- Malcolm Goldstein (violon, voix)
'Hardscrabble Songs'
(in situ - Orkhêstra)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REVUE DE PRESSE :
MALCOLM GOLDSTEIN - Hardscrabble Songs
[In Situ, www.orkhestra.fr]As a co-founder of Tone Roads Ensemble, violinist extraordinaire Malcolm Goldstein probably needs no introduction. Since the early 60's, his work has been pushing the boundaries of what a violin should sound like. He has received numerous grants and his compositions have been performed world-wide. Backed-up by Quatuor Bozzini [two violins, cello and an alto?], Malcolm's violin on this record is at its primal best. Showcasing his powers as a composer [and improviser, for that matter], he dives right in with spectacularly skewed and barren strokes. Intensity only grows as you listen to the pieces in the order they appear on the CD. Stop and go movements are tension inducing, as you wonder what sort of a rabbit he can pull out of his hat next. Memories of World War II, made Malcolm compose the title piece "Hardscrabble Songs". Disturbing, fragmented vocalization that is howled, hissed and whispered here talk of freedom, disturbing images of America as a melting pot and collective memory as a whole. At times, it's a very difficult and painful listen as you know you're peeking into a family photo album when nobody gave you permission to do so. Poignantly haunting and utterly beautiful, whether "Hardscrabble Songs" is Goldstein's' most ambitious work only remains to be seen. It is, without a doubt, one of his most daring and consistent statements to date.
- Tom Sekowski (http://www.gaz-eta.vivo.pl/gaz-eta/recenzje/gazeta.php?nr=34&id=s_16)
''Compositeur et violoniste Malcolm Goldstein a travaillé notamment avec John Cage et Merce Cunningham, et cofondé au milieu des années soixante l’ensemble Tone Roads (avec Philip Corner et James Tenney). ‘’Hardscrabble Songs’’ présente quatre pièces en solo et une composition interprétée par le quatuor Bozzini. L’instrument est vécu comme lieu d’expérimentation à la fois comme générateur de sons et dans la relation qui se construit avec le musicien. Une performance impressionnante en concert mais qui préserve aussi sa force à l’échelle du disque. Malcolm Goldstein active un fourmillement sonore (à travers frottements, crépitements…) qui se déploie lentement dans les ramifications des textures. Des ‘’mélodies de sons’’, selon son _expression, qui sont offertes dans un processus organique singulièrement intime. S’il a œuvré dans des contextes d’échanges collectifs plus ‘’traditionnels’’ (notamment avec le guitariste canadien Rainer Weins), le violoniste prouve une fois encore qu’entre la musique contemporaine et les musiques improvisées, les passerelles sont souvent décisives.''
Thierry Lepin (Jazzman n°110).
"A new Malcolm Goldstein CD is an event. There is no violinist like him, for he has taken the instrument far beyond its presumed limits, shaping a music, which shines and glows inside this fairytale atmosphere that is the mind and spirit of Malcolm Goldstein. (...) All in all I can count to 9 CDs and 2 vinyls in my Goldstein collection, and they all belong in my absolute favorite batch of recordings from all times; sparkling with ingenuity and the intense creativity of a free man on Earth. (...) I have never heard Goldstein quite like this, in this moaning on-the-porch blues kind of way, even though this southern atmosphere is just slightly hinted at here. There is a distorted melody line in here, quite readily accessible, in fact – and perhaps this is what renders the piece (My feet is tired, but my soul is rested) its strangeness, because you usually don’t detect melody in that sense in Malcolm Goldstein’s works; not in this fervent, affectionate way, but more often – if the term melody is at all applicable – in a fragmented, on-the-fly manner, lightly, like sunlight through windy trees or fleeing patches of light across the fields under drifting summer clouds a breezy day. There is arguing going on in this music, a voice that clearly tries to get across, drive home a point, persuade someone or a whole world or even herself. (...) These are extremely powerful songs, outstanding in their honesty and nakedness and their unpolished appearances, raw and fresh out of the dangerous creativity of one of the most original artists of our time, shoveling gravel and stardust and big heaps of relentless silence, dust and saliva and swallow’s nests…"
Ingvar Loco Nordin (Sonoloco).
http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco18/goldstein/hardscrabble.html
Le violoniste Malcolm Goldstein (vu cet automne à Lille dans un émouvant solo pour lequel toute l’Amérique de Thoreau et de Cage était convoquée) donne, avec Hardscrabble Songs (in situ IS 238, Dist. Orkhêstra), un recueil fascinant, gravé d’un archet épileptico-hendrixien que vient soutenir une voix fort riche (écoutez la suite éponyme et tout particulièrement son quatrième développement…) : songs et soundings improvisés de la plus haute volée ! Le Quatuor Bozzini vient clore avec une composition (dense et diffuse) de MG ce grand enregistrement, passionnant et poétique (hautement recommandé, que vous aimiez lez Freeman Etudes de Cage ou les textures de l’électrimpro). Guillaume Tarche (Improjazz n°111, janvier 2005).
"J'aime beaucoup Malcolm Goldstein qui a d'ailleurs séjourné à Nice, en residence à la Villa Arson, à l'époque où Jérôme Joy l'avait interviewé pour "Revue & Corrigée" (...) J'aime beaucoup The Seasons : Vermont, produit par Phil Niblock". Philippe Robert.
"C'est une musique vraiment magnifique et parfaitement envoûtante (...) Le disque ‘’Hardscrabble Songs’’ est magnifique !" Stéphane Ollivier.
"I hope this receives excellent reviews for it is a wonderful disc: one of the CDs of the year, I think." Peter Stubley.
- "I start from where I am (which is not the same as starting from nothing) ; there is a lot in all around us all the time. (Nothing prearranged or anticipated.) it is just a matter of letting whatever is necessary come forth, to be heard (which is not the same as repetition of habits),’’ writes violinist and composer Malcolm Goldstein in Sounding The Full Circle, a collection of eloquent and articulate writings on improvisation that places his work and aesthetics directly on a line extending forwards from Cage, and backwards to Thoreau via Charles Ives. Ives is a figure of central importance for Goldstein : the Tone Roads ensemble he founded with James Tenney took its name from an Ives composition.Ives’s music is quoted in A New Song Of Many Faces For In These Times, a string quartet written for and performed by The Quatuor Bozzini that also derives from this album’s title track. The four remaining pieces are all Goldstein solos. On Hardscrabble Songs, he sings along with his violin, weaving chilhood memories of wartime hardship, fragments of popular songs and nursery rhymes into a vision as quintessentially American as Harry Partch’s Barstow or Laurie Anderson’s song ‘’New Jersey Turnpike’’. Where are we going when we’re standing still, looking backwards ? ! is accompanied by a reproduction of Goldstein’s elegent handwritten graphic score, which in performance translates into a sustained exploration of the nuances of a Goldstein harmonic. Most violinists take pains to avoid open strings, but Goldstein positively relishes them. The violin is heard for what it is, an assemblage of metal and wood capable of producing clatters, squeaks and scrapes as well as beautiful melody. Total fluidity of gesture derives from willingness to accept such extraneous noise, but Goldstein’s fantastic virtuosity draws listeners into the complexity of his music rather than repels them. Advocates of the clumsy pitch deafness of late Cardew and the bombastic Frederic Rzewski should head for My feet is tired but my soul is rested (title courtesy Rosa Parks) for an example of true revolutionary music whose blues – and folk – inflected langage remains accessible to all while effortlessly incorporating highly advanced vocabulary, ‘’finding new subtle twists and turns as things move, are moved in the flow’’.
Dan Warburton (The Wire, issue 252).
- ''Compositeur et violoniste Malcolm Goldstein a travaillé notamment avec John Cage et Merce Cunningham, et cofondé au milieu des années soixante l’ensemble Tone Roads (avec Philip Corner et James Tenney). ‘’Hardscrabble Songs’’ présente quatre pièces en solo et une composition interprétée par le quatuor Bozzini. L’instrument est vécu comme lieu d’expérimentation à la fois comme générateur de sons et dans la relation qui se construit avec le musicien. Une performance impressionnante en concert mais qui préserve aussi sa force à l’échelle du disque. Malcolm Goldstein active un fourmillement sonore (à travers frottements, crépitements…) qui se déploie lentement dans les ramifications des textures. Des ‘’mélodies de sons’’, selon son _expression, qui sont offertes dans un processus organique singulièrement intime. S’il a œuvré dans des contextes d’échanges collectifs plus ‘’traditionnels’’ (notamment avec le guitariste canadien Rainer Weins), le violoniste prouve une fois encore qu’entre la musique contemporaine et les musiques improvisées, les passerelles sont souvent décisives.''
Thierry Lepin (Jazzman n°110).
- "A new Malcolm Goldstein CD is an event. There is no violinist like him, for he has taken the instrument far beyond its presumed limits, shaping a music, which shines and glows inside this fairytale atmosphere that is the mind and spirit of Malcolm Goldstein. (...) All in all I can count to 9 CDs and 2 vinyls in my Goldstein collection, and they all belong in my absolute favorite batch of recordings from all times; sparkling with ingenuity and the intense creativity of a free man on Earth. (...) I have never heard Goldstein quite like this, in this moaning on-the-porch blues kind of way, even though this southern atmosphere is just slightly hinted at here. There is a distorted melody line in here, quite readily accessible, in fact – and perhaps this is what renders the piece (My feet is tired, but my soul is rested) its strangeness, because you usually don’t detect melody in that sense in Malcolm Goldstein’s works; not in this fervent, affectionate way, but more often – if the term melody is at all applicable – in a fragmented, on-the-fly manner, lightly, like sunlight through windy trees or fleeing patches of light across the fields under drifting summer clouds a breezy day. There is arguing going on in this music, a voice that clearly tries to get across, drive home a point, persuade someone or a whole world or even herself. (...) These are extremely powerful songs, outstanding in their honesty and nakedness and their unpolished appearances, raw and fresh out of the dangerous creativity of one of the most original artists of our time, shoveling gravel and stardust and big heaps of relentless silence, dust and saliva and swallow’s nests…"
Ingvar Loco Nordin (Sonoloco).
http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco18/goldstein/hardscrabble.html
- "Depuis les années soixante, le violoniste et compositeur Malcolm Goldstein suit avec une constance exemplaire les voies de l’improvisation la plus radicale. Joué avec une technique rudimentaire, son violon grince, crisse et racle. Le son brut que le musicien développe est une matière qu’il sculpte avec finesse ou sans ménagement. En solo ou avec un quatuor à cordes, comme dans ce cd, avec Ornette Coleman, John Cage ou la Merce Cunningham Dance Company, chaque pièce que Goldstein construit dans l’instant se transforme en happening, réduisant la musique à son _expression la plus pure : un souffle."
Camille Guynemer (Octopus).
- "Il joue du violon, mais sa démarche ne saurait se laisser cerner aisément. Malcolm Goldstein entretient en effet une relation très particulière avec cet instrument, qu’il explore en tant que prolongement du corps, travaillant notamment sur la texture et la vibration du son. Côté composition, dans la foulée de John Cage, Malcolm Goldstein n’a pas hésité parfois à mêler différents bruits enregistrés à sa musique. Il se produit ici en solo au violon (et à la voix à l’occasion de la sortie de l’album ‘’Hardscrabble Songs’’ sur le label : in situ.’’ Hugues Le Tanneur (ADEN / Le Monde N°306).
- Le violoniste Malcolm Goldstein (vu cet automne à Lille dans un émouvant solo pour lequel toute l’Amérique de Thoreau et de Cage était convoquée) donne, avec Hardscrabble Songs (in situ IS 238, Dist. Orkhêstra), un recueil fascinant, gravé d’un archet épileptico-hendrixien que vient soutenir une voix fort riche (écoutez la suite éponyme et tout particulièrement son quatrième développement…) : songs et soundings improvisés de la plus haute volée ! Le Quatuor Bozzini vient clore avec une composition (dense et diffuse) de MG ce grand enregistrement, passionnant et poétique (hautement recommandé, que vous aimiez lez Freeman Etudes de Cage ou les textures de l’électrimpro). Guillaume Tarche (Improjazz n°111, janvier 2005).
- "J'aime beaucoup Malcolm Goldstein qui a d'ailleurs séjourné à Nice, en residence à la Villa Arson, à l'époque où Jérôme Joy l'avait interviewé pour "Revue & Corrigée" (...) J'aime beaucoup The Seasons : Vermont, produit par Phil Niblock". Philippe Robert.
- "C'est une musique vraiment magnifique et parfaitement envoûtante (...) Le disque ‘’Hardscrabble Songs’’ est magnifique !" Stéphane Ollivier.
- "I hope this receives excellent reviews for it is a wonderful disc: one of the CDs of the year, I think." Peter Stubley.
"A new Malcolm Goldstein CD is an event. There is no violinist like him, for he has taken the instrument far beyond its presumed limits, shaping a music, which shines and glows inside this fairytale atmosphere that is the mind and spirit of Malcolm Goldstein. (...) All in all I can count to 9 CDs and 2 vinyls in my Goldstein collection, and they all belong in my absolute favorite batch of recordings from all times; sparkling with ingenuity and the intense creativity of a free man on Earth. (...) I have never heard Goldstein quite like this, in this moaning on-the-porch blues kind of way, even though this southern atmosphere is just slightly hinted at here. There is a distorted melody line in here, quite readily accessible, in fact - and perhaps this is what renders the piece (My feet is tired, but my soul is rested) its strangeness, because you usually don't detect melody in that sense in Malcolm Goldstein's works; not in this fervent, affectionate way, but more often - if the term melody is at all applicable - in a fragmented, on-the-fly manner, lightly, like sunlight through windy trees or fleeing patches of light across the fields under drifting summer clouds a breezy day. There is arguing going on in this music, a voice that clearly tries to get across, drive home a point, persuade someone or a whole world or even herself. (...) These are extremely powerful songs, outstanding in their honesty and nakedness and their unpolished appearances, raw and fresh out of the dangerous creativity of one of the most original artists of our time, shoveling gravel and stardust and big heaps of relentless silence, dust and saliva and swallow's nests." Ingvar Loco Nordin (Sonoloco). http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco18/goldstein/hardscrabble.html
"Goldstein gehört zu jener Art von Musikmachern, die die Trennung zwischen Komponist und Interpret wieder aufheben. Hindemith oder Pettersson waren solche 'Musiker' gewesen, Leute wie Goebbels oder Barrett verkörpern ihn aktuell. Oder der Geigenvirtuose Goldstein. Fünf seiner Arbeiten sind hier versammelt, alle von ihm selbst performt. "My feet is tired but my soul is rested" entstand 1985 als eine Art abstrakter Blues zum Andenken an Martin Luther King und feiert mit dem Rosa Parks-Zitat des Titels einen Zündfunken der Bürgerrechtsbewegung. "Soundings for solo violin" aus dem Jahr 2002 zeigt in einer Momentaufnahme Goldmanns Mitte der 60er begonnenes Work in progress Freie Improvisation, spontanes Komponieren als Wechselspiel von Idee, Gestik, Technik, Instrument und Resonanz. Die "Hardscrabble Songs" von 2000 sind Lieder von schweren Zeiten, Collagen aus Volks-, Kinder- und Protestliedern, Phrasen, Songfetzen, die zu Redensarten geworden sind. Der Amerikanische Traum, in Goldsteins Kindheit soeben noch kulminiert im Krieg gegen die Nazis, gebiert als Schlaf der Vernunft das ,Ungeheuer' der ,Roten Gefahr'. Aus dem Home of the Brave und dem House that Jack build wird ein House on Un-American-Activities. Zu irrwitzigem Gefiedel sprechsingt Goldstein einen Stream of Consciousness aus Underdogperspektive: "...oh can you see / lights flailing... the sky / eyes have it / oh can you see / fires, fires in the house..." Bitterer noch als der ins Groteske kippenden Gesang ist der fast höhnische Sound dazu, schmerzhaft diskante Geigenstriche wie ein Nagel über das Blech der gebrochenen Versprechen. Ebenfalls von 2002 ist "Where are we going when we're standing still, looking backwards ?!", eine dreiteilige Komposition aus 1) sound-mass, 2) improvisation und 3) silent pause, nach der die Musik wieder auf Anfang springt, einen vibrierenden Halteton. Teil des Stückes ist eine Vorrede über Stillstand und die Wiederkehr des Gleichen in der Politik, von der antikommunistischen Hysterie der McCarthy-Ära zur aktuellen Terror-Hysterie. Eine weitere Komposition aus 2002 ist das abschließende "A New Song of many faces for In These Times (with a coda, the Same Old Song needed to be heard again and again", ein Streichquartett für das ausführende Quatuor Bozzini, das an die "Hardscrabble Songs" anknüpft. Den vier Variationen I. A gently flowing song, II. A brutal song, III. An agitated song, IV. A song for inner vision folgt ein Nachspiel, in dem Joe Hills ,The Preacher and the Slave' nach der Melodie ,The Sweet Bye and Bye', Ives und Beethoven anklingen. Goldstein handhabt die Violine als Waffe der Kritik, als Spiegel für das ,hässliche' Amerika, als Medium der Erinnerung an ein ,anderes''. Rigo Dittmann (Bad Alchemy).
"Depuis les années soixante, le violoniste et compositeur Malcolm Goldstein suit avec une constance exemplaire les voies de l'improvisation la plus radicale. Joué avec une technique rudimentaire, son violon grince, crisse et racle. Le son brut que le musicien développe est une matière qu'il sculpte avec finesse ou sans ménagement. En solo ou avec un quatuor à cordes, comme dans ce cd, avec Ornette Coleman, John Cage ou la Merce Cunningham Dance Company, chaque pièce que Goldstein construit dans l'instant se transforme en happening, réduisant la musique à son _expression la plus pure : un souffle." Camille Guynemer (Octopus).
"Il joue du violon, mais sa démarche ne saurait se laisser cerner aisément. Malcolm Goldstein entretient en effet une relation très particulière avec cet instrument, qu'il explore en tant que prolongement du corps, travaillant notamment sur la texture et la vibration du son. Côté composition, dans la foulée de John Cage, Malcolm Goldstein n'a pas hésité parfois à mêler différents bruits enregistrés à sa musique. Il se produit ici en solo au violon (et à la voix à l'occasion de la sortie de l'album ''Hardscrabble Songs'' sur le label : in situ.'' Hugues Le Tanneur (ADEN / Le Monde N°306).
Le violoniste Malcolm Goldstein (vu cet automne à Lille dans un émouvant solo pour lequel toute l'Amérique de Thoreau et de Cage était convoquée) donne, avec Hardscrabble Songs (in situ IS 238, Dist. Orkhêstra), un recueil fascinant, gravé d'un archet épileptico-hendrixien que vient soutenir une voix fort riche (écoutez la suite éponyme et tout particulièrement son quatrième développement.) : songs et soundings improvisés de la plus haute volée ! Le Quatuor Bozzini vient clore avec une composition (dense et diffuse) de MG ce grand enregistrement, passionnant et poétique (hautement recommandé, que vous aimiez lez Freeman Etudes de Cage ou les textures de l' électrimpro). Guillaume Tarche (Improjazz n°111, janvier 2005).
"J'aime beaucoup Malcolm Goldstein qui a d'ailleurs séjourné à Nice, en residence à la Villa Arson, à l'époque où Jérôme Joy l'avait interviewé pour "Revue & Corrigée" (...) J'aime beaucoup The Seasons : Vermont, produit par Phil Niblock". Philippe Robert.
"C'est une musique vraiment magnifique et parfaitement envoûtante (...) Le disque ''Hardscrabble Songs'' est magnifique !" Stéphane Ollivier.
"I hope this receives excellent reviews for it is a wonderful disc: one of the CDs of the year, I think." Peter Stubley.
Malcolm Goldstein, The Seasons: Vermont XI Records
The one thing that most people forget when talking about Thoreau is the fact that across the pond--always in eyesight--ran one of the Northeast's busiest railroad lines. Although Thoreau was on a nature trip, his observations were constantly accompanied by the rumble of commerce and industry; Thoreau was as much about coping with the culture around him, as he was about getting away from it. Over the years, while many musicians have invoked the more obvious straight-up-nature side of Thoreau, very few have delved into the more complex relationship of natural sounds to man-made noise. The violinist Malcolm Goldstein, on this new re-release of a 1983 improvisation for magnetic tape and instrumental ensemble, tackles the problem by mixing the sounds of rainfall and birdsong with chainsaws and motorcycles. The results are both unexpected and unsettling, made even more so by a group of six improvisers, who react to a pre-recorded tape of found sounds. Just when you've settled into the gentle sounds of leaves rustling, the percussionist throws a metal tube across the studio, jarring you out of your shoes. On this disc, Goldstein takes on the classical theme of The Seasons. During the time he wrote the piece, he was living in Vermont and made a tape catalog of the different sounds that happened during the different seasons. He then scored some rough rules for a half dozen musicians to follow and came up with a pretty convincing modern opus to nature. The four part structure of the work moves along fairly conventional lines: Summer is bustling with energy and sound, Fall starts off noisy and slowly simmers down, Winter is a long quiet stretch, and Spring eventually comes to life. However, it's the hundreds of small acoustic events that take place within each season that make this record intriguing. Summer throws in everything from motorcycles to skittering saxes; Fall uses Stomp-style trash can percussion to invoke the crackling branches of trees; Winter features the amplified sound of rubber boots walking on snow; and Spring is invoked by diddling guitars, dripping water and a tape of a fiddler's contest looped over and over again to sound like a swarm of cicadas. It's rich fare that only gets better with each listening. Every time I put he disc on, I hear something new depending on my focus and mood. On first listening, this record sounds like European improv. There's not a whole lot of structure as instruments trade turns with pre-recorded sounds. It's easy to imagine that you're listening to the London-based Spontaneous Music Ensemble or Ennio Morricone's late-60s Gruppe Nuova Consonanza. However, as you delve deeper into the disc, you realize that the work is extremely American, not only in its philosophically-based Transcendentalism and in its quotations of Charles Ives, but in its outward-looking chipper Romanticism. Where as European improv generally tends to look no further than itself for its subject matter (all references to the outside world are generally shunned in favor of the structuralist formalism of the music at hand), Goldstein's disc is awash in symbolism and sentiment. It's a circuitous way to arrive at content--but it works--at once keeping the emotional threshold high, while keeping the music cool. It's a disc that helps us come to terms with what we might generally consider "obtrusive noises" in our life, whether we live in the city or the county. After listening to this record, you'll learn to love the sounds of BMX motorcycles ripping through the woods during your Sunday walk in the county and it'll help you make peace with the ubiquitous squeal of rats foraging through metal garbage cans on your block. New York Press, 1998 (http://www.wfmu.org/~kennyg/popular/reviews/goldstein.html)It's only natural that wonder violinist and sonar poet Malcolm Goldstein should have pieces written especially for him. Here is a bunch of them, composed with him in mind, and as you can see, by some of the foremost personalities in contemporary art music. ... (more ... )
... The disc explores the wide range of nuance and 're-invention' of the violin that Goldstein has brought to the instrument. The new violin: as an extension of our voice/body, through gesture sounding the space. New sound-textures discovered as we listen to the bow breathing within the string, revealing a rich spectrum of tonal and noise qualities; the bow floating, pressing, sliding along and sharply articulating the string to vibrate (and all parts of the string offering new possibilities). So, also, with fingers articulating the string length; overtone/harmonic scale possibilities, as well as all nuances within the continuum of the pitch-tonal landscape...to create new melodies of SOUND expressive of he human gesture." ... (more ...)
"It is Goldsteins staggering vocabulary that provides reason enough to purchase Monsun; like the greatest free improvisers, he conjures whole worlds of song, nuance and feeling out of all means available on his instrument. Wilson fields his end of the conversation with rich, warm tones, and a great sense of structure, as if the violinist is providing the skin, and Wilson is constructing the skeleton." (Larry Nai, CADENCE)
Malcolm Goldstein (*1936) bildete in den sechziger Jahren mit James Tenney und Philip Corner zusammen das Ensemble "Tone Roads". Dem Violinspiel eroeffnete er neue Dimensionen des Ausdrucks. Entwickelte die Soundings: freie Improvisationen auf der Geige, bei denen er sich vom Zwiegespraech des Klangs und der Gestik des eigenen Spiels leiten laesst (Sounding the full Circle, Writings 1988). Als Violinist und Komponist Teilnehmer an zahlreichen grossen Festivals experimenteller Musik und des Tanztheaters in Nordamerika, Europa und Japan. Für das Studio Akustische Kunst des WDR realisierte er die Klangkompositionen Marins Lied, illuminiert, The edges of sound within, Ishi/Timechangingspaces, Topography of a sound mind, Zwischen (zwei) Raeumen, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule und as it where, another.Hommage an John Cage. (more ... )
Signal to Noise #13 (USA), Review 1336000
This is a remarkable account of three improvising musicians recorded over four days in November 1997, but a much longer period of musical exchange has shaped the interaction of violinist Goldstein, percussionist Heward, and prepared guitarist Wiens. The six trio pieces and two duets by Goldstein and Wiens are improvisation in its purest form, reminiscent at times of some of the quieter editions of John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Heward mentions in the notes that when "I think of and make improvised music I have images of water somewhere in and out of mind," and that will serve as ideal point of entry to this music making. It is, above all, fluid, making its own course, absorbing other materials, progressing at the rate that the terrain allows. But it is also its own terrain, with figure and ground never absolutely defined. Also elemental, it is so insistently engaged in time that it becomes effectively timeless. Like all good improvisation, it is utterly distinct, each piece and each voice necessarily itself, but it is so in such a way that all our individual descriptions must be some how similar. It’s quiet music that invites a moving point of view. Heward sounds Like he’s restricting himself to small instruments, while Wiens’ prepared guitar focuses on the minutiae of sound, so that one is often at a loss to identi fy who is making what sound, and how, at a particular moment. Part of the process of listening is to surrender that need, to wander into the music’s movement. Each player enjoys elliding tonalities, slides and glissandi and glassy rattlings that will recall the sonic world of Harry Partch. In this flux, one sometimes hears a passage in which a sound is so close and so necessary to Goldstein’s line that it is best identified not as drum or guitar, but as not-violin, the sympathy so strong that Goldstein might be playing one of his partners instruments. That blurring is especially strong around grating sounds, a metallic rubbing that often acts to rub parts together. At other times, a player will enter the discourse in such a marked way as to make you wonder how he had been previously absent. The two duets are, I think less successful than the trios, Heward too large a component for this music to surrender. The results seem suddenly, and only, binary, Goldstein becoming too markedly linear Wiens more fixed. Otherwise, this has the lulling gentleness of water, that gentleness that will erode mountains.
Stuart Broomer, September 01, 2000 (http://www.actuellecd.com/cat.e/am_066.prs.html#1336000)Review 1770000
Violinist Malcolm Goldstein, drummer John Heward, and guitarist Rainer Wiens had been playing together for five years or so when they recorded this first album in the studios of Radio-Canada, Canada’s French-speaking public radio. The trio features all the qualities expected from an experienced free improv outfit: synergy, listening capacity, compatibility in the choice of techniques. Goldstein’s signature is the most prominent one on Chants cachés (Hidden Songs). That is not to say that he leads the trio, but he has a way of setting the mood. His very personal vocabulary finds remarkable echoes in Wiens’ prepared acoustic guitar. Heward adapts his playing to the other two, using mostly his cymbals, his scrapings joining in with violin and guitar. The music is delicate, textural, inhabited by a restrained energy that only makes it more intense. Just listen to Heward keeping Trio 3 alive while the other musicians take a few steps back in order to leap farther. Chants cachés is an unlikely release for the Montreal label Ambiances Magnétiques — it was their first CD of acoustic free improvisations. Considering how Wiens’ work is so under-documented, one can’t help but be grateful.
François Couture, February 01, 2001 (http://www.actuellecd.com/cat.e/am_066.prs.html#1770000)
- Links related to Malcolm Goldstein:
- http://www.deeplistening.org/dlc/28golds.html
- http://www.truemuze.de/9801_booklet.html
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