Frisco Jenny (1933)

Simple Music for piano is a collection of inspired fragments from themes of classic Georgian plays and films for the stage and screen by Giya Kancheli (1935-2019). On this album the set is performed, improvised, arranged, even reimagined by the innovative pianist Jenny Lin and accordion virtuoso Guy Klucevsek as an engaging mixture of solos and duos.

The lute family, and the baroque guitar, have a wonderful solo repertoire spanning hundreds of years. Less so the gallichon, but Tommie arranged several pieces for this recording. The viola da gamba is also endowed with a rich treasure of solo works. For the first time in her career, Jenny has performed and recorded some of her favourite solo pieces, including the world premiere of a work written for her by Australian composer, Paul Cutlan. Finally, the music of Marin Marais is close to both our hearts. We have explored so many of his suites over the years and there is always a sense of achievement in committing another of the great man's works to record. Tommie would like to dedicate his recording of Mozart's Adagio to the memory of Swedish soprano Eva Nässén.

In BIS' Chinoiserie, pianist Jenny Lin brings one of the most compelling and relevant themed recitals to be heard on disc in years, a collection of pieces by Western composers that attempts to explore the subject of China in some regard, not only musically but culturally.

Música Callada (Music of Silence) is a very special work, one of the most beautiful and elusive in the entire piano repertoire. It is extremely difficult to perform. On the one hand, there’s the temptation to stretch each piece out hypnotically, if monotonously, while quicker speeds preserve the music’s melodic essence at the expense of much of its atmosphere and harmonic richness. For although much of the music is indeed quiet, and none of it moves quickly, it is all meaningful. Mompou himself found the perfect balance between incident and repose, and of all the pianists since, Jenny Lin arguably comes closest to doing the same, only in much better sound. It’s not so much that her tempos match Mompou’s own (she’s actually not copying him–it would hardly be possible in a work containing 28 individual pieces), but rather that her phrasing and sense of timing let the music breathe and sing with its own special poetry. To take just one example, consider the sadness that Lin finds in the fourth piece, “Afflitto e penoso”, by allowing the piece’s harmonic color time to speak simply and eloquently.

When two of the indie-jazz scene’s foremost instrumentalists unite for their debut co-writing collaboration that intermingles panoramic Americana-infused arrangements with a Brooklyn jazz pocket, the result is as ambitious as only violinist Jenny Scheinman and drummer Allison Miller could envision.