A series of spontaneous converstations captured live at the 2021 Copenhagen Jazz Festival at KoncertKirken, the second duo album between trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and pianist Kaja Draksler, using extraordinary and extended techniques to create lovely rolling textures or spacious sonic environments, passing between moods and approaches in natural and captivating ways.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2022 Country: Switzerland Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels Recorded live during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival at KoncertKirken in Copenhagen, Denmark, on July 7th, 2021.
"Kaja Draksler and Susana Santos Silva are among the most original and articulate voices of European jazz innovation. Their art fuses composition and free improvisation with structures, musical logic and advanced techniques. Both defy stylistic and historical boundaries and have found a highly personal expression in both their compositions and their improvisational playing, which is colourful, intricate and abstract. "The way they lure and steer each other to as yet uncovered territory is testimony to their never-ending search for meaning and (self-)discovery through sound. By letting their guards down, they are creating new contexts, paradoxes and challenges, based on human content and expressive breath. It is exactly this sense of renewal and growth that comes to the fore here."-Guy Peters
"Music is sound, but is sound music? For John Cage, sound was indeed music. His avant-garde experiments with silence, environmental sounds, and prepared instruments opened up an entire world for discovery and others' improvisations. Even though he disliked the concept of improvisation, preferring chance to a musician's choices, our modern and post-modern free improvisation world has much for which to thank him. Enter the improvising duo of Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler, living in Copenhagen, and Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva a resident of Stockholm. Together they are members of the quartet Hearth with Ada Rave and Mette Rasmussen, besides numerous other ensembles they either lead or participate in. Their interests are quite diverse, performing free and composed music solo, in small ensembles and orchestral settings.
Their previous duo This Love (Clean Feed, 2015) is quite different from this outing. That album was guided by the musicians' compositions, and maintained the feel (somewhat) of chamber music. However, it did hint at the music which the pair recorded at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 2021. Here they rely upon instant compositions, extended techniques, and prepared instruments. The musicians push the concepts of sound and music, fashioning notes from the literal inside and outside of their piano and trumpet. Machines are imagined with "Close"; a static sound, much like electric circuits, is generated with vibrating and quiet breathy trumpet, while Draksler works at different vibrations with her piano's strings. This is free improvisation with a small "i." The musicians eschew grand statements for the pleasures of improvisation. The satisfaction is in the discovery of new sound textures through the smeared trumpet breath and the percussive possibilities of the piano. "Liquid Rock" begins with what sounds like a blast from an elephant's trunk and develops into dreamlike piano passages. The four pieces presented are a gift of sounds which dare to become music."-Mark Corroto, All About Jazz
Includes a 12-page booklet with liner notes by Guy Peters in English and Swiss, plus photos and discographic information.