30 marzo 2010


Esce per l'etichetta Intakt il primo album del quintetto frithiano Cosa Brava: si intitola Ragged Atlas e contiene registrazioni di studio effettuate nel dicembre 2008. A proposito del gruppo - protagonista di un'intensa tornata di concerti due anni fa, e atteso nuovamente in Europa a fine maggio - ha detto Fred Frith: "Over the years I’ve done a lot of improvising, and composed a lot of music on paper. I’ve written for orchestras and string quartets, directed ensembles of improvisers of all descriptions, produced scores for dance and film. I even somehow became a Professor of Composition! But I really miss what you can do with a rock band. I miss developing material through the push and pull of cooperative rehearsals, I miss what happens when you move away from “the parts” and start formulating things with a collective ear, I miss the single-minded commitment to a group identity. The musicians in Cosa Brava can improvise, read scores, AND rock the house... Like I say, if you pick the right players, chances are the music will take care of itself.”

28 marzo 2010


Esce per l'etichetta Mosz l'album Chunk del trio berlinese Denseland, con David Moss, Hannes Strobl e Hanno Leichtmann: "Their music is radically intense, charged with energy, crackling. Yet Denseland's energy doesn't come from what is typically called "power". On the contrary, Denseland masters the art of reduction. There's a brief clattering or scratching over the strings now and then; otherwise, the scaffolding of bass and drums remains skilled yet spare, so that nodes of density emerge even more dramatically. One of the most expressive vocal artists of our time, David Moss, adapts himself completely to this art of restraint, reducing his voice to whispers, murmurs, rasps and mutterings, using it like a code incomprehensible to outsiders. In a kind of secret language, Moss communicates with the other musicians through pithy onomatopoetic play with the voice as resonator, rather than with the expressive vocal extremes he is known for."

David Moss è stato in Italia il mese scorso - a Monza, per la rassegna Lampi - per un concerto in solo e per un saggio di Provokalia Choirs, suo nuovo progetto seminariale per grandi ensemble vocali (mediamente dai venti ai cento partecipanti).

27 marzo 2010


Un'articolata intervista di John Eyles a Eddie Prévost - 'Looking Back, Looking Forward' - si legge da qualche giorno in All About Jazz. Tra le più recenti produzioni dell'etichetta Matchless Recordings con Prévost protagonista c'è un inedito del 1992 del Free Jazz Quartet (Memories for the Future, Prévost con Paul Rutherford, Harrison Smith, Tony Moore) e un concerto dell'anno scorso del trio Sum (Invenio Ergo, Prévost con Ross Lambert e Seymour Wright).