The Squid's Ear Magazine


Genetti / Smith / Lonberg-Holm: Sense of Hearing (Balance Point Acoustics)

8 duos recorded in the studio between bassist Damon Smith and free vocalist Carol Genetti, and 4 trio tracks adding Fred Lonberg-Holm on violoncello and performing live at Chicago's Empty Bottle.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Carol Genetti-voice

Damon Smith-doublebass

Fred Lonberg-Holm-violoncello


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Label: Balance Point Acoustics
Catalog ID: bpa005
Squidco Product Code: 15196

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2003
Country: USA
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded on January 29th, 2002 and January 30th, 2002 by Bob Falesch.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"For a while, bassist Damon Smith's preferred free improvising unit was the trio, as his previous releases on Balance Point Acoustics testify. But despite its triple bill, Sense of Hearing consists mostly of duets with singer Carol Genetti -- cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm joins in only for the last four pieces, representing half an hour of music. The duets have been recorded in the studio; the trio tracks are taken from a live performance at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.

Genetti plays her voice like an instrument, drawing on the legacy of Phil Minton and Maggie Nicols to develop her own identity. Several of her idiosyncrasies evoke bird songs (ululating, in particular), but she also uses a lot of croaking and half-enunciated nonsense sentences (similar in that to Morgan Guberman's vocal art), along with jazzier-sounding scat lines. Her tone is raspier than Aurora Josephson, another Bay Area singer often performing with Damon Smith (see their quintet CD, Zero Plus), and if she's not the most striking improv vocalist in America, she delivers a touching performance.

The eight duets presented on this disc range in duration between two and seven minutes. They showcase a musical language that is still growing or undergoing a certain mutation: the vocabulary isn't fixed, there is tension in the delivery, like an incertitude in how to interpret given signifiers. That provides an attention-grabbing level of unrest, especially in "The Hard and the Soft I" and "Experimental Sentences," the latter exploring softer, more fragile sounds. The trio pieces, performed the day after the studio session, are more assured, transmuting the previous tension into confident energy. "Self-Perpetuating Duplicity," with its train whistles, stands out as a potent free improv statement."-Francois Couture, All Music


Get additional information at All Music

Artist Biographies

"Carol Genetti is a Chicago-based vocalist whose work extends to sound and visual art media. Her palette is primordial, existing in a space where "language" and "music" have yet to be formed and formulated into familiar cultural patterns. Genetti's aesthetic is one of raw power, yet also delicate, subtle, and precise. An exquisite soloist, she is often also heard in the company of other improvising musicians."

-Carol Genetti Website (https://carolgenetti.info/bio)
12/4/2023

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

"Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon's explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson's Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra's Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and five great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, David Dove & Chris Cogburn, Damon will move to the Boston area in the fall of 2016. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians."

-Balance Point Acoustic Website (https://www.balancepointacoustics.com/damon-smith/)
12/4/2023

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

"Fred Lonberg-Holm (born 1962) is an American cellist based in Chicago. He relocated from New York City to Chicago in 1995. Lonberg-Holm is most identified with playing free improvisation and free jazz. He is also a composer of concert works. As a session musician and arranger, he is credited on many rock, pop, and country records. Lonberg-Holm currently leads the Valentine Trio, with Jason Roebke (bass) and Frank Rosaly (drums). This jazz trio performs original compositions as well as tunes by both jazz composers (e.g. Sun Ra) and pop songwriters (e.g. Jeff Tweedy, Syd Barrett). The group released its first album Terminal Valentine, in 2007, which was reviewed by AllAboutJazz critic Nils Jacobson.

He coordinates and directs performances of his Lightbox Orchestra, an improvising ensemble with a flexible, ever-changing membership. Lonberg-Holm does not play an instrument in this group, but rather conducts its non-idiomatic improvisations via the "lightbox" and by holding up handwritten signs. The lightbox contains a light bulb for each musician which Lonberg-Holm switches on or off to suggest when they should play. Collective groups of which Lonberg-Holm is a member include Terminal 4 who released an album, in 2003, called When I'm Falling that received four and a half stars, and AMG Album Pick by Allmusic, and it was reviewed by Allmusic's Joslyn Layne, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, the Lonberg-Holm/Kessler/Zerang trio (with Kent Kessler and Michael Zerang), and the Dörner/Lonberg-Holm duo (with Axel Dörner).

Among groups led by other people, he is a member of the Vandermark 5, the Joe McPhee Trio, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Keefe Jackson's Fast Citizens, and Ken Vandermark's Territory Band. When he lived in New York, Lonberg-Holm frequently collaborated with the rock group God Is My Co-Pilot pianist and composer Anthony Coleman as well as multi-instrumentalist Paul Duncan of Warm Ghost. In Chicago, he has worked with Jim O'Rourke, Bobby Conn (on "Llovessonngs" [1999] and "The Golden Age" [2001]), The Flying Luttenbachers, Lake Of Dracula, Wilco, Rivulets, Mats Gustafsson, Sten Sandell, Jaap Blonk, John Butcher, and a great many others.

Lonberg-Holm's concert works have been premiered by William Winant, Carrie Biolo, the Austin New Music Co-Op, Subtropics Ensemble, Duo Atypica, the Schanzer/Speach Duo, New Winds, Paul Hoskin, Kevin Norton, the E.S.P. Ensemble, and others. His scores for dance have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance Theater Workshop as well as many other venues. He is a former composition student of Anthony Braxton and Morton Feldman. He performed improvised music in the role of a troubled composer who finds inspiration in the love of a couple he spots on the street in a short film for the Playboy channel."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Lonberg-Holm)
12/4/2023

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


Track Listing:



1. Wuppertal Is An Idyll 7:37

2. The Hard And The Soft I 4:02

3. Urbanch Method 2:30

4. Simulate Bearability 2:55

5. Fragility Itself 6:14

6. Experimental Sentences 4:09

7. Ore, Oil, Open 4:39

8. Overhearing 4:10

9. Deadly Togetherness 6:43

10. Pouring Out Civilities 8:01

11. Self-Perpetuating Duplicity 9:49

12. A Sudden Fit Of Abstraction 5:20

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Unusual Vocal Forms
Chicago Jazz & Improvisation
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Balance Point Acoustics.


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