Austrian improvisers Ulit Winter (cello) and Fredi Pröll (drums) meet Greek-born pianist Villy Paraskevopoulos at Artacts '19, in St. Johann in Tirol, Austria in 2019 for these two superb extended free improvisations with a chamber/non-idiomatic approach, Paraskevopoulos performing inside and out of the piano, in technically impressive and well-balanced dialogs.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2019 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Live recording at Artacts '19, in St. Johann in Tirol, Austria, on March 15th, 2019, by Karl Wienand and Markus Massinger.
"[...] Another instance of tripartite experimentation in pure improvisation but with a cello in the place of the double bass is Live at artacts '19 St. Johann. The cellist is Uli Winter and the drummer Fredi Pröll, both Austrian and both of whom have built up an unbeatable rapport playing together for many years, backing the likes of Tanya Feichtmair and Udo Schindler. The pianist is Athens-born Villy Paraskevopoulos, who has worked with Thomas Berghammer, Irene Kepl and others. The disc consists of a near recital-ready exercise in quiet expression of deliberate string strumming, cymbal emphasis and deconstructed keyboard variations. While the emotional momentum is present throughout, palpitating and breath-taking sounds characterize "There And Back", the nearly 32½-minute opening salvo. Driven forward with squeaking sul tasto runs from the cellist and a popping broken beat from the drummer, the introduction quickly evolves with wriggling power pushes from the pianist that reveal new variations as they thicken into an exposition. Pushing and plinking inner piano strings soon afterwards slows the forward motion at mid point but with no loss of power. Eventually keyboard pseudo-impressionism gives way to modal Jazz scene-setting that establishes a narrative. Taken out with lug-loosening and tightening plus percussive plunks from Pröll and woody col legno sweeps from Winter, the piano-cello-drums sound fluctuations settle into a collaborative finale. [...]"-Ken Waxman, JazzWord