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2010-01-27T13:33:00.004-06:00

Ken Vandermark
Work series : Musician

a film by Daniel Kraus
2008 / US / color / 58 minutes (+ additional footage)
DVD (region 1) from Facets Video

photo by Juan-Carlos Hernandez
Anyone who has ever known anyone who worked as a musician should be well-aware of what a tough career it is – whether the performer is in a part-time local band or one who tours widely and often, with varying degrees of success and recognition. Suffice to say it’s not an option normally offered up by a high school job counselor. As difficult a road as this might be for anyone pursuing fame and fortune through relatively popular forms of music – rock & roll, singer-songwriter, country – imagine now how much more close to impossible it would be to actually earn a living and survive (both practically and artistically) when one’s chosen genre is avant-garde, experimental jazz. Chicago-based reed player Ken Vandermark has done just that – and I think it’s safe to say, looking over his career (and he’s still only in his 40s, with hopefully a long and fruitful future ahead of him), that he’s managed to do just that…and do it very well. Vandermark was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, which raised some eyebrows among those who were unfamiliar with his work (or his work ethic). I won’t claim to have heard everything he’s done – he has over 100 recordings to his credit, working with something like 40 ensembles, including his main band, The Vandermark 5, as well as collaborations with many of the brightest talents in his field, such as Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, Ab Baars…the list goes on and on…) – but I can vouch for the stunning quality of everything I’ve heard. The sheer volume of his recorded output would limit the quality level when applied to most artists – but his dedication and imagination, as well as the depth and brilliance of his composition and performing, make every release something to anticipate greatly. He tours an average of 8 months every year, and when coupled with the time needed for composition, rehearsal and self-management (to say nothing of his home life!), Vandermark is, to say the least, a busy fellow.

photo by Amanda Kraus
Daniel Kraus turns the camera of his acclaimed Work series on Vandermark for this documentary – the cinema verité style he employs is absolutely perfect in bringing the viewer into Vandermark’s world. We see Ken in the sometimes agonizing process of working on new compositions at home, alone; listening to phone messages and returning calls; setting up tours and negotiating concert fees and accommodations; rehearsing with his various bands, working out arrangements; traveling from gig to gig (no luxury limos here, folks – one has to really want, or be driven, to this specific calling); schlepping equipment in and out of cramped, hard-to-access performance spaces; &c, &c…you get the picture. It’s not a glamorous life – it’s one that the artists who choose it are compelled to pursue for the sake of their art, which springs from their souls and, in most cases, will not be denied. In not concentrating on performance footage, per se, Kraus has imbued his film with a deeper sense of reality than other documentaries that mostly show a band going through the same motions night after night, every movement on stage choreographed to the nth degree. This is the real deal, with no make-up, no pretension.

photo by Juan-Carlos Hernandez
The filmmaker also eschews the direct interview – sometimes we see Vandermark speaking with audience members or others about his work, but briefly. For the most part, Kraus allows the audience to become a part of the experience by immersing them in it without additional commentary – the images are so vivid, without the façade of ‘acting’, that the film is completely successful in this and all other regards. I can recall only a handful of music-related documentaries that were this perfect – Straight, no chaser, Charlotte Zwerin’s great film about Thelonious Monk; Step across the border, Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s document of Fred Frith’s travels (musical and otherwise); Agujetas cantaor, Dominique Abel’s brilliant portrait of possibly the greatest cantaor flamenco of our time; and Triumph of the underdog, Don McGlynn’s film on Charles Mingus all come to mind. These are all pinnacles of the form, and it’s easy to see why Musician made the list of ‘7 masterpieces of the 00s you’ve likely never seen’ on movieline.com.

photo by Amanda Kraus
This is a film that can be enjoyed by anyone even remotely interested in understanding the life of a working musician – and for jazz fans, especially those already familiar with Ken Vandermark’s fine work, it’s an absolute treasure. Although there is little actual performance footage in the body of the film itself, there’s plenty of on-stage material here in the form of nearly an hour of ‘deleted scenes’ – Ken is featured in various clips with The Vandermark 5, The Territory Band-6, Bridge 61, Cinc, and in some solo and duo improv sessions as well – all of it beautifully performed, filmed, and presented. There are also some brief segments of interviews and moments of relaxed conversation – all of it adds greatly to the effect of the body of the film itself.

Daniel Kraus...photo by Amanda Kraus
Watching it again in preparation for putting this piece together, I found it hard to limit myself – the temptation every time I put the DVD on is to view it again in its entirety…which I’m sure I’ll do again and again. It’s a wonderfully drawn portrait of someone who works very hard in pursuit not only of his livelihood but his artistic fulfillment…and an extremely compelling one. In closing, I’ll leave you with a short clip – I think you’ll get a good sense of both the mood and quality of this film from this brief excerpt…

The work series website

Ken Vandermark official website

2010-01-27T08:24:00.006-06:00

The window (La ventana)

written and directed by Carlos Sorin
2008 / Argentina / color / 77 minutes
Spanish with English subtitles
DVD (region 1) from Film Movement

In Carlos Sorin’s gently poetic film The window, Time is as much a character as any of the humans. The quiet, insistent ticking of a clock in the hallway and the swish of the swinging pendulum echo almost subliminally through the house and reverberate in the lives of the people with a strength that belies the subtle sounds – but Don Antonio is acutely aware of Time’s presence in his life, looming larger with the passing of each minute. The film opens with a dream – Don Antonio sees visions from his youth 80 years before, of his mother introducing him to his babysitter for the evening. He can almost see the young woman’s face – a tantalizing memory made more poignant by his inability to bring it completely into focus. He can hear music in the house – his assumption is that his parents were entertaining at home.

Reality asserts itself when he awakens and is troubled that he cannot remember the babysitter’s face – he wonders where he lost the memory, how it slipped away from him. Don Antonio is bedridden, apparently recovering from some unspecified heart-related problem, in San Juan, his ancestral home, remotely situated on the pampas of Argentina. He is under the care – and watchful eyes – of Maria del Carmen and Emilse, who function as housekeepers, cooks and caregivers, along with a longtime handyman. Their lives are pursued with little contact from the outside world – the occasional visit from a deliveryman or repairman, and of course regular visits from Don Antonio’s doctor and friend. They have no telephone, depending on a two-way radio for communication.

The film takes place over the course of a single day – a special day, with the impending visit of Don Antonio’s estranged son Pablo, who is a famous concert pianist now living in Europe. His return after many years is an opportunity for reconciliation with his father, and Don Antonio is determined that his son will be made welcome, and that the occasion will be celebrated as it should. Maria del Carmen and Emilse are pressed into readying a room for Don Pablo, as well as making sure that San Juan’s piano is properly tuned. Don Antonio’s doctor pays a call to examine his patient and check on the progress of his recuperation. He gently refuses Don Antonio’s request that he be allowed to receive his son outside of his bed, telling him that the time is not yet right for him to be more mobile. The nature of his long friendship with Don Antonio is illustrated by his calming assurance that the two of them will go fishing together when the old man’s health is better – but the look in Don Antonio’s eyes reveals that he knows more about his own condition than those around him might think.

The tall window in Don Antonio’s bedroom looks out onto his land – a panoramic view of the wind-swept fields under the beautiful canopy of the Argentine sky. He longs to walk his property again, to pace through the fields, to see the condition of his beloved garden – but Maria del Carmen and Emilse keep him on a short leash, concerned about his health and the doctor’s orders. The IV constantly in his arm acts as a tether – he can move about the room from time to time, when his bed is being made, or when he sits in a chair to have his hair trimmed, but it’s easy to see that it feels more like a ball and chain to him. The aching in his eyes and on his face as he gazes out of his window is palpable.

Don Antonio is a writer – one of the few modern conveniences visible in the film is his laptop computer, on which he works sporadically. During the doctor’s visit, he asks the physician to retrieve a book from the shelf – a first edition of A universal history of infamy by legendary Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. As he brings the book to Don Antonio, the doctor notices that the book is signed by Borges, with a dedication to Don Antonio, making it a very special item indeed – and he is all the more astonished when the old man insists that the doctor take the book as a gift from him. It’s a touching moment – Don Antonio conveys, through this selfless gesture, the value he places upon their friendship, at the same time letting the doctor know that the patient is aware that his time might not be long.

After a brief ‘escape’ for a walk around his property leaves him in a weakened state, tempering his hopes for a proper celebration around the return of his son. Don Pablo arrives not alone, but in the company of a woman named Claudia, apparently his girlfriend – she is evidently a performer herself, and is only partially present, concerned about the lack of communication with the outside world interfering with an upcoming booking. She greets Don Antonio with a combination of petulance and detached respect that clearly show she would rather be back in the ‘real world’ instead of stranded in the middle of nowhere. Antonio insists on having a bottle of champagne brought up from the cellar for a ceremonial toast – his son notes that the handwriting on the label is that of his mother, which his father acknowledges wistfully. As the bottle is uncorked, the lack of the characteristic ‘pop’ tells everyone that it is flat – another instance in which Time makes its presence and effects noticed. Afterwards, alone, the son explores the house, unfamiliar to him after the ensuing years. He approaches the piano, finding two tin soldiers on the top. They were retrieved earlier from inside, wedged among the mechanism, by the piano tuner, where they had evidently fallen many years ago, when Pablo was a child. He pockets them – a quiet, perhaps unconscious attempt to capture Time.

The film is shot beautifully – there are long scenes with little dialogue, but volumes are spoken, nevertheless, by the eyes and facial expressions of the characters, as well as by the movement of the natural world, which of course has a life of its own. There is tangible poetry in the cinematography, and a completely unpretentious grace in the characters – something that cannot be taught, which must have its source deep within. The actors embody their roles, immersing themselves in them, becoming the characters they portray – it’s an essential element too often missing in modern filmmaking, and refreshing to see in such quantity and quality as in this film. Sorin’s script is neither heavy-handed nor naïve, dealing gently and openly with mortality and memory, two elements of our existence that are completely under the sometimes cruel thumb of Time. There is a sort of informed sentimentality present – it is never maudlin or simplistic, gifted to the viewer by the director and cast as an undeniable element of life. We are born, we live, and we die – what we experience over the course of a life molds us and shapes us according to our own sensibilities, directed and nudged by the events through which we pass. Don Antonio’s ghostly dream from his boyhood attains a clarity he never imagined it would reach, delivered by a messenger completely unexpected – it is all the more of a treasure for this, just as this film is a moving cinematic treasure for the viewer. It is touching without being manipulative, filled with beauty that is completely free from artifice, visual poetry that moves and flows with the natural rhythm of the wind through the grass.

2010-01-03T20:13:00.012-06:00

Olivier Themines Trio
Miniatures

Yolk, 2009

The musical form of the miniature might well be viewed in the same light as the short story in literature, or the film short in cinema – arguably more challenging to the creator of the work than longer forms, in that the ideas expressed must be presented in an extremely succinct manner, without the luxury of slow development. There is no time to spare, no space to waste – every note, every rest, each rhythmic form and variation must be precisely designed toward the creation of these small bits of carefully crafted music. Clarinetist Olivier Themines rises to the occasion brilliantly on Miniatures, presenting a programme that shines from first track to last, performed in the able company of Guillaume Hazebrouck (piano) and Kit Le Marec (vibraphone). All of the compositions save one are originals, the lone cover being a piece written by the extraordinary American pianist Ran Blake – ‘Glaciation’, here reduced from the original length of 0’55 to an even more concise 0’32.

Even considering the sparse instrumentation, the arrangements are drawn frugally, in some cases featuring only one or two instruments at any given moment – but nothing is left to chance, with every piece of the musical puzzle falling into place beautifully, creating thoughtful interplay driven by perfect execution. I know that Themines and Hazebrouck are members of the extended Yolk collectif of composers / performers / improvisers – Themines has worked with the Bruno Regnier Xtet, and Hazebrouck has his own sextet as well as performing in a duo with reed player Pierre-Yves Merel. I’m not familiar with the work of vibraphonist Kit Le Marec beyond this recording, but no doubt he, Themines and Hazebrouck keep busy – the music they offer here is on a level that belies the relaxed feel it projects, something that is definitely not casually produced.

There’s a palpable sense of the spirit of Érik Satie hovering over much of this recording – that’s not to say it’s derivative, only that it has an almost dreamlike quality, one that gently reanimates the memory echoes whose resonances have faded almost to silence in the subconscious of the listener. Also present is the very real influence of Jimmy Giuffre, , the American clarinetist / composer whose ground-breaking trio with Paul Bley (piano) and Steve Swallow (double-bass) brought a thoughtful stream of dynamic, forward-looking minimalism (not as much of a contradiction as it might seem at first glance) into the jazz scene of the 50s and 60s, proving that a drummerless ensemble could be both swinging and thought-provoking – one track on Miniatures is entitled ‘Giuffrian sketch’ as an hommage to the inspiration his work offers to Themines and his bandmates. (I highly recommend checking out some of Giuffre’s work, especially the double-disc hatOLOGY re-release of Emphasis and Flight, two albums recorded on a concert tour of Germany in 1961)
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The clarinet, piano and vibraphone spin out melodies that intertwine one moment, shifting focus and sending one instrument soaring into solo flight the next, with the others alternately offering up a quiet counterpoint or dropping out altogether, only to reappear moments later to make their own statements. Far from being flights of improvised fancy, however, I’m left with the feeling that each note is placed in the score precisely where Themines intends it to be – there are doubtless short bursts of improvisation within a framework, but for the most part this seems to be strictly composed music. There are moments when the jazz backgrounds of these players are evident, others when they sound as if they would be equally at home in a classical chamber ensemble – but throughout the recording, they perform with care, emotion and an enthusiasm that enlivens the delicate nature of this music. While Themines is the leader of record here, and the composer of all but one track on the disc, this is without question a cooperative effort – the three players work together seemingly without the fences that the human ego can throw up to block equal interaction. The instruments themselves seem perfect in reflecting the intentions of the composer – the timbre and attack of the piano and vibraphone allow them to play off each other naturally, with the voice of the clarinet sliding in and out as gracefully as the breath that drives it. A trio without bass or percussion to drive the rhythm might seem weak on paper, but Hazebrouck and Le Marec never allow the music to drag. The three instrumentalists draw from their respective palettes with sensitive consideration, the resulting musical image being a delicate, spare filigree that leaves the listener holding breath as the images form and dissipate. No one seems determined to enter into every single ‘conversation’, to vie for attention – these arrangements are about as perfect as they could be, especially given the chosen form, and the experience is a rich one.

Yolk has been a source of some of the most rewarding music I’ve come across over the past 3-4 years – the label, as well as the collectif itself, seems to encourage and nourish the creativity of its participants by allowing them apparent near-total control over their individual recordings. Only in such a freeing atmosphere could musicians and projects like this one thrive and come to such complete fruition. Click on the link below to go to the label’s website – there, you can check out all of their releases and artists, as well as listen to the occasional sample tracks from their releases. If you hear something that strikes your fancy, I urge you to order it from them – they accept PayPal (the safest way to pay online that I’ve found), their prices are much cheaper than one would expect to pay for products from Europe, and their shipping is fast and securely packed. In the world of creative musical endeavors, it's a combination that's hard to beat.

Yolk Records

2009-12-08T17:26:00.003-06:00

Natsuki Tamura

trumpet - memory - dreamscapes

Any musician with talent, imagination and the desire to create something unique through their art winds up, I believe, making a concerted effort to expand the palette of their instrument or voice. Sometimes they choose to remain within their chosen genre (be it classical, jazz or whatever field in which they find their true expression) – others strain and push the limits of style to the point of bursting the envelope that attempts to contain them, giving artistic birth to something so new and different that they find themselves in a realm of their own invention. The work of Japanese trumpeter Natsuki Tamura falls variously into both of these categories. His work with his wife, renowned pianist Satoko Fujii, shows that he’s quite capable of performing in a jazz / free-jazz context, whether it’s in duo recordings with her or in her quartet or big-band ensembles. His own work, either with his quartet (which includes Satoko) or as a solo artist, tends to be more experimental and challenging. Every recording I’ve heard involving either or both of these two is a rewarding experience. Both of the releases I’m addressing here were recorded in 2003. Looking at the credits, one might imagine them to be completely different – they are at first listen, but as one allows this music to more deeply penetrate the psyche, certain elements can be recognized as shared properties.

Natuski Tamura Quartet
Exit

Libra (Japan), 2004

On Exit, Tamura is accompanied by Takayuki Kato (guitar), Satoko Fujii (synthesizer) and Ryojiro Furusawa (drums). The sound generated by this tight unit is very much in line with the cd cover image – the double-exposure combining inside / outside components, seemingly offering an exit from this world to another, is very evocative of the music itself. Tamura’s trumpet starts the first piece, appropriately entitled ‘Entrance’, with cascading echo-lines, with Satoko adding tuned percussive sounds from her keyboard along with angular, forceful punctuations from Furusawa and Kato. There are vocalizations as well – I’m guessing they’re coming from Tamura, but there is no mention of them in the notes – they add to the overall feeling of displacement and resurfacing memories and dreams that pervade not only this track, but most of both of these recordings. These feelings rise and fall with the sounds that conjure them, much in the same way that actual memories and dreams nudge their way into and out of our consciousness. I suspect that this is a purposeful attempt on Tamura’s part to evoke these feelings, to draw upon the effects of them in order to connect with not just his listeners, but with himself as well. It’s extremely effective – listening to this music for the first time, I had an underlying feeling of connectivity with its core that is otherwise unexplainable. ‘Endanger’ is led off again by Tamura’s trumpet, with the other instruments entering the arrangement in more subtle ways, creating a palpable surrounding presence that is vaguely threatening, the mood of the piece reflecting its title accurately. Tamura’s trumpet lines become more agitated, with bursts of lines that, again, evoke something perhaps once heard, perhaps mirroring an individual’s natural instinct of drawing upon something familiar and known when faced with the unsettling, possibly dangerous unknown.

‘Eliminate’ is a lengthier piece, clocking in at over 26 minutes, allowing the group to work through their ideas and stretch out with them – and they do so very well. Tamura’s trumpet coos, warbles, sings and screams over the bubbling background provided by his bandmates. Voice-like sounds are added to the mix – whether they’re generated live or drawn forth from samples is hard to determine, but they’re an effective addition to the mix. Melodies are touched upon in snatches; lines appear and disappear over the very effective foundation laid down by the others, whose melodic offerings are sometimes brought to the fore also. The churning rhythms of the opening section of the piece begin to fade around 7 minutes in, giving way to a more reflective section featuring Tamura’s trumpet sounding as if its tones are reaching the ears of the listener across an expanse of water, perhaps through fog – more audio equivalents of memory and dream elements, at times more felt than heard. The other instruments whisper and crackle in the background, giving the vivid impression of movement through space and / or time. Just after the half-way point in the piece, the others grow more insistent, finally charging back in to raise the energy level to a point even higher than that with which they began. Satoko’s synthesizer reasserts itself as a lead instrument, suddenly dropping out to leave the drums as the main voice – the others contribute accents, followed by the insertion of more vocalizations, then more trumpet, until everyone re-enters to close out the piece in a maelstrom of sound.

‘Expired’ is a more low-key affair overall, with Tamura’s echo-upon-echo trumpet lines offering the main trail through its darkness, with fine support from the others. His melodies zigzag over the musical landscape, with sounds (some of unknown origin) again surrounding the listener. It’s a little like seeing glowing eyes in the darkness when walking through a forest – they could be real or imaginary, benign and curious or quietly plotting. Organ-like sounds from Satoko’s synthesizer combine with Kato’s guitar in the middle section, brought to heightened reawakening by the trumpet and drums, a churning passage that gives way to the more reflective mood of the piece’s beginning to bring things to a close. The shortest track in the set, ‘Exit’, fittingly ends the album – staccato vocalizations are accompanied by a sporadically repeated melody line on the synth here and there that brings to mind ‘The girl from Ipanema’, which disappears again to allow the voice and percussive effects (drums or synthesizer) to bubble up here and there. The piece ends with echo-layered voices and a droning bass chord from the keyboard.

Natsuki Tamura
Ko ko ko ke

Natsat / Polystar (Japan), 2004

Ko ko ko ke is a true solo recording – Tamura produces all of the sounds himself with his trumpet and voice. The mood of this album is less frenetic than parts of Exit , but the effect of the music is no less insistent, drawing the listener into the audio world created by the artist. The elements of memory and dreams are present here as well (the cover photographs represent it beautifully visually), perhaps even more vivid in the less-populated audio canvas. Tamura is very obviously drawing upon his own memories here – not just directly, by way of tunes that he perhaps heard in his childhood, but in mood as well. The hazy, in-and-out-of-focus realm of time distance is recreated in an incredibly effective way here. There are snippets of songs – some tracks are performed solely as vocals – and evocations of traditional Japanese instruments (the shamisen and the taiko) as well. The album is as far as I can discern performed and recorded as heard, with no overdubs – it’s a process that leaves the artist literally naked before the listener, with no place to hide…but the honesty and sincerity with which Tamura presents these pieces adds a quality to the music that no amount of technology could ever match. He’ll play a few lines of melody on his trumpet, presented here with very little if any alteration, then sing a bit. There’s a childlike innocence and openness to not only his voice on this album, but to the entire project – it’s as if through the music he’s recorded here, he’s presenting his innermost self to the listener…and it’s a very moving experience, as well as being one that is incredibly satisfying on an artistic level. The album has a feeling of intimacy that permeates every single track – it’s almost as if he made this recording for himself. I’m very glad he chose to share it.

These recordings are a little hard to find in the US – but with a bit of online exploration, they can be found, along with his other works and releases by Satoko Fujii, all of which will give a more complete picture of two artists whose compositions and performances are as challenging as they are rewarding.

Natsuki Tamura on MySpace

Natsuki Tamura profile on Libra Records’ website

2009-11-16T19:53:00.006-06:00

Valentin Silvestrov
Fleeting melodies

Rostok (Ukraine), 2008

In the booklet for the 2004 ECM release of Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa, music journalist Steve Lake began his essay: ‘Time in Valentin Silvestrov’s music is a black lake. The water barely moves; the past refuses to slide away; and the slow, irregular stirrings of an oar remain n place.’ An apt image for the stillness present in so many of Silvestrov’s compositions – a sense of motionless repose is palpable, couple at the same time with a feeling of connection with things past, ever present in a rather Proustian way, a remembrance that exists beyond the ordinary boundaries of thought and memory, leaving its mark on the multiple, mica-fine layers of the human soul and psyche.

Valentin Silvestrov

The music on Fleeting melodies is described by the composer as ‘…a large cycle, comprised of seven works, which are performed without interruption – as one large text…the expanse in which melodies exist on the boundary between their appearance and disappearance…’ There is a direct reference in the title of some pieces to Tchaikovsky, as well as Silvestrov mentioning Bach’s The art of the fugue in his brief notes – but the listener also hears / feels wisps of echoes from other sources: Schumann, Mozart, Webern…nothing that is so blatant as a copied phrase or passage, but newly created lines that vividly demonstrate the love and understanding that Silvestrov has for the historic composers he admires…those who have preceded him on the path he travels.

Bohdana Pivnenko & Valeriy Moatiukhin

The performers on this disc – Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) – show, in turn, their love and understanding of Valentin Silvestrov’s work. His interpretative instruction, which they execute brilliantly throughout the album, written in the score to one of the pieces, ‘While listening, this music must sound light and clear, distant…’, could apply to just about all of his late work – it settles on the ear of the listener like a mist that is barely there, a whisper from another place, another time…delicate, but not to be ignored. More than any other contemporary composer whose work I’ve experienced, Silvestrov’s music sings – with or without a vocal component. There is so much more at work here than mere saccharine melodies that amount to ear candy – the beauty in these pieces carries meaning and emotion felt on the deepest level, wrapped in music that appeals to both the heart and intellect. Pivnenko and Matiukhin weave their lines in and out of each other, rapt in their interpretation and at the same time sensitive to the voicings offered by their partner – there is not a single failed nuance or overplayed line. It’s like listening to liquid flowing – the recording’s generous 72 minute length is over before one expects it to be, and repeated listenings follow as naturally as one breath follows the next.

This recording is only available, as far as I know, from UMKA in Kiev (link below). For those who might be hesitant to use a credit card to order, know that their online storefront is a company based in the US that accepts PayPal, a safe and secure method of sending money that doesn’t expose your credit card number to any seller. Coming from the Ukraine, with shipping, the disc is understandably a little pricey – around $35 – but well worth it. I received my order in about 12 days, much sooner than I expected. It comes in a DVD-sized digi-pack with beautiful artwork, albeit with brief notes by the composer and a moving dedication by Bohdana Pivnenko to her late husband.

Valentin Silvestrov is a treasure among composers, contemporary or otherwise – his works are imbued with a beauty that springs from the universal human spirit, singing in a wordless language that touches the soul with grace and truth…a touch we could all use.

Fleeting memories at UMKA

2009-11-09T23:48:00.003-06:00

La silence de Lorna
(The silence of Lorna or Lorna’s silence)

written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
2008 / Belgium / France / Italy / color / 105 minutes
French with English subtitles
DVD (region 2) from New Wave FIlms, UK
US release (region 1) from Sony Pictures (scheduled for January 2010)

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne

When a viewer takes in a film by the Dardenne brothers, there’s work to be done. The Belgian auteurs don’t lay everything out in an ‘a + b = c’ order like so many directors – one has to pay attention. It’s not as if their films are overly obtuse or ‘difficult’ – they reflect life, and the pieces of life rarely fit together like an entry-level jigsaw puzzle. The details of characters and plot are there to be discovered / uncovered as the film progresses – it’s a process that places more responsibility on the shoulders of the viewer…but it’s more than worthwhile, engendering an interaction that, like a good exercise session, has an invigorating effect and leaves a sense of involvement and satisfaction in accomplishment in its aftermath. The process also embeds the film and the mica-like layers of thought that engendered it in the mind of the viewer, encouraging a reflection on what has been experienced that is as natural as that stimulated by events in the real world. The world depicted in the Dardennes’ films is a very real one indeed – as real as that created by the great French director Robert Bresson in his work. Their work is by no means derivative of Bresson’s, but he’s an obvious influence – they’ve taken bits and pieces of his philosophy of cinema and added them to their own ideas and goals, moving the art form forward as only those who create from their soul can do. I think Bresson would admire their work – I don’t think he’d feel as if they had copied him.

Combining these techniques with actors who have the ability to transform themselves into their characters with an incredible ease and naturalness, captured on film and brought to the screen with their almost instantly recognizable ‘invisible’ photography that places the viewer in the scene with the characters, participating as a witness, rather than simply watching a film, makes for one of the most unique experiences in contemporary cinema. Their films are works of high art that can instantly be appreciated by any viewer who offers attention – the depth of character and situation that is embodied in them can invest a depth of empathy in an audience that is a rare thing indeed.

How else could filmmakers take such characters as a junkie and a woman who has allowed herself to be involved with petty criminals in a marriage-for-citizenship scam and make us care about them, experiencing and recognizing the humanity in these far-less-than-perfect people? The titular Lorna (exquisitely portrayed by Arta Dobroshi) is a recent immigrant from Albania to Belgium, where the film is set. She has entered into a marriage with Claudy Moreau (Jérémie Renier, veteran of two other Dardenne films, La promesse [1996] and L’enfant [2005], as well as works by other directors) in order to achieve Belgian citizenship. Claudy is a junkie, and has been chosen by Fabio, a petty criminal working as a cab driver, as an easy target for the game he is playing. Fabio is in league with the Russian mafia – the long-term plan calls for Claudy to be killed, leaving Lorna a widow and free to remarry a Russian who is also seeking citizenship. Everyone gets a cut of the money involved, including Lorna's boyfriend Sokol…except of course for Claudy, who is viewed as disposable – ‘He’s only a junkie,’ says Sokol.

The very first scene of the film shows money being exchanged, Lorna apparently depositing a sum into an account. Currency changes hands so much on screen that it almost becomes another character – but on careful observation, it’s actually multiple characters…or at least possessing multiple personalities depending on its source, destination, and purpose. Sometimes it is a negative force driving characters apart – sometimes a positive one that has the potential of drawing them together.

The scheme seems to be foolproof…until Lorna begins to see Claudy not as a disposable pawn, but as a human being. The emotional process through which she passes is one of subtle shifts, but it is every bit as gut-wrenching as Claudy’s attempts to rid himself of his drug habit, desperate to reclaim his life. She agrees to help him stay clean if he will agree to a divorce, freeing her to move on to the next step in the scheme being directed by Fabio. The cab-driving would-be crime magnate, however, is not interested in any change of plans – and the conflicts deepen and become more complicated. All of this begins to play on Lorna’s conscience and psyche, the colors of her emotions shift and change hue, imperceptibly at first – and she also begins to see that those with whom she is playing this game are less concerned with her long-range plans than she first thought. As the plotline circles become tighter and tighter, the tension naturally increases, leading to a conclusion that I won’t reveal…but one that is unexpected, as are so many conclusions in life itself. Her ‘silence’ is multifold – information given by her is doled out frugally…to herself as well as to others.

There are some noticeable differences between this film and the earlier work by the Dardennes – but their style is intact, merely showing their growth as writers / directors, as well as employing some ‘improved tools’ such as the use of 35mm cameras instead of their usual 16mm. There’s even a bit of music at the end of the film, a conscious decision they made in order to allow the mood to fade slowly, much like a sustained note on a piano that ends a piece with a lingering, languid decay. The in-your-face shots are still here, along with camera work designed and executed in such a way as to enhance the viewer’s sense of true presence in the film. Working from their script with their actors, they’re willing to listen to ideas from the cast, implementing some if they feel that the film is improved by their inclusion. It’s a nice combination of a give-and-take process over which they maintain ultimate control – and one about which they speak at length in one of the interviews (the other being with Arta Dobroshi) that is included as an extra in this, the UK edition of the DVD (it’s due to be released in the US by Sony in January of 2010 – hopefully the same extras and image / sound quality will be present). These elements are hallmarks of their style, placing their work on a higher plane than most contemporary cinema – a level that, thankfully, they manage to meet and surpass with each release. Experiencing their films can bring one into closer contact with one’s own humanity by virtually inhabiting the characters created and brought to life on the screen: art that promotes empathy and understanding, which has a value far beyond that of mere entertainment.

Of their other feature films, Le fils (The son) (2002) and L’enfant (The child) (2005) are the only two available in current release in the US; La promesse (The promise) (1996) is out of print in this country, although some rental outlets might still have it. Rosetta (1999), as far as I’m aware, has never been available in this country. All of these are in print in Europe – if you have a region-free player, they’re out there and they’re not all that expensive. Each one is a modest, yet extremely enriching, satisfying masterpiece of film art – and they’ll no doubt cause your expectations to be raised where cinematic creation is concerned.

With the film currently in limited theatrical release in the US, Sony Pictures have a website for it, where you can read more about it as well as view a trailer – click here. If it comes to a theatre near you, I strongly recommend seeing it on a big screen – if not, by all means find a copy of the DVD. It’s an unforgettable experience, one that should not be missed. It won the award for best screenplay at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival...and it very much deserves this sort of recognition.

2009-09-22T17:38:00.004-05:00

Kim Kashkashian
Neharót

ECM New Series, 2009

Violist Kim Kashkashian has shown, over the course of her recording career at ECM, that she seemingly has a magic touch when it comes to programming her albums. Her choices come from the ‘expected’ realms of classical music (her recording of Brahms’ sonatas for viola and piano, with Robert Levin) to composers whose work, while exceptionally thoughtful and beautiful, has not enjoyed the exposure of more ‘known’ composers, most likely due to its challenging nature and more obscure inspirational sources (her previous recordings of the work of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian, as well as this current release, falling into this category). It’s a shame – I know her work is highly regarded and much appreciated by both critics and listeners, but the wider listening audience is missing out on something very special indeed if they pass on her work simply because they don’t recognize names.

For Neharót, she draws from the oeuvre of four composers – Betty Olivero (Israel), Tigran Mansurian (Armenia), Komitas (Armenia) and Eitan Steinberg (Israel). The works offered here draw from the classical tradition, but also from other, age-old sources such as Armenian chant, laments and Hasidic melodies. She takes these melodies to the deepest chambers of her heart and transforms them, using her instrument as few musicians can, giving voice to their soul – and when I use the word ‘voice’, I do so very consciously, for there is a voice-like quality to her playing that brings depth of emotion and a living warmth to her music. Her tone, in her capable hands, can be pristinely intellectual or (as described by Paul Griffiths in his well-written notes to the disc) ‘earthy’ as needs dictate. She truly sings these pieces through her viola – it’s a marvel to experience.

Griffiths speaks of ‘memories we did not know’, referring to the chords struck within the listener on hearing this music – and his description is a perfect one. One can debate the validity of so-called generational or inherited memories – but few people are without the experience of feeling a sense of familiarity with something they’ve never before heard, as if the remembrances are carried in the blood, or DNA. Cultural tendencies and customs are taught, but think about that feeling of an emotion or action simply being ‘right’ touches our thoughts on a subconscious level, many times without being aware of it. These pieces – thanks to the skill of the composers and that of the performer – ring that memory-bell with a delicacy that belies the strength of deeply hidden layers of past experience.

Betty Olivero’s ‘Neharót, neharót’ opens the album – Kim’s viola leads a small ensemble (accordion, percussion and taped voices) and is accompanied by the Münchener Kammerorchester. Accordion, strings and delicate percussion lay down a dirge-like drone, with the viola serving up a melody that is a prime example of the ‘vocal’ qualities I mentioned. Just as with our internal memories, it’s easy to get lost in this piece. The title means ‘Rivers, rivers’, and is a reference to the flood of tears evoked by the seemingly continuous suffering under the yoke of wars in the Middle East. Along with the qualities of a lament, or mourning, however, are undeniable and unquenchable strains of the hope that allows people to survive as human beings in such a time and place. Olivero draws on traditional melodies from Kurdish and North African sources – taped voices of two professional singers, Lea Avraham and Ilana Elia, are used to great effect, enhancing and enriching the voice-like qualities of the viola.

Next up is Tigran Mansurian’s ‘Tagh for the funeral of the Lord’ – the sense of lament continues in this beautiful piece, with Kashkashian being accompanied by some amazingly sensitive percussion work (vibraphone, Thai gongs) by Robyn Schulkowsky, who was worked very effectively with Kim on previous recordings. This is a piece I can easily imagine hearing under darkened skies, perhaps even total night – the sounds have a gentle but firm penetrating quality, again with the quiet insistence of a voice that will not be denied expression. A piece by Komitas (1869-1935), which also appeared on Kim’s Hayren recording, is adapted by Mansurian, who performs it here, solo on piano. It’s a heart-rending, achingly lovely melody – Griffiths notes that it ‘reminds us how close are the genres of lullaby and lament’, and once again he has described the work perfectly. There is a palpable feeling of quietude, especially in the ending of the piece.

A trio of Mansurian works follows, ‘Three arias (sung out the window facing Mount Ararat)’, dedicated by the composer to Kim Kashkashian, who is accompanied here by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Gently swelling strings usher in the viola, which takes the melody firmly but delicately, almost physically handing it to the listener. Turning again to the notes, Griffiths writes, ‘The emotion…is one of longing, a feeling not so far from lament – of longing, in particular, for ancient Armenian sites that are now over the border in Turkish territory. Mansurian imagines these arias as sung out through windows looking towards the holy Mount Ararat, the mountains of Sasun and the ruins of Ani, where thousand-year-old churches testify to the splendour of a city, once one of the world’s greatest, that has been abandoned for centuries.’

Completing the bookending of the shorter pieces (along with the opening work by Olivero) and ending the recording is a longer composition by Eitan Steinberg, originally composed as a vocal work based on a traditional Hasidic ceremony, re-configured here (at Kashkashian’s suggestion) by Steinberg as an instrumental piece. Conveying the emotional impact of the now-missing words to the listener was a challenge for both the composer and the performer – Steinberg notes that Kashkashian ‘managed to cry the prayer from within the strings, to murmur the sacred text with no words’. It’s a stunning accomplishment on both their parts, and one whose result will move the listener deeply, whatever their spiritual orientation might be – emotions and feelings cross all such artificial barriers with great ease.
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I’ve enjoyed Kim Kashkashian’s work for years – with each new release, I look forward to hearing composers I’ve never heard before, music performed with warmth and sensitivity, delicacy and strength, always left with the feeling that her viola is ‘speaking’ directly to me. This could well be my favorite recording of hers – but it’s hard to say, with so many of them ranking so high in my esteem, and so dear to my musical heart and soul.

2009-08-24T21:09:00.002-05:00

Don Cherry’s Multikulti

1991 / Germany / color / 57min approx.
DVD from Kultur / NTSC / all regions

Don Cherry (1936-1995) was an incredible jazz innovator, working with Ornette Coleman early on in defining ‘free jazz’ and forever exploding the envelope in which the genre had been contained. They were not alone in this noble pursuit, of course – but they were among the first. After working with Ornette regularly, off-again and on-again, Cherry continued to erase genre boundaries with his music – and in doing so helped break down the walls of fear and ignorance that rise up between cultures across the globe, illustrating through his work that music and art are universal languages, wielding immense power to touch common ground and intertwine hearts and souls. Multikulti is the name he gave the band / project under which he was operating when this incredible concert document was filmed, in Germany before an enthusiastic audience, in 1991, just 3½ years before his untimely death at the age of 58.

Cherry was known mainly as a trumpet player – specifically the pocket trumpet, usually relegated to the ‘practice instrument’ category until he brought it to the fore as a serious solo instrument – but he was a true multi-instrumentalist, a natural-born seeker drawn to make music on whatever fell into his reach. In this appearance, he performs on trumpet, pocket trumpet, keyboard, melodica, flute, various percussive devices and the doussin gouni, a type of folk-harp from western Africa (particularly Mali), similar to the kora – and he also sings, sometimes using words, others in a wordless manner that nevertheless conveys great emotion and evokes wondrous images. He is joined here by three other amazing musicians – Peter Apfelbaum (piano, keyboards, tenor saxophone, flute); Bo Freeman (electric bass, percussion); and Joshua Jones (drums, percussion).

There are no compositional credits in the DVD package, but from comments made by Cherry during the performance, it’s clear that Apfelbaum wrote both ‘Walk to the mountain’ and ‘When the rain comes’; ‘Rhumba Multikulti’ and ‘Trans love airways’ are either Cherry compositions or co-compositions; and ‘Bemsha swing’ is one of Thelonious Monk’s best-known works. In the case of ‘Bemsha’, it’s enthralling to watch Cherry and his bandmates take Monk’s tune, break it down and re-set it, filtering it through their own musical personalities, much the way Monk would do when he assayed standards or even lesser-known compositions by others.

For that matter, the whole concert enthralled me – Cherry calls the shots, but everyone in the band makes meaningful and thoughtful contributions to the process, and the results are wonderful. Apfelbaum and Cherry switch between various instruments almost seamlessly, and are unselfconsciously adept at all of them. Freeman and Jones execute hard-driving funk, rhythms that approach reggae in their stagger-step beats, and passages drawn with delicate, fragile beauty – all with a natural skill and ease that belie the depths of their abilities and concentration. The introduction to ‘Bemsha swing’ is unrecognizable as a Monk melody – but as soon as familiar piano comps and later sax lines flow, the audience picks up on the tune and responds audibly, bringing a beaming smile and a nod from Cherry. Later in the tune, with Apfelbaum moving to tenor saxophone, Cherry strolls over to the piano and eases into the arrangement. And lest anyone think he’s tinkering when he addresses the keyboard, let them witness his work on this piece – if you watch carefully, you can even see him gently adopt some of Monk’s trademark splayed-fingers keyboard attack.

The sound quality is first-rate throughout – no fancy 5.1 surround sound here, just crystal-clear two-channel stereo accompanied by fine multi-camera video work. The director (Ulli Pfau) and her crew are sensitive to their subjects and the music they’re creating, much to the benefit of the home viewing audience – the camera angles and choices of view are thoughtfully chosen and very much in tune with the pieces being performed.

This is a great video for anyone who loves jazz or world music – the two meet here in respect and mutual admiration. Cherry and crew illustrate that they are cultural chefs, cooking up a stew that is built on innumerable ingredients brought together tastefully to nourish the mind, heart and spirit of the listener – and it’s easy to see that the players are having a wonderful time as well. It’s infectious. The DVD is readily available through the usual sources – Amazon, CD Universe, Mosaic, &c – at reasonable prices (easy to find new copies for under $20) – check it out.

2009-07-08T23:13:00.005-05:00

Akio Suzuki :
a journey of joyful discovery

Sometimes sound summons the world
with more certainty than my verse…
secretly, like twilight,
the world seems lost in listening,
trying to validate itself in each solitary sound.
– Shuntaro Tanikawa

In the notes to Akio Suzuki’s 2007 release, k7 box, Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa poses a couple of questions that go to the heart of understanding and appreciating his body of work: Does Akio Suzuki create music? Or is he only making noise? To anyone who hasn’t heard Akio’s music, these might seem a little insulting – but to the artist himself, I’m sure they bring only a wry smile. Akio Suzuki is a sound artist who approaches his work as what might be termed ‘serious play’ – his methods and the pieces he creates are thoughtfully assembled, but with a sense of ‘play’ that is as natural and filled with delight as that of a child. The joy that he finds in his work – in the world, for that matter – is something tangible, and he communicates it well through his art.

There are no inorganic elements in his music – no computer-altered sounds, no synthesizers, no tape loops. What you hear when listening to one of his recordings is pure, unadulterated sound – some of it produced by instruments that are traditional in nature (such as the stone flute he uses from time to time), in other instances by ones that he has designed and created himself. At times he employs objects such as stones, toys, or the naturally occurring sounds of wind or water. He has also conceived devices that alter and target sounds, but (as far as I’m aware) without the use of electronics beyond a minimum amount of amplification. He has created installations in galleries in Japan and Europe that are as compelling visually as they are in the audio sense.

One of his original creations, the analapos, is, simply described, the audio equivalent of mirrors that are set up facing each other, thus reflecting their images an infinite number of times, combined with sound-carrying tubes. The device captures sounds and enhances and amplifies echoes – sometimes random noises that occur within the performance space, sometimes sounds that Akio produces, on instruments or otherwise. The effect is more complicated than my poor description can convey – here’s a more eloquent explanation, again from the notes to k7 box, this time from Shin Nakagawa, a professor at Osaka City University: The echo is the crucial element in Akio Suzuki’s sound. However…Suzuki’s use of echo does not involve listening to the reflection of the sound…Suzuki tries to hear the echo as it passes beyond the surfaces. Accordingly, his echoes drift through the infinite reaches of cosmic space – which is why listening to Suzuki’s music can feel like being swallowed up in boundless darkness. There are of course varying types of darkness – some inspire fear and insecurity…the darkness of Akio Suzuki’s music is (at least for me) more likely to surround the listener with a comfortable, entirely non-threatening sense of both contemplation and exploration. There is an atmosphere of solitude, of naturalness, discovery and calm, with a thread of joy / play drawn from the very act of creation running through all of it.

Akio Suzuki with De Koolmees, above and below

Another instrument that is obviously not an off-the-rack item is his De Koolmees, a sort of glass harmonica made up of glass tubes on a wire frame – he taps, rubs, touches, and (apparently, from the picture below), breathes on and / or vocalizes in close contact with the glass in order to produce sounds. Turning again to Shin Nakagawa: The coil of the analapos and the glass surfaces of his De Koolmees glass harmonica, each begins to vibrate quietly before they are touched by his fingers. He listens to that gentle vibration and, softly, he amplifies it…Suzuki is listening to sound that has eclipsed its creation. Now, Suzuki is merely present in the space where sound appears.

Stone (1994)
The album Stone features the stone flute I mentioned above, as well as several tracks on which Akio creates sounds / music by rattling / rubbing stones together, knocking them against each other, &c. This description sounds about as un-musical as it could possibly be – but in his hands, born of his spirit and intellect and love of nature, there is a music to be found there that is as calming and reassuring as a walk down a gravel path in a Japanese garden.

Na-gi (Lull in the wind) (1997)
Na-gi is a document of two sound creations recorded on a bay north of Kyoto – the sounds of the waves and the wind are heard throughout, providing the perfect setting for Suzuki’s audio art. In his own words, from the notes, Akio reveals a little of his artistic philosophy: ‘Throwing’ sounds into nature is like putting a cut flower into a vase. If one follows these sounds, one finds the original music of nature. On this disc, he utilizes De Koolmees, analapos, stone flute, voice and found stones and other objects – along with some of the naturally-occurring echoes of the cave in which it was recorded. One can hear the water dripping and waves lapping, along with the wind – it’s one of the most serene, yet stimulating things I’ve ever heard.

Tubridge 99 – 00 (1999)

Tubridge is a bit different, at least in the location chosen for the performance…which of course lends its own color to the pieces. Rather than a gallery or pastoral outdoor setting, the sounds on this disc were captured in a traffic tunnel in Kyoto. It sounds like a simple concept – au contraire…see the diagram below (from the CD booklet, followed by an explanation translated from the German)…

The concept of Tubridge…

Three flexible tubes x, y and z are installed. The sound of area O will transfer x by the tube into the area Q. The sound of area P is carried by the pipes y into the area R. The tube z connects sounds from both Q and R. If one places an ear by the tube’s opening, one hears in the area Q the three-dimensional sound of R, in the area R the three-dimensional sound of Q.

If one is completely quiet in area Q or area R, one can observe how the sounds blend themselves. The three-dimensional sounds of the two areas behave like liquid in the communicating tubes – the resulting audio conglomerate does not belong to either specific area acoustically, and one cannot differentiate between the two, or from which area either one originates.

This is however only an assumption…

But still, no artificial electronic alterations are applied – all of the effects heard in the recording are achieved by the means described above: organic sound manipulation and assembly. It’s astonishing work, and extremely effective and compelling.

Breath taking (2003)
Breath taking documents a live performance given by Suzuki in collaboration with English musician / composer / 'curator' David Toop at the sound323 space in London in 2003 – the two are credited with a wide array of ‘instruments’. Akio performs on kikkokikiriki (which I’m guessing is one of his instruments, I have no idea what it might be beyond that), small flute, small stones, pan pipe, ireba, and silent toy; David’s arsenal includes flutes, bone whistle, dog whistles, stones, whistling pot, organic materials and feedback device (the closest thing to what I would consider ‘electronics’ on any recording I’ve heard by Suzuki). The disc is presented as a single 37-minute track, and is one of the most incredible live recordings I’ve ever experienced – to capture the delicate sounds generated by these two artists and transfer them to a playable medium must have been a Herculean engineering effort.

k7 box (2007)
k7 box – Suzuki’s latest offering at the time of this writing, about which, he said before it was formally issued, he was ‘more excited than any other he’s released’. Three of the tracks were commissioned to be played at the opening and closing of the Yokosuka Museum of Art. The nine selections are titled according to the instrument / device used in creating them – four for the analapos, three for the De Koolmees, one that involves both of these, and one simply entitled ‘Bottle’ for reasons that become obvious when listening to it. This was the first disc of Akio’s that I held in my hands, the first into which I found myself sinking deeper and deeper with each successive hearing – and it’s one of my favorites in his catalogue. The recording quality of all these CDs is very high – the material presented practically demands it, with the dynamic range involved – but it’s especially crystalline on k7 box. Its near-one-hour playing time seems to fly by each time I hear it – I’m so completely immersed in the sounds this master artist is creating that I’m never ready for it to end. David Toop describes it this way in his notes to this recording: Human music can become tiring to our sensibilities, our overloaded memories, but somehow, these simple sounds by Akio Suzuki stay alive for me, always as new and enduring as wind in the chimney, heard when I was a child, or the woodpecker chicks I heard in their nest this morning.

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For that matter, everything I’ve heard by Akio Suzuki bears repeated listening – whether the ideas and execution behind the recordings are simple (as in the case of the Stone CD and many parts of the others) or incredibly complex and carefully prepared (those presented on Tubridge), each time I hear them more seems to be revealed. Subtleties unfold, sounds previously unheard or unnoticed become clearer, moods and intuitive understanding deepen. This is amazing music. There is a calmness and serenity projected by Akio Suzuki – in his music, his art, in his writings and musings about his creations, his life and the world in general – that is rare in this age of complication. It has a grounding effect – at least on me – that is sorely needed to offset the stresses of our lives.

Check out his website below – there is information there in Japanese, English and French, with a profile and upcoming events available. The other link leads to a profile on the Resonant Spaces site, with a couple of sound samples available, so you can get a better idea of what this music sounds like than my poor words can convey. Erstwhile Records currently has Breath taking in stock – Mimaroglu Music Sales has k7 box as well as a couple of print items. At the moment, Soundohm in Italy has the most number of items available – they show k7 box, Tubridge 99 – 00, Breath taking, Na-gi, a double-CD called Odds and ends, and a museum-released book / CD combination (rather pricey, this one, at €28 plus shipping across the pond!). I’ve dealt with all of these sources in the past, and I can vouch for their integrity and reliability.

Akio Suzuki – official website

Resonant Spaces – Akio Suzuki profile

Erstwhile Records

Mimaroglu Music Sales (a sound sample here as well)

Soundohm

2009-07-06T23:03:00.003-05:00

Thôt

This is a great example of a band whose sound hooked me from the very first notes – Stéphane Payen’s alto saxophone introduction to ‘Toum-té’ drew my attention like an audio magnet, before the rest of the band entered into the arrangement. When the guitar, bass and drums came in, I knew I was doomed – Thôt’s music is the sort of stuff to which I find myself addicted once I’m exposed to its wonders. The music is a stunning example of a perfect blend of the exploratory urges of free jazz coupled with tight, incredibly intelligent and thoughtful scored compositions – I haven’t heard anything that mixes these elements with such skill, verve and sheer joy since the first album by Henry Cow blew my mind back in 1973. That’s not to say that Thôt’s music is derivative of HC (or of anyone, for that matter) – this is breathtakingly original stuff, full of lateral, horizontal and vertical movement. The precision with which these players execute the demands of the charts has to be heard to be believed – the tendency is to think that most of this music is improvised, but after only a bit of careful listening, it’s clear that the parts are mostly written. The inclusion of charts as pdf files on Work on axis confirms this.

Thôt (Quoi de Neuf Docteur, 2000)

The four musicians who make up the core quartet (with some very able contributions from four guests) are some of the best I’ve heard – and I had never heard of any of them before their self-titled debut disc. The interplay between the elements is amazing – Gilles Coronado’s guitar and Stéphane Payen’s alto weave a musical rope so tight in ‘Toum-té’ that it’s easy to imagine one could actually climb it. Hubert Dupont’s bass and the drums / percussion of Christophe Lavergne repeatedly perform feats far beyond the call of duty assigned to most rhythm sections – given the complexity of this music, it’s natural that they should be featured as equal partners with the sax and guitar, and they’re more than equal to the task. Coronado plays with a wide variety of tones, proving himself to be a master of his instrument – there are times when he sounds like he just stepped out of a rock band, others when the delicacy of his playing is nothing short of beautiful. There’s nothing sloppy about his work, or that of any of the participants, for that matter – there’s not a wasted or unnecessary note anywhere. Choppy counter-rhythms abound, guiding subtle shifts in tempo, punctuating passages by other members, constantly moving the music forward with confidence and a palpable sense of purpose and direction.

Gilles Coronado’s guitar begins ‘Clin d’œil (à Heptases) with an extended solo section – it sounds to me as if he’s fingerpicking while apparently holding a pick, as he combines his plucking with strumming when the drums, then the bass and sax enter the arrangement. The guitar in this tune in particular seems now and then to echo a line from the aforementioned first Henry Cow album – perhaps a small hommage…? – which is picked up in turn by the bass and the alto sax. It’s a wonderful touch, not overplayed one bit – nor does it detract an iota from the originality of the piece. ‘Enaïd’ follows, entering with a vengeance, the guitar distorted and the horns punctuating their lines like someone poking their finger into your chest as they make a conversational point. The arrangement moves through some energetic changes before settling into a quieter mood with Coronado’s guitar again playing a primary role. ‘[ΣtΣrmΣdzo] (intermezzo)’, the next track, at only 0’47 in length, is far from being mistaken for tossed-off filler – Payen’s alto line sounds as if it would be at home performed in a chamber quartet setting, with the other three members seemingly urging the mood back toward a more jazzy sound. The beginning of ‘Scabellum’ features Coronado extracting what sounds like chicken clucks from his guitar, alternating with choppy chords, then combining the two before kicking up the sustain and launching into a duet with Payen – all the while driven constantly forward by Dupont and Lavergne, operating in such tight tandem they seem to be of one mind.

I could go on and on about each and every track on Thôt – there’s not a weak tune or throwaway track in the bunch. This is one of those discs that winds up seemingly locked into my player for days at a time – I can listen to it over and over and not tire of it a bit. Music like this thrills and delights me – it’s exploratory, intelligent, acknowledging no fences or boundaries…absolutely fearless and brilliant. ‘Conversational’ might well be good word to describe this band and their work, regarding the relationships between the participants – or perhaps it’s more of a ‘dialogue’, since the scores are so tightly drawn. With all of the great playing going on here, it’s a tribute to the arrangements / compositions as well as to the spirit of cooperation and musical sharing embodied by the members that at the end of the recording, the listener is left with the firm feeling that no single member dominated the session – both albums are shining examples of some of the most truly ‘communal’ playing I’ve ever heard.

Thôt Agrandi – Work on axis (Quoi de Neuf Docteur, 2004)

With Work on axis, the band expands its lineup to an eleven-piece unit, with a name change to Thôt Agrandi effected to reflect the growth. The great sax player Guillaume Orti, a member of the wonderful ensemble Kartet and a guest on the first Thôt disc, is here, along with one of the finest drummers I’ve ever heard, Franck Vaillant, a member of Print (along with Thôt alto man Stéphane Payen) – and unlike almost every album I’ve ever heard featuring two drummers, the two featured here never try to outplay one another, working in artful tandem throughout the recording. An expanded wind section includes Pierre Bernard on assorted flutes, Laurent Blondiau on trumpet, Michel Massot on tuba and trombone, and Antoine Prawerman on clarinets. A second guitar is provided by Pierre Van Dormael. If this sounds like a crowded house, worry not – the arrangements are thoughtfully scored for a larger group, and the spirit of community and a shared workload are carried over from the first album with such a natural ease that it’s easy to recognize these traits as central to the Thôt ethic.

Work on axis starts off with the generically titled ‘Work 1.1’ – as much as I had enjoyed the first disc, couldn’t wait to hear the enlarged group, and I wasn’t disappointed. The staggering rhythm that begins the piece, carried by Coronado and Lavergne and punctuated by the paired drummers, leads into a section of incredible windwork, with several soloists vying for attention but never dominating one another. Can a seeming cacophony of voices be beautiful? It certainly is in this case – more wonderful musical conversations from this band. ‘Miniature 7’ is next, beginning with staccato sax and clipped guitar notes that are soon joined by longer phrases from flute and saxophone, the arrangement filled with meaningful meanderings that are simply awe-inducing. ‘Attitude’ begins with some fairly straightforward cymbal and drumwork, with some faint voicing from one of the reeds in the background and what sounds like amp static from one of the guitarists – as with any Thôt / Thôt Agrandi piece, nothing is static, with the winds joining the chart. Ideas are laid out and expressed, changes drift into the arrangement – statements are never belabored, and the piece wraps up in just over three minutes.

‘Miniature 4’ follows – and this piece is one that almost always causes me to hit the ‘repeat’ button. The melodies, colors and accents of this composition, along with the shifts in rhythm and mood, are nothing short of incredible. It begins as what sounds like a wind quartet, with the drums entering almost as background elements – tensions are built with wonderful skill as the percussive elements seemingly attempt to take over as the engine of the arrangement…which ultimately occurs, about three minutes into the track, but in a slightly different, more driving yet loosely configured pattern than earlier. Players duet in tight tandems, pair after pair, the two drummers and Dupont pushing everything along like a relentless engine. There’s even a drum duo about halfway through, illustrating once and for all, with no remaining doubt allowed, that Lavergne and Vaillant are working as a ‘team’ in the truest sense of the word – the same goes for Coronado and Van Dormael on guitars, executing some sparkling interplay. The entire group slams into the chart with its full force and power once more before the tune winds down, with elements dropping out, until the drummers have the last word with some extremely delicate cymbal taps.

Three shorter pieces follow this extended workout. ‘Work 1.2’ is a more wind-driven extrapolation of the ideas presented in the opening track, with the flute and saxophones calling out to each other over the bass and some restrained drumwork. Next is ‘Next’, appropriately enough – a subdued trombone (I think) plays over the double batterie, with accents from the other winds, before the full band swings into audio view…and swing they do, behind the more free-blowing sounds of the flute, with one of the guitars alternately comping and playing bits of melody alongside them. This track is followed by ‘Next 3’, similar in its mix of rhythms and voices, but a different tune altogether – nothing with these guys is ever repetitive unless it’s purposely intended to evoke a theme from elsewhere. ‘Work 1.3’, the album’s longest track (twenty minutes and some small change) follows – it begins with the same figure as ‘Work 1.1’, but employing a more ‘distant’ field of audio focus on the guitar and bass. The Pierre Bernard’s flute is the first featured instrument as the musicians take turns stepping to the fore – Michel Massot adds some thoughts on trombone in the background, with the other winds sweeping through periodically. As the listener should expect at this point in our journey, nothing remains the same for very long – trumpet, saxes, guitars, other brass elements, all have their say. The album draws to a close with ‘Next alternate’, at under two minutes the shortest offering – buzzing lines on the tuba accompanied by the drummers and bursts of wind accents seem to be assaying the project in retrospect, discussing everything that has occurred from first note to last. With all of Thôt’s material, the times of the tracks belie the content – it’s amazing that so many ideas are included in each one, at the same time surprising that the track is ‘already over’ when it ends. It’s a razor’s edge tightrope walk journey through these arrangements – frightening and thrilling, invigorating and draining…but always satisfying.

There are so many varied elements contained in this music – Payen (who authored all of the tracks on both albums save two group efforts and one co-written with Guillaume Orti) is obviously a serious composer with immense talent. But no one should think this music is made up only of dryly intellectual exercises in theory – there’s a good deal of tangible humor to be found here, in the music itself, in some of the titles, the graphics (the cover of the first disc, an image of an empty CD tray, is great!), even in the name of the band’s label, Quoi de Neuf Docteur, which translates as ‘What’s up, Doc?’ These guys are having fun as well as exercising a deep spirit of artful creativity that seems to literally burst from every one of them. Stéphane Payen is a very busy fellow – click on the link to his website below and you’ll see what I mean. The projects with which he’s involved are numerous – Thôt, Thôt Agrandi, Print, and several others keep him well occupied. The other members of the band – and their guests – are all similarly active in assorted ensembles and as soloists. Thôt reportedly have a pair of releases scheduled for 2009 – I can’t wait to hear what they do next…

Stéphane Payen – official website

2009-07-06T13:14:00.004-05:00

Manuel Mota :
patient improviser

I first heard Manuel Mota’s work through his associations with the amazing trumpet player / composer Sei Miguel – as I began to investigate the guitarist’s own material, I realized rather quickly that I had discovered something very special indeed. There are countless players out there working as experimental improvisers – many of them could be considered masters (Derek Bailey, Keith Rowe, Taku Sugimoto and Fred Frith come to mind…there are of course others), but few have the individualism of sound and originality of spontaneous composition exhibited by Manuel’s body of work. Instead of attempting to impress the listener with lightning-fast flurries of notes, Manuel takes his time, patiently. Unlike someone pounding and chiseling at stone in order to produce an image, he’s more like a woodcarver or an artist who moulds clay, holding his medium in his two hands, searching for the form within. As a result, his work is enveloped in a much more intimate atmosphere – the listener is left with the feeling of being witness to a private act of creation. It’s little wonder that Derek Bailey was so impressed with him.

Sings (2008)
Manuel seems to literally coax sounds from his instrument – nothing comes across as forced. It’s like making a friend comfortable enough to reveal the thoughts being held inside. If one listens closely enough, melodies begin to make themselves known here and there – not as ‘licks’ stated in a standard manner, but as partners to the overall sound experience. The notes he plays are usually either muffled or cut off, only occasionally ringing further than their first breath – his hands fret, pluck, tap and rub both the strings and the body of the instrument, leaving no territory unexplored in the search for completion of a musical thought. He generally utilizes an electric guitar, but it’s played at an incredibly low volume level, with the minimal amplification being one more tool in the box. On half of the double-disc Outubro he uses an acoustic guitar – the tone is slightly different, naturally, but his approach seems to be similar in intention.

Outubro (2006)

Leopardo (2002)
When I saw the title to his latest solo recording, Sings (Headlights, 2008), I had no idea how perfect a description it was. I listened to it only fleetingly for a couple of days, until I had a chance to devote some uninterrupted time to it – I must have played it through completely 3-4 times before I took it off. The music is that captivating. To the casual, ‘in passing’ listener, I can see how this music would seem to be like overhearing a guitarist warming up before a show, or practicing at home – but there’s so much more going on here than that, which anyone who gives this a thorough listening will discover. Completely freed of the constraints of playing ‘songs’ affords Manuel the freedom to gently explore musical paths and translate inner processes and ideas into sound – his constructions are like thoughts made audible, deliberately and without undue haste. Single notes, chords and clusters, strummed, bent and at times literally squeezed out of the guitar combine into a whole that is breathtaking in both originality and its own form of beauty. The results are unique among anything I’ve heard.

Curia (2007)
Balancing the quieter side of Manuel’s music, documented in his solo recordings, are his outings with other players – notably the improvising quartet Curia (Alfonse Simões, drums; David Maranha, Hammond; Manuel Mota, wah guitar; Margarida Garcia, bowed guitar) and the trio Dru (David Maranha, organ; Manuel Mota, electric guitar; Riccardo Dillon Wanke, electric piano). Curia’s music (their selftitled disc released in the US by Fire Museum, 2007), while presented with more volume than the solo discs, is not the assault on the senses that one might expect – these musicians are talented, sensitive improvisers, keenly listening to their co-players ideas as they’re laid out, responding in thoughtful musical conversation that makes the experience interesting and involving from first note to last.

L'aiguille du dru (2008)

Dru’s approach is more low-key and subtle – the musical waters here are dark and at times murky, with palpable currents carrying images into range and then out again. The guitar and organ seem to be more ‘in front’ as far as the sound picture goes, but the electric piano is more of an integral part of the mix than might be apparent at first listening – its sound seems to be altered in some way, or perhaps it’s simply being played at such a low volume level, with measured restraint and quietude. One can almost feel the music on L’aiguille du dru (Headlights, 2008) growing like a living organism. Rhythms emerge gently, accented and expanded melodically by each of the instruments in turn and in tandem – a gentle wash of sound, like dipping your hand (or head) into unknown, almost-still waters.

Dorsal (2004)

Quartets (2004)
He has been involved in other collaborations as well. I mentioned Sei Miguel already – there’s also Dorsal (Creative Sources, 2003), a recording with Ernesto Rodriguez (viola) and Argentine minimalist Gabriel Paiuk (piano); Quartets (Headlights, 2004), a collection of his compositions performed by Manuel (electric guitar) with Fala Mariam (alto trombone, a constant collaborator with Sei Miguel), Margarida Garcia (a Curia member, here appearing on electric upright bass) and Cèsar Burago (carillon, another Sei Miguel associate, one of the most incredibly inventive percussionists I’ve ever heard), arranged and produced by Sei Miguel. There are other solo recordings that are out of print or extremely hard to find (at least for me here in the US…I’ll keep searching) that I haven’t heard – I doubt seriously that I’ll ever find myself disappointed with anything he’s done, or with any project with which he’s associated.

Manuel’s releases on his Headlights imprint are available directly and he accepts payment through PayPal, a method I’ve found to be extremely convenient (link to this, as well as to other sources may be found below) – having ordered from him multiple times, I can vouch for fair prices and prompt shipping. Curia is available from Forced Exposure as well as from the US label that issued the disc, Fire Museum. Mimaroglu Music Sales carries quite a few Creative Sources titles – I got Dorsal from them, but checking just now they seem to be out of anything on which Manuel appears (hopefully a temporary thing) – I’ve included a link anyway, just to offer another avenue of exploration. Creative Sources does direct electronic ordering as well, so that’s another option – I have no experience with them, but I’m planning to place an order next payday.

For anyone even remotely interested in improvised music, Manuel’s work is something that should be experienced. His music is constantly reaching for new sound colours and methods of expression, at the same time being intrinsically ‘listenable’, with many moments of exquisite beauty…beauty of a different sort, but beauty indeed. I’ve listened to these discs countless times over the past few months, and I discover new life in them each time – there’s a freshness to them that seems unlikely to fade.

I’ll end with a video of Manuel performing solo at the Where’s the Love festival in Lisboa, May 2006, nicely shot by Nuno Moita…

Headlights Recordings

Creative Sources Recordings

Mimaroglu Music Sales

Forced Exposure

X
Fire Museum Records

2009-07-05T22:09:00.003-05:00

Akosh S. Unit
feel the fire…

Vetek

Universal (France), 2003

Nap mint nap

Universal (France), 2004

I love discovering music that starts out by taking me by surprise – with any or all of its qualities – and then leads me off into territory that is unknown, unexpected, challenging and (usually the case when these characteristics are found working together) rewarding. It was around three years ago that I first came across the work of Hungarian reed player Akosh Szelevényi (saxophones, metal clarinet, voice), whose creative spirit in composition, arrangement and performing I’ve come to appreciate more and more with every release. I have several recordings by Akosh – with his group, as well as with other collaborators and as a solo performer. I’ll concentrate on two here : Vetek (2003) and Nap mint nap (2004), both released under the group name, Akosh S. Unit – and both albums of staggering depth and quality.

Vetek begins with ‘Alkalom’, which leads off with a beautiful passage played on clarinet – it’s a minor-key melody with eastern European ethnic overtones (a motif appearing quite often in Akosh’s compositions). Before long, the bass clarinet joins in, adding another voice to the conversation with some lovely interplay. The soprano sax (possibly the metal clarinet) joins in, and things get a bit more…active…(a hint of what lies in store for the listener as the album progresses through its seven tracks, then beyond to later releases). The piece calms down quite a bit toward the end, echoing the mood from the beginning. ‘Mandala’, the second track, features the ney of guest musician Mokhtar Choumane, with the double-bass laying down a steady heartbeat – other winds enter, along with percussion, and the melody takes over nicely, evoking the traditional music of Akosh’s native Hungary with hints of the middle-eastern heritage that is also present in that region. The piece becomes filled with more competing instruments as it nears its end, never straying far from the mood set early on.

For that matter, most of the pieces on Vetek don’t get too deeply into the atonal / free blowing / improv territory one has come to expect from practitioners of ‘new jazz’ – there are moments approaching cacophony here and there, but for the most part the energy level remains moderate throughout the recording. That being said, there’s little danger of a first-time listener thinking this is mainstream jazz – there’s an edge to it that’s unmistakable, and the exploratory feeling, combined with the incorporation of ethnic elements as well as some of Joe Doherty’s violin work leave little doubt that this is envelope-stretching music. The interplay between the band members is close and remarkably well-executed – even the improv-tinged solos stick close to the body of the tune. There are flashes here and there – wilder moments – that might well be read as portents of things to come, of fences broken down, of horizons widening. Throughout the album, Joe Doherty (violin, clarinet, alto saxophone), Bernard Malandain (double-bass) and Philippe Foch (drums, tabla – also a member of genre-benders Les Amants de Juliette), along with guests Mokhtar Choumane (ney) and Nicolas Guillemet (soprano and alto saxophones), fill out the arrangements wonderfully, with opportunities to solo as well as providing stellar backup to Akosh as he leads them.

Nap mint nap finds Akosh working with a completely different lineup. Gone is Joe Doherty’s violin (he departed to concentrate on composing music for the theatre) – in its place, completely changing the sound and adding its own distinctive voice to the music, is the hurdy-gurdy (sometimes identified by its French name, ville-à-roue – not an instrument usually associated with jazz) of András Vigh. The reedy sound of this mediaeval instrument sounds like some sort of portative organ at one moment, a violin or viola the next, even a bagpipe here and there, with its combination of drone and melody strings – in the context of Akosh’s music, it seems to fit perfectly. Rounding out the band on this recording are Quentin Rollet (alto saxophone), Christian Brazier (double-bass) and Gildas Etevenard (drums). For his part, Akosh adds the bombarde (a Breton reed instrument) to his arsenal of saxophones and metal clarinet. The playing on this album is even tighter than that on Vetek – and the mood, whether brought about by the compositions themselves or the presence of the hurdy-gurdy as a partner to the reeds is decidedly more forceful, both rhythmically and melodically.

Still present in the melodies are wisps and echoes of eastern European / Hungarian melodies – but there’s an almost indescribably more ‘risk-taking’ feel to most of the tracks. There are extended solos for various instruments on several tracks – whether its Akosh’s reeds or Vigh’s vielle-à-roue or some simply stunning work from Brazier and Etevenard – combined with some tight, intriguingly arranged, at times downright beautiful ensemble playing, all of which add up to a memorable, extremely satisfying recording. ‘Lât’ is a great case in point – a long reed solo open the track, finally joined by the bowed double-bass and sporadic percussive elements, with the bass taking over the melody just short of the halfway point of the piece. Brazier executes some brilliant moves here, illustrating his mastery of his instrument’s dynamics wonderfully, utilizing its full melodic range as well. As he finishes his solo with some beautiful harmonics, Etevenard’s kit comes back into play, sending sonic sparks flying, and suddenly the listener is confronted with what sounds to my ear like Vigh’s hurdy-gurdy, soon joined by one of the saxophones in a duet that becomes a trio with the entry of the other reed, with everyone joining together to bring the number to an energetic close, led by Akosh’s tenor. At almost eleven minutes, this is the longest track on the disc and gives everyone a chance to spread out. Akosh’s ending tenor line leads right into the next track, ‘Van’, and the high energy level charges right ahead.

Things calm down a bit as the next track, ‘Amig’, begins with a beautiful sax line – the melody is evocative of older times and far places whose names might well be forgotten, remembered now only by the music itself. A chanted / sung vocal line in the background adds to the feeling of other-worldliness, with the chords struck by Brazier on the double-bass laying a foundation of rhythm and melody that will continue throughout most of this track, echoing the opening sax line (which returns to end this piece) and resurfacing later in the disc’s closing track, ‘Akar’. In between lies ‘Tesz’, which starts off with more great tenor work from Akosh (solo for over two minutes), becoming more insistent as it develops into quite the free-blowing fest until the hurdy-gurdy returns, featured for an extended section, allowing Vigh the opportunity to show how his instrument can indeed work in a jazz context. He relies mainly on the melody strings for this part, eschewing the normal accompanying drones – it leaves the listener with the sense of hearing a mad violinist silencing a room with the power of his playing. There’s an old folktale in France about a piper saving both himself and a flock of sheep by mesmerizing a marauding wolf with his playing – after hearing this, I think a hurdy-gurdy might do the trick as well. As Akosh’s tenor acted as the bridge between ‘Lât’ and ‘Van’, so András Vigh’s cranked conveyance leads us from ‘Tesz’ to ‘Akar’, with more great work from Brazier and Etevenard and Rollet, with Akosh taking the lead again at last over the double-bass figure from ‘Amar’, and the track – and the album – wind down almost to whisper for an ending, an effect that left me literally holding my breath until I was sure they were finished.

These are powerful, moving recordings – the covers hint at the energy and spirit within, with their illustrations suggesting darkness, force and a touch of madness – but the music must be experienced beyond its packaging, beyond any expectations that might arise out of reading the credits, reaching further than any intuitive sense of what is held in the hand. Find these – put them on – turn them up. They can leave the listener breathless with their power as well as their beauty – like any soul-motivated work of art in any medium, there is a force here that is far greater than the sum of its parts, driven by the urge to touch the audience…and the world…with innovation.

Akosh Szelevényi – official website

2009-06-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

Madeinusa

written and directed by Claudia Llosa
2006 / Peru / color / 103 minutes
Spanish with English subtitles
DVD from Film Movement

Madeinusa opens with a black screen bearing white script, a Spanish version of a graveyard admonition seen in various forms around the globe :

You passing, look and observe how wretched you are,

that this land imprisons us all the same.

Mortal, whoever you are, stop and read.

Consider this : I am what you will be and what you are, I have been.

The black screen gives way to live action color, and we see a young girl, Madeinusa, fourteen years old, preparing a meal, singing a hauntingly beautiful Andean folksong – those of us who have listened to a good bit of international music will recognize the melody…but the words are foreboding and prophetic :

Day and night you sing, saying ‘Oh, Mama! Oh, Papa!’

while running through hills and valleys,

Waychawcituy of the highlands, you who sings to nightfall –

perhaps your mother has left so you can be like me,

for you to be singing.

When ‘Holy Time’ comes around, I will stop and I will go –

over the hills and valleys I will run like you.

Waychawcituy, Waychawcituy, when my beloved father cries,

you will tell him not to, saying you will be back,

saying you will return…

She drops the last of the beans into the pot, and the camera closes in on her dark eyes – they are achingly beautiful, but full of secrets…and seem to be looking far, far away.

As she is depicted going through her apparent daily routine, we see Madeinusa trailing powdered rat poison in a ring around the family’s small home – dead rats, we learn, are good luck. Her sister Chale, it’s plain to see, doesn’t seem to hold up her end of the chores. The girl’s mother has gone – it’s never explained why or exactly to where, but she believes her mother has gone to Lima. In a heartbreaking but not overplayed scene, Madeinusa looks through a box of keepsakes she has hidden away, relics of her mother – on the cover of a magazine (or perhaps a graphic novel) depicting a woman holding a child in her arms, she writes her name across the top, over the original title. The implication, made stronger as the film progresses, is that the mother was driven away by a combination of life in a poor village and the personality of her husband, the girls’ father, who is also the mayor. In an early scene, he arrives home drunk and crawls into bed between the girls, making his incestuous intentions toward Madeinusa very clear – she reminds him that ‘Holy Time is not here yet – it would be a sin…’

Holy Time, we find, is the local observation of Easter weekend – through their isolation, and combining Catholic mythology with the beliefs of their pagan ancestors, the villagers believe that after the crucifixion, god is dead until the resurrection. During the time in between, literally, anything goes – there is no such thing as ‘sin’ during Holy Time. A festival is celebrated each year, during which the people engage in all manner of debauchery that would not be tolerated otherwise – drunkenness is rampant, women choose new partners with whom to couple, thievery goes unpunished, and more. The mayor has obviously been eagerly awaiting Holy Time, in order to pursue his sexual intentions with his daughter – and from comments made by an older woman (perhaps an aunt) later in the film, it’s a practice that is not uncommon.

An unexpected visitor from out of town – significantly named Salvador – disrupts the villagers’ anticipation of Holy Time. He is a geologist from Lima is stranded by a trucker who had given him a lift and then refused to travel any further. Generally untrusting of outsiders in the best of times, the townsfolk are insistent on the man being locked up for the duration of the festival, lest he interfere with their customs. The mayor puts the young man under lock and key at his home, explaining to him that ‘…it’s for your own safety’. Madeinusa is instantly intrigued by the stranger – and he is pretty obviously smitten by the innocent beauty of the young girl. She immediately sees him as her way out of the stagnant life of the village, and plots to leave with him when his ride returns after the weekend.

One of the annual customs played out during the Holy Time festival is a contest to choose the prettiest virgin from the town’s young girls – Chale, who is evidently older than Madeinusa, should get the prize by rights, but she knows that her younger sister is their father’s favorite, and expects her to win the contest. It is very apparent from early in the film that Chale is very jealous of Madeinusa receiving the bulk of their father’s attentions – even his incestuous ones, which normally would be shunned.

At 3pm on Good Friday, the hour at which Christ is supposed to have died on the cross, the villagers have gathered in the tiny church – a life-sized crucifix is at the center of the altar, and at the appointed time, the head of Christ droops, signifying his death. The figure is taken down from the cross and placed in a glass coffin. The designated virgin, Madeinusa, kisses him and gently places a white cloth blindfold across his eyes – the festival has begun. The blind Christ is paraded through the streets, and the liquor begins to flow. Meanwhile, Salvador has broken out of his makeshift jail cell – not too difficult a task, actually – and is observing the festivities. During a rendezvous with Madeinusa, she exacts a promise from him to take her away…and we see that the armor of her ‘knight’ is not as shining as she (or the viewer) had imagined.

The isolation under which the people live not only keeps them from being educated and knowledgeable about the world, it has engendered twists in a belief system imposed on them from colonial times that have led to an almost complete moral breakdown…although of course, they don’t see it as such. As the film works its way to its climax, betrayal, selfishness and violence rear their heads – and perhaps Madeinusa is not as innocent as we first thought. The circle winds up completed, its ends joined...but not at all as expected.

The film is beautifully photographed and framed – the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains, forests, lakes and meadows stand in stark contrast to the drab lives of poverty and ignorance led by the people of the town. It’s amazing to know that this is Claudia Llosa’s first film – the skills she demonstrates here portend great things from her. Most of the actors are non-professionals – the exceptions are Ubaldo Huaman (Cayo, the girls’ father and mayor of the town) and Carlos De La Torre (Salvador) – the naturalness with which they address their roles is refreshing and very believable, giving a deeper life to the entire film. Llosa’s script – and her direction – remain sensitive to the humanity of her characters, avoiding direct judgment or looking down on them. At the same time, the legacy of colonialism and the imposition of a foreign belief system, even centuries ago, has left emotional, psychological and cultural scars that remain – and the similarity between ‘Madeinusa’ (an actual name that is popular for girls in the region) and ‘Made in USA’ is openly acknowledged in a scene where the young girl, released from a mutual embrace with Salvador, says, ‘My name is on your shirt’, having read it on the label at the back of his neck.

This is a film that will evoke strong emotions, no doubt – the incestuous father will awaken anger and discomfort in many, and could be triggering for those who have been unfortunate enough to be the recipient of such ‘attentions’ – but the story is a touching one in many ways, beautifully filmed, with lessons and insights to be gained by thoughtful viewers. Overall, it’s a beautiful, moving experience – pass it up at your peril. The film should be readily available for rental or purchase – I’ve included a link to the Film Movement site below as well…they have a number of fine offerings there.

Here’s a trailer…

Film Movement website

2009-06-14T17:04:00.000-05:00

The man from London (A londoni férfi)

directed by Béla Tarr (with Ágnes Hranitzky)
2007 / Hungary / France / Germany /

XXXXXXblack & white / 133 minutes (+ Béla Tarr interview)
French / English with some optional English subtitles
DVD from Artificial Eye (UK – region 2 / PAL)

director Béla Tarr

Make no mistake about it – Béla Tarr is not afraid of the dark. His films are filled with darkness, both visual and otherwise. Scenes that take place outdoors during the day still have an overriding grey weight to them – perhaps a visual representation of the cultural and emotional burdens borne by the characters that populate his films. Time moves slowly, at times almost excruciatingly so – all the better to allow the film to get under the viewers’ collective skin.

The man from London is based on a novel by famed Belgian writer Georges Simenon, and is set in what appears to be a smallish French coastal city. The story centers around a nightshift dockwatchman, Maloin – his name is only revealed well into the film, further underscoring the anonymity that he feels in both his work and homelife. One night on the job, he witnesses a crime from his vantage point high above the pier – an apparent murder, preceded and followed by shady goings-on perpetrated by characters that look as if they could have stepped full-blown from a 1940s film noir creation. He watches with an almost bored fascination, not alerting any authorities about what he has seen – his actions from this point form the crux of the plot, causing him to sink deeper and deeper into a moral dilemma from which, soon enough, there is no real escape that will leave no harm in its wake.

Maloin’s homelife is even bleaker than his job – he and his family survive as best they can on his wages and those earned by his daughter Henriette, who works, against his wishes, at the local butcher shop. He continually nags her to quit, complaining that he doesn’t ‘want people watching her arse all day’. For her part, Henriette is pretty much a silent participant in daily events – she rarely speaks, and the expression that inhabits her face most of the time is one of deep-seeded resignation to her lot in life. Maloin’s wife does her best to care for her husband and daughter, but is openly dissatisfied with the family’s situation. In one scene, when Maloin comes home from work and goes to bed, she pulls heavy drapes closed to block the light pouring in from outside – light that seems to be an intrusion into the dark world the family inhabits.

The watchman’s actions in wake of the murder bring a large sum of ‘found’ cash into his possession – it is this factor, a sudden bounty inserting itself into the situation, which makes his dilemma more difficult. He doesn’t tell his wife or daughter about the money – but in a move that seems to be fostered out of guilt over his inadequacy as a provider, he takes his daughter to a furrier and buys an expensive stole for her after she admires one worn by an aging prostitute in a tavern. Maloin’s wife is incredulous and furious at this extravagance, which he still stubbornly – guiltily? – refuses to explain, and Henriette glumly agrees to return the stole the following day. This lack of communication between Maloin and his family is just one more symptom of the alienation and depression weighing upon him.

Things get complicated when one of the thugs – Brown by name, the titular character – involved in the murder begins to suspect that the watchman has retrieved the missing money. Maloin begins to sense that he’s being watched, and has this suspicion verified when he looks out of his bedroom window to see Brown on the street, looking up. An English detective arrives, apparently hired by those from whom the money was originally taken, looking for Brown – he brings Brown’s wife along, urging her to aid him in coaxing her husband out of hiding.

At this point, it’s pretty obvious that things are going to turn out well for no one – Brown is being increasingly pursued, threatened with prosecution for theft and murder, and Maloin is increasingly troubled by a decision that he simply cannot make – to somehow manage to keep the money and conceal it, or to return it and have to come up with an explanation as to why he didn’t report the murder and the case of loot. Tarr brings all of the plot elements to a conclusion very skillfully, but without the typical ‘nicely wrapped’ resolution that commercial films seem to favor – the ending here is awash with plotwater yet to be bailed, leaving the viewer to consider multiple angles and questions when it’s all over.

Tarr’s methods make The man from London instantly recognizable as one of his films – but that’s not to say they all look alike, or that his works are overly formulaic by any means. Aside from the aforementioned darkness, he loves long shots that not only almost physically immerse the viewer in the scene, but crank up anticipation and tension exponentially as well. The opening sequence in this film is wonderful – shot from the viewpoint of Maloin’s watchtower above the dock, through the dirty windows that surround his cramped domain, the camera pans back and forth to take in the scene below, moving almost imperceptibly. Not only is Tarr not afraid of the dark – he doesn’t allow himself to be rushed when committing his vision to film, making his work a must to avoid for the impatient viewer, at the same time a treasure for those who can allow themselves to be drawn into it without imposing time-centric limitations on the experience. The photography – in ultra-lush, low contrast black and white – by DOP Fred Keleman, who studied with Tarr, and with whom he has worked previously on the 1995 short Utazás as alföldön (Journey on the plain), is stunningly beautiful, and perfect in representing the director’s vision. The score, minimal though it may be, by longtime Tarr collaborator Mihály Vig, is absolutely perfect in cementing the overall mood of the film.

Here’s a brief trailer, courtesy of YouTube – it’ll give you a better idea of the look of the film than I could ever manage…

The one bonus item included in the Artificial Eye DVD is a nice one – an interview with Tarr, partly in English and partly in Hungarian (with English subtitles), offers a number of insights into the director’s processes and methods. Tarr stresses the human aspects of his films and characters, as well as his overall purposes in filmmaking this way : From the outset of the project usually our departure point is the actual character of the hero. And we ask what the person would do in a real life situation. And how can we furnish them with a real destiny? This is the exciting part, and this is the stage where we depart from the literary work…and we produce something that resembles the original a lot. That’s why I say we don’t translate literature into film, we translate literature back into life, and from this life experience we make a film.

He talks about positioning the camera at a low angle, looking up at his characters, as one of his favorite techniques when filming – it has the effect of more firmly placing the viewer in the character’s space, as well as filling the screen with the larger-than-life presence of characters that are in actuality, no larger-than-life than the viewer, made ‘large’ by the attention we are compelled to give them. He goes on to speak of conveying the emotions and realities of his characters and their situations to the viewers : What we know about film is that it’s the language of the definite. Film as a genre…is very definite. One can only shoot real things. Viewers…experience the same emotion (as the characters). That is why it’s worth making movies : to be able to show a human gaze or to say something about people without words. And to make you feel someone’s fate, that is the real challenge. This is why I like making films. He goes so far as to state that the dialogue is far less important than the actions and the emotions that are conveyed visually – at one point in the interview, he says, ‘…just watch it, don’t bother with the subs’.

The visuals contained in Tarr’s works are so rich and full of such strength of feeling that this last statement is less of an exaggeration than one might suppose. Immersing yourself in a Béla Tarr film is an incredibly enriching experience – if you’ve never seen one, I can’t recommend his work highly enough. Hopefully The man from London will see a North American DVD release, so that a wider slice of the US film public will have the opportunity to watch it. Until then, check out Werckmeister harmóniák (The Werckmeister harmonies), Kárhozat (Damnation), or the epic (over 7 hours, if you’re really ambitious and not in the least fidgety) Sátántangó. There are precious few directors making films today that approach the depth and scope of his work – these are films you shouldn’t pass up.

2009-06-14T02:04:00.001-05:00

Agustí Fernández
Un llamp que no s’acaba mai

psi, 2009

Improvisation is a tricky business. It’s pervasive in the jazz field, of course, most accessible in the form of improvised solos played over a structured background – it’s when the familiarly constructed elements fall away (or when they’re eschewed from the beginning) that mainstream listeners tend to shy away. Sometimes, even to those accustomed to experiencing free jazz improv, it can sound more like noise than music. Those musicians who can improvise together – at times, seemingly telepathically – are those whose heart and soul are connected more deeply to their art than most. Their thoughts are transmitted through their bodies to their instruments, making them an extension of themselves. Such is the case with this stunning recording.

photo by Ferrán Conangla

Pianist Agustí Fernández is a busy fellow – active as a professional musician since the age of 13 (he was born on Majorca in 1954), he has released dozens of albums and performed and recorded with musicians whose names read like a who’s who of forward-thinking jazz, contemporary classical music, and other progressive forms – Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Tom Cora, John Butcher, Matthew Shipp, Marilyn Crispell, Barry Guy, Mats Gustafsson, Mat Maneri…the list goes on and on. His website lists 28 albums that he has recorded as a solo, or in duo, trio or group settings, plus several collaborations. According to the biography on that website, ‘his musical life changed when he discovered the music of Cecil Taylor and Iannis Xenakis, with whom he studied’. He performs widely at festivals and smaller setting concerts throughout the world.

photos by César Merino, from the album cover

Un llamp que no s’acaba mai (A lightning that never ends) finds him in the company of two very able partners – John Edwards (double-bass) and Mark Sanders (drums, percussion). The album was recorded in concert, in December 2007, at Ermita de san Roque in Sigüenza, Spain – there are only four pieces, titled simply with ordinal numbers, but the shortest is just over nine minutes long, so the players have plenty of room to stretch out and develop their ideas. The disc starts out with ‘Primo’ – the players stake their ground gently at first…but it’s not long before sounds issue forth that are coaxed from the instruments in what many listeners would consider unorthodox ways…and we’re off on quite a ride through ‘Secondo’. ‘Tertio’ and ‘Quarto’, one that is both stimulating and enjoyable when approached with an open mind (and ears)..

The notes accompanying the disc, by Ferran Esteve (translated from the Spanish by Steve Dept), describe the concert setting this way: Using silence as a backdrop, Fernández, Edwards and Sanders set about unhurriedly, with calm assurance, as if they were assuming that the audience would be fully acquainted with what it braced itself to take in. At first, a gentle introduction, almost threatening, perhaps to intrigue the listeners and focus their attention, as if to remind them that the shots would be called by an incorporeal presence that was about to emerge from three altars and thanks to the craft of their respective celebrants; later on, a brutal, repetitive outbreak, almost orgiastic, which vanishes after reaching the climax, thus returning to the erstwhile menacing tunes, one of the numerous inflection points in the music that resounded that evening; and then the upright bass fired a sudden burst, or the piano, or the drums, or all three instruments simultaneously…

photo by Ferrán Conangla

These three are masters of their craft and of their instruments – their ideas flow together and feed off each other at an incredible level, sometimes with the precision of a school of fish that suddenly changes direction at top speed as if they were a single entity, at other times sonically bouncing off each other like ping pong balls caught up in a whirlwind. Fernández, not content to stick to the keys of the piano, sometimes reaches in to stroke, pluck or scrape the strings. Edwards expands the palette of his instrument in similar fashion, plucking, bowing, rubbing, and otherwise drawing forth tones and notes not usually associated with the double-bass. Sanders is credited only with ‘drums’ on the CD cover – but there’s a lot more coming from him than that simple notation would indicate. All three players have complete control over an incredibly wide dynamic range, employing it as yet another tool in projecting their thoughts into the world – and the ears of the listeners. There are bursts of activity that are so dense they seem to physically fill the air – but there are also phrases and sections of jewel-like, delicate beauty…and many levels in between these two extremes are covered as well.

This is an extremely satisfying recording, one that I’m sure will reveal more of its secrets, subtleties…and beauty…with repeated listenings.

Here are three clips of the trio from YouTube, performing at the Jazz à Mulhouse festival in 2007 – they appear to have been shot from the audience, but the quality is actually pretty good for this sort of thing. They’ll give you an idea of what this music sounds like…

Agustí Fernández official website (in Spanish)

psi recordings

Founded by the great UK saxophonist / composer / improviser Evan Parker, psi offers online ordering with very reasonable prices, a great selection of forward-thinking music

2009-06-08T19:06:00.000-05:00

Pulcinella
Clou d’estrade

Yolk, 2008

Controlled abandon…? Maybe…but not abandoning control.

More wonderful madness from the Yolk label / collectif in Nantes…! I’m slowly working my way through their website, listening to samples and investigating their artists through other channels online (band websites, MySpace music sites, &c). It’s an invigorating journey of artistic discovery…and I’m continually finding new things to add to my wish list. This album is a delight from start to finish – great playing and writing, infused with both energy and restraint (you wouldn’t guess from the pic below of the band on stage!) – let me tell you, these guys can swing...! There are quiet, beautiful moments as well – but the energy and sheer joy with which these four players address their art is breathtaking.

[ pic © Monique Da Costa ]

From the first bars of the opening track, ‘O mais’, composed by wind player Ferdinand Doumerc, the listener can’t avoid the reality of being in for quite a ride – bassist Jean-Marc Serpin-Morin opens with an energetic riff, and is soon joined by drummer (multi-instrumentalist, actually) Frédéric Cavallin, who enters like a friend who thinks you’ve slept long enough, thankyouverymuch. Time to wake up. Soon after, Florian Demonsant brings his accordion into play, the reeds of Doumerc join in, and we’re off to the races. There’s plenty of humor in Pulcinella's music – but never at the expense of fine playing – and it’s easy to hear Demonsant and Doumerc smiling on this track. The tune is laid out quickly, with plenty of ideas jostling for control – it’s almost like listening to a conversation in a café, with several people talking at once, tossing ideas into the air…but these guys, with all of the energy they’re expending, are working together, not at odds.

The mood settles down a great deal for the second track, ‘Les loups sortent de la bergerie’, which I believe translates as ‘The wolves leave the sheepfold’ – it’s a beautiful melody, slightly reminiscent of the traditional Japanese tune ‘Sakura’ at moments, and gives a strong image of sneaking away, in line with the title. ‘Vie et mort du platane de Prugnanes’ follows, a great tango piece spotlighting both Doumerc and Demonsant – they very deftly move to and fro in the mix, taking solos or playing backup to the other. Serpin-Morin and Cavallin keep things moving right along, with plenty of their own thoughts laid out in the arrangement – at about the four-minute point in the piece, something that sounds very much like a musical saw enters, adding a slightly eerie voice to the sound, like a creature crying off in the dark woods. This instrument is used at other times on the album, never overplayed, an unusual but not intrusive element by any means.

‘Sale gosse’ means ‘Horrible brat’ – and the accordion of Demonsant on this tune takes the role with relish, starting out with a repetitive passage that provides the musical equivalent of an insistent child poking one in the ribs, saying the same thing over and over. Doumerc plays some great tenor on this track, and Demonsant rises to the forefront now and then for a bit of melody. The rhythm throughout is very regular and pressing, with a few respites now and then – but just when you might think the piece is winding down, with some beautifully mellow lines from Doumerc, here we go again, full speed ahead. Demonsant’s accordion nudges are never far away, threatening to lead the band into a break-out return to high energy at any moment. The piece moves through a lot of changes, ending with a breakneck return to the rapid melody.

As the title might indicate, ‘Hippocampéléphantocamélos’ is very much a hybrid beast – both the rhythms and melodies involved in this piece vary greatly as it moves along…and there’s a strong feeling of walking to this one…which could of course be the product of my over-active imagination. It’s like listening to some sort of fantastical composite creature ambling along, with its different parts struggling for control over the others. In this track, as well as many of the others on the disc, the control of the band over the dynamics of the music is stunning – delicate work from various members that might be lost without empathy and sensitivity from all concerned shines through in just the right moments as the intensity of the arrangement shifts and instruments come in and out. Everyone has something to say, and they’re all heard. Amazing stuff.

‘Je suis dans la dèche’ goes through a lot of changes as well – slow passages, rapid ones, some really nicely written tight arrangement that give way to intervals of free blowing improv. ‘Amiel’ begins very quietly – lots of tinkling percussion, scrapes from Serpin-Morin on the bass strings, little toots from Doumerc and Demonsant. Only about two minutes into the tune does the arrangement congeal, heralded by some lovely métallophone work and Demonsant’s accordion, punctuated by some nice basswork from Serpin-Morin. At around six minutes in, the voice of the saw returns, and the piece builds slightly toward its conclusion, never venturing far from the lovely melody.

‘Rev’là Raymond’ rounds out the set, beginning with a tune that one could imagine being whistled during a walk down the road, complete with missteps and staggers laid out wonderfully by the whole band, led by Doumerc and Demonsant. At over eleven minutes, this is the longest track on the disc, and allows the group members many opportunities to shapeshift the arrangement and mood – each change is effected naturally and skillfully, with an ease that speaks of players who are in comfortable and known territory with their bandmates. As the tune winds to a close, the intensity smoothes out with a return to a quiet delicate melody that recalls the previous track. With the high energy level of much of the music on the recording, it’s a great way to leave the listener wanting more.

Here’s a clip from YouTube – shot from the audience, not the highest quality by any means – of a concert by Pulcinella performing in combination with the Emile Parisien Quartet. The tune is cut off at the end, but it’ll give you a bit of an idea of what these guys can do...

Be sure to check out the Yolk site (link below), where you can explore to your heart’s content – each catalogue listing offers a sample track. Print (another knockout French band, described in my last post) record for the label as well – their mail-order service is dependable, relatively fast (coming from Europe, after all), reasonably prices…and they take PayPal, which is an extremely safe and reliable method of payment when ordering online, a secure link to a credit / debit card or to a bank account. The band has a great website – all in French, zoot alors! – with a couple of tracks from the disc available for listening, with an additional tune, ‘Morphée’, that’s quite wonderful. There’s also some small-screen video there – much higher quality than the YouTube clip above. The graphics and animation on the site are great – very much in keeping with the humor and spirit of the band and its music. Check it out (link below).

Give me more…!

full band credits from the CD…

Ferdinand Doumerc –
saxophones alto, ténor et barython, flûte traversière, métallophone
Florian Demonsant –
accordéon, chouette
Frédéric Cavallin –
batterie, percussions, glockenspiel, métallophone, flûte à coulisse
Jean-Marc Serpin-Morin –
contrebasse

Pulcinella – official website

Pulcinella on MySpace

Yolk label / collectif

2009-05-24T17:43:00.000-05:00

Print

Print is a jazz quartet of French origin. It's a simple enough description, which can be expanded by listing the members and the instruments they play – tenor and soprano saxophones, acoustic bass (cello on the first album instead), drums. As is often the case with music, however, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts – in quantity…quality…and in this case, invention, energy and creativity. These players create mind-blowing music that is firmly footed in the jazz tradition / genre, but they are not willing to be hemmed in by that label. There are elements of free jazz, be-bop, hard-bop, post-bop (any sort of bop you might care to mention, actually) – their works are, I suspect, pretty much composed, with areas of improvisation. Each member is incredibly proficient on his instrument, but aside from the fact that almost all of the compositions are by Sylvain Cathala, there are no signs of clashing egos in these three recordings – everyone seems to be committed to the sound of the band as a whole, offering up their individual parts in contribution rather than competition.

Isphero

FTM, 1999

Sylvain Cathala – tenor saxophone
Stéphane Payen – alto saxophone
Jean-Yves Gratius – cello
Frank Vaillant – drums, percussion
guests :
Arnaud Vincent – guitar and prepared guitar
Ianik Tallet – drums

Recorded in late 1998 and released in 1999, Isphero is, as far as I know, their first recording – from the drum intro by Frank Vaillant, whose work is some of the best I’ve heard in recent years, it’s immediately apparent that this music is going to be angular and energetic. As the first track progresses, and the other instruments enter, it’s clear that it’s going to be thoughtful as well. The two saxophones play off of and around each other like birds in the sky – moments that seem to be spontaneously improvised reveal themselves to be composed as the two players come together for some stunningly effective and beautiful harmonies and counterpoints, only to fly apart again. Everyone gets a chance to shine a bit, but not so much as to take over any composition completely. The cello is a different touch in a jazz combo, replacing the lower registers that would normally be added by a bass with its more mid-range sound – Gratius bows or plucks his instrument as the arrangements require, and does a nice job. Far from giving the impression of a band reaching for some sort of group identity (as is often the case with first efforts), Isphero presents a cohesiveness that bespeaks experience and maturity of both ideas and execution.

[a.ka] Dreams

Yolk, 2002

Sylvain Cathala – tenor saxophone
Stéphane Payen – alto saxophone
Jean-Philippe Morel – double-bass
Frank Vaillant – drums, percussion

Recorded over three years later, in 2002, Print’s second album, [a.ka] Dreams, finds a slight change in personnel (Jean-Philippe Morel on double-bass replaces the cellist Jean-Yves Gratius) and a further cementing of the band’s sound and personality. The time and experience of playing together as a unit is very apparent. ‘Daybreak’, a section of a larger piece entitled ‘[a.ka] Dreams part 4’, kicks in solidly – the presence of the double-bass is immediately felt, giving the band’s sound much more of a ‘punch’ than was heard on their first album. The saxophones of Cathala and Payen seem to be recorded with more body as well – part of which effect could also be attributed to their maturing chops. They solo, intertwine and spar with one another deftly – all the while backed with incredible skill by Morel and Vaillant. This ‘rhythm section’ is not limited to support by any means – the drums and bass figure very prominently in the overall mix, with sections featuring them in duos or solos leaving the listener with no doubt of their abilities. Vaillant is obviously using not only his skins and cymbals but every part of his kit to squeeze a mind-boggling array of percussive sounds into their appropriate spots – and Morel sounds at times as if he’s rubbing the strings of his bass with his fingers / hands (as opposed to plucking or bowing them) in order to achieve a wider spectrum of sonic colours from his instrument.

The album is made up of three suites – ‘[a.ka] Dreams’ parts 4, 2 and 1, respectively. The music sometimes changes melodies, harmonies, rhythms and tempi suddenly, taking some or all of these elements into new territories and moods – but there is a naturalness to the compositions and arrangements that defies any characterization of purposelessness or randomness. Themes are introduced on one instrument only to be picked up by another, altered, morphed, countered and reborn, appearing on the surface of the arrangement or buried in its depths, arising again as the piece continues in the hands of another player. The ease with which all of the members command their own instrument’s dynamics is breathtaking and invigorating to experience.

Here’s a video of the band performing ‘Full moon’, from ‘[a.ka] Dreams part 2’…

Baltic dance

Yolk, 2006

Sylvain Cathala – tenor saxophone
Stéphane Payen – alto saxophone
Jean-Philippe Morel – double-bass
Frank Vaillant – drums, percussion

With Baltic dance (recorded in the summer of 2004, released in 2006), Print really hits its collective stride – the four members’ talents continue to grow, and their minds and souls continue to compel them to explore and expand their music in both composition and execution. Included in this album is another installment of ‘[a.ka] Dreams’ (part 3 this time), another excerpt from part 4, and three additional tracks. Each one is a finely-honed gem – but the group maintains the feeling of spontaneity that is so essential in jazz (or in almost any genre of music, truth be told) in order to stave off the stagnation that sets in when players find a style that ‘sells’, then settle into rehashing it for the rest of their careers. Careful listeners will detect not only the expected echoes and colours drawn from historic jazz innovators, but sonic brushstrokes that conjure up images from classical music, as well as modal twists and turns of melody and rhythm that could have sprung full-blown from various ethnic traditions.

Print’s music is a perfect example of how a band’s creativity can live and breathe, and continue to grow and expand. Some parts of their work might cause a casual listener to dismiss their sound as ‘just more free-blowing jazz’, but spending a little time delving further into their sound will prove that judgment to be premature – these are intelligently drawn compositions, carefully and thoughtfully constructed arrangements that contain elements of improvisation and invention, and above all, a living, breathing spirit that is present in this music that elevates it head and shoulders above so much else that is being force-fed to listeners through the usual ‘marketplace’ channels. I’m continually amazed when listening to these CDs when they’re over – there’s a tangible sensation of the music not being ‘finished’, that it could go on almost infinitely without becoming repetitive and trite. Of course, part of this comes from within me – I love it so much I don’t want it to end.

Print’s next project is scheduled to be out in July of 2009 under the ‘Print & friends’ moniker, and features the core quartet augmented by some fine guests, including guitarist Gilles Coronado from Thôt. Check out Sylvain’s website below for audio samples and other bits of information. The band’s MySpace page features some tracks that are as yet unreleased.

Isphero is a bit hard to come by – I was fortunate enough to find a supplier in Denmark who was able to scare up a copy for me. [a.ka] Dreams and Baltic dance are both readily available from the wonderful Yolk label – there’s a ton of great envelope-pushing music available there (you can listen to samples from most of their releases on their website). Their prices are especially reasonable for a European supplier, and their shipping department is fast and efficient – link below.

Stéphane Payen, by the way, also plays with another French ensemble, the amazing Thôt – it’s an outlet for his compositions, but like Print, it’s much more than just one member. More on them in another post…

Yolk Records

X
Sylvain Cathala – official website

X
Print on MySpace

2009-05-09T15:45:00.000-05:00

Times & winds (Beş vakit)

written and directed by Reha Erdem
2007 / Turkey / color / 108 minutes (+ bonus features)
Turkish with optional English subtitles
DVD from Artificial Eye (UK – region 2, PAL)
[ region 1 DVD available from Kino International ]

It’s astonishing, when experiencing this incredible film, to reflect on the fact that this is writer / director Reha Erdem’s first feature. Everything about it – the story and dialogue, the pacing, the framing and the absolutely stunning cinematography – reflects skills normally acquired only after years of experience behind the camera. It’s really that fine a creation.

Erdem’s film tells a coming-of-age story – a popular premise in cinematic endeavors, but in the case of Times and winds, placed in a very different setting: a small village in rural Turkey. The film is gently and naturally divided into five sections, after the traditional Islamic practice of five calls to prayer, made at appointed hours during the day and night. It’s a reminder of the spiritual forces governing the lives of the villagers – but there is no depiction of a militant interpretation of Islam here, no injection of politics into religious practice. There are strict rules governing the villagers’ lives, but there is no prohibition of education for girls, and no separation by sex within the classes – this is Islam as practiced and applied in Turkey, not the hard-line extremism that exists in other places.

At the center of the film are three children (Omer, Yakup and Yildiz – two boys and a girl, respectively) doing emotional battle with the transition into adolescence – a universal struggle, one that can be witnessed in any society anywhere on the globe. Childhood curiosity extends into adult feelings and actions that begin to be noticed and experienced – games and idle time wandering through the nearby fields and mountains are still treasured, but also included is a scene wherein the two boys are shown giggling as they watch two animals copulate – their teachings and sense of propriety are awakened, however, when they notice that their friend Yildiz is watching from another angle. Their embarrassment and shame induces them to chase her away.

Omer’s father is the village imam – the favoritism he shows toward Omer’s younger brother (a precocious child who does much better in school than Omer) ignites a powerful and potentially dangerous flame of jealousy. Omer actively and consciously wishes his father dead, going so far as to painstakingly empty the capsules prescribed by the imam’s doctor to treat the old man’s respiratory condition. Omer’s emotional distance from his father – indeed, from the rest of his family – is visually underscored in a scene in which a family portrait is being taken, his father having to physically pull the boy into the family grouping for the picture.

Yakup is infatuated with the children’s schoolteacher – a beautiful young woman who seems very dedicated to educating and caring for her students. The villagers show their gratitude to her by delivering regular gifts of bread and meats to her door. Omer teases Yakup about his feelings, but not too much – the boys are, after all, friends, and Omer senses that Yakup’s emotions are real, perhaps even knowing those sorts of pangs himself. When Yakup arrives at the teacher’s house to deliver a gift of goat’s meat, he is stunned and crushed to catch his father surreptitiously peeking into one of her windows, apparently in an attempt to see her partly clothed. It’s a cold slap in the face to one so young and innocent – but it’s not a perfect world in which we live, and the village where the children live certainly has its share of hypocrites and sinners/

Yildiz’s mother craves an additional child – after suffering through a difficult pregnancy, she delivers a son, then proceeds to transform Yildiz into a servant, saddling the girl with chores and tasks more fitting to one much older. The young girl feels put upon, but loves her little brother, and takes her responsibilities as seriously as one could expect in a child her age. When she trips while carrying the baby, dropping him onto the ground, her mother and most of the village react in horror, blaming her for carelessness. The shock of what has happened actually causes Yildiz to faint – she lies alone on the ground, unconscious, until her father comes along and picks her up lovingly in his arms to comfort her.

Perhaps none of these plot elements in themselves seem unusual or particularly noteworthy – as in the cases of many films, however, Times and winds is a creation that is much larger than the simple sum of its parts. This is due to several important factors / aspects, each of them being of extraordinary quality and imbued with a deep-felt spirit of humanity struggling with itself, its fate intertwined and inseparably connected with the natural world. As I mentioned early on, the cinematography in this film is breathtakingly beautiful – night or day, village or countryside, faces or surroundings, the framing is nothing short of perfect. The director has placed his subjects and their environment on the screen in such a way as to gently stress their ties to one another, at the same time drawing the viewer into the film like a magnet. Steadycam shots of characters moving along dusty streets and alleyways convey a palpable sensation of motion and underscore the claustrophobic characteristics of the architecture as well as those of the characters’ very lives. The children’s forays into the mountains are, I’m sure, a response to this feeling of containment, which is a form of emotional and cultural imprisonment – in the outdoors, lying on a mountain plateau, watching the clouds move above and the lay of the land below, they are free to exchange ideas and feelings in the open and honest manner that is so natural in children. For example, Omer’s confession to Yakup that he wishes his father dead is met not with horror, but with practical concerns about consequences. There are also repeated images – disturbing and beautiful at the same time – of the individual children lying apparently dead among rubble or brush. At first I thought them asleep – the shot of Yildiz especially depicts a peaceful, sleep-like repose, but one of the boys is shown on the ground among broken stones and bricks, with debris partially covering him.

Another factor in the success of this project is the young actors themselves – Erdem carefully chose non-professionals for the roles, and the youngsters are nothing short of perfect in embodying their characters. This results in a feeling that we are almost spying on these children, from a fly-on-the-wall viewpoint, observing without being observed. The natural ease they bring to their roles is a wonderful thing to experience. The dialogue throughout the film is realistic as well, and never explodes into wordiness – there are no long soliloquies or overly deep, length philosophical discussions. This is the stuff of life, and it’s presented in such a way as to make it fascinating to watch.

Last but certainly not least, the music chosen by Erdem to accompany his film is achingly beautiful – Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s work is featured, and the gentle, drawn-out figures for which the composer has become rightly admired are the perfect audio frame for the film’s stunningly lovely images.

Writing more about the plot would give too much away – but, that being said, Times and winds is not as much of a plot-driven film as it is a slice-of-life portrait of the three young protagonists and their physical and cultural environment. There’s enough of a plot, and enough ‘action’ to retain the interest of most viewers, I believe – but the film, to me, is more of an experiential type of cinema, in which one can immerse oneself and emerge feeling a little closer to understanding not only the characters and the lives they live, but humanity in general and the earth on which we live.

2009-04-02T00:29:00.001-05:00

Bérangère Maximin
Tant que les heures passent

Tzadik TZ8506, 2008

I hope the reader will bear with me while I approach this recording from what might seem an odd angle – it’s an unusual work, something that might well sound like ‘noise’ to many listeners, but which, for me at least, is a source of wonderment and beauty. This is amazing music, created / assembled in an unconventional manner – it merits a similarly unconventional approach in order to absorb its many facets, and to understand a little of how and why it works the way it does.

Filmmaker Raúl Ruiz – one of my favorite directors, many of whose works are as challenging as cinematic creations as this music – has written a great deal on what he calls ‘poetic cinema’, expounding his ideas and theories (sometimes in the most convoluted, mind-bending way) concerning the effects cinema has on the viewer, the reasons behind these effects, extrapolating these notions into proposals for auteurs to explore in creating entirely new concepts and methods of filmmaking. In his book Poetics of cinema 2 (Dis Voir, Paris, 2007), he speaks of the idea of a ‘film within a film’ – in some cases, a ‘film within a film within a film’, with elements from one interacting with those of another. This concept can be extended to infinity, like the monkeys-in-a-barrel toy some of us enjoyed as children – whereby multiple levels of ‘action’ can occur side-by-side, layered, or simultaneously. This sounds at first like total confusion – but he goes on to explain how such layers can be absorbed by the viewer, sometimes on a subconscious level, to be re-assembled (often in varied ways) by the mind either as the film progresses or in the state of ‘post-understanding’ described by the great Andrei Tarkovsky in his masterpiece Sculpting in time (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986). Ruiz also utilizes the example of multiple jigsaw puzzles, all of which have their pieces cut in the same pattern, but which originally display different images. If all of these puzzles are disassembled simultaneously, with the resulting pieces mixed at random, it’s possible to reconnect them using the shapes alone, which will of course result in seemingly jumbled images – but viewing these scrambled images repeatedly, one after the other, can result in the mind piecing the pictures back together as they were originally, much in the same way that the mind can recognize words in which the letters are disarranged.

Ruiz writes of a process he calls ‘distracted comprehension’ – he describes a physicist, a brilliant theoretician, who finds that he can better understand a new idea being postulated for him by a colleague if he doesn’t allow himself to become absorbed in the process of listening attentively to the theory’s explanation. His comprehension is more thorough – and more readily attained – if he allows himself to be slightly distracted during the exposition, with his mind re-assembling the critical points of the idea, very like the jigsaw puzzle or the ‘film within a film within a film’ mentioned in the previous paragraph. Human memory works in much the same way, reassembling bits of information which are then processed to appear more ‘whole’ to our consciousness. One of the truest representations I’ve ever seen in a film of human memory is in I could read the sky (Ireland / England, 1999, directed by Nicola Bruce) – there are layers of images displayed on the screen, with the audio being presented in the same manner, to a wonderfully realistic effect.

But what does all of this have to do with this music…? I’ll try to draw some connections…

Bérangère Maximin’s music has a similar effect on me – she utilizes pre-recorded tapes of found / environmental sounds, of musical instruments (many of which she plays herself), percussion (both standard sources and tapes of assembled rhythmic cycles), and voices to create an atmosphere of complete submersion for the listener. She brings all of these elements together in an astonishing way, wielding fragments of sound as tools and instruments, assembling them not in a random fashion, but thoughtfully and creatively, as a composer for a symphony orchestra might draw upon the various instruments at his / her disposal, to create mood, to express ideas and concepts, to construct a palpable sense of space in which the audience – be it a single listener or a group attending a live performance – is drawn into the soundsculpted world she is building. Sounds appear, vanish and re-surface – some recognizable, others not…but in the end, it’s not really necessary (or even advisable, I would think) to attempt to determine the source of everything falling onto the ear. Her work is like that ‘film within a film within a film’ described by Raúl Ruiz, or the experience that must be understood after experiencing it, as Tarkovsky spoke of his film Zerkalo (Mirror) (Russia, 1975) – the great Russian director, despondent over film critics savaging what was his most personal creation, found his work validated by viewers who wrote to him explaining how deeply the film affected them, many of them coming to understand it more fully some time after they had seen it.

Bérangère draws from her sound-palette as a visual artist might, coloring the audio presentation as if she were working on an abstract canvas – works of modern visual art might seem to be chaotic, but often inspire deep reactions in the viewer, much as I believe seemingly ‘abstract’ music can touch a listener on the deepest level. There are other ways to communicate ideas and thoughts besides directness – the shortest distance between two points (in the case, the creator of the work and the person experiencing it) might be a straight line in geometry, but in art, be it musical, visual, literary, or otherwise, the most effective and rewarding journey is often a circuitous or oblique one. An object viewed from one angle takes on a completely different shape as we move around it – the same principle can be applied to music, or ‘audio art’, to literature (there are works which the author intends be read in random order, for example) and of course to cinema.

Born on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, Bérangère studied electro-acoustic composition with Denis Dufour at the Perpignan Conservatoire in the south of France, later relocating permanently to Paris. She has performed within several genres of music, including rock and world music ensembles. Her experiences with these forms, as well as her friendship with musicians working in bands, has imbued her with a healthy respect for live performances, a quality she strives to maintain in her own work, whether before an audience or created in her own studio. Her skillful assemblage of recorded and created sounds is, when all is said and done, a beautiful thing – rather than being a mix of pure noise for noise’s sake, there are deep emotions awakened in the listener, brought to the mind’s surface by a subconscious swirl stirred by the sounds that fill the audiospace. Gurgles, springs, rattles, identifiable instrument fragments, voices, and bits of processed sounds which are completely reconfigured come together in a heady, mindfilling mix, evoking images and feelings in an almost shamanic manner.

This music must be experienced in order to comprehend it, to feel it. To that end, I’ve included a link to Bérangère’s MySpace page below, where you can listen to samples (the top one on the list is a track from this CD) – I would suggest doing so without any distractions, although, as Raúl Ruiz has written (again in Poetics of cinema 2), sometimes being distracted is the key to understanding a concept or an idea. It’s completely possible, of course – and I would recommend it – to listen to Bérangère’s music with just the right mixture of attention and distraction, allowing oneself to be carried away by it, surrounded by it, immersed in it, swallowed by it. It’s an incredible, wondrous experience that I can’t recommend highly enough.

Bérangère Maximin on MySpace

Tzadik Records

2009-03-02T13:30:00.000-06:00

Borah Bergman : of two minds

Borah Bergman’s genius is nothing short of staggering. Famous for his compositional, performing and improvising abilities, which are augmented immeasurably by his incredible cross-handed technique (it’s like listening to two players, or someone with two minds, as referenced above), he has long been a perfect foil for such free jazz envelope-pushers as Evan Parker, Andrew Cyrille, Lol Coxhill, Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, Peter Brötzmann…the list goes on and on. I’ve admired his work in these settings, but at least for my tastes, most of the time, they tend to be a little on the ‘heavy’ side, making my forays into them rare…in other words, I really have to be in the mood. By contrast, his last two releases on John Zorn’s Tzadik label (through which Zorn is apparently out to redefine the term ‘prolific’, with admirable results) are two of my favorite piano-centered jazz recordings. There’s a beauty to each of them that is both transcendent and transporting – but in case anyone out there thinks that translates as ‘elevator music’ or some sort of smarmy ‘smooth jazz’, they should think again. Bergman’s influences come from classical music (Ives, Ravel, &c), as well as innovators from the world of jazz such as Lennie Tristano, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Fats Waller and Earl Hines. Everything we experience colors our perception, some things influencing us greatly and inspiring us to reach further, to dream – applied to the creative process, whether in music or some other art, these inspirations can be a springboard to creating something entirely new. Bergman’s has taken this direction – his work is unique, thoughtful and filled with a living, breathing beauty.

Tzadik, 2003

Meditations for piano is just that, in the purest sense of the word when applied to works of music. These are unaccompanied piano pieces, and whether they were composed ahead of time or improvised in the studio, there is a logic and structure to them that belies their seeming simplicity. It’s as if the listener is being given an opportunity to peer into Bergman’s creative processes – there’s a feeling of ‘newness’ to these pieces, the notes being released into the air for the very first time. He spins out some of the most beautiful melodies I’ve ever heard, obviously giving great consideration to the construction of each and every track – a project like this always runs the risk of coming across as ‘noodling’, but never for a moment is that the case here. Each of his hands is equally adept at playing melody or support – his cross-handed work is never used as a gimmick, but as a means of extending a melodic run, or allowing one hand to switch tasks without breaking the melodic thought. Sometimes he lingers over a pair of notes, or a triad, before continuing to pursue the music’s path. There are moments when a theme or part of a melody from one piece appears briefly in another – a fragment of memory, the music revealing the mental processes behind it.

Tzadik, 2009

Luminescence places Bergman in a trio setting, accompanied by Greg Cohen on double-bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums, with the addition of John Zorn's saxophone on one track. Even though this is a group session, with capable and thoughtful contributions from his partners, this is Bergman’s recording from start to finish – Cohen and Wollesen lay back so quietly in places that it’s easy to forget they’re there. When they do step up, the restraint and synchronization they exhibit is breathtakingly perfect – they never overwhelm. It’s as if Bergman’s playing is a visible work of art for which they’re providing the frame.

Anytime a musician pours forth creativity of such depth, it's inevitable that his / her cultural heritage comes into play – the nature of personal creativity, after all, precludes dishonesty, and it would be false to ignore the soul’s core in bringing works of art into fruition. Bergman’s Jewish roots (he dedicates Meditations for piano to his grandfather, Cantor Joseph Meir Pergamenick) can be heard throughout both of these discs – the plaintive minor melodies that almost convey audible words in their hearts – but it is on Luminescence that they’re more prominent. Does that make this ‘Jewish music’? I doubt that many listeners would categorize it as such – the beauty it carries is too universal in its appeal to be confined by such a definition, and neither Bergman, the music itself, nor the listener deserves to be burdened with such limitations.

One of Bergman’s poems graces the back of the insert to Meditations for piano…
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A boy had sat there waiting for a touch on his shoulder,
from behind, someone to surprise him,
and turning, a greeting, words, a touch and a smile.

Smiles, he had a hunger for them.
Girl smiles, they shook him,
he wanted to put his hand onto one.

How could someone touch a smile?
When the hand went along the lips and part of the face,
although the shape remained, the feeling in the smile vanished.

He had asked her once to hold her smile still
finding about the feeling then.

He wondered if this feeling had to do with the smile
coming on without a plan
– just happening.

The music on these recordings is filled with deep thought and contemplation, wrapped in the gentle, unforced beauty, the natural spontaneous grace of such a smile. It’s probably as close as one could ever come to actually touching one.

Tzadik Recordings

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2005 interview with Borah Bergman from the All About Jazz website

2009-03-01T19:17:00.000-06:00

Les temps du loup (Time of the wolf)

written and directed by Michael Haneke
2002 / France / color / 111 minutes (+ bonus features)
French with optional English subtitles
DVD from Artificial Eye (UK – region 2, PAL)

The end of the world – up close and personal…

Austrian director Michael Haneke has never been one to make ‘easy’ films – critics and audiences alike have had difficulty with his work. He is quoted in an October 2003 interview in Britain’s The Independent as saying, ‘When I go to see a film, I don't want to leave the cinema in the same way I entered it, otherwise it's a waste of time. I assume the same of my viewers, I take them seriously…People are used to seeing things that are totally rounded off, consumable – films that say everything and are immediately forgotten. I want to destabilise the viewer, and teaching a lesson is the last thing I want to do. If someone doesn't get me, they don't get me. That's not my problem.’ Whereas most directors – particularly those at the commercial heart of the US film industry – would fill any work dealing with an apocalyptic, end-of-the-world theme with mind-numbing special effects, Haneke has taken a higher road, centering his story around the very human trials of a family faced with the sudden prospect of surviving in a shattered society, struggling at the most basic levels to find shelter and food, to maintain and retain some form of humanity.

Haneke draws on the immense talents of his cast, particularly Isabelle Huppert (who starred in his 2001 film La pianiste [The piano teacher]) and young Anaïs Demoustier, who portray Anne and her teenage daughter Eva, respectively. As the film opens, we see them (along with Georges, Anne’s husband, and Ben, their son, who seems to be around ten) arrive at a secluded cabin in a wooded area, which we learn is their property, a summer home perhaps. They are surprised to find, as they begin to bring their belongings inside, that the dwelling is occupied by an unknown family – they are not made welcome, to say the least, by the ensuing violent reaction. Anne and her children are forced to flee, leaving behind their car and most of their provisions – they set out on foot, and as they go from door to door in the nearby village seeking aid and sustenance, it becomes more and more apparent that the region (perhaps the world) has undergone a widespread catastrophe, the nature of which is never explained. Electricity is a thing of the past, and supplies of food, fuel, and other necessities are dwindling rapidly, guarded and hoarded by those who have them.

At one stopover, as they take shelter in an abandoned haybarn, young Ben wanders off in the night, setting Anne and Eva into a panic. The mother’s instincts will not allow her to leave off searching for the boy until daylight – she gathers armfuls of hay as makeshift torches and sets out into the night to find him. Haneke’s filming is brilliant throught the film – and in everything I’ve seen by him – but it is especially effective in this work, with so much of the first half of the film taking place in darkness or deep fog. The torch that Anne bears, calling her son’s name, only serves to deepen the darkness around her, revealing nothing but her own isolation in a world gone mad. Eva attempts to keep a fire burning in the barn, but the fire and the proximity of the hay make a bad combination, and the structure burns to the ground. The next day, as they sit among the remains, having not found the boy and sinking into a deep despair, a young man about Eva’s age approaches with Ben in controlled tow – they are relieved to see Ben alive, but convincing the feral youth to free him takes some doing – he is wary of anyone and everyone he meets, and very reluctant to talk about either his personal situation or the prospects that face anyone who is still alive. Despite his attitude, Anne shows kindness to him by changing the dressing on his wounded hand – and as she and her children travel on, his path seems to paralle their own, as they continue to come into contact with him.

Eventually they arrive at a rail station where other refugees have taken shelter, awaiting a train that may or may not arrive, placing their hopes in the possibility of forcing it to stop and take them away, to some unknown ‘better place’. They are led – ‘controlled’ or ‘bullied’ might be a more appropriate word – by a man named Koslowski (played by the great actor Olivier Gourmet, veteran of several features made by the Belgian Dardenne brothers). He imposes a sort of order on the group, much of which appears to be made up as he goes along, and which of course favors him remaining in control – one accuses him of being the leader by virtue of the gun in his pocket, and there is more than casual resentment of him. With objects of any value for trade becoming more and more scarce, several of the women apparently choose to sleep with him in return for special attention or favors. It is a picture of society robbed of its support structure, knocked down to its most basic levels. Religious beliefs have suddenly become twisted, tied up in knots with fables and made-up rumors – a group of beings called ‘The Just’ are described as ‘keeping the world turning’. Another group called ‘The Brothers of Fire’ is blamed for the current state of affairs – they have apparently not engaged in their practice of sacrificial self-immolation frequently enough to prevent the disaster from occurring.

Haneke creates an incredible sense of tension in the film by focusing on the characters’ humanity and emotions, rather than relying on the aforementioned special effects to carry his story. He says in the accompanying bonus feature on the making of Time of the wolf, ‘I didn’t want to do a genre film, a disaster film. I wanted to do a very private film on interpersonal relationships. In every newscast you see on TV there is a mini-end-of-the-world, but it’s at a distance. It’s always other people experiencing this. I wanted to do a film for our superficial society: those who are doing well, who feel comfortable…and give them a taste of what it would be like if it happened to them.’ His filming and writing techniques, along with the manner in which he deals with his actors and extracts from them exactly what he wants for his work, bring the viewer into such close contact with the characters that it is almost impossible not to identify with them on the deepest level. These characters are completely human in the truest sense of the word. Haneke continues, ‘I always try in all my films to be humanist…because I think if you are truly and seriously interested in art, you can’t be otherwise. It’s a necessary condition. Art without humanism is a contradiction, it doesn’t exist. That’s the strongest reason to believe in what I do.’ At the same time, his films are devoid of any unnecessary sentimentality that might make the story easier for the viewer to bear – his work is incredibly rewarding to experience, but requires more work on the part of the audience than mass-produced multiplex cinematic fare.

In the same feature, Isabelle Huppert comments on Haneke’s directorial skills, comparing him to Hitchcock – and she says ‘I don’t use the name Hitchcock lightly.’ She notes his ability to create tension simply through the manner in which he films his characters and places them spatially onscreen. She also addresses the interpersonal relationships within Time of the wolf, the characters thrown together in a manner to which they are unaccustomed, the rules of society in tatters: ‘You can see within this group all the injustice, all the tension…You can see all the suffering. The suffering is created by the same circumstances under which they find themselves gathered in this way. But violence emerges within the group almost immediately. This microcosm is learning to live again. There’s a bit of hope as well, that comes from the children.’

The younger characters are indeed the greatest source of hope and optimism in the story. Eva discovers a pencil and a writing tablet in a desk drawer at the rail station and begins composing a letter to her dead father – when Anne later discovers it in her daughter’s coat pocket, it allows her a deeper understanding of the pain Eva is feeling, which has been difficult for her to discuss with her mother. Eva also shows a great deal of compassion for the young man who had kidnapped Ben, trying – mostly in vain – to get him to talk with her about his feelings, to open up to another human being. But it is Ben who, perhaps, in the film’s ultimate sequence, demonstrates the greatest urge to give of his very humanity in order to bring about the positive changes that are so desperately needed by the survivors of the still-unnamed disaster. The last scene is one that, I believe, will linger in the mind and heart of the viewer long after the film is over, compelling contemplation and reflection on the true meaning of our shared humanity, and on the nature of hope.

There are brief episodes of shocking violence in the film – but when compared to other, more commercially distributed works, they are few and far between. They are there because they are part of the story that Haneke is telling, not because he feels any cheap need to titillate an audience. Neither is there any nudity to speak of, and any sex is either implied or glimpsed fleetingly, without visceral details – it’s relative to its place in the story. Everything in the film is there for a reason – and it’s the overall effect, the combination of all the elements drawn on by the writer / director (and of course the cast), that make the whole as effective as it is.

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I've written here about the UK release, from Artificial Eye – the film has also been released on DVD in the US by Palm Pictures, and should therefore be readily available for either purchase or rental (n. b. – be sure not to be confused by another film with the same title, directed by Rod Pridy and starring Burt Reynolds…!). I can also highly recommend La pianiste (The piano teacher) and especially Caché (Hidden) by Haneke – I’ve shared the latter with friends on a couple of occasions, and I’ve long thought that it was a film that Hitchcock would be proud to have made...and as Isabelle Huppert said, ‘I don’t use the name Hitchcock lightly.’

2009-02-28T21:33:00.000-06:00

Music of the earth :

the environment as source and composition

The advent, over the last couple of decades, of a new legion of audio artists, utilizing sounds gleaned from innumerable sources, most of the time processed by means of a laptop computer or other tools, has unleashed an overwhelming amount of material on the public. Much of this work is astonishingly good – artists with a true spirit of imagination and adventure, combined with taste and judgment, have illustrated that music can come from just about anywhere. In the early stages of this movement, the sources seemed to be actual musical instruments – altered sounds from pianos, guitars, &c – but as the techniques have proliferated, along with the inspiration that is inevitably generated by practitioners of innovative techniques, the performers have reached out into the natural world for samples to be processed. Far from resulting simply in higher-resolution environmental recordings, many of these works have been stunning in their sheer musicality, shattering preconceptions held by many listeners as to what constitutes ‘music’. These two recordings apply minimalist principles to this genre – and the results are nothing short of transporting.

Isobel Clouter
Rob Mullender
Myths of origin : sonic ephemera from east Asia

and/OAR, 2008 (rec. 2001)

Myths of origin is based on recordings made by Clouter at various locations in Japan (tracks 01-03 on the disc), and by Clouter and Mullender in China (tracks 04-09). The Japanese sources include sounds recorded at festivals, in temples, an uguisubari-no-roka (a ‘nightingale floor’ that makes bird-like chirping sounds when walked upon), a suikinkutsu (which makes a beautiful, natural music generated by water falling into an underground chamber, a feature of many Japanese gardens), and ‘singing sand’ on various beaches. These have been edited by the artists, but with little audio alteration beyond combining them into the three separate tracks.

The recordings made in China were mostly captured in desert environments, featuring the phenomenon known as ‘booming sand’, whereby the dunes, triggered by the winds and other natural forces, produce sounds on their own, without interference or instigation of human actions. These sounds have been extremely hard to record over the years – most of the source material on this disc featuring them is of sounds resulting in sandslides created by the artists, or by footsteps on the dunes. Track 09, which ends the disc, was recorded in a temple, and features the sounds of prayer wheels being turned by visitors.

Clouter and Mullender – as well as other ‘musical anthropologists’ – theorize that the natural sounds of the earth have at times through history influenced music made by humans. They cite Mongolian höömi (overtone) singing as an example, which, according to local legends, has a ‘myth of origin’ that describes a relationship between environmental sounds and music. The notes state that the sounds gathered in China are unprocessed, edited only by selection. The low frequency drones produced by the sands are incredible – one can only imagine being there in person and actually feeling the sound in the air and through the dunes.

The artists offer informative notes in the booklet, as well as some nice photographs – the disc itself also includes a PDF booklet with photographs relating to the recordings, compatible with both Windows and Mac systems.

Francisco López
Wind [Patagonia]

and/OAR, 2007 (recorded 2000-03, composed and mastered 2003-05)

Wind [Patagonia] is actually the third installment in a trilogy by López – the first two were La selva (1997), which was recorded in a Costa Rican rain forest, and Buildings (2001), featuring the inner sounds generated by buildings in New York City. With Wind, López illustrates the amazing breadth of sounds produced by the wind’s interaction with the harsh landscape. The notes on the back of the digipack describe the recording as ‘an immersion into the sonic matter from micro- and macro-environments dominated by wind in Patagonia. A vast barren space shaped and inhabited by the ever-changing forces of unmated plants, rocks, sand, snow, and ice. An irregular broad-band environment of relentless strength and richness. And above all, a tour de force of profound listening.’ This might be dismissed as hype – but listening to this disc for the first time, I was completely overcome and carried away by the variety of sounds generated by the wind – it’s an immersing experience of a depth that must be heard to be understood.

An artist known for his imagination and abilities in the subtle alteration of sounds, López states that this recording is ‘non-processed, not mixed environmental sound matter from a certain “reality”. An appraisal of the richness and essential qualities of the original sonic material. A non-referential intention. An extreme phenomenological immersion led by anti-rationality and anti-purposefulness. A world devoid of human presence.’ The temptation is to pre-suppose this recording to be one of those ‘relaxing’ natural sounds experiences – but there is unimaginable power and strength at work here, producing an incredibly wide dynamic range of the purest form of ‘natural music’. These are the sounds of our planet, a living, breathing world – it’s a good way to put the presence and influence of human life in perspective.

The booklet contains several beautiful photographs (above is one example) taken in the region where the recordings were made, which illustrate the wide range of physical features found there. There are also notes by López and a nice essay by Christopher Cox, who writes, ‘López’s Patagonian winds have a ferocious beauty and immensity. Delicate whispers combine with wild swarms and eddies undergirded by deep bass punches. And all of this produced by an invisible force that endlessly sweeps the surfaces of the globe. With this, we are no longer in the tidy world of human music, but have entered the sublime domain of natural sound.’ It makes for some pretty incredible listening.

I found both of these recordings at the label website – and/OAR is a great source for the adventurous audiophile, making available not only releases on their own label, but a wide variety of like-minded experimental, envelope-pushing, mind-stretching works from other sources as well. Click on the link below and browse their selection – it’s a rich trove.

and/OAR

2009-02-22T20:30:00.000-06:00

8 films de Jean Paul Civeyrac

1991-2005 / France / black & white, color
French with English subtitles
DVD from BlaqOut / region 0 / PAL

‘…Pauvre amour, laisse que jet e touché. Sois calme. Sois docile et fais ce que je veux. Laisse-moi caresser ta joue et tes cheveux. Laisse ma main, par cœur, apprendre ton visage.’

‘…Poor love, let me touch you. Be calm. Be docile and do what I want. Let me caress your cheek and your hair. Let my hand learn your face by heart.’

– Jean Cocteau

Jean Paul Civeyrac

Working my way through this amazingly rich set – let alone getting my head around it enough to write anything remotely coherent and inclusive about the films contained here – has been quite a daunting task…but very enjoyable and rewarding. I had never heard of Jean Paul Civeyrac prior to reading about him online one day, when I came across articles on Fantômes and Toutes ces belles promesses on the wonderful Strictly film school site (click on the titles to read the individual pieces) – after a bit of further research, I discovered that BlaqOut had compiled 8 films (6 features and 2 shorts) into a very nice book-bound package, with the addition of a DVD-ROM multi-media presentation, Jean Paul Civeyrac : interstices, by Grégory Chatonsky featuring scenes from the films. All of this makes the € 80 (+ shipping, around $125 total) price tag a good bit easier to take – and after watching these films, I’m confident that my money was well-spent.

Civeyrac’s films are filled with some of the most moving, beautiful imagery I’ve seen. Additionally, he loves available light, and utilizes movement – both by the actors and the camera – in such a way as to place the viewer intimately within the scene, creating a palpable sense of place, of inclusion. His characters are drawn large, as cinematic requirements dictate, but they are never larger than life, always remaining human – I would even describe them as ‘touchable’, both physically and emotionally (The lines from Jean Cocteau, above, are quoted on the back cover of the set – and they appropriately invoke the tactile aspects of Civeyrac’s art). They take some getting to know, just as those we encounter in everyday life – there are depths to their personalities and psyches that are only revealed with time, and the director wisely refrains from laying everything out for the viewer like cards on a table. The viewer is forced, albeit it gently, to think, to consider the reasons and emotions behind the actions played out on the screen – the result is an infinitely richer, more rewarding cinematic experience. I came away from these films feeling an intense personal connection and identification with many of these characters, warts and all – the events and feelings depicted are things with which all of us can identify.

There are several themes running through Civeyrac’s work – and I wouldn’t for a moment claim to identify all of them. There is alienation, perhaps better described as a feeling of separation or exclusion – from society in general (La vie selon Luc and Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam), from loving relationships (Les solitaires, Le doux amour des hommes, Toutes ces belles promesses, and Tristesse beau visage), and between the living and the dead (Les solitaires, Fantômes, Toutes ces belles promesses again, and À travers la forêt). These themes are often combined, just as multiple issues in life are combined in reality. Characters often interact / communicate with departed loved ones, sometimes vividly reliving conversations and sessions of lovemaking, often to the point of deeply believing the dreams / memories are real, much to the consternation and concern of those around them. At times it’s not immediately apparent to the viewer if a character is alive, dead, or a figment of the imagination, memory or subconscious – it caused me to repeat several scenes, just to savor the experience of peeling back another layer of the cinematic onion Civeyrac has so skillfully created.

La vie selon Luc (Life according to Luke) (1991), a 14 minute short, focuses on a young bisexual hustler and his inability to feel any love or emotion for anyone around him. He stumbles headlong through life, concerned only with his own needs – amassing what seems to be a large sum of money whose purpose is never explained – lashing out at everyone who attempts to reach out to him, friends and family alike.

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam (Neither Eve nor Adam) (1996) is similarly concerned with a young man, Gilles, whose aggressively non-conformist behavior lands him in trouble at school, at home, and with the local authorities. Thrown out by his parents, he is shown sleeping on park benches and holed up in derelict basements, scrabbling to survive however he can manage. He convinces his friend Gabrielle to run away with him – their journey is a rushed one, both in physical distance and the emotional trials of growing up too fast. It’s touching to see the bond between them develop, but sad at the same time, knowing that they are only ‘playing’ at independence (which they probably know subconsciously) on the road to a future that is uncertain at best.

Les solitaires (The lonely) (1999) is centered on Pierre, in perpetual mourning for Madeleine, unable to accept the love offered by Alice (very much alive, who would be his lover) or his brother Baptiste, who comes for a visit with plenty of issues of his own. Pierre’s psyche is so twisted by the depths of his sorrow that he swings wildly between states of deep depression and manic acting-out – one minute he and Baptiste are effecting an emotional reunion, the next they’re arguing and fighting wildly. Alice tries desperately to lift Pierre out of his emotional pit, putting herself at risk in the process – Eva, Baptiste’s estranged wife, arrives to attempt a reconciliation, adding more confusion and emotional turmoil to the mix.

Fantômes (Spirits) (2000) blurs the live between the living and the dead even further, with the status of characters unrevealed for long stretches. Those who have lost loved ones are tortured with grief to the point of receiving physical visitations by the departed – one woman ties her reanimated dead lover to her with a phone cord while he sleeps, desperate for him to remain with her. When he awakes and realized what she has done, he pleads with her to untie him before the sun comes up – she refuses, and he says, ‘You’ll die with me!’ In an additional plot element, random people in the area seem to be instantaneously disappearing – no bodies are found, no traces of the missing remain, and a general atmosphere of fear covers the city.

Le doux amour des hommes (Man’s gentle love) (2001) deals with a young poet, Raoul, who is seemingly unable to emotionally commit to any woman he takes as a lover. Handsome, egotistical and aloof, he unexpectedly falls for Jeanne, a young woman who is a junkie. While he has found someone with whom he feels a connection, and the possibility of a longer commitment, she tells him, ‘You do act like you love me…Don’t. I’m not well and I do myself harm. I may not last the winter…Kiss me again. It’ll be a nice memory.’ Raoul has spent his adult life coldly pursuing any female who crosses his path and appeals to him – his lessons in love are hard to learn. In this film, as in others wherein Civeyrac deals with love and other deep emotions, there is no cheap sentimentality at work – the feelings are played out realistically, never veering into easy, sappy depictions. Even characters who are ‘shallow’ are fully formed to the point that one feels the ability to reach out and touch them. Despite Raoul's boorish tendencies, it's difficult not to feel some sympathy for him as events transpire.

Toutes ces belles promesses (All the fine promises) (2003) deals with many of these same elements, but in a completely individual way. Marianne is a cellist – her lover, Etienne, a violinist, dumps her for a flautist (given the personality which is revealed in him, it could be any other woman), and she experiences an emotional collapse. She begins seeing her dead parents and others from her past – memories of her childhood, her parents’ parties, their life in a beautiful house by the sea, all come rushing back to her in incredibly tactile experiences. When she comes across her father’s will, she discovers that he had a mistress for many years, to whom he bequeathed a few items. Her mother had understandably not fulfilled his request, so Marianne sets out to find the woman, reconnecting with the days of her childhood spent in the house by the sea. She forms an almost immediate – but not always easy – bond with the woman, and begins a reassessment of her own life and outlook. When Etienne inevitably approaches her again, she is more prepared to deal with him.

Tristesse beau visage (Sadness beautiful face) (2004) is another short film, a retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in a modern urban French setting. Multiple layers of voice-overs are used along with spare spoken dialogue to tell the story, with characters named for the principals in the original. Once again, resistance to professed love – be it from insecurity or fear of the repetition of past experiences – directs the actions of the characters.

À travers la forêt (Through the forest) (2005) centers around Armelle, one of three sisters whose lover, Renaud, has died – as in Les solitaires and Fantômes, the loss overwhelms the character. She claims to have experienced him spending the night with her, making love, talking, waking together – one sister, Roxane, believes her vision to be real, the other, Bérénice, declares it to be rubbish. Being pulled literally in several directions, Armelle finds it difficult to cope with her feelings – she goes to a medium one day, then makes an attempt to forget it and put it behind her. Nether path will lead her to heal her grief, however – and meeting a young man, Hypolite, who closely resembles the dead Renaud complicates things even further.

The synopses above are my own, and necessarily brief – and none of them comes close to doing justice to the films contained in this set. Civeyrac’s vision – and his incredible skill in bringing it to fruition on the screen – must be experienced to be fully appreciated. From a purely photographical standpoint, these are some of the most breathtakingly beautiful cinematic works I’ve ever experienced – add to that the philosophical and emotional depth that he manages as director and writer or co-writer on all of them, and you have a pretty stunning body of work. The camerawork and lighting, in capturing the textures of the actors’ bodies and skin – in lovemaking scenes as well as others – is visually arresting and incredibly effective in bringing the viewer in contact with the various characters. His use of music is noteworthy as well – from widely known classical composers to those one would not immediately associate with film scores (John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, for example), his choices are a perfect fit, illuminating the film in their own way as much as any lighting that might be employed. These films are simply stunning in every aspect.

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It’s sad that this set – or the individual films, for that matter – are not available in the US. I would recommend without hesitation for anyone who loves great filmmaking to take the plunge and order this from BlaqOut (link below). It’s a beautiful package of incredibly crafted works, and there’s no telling how long it’ll be available. The folks at BlaqOut have thoughtfully produced these without regional coding, so they should play on any recently-manufactured DVD player – they’re presented in PAL format, but most TVs (and all computers, as far as I’m aware) will play that with no problem. I’m glad I picked it up when I did – and I know I’ll be returning to it multiple times, and sharing it with as many friends as I can.

BlaqOut

2009-02-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

El cielo gira

directed by Mercedes Álvarez
written by Mercedes Álvarez and Arturo Redin
2004 / Spain / color / 106 minutes
Spanish with optional English / French subtitles
DVD from Sherlock Home Video (Spain – region 2, PAL)

Director Mercedes Álvarez was the last child born in the tiny village of Aldealseñor in northern Spain – she left there with her parents in the late 1960s, when she was only three years old. As is the case with countless, similarly isolated hamlets, which for various reasons have watched the outside world pass them by, Aldealseñor is slowly, inexorably being depopulated. At the time of the filming of El cielo gira (The sky turns), there were only 14 inhabitants remaining – and with the film depicting the passage of several months in the village, it was almost inevitable that this number be reduced by the passing of one of its citizens. Despite this, Álvarez has not created a morbid, maudlin documentary about the death of a hamlet – this is a gently beautiful film, thoroughly imbued with respect for not only the villagers themselves, but for Aldealseñor itself, the landscape and the history that has shaped it.

Álvarez contributes narration here and there, but for the most part allows the people still living in the area to speak for themselves, oftentimes in the form of natural, un-coached conversations amongst themselves. Unfolding over the course of a year, the film is presented in parts corresponding to the seasons of the year – day-to-day activities are shown, filled with silent contemplations, views of the landscape and heartfelt, honest reflections on both the nature of the villagers own lives as well as their place in the world and the events that are unfolding around the globe. The photography is nothing short of stunning – Álvarez utilizes a skill in capturing the constant interplay between light and shadow that is simply amazing. I found myself, at several points, having to go back to read subtitles that I had missed while concentrating on the visuals.

The director says that her inspiration for making the trip back to her birthplace was cemented by viewing a painting by the artist Pello Azketa, who is also from the area. The particular work depicts two boys at the edge of a reservoir, peering into the water as if looking for something that is about to appear, or has disappeared – an apt metaphor for the process that will eventually empty the village. She determined to go there and create a film that would preserve for posterity the personalities of the people who lived there, their way of life, and their place in history. Most of the villagers are elderly – there are a couple who work as shepherds, and they all have activities which keep them as busy as they feel they need to be, such as gardening. They are shown gathering under a tree on the village square, maintaining the church graveyard, tending their sheep, walking through the countryside together, sitting beside a gently warming hearth at night – nothing comes across as staged, which was most likely accomplished because the director had once lived among them. An outsider, no matter how well-intentioned, would probably have had a hard time gaining their trust.

A couple of the more poignant scenes in the film involve Pello Azketa returning to Aldealseñor – the artist is suffering from an optical disorder that is slowly robbing him of his sight, just as the changes in the village are robbing it of its residents, but his memories of the place are so vivid that he knows where things are as well as the shapes they have held for centuries – the door to the church, the curve of the hills and the general lay of the land.

Even with discussions of the inevitability of death, as well as changes in the village which they might not approve (such as the remodeling of an 800-year-old Moorish castle into a 5-star hotel), the inhabitants maintain an attitude of gentle acceptance that seems to be completely devoid of resentment or bitterness. They are comfortable with their place in the scheme of things, satisfied with the lives they have lived, and see no point in wishing things had been otherwise. Even a discussion about the difficulties of maintaining a steady supply of staples (bread and other items are delivered from outside once or twice a week) doesn’t generate into a mood of dark dissatisfaction – things are what they are, and their lot is to deal with life as it is handed to them.

The village itself is surrounded by countryside that is absolutely beautiful – rolling hills dotted with oak and elm trees – that, through the course of the passing seasons, reveals countless panoramas that will take the viewers’ breath away. Early in the film, an elderly woman points out the tracks of dinosaurs in the stone (there are also several life-size models in the area) and comments on how many millions of years ago they lived; a tour guide leads a group through Iberceltic ruins from Roman times, narrating the staunch defense the ancient locals mounted against the invading armies; modern technology is scarce (a television is shown in one scene, delivering news of the impending US invasion of Iraq) for the most part, making a significant incursion in the form of a windmill farm built to generate electricity. The ancient dominates, but modernity will not be deterred – the locals consider it to be as natural a process of the passing of time as birth and death.

I suppose El cielo gira has a bit of an elegiac mood to it – but it is never really mournful. Without coming across as an outsider trying to forcefully preserve a way of life that is slowly disappearing, Álvarez literally caresses her subject – with her sparse but to-the-point narration allowing the actual voices and feelings of the people to shine through, she has created a document of rare beauty that should speak to the heart and soul of every viewer. It’s an elegy of sorts, but one that will, I believe, elicit more gentle smiles than tears.

2009-01-18T16:06:00.000-06:00

Alexandra

written and directed by Aleksandr Sokurov
2007 / color / 90 minutes (plus bonus items)
Russian with English subtitles
DVD from Artificial Eye (UK – region 2, PAL)

Aleksandr Sokurov’s latest film has been labeled by many reviewers as his most political film in years, possibly of his career – while it has political implications, it also falls comfortably within a group of his works that have been called ‘family portraits’, which include Mother and son (1996) and Father and son (2003), among which The second circle (1990) could also conceivably be placed, although in the latter case, one of the family members is deceased. In Alexandra, the title character (portrayed with screen-filling natural realism by the great Russian opera star Galina Vishnevskaya) travels to a remote army base in Chechnya to visit her grandson, an officer, whom she hasn’t seen in seven years. Her husband has died, she is well into her senior years, and she obviously feels the need to reconnect with family. The trip is arduous under any circumstances, and especially difficult for a person of her age – she makes the journey by armored train, among soldiers, and in an armored personnel carrier, arriving at the camp expected by those in charge to find her grandson away on maneuvers. The area is windy and dusty, and the temperature in the daylight hours is oppressive – she remarks often that it is ‘stifling’. Her grandson Denis returns from his assignment and welcomes her – but rather than telling a story on a completely personal, one-on-one level, Sokurov instead skillfully uses Vishnevskaya’s amazing and robust natural personality to give the viewer an eye with which to view not just the immediate physical surroundings, but the very central essence of war itself and the effects it inevitably inflicts upon humankind.

Alexandra spends much of her time wandering about the camp, speaking with soldiers (‘You’re so young’, she comments to one – but everywhere she looks she sees conscripts barely out of their teens), observing and reflecting. Vishnevskaya is masterful in her role – she communicates more by her facial expression and tone of voice than most actors could manage with a long soliloquy. The things she sees trouble her to her soul – you can see it in her eyes, in the lines on her face. At one point, her grandson helps her into a tank – inside, he shows her his rifle, which she holds while he instructs her on how to use the sight. She looks down the barrel and squeezes the trigger of the empty weapon – ‘It’s so easy’, she murmurs. When the camp commander gives her a short tour and attempts to explain their mission, she says ‘You can kill – but can you rebuild?’ Admonished to stay in her quarters and rest, she walks to the sentry gate and sits with the guards, learning about them, about their lives. Determined to walk into the nearby village to the market, she wanders among the stalls looking for cigarettes and biscuits to take back to the camp – when she grows weary, a Chechnyan woman invites her to sit with her, then to her apartment nearby, in a building that appears to be on the verge of collapse due to damage from shelling. Inside, they share some tea and conversation, completely at ease with each other as human beings instead of members of opposing sides in an armed conflict. When Alexandra leaves to return to the camp, she exacts a promise from her host to come and visit her in Russia – they both know the unlikelihood of the vow being kept, but they are satisfied with their agreement, as they should be. They have made contact with each other on the basis of their shared humanity, of their womanhood – none of the politics involved in the conflict raging around them matters in this light.

This struggle of humanitarian versus political values lies at the very heart of Sokurov’s conception of the film. In an interview included on the Artificial Eye DVD release, he lays out his personal philosophical indictment of the warlike nature of civilization: The most important thing is that the essence of war since the first conflict has not changed, because the goal of war is to kill, to win by means of killing…every (great civilization) made their history…by means of killing. You see, the cynicism has gone to the point that…when the victory happens, it doesn’t matter at what price. But the moral amendment, that the victims were too numerous, annuls, removes the very subject of victory…This is an egoism of the survivors. They say, ‘Yes, yes, we won, our country is living, our cities are living, yes.’ However, there are hundreds of thousands lying in the fields. ‘But they gave their lives for the great victory.’ This is said by the living. And are those victims, those lambs, those millions, thinking about that? This is a very complicated thing, and modern civilization fails to realise it. So, if we say, ‘We lost all those people, but we won,’ will this raise the lost from their graves? Does that change anything? This changes nothing. This changes nothing.

Choosing Galina Vishnevskaya for this role was an inspirational stroke of genius on the part of the director. Again from the included interview, Sokurov says: I was greatly impressed by her dramatic talent, the personality, the scale of her personality…she is a great singer, a great opera actress, a great citizen of Russia, one of the world’s outstanding personalities, so it was necessary to understand if she needed this film at all…I wrote this script especially for her, so, if she hadn’t been able to play in this film, it probably wouldn’t have ever been shot. Her personality indeed fills the screen and the film, but purposefully so – the Vishnevskaya’s own life experiences, her strength and her wisdom, give life to Alexandra in such a way as to make the film almost seem like a documentary about the character.

I’ve read reviews that note that the film doesn’t ‘look’ like a Sokurov creation, that the incredibly beautiful, painter-like shots which the public has come to expect from him are few and far between in this effort – but war is not a beautiful thing, and in the case of dealing with such a subject, some bleakness and harshness is required. There are still amazingly beautiful shots in the film – Alexandra sitting inside a tent at the army base, with a young soldier peering in through a flap; shots of her face on the train, looking at the young soldiers around her, wondering how many of them will live to see their families again; the tenderness with which Denis cradles his grandmother in his arms, the bond of love between the two of them so palpable; the face of the Chechnyan woman who welcomes Alexandra into her home, the connection between the two of them, and the pain of the events unfolding around them written there so plainly.

Alexandra will no doubt eventually be released on DVD in the US – I hope that his reputation, which has justifiably over the past few years, will compel as many people as possible to experience this film. It stands steadfastly with his other works, equal in quality and artistry, a strong condemnation of the senselessness of war. Again, in his own words: …among the high and mighty they are very rare – the people that rate humanitarian values higher than political values. I think that all politicians all over the world, from the beginning of the 20th century, rate political values higher than humanitarian values, which is a crime…This is impossible. This is a dead-end. This is murder. This is terrorism…terrorism is a consequence of the fact that political values are put above humanitarian values.

2009-01-17T22:39:00.000-06:00

Eleni Karaindrou
Elegy of the uprooting

ECM DVD release, 2008
artistic direction by Manfred Eicher

ECM’s DVD presentation of the 2005 concert in Athens of the music composed by Eleni Karaindrou for various films and stage productions is without a doubt one of the finest live music videos I’ve ever seen. As expected (for anyone even remotely acquainted with ECM’s production standards), the audio is first rate – clear and full, precisely mixed and balanced. The video was shot with several cameras, absolutely perfect and appropriate lighting, then edited and produced with incredible sensitivity to the music and the performers. Soloists are shown at just the right moments, and at times split-screen technology is employed with taste and skill to depict the individual artists as well as the group as a whole. The performers include the Camerata Orchestra, the ERT Choir, an ensemble of traditional instruments (harp, Constantinople lyre, ney, kanonaki, santouri, bendir and daouli), the great Maria Farantouri (a Greek national treasure in her own right) and the composer herself on piano – all conducted masterfully by Alexandros Myrat, filmed at the beautiful Megaron (Hall of the Friends of Music) in Athens in March of 2005.

I’ve already written about the music performed here – it was released as a double CD by ECM in 2006. Far from being superfluous, the DVD release enriches the experience for the viewer. I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has ever seen one of Theo Angelopoulos’ wonderful films, most of which are graced by Eleni’s music, could not help but be touched by the scores. Angelopoulos has said that he cannot imagine his films without her contributions – high praise indeed from a director of his stature. You can read my thoughts on the CD release here. I cannot recommend this DVD highly enough – as I watched it, the hour and forty-five minutes of its length slipped past with the grace of a flowing river, and was over before I knew it. There is a deep melancholy, but it is an achingly beautiful one that brings joy as well as sadness to the listener / viewer.

I hope ECM expands their wonderful work further into the area of DVDs – the quality we’ve come to expect from them in their audio releases is here in all its glory, and I can think of literally dozens of their artists whose performances I’d love to see, after enjoying listening to them for many years.

2008-12-06T19:02:00.000-06:00

Sei Miguel
The tone gardens

Creative Sources Recordings, 2006

There are some amazingly talented and imaginative musicians out there who are literally exploding the ‘box’ for their respective instruments. Sei Miguel is a trumpet player from Portugal whose compositional and performing skills are charting new territories and weaving sonic textures that go far beyond what most listeners have come to perceive as ‘music’. The tone gardens finds Miguel in the company of musicians with whom he has worked a great deal over the course of his career. The disc is made up of three tracks, simply titled ‘First garden’, ‘Second garden’ and ‘Third garden’ – the titles might be unassuming, but the music is decidedly thoughtful, possessed of rewarding depth. The empathy and sensitivity employed by the quartet on this recording is astonishing – diverse elements from acoustic and electronic sources swirl and merge to create a vibrant, living whole, bringing the universe of sound conceived by Miguel and his musical partners into tangible fruition. In the hands of some improvisers, music of this type sounds strained and forced – in the case of The tone gardens, working far outside of standard forms to such an extent as to be literally unclassifiable, an incredible beauty emerges. This music can be startling at times, alternately forceful and delicate – but the overall effect is transporting.

Sei Miguel sticks with pocket trumpet on this album, played with a mute throughout the first two tracks, and on the intro to track three. There are lines of beauty emerging from his horn from time to time, but he also wields it as an audio paintbrush, accenting and highlighting like a visual artist in the throes of creativity’s forces. Sounds issue forth that are difficult to source – born in his mind and heart and given birth by his life’s wind and playing technique, they cry out, rasp, breathe and sigh. He has not only expanded his musical palette, he has incorporated every tool at his command into a new language – it communicates emotion and conjures images beyond the usual power of sound.

The three players who join him on this recording are, as I mentioned, frequent collaborators. Their talents have graced several of his recordings, and the understanding they share shows brilliantly here. Fala Mariam plays alto trombone – like Miguel, she uses a mute on tracks one and two. Her instrument, in her hands, becomes an extension of herself – the control and sensitivity with which she adds colours and highlights to the set are breathtaking. Years of playing, creating and sharing music with Sei Miguel (her presence on his recordings, as well as that of César Burago, goes back to 1988) allow her to contribute a vital voice to these works that is so in sync with the leader that it sometimes seems as if the two players are of a single mind.

The electronic elements in the music presented here are added by Rafael Toral (also a guitarist, who has recorded with Sei Miguel since 1996), who has a catalogue of respected releases to his credit. He utilizes computer sinewaves (on track one), portable amplifier feedback (track two) and a modulated white noise system (track three) to balance the wind-borne organics from Miguel and Mariam. The sounds he creates are perfectly suited to the mood and structure of Miguel’s compositions – he never inappropriately overpowers the others with randomly generated noise, but adds his touches with taste and skill.

Completing the ensemble is the amazing percussionist César Burago – drawing from a surprisingly narrow ‘tool box’ (at least on this album), he calls forth an amazing array of sounds from seeds (track one), fiber (track two), tamborim + metals (track three), and dead radios (on both one and two). Swishes and whispers, rubbing sounds, seeming insect noises and other unidentifiable additions add a palpable sense of living movement to the mix.

If all of this sounds hard to imagine, I suppose that’s understandable – check out this video from YouTube of Miguel, Mariam, Burago and guitarist Manuel Mota (another frequent partner in Miguel’s creations), live at the Sonic Scope Festival in Lisbon in 2005…

A statement from Sei Miguel’s website gives a succinct description of his work: Sei Miguel is a jazz music director with innovative (and often strange) solutions. He deals with the full spectrum of sound, including frequent use of electronics. While playing trumpet with awareness of the whole Jazz history, he has nevertheless created his own musical system, allowing him to take open pieces to a remarkable state of precision. It’s pretty obvious that he has listened to and learned from the great players and composers of jazz who have come before him – Miles Davis and Sun Ra are no doubt influences in the direction he has taken – but he has taken their work as inspiration to go far beyond the boundaries that they (and others) pushed before them. His works, as those of most great jazz players (and those of other genres as well) might begin with improvisation, and he and his partners most assuredly employ it in performing – but make no mistake about it, this is not simply a series of random notes around an axis. These pieces are of great complexity and subtlety, woven like threads into a sonic tapestry of cosmic proportions – the group on this recording is a smaller ‘crew’ than Sun Ra employed on his interstellar voyages, but believe me, they get it done. Whereas Sun Ra created compositions and arrangements that bespoke density and evoked large-scale images of whirling planets and galaxies, Sei Miguel's approach might be more aptly likened to a more delicate representation of something like string theory, the microscopic structures and relationships between energies of the most basic, sub-microscopic level, which despite their almost unimaginable minuteness, are the foundations upon which everything else in the universe is built. That analogy might sound a little heady or far-fetched, but when you hear this music and allow it to enter your consciousness and touch you on the deepest levels, I think you'll see what I mean. Sei Miguel has some recordings available utilising a much larger ensemble – I can’t wait to hear them. For that matter, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be snatching up anything I can find by him – I doubt seriously that I’ll wind up disappointed.

I’ve discovered some pretty amazing and exploratory trumpet players in the last few years who have opened my ears to new forms of sound and composition – Arve Henriksen, Cuong Vu, Markus Stockhausen. Now I can add Sei Miguel to that list.

some useful links:

Sei Miguel – official website
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Creative Sources Recordings
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Headlights Recordings – an independent label operated by guitarist Manuel Mota, featuring his work plus other interesting items, including a couple of older Sei Miguel releases (very reasonable prices which include shipping).
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Mimaroglu Music – an affordable US source for mind-stretching music, including this release.

2008-11-29T21:19:00.000-06:00

The forsaken land (Sulanga enu pinisa)

written and directed by Vimukthi Jayasundra
2005 / color / 108 minutes (plus bonus items)
Sinhala with optional English subtitles
DVD from New Yorker Video, 2008

The forsaken land is a film at once strikingly beautiful and jarringly disturbing – writer / director Vimukthi Jayasundara demonstrates in this, his first feature, that he can be expected to be a visionary force that will both enthrall and shake audiences for the remainder of a career that, it can be hoped, will be a long and productive one. Taking as his subject no less than that of the effects of war and strife on not only individuals, but on humanity as a whole, and by extrapolation the very planet we inhabit, his work stands up to the task at hand very well indeed. There are images here – and the deeper thoughts which they inspire – that will remain with the viewer for years to come.

A society ruled by war will always look for a solution,

be it through war or peace.
This film was conceived as a poem, where shots substitute for words.
– Vimukthi Jayasundra

Set in Sri Lanka, which has been torn apart for over thirty years by a civil war that eats away at the people and society like a cancer, Jayasundara’s film draws the audience into the lives and souls of his characters. There is little dialogue – in fact, the first spoken words occur some thirteen minutes or so into the film – but volumes are communicated in the subtle nuances present in life itself, which among the arts only cinema, through its inherent combination of elements, can translate so accurately into palpable feelings. A look, a gesture, a sigh – the very landscape itself, a village on the edge of a wasteland – convey the desperation, tension, societal and emotional isolation and alienation that are the horrible byproducts of an existence lived in a constant state of war…or, in the case of this film, a truce that is so fragile that even the audience senses that outright hostilities could break out again at any time. The recurring image of a tank at twilight, prowling the area at a crawl, stopping now and then, its turret slowly casting its single threatening eye about the landscape is enough to make one hold one’s breath in anticipation. Without a shot being fired throughout the length of the film, the sense of danger is no less than if bullets were flying all around. This is truly life lived walking the edge of the proverbial razor.

The characters at the center of this agonizingly grinding maelstrom are few. Anura is a young man who is apparently in the hire of the military as a guard, but not actually in the army. His wife Latá is a restless, beautiful young woman who finds their interrupted relationship unfulfilling, leading her to seek companionship on the sly. Living with them is Anura’s unmarried sister Somá, who although seemingly the only character who is both grounded and aware of their circumstances, is resented by Latá but adored as a mother figure by Batti, a young pre-adolescent girl who lives nearby. In one particularly poignant and telling exchange, she speaks with Somá of her future – instead of saying ‘when I grow up’, she says ‘if I grow up’, a painful reminder of the pointed uncertainty under which they all live. Piyasiri is an older man who shares guard duty with Anura and regales the wide-eyed Batti with folk tales, one of which sheds both light and darkness on their communal past. The story has not-too-cloaked parallels with the reality they inhabit.

The war itself – or at least the sense that it lurks in such proximity that one can hear its panting breath – is as much a character as the human beings in this film. There may be a cease-fire in place, but people disappear and killings occur at night, to be discovered when the sun casts its weary eyes on the scarred land once more. The director’s incredible compositional prowess packs quite a punch – a darkened pond, with heavy clouds obscuring almost all of the available moonlight, reveals the stiff arm of a corpse seemingly sprouting like the water-based vegetation around it. Latá awakens from a restless afternoon nap, clearly in a state of emotional and sexual clamor, to methodically throw open the shutters of the house – the wind almost rips a couple of them out of her hands, exemplifying her hopelessness in controlling her desires and thoughts, blowing through the rooms like a beast in the hunt.

When Anura and Latá are awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on their door, the young man responds and receives a command from a soldier that will change his life forever – there are things those who serve are called to perform that will linger in their mind and soul until the day they die. The helplessness he feels, the rending of his sense of self, are as real as if they were occurring to us as we watch the events play out. Afterwards, as he runs toward his home in the moonlight, seeing physically but blinded by the trauma of what he has experienced, he stumbles and collapses into the dirt, laying his face against the earth as if to reassure himself that it is still there. It’s one of the most harrowing, piercing images of the film – and one that exemplifies the feeling of being ripped from all of the normal aspects of life, with little hope of ever regaining them. One reviewer wrote that the characters seem to be sleepwalking through the film – not implying any sort of ‘wooden’ acting, but that the horror of their existence has numbed them almost to the point of being animatons. Their pain is real, but it has become so great that it has replaced happiness and fulfillment as the compass by which they navigate their lives.

War is inarguably a horrible environment, whatever its intensity or form – out-and-out direct combat, guerilla war, or the war conducted by shadows under cover of darkness. It traumatizes all of those it touches – combatants and innocents alike – in ways that will affect them physically, psychologically and emotionally for the rest of their lives. Vimukthi Jayasundara has seen that trauma, and has eloquently and poetically translated it into a film that is both jaw-droppingly beautiful and viscerally haunting. It won the prestigious Camera d’or award – given for outstanding first directorial feature – at the Cannes festival in 2005. It’s available in the US through New Yorker Video, so it should be fairly easy to find either for rental or purchase – pass it up at your peril. It’s absolutely one of the most stunning works of cinema I’ve seen in the last ten years.

2008-11-02T17:38:00.000-06:00

L'enfance-nue (Naked childhood)

directed by Maurice Pialat
1968 / colour / 80 minutes (plue extra items)
in French, with optional English subtitles
2-disc restored edition from Masters of Cinema / Eureka (UK), 2008

Maurice Pialat’s 1968 debut feature, L’enfance-nue (Naked childhood), is by no means an easy film to watch – but past the discomforting events depicted, it’s one of the most compelling, vital, and ultimately ‘real’ works of cinema that I’ve ever experienced. The film follows a young French boy, François (Michel Tarrazon), on his travels (travails might be more appropriate) through the French foster-care system. Families were paid stipends by the state to take in children who had been abandoned, offered up for adoption for various reasons, or had been removed from the homes of abusive parents. Pialat wisely chose to use mostly non-professional actors in the film – and while many directors have taken this road in their work for one reason or another, it’s especially effective in this case, the result being a film that is so close to the feel of a documentary that the audience is drawn into the boy’s story far more deeply than might otherwise be the case. (In the spirit of both self-honesty and openness with any readers, I have to say that the fact that I was an adopted child myself most likely added immeasurably to the effect the film had on me as a viewer.)

François is an intelligent child, but troubled. The film makes the point that almost any child who is adopted or placed in a foster home, no matter how much love and care is given or how hard the host family tries to open their hearts to them, will be affected by emotional issues stemming from their situation. These might be overt or subconscious, but their presence is undeniable. In the case of François, who was placed into the system at a very young age, and has no real memory of his mother, it’s particularly heartbreaking. His feelings of separateness, his inability to connect with his foster parents on a meaningful, deep level, engender within him a sense of hopelessness and inevitability – he will never truly belong to anyone, and feels that repeated rejection is his destiny. While he is given love, shelter and sustenance from his hosts, after a while his innate desperation causes him to act out in ways that leave them no choice but to send him back into the system, to another group home or foster family. It’s as if he feels that there is no reason for him to fight against his fate, so he commits misdeeds in order to speed up the process.

He is shown at first in the home of a couple who appear to be in their late thirties or early forties – they have other foster children as well, and are troubled by François’ seeming inability to get along, to behave himself. He steals – both from family members and from local shops – and hangs with a gang of boys who seem intent on misbehaving in some very disturbing ways. In one scene, he and his mates are shown dropping his foster-sister’s cat down a multiple-level stairwell, apparently in a misguided ‘experiment’ to see if it will really land on its feet. (Needless to say, as disturbing as this scene is, it was shot in such a way that the animal was not really harmed.) The cat is, of course, injured gravely – when his sister is distraught over this, he promises to care for the animal, assuring her that it will recover. When it ultimately dies, and she inquires about it, he callously draws a finger across his own throat to indicate the animal’s fate – and receives a slap across the face from the girl as a reward. His foster parents see this behavior as the final straw, and call the social worker in charge of his case to request that he be taken from them.

In a gesture that might be seen as calculated by some, François uses some of the money his foster dad has given him to buy a parting gift – a scarf – for his foster mother, presenting it to her as he is being led out the door by the social worker. The conflicting emotions on both sides are very honestly depicted – while the mother feels that she is making the only choice she can realistically make for the sake of her entire family, she feels the bond that she nonetheless feels for the boy tearing at her. As for François, I believe the gift was given from the heart – for one reason because he purchased it instead of stealing it – and his farewell look from behind the window of the departing automobile shows real regret and sadness, as well as resignation.

The family with whom François is seen living for the greatest part of the film is an older couple, M and Mme Thierry (René Thierry and Marie-Louise Thierry), called ‘Pépère’ and Mémère’, respectively, probably in their sixties. We learn that they were each married before, and have children and grandchildren from those unions, but were too old to have children together. There are other foster children in their home, but the only one we see interacting with François with any regularity is Raoul (Henri Puff), who appears to be in his early teens.

Also living in the home is Mme Thierry’s aged mother, ‘Maman’ (brilliantly played by one of the only professional actors in the film, Marie Marc) – it is with this old woman that François bonds most closely, in a touchingly depicted but very believable relationship. Pépère and Mémère have seen a lot in their day – his stories of being a member of the French underground during the war captivate François – and have learned the lessons of patience over the course of their lives…and despite the honest, open love they attempt to give François, this patience will be stretched to the breaking point.

Once again, he begins stealing and hanging out with groups of boys who are older and up to levels of mischief beyond that which might be expected from a boy his age. In one particularly destructive prank, he and some friends stand on a bridge and toss some pretty hefty stones down at approaching cars – one hits its mark and causes a serious accident, which gets the police involved and wakes the Thierrys up to the fact that they might not be able to handle this child, despite their best intentions. Once again, François has felt the subconscious need to nudge his fate along – there might not be a traditional ‘happy ending’ to a film such as this, but it’s an experience that will no doubt touch viewers very deeply, on varied levels (depending on their own background and feelings).

Pialat’s style of shooting and editing, which of course developed further as his career progressed, is fascinating to see in its infancy here. Rather than striving for smooth transitions from one scene to the next, he makes the audience do a bit of work, which I believe causes the viewer to become even more involved in the film than would otherwise be the case. Relation to the film’s timeline is not always apparent from scene to scene – just how long the break between them is, relative to the story itself, is not always clear. Is the scene we’re watching happening immediately after the previous one, or have several days or weeks passed? Pialat gives us very little chance to figure this out as the film plays out before us – it is only with hindsight that these aspects become more clearly defined. It’s one more technique that moves this film into a different category than most dramatic narratives – and one that causes it to burrow more deeply into the psyche of the viewer, ensuring a more lingering effect, giving cause for deeper reflection. Similarly, Pialat frames his shots unconventionally – rather than rely on close-ups and constant camera movement, he places the camera in a stationary spot, allowing it to take in the entire room. The characters move about in the space according to the story’s requirements (much of the movement and dialogue, while suggestions were made by the director, was improvised and spontaneous – a technique he used repeatedly in his career), giving the viewer more of a sense of actually being in the room with them, further heightening the feeling of reality in the film.

In one of the interviews included as a bonus item in this carefully-assembled two-disc release, Pialat appears on a French television show devoted to films that were well-received critically, but not commercially successful. The host introduces the film – which was apparently shown in its entirety – then speaks with Pialat afterwards. The director begins his discussion of the film in an almost self-deprecating manner, then turns the tables on the host, making the point that true creativity in cinema should never be stymied by the lack of commercial success – there are subjects to tackle and points to be made that are far too important to be ignored by such a vital medium. He even takes the French film-going public to task for not having the courage to support films that they might find ‘uncomfortable’ to watch. There are also other interviews included, featuring not only Pialat, but associates who have worked with him, discussing his art – as well as a documentary on the making of the film (a welcome treat, and unusual for a film made in 1968), which includes a round-table discussion by several former foster children who have formed a support group to aid others who have passed through the system in recognizing and coping with their resulting emotional issues.

The biggest treat for me, however, is the inclusion in the set of Pialat’s short film L’amour existe (Love exists), from 1960 – a stunningly effective 19-minute look at the numbing effect on French society caused by the emergence of sterile, nondescript suburbs which sprang up around the major cities after World War II. While rebuilding was a necessary occurrence, the short laments the lack of access to culture and recreation in these projects. The images are extremely moving, and the narration is right on target – there were aspects of society that were lost, never to be fully recovered…not the least of which was a sense of real hope for a productive and fulfilling life without the vitality and release provided by art and nature.

Masters of Cinema have done a wonderful job with this release – despite the age of the feature, their painstaking restoration has resulted in an image that is clear and compelling, with little visible damage artifacts. The restored sound tops off the presentation – it’s as if we’re viewing the film on its first release, in 1968. This is a great addition to their library (and to mine!), and a great service to film lovers.

2008-11-02T00:08:00.000-05:00

Pierre de Bethmann
Oui

Nocturne, 2007

Pierre de Bethmann is a recent discovery for me – but like most jazz players who impress me, I’ve found that he’s been around for a few years, playing in various contexts stretching back, per the discography info on his website, to 1995. That list shows nineteen appearances as a sideman for assorted artists (including separate releases by two bandmembers, David El Malek and Michael Felberbaum), four as a member of the trio Prysm, and three with his current band (expanded from a quintet on their first two albums to a septet for Oui). With the formation of his current group, he moved more firmly into Rhodes territory, exploring and expanding the sound of the instrument, sculpting a personal expression from its possibilities with his formidable talents. I was listening to Oui the other morning while I was talking with a friend on the phone – I had to put the receiver down for a moment to tend something in the oven, and when I came back, he asked me, ‘Man, who’s that working on that Fender…?’ The style that de Bethmann has developed over his career is one that’s going to grab the attention of anyone who hears him – he’s moving the instrument into new territory both rhythmically and melodically.

Five members of Pierre’s group have graced all three of his albums – the mutual respect and empathy they share are immediately evident in the results. David El Malek is incredibly fluid on tenor saxophone, capable of swoops and arcs of notes that could induce whiplash in the listener. Michael Felberbaum’s guitar goes from beautiful chordal background work to chopping rhythmic urges to blistering solos and back again with seemingly effortless (anyone who plays an instrument knows better!) changes of focus and gear. The double-bass work of Vincent Artaud and drums of Franck Agulhon provide an invaluable steady foundation for the group, but like the great players they are, they’re not content to limit themselves, illustrating time and again that they not only have the constantly changing rhythms firmly in hand, but that their imaginations are working to add accents, counterpoints and fills to complement the work of the others as well. New members for this outing are Stéphane Guillaume, an excellent alto saxophone player, adding a nice balance / foil to David El Malek’s tenor; and Jeanne Added, whose wordless vocals are every bit as integral an instrument as the ones wielded by the others. Singing at times in unison with Pierre’s keys, or with the guitar or reeds, or providing a melodic or rhythmic counterpoint, her tonal control is about as perfect as one could imagine.

The set starts off with a vengeance, Pierre’s Rhodes setting the pace on ‘Shema’ with a repetitive 7/8 figure, joined after a few bars by the rest of the group. The vocals, reeds and guitar play off each other a bit before the piece slows down a bit – after a section of voice-alto interplay, Pierre’s Rhodes enters for a length extrapolation, leaving no doubt in the listener’s mind as to not only his compositional imagination, but the magic with which that extends into his playing. Listening closely, it’s easy to imagine someone thinking there are two keyboards working – he’s gifted with a high degree of ambidexterity, one hand delivering chordal clusters while the other explores the melody with breathtaking freedom and grace. This piece goes on for almost ten minutes – but it never drags, and the first time I heard it, I was surprised at the end that it had been going as long as it had. For that matter, there’s only one track of the CD that’s under six minutes long – and thanks to the constantly changing melodic landscape, wide dynamic range and fluid interplay between the participants, there’s not a wasted note to be found anywhere.

‘Singulier’, the second track, enters with a rolling chromatic figure from the Rhodes, joined soon by Jeanne Added’s beautiful vocals – the two instruments intertwine their melodies in an almost mesmerizing spiral until Agulhon’s drums and Artaud’s double-bass solidify the rhythmic element. Reeds and guitar accentuate the determined beat for a moment, before the tune shifts down again, with Jeanne’s voice this time alongside some lovely guitar work from Felberbaum. Focus shifts repeatedly, rhythm reasserts itself, with some very nice, more forceful lead playing from the guitar toward the end of the piece. The third offering, ‘Air courbe’, begins with quiet alternating chords from de Bethmann, soon joined by the voice carrying the lead, with the others alternately providing support, accents, and comments of their own.

The set is extremely varied overall, with no one rhythm or colour dominating for very long. Melodies are never sacrificed in the process, providing a great deal of beauty for the ears – but at the same time, these folks never settle for simply making ‘pretty music’. There’s a lot of fire and imagination at work here, with some envelope-pushing time changes and more than a few angular melody tangents – at times it almost sounds as if there are two signatures being employed simultaneously by ‘sub-committees’ within the band, with the rhythms coming around after a bit to re-join, rather like the polyrhythms heard in some African music.

This is pretty amazing stuff, folks – and like many ‘discoveries’, a little research shows me that there’s a pretty deep well here from which to draw. The interactive discography on Pierre de Bethmann’s website reveals a money pit of extreme proportions (I loves my music, so...) – but that’s often the case with jazz players, given their propensity to perform widely with other artists, offering their services in whatever form can be creatively rewarding for all concerned. The nine tracks on Oui alone tell me that I’ve found a new favorite here – I've already come across a couple of Prism CDs online at prices so low that I couldn’t pass up ordering them, and I’ve added some others to a wish list that seems to grow much faster than I can reduce it (how many years has that been going on…?). The more ‘new’ (meaning, ‘new to me’) players that I discover, the more comforted I am that creativity will always find a way to be heard (or seen, or read, or experienced in whatever medium it’s found) – and in our world, it’s always a nice feeling to be reassured.

Check out his website – you can listen to audio samples from all four Prysm albums as well as his three latest releases. Also – visit out the site's ‘video’ section, with some really high-quality offerings to enjoy.

Pierre de Bethmann – official website

2008-10-29T21:50:00.001-05:00

The sound artist as shaman…
building bridges and opening inner doors

No one travels

along this way but I,

this autumn evening.

– haiku by Matsuo Basho

(Japan, 17th century)

There seem to be more artists dipping into the well of ambient / electro-acoustic music with each passing day. The more cynical listener might suppose than anyone and everyone with access to a laptop and audio shaping programs is getting into the act – and while it might be true that the wider availability of such hardware and software is causing a proliferation of sound artists, as is the case with all forms of expression, there’s a lot more to it than that. Slapping together bits of processed recorded sound – from whatever sources – still needs to have imagination, creativity and skill at its core in order to be artistically effective. If the genre doesn’t appeal to the listener, of course, it’s all going to sound like noise anyway…but for one who can appreciate the intent, structure and craftsmanship that go into such endeavors, the results can be more than simply rewarding or entertaining – when everything comes together in the right way, such projects can induce a psychological / physical shift in the listener that is absolutely shamanistic in its power to transport.

Shamanism can of course have religious / spiritual overtones, depending on the existing beliefs of the person on the ‘receiving end’ of such activity. For some time now, I’ve become aware of some parallels between this sort of shamanism and the practice of some forms of psychology / psychotherapy. Both the traditional practices and the more modern ones seem, at least to my view, to open the mind of the person under ‘treatment’ to knowledge or thought processes which are inaccessible or at least subsurface in normal thought activity. In tribal applications, this ‘mind-opening’ can offer up what seem to be communications with or visions of people or events that are physically out of reach. In psychological settings, the therapist can utilize various methods to make the subconscious of the client more available to conscious thought, thus giving the opportunity to see issues or problems in a different light or from a different aspect. The concept of employing psychological triggers to open the subconscious mind, revealing the sources of traumas that have adversely affected the psyche, allows the individual to better understand those traumas and to deal with them and the effects they have had on their life. It’s a tool for healing, for furthering understanding.

Music and other forms of art can have just such an effect on the listener or viewer – subtle aspects of the work can open psychological doors, allowing the recipient to experience altered / augmented understanding of seemingly unrelated subjects. The trigger could be a snippet of melody, a combination of sounds or colours, a fragment of lyrics or poetry, or any of a number of elements or combinations. Sound artists who utilize recordings of environmental ambience in their work, altering them to varying degrees (or sometimes not at all) can combine sonic ingredients that have the power to affect listeners even more than more conventional components, such as literary content, that act in a more direct way on the consciousness.

Each individual who experiences such works will, naturally, be affected in different ways and with varied intensity – and some will not be affected at all beyond finding the creation interesting or entertaining on a purely aesthetic level. One might feel touched by a piece of sound art (or music), or by a work of visual art, or by a film, and not immediately understand why it has affected them so deeply – if time is devoted to further reflection, especially with repeated exposure to the work, it might become more clear.

Some of the works below are made up almost entirely of sounds from nature, or from other environments – some of them contain elements that are more ‘musical’ mixed into the material. These are not recordings for cruising around in the car – the subtleties they employ are too delicate to be thoroughly appreciated or felt in such an atmosphere filled with distractions. All of this is not to imply that having these playing in the background – even as you sleep, for example – is inappropriate, only that they merit deeper listening as well.

John Kannenberg
Autumn ensō

Why Not, 2005

The ensō, basically a circle, is a symbol from Zen philosophy and calligraphy, used to invoke thoughts and images of enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and the void (description from Wikipedia). After viewing an art exhibition of works featuring the image, Kannenberg was inspired to create an ensō made up of autumn leaves arranged in a circle on the head of a snare drum. It wasn’t much of a leap for this sound artist to take his idea from a visual concept to an audio piece – and the results are pretty stunning in their combination of simplicity and depth. He has since released a DVD – he terms it a videopainting – to further the ideas presented in the sound version, including a live performance of the piece.

John Kannenberg’s website

Asher / Jason Kahn
Vista

and/OAR, 2008

A collaborative work, the environmental recordings that form the basis of Vista were made by Asher in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood – sounds heard on a pre-dawn walk through the streets and alleys, including generators and other mechanical sounds, idling motors, &c were then digitally processed and sent along to Jason Kahn in Switzerland. Kahn made his own recordings, also in the pre-dawn hours, walking around Lake Zürich, which were then sent to Asher, who processed these using the same methods he had employed with his own recordings. Kahn forwarded further recordings of the wind in the Swiss Alps, unprocessed, and the two artists then worked together on the final mix. The finished recording has an almost physical sense of space to it – one can practically hear the distance between the source of the sounds and the receptive organ (ear / microphone), giving the project a heightened feeling of reality despite the obvious alteration and manipulation of source sounds.

short review and samples on Smallfish

Loren Chasse
The footpath

Naturestrip, 2008

Loren Chasse / MNortham
The otolith

Helen Scarsdale, 2008

Both of these releases are based on field recordings – but instead of the more ‘passing’ sounds used by some of the artists above, Chasse literally gets ‘down in the dirt’ (or whatever element he finds) for a more ‘in your ears’ effect on The footpath. He has been described as using a microphone for an ear placed directly onto the ground – the sounds of footsteps (appropriate especially given the title) on gravel, clods of earth being crushed, rocks grating together, vibrations from unknown sources transmitted through the ground, all things available are brought into the mix and treated. Some sounds are recognizable, others remain a mystery – but it all fits together beautifully, creating a vivid sonic image. The otolith (named after part of the inner ear that transmits information on the angular attitude of the head to the brain, allowing it to perceive and implement balance, a very a propos reference) adds musical instruments – albeit unconventional ones, such as magnetic table harp and bowed wires – to the mix, while The footpath seems to have its source in ‘grittier’ sounds. Both recordings are stunning and very effective.

Loren Chasse official website

MNortham official website

And finally, the pièce de résistance – one of my ‘great discoveries’ this year…

Tetuzi Akiyama / Masahiko Okura / Toshiya Tsunoda
Manfred Werder : 2006[1]

skiti, 2006

This recording is simply amazing – and more than anything I’ve heard in recent memory, it has the ability to transport me to another place / time every time I experience it. I was blown away by the effect it had on me the first time I listened to it, and I continue to be stunned to find that it happens again and again. It’s a short piece, composed by Werder and performed by a trio of respected Japanese improvisers (Tetuzi Akiyama [guitar, stones], Masahiko Okuro [alto sax] and Toshiya Tsunoda [tambura]), recorded outdoors by a riverside outside Tokyo. I was expecting something completely different when I read the credits – what I got instead is an album of incredible beauty, on which one can barely hear the musicians touch their instruments (if at all, a definite possibility here). The overriding effect is of sitting in a garden or park, listening to the sounds of the world around – passers-by talking, crows in the sky, footsteps on the path, children playing (perhaps 50 yards away – another recording with a very real sense of distance and space), trains passing nearby, the wind, &c. Manfred Werder, who composed the piece, states in the notes to the CD release: ‘The world is sounding infinitely. There isn’t any silence without sounds. There isn’t any sound without silence. It’s not about exploring new sounds, but exploring a new relation to what the world sounds – as we actually are part of the world as the very phenomenon itself. What could a new relation to what the world sounds bring forth? In my work I try to describe a general situation where we are a part of it might already be the whole of the world…the fact that it sounds.’ He further describes the piece itself through a seeming subtitle, much as any ‘traditional’ composer might add information to a score in order to help the performing musicians better understand his intentions, ‘A place, natural light, where the performer, the performers like to be. A time. Sounds.’

I’ve wondered a great deal since acquiring this disc why it affects me so much. Is it the sounds of the children playing at a distance that remind me of some unspecific time in my childhood? Could it be the natural environmental sounds, so unadulterated and clearly reproduced, that bring to mind a completely stress-free place and time? The answers to these questions and others might come with repeated plays, with the passage of time – and then again, they might not. In the meantime, I find myself returning to this disc again and again, sometimes playing it repeatedly for a couple of hours at a time (it’s only a bit over 28 minutes in length). I’ve found from experience that, despite its overall low volume level, it’s not something I can play while I sleep – it’s far too personally involving for that sort of listening. It’s too rewarding on too many levels to relegate to the realm of slumber.

2008-10-29T12:51:00.001-05:00

Paolo Fresu Devil Quartet

Stanley music!

Blue Note (Italy), 2007

This album is a great example of a ‘perfect storm’ – four contemporary masters from the Italian / European jazz scene, who have played together before in various contexts, come together in a quartet to create music that is a living example of the old adage ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. It’s nothing short of stunning. (I have absolutely no idea about the meaning of the title, in case you might wonder...)

Paolo Fresu (trumpet, flugelhorn), under whose name the quartet operates, has long been a favorite of mine. As with most fine jazz players, he’s incredibly prolific, lending his talents to innumerable projects and configurations as a leader, co-leader or sideman – in every case he adds more than a little shine to the finished product. I can’t even remember where I first heard his work – but seeing his name on a recording is a sure sign of quality playing and compositional innovation. I’ve read that when he appeared at a jazz festival in Europe in the early 1980s as a relatively unknown player, the great Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava heard him and recognized that the future of jazz was in good hands. Fresu’s tone and control are absolutely amazing – coupled with the taste and sense of commitment that he displays in every outing, he’s definitely a force with which the music public will find itself reckoning again and again, producing a body of work that will reveal new gems with every dig.

Bebo Ferra is one of the finest guitarists I’ve heard – most of the recordings on which I’ve experienced his talent have showcased his work on acoustic or classical guitar. While there are moments of that beauty here as well, on this album he steps up on electric guitar and guitar synthesizer, issuing forth veritable lightning bolts of melodic energy that the listener might swear leave behind traces of brimstone in the air (perhaps one aspect of the quartet name…?). Never sacrificing melody or harmony for power, his guitar lines both lead the group and offer thoughtful support for the work of the others, shifting from fore to aft effortlessly with a grace that comes from a deep dedication to the music rather than any attempt to take control or show off.

In addition to their main instruments, Fresu and Ferra are credited with ‘multi-effects’ – the notes in the CD booklet don’t elaborate further, but beyond the numerous abilities of the guitar synthesizer, I suspect Fresu is utilizing a harmonizer of some sort with his horn. There are audible lines generated that on a casual listen might seem to be overdubs – on closer listening, they seem incredibly in-sync to my ears, leading me to suspect that they’re being produced ‘live’ as he plays. Rather than coming across as ‘gimmicky’ in any way, Fresu’s sense of restraint remains in control throughout the album – he never over-does the effect, using it to achieve fine results that add immeasurably to the mood and quality of the set. Similarly, at times I seem to detect lines played simultaneously by Fresu and Ferra that are pretty amazing – it’s the sort of near-telepathic communication between great musicians that comes from deep empathy and a unity of spirit.

Paolino Dalla Porta’s talents on the double-bass extend far beyond the limits too often imposed on the instrument – and thankfully, there are more and more players stepping outside the ‘rhythm section’ box in this regard. A fine composer in his own right, contributing two tunes to this set, Dallo Porta explores the entire tonal and dynamic ranges of the instrument, providing a firm foundation constantly, while providing contrapuntal / harmonic lines to Fresu and Ferra in such a smooth manner that one might be forgiven for realizing that so much of the music is coming from the double-bass.

The drums, handled here by the great Stefano Bognoli, are every bit as dynamically and sensitively nuanced as the other instruments – the beat is steady, to be sure, but Bognoli’s accents, fills and what could only be described as comments or conversation are breathtakingly precise and ear-opening.

The set opens with ‘Another road to Timbuctu’, jumping right in with a horn riff to which the melody returns after forays into melodic exploration from Fresu and Ferra – this is a driving tune, never letting up until the final notes, a great way to get things started. ‘Il tempo del sogno’, composed by Paolino Dalla Porta’, follows – it’s a beautiful, leisurely paced excursion that affords the listeners a chance to catch their breath, featuring restrained, lovely lines from Fresu, Dalla Porta and Ferra (some of his most jewel-like classical guitar work). Bognoli’s light drum / cymbal work on this tune is a great example of his abilities – it’s a talented drummer who can provide such delicate support without succumbing to the temptation to be heavy-handed. ‘Caledonian flowers’ features a bluesy melody line that both Fresu and Ferra explore to the fullest – the melody takes some surprising twists and turns, but never drifts into atonality. Fresu’s work with a mute is particularly effective on this track.

‘Moto perpetuo’ has an Iberian colour to it – now and then I can hear what I’m sure must be a conscious nod to Chick Corea’s classic composition ‘Spain’ (from Return to Forever’s 1972 Light as a feather), but it’s certainly an example of hommage rather than being derivative. The pace slows down again with the first of Bebo Ferra’s compositions to appear in the programme, ‘Giovedi’ – his acoustic guitar and Fresu’s trumpet play off each other beautifully, framing a melody that is melancholic and uplifting at the same time. Next up is ‘Dou Dou’, from the pen of drummer Bognoli – and if any listener believes that a composition by a drummer is automatically going to be built around percussion, let them immerse themselves in this piece. The other three instrumentalists figure so prominently in the delivery that it would be easy to guess that any one of them might have written it – it’s simply lovely, a great addition to the set. Bognoli’s drums are showcased in a nice, varied, brief solo to open the next track, a medley of ‘Devil’s game’ (by Dalla Porta) and ‘Labbra bianche’ (by Fresu) – two tunes joined at the hip that pick up the pace again very nicely. The first, after Bognoli’s introduction, features some near-free blowing that congeals into melody and takes off without looking back.

Fresu’s ‘L’afflato prodromo del misantropo’ has an almost anthem-like quality to it – the pace is slow, but without any sense of inactivity from any of the members, offering up a nice balance to the previous track. Some nice chording from Dalla Porta opens ‘Il diavolo e l’acquasanta’, another Bognoli composition – Fresu and Ferra trade lines over Dalla Porta, who gives the piece a palpable ‘noir’ feel until he opens up with a more walking pattern with a slight melody change. ‘Qualche anno dopo (Some year after)’, from Ferra, ends the tracklist – the tune has an almost hymn-like quality to it, perhaps more of a sense of reflection (hence the title). Fresu and Ferra weave in and out of each other, trading lines seemingly without much free improvisation, sticking to the beautiful melody without ever growing repetitive – another sign of great players. There’s a ‘ghost track’ included as well, following a bit of silence – a little online research led me to be confident that the title is ‘Cartoons’ – and the mood of the piece fits that very well, ending the set with both invention and humor.

Here’s a bit of video from YouTube featuring the quartet at the 2006 Umbria Jazz festival in Orvieto – it was apparently shot from the audience, so the quality isn’t exactly first-rate, but it’s not bad…

Stanley music! is one of those recordings that I initially heard via some samples online – I was so impressed with those brief excerpts that I immediately found a source for it and ordered a copy. When it arrived, it stayed in my player – and in my head – for several days. I’ve returned to it several times since then, always finding nuances revealed that I missed on previous hearings – a sure sign of a work of lasting quality. I think it’s safe to say that anyone who loves jazz – hell, anyone who loves good music in general, even those who might think they don’t enjoy jazz – would appreciate the quality of this recording. Why Paolo Fresu isn’t more widely known and appreciated in the US is a mystery – the labels who have issued his works are missing the boat here. These musicians are all players whose talents ensure the continued viability and vitality of not just jazz, but music of all genres.

Paolo Fresu official website

2008-08-28T23:23:00.000-05:00

Before the rain

written and directed by Milcho Manchevski
1994 – in Macedonian, Albanian and English with English subtitles
113 minutes – colour
[ Criterion DVD released 2008 ]

I’ve watched this film (in the wonderful recent edition from Criterion) three times over the past few weeks, and I cannot get it out of my head. I’m astonished that this is the first feature from director Milcho Manchevski – this is world-class cinema, crafted with artistry, depth and subtlety, taking on a subject as horrifying as the ethnic / sectarian violence that seems to be staining our world with terrifying, increasing frequency, filling it with imperfect, completely believable human characters, and setting it against a natural backdrop of some of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful locations, stunningly photographed, that a viewer is likely to encounter anywhere. The contrasts – images, events, emotions, values, choices and actions – are stark and sometimes jarring…just like those in the real world. Manchevski has created his story with care and commitment – and he has continued that commitment throughout the twists and turns of an arduous production path that at times left him wondering if the film would ever be finished, emerging with a finished product that any director would be satisfied to call a career-defining work. There is much complexity here – but it never gets in the way of a story that, while placed firmly in its setting, is so universal in its message that it cannot help but resonate within the heart and mind of any viewer anywhere in the world.

Before the rain is subtitled ‘a story in three parts’ – each has its own central protagonists, some of whom overlap, and well-defined environment. As the film progresses and moves from one section to the next, it becomes apparent that the timeline of this work is more than simply non-linear, or circular. Manchevski has taken inspiration – whether conscious or subconscious – from no less an artist than the unique M. C. Escher, constructing something the director calls ‘a circle with a kink in it’, or perhaps a Möbius strip of time. As contrived as this premise might sound at first, rather than distracting viewers from the soul and story of this film, it winds up enhancing it – at the end, when the credits roll, it is almost impossible not to ponder what one has seen, to replay it in the mind, to discuss it with others. And with a theme as vital as the seemingly endless cycle of violence that we human beings seem intent on inflicting on ourselves as a race, perhaps concentration, decompression and dissection of what has been seen, heard and felt over the length of this experience would do us more than a little good. It certainly won't end or go away if we ignore it.

The film begins with a quote from Serbian / Bosnian poet Mehmedalija ‘Meša’ Selimović (1910-1982) : ‘With a shriek, birds flee across the black sky, people are silent, my blood aches from waiting.’ Manchevski’s title itself, this quote from the epigraph of one of Selimović’s poems, repeated mentions of a rain that is expected, and other references that are imbibed with a sense of heightened anticipation, fill the film and the viewer with a tension that slowly builds to its climax. Several times the image of startled birds presages an event, or the arrival of a person, or lends a sense of foreboding to various scenes.

Part one (entitled ‘Words’) takes place in Macedonia – a monastery and the surrounding grounds, to be exact, which, from appearances, could be situated in any time during the past several centuries. It is only when we see a jet’s vapor trail in the sky that the scene comes firmly to rest in the present – but as this image is contrasted with the ancient painted icons and the darkened, serene architecture and lighting of the chapel and the monks’ quarters, there remains an undercurrent feeling of timelessness that pulls like a riptide, which lies on the landscape like a morning mist. A young monk – Father Kiril (Grégoire Colin) – is picking tomatoes in a garden, his face and posture radiating a sense of peace, sure in the knowledge that he is exactly where he belongs. An older priest approaches and begins speaking to him, making small talk about the weather. 'The flies are biting,' he says. 'It's going to rain.' As Kiril stands to walk with him, the elder man gestures across the plain below them and adds, 'It's already raining over there.' As they walk along the mountain path that leads from the monastery itself to the nearby chapel, the rolling sound of distant thunder is heard. The old man says, 'Thunder always gives me a jolt. I fear they've begun shooting here, too.' They walk past a group of children playing at war, using turtles as tanks, sitting in a circle, an apt visual metaphor for the just-referenced cycle of violence. Kiril's brother priest muses, 'Time never dies. The circle is not round'. This phrase recurs, in one form or another, in other parts of the film. A lightning strike in the distance is followed by its accompanying clap of thunder. The old man says, 'I nearly took a vow of silence like you. But this heavenly beauty merits words.' The natural panorama visible behind them is the perfect backdrop for his statement.

After the service, as Kiril is in his cell preparing for bed, he is shocked as he sits on his bunk to find it occupied. A young woman – her gender not apparent at first due to her short hair, slim build and the lighting – has taken refuge there. She speaks Albanian, Kiril speaks Macedonian – each of them is frightened at the circumstances in which they have found themselves. He understands enough from her manner that she is hiding from some sort of danger, and makes the decision to shelter her. Still unsure of his intentions, her trust begins to warm at his gift of fresh tomatoes (he has correctly guessed that she is hungry). A beautiful, effectively composed shot – one of many in this incredible film – captures her, out of focus, crouching in the dark across the moonlit room, with Kiril lying on his bunk, his back to her, his features clearly defined, smiling at the sound of her eating the tomatoes. In Albanian, she offers, ‘My name is Zamira’, and, after a pause, her judgment : ‘You are good’.

Kiril’s choice to hide the young woman in the face of the irreversable implications of his action on both of them is the central theme of the first part of the film. He has turned a corner on the path of his life from which there is no turning back. Armed men come to the monastery in search of the the girl – ‘The whore killed our brother’, they say. The elder priest attempts to calm them – the old and the new are contrasted again when the apparent leader of the armed men says, ‘An eye for an eye – blood is in the air’, to which the priest replies, ‘Turn the other cheek’. After attempting to dissuade them – and after receiving assurances, in private, from the other monks that there is no girl there – the head priest agrees to allow them search the premises. The men, while outwardly showing respect and reverence towards the priests, procede to ransack the place, leaving its traditional solitude shattered. Kiril’s tension increases as they prepare to search his cell. The director cranks this up subtly by not showing the activity directly, but by having the camera remain with Kiril on the floor below. The sounds of their search – the rough footsteps, furniture being dragged across the floor objects being thrown about and broken – filter down to the anxious monk. The camera looks up, and through the gaps between the floorboards motes of dust drift down into the light, dislodged by the men above. They return empty-handed – the girl has not been found, much to Kiril’s surprise and relief.

The searchers are not convinced, however, and refuse to leave the area of the monastery, posting a guard outside, waiting. Kiril returns to his cell to find it turned upside-down. In another old-new contrast, one of the intruders is seen outside the walls of the ancient structure, dancing to the sounds of the Beastie Boys blaring from his transistor radio. That evening, as Kiril lies on his cot, we can see the shadows of rain, running down the window opposite, play across his face. He starts from his sleep and sits up to see Zamira standing in the room. Rubbing his eyes, he looks again and realizes that he is dreaming – she is not there. A bit later, this time without the ghosts of rain on his face, he awakens again and sees her – this time the apparition is real, and she is indeed there. The next morning, two of the elder monks enter his cell unexpectedly and discover her – they feel they have no choice but to expel both the girl and Kiril from the monastery. Although Kiril and Zamira, the very picture of cast-out innocents being thrown into the world, manage to sneak past the sleeping guard, they soon encounter an equally dangerous foe – members of the girl’s family and villagers, including her grandfather and brother. Their animosity toward her is open – they consider her to be a troublemaker, her grandfather repeatedly calling her ‘whore’ and ‘slut’. It is not a pretty confrontation, and the outcome is bleak from the start.

The second part of the film is entitled ‘Faces’, and the setting moves to bustling, modern London. A brief shot of a brick wall, acting as a thread connecting the two parts, shows scrawled graffiti that echoes the phrase spoken by the old monk in the first part of the film: 'Time never dies. The circle is not round.' One of the main characters at the centre of part two is Anne (Katrin Cartlidge), who is employed at a news photo agency – she is married, but is estranged from her husband and involved in an affair with Aleksandar Kirkov (Rade Šerbedžija), a Macedonian-born photographer whose work in the theatre of the Balkan Wars has recently won him a Pulitzer Prize. He returns from his assignment in Bosnia unexpectedly and announces to Anne that he has resigned his position. Shocked by this revelation, she presses him for a reason – she understands both him and his passion for his work well enough, to know that something serious has happened to drive him to such a decision. She begs, ‘What happened, Alex? What happened to you in Bosnia…?’, to which he quietly replies, ‘I killed.’ He has always staunchly refused to ‘take sides’ in any conflict from which he is reporting, considering himself to be a neutral window through which the world can peer. Without explaining any further, it is apparent that he feels he has crossed that line, which he has long vowed never to do. He is broken, he is burned out – he is determined to return to his home in Macedonia, which he last visited 16 years before, and to take Anne with him, to live out their lives together there.

Anne is unable to bring herself to go with him on such short notice – there are complications in her life, not the least of which is her husband, that she feels cannot be resolved satisfactorly enough to leave immediately. She begs him, ‘…be patient with me’ – he has made up his mind to go back, with or without her, and replies, ‘Have a nice life…don’t forget to write’, and walks away.

The violence that people see on television news programs, and in newspaper and magazine photographs, can seem like another world – but sadly, more and more, that violence has a disturbing way of finding a crack in the wall and worming its way into everyday lives and activity. This is the infection that finds Anne and her husband Nick as they dine in a quiet, refined London restaurant. He thinks she has asked him there to attempt a reconciliation...but she reveals to him that she wants a divorce. As they work their way through this discussion, their private tension naturally mounts, and it is accentuated by frequent camera cuts between them, other diners, and an additional drama that develops when a man enters and begins talking with a waiter – both of them speaking in a foreign language, in tones too low to heard clearly (their dialogue is not subtitled, inferring that the viewer can learn all that is needed from the rhythm and pitch of their speech). The conversation between these two men becomes louder and more heated, growng into an abusive argument, with the man repeatedly tossing currency into the face of the waiter. The maître-d’, attempting to restore order, intervenes and tells the waiter that he should leave and not come back – effectively firing him – and that he should take his friend with him. The angry words escalate further into an all-out brawl, and customers scatter. Subdued by a number of other employees, the man leaves, only to return a few minutes later with the intent of wreaking even more violent havoc, spraying the room with gunfire. The ensuing carnage plays out so quickly that its over almost before it begins – yet, as is the case with scenes such as this, at the same time it seems to last forever.

Part three (‘Pictures’) sees a return to Macedonia – but instead of the tranquil setting of the ancient monastery, our first view is of a modern jet landing in Skopje. The subdued blue, moonlit hues that visually ruled much of part one are replaced by scenes brightly lit by sunlight, as if to imply that events are to be revealed more openly, unable to remain hidded, unavoidably seen by newly-opened eyes. Aleksandar has returned, and after a ride in an old bus along dusty rural roads to his old village, finds himself welcomed not by family and friends, but by a young thug brandishing an automatic weapon (one of the armed men who come to the monastery in part one), demanding to know where he is going. Alex turns to walk away and ignore him, but finds the youth in his path again, threatening to shoot him. The photographer sighs and says, ‘You’ll hurt yourself’, and before the boy can react, snatches the gun away from him, much as one would take a toy from an unruly child. ‘Anyone home?’ asks Alex, gently slapping the boy on the head. He slings the gun over his shoulder and continues into the village, leaving the young man hurling insults at him from behind. He makes his way down the narrow dirt lanes that are etched into his memory, pausing at one house and reaching up into a recess in the wall, retrieving a water pistol that he had apparently left their as a child. There is a sense of watching a classic American western as he walks along : villagers are reluctant to speak with him beyond a nod or a brief spoken greeting, or to meet his eye for more than a second. Startled birds take to the air, and we see a shot of a child's swing, in motion, apparently just vacated at the approach of a stranger. When he reaches his former house, he finds much of it roofless – the walls are standing, but the structure shows a weary, harshly-weathered visage that is the architectural equivalent of seeing the scars (both physical and emotional) of warfare on the faces of human beings who have endured such horror. Alex shakes his head, laughing silently at himself for ever imagining that he would find anything different after all this time, especially considering the events that have transpired in his absence.

After spending the night in his old bed, he re-connects with his cousin Zdrave and old friend Mitre (the latter turns out to be the uncle of the young man who had challenged Alex on his arrival). The sense that things have changed more than he imagined in Macedonia sinks in more and more as he spends time with his old acquintances – the ethnic and religious hatred that has cloaked other areas of the former Yugoslavia in blood and death has begun to spread its stain here as well. Christians and Muslims (Macedonians and Albanians, respectively) distrust and dislike each other, and have gradually grown physically apart, forming separate villages. The tensions that such feelings engender threaten to erupt into full-scale civil war at any moment – all that is left is for the fuse to be lit. When he announces at a welcoming dinner that he has come home ‘for good’, his words are met with disbelief and gentle ridicule. He is told that things have changed, which he begins to believe more and more as events progress toward what seems to be, sadly, an inevitable conclusion.

One person Aleksandar is determined to see is a woman named Hana, a former sweetheart for whom he has continued to harbor a deep love since their days in school together. He knows that she married after he was home the last time, and that she is now a widow. He has brought gifts for her, her father, and her two children as a token of respect and good will. His relatives and friends advise him to stay away from her – because she’s a Muslim – but he remains headstrong. When he walks into her village, his presence is challenged by armed men from the other side of the conflict, who immediately recognize that he is not one of their own. He manages to have a visit with her father that is courteous, but strained, despite the old man’s welcoming words and shared comments about the 'bad situation'. Hana brings a tray of refreshments into the room, but hardly speaks to him beyond a quiet welcome. In an almost subliminal moment, we see a young woman, Hana’s daughter peering around the corner at the guest, shooed away rapidly by her brother – it is Zamira, from part one of the film. The young man, Ali, is called into the room by his grandfather and is ordered to welcome Aleksandar. Instead, he glares at the guest and asks, 'Why is he here?' When the old man insists that his grandson kiss the photographer’s hand, the young man instead says, ‘I’ll slit his throat.’ He is gruffly dismissed by his grandfather. As Aleksandar walks away from the house at the end of his visit, he stops and looks back, as if into his past – he sees Hana in a window watching him. After a poignant look is exchanged, she lets fall the sheer curtain she has held up in order to peer out, a visual reminder of the tangible veil that divides their two cultures – it seems so fragile, but it keeps them apart as if it were a brick wall.

It is during this part of the film that the incident that caused Alex to resign his position is revealed. Attached to a group of fighters in Bosnia, he had complained to their leader that he wasn’t ‘getting any action’. The soldier subsequently pulled a prisoner (in a semi-Hitchcokian twist, this prisoner was portrayed by Malcho Manchevski, the director, since the assigned extra did not show up for work that day) from a line of detainees and shot him in the head in front of Aleksandar, coldly asking, ‘Did you get that?’ The photographs were taken – and with that event, his life changed forever. His long-held vow not to ‘take sides’ had been shattered in the space of a few seconds – if he had not killed the man directly, with his own hand, he felt responsible for the man’s death, and it was too much for him to bear. He writes a letter to Anne, explaining, 'My camera killed a man. I took sides.' He tells her that the photos, copies of which he has left with her, belong to her now, not to him. He wants no more part of them, but he still bears the guilt, which hangs around his neck like an invisible millstone.

The path down the road to greater violence opens wider when Mitre’s brother Bojan is attacked with a pitchfork – Alex arrives at the victim’s house just in time to watch him die, surrounded by his grieving family. As the photographer stands in the doorway to the death room, watching Bojan’s life literally slip from him, his blood dripping over the edge of the bed and onto the floor, he raises one hand to his face, in an unconscious gesture that is unmistakably that of snapping a picture – complete with the click of the shutter from the absent camera. Afterward, as he and the doctor walk away, mulling the situation as it exists in the country, they encounter a party of the dead man’s relatives and friends on their way to mete out their own brand of vigilante justice on a young Albanian girl who has been accused by local children after seeing her with Bojan prior to the attack. Whether the girl was even involved, or whether the attack was done in self-defense, perhaps in the face of an attempted sexual assault, is never considered. The seething prejudices cloud the air and narrow rational sight, removing any hope of objective assessment of cause and guilt, in effect pouring gasoline on smouldering embers. Aleksandar and the doctor sit to have a smoke (even though Alex has given up the habit) and ponder the situation. Hearing the medical man express his thoughts on the inevitability of the cycle of violence, Aleksandar declares, ‘You’re as crazy as the rest of them’ – the doctor nods and replies, ‘I’m still here…in this asylum.’

That night, in a visual reprise of Kiril’s dream from part one, Aleksandar is seen in his bed with rain shadows on his face – he is awakened by a noise and sits up to see Hana in the room. Just as in the earlier scene, when he rubs his eyes and looks again, she is gone. A few minutes – or hours – later, he is awakened again. This time she is really there, and tells him that her daughter is missing – the very girl that the vigilantes are out to capture. She asks Alex, ‘Don’t you see what is happening here?’ He replies, ‘I see.’ She counters with ‘No – you just watch.’ When he asks what he can do, she says, ‘Help me. As if she were your own.’ Hana does not go so far as to tell Alex that he is Zamira’s father – but the unvoiced possibility is left hanging in the air like a scent that won’t go away. The weight of its implication is in his eyes.

The next day, he goes to the sheepfold where he suspects the group is holding the girl. The same man who was seen asleep at his ‘post’ outside the monastery in part one is slumbering again, with an automatic weapon in his lap, at the door. Aleksandar strides in – this shot looking very much like something John Ford might have composed – and finds her. His cousin Zdrave tries half-heartedly to stop him – Alex admonishes him for his part in this dangerous game, saying, ‘Shame on you. She’s a child. A child.’ He wraps a cloak around her and begins to walk her away, with the intent of returning her to her family. As the others come to the realization that their prisoner is being taken from them, that their 'justice' is in danger of being denied, Mitre begins goading Zdrave to stop them, calling him a coward – and yet another confrontation between neighbours and relatives is set up. As the climax plays out, the ‘Möbius timeline’ connects and becomes clearer – but as the director says, it is ‘a circle with a kink’, containing elements that are deliberately left in an ‘impossible-to-connect’ state – more aspects for the viewer to consider.

This film is marvellous and a wonder to behold – with all of the beauty of its photography viscerally opposed to the violence that occurs or is implied, it’s a clear portrait of the dialectical nature of humanity’s aspiration to end war and violence and its seeming inability to break the chain of death and destruction. Instead of leaving one with a mood of despair, however, it gives cause for reflection on the causes of ethnic and religious hatred, as well as consideration of ways to stop the cycle. After all, one broken link can destroy a chain. Milcho Manchevski has brought forth a true masterwork here in his first feature film. It cannot fail to move the viewer both emotionally and intellectually; it is intelligently conceived and brilliantly executed by all concerned, yet it is not so ‘lofty’ a film that its message and theme are beyond the grasp of anyone. This is the first feature film shot in Macedonia after the break-up of Yugoslavia – many obstacles were encountered during production, including the sudden loss of one of the principal investors, and the project almost didn’t make it to completion. It went on to win the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1994, as well as garnering a nomination as ‘Best foreign language film’ at the Oscars that year. (Manchevski's latest film, Shadows, has been nominated for the 2008 Oscars in this same category.) The budget for Before the rain was comparatively small by contemporary standards – under $3 million – and several times during filming the crew had to scramble to find a way to accomplish the director’s aims – but after seeing it several times, I have to say that it’s an unqualified success. Additionally, Criterion’s treatment of the DVD release is predictably laudable. This is a superb, stunningly beautiful restored digital transfer, accompanied by several special features including an informative interview with the director, as well as a revelatory second-channel commentary by him along with film critic Annette Insdorf that runs the length of the film.

This is a film that I am very pleased to have in my collection – I’m sure I will return to it again and again through the years to come, with new discoveries and subtleties revealed with each viewing. It is one of the most moving works of cinema I have ever experienced – I cannot recommend it highly enough. I’ll end with a trailer – but keep in mind as you watch that this is a decidedly low-resolution embed from YouTube, and that it doesn’t even come close to doing justice to the beauty of this film…

2008-08-16T18:21:00.001-05:00

Monsieur Hire
the fine line between love and obsession

directed by Patrice Leconte
1989 / France / 79 minutes / colour
in French, with English subtitles

Patrice Leconte’s 1989 film Monsieur Hire, which was just released on DVD last year in the US by Kino, is a small masterpiece of a thriller that has stood the passage of time very well indeed. By allowing the characters to reveal themselves with subtlety and patience, and stressing their struggles (inner and outer) and their attempts to live with and liberate themselves from these struggles, rather than relying on setting and artifice, the director has removed the stifling effects of chronological and spatial imprisonment that mar so many otherwise well-made films. Monsieur Hire is thus a film with a contemporary feel, but the foundations of the story and the humans who populate it could easily be transplanted into any era – love, loneliness, insecurity, the suspicion of anything / anyone different, desperation, guilt, erotic obsession, scheming and betrayal are all present here, manipulating, infecting and challenging their mortal carriers, driving them to actions that lead to consequences none of them could foresee.

Leconte wrote his script based on a Georges Simenon novel (Les fiançailles de M. Hire, 1933) which had been filmed once before, as Panique, in 1947, by Julien Duvivier – in fact, it was Leconte’s viewing of the older version on television that first interested him in the project. Rather than attempting a ‘remake’ of Duvivier’s film, the director explains (in a short 1991 interview included on the DVD) that his intention was rather to create ‘a new adaptation’ which, while remaining respectful to Simenon’s story, became ‘…a more personal work, expressing my own ideas, also to express something that’s very interesting to me, and troubling, which is erotic desire.’ The film lives and breathes with the success of Leconte’s intentions, but in a way that stops far short of being erotically explicit or exploitive, relying instead on the stunning performances of the two leads (Michel Blanc as Monsieur Hire and Sandrine Bonnaire as Alice) to convey rich feelings with a dark gentleness that belies the powerful emotions seething beneath the surfaces of their characters’ external façades. Leconte and his principals accomplish this without resorting to any visceral sex scenes – the single short flash of nudity that occurs when Hire is depicted in a sauna at a high-class brothel is over almost before it begins.

The film opens with natural ambient sounds over the credits, which roll on a solid black background (the end credits are presented in a similar manner, effectively framing the film itself and thereby audibly ‘placing’ it in everyday reality). Music begins only with a fade to a scene that presages the voyeuristic aspects that will be developed more fully later on – the pale body of a young woman lies on the ground, almost in an attitude of peaceful sleep, the camera viewing her from a level very near the ground. A man – revealed as a police detective, who is never identified by name – looks down on her, then with a nod instructs his assistants to cover her with a sheet. We next see him sitting in her apartment, and hear his thoughts in a voiceover: ‘Pierrette died on her 22nd birthday. That’s no age to die, people say, as though there were a right age.’ He wonders about why she had to die, and who might have killed her, as he goes through the things in her apartment – a type of post-mortem voyeurism in itself – and muses that ‘…no one will hold her in their arms again...’, giving voice to the importance of touch, which will also be repeated throughout the course of the film. The scene shifts to the morgue, with her corpse on a table covered to the shoulders with a sheet, her hands folded in false repose in front of her. He kneels beside her, obviously moved, and places both of his hands over hers, leaning in for a closer look at her face before standing and, in a more procedural but still touching gesture, snaps a photo of her lifeless face.

Monsieur Hire is a lonely man in the deepest, most painful and desperate sense – he occupies a small, neat, sparsely furnished apartment. His job as a tailor allows him to manifest his talent and creativity, but only to a certain extent – the work he does seems professional and proficient, elegant in a simple way, but it is a solitary pursuit, done in a small shop that is inhabited only by him, the occasional customer, and a small cage of white mice he keeps as pets. The depths of his feelings are never displayed overtly by Michel Blanc – his portrayal, however, is rich in the subtlety with which he allows the viewer to know Hire more intimately and effectively than if he were writing his own biography, or pouring out his soul to a therapist. Blanc manages to convey more with an almost imperceptible shift of his eyes than most actors express with blatantly obvious displays of emotion. The tenderness with which he removes a dead mouse from amongst the others in the cage, gently wrapping the body in a carefully chosen remnant left by his work, then dropping it, almost ceremoniously, into the river, is very moving.

Hire’s neighbours revile and distrust him. The children who live in his apartment building regularly make him the target of their taunts (he sits stoically at his rollup desk, eating a poached egg, hardly reacting at all when they pound on his door, then run away, laughing, down the stairs). Yet our first glimpse of him, in one of the film’s earliest scenes, shows him extending kindness to one of them, his hand on the head of a little girl, gently directing her gaze toward a doorway, having her count to 30, in an apparent attempt to cure her of a headache, or perhaps a fear, by distracting her in a relaxing manner. When she finishes counting, he removes his hand, bends slightly to address her, comfortingly saying, ‘See…? All gone now.’ He then walks away, headed to his tailor shop. She looks after him with a gaze that is so unaffectedly childlike that it could not possibly be coaxed from a performer, a mixture of gratitude and unease – the man who has been the butt of so many pranks has shown her a moment of honest compassion, and she doesn’t quite understand it.

His aching solitude finds an outlet in his furtive, frequent viewing of Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire), a beautiful young woman who lives in the apartment building across the way. Rarely closing her curtains, she goes about her life unaware that she is being watched – for hours every day, apparently – by the solitary Hire from his darkened window. She casually dresses and undresses, bathes, does her chores, and conducts a love affair with her fiancé Emile (Luc Thuillier), all under Hire’s steady, unflinching gaze. It is only by a chance flash of lightning one night, illuming his face in an almost ghostlike manner, that she sees him in his window and realises that she is being watched. Shocked and frightened at first, she gradually becomes fascinated with this voyeuristic stranger, and sets up a situation through which – to Hire’s subtly revealed but obvious horror and discomfort – the two of them meet face to face.

The detective investigating the murder of the young woman turns his attentions early to the reclusive, almost universally despised Hire, his instincts aroused by the fact that the man is a loner, neither liked nor trusted by those who live around him. He attempts to coerce a reaction by asking why he is disliked so much. Hire relates, ‘They don’t. It’s true. But then, I don’t like them.’ Pressed to explain, he adds, 'I’m not very sociable or friendly, and they don’t like that. Conversations stop when I approach and resume after I’ve passed by. It doesn’t bother me. I prefer silence. I don’t like to talk.’ The detective nods and observes, ‘You’re a strange guy.’ Hire responds, ‘I don’t agree. See? You’re just like the rest of them.’ He then discovers that he’s under suspicion – the detective mentions the murder and the fact that a cab driver saw a man in a dark overcoat running toward Hire’s apartment building. The tailor shows no emotion, merely commenting that ‘Life is horrible’. He then gets in a subtle jab of his own, saying, after the investigator has apparently faked sudden pain in order to elicit a reaction, ‘It can’t be easy to still be just a detective at your age.’ It hits home – the expression on the face of the policeman reveals this.

The detective continues to question Hire frequently, returning again and again, both to the shop and to the small apartment, sometimes almost brutally hounding and embarrassing him, in one instance forcing him, in the presence of several of his neighbours, who have gathered out of morbid curiosity, and very likely in the hope of seeing him squirm, to reenact the scene witnessed by the cab driver. One of his neighbours goes so far as to put out a foot to trip him, causing him to stumble and fall to the ground. When the cabbie admits that he cannot say with total certainty that Hire was the man he saw that night, the detective calls off the ‘show’ and the crowd disperses.

The police investigation reveals that Hire has a record (just how long ago the offense occurred is not revealed) – casually showing up at a bowling alley where Hire has apparently been engaged to draw a crowd by exhibiting his skill at the game, the detective confronts him with it, ‘…six months for indecent assault. That’s not going to help your case.’ The tailor’s face is impassive, and the detective continues to attempt to pry information for him, questioning him about his name, which Hire freely admits was changed from Hirovitch by his father and grandfather. Continuing, believing that he is dealing with a ‘simple’ sexual predator, the policeman attempts to shock a reaction from Hire by asking, with a smile, ‘Tell me, Monsieur Hire…how long is it since you came inside a woman?’ The tailor makes no reply, his face revealing nothing beyond a brief sidelong glance.

The friendship that grows between Alice and her voyeur is a strange one – her feelings of shock and danger seem to disappear rather quickly, replaced by expressions of understanding, accompanied by a revelation that she actually finds herself enjoying being watched. The love that Hire has felt for her for some time grows even stronger – and while initially he attempts to remain emotionally aloof, he begins to let his feelings for her become known, a little at a time.

At one point, he takes her to the brothel he has regularly visited, recounting the repeated scenes with various girls in detail – his emphasis on the subtle, tactile aspects of their contact illustrate that the sex act itself is not the ultimate goal for him. His life is such an isolated existence that he values simple, honest touch above other aspects of physical intimacy. He tells Alice that he has stopped coming to spend time with the prostitutes because he has fallen in love with her, and doesn’t need the attentions of these women any more. His detailed description of his experiences at the brothel shock and repulse her, but at the same time it’s easy to see that she’s touched by his honesty, and that she believes him when he professes his love for her. His narrative implies that events were almost exactly the same each time, and that the women with whom he spent time there were interchangeable to him because the services they offered were not felt on a deeper level, making this activity an easy thing for him to forego.

Emile, Alice's fiancé, is apparently involved, or has been involved, in some sort of activity that has caused him to be under the gaze of the police…yet another type of voyeurism. The tension he feels under this scrutiny begins to loom larger in their relationship, causing emotional cracks to appear. At one point, he assures Alice that he wants to marry her – when she reminds him of this later, telling him ‘…the time is now’, he hedges, citing his problems and uncertain future. As her relationship with Emile becomes less satisfying and more unpromising, we see Alice apparently begin to rely emotionally more on Hire. The lonely man finds himself beginning to believe that the two of them might share a future together, and to think more solidly along those lines as the film comes to its climax. Rather than reveal any more about the plot here, I’ll just state that like all well-made thrillers, there are twists and turns along the way that are quite skillfully and believably made real by the director and his cast.

More than simply presenting the story itself, the film gives the viewer plenty of cause to contemplate the fine line between love and obsession, along with all of the grey areas that surround these two states. Hire’s voyeurism of Alice, while inarguably disturbing, is pursued by him with a pure heart, with an almost meditative calmness and reflection. He is never seen engaging in physical self-gratification in relation to his voyeurism, nor is it ever implied. Just as the early scene with the little girl illustrates, I believe, that Hire is in not a sexual predator, per se, another, depicting him at work in his shop setting the hem of a dress for a young female customer, shows that him visibly undistracted by the legs of the young woman (the rest of whom is never shown) standing on the fitting stool just inches from his face. The consummate professional, he concentrates on his work, without an iota of lust in his eyes or in his expression, simply asking her to turn a bit now and then so he can continue to progress around the hem of the dress. This is an extremely complex character whose inner thoughts and feelings are not clumsily conveyed by over-emotive acting. The skill with which Michel Blanc fleshes out his part is immense, on a career-defining level, quietly and completely stepping into the shoes and soul of a man whose pain and loneliness have manifested themselves in facets that open slowly to the audience. It’s almost like watching a flower unfold – and the beauty, despite the darker sides of the character, is undeniable. Sandrine Bonnaire – who has given many standout performances in her career, including a veritable tour-de-force as the young vagrant in Agnès Varda’s 1985 masterpiece Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi), is absolutely perfect here as well. Patrice Leconte has brought forth something very special in Monsieur Hire – a finely-crafted, intelligently written and well-acted thriller, to be sure…but a treasure of much deeper proportions that will reveal more and inspire more thought and contemplation with repeated viewings, even after the ending is known to an open-minded and appreciative audience.

trailer :

2008-08-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

Stephan Micus
Snow

ECM Records, 2008

What the sky is made of I do not know –
sometimes it is made of dancing snow.
– Rose Tremain (quoted in the CD booklet)

Every time a new release from Stephan Micus reaches my grateful ears, I find myself reaching for superlatives with which to describe the magic he performs – but in the end, of course, words fall far short. I’ve been listening to his work since the release of his first album, Archaic concerts, in 1976, hooked happily from the beginning. Few people who know me have ‘escaped’ the experience of sharing one of his recordings with me – I have no idea how many times I’ve uttered the words ‘You’ve got to hear this…!’ in relation to his music. His art is something that never fails to touch my heart and soul at the deepest level – and unlike many things that come and go with moods and other variables, the echoes remain. Now and then, I find myself humming a melody, or simply listening to it play out in my mind, only to realise that its source is some Stephan Micus release, recent or otherwise.

Unlike too many performers who gather instruments from around the world and weave the various sounds into their own personal audio fabric, Stephan’s compositions / constructions seem to possess a spirit that goes far deeper than ‘simple sound’. He combines instruments from far-flung locales which would likely never be heard together were it not for his imagination. The musical paintings he conjures from his palette never ring false or sound forced – it’s as if the listener were sitting in on a gentle, natural conversation between cultures. The best aspects of each are intermingled, yet preserved – even when one instrument holds sway over another, it’s a brief dominance and not an overbearing one. The respect with which Stephan holds the music of the traditions he has touched in his musical travels passes from his heart through the instruments in the form of something that is ancient and new at the same time, eternally being reborn.

Snow is Stephan’s 20th album since 1976 – all but two of them have been released on Manfred Eicher’s ECM Records or on its affiliated label, JAPO. Each one has its own personality, array of employed instruments, and themes – but they’re all distinctly Stephan Micus creations. Instruments on this new release include duduk (a double-reed instrument from Armenia, this particular one being specially made for him to play in a lower register than the standard model); doussn’ gouni (a harp from West Africa with gut and nylon strings); maung (a set of 40 tuned gongs from Burma); Bavarian zither (utilising his own tuning and strings); steel-string guitar; sinding (another West African harp, this one with cotton strings); hammered dulcimer; nay (an Egyptian hollow reed flute, used extensively in Middle Eastern and North African music); and charango (a small guitar-like instrument from the Andes with 5 pairs of strings), which is a new addition to Stephan’s sound.

The pieces on Snow, like all of Stephan's works, are constructed and performed with great thought – rather than attempting to reproduce the music of the various cultures from which he draws his tools, Stephan groups them together in ways that create a new musical language, but without turning his back on the sources that have inspired him. On the ECM website, he says, of the album’s title, 'To me, snow is one of the most beautiful of all natural phenomena. It’s closely associated with lasting impressions of my original home in Bavaria, especially the long moonlit walks I used to take when I lived in the Alpine foothills. I’ve always regarded snow as the essence of magic, even more so today, now that there’s so little of it and the glaciers are disappearing.’ Impressions of the beauty and majesty of nature abound in his work, as well as the love and respect he so obviously feels for the people and cultures he has encountered. He goes on to speak about the instruments themselves, and how he feels drawn to employ them: ‘I feel strong ties to the sound of these age-old instruments. To me they lie somewhere on the border between an object and a living being, between a thing and a person. Sometimes I actually think of them as sentient beings. You have to listen to what they want to say. When you do, you connect almost automatically with their traditional idiom. To me, it’s important not to adopt any pre-existing melodies, or even fragments of them, but to develop a language of my own.’

Some selections feature several instruments, utilising the overdubbing techniques available in the modern studio with great taste and sensitivity – at times a single ‘voice’ is enough, the perfect setting for the ideas and images he wants to convey. Now and then, he adds his own voice to the mix, with wonderful results. On this recording, it’s done in groupings of 22, 11 and 15, on three selections – sometimes the effect is that of a choir, other times in a call-and-response setting.

Stephan Micus performing in Portugal (photo by Filipe Palha)

‘Snow’, the title track which opens this set, features 2 doussn’ gouni, a duduk and an array of percussion. The beauty deepens with ‘Midnight sea’, in which a duduk soars in and out of the sound of the zither. Stephan’s gentle plucking on the strings of the sinding open ‘Sara’, then his solo voice enters, soon joined by harmonies – he’s said that the words he sings ‘have no known meaning’, indicating that they’re not in any given language, but spring from a universal voice within him…but it’s hard not to hear or imagine meaning in them. ‘Nordic light’ is a lovely charango solo – the notes on the ECM website refer to it as an improvisation, which makes it even more amazing for its breathtaking beauty. ‘Almond eyes’ features 11 voices, accompanied by a steel-string guitar and percussion. The duduk and the doussn’ gouni return for ‘Madre’, along with maung and other percussion. ‘For Ceren and Halil’, the palette is expanded a bit after a opening charango solo – Stephan brings 8 charangos, duduk, nay, sinding and 5 hammered dulcimers into play, arranged and played with such grace that it never sounds ‘crowded’ in the least. The album ends with the beautiful ‘Brother eagle’, featuring some incredibly beautiful playing on the bass duduk (the rich tones of which will likely rattle your speakers, but in a good way), as well as 2 sinding and 15 voices.

Every single track on this disc is a treasure – the titles are listed as ‘parts’ of the entire album, a usual practice for Stephan, and it’s very easy to hear them as a whole…it’s as seamless as a breath, and equally natural. His music can be strongly rhythmical, like a pulse, without ever being ‘pounding’…it can be as ethereal and diaphanous as a cloud over a mountain…it can be as deep and mysterious as the sea…it can evoke an image so crystalline that it could be a photograph…it can conjure a memory that is so enveloped in mist that it seems to be from another life. His music is eternity…it is very much the present at the same time – and aren’t those extremes, and everything in between, contained in each and every one of us? His music is as universal as music can be – if it’s something you’ve never experienced, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve often said that if I had to choose the music of just one artist in my entire collection to keep for the rest of my life, it would be the work of Stephan Micus, without hesitation.

Stephan’s catalogue:

1976 Archaic concerts (Caroline Records, 1976 [LP]; never released on CD)
1977 Implosions (JAPO, 1977)
1977 Koan (ECM, 1981)
1978 Till the end of time (JAPO, 1978)
1978 Behind eleven deserts (Wind Records, 1978 [LP]; Verabra Records, 1990 [CD])
1981 Wings over water (JAPO, 1982)
1980-1983 Listen to the rain (JAPO, 1983)
1985 East of the night (JAPO, 1985)
1986 Ocean (ECM, 1986)
1987 Twilight fields (ECM, 1987)
1989 The music of stones (ECM, 1989)
1990 Darkness and light (ECM, 1990)
1992 To the evening child (ECM, 1992)
1993-1994 Athos (ECM, 1994)
1995-1996 The garden of mirrors (ECM,1997)
1997-2000 Desert poems (ECM, 2001)
1999-2001 Towards the wind (ECM, 2002)
2001-2004 Life (ECM, 2004)
2003-2006 On the wing (ECM, 2006)
2004-2008 Snow (ECM, 2008)

2008-07-26T21:37:00.002-05:00

Vengo
a thoughtful, masterful meld of music and drama

2000
90 minutes / Spanish with English subtitles
written and directed by Tony Gatlif

The insert accompanying the DVD release of Tony Gatlif’s amazing film Vengo gives a succinct but very informative background on the forces that combined to create the musical form called flamenco – a ‘perfect storm’ of Christian, Hebrew, Muslim and, later, Gitano cultures came together and something completely new and wonderful was born. It’s a process that continues to this day, blending musical flavorings from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and as far away as India into a tasty stew that is unequaled in its ability to express the joys, pain, passion, sorrow and loss that boil within everyone, yearning to freely express themselves, to share with others the emotions that live within the human heart and soul. Director Tony Gatlif has Gitano blood flowing in his veins – his love of his heritage, his respect for Roma history and culture, and his knowledge of the elements that have formed it (and continue to form it, for it is like an extensive living organism) have manifested in his art, resulting in some incredible filmmaking, his first work appearing as early as 1975. Especially notable among his other films are Latcho drom (1993), Gadjo dilo (1998), Swing (2002), Exils (2004) and Transylvania (2006) – Roma culture and music play huge roles in all of them.

Vengo opens, appropriately enough, with a scene in which the viewer sees both musicians and listeners arriving by boat at a palatial residence perched high on a rock above the water. A guitarist (the great Tomatito, one of Spain’s finest) and violinist begin to play with amazing virtuosity, feeding off each other as if they were of one mind – after a few minutes, as if in response, a group of Arabo-Andalusian players take up their instruments. To the accompaniment of an oud, a violin, a flute, percussion and a chorus of responsive vocals, Sheikh Ahmad Al Tuni begins to sing, clinking on a glass for additional percussion, an ecstatic expression on his face. Soon the Gitano players come back in, with the whole picture underscoring the deep relationships between the cultures and musical forms that gave birth to flamenco.

Gatlif’s camera cuts from the concert to a shot of the whitewashed walls of a church and its attached gallery of crypts, stark against a blue sky filled with rolling grey clouds – the dramatic element of the film comes into play. Caco (pictures above, wonderfully played by Antonio Canales, known in Spain as a fine dancer), the head of a Gitano clan, stands before the tomb of a young woman who is revealed to be his daughter Pepa – his grief is deep and clear, and its effects on him and those around him will become even clearer as the film progresses. Leaving the churchyard, Caco and his entourage – family members and bodyguards – arrive at their village to find graffiti scrawled across the wall : ‘Sandro – you will be avenged’, the first allusion to the bad blood that exists between Caco’s family and a rival clan. He immediately fears for the safety of his nephew, Diego (Orestes Villasan Rodriguez, in an absolutely stunning performance), racing up a hill to assure himself that the young man is safe.

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The ‘business’ of Caco’s family – beyond his part-ownership of a Seville bar – is never detailed, but large bundles of cash are handled, instructions (both verbal and written, at times cryptic) are given and carried out at his bidding – there’s never any implication that anything illegal or illicit is going on, but its possibility is there. An associate talks with Caco, communicating to him that he has a potential buyer for Caco’s share of the bar – when asked the identity of the potential purchaser, he’s told that the man wants to remain anonymous. This brings a comment from Caco referring to the Caravacas family – ‘that scumbag family’, he spits – further identifying his family’s adversary, and the probably source of the threatening graffiti.

Sheltering and nourishing his nephew Diego and dealing with his own massive grief over the death of his daughter Pepa are the controlling forces in Caco’s life – even as he works to keep the reins of their businesses tightly in hand. He takes Diego to Seville – a trip involving both business and pleasure – and introduces him to an apparent prostitute, a young woman he knows called La Catalana, with whom he has prearranged a liaison with the young man. Making an excuse of having to run an errand, he leaves the two of them alone together in an empty bar – later, after his return, as he and Diego walk down the darkened street together, he attempts to pry information from the boy about what happened between him and the woman. Diego is touchingly, shyly reticent, finally expressing, in response to Caco’s macho ‘So how was it…?’ with a comment that illustrates the depth of his own thought, understanding and wisdom concerning such matters, ‘It was good – but it wasn’t love’ – it’s inspiring to see that he knows and recognizes the difference at his young age.

Later, the two of them meet up with other family members, friends and associates for a performance arranged and financed by Caco featuring one of Diego’s favorite singers, La Caita, at a restaurant. This amazing singer was also featured in Gatlif’s film Latcho drom (click here for a clip from that film featuring her) – the sheer power and passion with which she throws herself into her cante is breathtaking. She sings, ‘In the street of winds, your body and mine came together’ – this is the flame of the unfettered and untamed voice of pure emotion. Accompanied only by a guitar or two, some improvised percussion and palmas from around the table, she very nearly sets the screen on fire. Across the restaurant, a table filled with a couple of dozen soldiers listens – one of them strolls over to be closer to the music, with Alejandro (Caco’s cousin, one of his bodyguards and his closest confidant, played with fine subtlety by Antonio Perez Dechent) showing concern that trouble might develop. More of the soldiers make their way over as the music comes to its incredible climax – at the end of La Caita’s song, one of them calls out, ‘¡Viva arte!’, to which Alejandro replies, forcefully and with due pride, ‘¡Viva flamenco…flamenco puro!’ This performance by La Caita is a moving, graphic example of ‘flamenco puro’ – the music that the Gitanos create for themselves, to give expression to their souls, as opposed to the flamenco that is performed for tourists, or the watered-down version propagated by so many elements of popular culture media.

Once again the scene shifts, depicting Caco at Pepa’s tomb. The pain in his heart is inexpressible – but conveyed beautifully, and deeply felt. He lights a candle for her and murmurs, ‘Your death burns me…’ as he taps gently on the glass that covers her picture and the marker sealing her crypt. As Alejandro waits with the others outside the churchyard, the wind begins to blow – softly at first, almost unnoticeable – through the leaves and branches of a tree. As it catches his attention, Alejandro walks over to it, then under it, allowing the branches and leaves to surround him. ‘Listen…’, he says to his companions, who join him. Antonio (Bobote, a musician himself) closes his eyes and immerses himself in the sound – he says, ‘This tree’s got duende – sounds like a lament’, and begins to sing softly. Is it an echo or a foreshadowing of loss?

Diego loves flamenco, and he loves to party – he mentions another group to Caco, Las Cigalas de Jerez, and his uncle promises to get them for their next party. It begins in the afternoon, eats up the night as if with a fork and knife, and continues on into the next morning. Caco’s sorrow cannot be subdued by the music and revelry – it’s as visible in his eyes and on his face as an old scar. He consumes glass after glass of wine, finally passing out, helped by a couple of his aged aunts to a place where he can give in to his alcohol- and grief-induced slumber. As he slips into unconsciousness, he mutters his lost daughter’s name, ‘Pepa…’ and fades into the oblivion of sleep. At one point, in the light of morning, Diego looks in on him, showing that the love of family is more than a one-way street.

Caco is seen talking with a couple of members of the Caravacas family, revealing the source of the bad blood between the two clans – Caco’s brother Mario killed a member of their family, and they are grimly determined that ‘someone has to pay’ for the death. The celebration around the christening of their dead brother’s daughter, is seen by Caco as a chance for rapprochement – in the company of his bodyguards and family, he brings Diego to the gathering as a sign of good will, insisting that they have not come to insult the family of the dead man, but that he wants to talk, in order to heal the rift between them. Music again plays an important role in this scene, in the form of a performance by an absolute legend of cante flamenco, Paquera de Jerez. Caco and the brother of the slain Caravacas man separate themselves from the opposing entourages (who continue to exchange insults), but little is resolved. The tensions that have slowly and inexorably mounted throughout the film continue to do so, ultimately leading to the climax.

Vengo is remarkable for a number of reasons. It’s well-written, creatively and sensitively directed, acted with a great mixture of believability and feeling, with impressive and moving cinematography – add to this the seamlessness with which Gatlif has combined the elements of drama and music, and you have something of very rare quality indeed. I’ve viewed it a number of times now, and I always come away more impressed with it than before. The storyline is intelligent and well-developed, its portrayal of Gitano culture is never patronizing or simplistic, and the musical element is woven so naturally and tightly into the film that the viewer is never left with the feeling of watching a music video (a trap into which far too many films that attempt such a combination find themselves stumbling, despite their best intentions). The DVD release, through Home Vision Entertainment, features a sharp image that doesn’t appear to suffer at all from over-zealous tweaking or image-boosting – and the sound is crystalline, allowing the dialogue, environmental sounds, and the stunning music to be heard unencumbered by any unnatural-sounding effects. There are a couple of nice bonus features as well – interviews with Antonio Canales and Antonio Dechent, and a short film entitled Los Almendros – Plaza Nueva, about contemporary Gitano life, that was shown at European film festivals in conjunction with Vengo.

The DVD is readily available through domestic US sources, for either rental or purchase. I can’t recommend this one highly enough – and I can’t see myself ever tiring of returning to it. The wonderful soundtrack CD is available as well, and is a great introduction to this moving music.

2008-07-13T01:00:00.000-05:00

Agujetas cantaor

1999
directed by Dominique Abel

Manuel Agujetas: scarred genius, a living treasure of cante flamenco.
It just doesn’t get any more ‘real’ than this man and his music – and this film is an incredible document of them both. Director Dominique Abel has gifted both the film world and the music world something very special indeed here – an audio and visual record of one of the greatest flamenco cantaores ever to dip into this deep well of tradition. As it opens, the viewer sees a man – Agujetas, apparent as he gets closer – slowly walking into view along a dusty country lane, singing. After a moment, it registers that his voice seems to be carrying a good distance – could this be a remote mic? – no, it’s simply the power of a voice wielded by an artist unlike any other, in the present or the past, in this world or an alternate reality. This is Manuel Agujetas. This is cante flamenco, sung in the martinete style (literally, ‘pile driver’). This is – as part of the text on the DVD cover notes – ‘A fierce enemy of modern ways, and a free and original personality that has been mythicized for the good and the bad of the gitano world.

There are ‘interviews’ (which are mostly unforgettable monologues delivered by Agujetas to the camera), priceless archival footage (the scene, one of the samples below, showing Agujetas’ father, also a respected cantaor, singing, then watching with almost tearful pride as his son sings, is extremely moving) and present-day performances included in this film – and the package comes with a 50-minute CD containing six songs from the soundtrack. Manuel is seen performing in a small venue with the amazing guitarist Moraito – whose deft, unbelievably fast and nimble fingerwork left me torn between watching him or Agujetas (fortunately, the director wisely chose to feature a balance of both)…or the audience. There are people present who are obviously familiar with Agujetas’ style – one man in particular seems to be on the verge of crying tears of joy, he is so moved by the cante. Also in attendance are those who have evidently not been exposed to the explosive, fiery singing of this man – their heads are seen to flinch and jerk at his outbursts…but no one is leaving. This is some of the most compelling, captivating music you’ll ever be likely to hear – nor will you ever forget it.

In the monologues, Agujetas is seen walking around his self-built house and land, showing off the well he says he dug by hand, the vegetables he grows, the iron forge he still works, and the railings and other handiwork from there, of which he is justifiably proud. He speaks on not knowing the year of his birth, boasts of not being able to read or write – he says, ‘A person that knows how to read and write can’t sing flamenco because his pronunciation isn’t right’. He knows hundreds of lyrics by heart, having learned them over the course of his life, without the benefit of any of them being written down on paper. He adds, ‘I get up with a headache because I dream of singing every night.’

Observers, fans and aficionados comment on his music in different parts of the film – one man says, ‘Agujetas’ singing is rough, like the first sip of whiskey’. Another offers, ‘Agujetas’ singing hurts you. It makes you bleed. It cuts open your flesh like a knife.’ Author and flamenco archivist Fernando Quiñones writes of his unmistakable, completely unique voice, that is it ‘aglow with pain and gitano essence…soaked in acid primitiveness’. This goes hand in hand with one of Agujetas’ descriptions of himself – all of which are to be taken with a grain of salt, of course – as ‘dangerous’. He speaks of his family – a line of singers going back beyond memory, his Japanese wife (seen dancing flamenco in one part of the film), the women he has had, the extended families ‘…I’ve got several families, but they’ve had enough of me’.

One review I read expressed it this way – ‘With a single shout he milks the cow dry. There are singers like Sugar Ray that can hit you fifty times in a flash. But just one punch from Agujetas, and you're going down.’ If that doesn’t sound ‘dangerous’, validating the cantaor’s opinion of himself, I don’t know what does. Guitarist Moraito speaks of working with Agujetas as one of the most positive experiences of his life, challenging, unpredictable and satisfying – ‘He’s constantly surprising you with new and undeveloped ideas. Because the singing of Agujetas is wild and untamed in its natural state.’

Just one look at the chiseled face on the cover of the DVD will give a clue to the personality that lives behind it. This music – all the more incredible that it is produced by a human voice sometimes accompanied by a guitar – is absolutely white-hot with power and emotion, yet capable of moments of tenderness that could wring tears from a stone. It must be heard and seen to be believed – and even then, I’m certain that the experience of being in the room with this man singing his heart out would be the ultimate immersion in the magma-like power of his music.

I have a region 2 edition of this film, ordered from France – I have yet to find a source for a region 1 copy (for use in most North American systems). If I discover one out there somewhere, I’ll add it to this post as an edit. In the meantime, check out some scenes from the film from YouTube (naturally, these are lower quality than the DVD itself, but for now…)

A short clip from Agujetas cantaor...

Agujetas el Viejo (Manuel's father), as seen in the film...

from Spanish TV, I'm guessing 15 years or so ago...with an ageless face like his, it's hard to tell...
and finally, from Carlos Saura's great film Flamenco, singing a martinete...

2008-07-06T18:15:00.000-05:00

Wolfsgrub
Step across the border
Middle of the moment

three visionary documentaries by
Nicolas Humbert & Werner Penzel

Werner Penzel & Nicolas Humbert

In the three documentary features described below, Nicolas Humbert and his co-director Wener Penzel have approached the medium in a way that allows the subjects to speak for themselves. There are no voice-overs, no ‘narrators’ – on occasion speech is addressed to the filmmakers / audience by those depicted in the films, and sometimes the actual voice of the filmmaker is heard, in conversation with the subject – but the overriding impression is the sensation of being a spectator, a witness to the lives and creativity of some extraordinary people. The method prevents these films from becoming dry and over-intellectualized exercises and allows the viewer to become a part of the environment and experience played out before the eyes on celluloid.

These three films are all available on DVD under the auspices of the wonderful German label Winter & Winter – their release should go a long way in making the company known as much for its support of cinematic efforts as the great jazz and classical music which makes up the bulk of its catalogue.

Wolfsgrub : portrait of my mother
directed by Nicolas Humbert
1985, 64min

Wolfsgrub, c.1934

This film’s subtitle belies the depth and intimacy with which Humbert addresses his subject. Wolfsgrub is the name of the hamlet in Germany where his mother, daughter of the writer Max Mohr, grew up and spent all of her life. Filmed in simple black and white, filled with striking yet simple images of the surrounding countryside, the house and the subject, it’s an extremely effective immersion into the life and history of an inspiringly independent, intelligent and free-thinking woman. Eva, Humbert’s mother, is seen asleep, waking up, washing and combing her hair, going about her daily chores – a practical view of her life which is woven delicately and naturally into her conversation (which is mostly a monologue of remembrance) with her son, which makes up the bulk of the film. She candidly speaks of her life at Wolfsgrub from the time she was a child to the present, talking openly about her father and mother, their differing personalities and life-requirements, his self-imposed exile to China during WWII, and about growing up during the time of Nazism in Germany.

Eva Humbert-Mohr's parents, Kathe and Max Mohr, c. 1934

Eva Mohr, c. 1934

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Eva relates that her mother was pretty successful in shielding her from the harsh realities of that dark time – the incidents that opened her eyes and mind to the nature of those in charge of the government at the time seem small and ordinary taken out of context, but were both opportune and imperative in altering the course of the human spirit. More than a feeling of ‘collective guilt’, she speaks of a sense of ‘collective shame’ at what the Nazis wrought on humanity – it caused the eyes of her conscience to open wide, and brought with it a different political view…but in her case, more one of a Gandhi-like ‘be the change you wish to see in the world’ rather than outright political activism. The sheer openness and honesty with which she speaks of her life, world events, her family, the joys and mistakes she has experienced, her philosophical lack of personal regrets, all make her an unforgettable and admirable human being.

Humbert’s images are simple ones – opening sequences depict his journey home, followed by shots of the surrounding area’s idyllic setting. The viewer is left with the feeling that the house – almost as much as his mother – is a living, breathing character. It has witnessed much in its history, and is an inseparable link to the lives of all who have dwelled within or simply passed through its doors. The textures of its walls and floors and furnishings are as detailed and defining as the lines on a human’s face and hands – there are stories and lessons to be found there, if one will only take the time to look and listen. The film is personal in a way that few documentaries attempt or accomplish – it’s a gentle but complete immersion into the life and history of this remarkable woman, told with grace, easy and beauty. Humbert’s concept and execution, the knowledge, love and respect with which he treats his subject, and the compelling but unobtrusive soundtrack by Fred Frith all combine to make this an unforgettable, enriching experience.

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Wolfsgrub was awarded the Public Prize at Filmfest München, 1986

Step across the border

directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel
1990, 84min (+ 30min of extra material)

Possibly as a result of working with Fred Frith on the 1985 film Wolfsgrub, Nicholas Humbert and co-director Werner Penzel turned their lens on the renowned avant-garde / improvisational musician as the subject of Step across the border, described as ‘a ninety minute celluloid improvisation’. As in that earlier film, there is no real ‘narration’ – Frith is shown in multiple settings relaxing, rehearsing, performing before rapt audiences, and in conversation (mostly one-way) with the camera crew. Shot over the course of four years (1987-90) in several countries (Japan, Germany, France, Italy, England, the US and Switzerland), it’s an extremely interesting, informative and involving portrait of the musician / composer, his fans and cohorts, and the music itself. Far from being a stuffy intellectual type (although his intelligence cannot be disputed by any means), Fred is shown to be outgoing and engaging, open-minded, with a free spirit – and certainly not reticent when it comes to sharing a laugh with others. One of the brightest moments of the film – at least to me – was the scene, perhaps shot in Fred’s home or that of a friend, where he reproduces the themes from several of his many musical compositions using only his mouth and a bit of ‘body percussion’. It shows that while he’s aware of his own talents and creativity, he doesn’t take himself so seriously as to be egotistical and unnecessarily elevated.

Several sequences in the film depict motion and travel – Fred tours quite a bit, playing to appreciative audiences all over the world, so this is an understandable and integral part of the picture the filmmakers paint. This is not to say that the subjects – Fred and the music – are shown as being isolated from the world in which they, and we, exist. All of the locales are fully-formed, visually, with the environment (both good and bad) clearly shown. Performing and composing in diverse areas of music, from tightly composed (including some with a string quartet) to totally improvised, he’s shown rehearsing with a group performing a tune from his days with Massacre; with the late Tom Cora, preparing for a gig at The Kitchen in New York City; playing casually outdoors with Iva Bittová and others; and in various concert settings including appearing solo in Osaka. Other well-known musicians – Arto Lindsay, Charles Hayward, John Zorn, Tim Hodgkinson and others appear in various sequences, both in the film and in the extra material included on the DVD.

Both the video and sound quality are excellent – combined with the sensitive choice of material, method and editing of the filmmakers, the viewer will no doubt come away from Step across the border with a greater understanding of not only the music of Fred Frith, but his character, temperament and philosophy…and of the experimental / improvisational music scene as well. This is a great opportunity for fans of Fred’s music to experience him creating and performing it – and an opportunity for those who have never dipped into this rich well to savor something completely different from the fare shoveled out by commercial radio and other outlets.

Step across the border is the recipient of the Golden Gate Award, the European Film Award, and the Grand Prix International.

Middle of the moment

directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel
1995, 76min (+ 42min of extra material)

From the notes on the DVD cover, excerpted from the Winter & Winter website, by Miriam van Leer : The essence of any experience, any moment, is to be found where people are in most intense contact with the place they occupy. And, paradoxically, it is through a nomadic existence that one occupies a space the most intensely. Whether the nature of this nomadism is largely physical…or rather abstract…is not important. In my opinion, the greatest achievement that filmmakers Humbert and Penzel have achieved – at least in these three films – is Middle of the moment. Two groups of people, along with one individual, have been chosen to represent the subject matter at hand – the performers and workers that form the heart and soul of the European ensemble Cirque O; the wandering Touareg tribes Kel Iforas and Kel Wdegui of the forbidding Ténéré region of the south Sahara; and the great American expatriate and seclusionist poet Robert Lax.

The images are shot in both close-up and distant formats – but the feeling the viewer is given is one of intimacy. The film opens with a shot at night of sparks from a fire blowing in the wind, accompanied by images of a road in the dark, with briefly lit road signs passing by. Then two young faces appear, lit by the fire – one is tending the flame, blowing on it to get it started, as if imbuing it with life by giving it his breath. Scenes shift from time to time, with images of desert nomad life being contrasted and compared with those of life in a traveling European circus – in a brief interlude, Robert Lax is shown reading one of his short works. While it would seem at first glance that these lifestyles have little in common other than constant traveling and isolation (imposed or by choice) from the greater body of human society, similarities and shared traits soon become visible and otherwise evident.

Both the desert nomads and the circus performers are shown erecting and dismantling tents – shelter for one, workplace for the other. I readily saw a theme of circles developing in this film – perhaps intended overtly or not, I sensed it as a visual / emotional reference to the ‘connectivity’ expressed in the quote above – these are people who are more in touch with the earth than people who dwell in (and are almost completely depended to) cities and other ‘permanent’ forms of residence can hope to completely understand or feel. They move across the skin of the world, in constant and intense contact with it – everything they do, with few exceptions, directly relates to their ability to survive and even thrive in the environment they inhabit. There are circles formed by bodies around a fire; a bowl containing a yoghurt made from goat’s milk, from which hands dip from all sides; an improvised well, dug into the sands by hand; the performance area of rings inside the circus tent, as well as the circles formed by the tents themselves, both of the circus and the nomads; the circular nature of life and time itself, expressed in the poem read by Robert Lax :

One moment passes –
another comes on.
How was, was –
how is, is –
how will be, will be.
Is was,
was is,
was wasn’t,
wasn’t was,
is isn’t,
isn’t is,
won’t will be,
will be won’t.

The contradictions that appear on the surface of the seemingly simple series of thoughts that make up this poem are so interconnected that they become one – like a circle. One of the most striking images in the film is of a female circus performer spinning at angles in a large double-wheel, controlling her movements and direction and speed by subtle body movements – it’s a compelling picture of grace and beauty, drawing the eyes as a magnet draws iron. Similarly moving is the birth of a baby camel, the mother being assisted gently by some of the tribal members – we later see the young animal encouraged by a tribesman to rise up and take its first steps, watched over with visible love by the new mother.

There is little conversation or dialogue in the film that is ‘explanatory’ – the exceptions are conversations between people, never by the filmmakers themselves. One of the desert nomads relates a dream to a woman, perhaps his wife, as they sit on the sand: And then I shout – every time they come and pursue me in my dream, I shout. Sometimes I sleep under a tree and can hear the jackal…in my dream he comes to eat the goats, then I shout – he clears off. And sometimes I dream that something grabs me and pulls me into the sky… An image appears of a young boy sitting before a fire at night, with the moon a tiny circle over his shoulder – his face is at first glance inscrutable, but there is a world to be seen in his eyes. The scene changes to that of one of the circus performers applying his makeup in a mirror – the paint with which he colors his face makes a fierce design, but, again, there is deep humanity in his eyes.

Music plays a large role in the lives of both the Europeans and the Touaregs – a plaintive Roma melody is played on the violin by a woman in one of the caravans that will go right to your heart of hearts; a man wanders along a dockside, playing an accordion; a group of desert-dwelling women chant and sing in the night in a call-and-response style, accompanying themselves on drums; the band in the circus plays along with the performers, musically coloring the emotions they create in the onlookers; and the music is present in its absence in a scene in the desert campsite, showing another circle, made of footprints, left from the previous evening’s dancing and revelry.

This film is pure artistry, assembled with great skill and creativity by filmmakers to express ideas and emotions connected with a style of life that is unchained from the day-to-day treadmill that most of us experience. It is a breathtaking and moving picture of the juncture of humanity touching the earth – the footprints in the sand, the impression of tents removed, the shadow painted by a spinning metal hoop in a circus spotlight, slowly but inexorably coming to a horizontal stillness. All of these images will vanish – the footprints will be erased by the desert wind; the rains will wash away the marks in the ground made by the circus tents; the shadow and the hoop that made it will disappear when the lights are cut and the equipment is packed away.

The humanity – and the less-visible but more longer-lasting touches it makes with the earth, will remain.

Middle of the moment has received many film awards, including the Prix La Sarraz for innovative cinema, Switzerland, 1995; the Prix du Public, Filmfestival Marseille, France, 1995; the Grand Prix - Best Documentary, Filmfestival Florence, Italy 1995; and the Hessischer Filmpreis - Best Documentary, Germany , 1995. It has been screened at film festivals around the world.

I consider all of these to be essential elements of my film collection, and of my life experience in general. You’re extremely unlikely to be fortunate enough to see any of them in a theatre (I’d love to do so, but I doubt I’ll ever have the opportunity) – but they’re available at reasonable prices on DVD (see the Allegro link below) – and the packaging by Winter & Winter is distinctive, aesthetic and informative, as is the case with all of their musical releases. Heck, Step across the border and Middle of the moment are even available through Netflix, and you might well be able to locate them for rental locally, depending on the presence of an outlet that features hard-to-find items. However you find them, I can’t recommend them highly enough – each one of them makes for incredibly enriching and rewarding viewing.

Winter & Winter official website

Cine Nomad official website

Allegro Music – affordable domestic source for mail-ordering the DVDs

Fred Frith official website