Aaron Lumley. Wilderness. Aaron Lumley is a string bassist who recently moved to Montreal after some years of activity in the Toronto improvising community. Wilderness presents eight highly organic solo improvisations. In an accompanying note, Lumley compares his approach to wandering off a forest path for the chance to[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 114

Frank Lowe. The Loweski. This new release from ESP features the Frank Lowe Quartet in unreleased tracks that didn’t make it onto Lowe’s 1973 ESP release Black Beings. As a free-jazz set, The Loweski is distinguished by its silences, one helping each, at the beginning and end of the set, where the ensemble[...] Read more

Recordings Andrew Hamlin Issue 114

Fleshtone Aura. On Rusticated Slant. Similarly to his other group, Gastric Female Reflex, Andrew Zukerman’s Fleshtone Aura project is an act of cheeky historical revisionism. Evoking the rubbery tactile sonics of musique concrète through jump-cuts and slippery tape-speed bends, Zukerman’s pieces are also[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 114

Coat Cooke & Rainer Wiens. High Wire. The pairing of Coat Cooke and Rainer Wiens in High Wire, results in a performance of dualities. Complexity versus simplicity, density versus scarcity are all at play here. Wiens creates complex sound environments on eclectic guitars and thumb pianos while Cooke soars overhead with clear, clean[...] Read more

Recordings Randy Raine-Reusch Issue 114

Coat Cooke & Joe Poole. Conversations. Vancouver saxophonist Coat Cooke has always been in full control of his horn and is capable of great heights of creativity. He leads the NOW Orchestra and is extremely active in many parts of the Canadian music community. But few projects have given him, as this one does, the freedom to express[...] Read more

Recordings Randy Raine-Reusch Issue 114

John Butcher and Mark Sanders. Daylight. The saxophone–drum duo has a long history in free jazz—a primal pairing that achieved an early high in the 1967 John Coltrane and Rashied Ali recording called Interstellar Space. Such fire-breathing antecedents might seem distant from the music of English saxophonist John Butcher,[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 114

300 BASSES. Sei Ritornelli. There’s something wonderful about first hearing an instrument transformed, such as Eric Glick Rieman preparing a Fender-Rhodes electric piano or Seymour Wright playing a saxophone by tapping and amplifying it, not blowing it for long stretches of time. As fine as those experiences might be[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 114

R. Murray Schafer. My Life on Earth and Elsewhere. In his latest book, Schafer describes a composition as “a multicultural event in which we laugh at ourselves and each other.” It’s a good description for the memoir itself: its scope is vast, but its tone is irreverent, lighthearted. Schafer does nothing here to dispel his[...] Read more

Books Issue 113

Linda Jansma and Carsten Seiffarth, eds. Gordon Monahan: Seeing Sound: Sound Art, Performance and Music, 1978–2011. If there is one life-changing moment in the career of the Canadian composer, performer, and sound artist Gordon Monahan, it may well have been his encounter—and eventual partnership—with Laura Kikauka. Leafing through the monograph Seeing Sound, which spans over thirty years of[...] Read more

Books René van Peer Issue 113

Burkhard Beins, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, Andrea Neumann, eds. Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Self-Defining a Scene. Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Self-Defining a Scene is a welcome and expansive document on the improvised music scene in Berlin. The term “echtzeitmusik,” which translates into “real-time music,” is the current working description for the type of music practiced by such[...] Read more

Books Chris Kennedy Issue 113

Merce Cunningham Dance Company: the final Event. NYC, USA. December 31, 2011. It is with wistfulness and admiration that I’m writing a review of the last-ever Merce Cunningham Dance Company Event, the second of two shows at the Park Avenue Armory last New Year’s Eve.   Wistfulness, for obvious reasons: this performance marked the end of a[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Matt Rogalsky Issue 113