Two distinct works by Swiss composer and bass clarinetist Jurg Frey: the 1st, recorded in Connecticut, a quintet composition from 2009 for bass clarinet, cello, violin, keyboard and electric guitar, Frey's harmonies creating an open instrumentation for the clarinet and cello; the second a 1997 composition for multitimbral field recordings and bass clarinet.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2018 Country: USA Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Track 1 recorded at Wesleyan University, IN Middletown, Connecticut, on November 10th, 2017.
Track 2 recorded at Tonlabor, in Bern, Switzerland, in December, 2012.
Personnel:
Jurg Frey-composer, bass clarinet, field recordings
"Jurg Frey's unique compositional approach places him at the cutting edge of contemporary classical music while simultaneously maintaining a touch of impressionisticomantic aesthetics in its roots.
The album 120 Pieces of Sound contains two of Frey's significant compositions: "60 Pieces of Sound" (2009) and "L'ame est sans retenue II" (1997-2000). Frey and the Boston-based ensemble Ordinary Affects (Laura Cetilia, Morgan Evans-Weiler, J.P.A. Falzone, Luke Martin) performed and recorded "60 Pieces of Sound" in New England in 2017, in which Frey's clarinet and Cetilia's cello played the pitches in the two-part melody written in the score, while the rest played the open instrumentation part with undetermined sounds. The resulting music was a unique series of harmonies created by open instrumental sounds with a faintly recognizable melody hidden in the core of the ensemble's evenly tempered sounds. The impressions of the chords move along at the edge of consonance and dissonance with the afterglows of each chord in the subsequent silence, hovering somewhere between meditative calmness and disquieting shadow, while bringing an organic warmth and a feeling of breathableopen air into a minimal musical structure.
"L'ame est sans retenue II" was written for field recordings and bass clarinet. Frey first edited the field recording parts from the materials he recorded in Berlin in 1997, and later added his bass clarinet sound with a certain pitch as an underlying tone that would blend with the field recordings. Frey's bass clarinet is discreet and almost unrecognizable, often hidden under the complex layers of the field recordings, and yet clarifying the harmonization of the field recordings from inside.
Presenting these two pieces "60 Pieces of Sound" and "L'ame est sans retenue II" back to back on this album brings out the fundamental aesthetic of Frey's compositions in regards to how he approaches the 'harmonization' and 'openness' of the music."-elsewhere