Mittwoch, 2. Februar 2011

Way Cool


Im April 2009 hatten Christian Marien und ich das Vergnügen, zwei Tage mit Stanley Schumacher (tb, voice) und Evan Lipson (b) in den Westwire Recording Studios in Allentown, PA, zu verbringen. Das Ergebnis ist jetzt erhältlich!

Hier dazu ein Text von Steven Eversole:

Improvised Contemporary Art Music…….. As is apparent from reading the album personnel, this CD features the trombone, or more precisely, two trombones. The trombonists, Stanley Schumacher and Matthias Müller, push the envelope to the maximum, and the result is an eye-opener. They are presented here in a variety of chamber music settings designed to showcase the extensive exploitation of extended techniques for trombone and voice. In fact, the relationship of the trombone to the male voice is one of the most revealing aspects of this album. Being in the same range and possessing a similar timbre, the trombone and male voice both complement and imitate one another beautifully, resulting in a range of expressiveness that is unexpected........The tracks on Way Cool fall nicely into three categories. The first category includes the instrumental pieces: “Ambient Event,” “Hearing Disorder,” the sinister sounding “Darkness Of Error,” and “Back Talk” with its distortion boxes. Also included in this category is “Trombone On The Edge,” a tour de force for trombone and percussion featuring German musicians Matthias Müller and Christian Marien. The second category showcases pieces featuring the interaction of trombone and voice. If the pieces in the first category demonstrate mastery of the trombone, then the vocalizations in this category demonstrate the trombonist’s indebtedness to singing, for it is often difficult to tell which sounds are being produced by trombone and which by voice as in the aptly named “Linguistic Engineering.” Also included in this category are “Cognitive Dissonance,” “Out Is In,” and the final track with its rhetorical question “Where’s The Melody?”. Finally, in the third category, we have two text-based pieces: “High Art?”, with its parody of foolish criticism of new art music, and “Way Cool,” a morality tale with jazz accompaniment……..Trombones, voice, a parody, a morality tale! Dealing with Stanley Schumacher? EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!