Tag: flute

Per Tjernberg – They Call Me, 1990

An ambitious and highly effective combustion of ambient jazz and a slew of musical traditions, whirlwinded together with dizzying, almost violent enthusiasm by Swedish jazz percussionist Per Tjernberg. Gamelan textures, Indian tabla, Aboriginal didgeridoo, Gabonese and Cameroonian sanza and mbira humming, Japanese strings, African flute, oud, and drums from too many countries to name.

While writing this post I realized that Tjernberg is also responsible for this reggae-pop treat (released under the wink-wink pseudonym Per Cussion) that I’ve had in my “tracks to do things with” pile for years. That he succeeds at such wildly different efforts (which are equally unabashed in their proclivity towards cultural borrowing, or, you know, appropriation; call it what you will) is a testament not just to his musicianship (though They Call Me is his first release under his own name, he was already well-seasoned in other projects) but to the grace with which he applies textures outside of their traditional contexts and shapes them into landscapes that sound simultaneously very terrestrial and slightly alien. (Relatedly, he’s also touted as the first Swede to make a rap record, which he did with the aid of American rappers, and about which I have nothing to say other than that I like the kalimba.)

There is, as you might expect, a lot going on here, but They Call Me shifts comfortably between wild freeform jazz and more subdued textural motifs, and I (predictably) think its strongest moments are when it leans into the latter mode. The title track, as well as “Didn’t You Know…Didn’t You Know” (previewed below) are very high highs. The closing track, “This Earth: Prayer,” is stunning in scope, managing to do so much with what is, for much of the song, just a didgeridoo, a lone brass instrument, and some light percussion. It evokes whales and also something even more cosmic, and I’m reminded strongly of Deep Listening every time I hear it. I don’t know that this record is for everyone, but if it’s for you, it’s definitely for you.

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David Casper – Crystal Waves, 1984

Another gem from private issue new age icon David Casper, one of the later follow-ups to his excellent Tantra-La. Like that record, Crystal Waves manages to blend a laundry list of instruments (cello, played by Jami Sieber; marimba, played by Scott Cossu; ch’in [yuequin, aka moon zither, played by T’ao Chu-Chen], h’siao [Chinese bamboo flute], ocarina, crystallophone) into something that never sounds at all busy. That unhurried spaciousness is even moreso the case for this record than for Tantra-La. While a very careful and thorough use of acoustic environment brings to mind open landscapes rather than large rooms, and while there’s definitely some highly detailed multi-tracking going on, the precision and directness of the sounds seem to belie their numbers–which is to say, Crystal Waves masquerades as a very effective minimalist line drawing until you stare at it for awhile and realize it’s a full-color impressionist oil painting. It’s rendered in tones that are so delicate, translucent even, that you might not realize right away that they’re there.

This is particularly the case on the second side of the cassette, which, for our purposes, is the “Crystal Waves I-IV” tracks 4-7. It’s composed entirely of tuned crystal glasses:

Each glass was played individually with meditative attention and recorded, grouped, and re-recorded in a lengthy blending process. In order to attain a broad spectrum of sound from a simple source, tape speed, equalization, and harmonic balance were changed to produce sounds reminiscent of bass and cello, flutes and horns, organs, bells and gongs, and other sounds suggestive of electronic synthesis. Sometimes as many as thirty glasses may be heard at once, each with its own pulsation and timbre, produced acoustically by finger on glass.

The depth of field and texture Casper achieves with glass alone is remarkable, as is his gift with drawing heat out of sounds that might otherwise be predisposed towards frostiness. He’s just as skilled with his treatment of strings as he is with glasses: in spite of the wide openness of these songs, there’s a direct suggestion of reassuring warmth that I find myself feeding on over and over in the wintertime. I also just realized that it’s been a year almost to the day since I posted Tantra-La, so clearly these records are seasonally significant to me. I hope you love this as much as I do.

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Haruomi Hosono – 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji), 1987

Another favorite from the Hosono canon. This was the score for the first animated adaptation of The Tale of Genji, a sprawling piece of 11th century literature written by noblewoman Shikibu Murasaki, considered by many to be the first modern novel in recorded history. (Isao Tomita later write his own symphonic adaptation of the story.) The anime was directed by Gisaburō Sugii, and while it only covers a small part of the epic storyline, the score is highly ambitious.

Scan courtesy of Kaleidophonics

Unlike much of Hosono’s catalogue, here synthesizer mostly acts as an atmospheric texture and instead puts traditional Japanese instruments, particularly koto, flute, and drums, front and center. What’s really astounding about this soundtrack is the layering of instruments, piling them up until they become unfamiliar: droves of fingerpicked strings sound like a hive of insects, waves of gentle hand percussion feel like the swells of inhales and exhales, processed flute suggests the shrieking wind. Despite a pervasive mysteriousness, and even ominousness, this is unmistakably gorgeous music, and structured in such a way that it will appeal to fans of more conventional synthetic ambient music–but retains a feverish futurist-classical elegance all its own.

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Tōru Takemitsu – Kwaidan, 1964

A watershed moment in the career of an avant-garde giant. Takemitsu composed several hundred pieces of music, many of them massive and orchestral in scope; scored over 90 films; and published 20 books before his death in 1996. Interestingly, much of his early output was marked by his contempt for traditional Japanese (and, more broadly, non-Western) music, colored by his experiences of the war, during which Japanese music was associated with militaristic and nationalistic cultural ideals. In his own words: “There may be folk music with strength and beauty, but I cannot be completely honest in this kind of music. I want a more active relationship to the present. Folk music in a ‘contemporary style’ is nothing but a deception.” So severe was his enmity with tradition that he famously destroyed several of his own works upon discovering that he had unintentionally incorporated “nationalistic” elements of traditional Japanese scales. An early proponent of musique concrète, his work has often been cast as in synchronicity with Pierre Schaeffer; however, neither were aware of the other at the time (though Takemitsu was an ardent admirer of John Cage).

Still, despite his fierce commitment to avant-garde experimentation, by the 1960s he had started to more deliberately incorporate traditional Japanese scales, elements of folk songs, the tones and modes of Gagaku, and, as evidenced in Kwaidan, ancient instruments like the biwa.

A quartet of heavily stylized supernatural vignettes rendered in intensely saturated color, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan was the most expensive film in the history of Japanese cinema at the time of its release. Takemitsu turned out a score ambitious enough to match, channeling his ambivalence towards tradition into a mangled, strangled take on the folk sounds of his upbringing. Silence acts as a prominent texture, but in between the strained gaps are twisted shakahuchi lines, shrieking winds, ghostly metallic clangs, splitting wood, an occasional distant drum, Noh-style vocals recalling a storied mass suicide on a battle ship, and a whole lot of that biwa, played with such venomous ferocity that one can only wonder how many strings had to be replaced over the course of recording. Sparse, horrific, and very potent. Enjoy, and happy Halloween!

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Kudsi Erguner & Xavier Bellenger ‎– Conférence Des Roseaux (Ney & Kena), 1984

Another one in a collection of recordings made in locations with amazing natural reverb. This one was recorded over the course of two days in September of 1982 at the Abbaye de Senanque, a Cistercian abbey in Provence. Kudsi Erguner is a Paris-based Turkish ney-flutist, composer, and musicologist, and has contributed to a handful of Ocora records. Xavier Bellenger (here on the kena, or quena, flute) is a French ethnologist and musician who went on to collaborate with Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. As far as I know, Conférence Des Roseaux was completely improvised.

With the details out of the way, this is music that speaks for itself. Crystalline, deeply expressive, bird-like flute duets that, despite having been recorded indoors, evoke huge space. To me, the audible joy of two very skilled musicians having fun making sounds together is what makes this such a special record.

[RIP] Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy – African Skies, 1993

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of legendary jazz trumpeter (and occasional zither player) Kelan Phil Cohran at the age of 90 on Wednesday. While his accomplishments are too significant to fully do them justice, he played trumpet with Sun Ra and His Arkestra, co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), was a respected educator (one of his students was a young Maurice White), opened the Afro-Arts Theater in Chicago, and invented the Frankiphone (aka space harp), an electric mbira. He also recorded extensively with The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a group composed of eight of his sons. Cohran was still regularly performing live until quite recently.

Though African Skies was recorded a later stage in his career (by which point he had already been given the honorific Kelan, meaning holy scripture, by Muslim scholars during a trip to China), it’s considered by many to be a cosmic jazz masterpiece and one of his finest works. His first record since his 1969 Malcolm X memorial, this was recorded live at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago as a glowing tribute to Sun Ra, Cohran’s mentor and friend who had recently passed away. African Skies is mostly acoustic and fairly minimal, but for all its sparsity, it’s hypnotic, deftly expressive, and all the more powerful for doing less. Trumpet, harp, frankiphone, congas, violin uke, guitar, flute, bowed string bass, clarinet, trombone, and vocal riffings by Aquilla Sadalla that, whenever I’ve put this on in social settings, have invariably prompted at least one person to ask what we’re listening to. If the back cover is any indication, this performance looked just as incredible as it sounded.

Though I’ve always considered myself a jazz idiot, this record has been an ideal gateway drug into the worlds of cosmic and spiritual jazz, and I can’t think of a better tribute to Cohran’s legacy than giving this some airtime this weekend. Out of respect for his family I’ll be taking down the download link in the next few days, so if you want it, get it now. Thank you for everything, Kelan Phil Cohran!

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 13: Joanna Brouk Tribute

My newest mix for NTS Radio is a two hour tribute to Joanna Brouk, who passed away this month at 68. Considered one of the early founders of New Age, Brouk never referred to herself as a composer, but rather insisted that she was a vessel for the music that flowed through her. Her work sat somewhere in between new age, drone, minimalism, and classically inclined ambient, with a curiosity and a roughness reminiscent of pioneering early electronic music. You can buy her excellent compilation released last year by Numero Group here. There’s also a great interview with her here in which she talks about her early processes and her work in sound healing.

She often said that it was the space between the notes in which interesting things start to happen, and that music has to slow down in order to get there. I put this mix together of things that, to me, are similarly interested in space and silence. Some of these songs were written by her contemporaries; others are just things that I hope she might have liked. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Goodnight, Joanna, and safe journey.

Tracklist:
1. Joanna Brouk – Healing Music (excerpt)
2. Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Alalogo (excerpt)
3. Kudsi Erguner & Xavier Bellenger – Apu-Caylioch / Le Seigneur Des Étoiles
4. Kevin Braheny – Lullaby for the Hearts of Space (excerpt)
5. John Clark – The Abhà Kingdom (excerpt)
6. Masahiro Sugaya – 水-(1)
7. Craig Kupka – Clouds II (excerpt)
8. Iasos – The Winds of Olympus
9. Daniel – Quartz Crystal Bells (Side A) (excerpt)
10. Daniel Kobialka – Planetary Mysteries
11. Ojas – Shiva Dance (excerpt)
12. Jansen / Barbieri – The Way The Light Falls
13. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Water Planet
14. Alice Damon – Waterfall Winds
15. Joanna Brouk – Golden Cloud Layers

Quarteto em Cy – Quarteto em Cy, 1964

Originally comprised of four sisters from Bahia (Cybele, Cylene, Cynara, and Cyva; their real names), Quarteto em Cy has been enormously prolific and has also undergone many lineup changes over the years. I’ve been unsure which record of theirs to begin with since this blog started, so I’ve decided to start at the beginning and share their debut (and also their first of maybe five self-titled records), from what Brazilian music snobs consider to be their golden period (although they weren’t signed to the legendary Elenco label until 1966).

Swooning vocal harmonies delivered with expressive precision and set over meandering jazz and bossa textures. No reason not to be listening to this today.

Don Cherry & Latif Khan – Music/Sangam, 1978

Another Don Cherry collision with terrific results. Originally recorded in Paris in 1978, this only had a 1000-copy run in France and, despite being considered one of Cherry’s strongest works by die-hard fans, was mostly forgotten until its reissue in 2009. A fairly early and very successful piece of Indo-jazz fusion–while Cherry had a propensity towards cultural dabbling, he avoided many of the pitfalls of “world music” aesthetic through his commitment to musicianship, collaboration, and sensitivity. Also, he sings a bit!

Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan was a tabla virtuoso, avid composer, and member of the Delhi Gharana. He also had perfect pitch and used it to great advantage, tuning his daya (right drum of the tabla) to the same pitch as his baya (left drum of the tabla)–typically the baya is between a fifth and an octave below the daya, but Khan’s tuning allowed for an unusually deep, full tone of the bass notes. He stood out both for this tonal precision and because of his taste for irregular and extremely syncopated rhythms. From the liner notes:

“Sangam” means “meeting place” in Sanskrit. Don obviously knew exactly what he wanted to do, and Latif immediately understood, his fingers fizzing across the tablas at frightening speed, his perfect pitch making him the obvious person to tune the disparate instruments in Don’s armoury to those in the studio, which included a grand piano, a B3 Hammond organ and chromatic timpani.

 It was Don who suggested that Latif overdub new tabla parts to enrich and add complexity to the first takes. We could reasonably have expected to spend the night doing this because this was the first time the percussionist had done this. It took him all of five minutes to get used to listening to the first tracks over the headphones before playing them without the slightest mistake. When we got to the timpani, which he was playing for the first time, his keen sense of pitch and tone once again did miracles. During one take, just for the fun of it Latif started to play a fairly slow, disconnected duple time, moving on to three and then four… all the way up to 19 by which time his fingers were whizzing invisibly across the skins, leaving us in awe and him looking as if he didn’t know what the fuss was all about. All this just made Don even keener to impress his musical companion for a day… and so he did, with great ease and a complicity created by their shared love of music.

Of course, the subtleties of this album call for greater analysis, for example the meeting between the Malian doussou n’gouni and Indian tablas, the Hammond organ taking over from the tampura, 5 1/4 time as if it were the easiest thing in the world, the reinvented Indonesian gamelan… and the lyricism of the (pocket!) cornet.

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Dorothy Carter – Waillee Waillee, 1978

Guest post by Peter Harkawik

I was recently digging through sidebars on musical sculpture, when I stumbled upon two enchanting private press albums by the late Dorothy Carter—mystic, free spirit, wizard of the strings. According to a tribute by her bandmates The Mediæval Bæbes, Carter was born in New York in 1935, studied at Bard and the Guildhall School of Music, and in her later years toured Europe, playing festivals, cabaret, and at least once, a concert in a cemetery. She reportedly lived in a drafty loft in New Orleans, where she collected giant zithers, hosted salons, and played her brand of medieval folk music wherever she could. By another account, she “lived in a commune, worked on a Mississippi steam boat as a ships boy, raised two kids and ran away to a Mexican cloister with an anarchistic priest.”

Somewhat more secular than her 1976 debut Troubador, Waillee Waillee alternates between darkly enigmatic, inward melodies, and jaunty, exuberant hymns. Songs like “Along the River,” while populated with some familiar folk imagery—woodland creatures, mollusks, and rosemary bushes—are absent of the studio chicanery that so often accompanies it. Flutes, maracas, and tambura, some played by new age pioneer and instrument-builder Constance Demby, join Carter’s expert plucking and hammering to great effect. Her vocals might draw comparisons to Karen Dalton, Bridget St John, or perhaps Linda Perhacs, but here, in the service of her wistful paeans to nature, they stand alone. On the album’s haunting title track, Carter croons, “When will my love return to me?” with uncomplicated sentimentality, like a forlorn lover trapped in a block of ice. “Dulcimer Medley” and “Celtic Medley” are sprightly instrumental ballads that would not be out of place in a scene from Barry Lyndon.

For me, the standout on this album is “Summer Rhapsody.” Seven minutes long, expansive and majestic, it begins with a rumble like a jet engine, building to a crescendo of feverish dulcimer. It’s here too that the recording really sparkles, as though the dulcimer’s harsh textures are pushing the tape to its very limits. While it might sound like a hurdy-gurdy, the corpulent drone is produced by a steel cello, an instrument resembling the sail on a medieval cog. Here we see the fruits of Carter’s decades-long collaboration with artist Robert Rutman, who, like Walter Smetak, Ellen Fullman, and others, pioneered a hybrid art that was neither purely aesthetic nor musical. It was with his group the Central Maine Power Music Company, formed in Skowhegan in 1970, that Carter first toured, playing unconventional shows in New England planetariums, sculpture gardens, and museums.

Part of what’s so incredible about Waillee Waillee is that as much as it is a psych-folk record, it is also completely at home with the experiments of Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Yoshi Wada, Pauline Oliveros and Laraaji. Carter was a fascinating figure whose devotion to her chosen instruments was legendary. I hope you enjoy this record as much as I do.