night with all the resignation of one who is sure in life and in love. His development as a jazz artist manifests itself further in the album’s intertextual variety, evoking Bill Evans, Vince Guaraldi, and French impressionism in short chains of keystrokes. In the latter regard, his arrangement of Ravel’s “Pavane” proves that his architectural awareness has indeed bloomed in the four-year gap between trio albums. Here he balances guidance and recession, thinking out loud in real time before our ears and brushing away the leaves to reveal the ground in all its promises of life.
Although on paper Tsabropoulos headlined Achirana, which was irrefutably an Andersen showcase, this time the opposite holds true. Still, Andersen muscles his way through some soft territories without so much as a blemish in his wake. He contributes three tunes, rendering a puff of cloud for every patch of sky. “Saturday” invokes a proper and delicate swing and finds Tsabropoulos going for a more linear approach, which bodes well for everyone involved. There is a nostalgic, quasi-urban energy in this one that sits on the cusp of swimming and drowning, opting to jump before finding out which will prevail. “Prism” offers a velvety ballad—the album’s only in the truest sense—and sets us up for the groovier “Lines,” in which the trio hits its stride.
By far the most interesting portion of this album, however, comes in the form of “European Triangle,” an unusual group improvisation that hints at broader undercurrents begging for exploration.
This is simpatico done right.
<< John Taylor Trio: Rosslyn (ECM 1751)
>> Trio Mediaeval: Words of the Angel (ECM 1753 NS)
Vassilis Tsabropoulos piano Arild Andersen double-bass John Marshall drums
Recorded October 1999 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Achirana introduces a special trio formed by bassist Arild Andersen with pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos and drummer John Marshall. Although the prodigious Tsabropoulos anchors equal footing in classical performance and composition, his improvising, notes Andersen, has full independence. Its rounded panache and ability to graft on to its surroundings while also maintaining an inherent melodic drive make this, his ECM debut, a thoughtful entry. That said, by the end he leaves us with a little too much to process. More on this below.
Tsabropoulos’s melodic gifts are immediately apparent in the whispered clusters with which he begins the title opener. A wistful thought, a tangle of hair about the nape, a ribbon loosed and windblown: such are the tiny pictures created by these gestures. Andersen’s playing is poignant and builds to density with such tact, magisterial yet as compressed as a teardrop, that the facets of “Diamond Cut Diamond” glitter with that much greater beauty. In this dance of thread and needle, Andersen resonates with mercurial depth-soundings. His heavy quavers are like giant arrows in the darkness, each shafted by a fallen tree and feathered by itinerant dreams, leaving their spores behind to sprout, fly, and strike their targets truly. Yet these are not weapons but instruments of writing, flowing down into “Valley” with their watery dreams fully intact. Such tracks as this clarify the album’s key element: namely, its ability to make the ineffable audible. Andersen’s poised soloing says it all, as does his pliant re-imagining of the Norwegian folk song “She’s Gone.”
The album’s remainder consists of Tsabropoulos originals, of which the breadth of “The Spell” and the upswing of “Fable” stand out for their pathos. He allows the music to breathe with such deference to the act of bringing it to life that he feels more like a ghost as the set progresses. By the final two tracks (“Song for Phyllis” and “Monologue”) he feels like an untraceable border in a Rothko canvas: nothing seems to separate his playing from his surroundings. It’s not that a jazz musician needs to stand on his head. Nevertheless, one wants to feel something embraceable, and sometimes Tsabropoulos plays a little too smokily. Compared to, say, John Taylor’s work with Peter Erskine and Palle Danielsson (as documented on Time Being, As It Is, and JUNI), the surface of Achirana is rather uniform. This is not necessarily a drawback, but it may help you decide whether or not Achirana is for you. Either way, it’s a unique swath of pianism and the formative mark of a musician who has since grown into his skin as an improviser. In this respect, the trio’s follow-up, The Triangle, is where it’s at, to say nothing of Tsabropoulos’s marvelous solo effort, Akroasis.
Barring the fact that Tsabropoulos’s name heads the roster, this is an Andersen record through and through. In addition to his creative playing, the bassist’s creative listening is patently obvious throughout, whereas Tsabropoulos tends to fill space wherever he can find it. The difference in approach is staggering and proves that jazz is more about what you don’t play. And let us not forget Marshall’s luminescent contributions, which open the listener further to that unnamable, tuneful inkwell into which masters of the art all dip their quills. In this respect, Edward Bulwer-Lytton only got it half right when he said that the pen is mightier than the sword, for what the pen leaves behind is mightier than both, as is the page, without which those markings might never reach us.
<< Zehetmair Quartett: Karl Amadeus Hartmann/Béla Bartók (ECM 1727 NS)
>> András Keller/János Pilz: Béla Bartók – 44 Duos for Two Violins (ECM 1729 NS)
Keith Jarrett piano Gary Peacock double-bass Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded July 5, 1999 at Palais des Congrès, Paris
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Following his intimate comeback from an illness that might have barred him from the keyboard forever, pianist Keith Jarrett closed another gap with Whisper Not, the first live album with his standards trio in three years. Once the needle of “Bouncin’ with Bud” drops, however, it’s as if there’d never been a skip in the record. Jarrett seems unable to contain the joy of being once again in his element, so that his chording behind Peacock’s first solo feels like a bird circling, waiting to dive: not in for the kill, but for the sheer thrill of his clip. And dive he does, navigating DeJohnette’s thermals with expert care, thus marking a triumphant return to the fold. That said, when later Jarrett comes into his vocal own on “Hallucinations,” he proves that this concert is more than that: it’s a reframing of what always was, and ever will be, a profound talent.
That the trio’s sound is brighter and more focused will be obvious to any longtime listener. There’s a special, scintillating quality to this album notable already in the title track, which opens with a characteristically wood-knotted intro before locking into a welcoming gait. Yet Jarrett positively fluoresces in the more downtempo turns. “Chelsea Bridge,” for one, moves with the magical fortitude of a classic fairytale—only this music is undeniably real. Some tender unpacking from Peacock sets the pianist to the delicate task of sorting those artifacts to heartwarming effect. His vivid approach to melody stands out further in “All My Tomorrows” and “Round Midnight,” both deep gazes inward that light candles in a post-storm blackout: not with fire but with an inextinguishable love for the musical process.
From “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams” to George Shearing’s “Conception,” the set’s more upbeat turns have a tenderness all their own. On the same note, “Groovin’ High” might as well be the name of a school, for the trio’s performance of this Dizzy Gillespie tune is a master class in exposition. Peacock revels in the sound to which he is able to contribute so intelligently, while DeJohnette elicits visceral exchanges, ligaments to this as-yet-infallible body. “Sandu” further proves why Peacock and DeJohnette comprise one of the most intuitive rhythm sections in the business. They flow so organically, and with such unforced conviction, that it seems impossible to listen outside their spell. Each has his master moment: the bassist’s in “Prelude To A Kiss” and the drummer’s “Poinciana.” The latter is one of the most brilliant in the trio’s recorded output, of which only this concert’s encore, “When I Fall In Love,” has made it to disc before. Even more beautiful than one could hope for, it’s the perfect way to end a new beginning.
Welcome home.
<< Bruno Ganz: Wenn Wasser Wäre (ECM 1723 NS)
>> Herbert Henck: Piano Music (ECM 1726 NS)
Any fans of Lena Willemark and Ale Möller will want to check out my latest twofer at RootsWorld, where I review albums by Danish New Roots outfit Himmerland and the Ale Möller Band. A fresh wakeup call for your drowsy summer.
Tom van der Geld vibes, percussion Roger Janotta reeds, percussion Larry Porter piano, electric piano, percussion Richard Appleman bass Jamey Haddad drums Bob Gulotti drums
Recorded 1973 at Rennaissance Studios, Maynard, Massachusetts
Engineer: C. Ange
Produced by Tom van der Geld
Vibraphonist Tom van der Geld’s distinct musical wanderings have left behind some of the choicest among ECM’s out-of-print relics. Whether the trio settings of Path or the broader palette of Patience, his sound is at once soft and unbreakable, forthright yet ecumenical. His footsteps also found purchase in the rarer soil of the JAPO sub-label, of which this self-titled date from his legendary group Children At Play was the first. Here van der Geld is joined by Roger Janotta on reeds, Larry Porter on keyboards, Richard Appleman on bass, and Jamey Haddad on drums. Basking in opener “Tamarind,” it’s clear why the ensemble has attained such high status among collectors. This power statement awakens to a wealth of morning light every bit as descriptive as Grieg’s. The brittle bass line that ensues nets a flavorsome admixture of piano, vibes, and soprano sax that positively exudes personality. Between Porter’s grounding keys and a drum circle-like interlude, there is much to take in throughout this 18-minute journey as it pulls down the sun to where it began.
“Wandering I” lumbers further into the album’s storybook scenography, bringing illustrations to life with a hint of whimsy. In addition to the group unity forged in such tracks, Janotta’s reeds work a most vivid magic throughout, but especially in “Sweet My Sweet,” in which he sets up a tropical narrative from van der Geld, trembling and sunbathed, swaying like the album cover’s long grasses. Drummer Bob Gulotti replaces Haddad on “Reason,” a rubato outing of multifaceted inner dimensions. A gnarled, lethargic bass solo paints the picture of sleep before van der Geld’s dreams touch off lens flare accents.
If pushed to find a point of critique regarding this album, I might comment only on the sequencing, for the tracks might have better served themselves in reverse. As the order stands, it’s like starting with an enormous dessert and working one’s way back through smaller main courses. Either way, the album is another beautiful entry in the van der Geld travelogue and finds rich closure in “Patch Of Blue.” The only track not written by the bandleader (this one comes from Porter’s pen), it molds a pastiche of all that came before, combining the time of “Tamarind,” the fantasy of “Wandering I,” the warmth of “Sweet My Sweet,” and the introspection of “Reason” in smooth detail. The feeling is one of sand—not of desert, but of beach—between the toes, honest down to the last grain.
Admir Shkurtaj accordion, piano Giorgio Distante trumpet Redi Hasa cello
Released 2012 by SLAM Productions
One of the benefits of my sideline as a music writer is that I receive review copies of albums by artists I might not otherwise have discovered. Through my ongoing contributions to RootsWorld online magazine especially, I have encountered a wealth of fascinating music from all walks of life. One of the most intriguing of these so far is Admir Shkurtaj, an Albanian multi-instrumentalist and composer who first came to my attention when I was asked to review his solo piano effort, Mesimér, for the selfsame magazine. Where that album might be seen as a distillation of his diverse interests, ranging from folk to the avant-garde, this from the same year attests further to his ability to interact, listen, and guide. The dynamic of Gestures and Zoom—for which Shkurtaj is joined by trumpeter Giorgio Distante and cellist Redi Hasa—is markedly different, not only for the flexibility of its means but also for its distinct methodology.
Shkurtaj elaborates on the title concept: “Gestures and Zoom is constructed from a plurality of musical gestures proposed by each of the instruments, in chaotic order. A musical ‘gesture’ means a cell or musical object. In theatrical terms, we would say that a musical gesture is a character within the scene. Each one has/is its own character, fleeting as it is. After several exposures, the ‘zoom’ factor fixes the target of a single gesture to view it more clearly, or, in more musical terms, to develop it in order to enhance its characteristics.” From this dance of physicality and visualization, Shkurtaj and his trio spin a wild photometry indeed.
Despite the delicate madness that follows it, the album’s introductory piece is duly exploratory. Shkurtaj’s tinkering pianism seems to deconstruct as much as it builds. The insightful processes therein foil the slalom course of “Disegni” and “Olmi,” which respectively showcase the tremendously expressive abilities of Distante and Hasa. “Improntrio” is another spiraling ride—the DNA helix as roller coaster—and reaches some dizzying heights of pitch, a ghostly conversation in fast-forward. Moments of deep familiarity do, however, come to the fore, most notably via Albania’s popular traditions as they materialize in “Danza” and “Victoria.” These nodes of locality stand out for their precision. Shkurtaj and Hasa, both of Albanian extraction, carry out the most delicate surgery, while Distante, who hails from Italy’s Apulia region, introduces their stark themes and from them spits out a full speech.
Gestures and Zoom balances improvisation and composition with great skill. Shkurtaj makes it obvious where one begins and the other ends, and so on until the resulting blend finds solidity in an emerging narrative. “The themes of the compositions,” he clarifies, “are structurally similar to jazz standards but have a chamber music character (I am writing for chamber ensembles in a contemporary classical environment). Improvisation is free and based on complex rhythmical frames, such as derivatives of the rhythmical cell 3 + 2/8 (Olmi – Victoria), and sometimes on particular musical gestures decided right from the start (Gestures and Zoom – Disegni).” Whether or not the listener has such vocabulary to make sense of the designs, the blend of their spinning remains clear.
What is challenging yet also enjoyable about this record is the detail of its fire. Nowhere is this clearer than in the title track. In bubbling voices and instrumental scrimshaw, an explicit liberation begins to take shape, making such programmatic gems as “Shi” all the more effective for their simplicity. Shkurtaj: “‘Shi’ in Albanian means rain. I have always listened in silence to the sound of rain. When it falls on metal surfaces it becomes even more interesting. I tried to imitate this through rhythmic counterpoint on the prepared piano.”
Shkurtaj’s is biological music that treats its motives as Petri dishes in which to culture a balance of attunement and free wandering. Between the intriguing little “Duetto” and the culminating “Conduction” the listener may feel a switch flipped at the mitochondrial level. Of this microscopic aesthetic, Shkurtaj says, “For the most part, with the possible exception here of ‘Improntrio,’ the music I write is mono-gestural. The songs are built on a single element or musical idea. This lends itself to feelings of narrow space.”
Annie Lewandowski vocals, prepared piano, keyboard, guitar John Dieterich guitars, bass Thomas Bonvalet harmonica reeds, six-string banjo, amps, microphones, feet tapping, hand clapping, tuning forks, concertina, guitar, dry poppy pods, whistlings
Released March 2013
Circle Into Square
As the high-pitched distortions of a concertina pierce the ether in “Fellow,” the opening track of powerdove’s latest, Do You Burn?, it’s clear they belong to a music comprised of supernal layers. Like emotional specimens under a microscope, each instrumental slice has its own cover slide. At the risk of belaboring the analogy, we might say that Annie Lewandowski’s voice is the clarifying stain. The Minnesota-born pianist, songwriter, and improviser began powerdove as a solo highway before assembling her current car pool with John Dieterich of Deerhoof and Thomas Bonvalet of L’ocelle Mare. Their barbed tangle of feedback and acoustic guitar almost obscures the patter of raindrops that follows in Lewandowski’s wake, each a step toward fractured closure. The classical enunciation of the words adds glint to the rough lyrical edges in a love song that is both invitation and self-cocooning:
Fellow you’re inside mellow to my aching body
Thus initiated, thus torn in two, the listener leaves one self behind while the other drips into the soil, where the only accompaniment can be found in the stirrings of worms, chiggers, and other stewards of long-rotted crops. In this fecund quilt lies the one perfect square, its fragrance more powerful than a tornado.
There is a feeling here of three itinerant creators, wandering from one abandoned farmstead to another and playing on whatever battered equipment they can find, thus leaving songs as sigils of their fleeting inhabitation. This doesn’t mean that the proceedings are in any way sparse, for as in “Under Awnings,” despite the minimal appliqué of handclaps and muted piano, there is a mortal weightiness that one can only find in the dreaming body.
One last chance for a kiss run away to another under awnings of sheet and steel I lay me down
So, too, the portal of “California.” It is fiercely emblematic of the album’s deceptive simplicity, for what appears to be nothing more than a drinking song is in fact a veiled paean to knowledge-seeking and the ways in which it is inevitably cracked by, and elided from, the creative process in favor of something new. Such abandonment is also readily apparent in “Flapping Wings,” a scenic morsel to feed the gaping mouth of a landlubber’s heart (indeed, there is something of an oceanic brogue about it).
All the leaves blow off breeze to take the spring seeds on
The title track pulls harder at the album’s frays of memory as the sun watches keenly, nakedly, holding no judgment but our own.
The quavering bellows provide mechanical respiration in the background, the trembling of a newborn locomotive opening its eyes to the tracks. Unlike the latter, however, powerdove does not submit to the promise of coming together that the horizon throws at us. Rather, it maintains its parallels through a voice’s secrecy that we find in “Alder Tree I,” as well as in “Out On the Water,” which enacts another playful approach to perspective and relays between solo accompaniment and homespun groove and treats size as an ever-changing idea to which ears subscribe at random.
listen hear the refrain listen now the refrain
“Love Walked In” enacts that part of every journey during which the destination, though still a ways away, nevertheless glistens in the mind as if it were a jewel in the hand. Sprightly guitar layers and an optimistic bass dance their way down endless stretch of road. Rhythms recur with the crunch of granola at molar touch.
We run and laugh and run under darkened skies
“Red Can of Paint” evokes the microscopic attention of William Carlos Williams. Overturned, it acts as a sounding drum for all activity that shares slivers of its perimeter in this pizzicato postcard.
Light from the hall wash you over
“All Along the Eaves” is by far the album’s truest to form—not only for the subtlety of its traction but also for its admixture of voice, melody, and text. Through songs like this, powerdove asks us, Why separate the chaff when it is still singing? And in this sense they provide an ethical service, documenting swan songs before they are discarded via the guts of machinery and industry.
On my knees I’m weak three breaths from my coffin
“Out of the Rain” is a beautiful afternoon-laden choir with a thump following close behind: a peg-legged, Björkian nightscape.
Whisper me my name your hand resting on my face
Lewandowski has beautiful way of repeating words: drinking, sinking, sung, turning them into compact mantras of poetic evocation.
In “Wandering Jew,” which reads like a travelogue of the voice, that repetition finds in the sensitive instrumental accompaniments a wavering sense of corporeal reality, which seeks shade under the beautiful plucked piano of “Alder Tree II,” a windblown leaf that hangs even though its branch is gone.
I hang my head
Although the album barely surpasses half an hour in duration, it cradles countless more of unraveling in its bosom. There is a sheen to its contours that speaks of the dawn as experience’s signature: not an admission of love but a love of admission.
(Photo by Ben Piekut)
An e-mail interview with Annie Lewandowski
> 1. Can you briefly walk me through the evolution of the album from concept(s) to realization?
In June 2010 I moved to Southampton, England to join my husband, Ben, who had work teaching there. I’d left the Bay Area and also left powerdove, which at that time had consisted of me singing and playing guitar, Jason Hoopes on upright bass, and Alex Vittum on percussion. We’d toured some on the west coast and recorded “Be Mine” (released on Circle Into Square Records) earlier that year. In England I had a lot of time (perhaps too much time…) to myself. No work, no friends. I was inspired by the rain, the grey, the solitude, and very much the landscape. 11 of the 13 songs on “Do You Burn?” were written there, walking along the River Itchen, as sparse arrangements for voice and guitar. Ben and I talked at length about how this next recording might sound. Ben suggested I ask Thomas (Bonvalet) and John (Dieterich) to collaborate. Thomas has a fantastic solo project called L’ocelle Mare that I’d been introduced to in 2006 or 2007 when he toured through Oakland (Thomas is from France). He plays a vast array of instruments—foot percussion, handclaps, reeds, banjo, poppy pods…. He has an incredible sense of rhythm and a fantastic sense of atmosphere. John has been a friend for a long time. He’s an amazing guitarist and imagining his dense guitar sound on this record was thrilling. I invited Thomas to come to a concert I played in Paris in April 2011 to see what he thought about collaborating, and John’s known powerdove’s music since the beginning. Both were on board and we met in Albuquerque to record the album in January 2012.
> 2. How did you come to share the road with John and Thomas? What newness (or antiquity, for that matter) do they bring to the powerdove sound?
Think I answered this in my lengthy response to question one…
> 3. Your lyrics seem personal, at times intensely so. Are they a diary? Are they a travelogue? Are they fantasy?
Yes, the lyrics are intensely personal. Sometimes I’ve worried that they are a bit too personal, but then what else would I write? I don’t think I could do it any differently. I’ve worried about the transparency of the lyrics before, but had a really comical experience a few years back that lead me to believe they maybe weren’t so transparent. I had performed the song “Easter Story” in London and someone came up to me afterwards and asked me if I was a Christian. Another person asked me if the song was about Catholic church child sexual abuse. Needless to say, neither got at what the song means to me.
I’d say that, more than anything, these songs are a diary…things I’ve thought, felt, experienced, that have found their best articulation in music.
> 4. Your music strikes a fine balance between polished and rough ore. Is this balance conscious and, if so, does it arise organically?
I love that you have that experience listening to Do You Burn? This balance is very conscious, and it happens very much organically. At a concert we played in Poitiers in March, someone came up to me after the concert and said they felt like I was the lighthouse in the midst of a storm. I love for the simple clarity of the melody and lyrics to root itself in the bed of sonic wildness that Thomas and John create. It’s exhilarating to sing in the middle of it! I’ve been trying to close my eyes less when I sing but have found it to be impossible. I have to concentrate so completely while I’m singing so as not to get thrown off balance.
> 5. For the most part, the songs feel like they were recorded live in the studio with very little multi-tracking. Was this a practical or an aesthetic decision?
It was an aesthetic decision. We wanted the intimacy and feel of live takes so recorded the album as such. There was a relatively small amount of overdubbing done for this record. We recorded live at John’s house—I was singing in a closet, Thomas was playing his banjo (and other instruments) in the bathroom, and John was in the main room playing guitar.
> 6. Speaking of aesthetics, how would you describe powerdove’s in one word?
jagged
> 7. The song “Wandering Jew” is rivetingly poignant. What does it mean to you?
I wrote “Wandering Jew” after Ben and I had packed up everything in our semi-detached house in Southampton. The movers had taken everything and there was literally nothing left in the house. I’d kept my guitar and wrote it in the days just before moving back to the US. There is a lot about the English landscape in that one, there is a lot about the pain and the exhilaration of having left the religion I was brought up with. It’s my favorite song from “Do You Burn?” I can feel my heart bursting with this complex range of emotions every time I sing it. I owe a lot to John and Thomas for magnifying that feeling in their instrumental parts, which are absolutely exquisite.
> 8. Much of the press surrounding your work talks about geography. How important is landscape to you as a songwriter?
I’ve noticed how much geography figures in my songs, but only in hindsight. So much about water…. I grew up in a small town in Northern Minnesota near the headwaters of the Mississippi. Much of my childhood was spent swimming in the lakes and river in the summer and ice-skating and running around on the frozen lakes in the winter. Maybe after all of those years in and on bodies of water it’s what first comes to mind. Or maybe it’s because I get the lyrics for many of my songs when I’m outside walking and that’s often near bodies of water. We just recorded songs for the next powerdove album and geography still has a presence, but less so than in Do You Burn?
> 9. If asked to cite any musical influences on powerdove, who might they be?
For singing, Nico’s at the front. Instrumentally, all of the wonderful improvisers I’ve had the pleasure of hearing and playing with the last 15 years. And I grew up in and received a lot of my music education in the Lutheran church. When my songs are at their most basic, just me singing and playing guitar, I find they have a lot in common with the hymns of my youth—stark and simple.
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 