E dopo le illustri collaborazioni con Wayne Horvitz, Dave Douglas, Aoife O'Donovan e Theo Bleckmann, i magnifici quattro Westerlies - Riley Mulherkar, Chloe Rowlands, Andy Clausen e Addison Maye-Saxon - approdano alle musiche di Bill Frisell, loro amico e ispiratore, portando in piena luce una serie di inediti appena abbozzati dall'autore nel periodo più buio della pandemia: l'album è Have you Heard?, presentato in anteprima poche sere fa con un magnifico concerto a Brooklyn NY al Roulette.

Scrive Andy Clausen: "In 2020-2021, with concerts and tours cancelled due to the pandemic, Bill found himself at home for an extended period of time for the first time in many years. The way he stayed sane was to wake up every morning, have a cup of coffee, grab his guitar and a musical notebook, and start writing. Music-making with no agenda other than pure discovery and exploration. Around 2024, we started chatting about the potential of The Westerlies exploring some of that music, and a few days later, I received a folder containing dozens of new pieces. Combing through these notebooks, I had a feeling of excitement I can only equate to the experience of seeing an exhibition of Picasso’s sketches for the first time: a brilliant artist working through ideas and shaping the same subject matter through a process of transformation and revision. In the case of Bill’s notebooks, first a melody might appear, then a few days later shaded with a palette of harmony, only to be sketched into a fully formed structure a few days later. To see this process on paper was absolutely fascinating and deeply inspiring.

What followed was a year-and-a-half-long process of exploring and arranging the source material with the utmost reverence - a collective way of working and shaping material The Westerlies have been developing for 15 years now. In some instances, that led to a very direct realization of the notes on the page. In other cases, it meant cracking open the material with improvisation and building arrangements which felt like our most honest realization of what the material wanted to be. What you will also find is a musical chronicle of one of the most significant periods in recent history. The dates, titles, and music read like journal entries. “Madness Hopeless,” “Dose” and “Impeach” all the way through the most recent work, “A Wonderful Day” from January 2024. We are so grateful to Bill for the trust and honor to share the premiere recordings of these new works, and we hope you enjoy the music."

https://www.westerliesmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/westerliesmusic
https://www.youtube.com/@RouletteIntermediumNYC

Tra i temi e le istanze valorizzati dalle vaste capacità interpretative di Theo Bleckmann non è raro trovarne di attinenti a guerra, resistenza, esilio, immigrazione, lotta di classe, diritti civili e autodeterminazione, in chiave storica o attuale: ne è un esempio l'album Berlin (Winter & Winter, 2007) prodotto con Fumio Yasuda citando i classici di Brecht, Weill, Dessau e Eisler - e non manca Über Den Selbstmord, naturalmente - così come il più recente This Land (WR, 2021) realizzato assieme all'eccezionale quartetto di ottoni The Westerlies con un repertorio di brani di Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Joni Mitchell e vari testi americani di denuncia e di protesta. Di quest'ultimo è documentato un intero concerto su YT.

https://www.youtube.com/this-land

Note to a Friend, opera da camera scritta da David Lang per voce solista e quartetto d'archi ispirandosi allo scritto di Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) Memorandum per un vecchio amico, è documentata anche in cd grazie a Cantaloupe Music nella versione di studio registrata nell'ottobre 2023 da Theo Bleckmann con l'Attacca Quartet (Amy Schroeder, Domenic Salerni, Nathan Schram, Andrew Yee). Spiega Lang: "The idea for it came out of a conversation I had with the Japan Society’s director, Yoko Shioya, who asked if I would consider writing a stage work that was somehow related to Japan. I immediately thought of the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, whose I work I have been a fan of since I was 16. Growing up in Los Angeles, my high school had a class in film studies, and we watched the film Rashomon, which is based on two of Akutagawa’s short stories. After that I kept reading his work, and eventually I discovered the famous letter Akutagawa wrote to a fellow writer, explaining and justifying his decision to kill himself, which he did do, in 1927. After his death, this letter was published in English as A Note to a Certain Old Friend."

Conceived as a chamber opera for solo vocalist and string quartet, the work is also the perfect vehicle for singer Theo Bleckmann, who brings a profound emotional weight to his performance, in collaboration with the inimitable Attacca Quartet. The result is a stunning and haunting monodrama that addresses our eternal human fascinations with love, death, family and the phantoms of our daily existence.

https://cantaloupemusic.com/albums/note-to-friend
https://davidlangmusic.bandcamp.com/album/note-to-a-friend
https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/note_to_an_old_friend.pdf