STELLARI STRING QUARTET
Phillipp Wachsmann violin
Charlotte Hug viola
Marcio Mattos cello
John Edwards double bass
***Please note it is an early start concert ***
Doors 6.30 – Show 7pm – £7/5
„If there were stars in the world of free improvisation, then the members of this quartet would
surely be among them – four very distinctive and fluent musicians, who also have the talent to
work together to produce a fifth distinctive and fluent entity, namely an improvising string
quartet“. MARTIN DAVIDSON (2009)
What I hear on this CD is four people who have worked so long and hard on improvising, and are so brave and trusting of each other, that when they intersect here they leave their usual ways of being and playing behind and forge new ways, and completely new music, for the occasion. This balancing act, this apotheosis of communication, is what makes music indispensable to the human organism. CAROLINE KRAABEL (2009)
LISTEN: Stellari String Quartet at the Lucerne Festival 2011 https://soundcloud.com/charlotte-hug
FREE DOWNLOADS: of some tracks of the CD Gocce Stellari
LINKS: EMANEM our Label http://www.emanemdisc.com/E5006.html
Philipp Wachsmann http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mwachs.html
Charlotte Hug http://www.charlottehug.ch/
Marcio Mattos http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mmattos.html
John Edwards http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/medwards.html
Excerpts from reviews:
“Refreshingly, the music here seeks to neither emulate nor deliberately avoid conventional notions of the string quartet. Instead, each of the four players brings their own distinctive voice and approach to their instrument plus openness to the music produced by the others…The individual voices are more often subsumed into a dialogue in which their contributions overlap both in time and in frequency, creating a whole greater than any of its parts. It is a fascinating exercise to try to remain focused on one player throughout, but ultimately that is as difficult as following one particular strand through a richly woven tapestry.” JOHN EYLES –
ALL ABOUT JAZZ 2009
“‘Gocce stellari’ (stellar droplets) are stars born through the force of gravity, as gas and dust slowly contract together until nuclear fusion ignites them. It’s a nifty analogy for the music, the four players concentrating the ‘qas and dust’ of free improvisation (fine, texture, and timbre) to create spontaneous constructions full of austere intensity. Mining the essence of their instruments, they utilize an expansive array of sound from dark arco to dry scratches, buzzing overtones, and richly layered harmonics. Even at its freest, there’s a conceptual rigor to the music, which gracefully bridges the worlds of contemporary classical music and free
improvisation.”MICHAEL ROSENSTEIN – SIGNAL TO NOISE 2010
“The title (Italian for ‘stellar droplets’) comes from Orion Nebula’s newborn stars, generated by the nuclear fusion of huge globules of gas and dust; stars are also the origin of the seven tracks’ names. Thus, associating the adjective ‘stellar’ to the playing heard in this CD becomes commonplace. Philipp Wachsmann (violin), Charlotte Hug (viola), Marcio Mattos (cello) and John Edwards (double bass) conduct business with a combination of formal respect for the configurational clarity of a hypothetical composition: these pieces impressively resemble the upshot of written scores – with more than a hint to XX century’s literature – exalted and enriched by the kind of impulsive improvisation that one expects from musicians at this level of instrumental command. In the notes, Caroline Kraabel makes a very good point about the initial trouble in recognising the single voices even after many years of listening to them. Here lies the reason of this record’s accomplishment: the global yield of polychrome pitches, fractal percussiveness and structural multiplicity overcome the difficulties elicited by the thorny convolutions and atonal spirals – permeated by a measure of intransigency – that the quartet constantly delivers. The performers apply a logic of intelligibility to everything they play, dividing the stereo space in well-defined sectors, remaining disengaged from rigid rules yet appearing solid all along. The typical characters connected to contemporary music for strings – including the exploitation of rarely attended parts of the instruments – are astutely employed, proof of a technically enlightened maturity. Serialism, lyricism, dronage and the average reviewer’s pet quote – Lachenmann (yeah, let’s go and join the name-throwing party…) – get evoked and instantly disposed of in a matter of seconds. Ultimately, the best way to tackle GOCCE STELLARI is absorbing it little by little over repeated listens, at first being flattened and somewhat pushed back by its bittersweet vigour, then dissecting the components to individuate and separate nuances and details. Both acts lead to the same conclusion: this is a persuasive record.” MASSIMO RICCI – TOUCHING EXTREMES 2010
“Since this blog has often turned its focus towards the twin poles of free improvisation and contemporary classical I figured, why not post an album that combines both of them, and in an interesting way at that? What we have here are four string players forming a string quartet, indeed one of the ensemble forms most rigorously associated with contemporary classical music, intent on improvising their way against the established cultural grain. And with names such as Philipp Wachsmann, Charlotte Hug, Marcio Mattos and John Edwards, such an ambitious project does not seem out of reach of success. And succeed it does, at least to my humble tastes. As expected, the group is very much focused on texture, timbre and spontaneous interaction, as opposed to the more commonly rhythmical and melodious workouts often found within the classical music world. Strings rumble, screech, drone and creak in all ways imaginable, the players all the time upholding a certain tension, effectively giving the project the frame necessary for it not to feel unfocused or random. Thankfully, though, there’s also a lot of diversity (in relative terms, of course) to these pieces, and a sense of the four of them wanting to create new textures and sounds in a freer way than what’s usually the case with this instrumentation. What’s perhaps most surprising, though, is how much it still sounds like a modern atonal composition, which might be mostly due to the performers’ listening skills and sense for somewhat traditional dynamics All in all, I found this an interesting and very enjoyable album, and, as a result of the concept, it should appeal to fans of both contemporary classical and free improv (or none, depending on how much of a purist you are), and indeed to readers of this blog. Enjoy! GRINDFUCKED – KILLED in CARS 2011
