in briefrelease

Treen In Free Fall – And In Common Flow

Treen: »Kaikō«

Kristoffer Møllegaard. © Kristoffer Møllegaard

On Kaikō – the trio Treen’s second release – saxophonist Amalie Dahl, pianist Gintė Preisaitė, and percussionist Jan Philipp demonstrate confidence, mutual trust, and a distinct musical adventurousness. The opening track »Hylē« unfolds with rattling percussion and strikes seemingly aimed directly at the piano strings, stumbling forward over an underlying drone. The saxophone cuts in with phrases that sound at once admonishing and bewildered. Nothing feels meticulously calculated; instead, the music is carried by a keen awareness of the three musicians’ individual voices within the shared soundscape.

The same basic formula unfolds across the album’s three other pieces, yet always in new variations. On »Kinetic«, Dahl’s saxophone emerges with much greater weight, its slowly growing crescendo mirrored and challenged by Preisaitė’s piano. Improvised music can often slip into polite holding patterns, with the musicians taking turns in the spotlight – but not here. Dahl, Preisaitė, and Philipp appear as three drifting islands without anchors, propelled by their own currents yet inexorably drawn in the same direction. The result is both sudden shifts and an organic flow that can pull the listener into a trance, if one surrenders and simply lets the sound wash over.

It is precisely the trust between them that allows the three to play freely, without fear of leaving or losing each other. In doing so, they create a momentum that is hard to resist – whether one chooses to let the islands drift past or to float along in their current.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

16.08.2024

My name is Carolyn Goodwin – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music has always provided me with a clear pathway on which to navigate a meaningful life. It is imbued with a set of noble intentions that have taught me important lessons: the art of giving and receiving, how to grapple with the ever-shifting forces of tension and peace, what it is to trust the people who surround you, and the ability to let go.«

The Irish-born, Denmark-based composer-musician Carolyn Goodwin is a clarinetist and saxophonist, and the founder of Copenhagen Clarinet Choir. Her compositional work is driven by a desire to explore new frontiers in ensemble playing, bringing body and movement to the forefront, and combining the freedom of improvised music with her foundation in classical music. Goodwin's 2022 release with the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir, Organism, on the År & Dag label, has been described as »cranio-sacral therapy for the ear« and »a perfect cross between intelligent and sensory music.« It is these sound and performance parameters that have inspired composers like Marcela Lucatelli, Greta Eacott, and Anders Lauge Meldgaard to compose music for Goodwin’s ensemble.

Goodwin is a member of the trio Coriolis, alongside fellow saxophonists Maria Dybbroe and Nana-Pi Aabo Kim, as well as Jason Dungan’s Blue Lake project. She is also part of the musician collective Barefoot Records.

playlist

12.08.2024

My name is Jay Campbell – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is limitless, and its potential for meaning is infinite. This is neither good nor bad, but simply an acknowledgement that music is one kind of expression of any given culture (with many other inputs, of which I am mostly ignorant). From that perspective, I suppose then that music is just another medium through which I try to understand another human and/or the culture that they exist(ed) in, and more deeply feel the interconnectedness of the world that we live in, that we have inherited, and that we will pass on.«

Currently the only musician ever to receive two Avery Fisher Career Grants – in 2016 as a soloist and in 2019 as a member of the JACK Quartet – cellist Jay Campbell has brought his eclectic artistic interests both as a performer and curator to the New York Philharmonic, Deutsche-Symphonie Orchester, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Ojai Festival, Lucerne Festival and many others. Deeply committed to collaborative music, Jay is a member of the JACK Quartet, as well as the Junction Triowith violinist Stefan Jackiw and composer/pianist Conrad Tao, multidisciplinary artist collective AMOC, and frequently works with composers and performers like Helmut Lachenmann, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Barbara Hannigan, John Zorn, Tyshawn Sorey, and many more from his own generation.

in brieflive

05.07.2024

A World of Contrasts – and a Touch of Smurf Vocals

Roskilde Festival: Slauson Malone 1

Roskilde Festival, Platform, 03.07

Sune Anderberg

The cello is everywhere at this year’s Roskilde Festival. Some use it as just about anything else – hey, now it’s an electric bass, or how about a keyboard drowned in effects – but in American Jasper Marsalis’ Marcela Lucatelli-worthy bomb project Slauson Malone 1, the cello was actually used as, well, a cello.

Marsalis himself handled vocals and electric guitar on the open Platform stage, while Nicholas Wetherell opened the concert with a motor-race assault on his amplified cello, then pivoted into plucked meditations, to which Marsalis contributed overtone playing on guitar. Sensitive jazz guys? Nope – suddenly: synchronized noise sprints, intimacy splintered, and before long Marsalis threw himself into the seated audience with a somersault – and a scream.

Meanwhile, Wetherell played tender vibratos. Because contrasts thrive at Roskilde – and, after all, seem to be driving the world forward these days. And so it was the world itself that came into focus in the music: through violent shifts between 8-bit Smurf vocals, ambient gnawing solo cello, intimate indie layered over a one-second sample of Cher – culminating in a wistful lullaby veiled in digital theremin.

In many ways, it was peak hipster era. But it was also intensely moving – something like following Mahler out on the edge of the abyss as he tried to sketch the whole world into his scores. The only difference: the easel looks a bit different today.

in brieflive

04.07.2024

Shouldn’t Selvhenter be playing the Orange Stage next year?”

RF 2024: Selvhenter

Roskilde Festival, Avalon, 03.07

Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

It is not the first time Selvhenter have shown Roskilde how a saxophone can scream. Even the most avant-garde-ready listeners were left gasping for air. It was hard not to let your own lungs empathise with the long passages and unruly energy that the experimental Copenhagen quartet excelled in, wielding an instrumentarium consisting of two drum kits, synth, trombone, saxophone and assorted extras.

And the more the band – positioned in the centre of the Avalon tent, surrounded by the audience – wove their collective patchwork carpet, the more the individual character of the instruments was erased. Selvhenter could just as well have been playing entirely different instruments. You could see Sonja LaBianca standing there, forcing tones out of a wind instrument, yet it sounded more like a harp from outer space. It was astonishing how her saxophone fanfares resembled distress signals beamed into the cosmos. Meanwhile, the drums drove very grounded rhythms: Steve Reich-like pulses colliding with freer passages.

Selvhenter inflated the tent with full-fat punked and jazzy noise. Without pauses (not even when a snare drum went dead and had to be replaced mid-set) and without water for the crowd. Being so close to the musicians was a plus; on their small central stage they looked like giants in a battle arena. This was new music that was deeply physical. For about an hour we breathed together (and perhaps even sweated?) in sync. And it is profoundly good to do something together at a festival.

Selvhenter on the Orange Stage next year. Come on!

playlist

12.06.2024

My name is Jussi Parikka – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music involves a mix of noise, of existing or fabricated instruments, of alternative worlds that the sounds and voices assemble. Some are gentle, some less so. We shift gears with music, it shifts intensity, we shift with it. I listen when I can.«

Jussi Parikka is a Finnish cultural historian and writer who works at Aarhus University as professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture. After some 15 years in the UK, he continues in Denmark his work on how ecology, digital culture, art and design, and philosophy intersect. He has written on visual culture and history and archaeology of media, including the recent books Operational Images (2023) and Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media (2024) which is co-authored with the Madrid-based artist Abelardo Gil-Fournier. Besides his writing and work as educator, he has been active as a curator including the recent show Climate Engines at Laboral, in Gijon (Spain) that was co-curated with Daphne Dragona as well as his involvement in the curatorial team of Helsinki Biennial 2023.