Reviews – Birthmark

I sometimes have to catch myself wondering how so many excellent players out there can devote themselves to a form of music that offers potentially and comparatively little in the way of economic recompense, yet demands a lifetime of study and performance, a sacrifice often of the comforts of home to be replaced by continual touring. These people are heroes and they should be touted to the skies by every cultural agency that has anything to say about anything artistic.

I speak of those who play advanced improvisational music, called jazz by some, which to me still makes sense because it is rooted there one way or another. People who play music that is avant, free-flowing, are never going to score a top-40 hit, most likely. Those who judge the artistic merits of the music world in terms of number of units sold are never going to get it, no matter how accomplished and advanced the music. Do we judge Plato on how many copies of The Republiche “sold?” Of course not. If we start doing that we are doomed.

So that’s what hits me as I listen to a really captivating album by three practitioners of the improvised arts. I speak of Lotte Anker, Rodrigo Pinheiro and Hernani Faustino and their albumBirthmark (Clean Feed 267). Lotte is Danish. Rodrigo and Hernani are Portuguese. Lotte is a woman and plays the tenor, soprano and alto; Rodrigo and Hernani are men and play the piano and the double bass, respectively. And of course it is a matter of how they do all that.

This is free music that rollicks. Not that it is carefree, especially. But everything flies out of the three instruments/instrumentalists in such a lucid way that it all seems so easy, easy-going. These are players who make it sound easy. It is far from that. There is nothing more difficult than creating a music out of a musical language very few speak fluidly and make it make sense. These are ultra-fluid speakers of the new improvisatory language and their three-way inventions have the quality of a profound conversation among equals on topics that are very central to their beings.

There is as much “new music” discourse here as there is “free music” discourse. It’s very abstract yet filled with feeling. There is an attention to the sound, the timbres, from all three that is uplifting. Lotte coaxes her own particular tone-personality out of the three saxes and her note choice has very much something personal as well. We’ve encountered Rodrigo and Hernani before on these pages and they are as effective as ever. Rodrigo works with cascades and string manipulation or sometimes just brings out of very appropriate super-rubato two-hand counterpoint. Hernani makes full use of the contrabass and what it can do arco and pizz. He listens and responds with what seems exactly right and also initiates the conversational segment when it seems time. He’s right there in ways that make it work, and a joy to hear.

These are three artists at the top of their craft making a spontaneous music that rings true and has real locutionary power. Birthmark is a genuinely exciting contribution to the music. So, listen already, OK?

Grego Applegate Edwards http://gapplegatemusicreview.blogspot.pt/2013/11/lotte-anker-rodrigo-pinheiro-hernani.html

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The trio of Anker, Pinheiro and Faustino is a reunion of sorts, as all three are part of the Variable Geometry Orchestra, as heard in the 2007 Creative Sources release Still. As a smaller working group the three find common ground in abstract free improvisation, recording this exemplary album of distinctive playing. The Copenhagen-born, New York-based saxophonist Lotte Anker enjoys a diversity of settings, which includes the trio of Anker, Taborn, Cleaver, and the Mokuto Trio with Peter Friis Nielsen and Peter Ole Jorgens. Pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro and bassist Hernani Faustino are both members of Lisbon’s RED trio, who bring a variety of tactics to contemporary improvisation, using abstract density and tangential lines that bring an interesting equilibrium to their work.

Bassist Faustino’s roots are as an electric rock bassist; in this trio setting his playing on the double bass, plucked and bowed, keeps a steady yet never frantic pulse while maintaing a healthy distance from obvious choices. Pianist Pinheiro works in clusters and long lines, creating circular structures that lead into interesting and unexpected avenues, often through complex and meticulous runs. Where RED trio tends to plays quickly and percussively, here Pinheiros and Faustino are more subdued and introspective. The recordings appear on the surface to present more melodic interplay than is typically associated with these players, probably attributable to the influence of Lotte Anker’s playing. Anker is an expressive player, with a relaxed tone that reminds of Lee Konitz or Paul Desmond, though her strategies are much different. Her effortless playing belies the fierce technique and creative strength of her mind, heard in both short figures and extended runs, with beautiful melodic glimpses that resolve in elegant ways. Her playing takes this trio into territory that sounds restrained, yet on inspection is filled with intricate and expansive approaches to improvisation.

On the seven tracks of Birthmark all three players are intently listening, constraining wilder flights in favor of educated and confident discourse. “Golden Spiral” is the perfect example of this trio’s dialog, an extended work that gives ample time to each player. The work unfolds slowly, led by Faustino’s bowing work, while Anker slowly adds harmonic utterances and short crying tones that extend as Pinheiro introduces single tones, short rhythmic steps that push Anker forward; Pinheiro’s lower register playing is offset by Anker’s high tones, while Faustino maintains a low circular foundation, all three building tension. The playing increases in intensity without gaining speed, an interesting illusion that gains momentum with increased activity: Anker extending her lines, Faustino’s bowing becoming more forceful, and Pinheiro’s playing adding more complexity and range. The music becomes a subtle whirlpool, adding harmonic strength, and then unexpectedly dropping out for a solo section from Pinheiros, from which the piece builds again. This kind of exchange characterizes the trio, who provide space and support for each other without allowing the improvisations to become excessive or agitated. The music has a sort of delicacy, keen and astute, but never overbearing; it is a model of control and discipline while fascinating the listener with each player’s voice, and with their compelling conversation. Phil Zampino http://www.squidsear.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=1553 

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We are living in a time when experimental jazz musicians are not daily news stars (as if there ever was such time). On a different planet, Danish sax player Lotte Anker would be such a star.

Classically trained as a pianist in her teens, Lotte switched to jazz reeds later, and in her jazz-friendly homeland played with such great jazz musicians as former Miles Davis drummer US-born and Denmark living Marilyn Mazur, American pianist Marilyn Crispell and then still unknown Niels-Petter Molvaer. After her meeting with “new NY avant-garde jazz” representative sax player Tim Berne at one of the festivals, she started a long lasting collaboration with his band’s musicians, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver, forming with them The Lotte Anker Trio. With this trio she recorded some of her most successful and best known albums, mixing her Scandinavian relaxed and airy saxophone sound with quite energetic NY downtown pulsations and freedom (learning a lot from Tim Berne and actually exchanging with him in what could be his trio).

Surprisingly, “Birthmark” features her other trio. This time she plays with two relatively unknown Portuguese musicians, bassist Hernâni Faustino and pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro, instead of Taborn/Cleaver and it works! Hernâni Faustino and Rodrigo Pinheiro are both the bigger half of the young, but quite successful Portuguese Red Trio (their two albums got a lot of positive press around Europe). It’s interesting that in the new trio, Lotte herself is the NY loft sound generator, perfectly balanced with the European free traditions represented by the bassist and pianist.

The music on this album is quite relaxed, but has its nerve, very free form but melodic, often even lyrical, philosophical but without being boring. It is a unique mix of Don Cherry Christiania-based music (without world fusion elements though), Tim Berne-like modern New York avant-garde jazz and European classic avant-garde traditions. And most importantly – all three musicians have that magic chemistry which separates great music from just good music, and it’s a rare thing.

Recorded and released in Portugal, this album has one more strong side – it isn’t too long and contains no fillers. With my full respect and even love for one of the most successful of European young labels, Clean Feed Records has one serious problem – musical material editing. Many of their releases would be much, much better with even small additional cutting of unimportant or openly boring parts, making final albums not 79:56 min overloaded releases for crazy collectors, but well produced concentrated music products for casual listeners. “Birthmark” is quite a rare and successful exception – one more reason to have this album in your collection.

Slava Gliozeris

http://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/birthmark–review.aspx?id=243172 

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Here is my rating overview of Lotte Anker albums on this blog :

– Live At The Loft (2009) : *****
– Floating Islands (2009) : *****
– Alien Huddle (2008) : ****

Here is my rating overview of RED trio albums on this blog :
– RED Trio + Nate Wooley – Stem (2012) ; *****
– RED Trio + John Butcher – Empire (2011) : ****½
– RED Trio (2010) : ****

That’s a lot of five stars for a few albums. So, when Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker teams up with Portuguese pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro and bassist Hernani Faustino from RED trio, you can bet that magic is the air. And yes, they deliver the goods. What more can I say, that yes, I am a little bit biased because I had the honor of writing the liner notes, which I reproduce below, which saves me the effort of writing a review. Intensity, lyricism, sensitivity and character guaranteed.

“Intensity, you cannot put your finger on it … though you know it when you hear it. Nervous tension, the creation of anticipation, the quick-turn changes, the effect of being in the moment, all three, at the same time, then adding a flowing continuity, building expectations, building tension, new expectations, new tension. What you hear surprises you, it captivates you, every note, every sound a story by itself. Listen to the slow shimmering tones of Lotte Anker, and the precise and cautious sparse piano notes that Rodrigo Pinheiro adds, accurate, without abundance, just the right few notes that make it work, the dark tones of Hernani Faustino’s bass, one accent here, another foundational color there. What is happening? You wonder … you wonder about the beauty you hear, the worlds that unfold behind your ears the images behind your eyes … enveloped in shimmering light, subtle yet dense, ephemeral yet solid … the space between substance … the nature of contrast. Intensity may be the result of paradoxes, a feeling of alienation combined with the comfort of recognition, the alienation of form with the recognition of emotion, the feeling that these light textures and joint instant lyricism reveal something known, a fleeting familiar feeling, implied but never stated phrases, melodies that evaporate before they become, images out of long-gone memories or images spontaneously arising, you don’t know, it is beauty offered. Intensity is about giving value to each note as part of a broader canvas, created together, with each little note valuable like glittering diamonds in a necklace, with silence acting as emptiness to emphasise the quality of the tone, the shade of the sound, their combined effect. Intense calm, controlled passion. Stretching tones on alto on arco with piano like raindrops piercing through fog. Skittering like bird song, fresh naïve and real, with somehow a menace in the background, something that might disturb, that might alter and it does, the mood changes, but somehow the structure doesn’t, still the skittering bird song, the piano the bass menacing, the bird song in distress. Ongoing surprise, unpredictability, deep experience. Don’t think while listening. Go with the sounds. Let go. Let yourself be surprised. You will be taken to strange places … intense and rich and authentic places“.

Stef   http://www.freejazzblog.org/2013/05/lotte-anker-rodrigo-pinheiro-hernani.html

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Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker revels in the slow burn. For confirmation, just lend an ear to records like Live At The Loft or Floating Islands (both on ILK Music) by her trio with Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver to hear how she builds a soaring edifice from humble foundations. It’s a trait she shares with Portugal’s RED trio who, in two acclaimed outings with saxophonist John Butcher and trumpeter Nate Wooley, demonstrate how they can absorb a radical stylist into their idiosyncratic group conception. Birthmark should appeal to fans of both outfits and make new converts besides, combining as it does Anker’s fluent husky musings with the spare but astute sound placement of pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro and bassist Hernani Faustino.

In instrumentation, the threesome echoes Jimmy Giuffre’s pioneering ensemble of the seminal Free Fall (Columbia, 1964). And though she doesn’t play clarinet, Anker makes virtuoso use of some of the same split tone effects on her array of saxophones while maintaining a biting abstract lyricism. In that, she sets up a tension with the extended techniques of Pinheiro and Faustino. Subtle piano preparations accentuate the percussive nature of the keyboard while the bassist mines a wide range of timbres through insistent scrapes and scrabbling fingerwork, emphasizing the thwack of string against wood. Conversing through terse diction in a language of their own creation, they explore the expressive potential of line against tone.

All seven cuts are collaborative constructs, characterized by a high level of sensitive interaction. “Golden Spiral” provides a case in point in the way ghostly soprano overtones merge with bowed harmonics and rubbed piano wires. After a tiptoeing sax/piano dance, the piece opens up for a wonderfully dark rippling interlude from Pinheiro, which shows that his armory comprises more than just novel textures. But that’s only one example among many on a set of chamber jazz that smolders throughout with dazzling intensity. John Sharpe  http://www.nycjazzrecord.com/issues/tnycjr201306.pdf

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After releasing a trio of stellar recordings with pianist Craig Taborn, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, the last beingFloating Islands (ILK, 2009), Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker returns with a new trio. She teams up with the Portuguese players Rodrigo Pinhero (piano) and Hernani Faustino (double bass), best known as members of RED trio with drummer Gabriel Ferrandini.

Like her American trio, this encounter is marked as an interactive improvisational session. A very cooperative session. Much, no, all of the music making is focused on replying to the other musician and maintaining the aggregate. A difficult task when the music is often hushed, doled out in whispers and quiet passages. The opener “Rise” is marked as a barren journey, slowly paced with notes applied always reciprocating and countering another. The music intentionally advances leaderless but tugged one direction then another in a sort of, not call-and-response, but more like response-and-response. “Upper Bound” quickens the pace with a lightning round of flashed notes, the intensity peaks with a hammering plateau of sound, and then a joyous run of notes.

Anker’s command of her instruments (soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones) is exceptional. She has the full complement of sounds from overblowing to growls and at times, ineffable beauty. The attraction here though is the interaction. The longest piece at nearly 14 minutes, “Golden Spiral” begins as an instrument tuning—bowed bass, upper register saxophone and the insides of piano. The piece advances, gaining energy very much like a classic Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton improvisation, capturing momentum and intensity. This trio succeeds on multiple levels. Marc Corroto 

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=44683#.Ub96hOBOHnY

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Por vezes encontros improváveis podem acabar por se revelar os mais extraordinários. Rodrigo Pinheiro (piano) e Hernani Faustino (contrabaixo) representam dois terços do RED trio, o grupo improvisador luso que se tem notabilizado internacionalmente, colaborando com figuras de proa como John Butcher e Nate Wooley. A dinamarquesa Lotte Anker é uma da mais interessantes saxofonistas da actualidade e, a par de Ingrid Laubrock, uma das raras mulheres que se têm notabilizado naquele instrumento ao longo da última década – um dos seus projectos mais marcantes é o trio com os americanos Craig Taborn e Gerald Cleaver. Este novo disco Birthmark   resulta de um encontro em Lisboa, gravado em estúdio em Setembro do ano transacto, que reuniu o inesperado trio para uma sessão de improvisação. Sendo a improvisação livre um terreno comum, quer para Anker como para a dupla lusa, o trio facilmente acerta agulhas para embarcar numa numa viagem musical amplamente proveitosa. Anker aplica-se nos saxofones (soprano, alto e tenor), com uma permanente tensão controlada, inteligentemente concisa mas também capaz de exprimir uma boa dose de emoção. A intervenção do piano de Pinheiro é razoavelmente discreta mas resulta eficaz – as notas do piano sublinham, complementam ou contrariam o saxofone, num diálogo contínuo. O contrabaixo de Faustino é uma sombra negra que persegue o saxofone e piano, acrescentando gravidade constante. As ideias fluem, há discursos que se aproximam, linhas musicais que por vezes se desviam, há paragens bruscas, caminhos que se alternam e cruzam, choques e encontros. À partida, antes da audição havia no ar a curiosidade de saber como soaria a dupla Pinheiro e Faustino renascida com um parceiro diferente. Sem a presença de Gabriel Ferrandini, o baterista do RED trio, a música perde energia e turbulência; por outro lado, passa a ganhar mais contenção, detalhe e espaço. E a saxofonista dinamarquesa preenche esse espaço aberto na perfeição. Nuno Catarino Público/Ípsilon 

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Skivan ”Birthmark” är ett mycket lyckat exempel på hur olika temperament kan mötas och skapa något nytt och spännande. Med sitt flödande spel och djupa klang möter den danska saxofonisten Lotte Anker de mer abstrakta portugiserna Rodrigo Pinheiro, piano, och Hernani Faustino, bas.

Resultatet är en improviserad musik som möts i intensitet och rör sig sömfritt mellan jazz och konstmusik. Det är dock en intensitet som bygger mer på inneboende spänningsfält än på expressivt tryck (även om detta också finns).

En bidragande orsak är naturligtvis avsaknaden av trummor, som dock inte innebär att rytmiken får mindre betydelse. Snarare öppnar det upp för något lättare rörelser.

Lotte Anker är tveklöst en av de mest spännande nordiska saxofonisterna. ”Birthmark” är inget undantag i detta. Bortom hennes innehållsrika sound finns också ett tålmodigt musikaliskt byggande som växlar mellan långt hållna toner och snabba cirkulära klangrörelser.

Piano och bas spjärnar framgångsrikt emot. Samtidigt är det nästan befriande när de i avslutande ”Voices” möts i ett intensivt vibrerande tillstånd.

Magnus Nygren  http://www.svd.se/kultur/musik/nagot-nytt-skapas-i-lyckat-mote_8195612.svd 

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Tout aussi stimulant par son degré d’engagement pulsionnel et intellectuel, “Birthmark” marque la rencontre de la grande saxophoniste danoise Lotte Anker avec deux représentants de la jeune scène portugaise de musiques improvisées, Rodrigo Pinheiro et Hernani Faustino (respectivement pianist et contrabassiste du trio RED, lui meme enregistre sur Clean Feed). Dans un registe plus familier, cette musique de l’intensité et du flux, attentive è ne jamais dissocier l’exploration timbrales d’un vrai souci rythme, alterne des séquences abstraites (sonorité admirablement modulée d’Anker) avec des morceaux plus energétiques ou le piano “théatral” et volontiers caverneux de Pinheiro donne sa pleine mesure. Stéphane Olivier / Jazz Magazine Jazzman 

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Lotte Anker, Danish saxophonist, b.1958, plays soprano, alto and tenor here. Has close to a dozen album since 1997; someone I should look into — Stef Gijssels had her Live at the Loft as his top album of 1009 — but this is my first encounter. Pinheiro and Faustino play piano and bass in RED trio, whose original eponymous 2010 album I can recommend highly.  This is softly toned and abstract, the lack of a drummer making it seem like nothing much is happening, but it sneaks up on you, demanding and rewarding your attention. B+(***)  Tom Hull http://tomhull.com/ocston/arch/jp/jp13-06.php

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