The Squid's Ear Magazine


Fish-Scale Sunrise (Ab Baars / Kaja Draksler / Joe Williamson: No Queen Rises (Relative Pitch)

Their name taken from a poem by Wallace Stevens, the Netherlands-based trio of Ab Baars on sax and clarinet, Kaja Draksler on piano, and Joe Williamson on bass represent the spirit of the poem in seven compositions from Ab Baars plus two collective improvs, a great mix of serious and playful performance that diverts from detailed interaction to spacious reflectiveness.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Ab Baars-tenor saxophone, clarinet

Kaja Draksler-piano

Joe Williamson-bass


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UPC: 5902249001099

Label: Relative Pitch
Catalog ID: RPR1075
Squidco Product Code: 26233

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2018
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at MCO 2, in Hilversum, The Netherlands, on November 30th 2017, by Micha de Kanter.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Melodious skeletons, for all of last night's music / Today is today and the dancing is done"

This short poem of Wallace Stevens, "A Fish-Scale Sunrise", captures the spirit of Dutch reeds master Ab Baars' new trio. Baars titled his new trio after Stevens' poem, and like the poem, it features some melodious skeletons, nocturnal themes and a few beautiful dances. Fish-Scale Sunrise began working in 2015 and is now releasing its debut album No Queen Rises, recorded in November 2017.

"Dew lies on the instruments of straw that you were playing, / The ruts in your empty road are red"

Fish-Scale sunrise signals for Baars a broadening spectrum of possibilities for compositions and improvisations. Baars wanted to explore new timbre, dynamics and sounds. He employs for the first time in his ensembles a pianist - Slovenian, Amsterdam-based pianist Kaja Draksler, who collaborated before with Baars in her Octet - introducing a new weight of nuances of timbre and dynamics as well as new harmonic horizons. Canadian, Stockholm-based double bass player Joe Williamson completes this drummer-less format and positions the bass with a unique role. Baars wrote seven compositions and the other two are free-improvisations

"You Jim and you Margaret and you singer of La Paloma, / he cocks are crowing and crowing loud"

These experienced musicians know how to weave a complex, captivating stories with few strokes of imaginative sounds, austere yet elegant, subtle but full of nuances. "Endless" visits Far-Eastern, terrains, flows in a balladic narrative and matures in a touching, playful dance of court and spark between Baars, playing the clarinet, and Draksler. "For Toby" suggests a complete different dialog between Baars and Draksler. He sings gently with his tenor sax while she pounds the piano keys in a hyper-dramatic manner while Williamson bowed bass stands in the middle. Baars and Draksler return to the minimalist dance mode on the lyrical, emotional "Now".

"And although my mind perceives the force behind the moment, / The mind is smaller than the eye"

"Catch the Moon" is a joyful, melodious game between Draksler, Williamson and Baars, all chasing the reflection of the moon, mirrored in their playful, concise gestures. The trio paints the sparse, free-improvised "Receding Mountains" with gentle, subtle touches of rich colors, allowing this free-form texture to remain mysterious. The austere, minimalist atmosphere of the last pieces, "The First Sea" and "There" tells volumes despite its haiku-like profound restraint. No Queen Rises has powerful, suggestive impact. It challenges, teases, and occasionally comforts the listener, but always compensates with masterful performances and inspiring music.

"The sun rises green and blue in the fields and in the heavens. / The clouds foretell a swampy rain".

-Eyal Hareuveni, All About Jazz; italicized sections from the poem by Wallace Stevens


Get additional information at The Free Jazz Collective

Artist Biographies

"Ab Baars (Magrette, 1955): Dutch musician-composer and bandleader Ab Baars performs on tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. He focuses mainly on Ab Baars Solo, Baars-Buis, Fish Scale Sunrise, Perch Hen Brock & Rain, Ab Baars Trio, Duo Baars-Henneman and the ICP Orchestra.

In reviews Baars' music has been characterized as joyfully obstinate, but surely appealing and as colourful as it is astonishing. It embodies the best typically Dutch improvised music has to offer. Although he seldomly uses recognizable song forms or ongoing swing rhythms, the music stays catchy, because it is stripped to the essence and clearly presented.

Ab Baars has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music performed in hundreds of concerts throughout Europe, North America, Brasil, Japan and Australia in the past 30 years.

Some highlights:
▪ Ab Baars Trio tour Netherlands (2013 - 2014) recorded on Slate Blue (Wig 24, 2014)
▪ Duo Baars-Henneman Autumn Songs USA Tour (2012) recorded on Autumn Songs (Wig 22, 2013)
▪ Ab Baars Trio & New York Guests Fay Victor, Vincent Chancey and Dutch poet Anneke Brassinga in Invisible Blow (2011) recorded on Invisible Blow (Wig 23, 2014)
▪ Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark (2007 and 2009), recorded on Goofy June Bug (Wig 15, 2008)
▪ Kinda Dukish. The music of Duke Ellington (2004), recorded on Kinda Dukish (Wig 12, 2005)
▪ Ab Baars Trio plays music of Native Americans (1999), recorded on Songs (Geestgronden, 2001)
▪ Ab Baars Trio with trombonist Roswell Rudd (1996 & 98), recorded on Four (DATA Records, 2001)
▪ Ab Baars Trio plays the music of John Carter, recorded on A Free Step (Geestgronden, 1999)
▪ Ab Baars Trio in collaboration with the Nieuw Ensemble, shakuhachi player Yoshikazu Iwamoto and conductor Butch Morris at the Festival Improvisations/Improvisations (1996)
▪ Ab Baars Trio with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (1995)

Influenced by the American saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, whom he worked with in 1986, and by his participation in the Monk Project (performed by the Instant Composers Pool, directed by Misha Mengelberg), Baars adopted a very personal style, or 'ab music' as Misha Mengelberg calls it.

At the age of 15, Ab Baars began playing the saxophone in the Philips Marching Band and other local bands in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. From 1976 to 1981, he studied saxophone with Leo van Oostrom at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. He was granted a scholarship by the Dutch Ministry of Culture in 1989 to study with clarinettist-composer John Carter in Los Angeles. That same year Baars was presented with the prestigious Boy Edgar Award. In 2005, Baars set out playing the shakuhachi (a Japanese end-blown bamboo flute) and took lessons with Kees Kort, Christopher Blasdel and Takeo Yamashiro.

So far, Ab Baars has worked with improvisers such as Han Bennink, Jaap Blonk, Alberto Braida, Anthony Braxton, John Carter, The Ex, Cor Fuhler, Ben Goldberg, Tristan Honsinger, François Houle, George Lewis, Michael Moore, Sunny Murray, Sonic Youth, Fabrizio Spera, Cecil Taylor, Roger Turner, Ken Vandermark, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, Michiyo Yagi, poets H.C. ten Berge and Diane Régimbald, dancers Beppie Blankert, Hisako Horikawa, Masako Noguchi and Katie Duck's Magpie Company."

-Wig (http://stichtingwig.com/abBaars/AbBaars.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Kaja Draksler (1987) is a Slovenian pianist and composer. After her studies in the Netherlands (BA in jazz piano and MA in classical composition), she decided to stay in Amsterdam, where she is an active member of the improvisors scene, performing extensively all over the Europe. Besides her frequent solo concerts, she has been working regularly with Čudars-Draksler Duo, Feecho, BadBooshBand, and Draksler-Santos Silva duo. She is also one of the founding members of the interdisciplinary group I/O. She recently formed her Octet. As a composer she has been commissioned by various international groups, ranging from vocal and chamber ensembles to big bands and orchestras. Kaja is interested in finding ways to merge the composition and (free) improvisation by working with different structures and musical logics. She is drawn to the idea of erasing the stylistic and historical musical borders, and discovering personal expression and language through composition and improvisation."

- Website (http://www.kajadraksler.com/pressENG/KD%20BIO.pdf)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Born 1970 in Canada, Joe Williamson has toured the world as a bass player in various setting and He moved to Europe in 1992 and has lived in Amsterdam, Berlin and London, and Stockholm. Projects include The Inconvenience, Trapist, Alex Ward and The Dead Ends, Tobias Delius 4tet, Weird Weapons, the Duck Baker Trio, King of Herrings, The Green Valley Players, Booklet, The 7 Seas Orchestra,The Wardrobe Trio... Past and present collaborators include Duck Baker, Steve Beresford, &c.

-Squidco 3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Fish-Scale Sunrise 3:01

2. Endless 4:53

3. For Toby 7:13

4. Now 5:59

5. Catch The Moon 4:27

6. Receding Mountains 5:34

7. No Queen Rises 3:05

8. The First Sea 5:31

9. There 7:17

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Relative Pitch.


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