Radioastronomie Basses Fréquences

Some of the Italian musicians who came to London to ‘make their fortunes’ found themselves influenced by the Celtic lands and their rich tradition of folk music. They were in their turn admired and sometimes even copied by their counterparts in the British Isles. This recording shows the outcome of that encounter. Lorenzo Bocchi was probably the first Italian cellist to settle in Edinburgh, in 1720. Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) arrived in Dublin in 1733. Since 1714 he had been resident in London, where he performed with Handel, but his passion for art dealing landed him in prison. The Earl of Essex then took him under his protection in Dublin, where he swiftly acquired a high reputation. In 1749 he published in London a collection of songs and tunes arranged as sonatas for several instruments combined with a treatise that gives us much useful information on how to play this music.

Acclaimed for their interpretation of Vivaldi and Barriere's sonatas, Bruno Cocset's Les Basses Reunies return to Italian 18th century music in this fantastic new recording. The programmed, comprising sonatas by Francesco Geminiani, calls upon a distinguished guest: theorist and lutist Luca Pianca. Also featured under Cocset is Bertrand Cuiller (harpsichord), Mathurin Martharel (cello), and Richard Myron (double bass).

With this CD book, Bruno Cocset completes his Nascita del Violoncello . After a first part published in 2011, devoted to Bologna and his first repertoire for the cello (Vitali, Gabrielli, Jacchini) - reissued in this boxed set - he presents, with the musicians of Basses Réunies, a new recording devoted to Naples, from the Renaissance composer Diego Ortiz to the gallant and virtuoso cello of Lanzetti… offering two crossed views, two approaches that provide a better understanding of the identity of this instrument. The instruments used here - Cocset plays ten in all - bear witness both to this journey and to the bond that has bound him for many years to his luthier, Charles Riché.

Aftermath is thisquietarmy's fourth album and first for Basses Fréquences. Partially inspired and in respect to aesthetics by the works of German visual artist Anselm Kiefer, the setting of Aftermath takes place in the post-apocalyptic countryside and revolves around fallen angels as unexploded ordnances. In parallel, the compositions were also inspired by the sounds of crackling tubes and failing resistors captured by amplifiers during the recording process. Drones and melodies were built around these hissing sounds to create moods of tension and transitions from the remnants of destruction…

Basses Loaded! is the suggestive name of this 1955 album featuring three jazz bass specialists in four numbers each. Milt Hinton needs no introduction: having started with Cab Calloway’s great band of the 1930s, Milt added his personal touch to a wide variety of musical units, both large and small, and recorded with just about every name in the field. Here he has the first four tracks, all arrangements (plus one original) by Al Cohn.

Originally released on ECM in 1971, and here reissued on CD in Japan, this historic date features the two British bassists engaged while at the top of their powers, exploring not only tonality and the dynamic and harmonic possibilities that exist between two double basses, but also the expanded notions of how the different players' styles and musical intuitions dovetail, rather than work in opposition. Holland's pizzicato attack is far more languid and lush than Phillips,' whose style is over the top; they approach each encounter as one in which sheer propulsiveness becomes an aesthetic.