The process of composing music, generally, is autocratic: "This is what I want; play these notes." But the burgeoning free improvisation scene has put the emphasis on "distributed creativity." Each member of an ensemble composes her/his own part, in real time. In jazz improvisation, musicians know the melodies, harmonies and rhythms in advance and use them as the basis of the performance, but free improvisers engage in a process of discovery; they feel their way, exploring sounds and textures by real-time experimentation.
The four musicians who created the two extended tracks on Carved Water have left instrumental virtuosity behind. Instead, they engage something like what the late Pauline Oliveros termed "Deep Listening." Each musician uses his listening sensitivity to meld with or differentiate from the others, to increase or decrease dynamics and densities, to make textures smooth or coarse, to extend tones or create rhythmic or arrhythmic patterns.
The music was created for the Sound Art exhibition "On the Edge of Perceptibility" in Budapest. Thanos Chrysakis (laptop, live electronics), Christian Kobi (soprano saxophone), Christian Skjødt (objects, live electronics) and Zsolt Sőrés (five-string viola, contact mic, tools) weave ever-changing complexities that are mysterious and ineffable.
Drama yields to quiescence and reverses. Sources of sounds are inscrutable. Whispers, scrapes, rumbles, clicks, drones, screeches, taps, clouds of noise — all this draws the listener in. One's rapt attention is richly rewarded.
(Aural Terrains Records)The four musicians who created the two extended tracks on Carved Water have left instrumental virtuosity behind. Instead, they engage something like what the late Pauline Oliveros termed "Deep Listening." Each musician uses his listening sensitivity to meld with or differentiate from the others, to increase or decrease dynamics and densities, to make textures smooth or coarse, to extend tones or create rhythmic or arrhythmic patterns.
The music was created for the Sound Art exhibition "On the Edge of Perceptibility" in Budapest. Thanos Chrysakis (laptop, live electronics), Christian Kobi (soprano saxophone), Christian Skjødt (objects, live electronics) and Zsolt Sőrés (five-string viola, contact mic, tools) weave ever-changing complexities that are mysterious and ineffable.
Drama yields to quiescence and reverses. Sources of sounds are inscrutable. Whispers, scrapes, rumbles, clicks, drones, screeches, taps, clouds of noise — all this draws the listener in. One's rapt attention is richly rewarded.
