mopomoso @ the vortex 10/16/2011

words + photos: gian paolo galasi

Simon Rose on baritone sax

Last Mopomoso monthly session at the Vortex opened with a trio of regular players of the LIO. Restart is composed by Benedict Taylor on viola, his brother Noel at clarinet and Noura Sanatian on violin. 

It's always interesting to see young improvisers looking for their own path and dimension, and so tonight the trio provided a set in which to show their ability in building their own music layer upon layer from different short assertions, increasing and varying. Still in need to develop awareness about the dynamics of the space, and dealing with different volumes of sound, the trio also reminded us how it is harder but even more adventurous to exploit the possibilities of such a combination as clarinet and strings, in comparison with the 'classic' improv sax/double bass/drums line-up.

The second set was Simon Rose's solos on both baritone and alto. Well known for his trio Badlands with Steve Noble and Simon Fell, and recently represented in a beautifully recorded solo album on baritone - 'Schmetterling', on Nottwo, exploits the resonances of the boat-shaped hall in which it was recorded - Rose gifted the audience with a beautiful performance, full of nuances, circular breathings and something like a theatrical or ritual attitude, but very near to the essence and far from rethoric.

Louis Moholo Moholo

The third, announced group of Steve Beresford, Shabaka Hutchings and Guillome Viltard was added with Louis Moholo Moholo, back from the previous night duo with Evan Parker and then  'groupcomposing' with John Tchicai and Tony Marsh also. A multi-instrumentalist since long time associated with the Company but also rounded enough to play with The Slits and The Flying Lyzards, Beresford plays the piano with an ironic touch and a resolute, but light, manner, with Shabaka Hutchings - Zed U, The Heliocentrics, Polar Bear, Courtney Pine's Jazz Warriors - perfectly functional with the group, and Guillome Viltard providing the right garment to Moholo's pulses. 

the workshop series @ cafe oto 09/26/2011

word + photos: gian paolo galasi

As the Vortex Jazz Club, also Cafe Oto offers a monthly residency for regular encounters. Tonight's the time for some of Eddie Prévost's weekly workshop participants, with three different sets of improvised music.

Hyelim Kim (taegum), Carole Finer (cumbus/objects) and Benedict Taylor (viola) set started with firm and controlled gestures, circularly feedbacked by the players in order to create a gentle, not utterly conducted, climax. 

Carole Finer is an historical member of the Scratch Orchestra large collective, created in 1969 by Cornelius Cardew initially to perform his The Great Learning. Actively involved as a teacher in Camberwell art school, tonight she didn't use her 5-string banjo in an idiomatic way - deeply rooted and involved in bluegrass music as she also is - but as a generator of fluttering, quivering and throbbing particles using the body and the strings of her instrument frictioning it with the help of marbles and other small objects. 

Seymour Wright (alto saxophone), Vasco Alves (AM/FM keyboards) and Tom Soloveitzik (tenor saxophone) offered an intense set made of silences, resonances, sudden breaks, spanning through granular frequencies up to squeaking and prolonged horn lines.

With the lights completely turned off, Tom Soloveitzik showed his achievements in digging the techniques he's also teaching, as a matter of control over the body, the gestures, the sound itself. While waiting for a forthcoming release with Soloveitzik, cellist Kevin Davis and Turkish improviser, sound designer and composer Korhan Erel, tonight we appreciated a trio that have developed a language in which various elements are combined together in a refined, though aptly rough, interaction.

In the end, Jennifer Allum (violin), Philip Somervell (piano) and John Lely (objects) made the most intimate set tonight, exploiting the strings of their real instruments in order to interact with the objects on a equal level. Probably the most close to Prevost statements as quoted on the flyers prepared for the event, since differently from Kim/Finer/Taylor set - that in the end, assuming that we're talking mostly about nuances, let people feel what aleatoric can be dealing with sound - seemed to be more structured, as a passage through different devices and combinations of levels and elements, creating a scanning of space, time, silence, timbres, noises, textures. More than a flux, a real environmental soundscape of 'found sounds'.