Award-winning composer and music theoretician Roman Berger is widely respected for his stand against political repression in Eastern Europe during the last century. Most of the works on this recording are dedicated to the members of The Berger Trio, one of Slovakia’s leading ensembles. They include a commemoration of the composer’s late wife and other aspects of parting. The composer himself has written ‘…for me expressionism is neither a style nor an aesthetic, nor an “anachronistic” fashion: it is the result of life experience. The drama of existence leads to drama in art.’
Myhre makes his solo debut with the release of the captivating and mysterious Unheimlich Manoeuvre. The title is an obvious play on the life-saving technique, though whether the added negation makes the threatening or simply subverted remains ambiguous. More to the point, the English translation of unheimlich is “uncanny” or “eerie” – an apt descriptor for the sounds that Myhre creates. To borrow a phrase from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Myhre conjures aural landscapes that suggest “a place both wonderful and strange,” stunning in their beauty with something alluringly unsettling lurking just underneath.
Founder of the Creative Music Studio and a close collaborator of Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Gato Barbieri, Anthony Braxton and so many more, Karl Berger is a master musician and one of the pioneers of creative music. The third and final CD in his trilogy for Tzadik features fourteen tracks spanning a wide variety of moods. Karl’s gorgeous string arrangements are highlighted here in this beautiful and soulful suite of music for piano and strings.
When Pablo Casals rediscovered the cello suites of Bach at the beginning of the 20th century, the novel thing about it was that he played them "senza basso", i.e. without piano accompaniment. In a time of music-historical over-maturity and experimentation, renowned composers soon came up with their own attempts, among them most famously Max Reger's "Solo Suites" and Kodály's "Solo Sonata", both written in 1915.
Lest anyone forget what a wondrous vibraphonist and pianist Berger is, this recording is a welcome reminder. The musical conversations are a series of duets with various longtime friends, including alto saxophonist/flutist Carlos Ward, bassist Dave Holland, guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer, vocalist Ingrid Sertso, trombonist Ray Anderson and violinist Mark Feldman. The music is completely tonal, lively within subtle constructions, and thoroughly enjoyable. With Ward, Berger conjures up a more spiritual side on the lustrous alto sax/piano Berger original duet "At Last," while Ward's pitch perfect flute is an organ of sheer beauty alongside Berger's vibes on the 6/8 paced "Out There Alone"…
Wilhelm Peterson-Berger is relatively unknown outside Sweden, but his three books of "romanser" (Lieder) for piano, "Frösöblomster", sit at the center of the Swedish lyric piano tradition. Published in three separate books between 1896 and 1914, the melodies are inspired by the wild landscape of Jämtland, that mountainous part of central Sweden near the Norwegian border west of Östersund, and the pine-clad island of Frösö in the middle of Lake Storsjön. Although Peterson-Berger spent much of his life in Stockholm, where he was a conductor, theatre director, and music critic for the influential daily, "Dagens Nyheter", he visited Jämtland at the age of 22 and kept coming back for the rest of his life, finding endless inspiration in the pristine Swedish countryside.
Norway meets Iceland in wildly inventive ambient-gothic improvisations recorded in an abandoned Reykjavik warehouse Jo Berger Myhre and Ólafur Björn Ólafsson have created a strikingly original sound-world that, while it may have its antecedents, doesn’t really remind you of anyone else.