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Plus ça change...
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Boston area
Posts: 16,919
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Dennis, as well as being a fine instrumentalist, Gies is a very talented composer, I think. Most (all?) of his recordings have been on Leo. Here are a couple of reviews I've done of his discs.
Joachim Gies
Rilke Anthology I
Leo
It is, at least before hearing the enclosed disc, a bit disorienting to find on the cover of a Leo CD, a favorable blurb from the legendary operatic baritone, Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau. Joachim Gies’s two works on this disk are, however, firmly in the tradition of the German Art Song. Listeners will perhaps be reminded of Berg’s Altenberg Lieder and Schoenberg’s Book of Hanging Gardens. But with their spare, breathy accompaniments, most of the pieces here are probably most reminiscent of Anton Webern’s pre-serial, vocal music. The first work, Reflections, is a cycle of four Rilke poems set for mezzo and saxophone, preceded by a five-minute saxophone solo. For the second piece, Gies set excerpts from Rilke’s near-novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and added electronic sounds to the vocal/woodwind duo. According to the composer, there is almost no improvisation on either work, and what little there is is provided by the composer himself. Soprano Ute Doering and keyboardist Michael Walz are required only to perform what Gies has written for them. They do so beautifully. Gies’s opening solo, "To the Silent Talking" is a sorrowful and delicate affair, full of masterful harmonics use. On "The Stairs of the Orangerie," Doering alternates between a traditionally beautiful rendition of the the Sessions-like vocal line and a haunting spoken narrative. ("By the Grace of God and straight toward heaven and leading nowhere.") There are healthy doses of parallel whole tone climbs on "The Flamingos" and a good deal of Webernian canonic tidbits on "A Roman Fountain." The entire piece "…spreads peacefully in its own beautiful bowl/not being homesick, circle after circle, only sometimes dreamily and drop by drop/letting itself down the mossy spots to the last mirror…" Because of the addition of Walz’s electronics, The Notebooks is, in places, a denser work, but it is also less experimental in some ways. There is more use of repitition, and a more traditional approach to vocals and accompanying instrumentals. On "Part 1" Walz concentrates on celeste sounds for much of the work, and the harmonies are more Bartokian than one could find either in Reflections (or in Webern’s Vienna"). "Part 5," a setting of a portion of Rilke’s famous musings about how we—including young children and dogs—wear various faces and put others aside, provides a cute change of pace. It’s a salon-style funk tune that somehow made me think of Blomdahl’s Aniara. It doesn’t quite succeed, but it’s cute. Gies’s background of multiphonic flutters is very effective in the closing "Part 6," while the remaining three movements are more solidly back in the territory of electro-acoustic Webernianism. Whether his work is considered avant-garde or retro, Joachim Gies has clearly provided us with thoughtful and highly successful settings for some of the most mystifying German poesy ever created.
Not Missing Drums Project
Position/Dark/Red
Leo Lab 070
Like its two fine predecessors, this disk of live performances of works by saxophonist Joachim Gies and cellist Thomas Bohm-Christl displays the highest compositional and instrumental facility. Although there is plenty of improvisation, it is clear that Gies and Bohm-Christl are anxious to display their ample composing chops. Gies, in particular, shows that he can make music that doesn’t just sound like something that might be heard at a classical recital of contemporary chamber music: most of his pieces here deliver the actual goods. Bohm-Christl’s stuff ranges more widely. This is not in itself a demerit, but a couple of his pieces involve "funky-esque" cello ostinati, which, of course, are not the real thing. That is, while these players can actually create beautiful works in the "contemporary classical," "free/composed jazz," and "creative improvised music" veins, they accomplish little more than faux facsimiles of funkedelia. No one is likely to jump out of his seat and start break-dancing to any of the Bohm-Cristl tunes, at any rate. But I don’t want to leave the impression either that Gies’ pieces are dry academia or that Bohm-Cristl is just a European Sly Stone wannabe. The music here is nearly all powerful stuff, carefully constructed, yet full of emotion, and nearly all of it has a clear narrative flow. The "classical" models move from Weill, Orff and Adams, to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Berio: there’s almost always a handle to grab onto. And the disk is chock full of absolutely marvelous playing. The violin soloist in Gies’ "Passages" (either Alex Kolkowski or Dietrich Petzold) plays an astonishing cadenza full of American concerto flourishes (kind of a mix of Barber and Imbrie) over accompanying snippets that are reminiscent of the song of the Maoettes in Adams’ "Nixon in China". There are also breathtaking, if brief, solos by Gies, Bohm-Christl and one of the singers (Ute Doring or Elisabeth Tuchmann) over this herky-jerky background. It’s dynamite. Bohm-Cristl’s "World’s Woes" has some wonderful sprechstimme and Pierrot-style ensemble work but is hurt a bit by the banal cello ostinato in the middle. There’s plenty of stuff to scare next year’s trick-or-treaters in Gies’ "Clouded Mirrors" with its hyperventilated string writing. And his "Vowels" is a Rimbaud-based torch song for someone who was Edith Piaf in a former life but who probably belongs safely confined to a padded room in this one. Bohm Cristl’s effective title tune is full of mezzo-soprano longing (in spacey ahs and ohs) over both the chugging bass work of Stefan Weeke and a clever contrapuntal commentary from the rest of the ensemble. This disk demonstrates how much glorious art of real originality (even of the ultra-hip, catholic sort) can be created without painting moustaches on Mahler, Bach or Ornette Coleman. One can only hope that their next release will be a multi-disk set that provides longer spaces for solos from these terrific musicians. Highly recommended.
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