Kaufmann / Gratkowski / de Joode

Unearth

Label: Nuscope Country: USA

"According to journalist Marc Chenard, "Call them spur-of-the-moment pieces if you will, or instant compositions, these essays in spontaneous music are outgrowths of a collective playing experience. Since its inception almost three years ago, this unit has criss-crossed Europe on more than one occasion, one of its tours yielding enough material for a first recording on the Berlin-based Konnex label, a disc entitled Kwast.

In this follow up release, pianist Achim Kaufmann, reedist Frank Gratkowski and bassist Wilbert de Joode have succeeded in meeting one of the prime challenges of improvised music, i.e. of achieving a very different sounding set of music than in its previous effort. In Unearth, these musicians focus moreso on discursive strategies, whereas its predecessor emphasized timbral explorations."

According to David Dupont in Cadence magazine, "Gratkowski, Kaufmann, and de Joode demonstrate on Unearth the kind of close listening needed to create a unified collective sound. Often that means they moderate the volume of the music, forcing the listener either to fade out of the proceedings or, if they're serious, to focus more intently on the musicians' interactions...For this trio, the musical poetry is found in the sawing song of de Joode's bass, the breathy tones of Gratkowski's horns, (and) the splashes and plinks of Kaufmann's piano. To draw on the rhetoric of the session's titles, it all has its own kinky logic, yet nothing seems remotely connected to any textbook."

This release features an 8-page booklet with liner notes from Montreal-based journalist Marc Chenard, and very original cover art from Achim Kaufmann's wife, Gabriele Guenther."-nuscope