Heiner Goebbels - Ou Bien le Débarquement Désastreux (1995)

Heiner Goebbels' and Boubakar Djebate's "Ou bien le débarquement désastreux" (Or the Hapless Landing) is a melodrama, text spoken over or against music. There are three strands of text, spoken mostly in French (Andre Wilms), on the subject of forests: Joseph Conrad's Congo Diary; Francis Ponge's meditative Pinewood Notebook of 1940; and Heiner Mueller's Herakles 2, describing the hero's search for the Hydra ('the forest is the beast').

There are two strands of music: African, or more precisely Senegalese (Djebate), and contemporary Western (Goebbels). The virtuose Djebate plays the kora, a harp constructed from a pumpkin, and a very well-tempered harp it is too, with nothing 'primitive' about it. Sira Djebate sings traditional Senegalese Griots quite exquisitely. Against them are ranged trombone, electric guitar, keyboard-sampler and - bridging the divide - the Daxophon, a small piece of wood sounded by a bow and amplified: the range of jungular noises it produces it simply bewildering.

As in all melodrama there is conflict between word and note: it is more difficult for the human brain to absorb the two when the words are not simply set to music. There is also a conflict between two musical languages. At first I resented Goebbels' jazz-based, somewhat brutal modernism intruding on the less familiar Senegalese sound-world; gradually it became more African, with the trombonist Yves Robert sounding as though he had long been studying the cries of elephants. While nothing so vulgar as a synthesis was achieved, African rhythms eventually tempered and somehow tamed European inventions, just as Ponge's vaguely upbeat musings conversely tempered the terrors of Conrad and Mueller. That is just one reaction: as in all the best journeys into forests, there was no telling exactly where you were going. But at just over an hour, it was a musical journey that gripped the imagination from first to last. Rodney Milnes, The Times 5/7/95

1. Longtemps Il Crut Encore (0:50)

2. Samedi, 28. Juin (3:01)

3. Les Premiers Jours (1:16)

4. Jeudi, 3. Juillet (3:14)

5. Longtemps, Longtemps, Longtemps (0:38)

6. Vendredi, 4. Juillet (1:51)

7. Samedi, 5. Juillet (0:51)

8. Comme Le Vent Augmentait (1:35)

9. Mardi, 8. Juillet (4:21)

10. Cette Forêt (2:21)

11. Vendredi, 25. Juillet 1890 (1:36)

12. Il Eut Du Mal (3:58)

13. Mardi, 29 (2:49)

14. Fili (2:21)

15. S'adapter Et Ne Pas S'adapter (2:38)

16. 3. Août 1890 (1:14)

17. 9 Heures Après (0:20)

18. Dangoma (3:07)

19. Il Comprit (3:42)

20. Mort Aux Mères (1:51)

21. Koulanja (2:15)

22. Haches, Couteaux, Tentacules (4:26)

23. 7. Août 1940 - Après-Midi (2:33)

24. Le Soir (1:40)

25. Manilo (2:03)

26. 8. Août 1940 (1:46)

27. 13 Août 1940 - Matin (2:25)

28. 20. Août 1940 (3:46)

29. Sunyatta (2:45)

30. Dans Le Silence Blanc (0:51)

31. Fin Du Bois Du Pins (0:47)

Moussa Sissoko - djembe
Alexandre Meyer - electric guitar, table-guitar, daxophone 
Boubakar Djebate - kora, vocals
Yves Robert - trombone
Sira Djebate - vocals
André Wilms - voice
Xavier Garcia - keyboards, sampler
Heiner Goebbels - sampler

Music by Boubakar Djebate & Heiner Goebbels 
Texts by:
Francis Ponge (tracks: 23, 26 to 28, 31)
Heiner Müller (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 20, 22, 30)
Joseph Conrad (tracks: 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17) 

Released by ECM Records in 1995.

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Paul Giger & Marie-Louise Dähler - Towards Silence (2007)

Paul Giger’s ECM debut “Chartres”, recorded in 1988, signalled the arrival of a uniquely- gifted violinist with an uncommon sensitivity to sound-in-space, as well as to the musical material. When the Swiss violinist plays ‘the room’ is invited to be an active participant in the process. True of Giger’s outstanding solo albums (“Chartres”, “Schattenwelt”) it is true too of this duo with harpsichordist Marie-Louise Dähler recorded at the mountain monastery of St Gerold in Austria.

As in his previous recordings, this sixth album, recorded at Sankt Gerold Provostry in Austria, is made up of Giger's own compositions and improvisations. But this time there is an admixture of music by Johann Sebastian Bach: the famous 'Aria' that serves as the starting point of the Goldberg Variations, and the four- movement Sonata in F-minor for violin and obligato harpsichord (BWV 1018).
Despite years of cultivating his own music, Giger, who was formerly the leader of the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra, has not neglected the violin repertoire, as is evident in his lean and agile playing of Bach. Marie-Louise Dähler, a much sought-after soloist and chamber musician and a passionate continuo player who began taking harpsichord lessons from her father as a very young child, is perfectly at home with Bach. Being a thorough bass specialist, she also has a natural penchant for improvisation - a talent that has proved highly productive in her collaboration with Giger. She has expanded this talent into free improvisation, which has in turn left a mark on the compositions. In Towards Silence these two musicians approach each other from different angles, giving rise to a playful and ever-surprising interaction between allegedly opposite styles and sound-worlds.
Since they joined forces to form a duo seven years ago, Giger and Dähler have never ceased to study Bach’s sonatas and frequently include them on their programs. This is fully in keeping with their musical philosophy. 'In a recital one usually knows exactly where to interpolate a movement', Giger explains, 'but on a recording the problem is more complex. In the end we found a solution that practically inverts the sequence of movements in the Bach sonata but allows us to create highly contrasting transitions between our music and Bach.' The album opens with a sharp contrast between an extended free improvisation, recorded in a single take, and Bach's 'Aria'. In contrast, the Vivace from the Bach sonata is followed by Postlude like an angular shadow (track 5), while Prelude blends almost imperceptibly into Bach's Adagio.
Thanks to a wealth of unconventional playing techniques, the two musicians coax a great many unusual sounds from their instruments. In Cemb a quattro the harpsichord is prepared in such a way that each register has a different reservoir of sounds. This has an immediate impact not only on the melody and harmony but on the rhythmic processes as well.
While Marie-Louise Dähler presses the keys, Giger strikes the strings with dulcimer mallets inside the instrument. Another source of unusual timbres is the 'violino d'amore' - Giger's first violin, inherited from his grandfather and rebuilt by Christopher Lee Lüthi so as to combine five specially tuned strings (d-a-d'-a'-d') with six sympathetic strings. Owing to the relations between the upper partials, the notes in certain scales produce distinctive sympathetic vibrations that seem to envelop the instrument in a gentle haze of sound. When plucked, as in Dorian Horizon, the sympathetic strings produce a sound that intermingles mysteriously with that of the harpsichord.
No matter how free and associational these pieces may sound, almost every one is based on a structural idea. In the case of Halfwhole it is the harmonic and melodic potential of a scale consisting of alternating half- and whole-steps. Dorian Horizon, as the title suggests, exploits the horizontal, i.e. melodic aspects of the Dorian mode. And Gliss a uno inscribes an extremely slow descending glissando played on a single string with a constant bowed tremolo. Bombay II is a duo version, newly elaborated in conjunction with Marie-Louise Dähler, of a solo piece that Giger composed in 1970 toward the end of his first trip to India. The solo version can be heard on the CD Schattenwelt.

1. From Silence to Silence
2. Aria from Goldberg Variations (BWV 988)
3. Cemb a quattro
4. Halfwhole
5. Vivace from Sonata V in F Minor for violin & harpsichord (BWV 1018)
6. Dorian Horizon
7. Allegro from Sonata V (BWV 1018)
8. Vertical
9. Gliss a uno
10. Præludium - Adagio from Sonata V (BWV 1018)
11. Bells
12. Bombay II
13. First movement of Sonata V (BWV 1018)

Paul Giger: violin, violino d'amore
Marie-Louise Dähler: harpsichord

All Compositions by Giger/Dähler except 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, by JS Bach
Released by ECM in 2007

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Heiner Goebbels / Heiner Müller - Der Mann im Fahrstuhl (1988)

Using the texts of playwright Heiner Muller and collecting a wide range of imaginative musicians, Heiner Goebbels constructed a fascinating music-theater piece that mixes languages and musical styles. The text, read and sung by Arto Lindsay, concerns the thoughts and fears of an employee summoned to his boss' office and has something of a Brazil-like aura about it. Perhaps coincidentally, Lindsay interjects some Brazilian songs into the proceedings. But the highlight is the performance by this stellar ensemble, ranging from free to punkishly tinged jazz-rock to quasi-African. There are outstanding contributions from guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, and the late Don Cherry on trumpet, voice, and the African hunter's guitar known as the doussn'gouni. Goebbels brews a rich stew of overlapping languages and styles in a dense matrix that creates an appropriate feeling of angst, but never loses a sly sense of humor. If anything, some of The Man in the Elevator is reminiscent of Carla Bley's better known work and fans of hers as well as curious rock listeners should have no problem enjoying this one.
Brian Olewnick

Charles Hayward - drums, percussion
Fred Frith - guitar, bass
Heiner Goebbels - piano, synthesizer
Ned Rothenberg - saxophone, bass clarinet
George Lewis - trombone
Ernst Stötzner - voice
Arto Lindsay - voice, guitar
Don Cherry - voice, trumpet, strings [doussn' gouni]

Written By Heiner Müller
Released in 1988 by ECM Records

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Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble - Toward the Margins (1996)

British saxophonist Evan Parker was one of the first musicians to record for ECM, appearing on the label's fifth album in 1970 as a member of the Music Improvisation Company; his partners in that collective included Stockhausen associate and electronic composer Hugh Davies.

Over the past three decades, electronics have been one of Parker's abiding interests and his collaborations both with improvisers using electronics and with composers of electronic music have been many. In 1992 he formed the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble to explore more fully the potential of live electronics in improvisation, a potential that has grown as the technology has become more sophisticated.
The Ensemble pools musicians from the worlds of free improvisation, jazz, contemporary composition and computer music research, with most of its members straddling more than one idiom or area of activity. The Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble has toured widely, and its North American debut at the Victoriaville Festival was widely hailed as the event's highlight: "An orchestral music of panoramic scope, full of spatial detail...cascading layers of morphing transmutations ... the electronic manipulations charged the music with a sense of spontaneous discovery" - Cadence, "Ardent ... grandly ambitious ... broadly sweeping schemes, mating improvised activity with MIDI-fied crosstalk" - Jazz Times.
There is a great deal of slowly-evolving tone colour and space, with the opening track almost entirely textural and hung around Guy's sonorous bass. Sepulchral gong-sounds echo behind Parker's whirling soprano sax, there are spooky percussion solos of slithery whispers and sounds like buckets of broken glass being emptied onto concrete, and the leader's remarkable capacity for contrapuntal solo playing acquires even more voices as the electronics echo it. Serious play, in every respect. John Fordham, The Guardian (Jazz CD of the Week)

Evan Parker - soprano sax, gong
Barry Guy - double-bass
Paul Lytton - percussion, live electronics
Philipp Wachsmann - violin, viola, live electronics, sound processing
Walter Prati - live electronics, sound processing
Marco Vecchi - live electronics, sound processing

1. Toward the Margins
2. Turbulent Mirror
3. Field and Figure
4. The Regenerative Landscape (for AMM)
5. Chain of Chance
6. Trahutten
7. Shadow Without an Object
8. Epanados
9. Born Cross-Eyed (Remembering Fuller)
10. Philipp's Pavilion
11. The Hundred Books (for Idries Shah)
12. Contra-Dance

Recorded in May 1996 at Gateway Studios
Released in 1997 by ECM

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Maya Homburger & Barry Guy - Ceremony (1999)

"Probably something that could never have been imagined during the 1960s heyday of the Third Stream, this masterful CD doesn't try to meld classical music and jazz, as much as celebrate the congruence of both traditions. Maya Homburger, who plays an Italian violin built by dalla Costa in 1740, is a specialist in the interpretation of Baroque music and the first track here was written by Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704). The other compositions and the bass half of this duo are the products of the mind of Barry Guy -- born more than 300 years after Biber -- and best known for his membership in the Evan Parker Trio and leadership of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Fruits of this partnership can be heard on most clearly on Guy's "Immeasurable Sky," which leaves ample space for improvisation. As concerned with the beauty of small dissonances as any of the more formal works here, the track allows both players ample space for innovation. Nowhere do you get the idea that it's merely the classically trained violinist who is playing the lyric melody, while the jazz bassist slaps out strident rhythmic decorations. Guy, who performed for years with the Academy of Ancient Music, is cognizant of the particular demands of pre-modern music, while Homburger is a Baroque specialist not a purist. Ceremony's fascination resides in the fact that Guy's string treatments seem perfectly aligned with those of Biber, who, after all, was one of the first composers to use scordatura, the unusual tuning of strings.

Biber-influenced scordatura plays a large part in Guy's meditative "Ceremony," which features Homburger live in the studio improvising against seven pre-taped tracks of herself playing four other specially-tuned violins. Casual listening to these sweet string clusters may make it appear to be merely another period chamber piece. Actually, with the various sections layered so the soloist can use as much or as little of them as she wishes, it has all the elements of a contemporary creation. Similarly, Guy's solo track, "Still," fits perfectly in with the pensive mood of the rest of the disc. Yet, at the same time, with its brisk pizzicato attack and sonorous resonance it also wouldn't be out of place on a freewheeling improv disc featuring the likes of Parker.

Neither Third Stream nor a crossover mix of different styles, Ceremony is instead a fine example of how structures can be opened up to expose music's emotional core. As someone who prides himself on writing for individual personalities, Guy has shown once again that style is just a word and memorable sounds can appear in any medium". Ken Waxman

Maya Homburger: baroque violin
Barry Guy: double-bass

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