Let’s Dance – Ash Walker & Amp Fiddler: Afronaught (Ron Trent Remix) (Night Time Stories)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Ash Walker’s Astronaut slipped under the Arcana radar in 2023, so it’s only right to focus on it as its constituent tracks start to get the remix treatment. The choice of Afronaught is ideal, not just because – as the press release states – it flips the title of the album on its head, but because it contains guest vocals from Amp Fiddler.

Amp – Christian name Joseph – sadly left us just before Christmas 2023 at the age of 65, leaving in his wake a stellar discography of solo vocal and band keyboard contributions (notably with George Clinton and Moodymann).

This is what Walker had to say: ‘Having recently very sadly lost a dear friend, mentor, collaborator and huge inspiration of mine – Amp Fiddler, it was very touching to hear how Ron Trent reinterpreted Amp and I’s track together ‘Afronaught’. Label buddy Ron was able to steer Afronaught in a Chicago style, Acid House inspired direction which compliments Amp’s vocal perfectly, giving the track a new lease of life. Amp was such a pioneer and embodiment of Afrofuturism who never ceased to push boundaries, proving that us as black musicians have the power to defy genre and surpass societal expectations. Amp’s spirit will live on eternally, not only through the music he created in his lifetime but also through all the artists he nurtured and influenced worldwide.”

The press release goes on to say that “Ron Trent’s remix marks just the beginning of this journey, a sonic flare if you will lighting up the way for the projects to come”.

What’s the music like?

It’s difficult to imagine a more appropriate mix to mark Amp Fiddler’s passing. Ron Trent delivers a spatial piece of work full of low-end goodness – mellow keys underpinned by a steady, deep kick drum and surrounded by vocal snippets that are easy on the ear. Amp’s voice appears as though in a vision, while the keys flicker in the middle ground.

Does it all work?

It does. All very easy on the ear!

Is it recommended?

It is – a very classy remix and the ideal tribute to a much-missed musical presence.

For fans of… Moodymann, Charles Webster, Carl Craig, Juan Atkins

Listen & Buy

Published post no.2,093 – Tuesday 20 February 2024

Online Concert – Ensemble Apparat @ Ultraschall 2024

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Poppe Zug (2007)
Bailie Night Scenes I & II (2023) [World Premiere]
May Multiplayer Instrument (2023) [World Premiere]
López Brass Quintet (2003-04)

Ensemble Apparat (Mathilde Conley and Rike Huy (trumpets), Samuel Stoll, Morris Kliphuis and Elena Kakaliagou (horns), Weston Olencki and Wojciech Jeliński (trombones), Eliot Duschmann (tuba)] / Max Murray

Radialsystem V, Berlin
Sunday 21 January 2024

by Richard Whitehouse

Heading into its second quarter-century, Berlin’s annual Ultraschall festival put together some typically wide-ranging programmes – not least this Sunday afternoon concert, which featured Ensemble Apparat in a sequence of diverse pieces for various ensembles of brass instruments.

Among the leading German composers of his generation, Enno Poppe (1969-) has now built a sizable catalogue – from which Zug, whether it refers primarily to a train or a procession (or the capital of a Swiss canton), continually diverts and intrigues with its interplay for brass septet. Unfolding as three intensifying waves of activity, the music elides between sometimes playful and at other times ominous moods. While the expressive outcome is left in the balance, there can be no doubting the formal cohesion of a work whose technical dexterity never draws undue attention to itself.

Its comparable number of players aside, there could scarcely have been greater contrast than with Night Scenes by Joanna Bailey (1973-). Much of her recent output features audio-visual or installation elements, the present diptych setting its instrumental component in the context of a soundtrack whose incrementally changing ambience likely reflects those places specified. Hence the luminous if distanced activity of Geneva and atmospheric if never claustrophobic confines of Schwarzwald, with these two complementing each other in an evocative totality.

From here to installation pure if not so simple. Visual artist Ragnhild May (1988-) has made a feature of human and mechanical amalgams, with Multiplayer Instrument her most ambitious such project yet by fusing the ensemble into a ‘meta-brass instrument’ whose sonic and even constructional qualities are in a constant state of change. While its overall impact inevitably depends on being seen as well as heard (see the photographs on the Ultraschall website), the stark and even hieratic nature of this undertaking is undeniable even to those ‘just’ listening.

The combining of sound-sources was heard at its most graphic in the Brass Quintet by Jorge E. López (1955-). Here the instrumental music is interpolated with concrète episodes such as evoke respectively the sonic overlap between an alpine crevice and industrial powerplant, the tortuous process of mountain rescue down a vertical cliff-face, then its effortful continuation over a field of scree. In each case, the contextual emergence and resolution of these episodes has been provided by the music for brass out of which they come then into which they return.

That brass writing has all the visceral immediacy associated with this composer, not least in its emphasis on those lower sonorities of Wagner tuba and contrabass tuba. The preludial first section vividly contrasts its contrasting musical-types, while the second is an incisive toccata and the third a plangent threnody, then the fourth section resembles an introduction and fugue in which a lively jig earlier insinuated by trumpet rapidly comes to the fore – dominating the closing stages as it draws all five instruments into a recessional of jocular yet wanton inanity.

Such was the impression made by this performance, superbly rendered by the musicians of Ensemble Apparat under the astute direction of Max Murray. It set the seal on a programme of engrossing music and music-making – these being characteristic of Ultraschall at its best.

You can watch this concert via the Ultraschall website Click on the names to read more about Ensemble Apparat and Max Murray – and for the composers Enno Poppe, Joanna Bailie, Ragnhild May and Jorge E López, whose 65th birthday tribute can be read on Arcana

On Record – William Doyle: Springs Eternal (Tough Love)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

William Doyle returns to the LP format with this response to the ‘ecstasies and agonies of the 2020s’ . On it, he is assisted by Brian Eno, Alexander Painter and Genevieve Dawson.

What’s the music like?

This time Doyle shows his musical versatility through a collection of intricate art pop songs. Drawing on late 1960s pop and psychedelia for inspiration, he updates them with cultural references for today, a kind of coping mechanism for life in the digital age.

Doyle’s lyrics show an awareness of the changing climate, and as he found nearly all the songs mention water in some way. They are clever and well written, with songs like Relentless Melt that are knowing commentaries on modern life dressed with catchy tunes. The orchestration is bright and suits Doyle’s delicate tones.

Does it all work?

Largely – though on occasion the feeling persists that the music on this album is just a bit too bright eyed and bushy tailed, that darker thoughts below the surface are not fully expressed.

Is it recommended?

It is. Springs Eternal is an optimistic statement proving once again how versatile William Doyle can be.

On Record – Enchanted Places: The Complete Fraser-Simson Settings of A. A. Milne (EM Records)

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Grant Doyle (baritone) and John Kember (piano) with Brian Sibley (narrator)

EM Records EMRCD082 [two discs, 2h29m17s]
Producers Grant Doyle, John Kember Engineer Nick Taylor
Recorded 2019 and 2020 at Porcupine Studios, Mottingham, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its coverage of lesser-known and neglected English music with this complete traversal of A. A. Milne settings by Harold Fraser-Simson, more than appropriate when this year coincides with the centenary of Milne’s first collection of poems for children.

What’s the music like?

One among a notable generation of ‘light music’ composers, Fraser-Simson (1872-1944) had a brief if successful career with his songs and musicals; his musical comedy The Maid of the Mountains enjoyed one of the biggest West End successes during the latter years of the First World War and is still occasionally revived (the complete score was recorded by Hyperion in 2006). Although Simson’s star waned after the mid-1920s, his settings of Milne’s poems from the collections When Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927) have kept his name alive. Along with Milne’s books of short stories, these centre upon his son Christopher Robin and the latter’s nursery toys – above all, his bear Winnie-the-Pooh. They have held their own, moreover, throughout an era when the Disney franchise has continued to grow exponentially.

The songs themselves were published in six books between 1924 and 1929, alongside Milne’s poems with illustrations by Ernest Shepard which had graced the original collections. Private recordings were made at this time by Cicely Fraser-Simson with her husband as pianist, while Christopher Robin recorded several for HMV in 1927, and they have continued to attract the attention of singers both amateur and professional. Nor have the poems lost their appeal for subsequent generations of composers (Oliver Knussen drawing on a selection of them in his 1970 opus Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh), but Fraser-Simson’s settings have retained their charm along with a pathos accrued over the intervening decades. The present recording features 10 songs recorded for the first time to make this collection complete in all respects.

Does it all work?

Yes, not least given the quality of these performances. A seasoned exponent of opera, Grant Doyle gets to the heart of these settings – his singing of a warmth and precision that offsets any risk of sentimentality. Nor can his diction be faulted – no potential purchaser is likely to be without Milne’s original books but having them to hand is hardly necessary – while John Kember accompanies with subtlety and discretion. Devotee of all things Pooh, Brian Sibley narrates his handful of texts with due feeling for their unforced and often ingenious scansion.

This might not be the only way to realize these settings (a comparably extensive collection by Volante Opera Productions (Prima Facie) features seven singers), but the consistent and characterful nature of Doyle’s approach is its own justification. Those wishing to sample this release should go to The King’s Breakfast (CD2, tracks 26-29), essentially a cantata in which singer, narrator and pianist are joined by four other musicians to deftly imaginative effect, or evergreens Vespers (1, 39) and Buckingham Palace (2, 3) which emerge newly minted here.

Is it recommended?

Yes. The sound has an ideal combination of clarity and definition, while Sibley’s booklet notes on composer, author and project could hardly be bettered as an informed introduction. Put the Disney treatment aside and enjoy these settings for the winsome humour as initially intended.

Listen

Buy

You can explore purchase options for this album at the EM Records website. For more information on the artists click on the names of Grant Doyle, John Kember and Brian Sibley

Published post no.2,091 – Sunday 18 February 2024

In concert – Guy Johnston, Britten Sinfonia / Thomas Gould @ Barbican Hall: The Protecting Veil

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Guy Johnston (cello, above), Britten Sinfonia / Thomas Gould (violin)

Beethoven arr. Weingartner Grosse Fuge Op.133 (1826)
Bartók Divertimento for String Orchestra Sz113 (1939)
Tavener The Protecting Veil (1988)

Barbican Hall, London
Thursday 15 February 2024

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

The Protecting Veil is a special piece. Written by John Tavener in 1988, this musical meditation for cello and orchestra is based on and inspired by the Greeks resisting Saracen invasion in the early tenth century. They are heartened by a vision of Mary, the Mother of God, surrounded by a host of saints and spreading out her Veil as a protective shelter over the Christians.

In what is effectively a single-movement concerto, the cello represents the Mother of God, leading the string orchestra in eight prayerful chapters that respond to landmark events in which she is present. It may sound elegiac and deeply ambient for much of its duration, but to achieve this elevated state the performers require poise, concentration and inner strength.

It is hard to imagine a better performance than this one experienced at the Barbican. Guy Johnston led us in contemplation, the serenity of his upper register cello line immediately establishing a mood of calm, in complete contrast to the bustling city outside. The Britten Sinfonia responded in kind, conducted where necessary by violinist Thomas Gould but largely following the cello, a congregation responding to his prompting.

In spite of its inner serenity, The Protecting Veil is troubled by the shadows of violence throughout the world. This performance was a stark reminder of how little has changed in eleven centuries, for in the ominous falling motif that recurs for the cello it was impossible not to think of bombs and missiles raining down in the many warzones we see today. The Barbican fell largely silent as those images undoubtedly projected to many listeners, aided by a sympathetic light show that cast the distinctive markings of the back of the stage as a wooden chapel. When Johnston played alone in the central section, The Lament of the Mother of God at the Cross, he could easily have been playing solo Bach, the intimacy of his and Tavener’s thoughts laid bare.

There was, ultimately, consolation and redemption, and the lights burned yellow when the music soared back to the heights with which it began. Feverish anticipation gripped the strings as they responded excitably to the higher cello, and with a surety of tone that never dimmed, Johnston led us to the end. His was a remarkable performance of stamina and poise, those long notes held for what seemed like an eternity, their pure tones never dipping.

The musical contrast with the opening piece, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, was notable. Here is a piece that still sounds as new and every bit as challenging as the day it was written, the Everest of fugues. In this arrangement for string orchestra by Felix Weingartner, its angular subject is a touch smoother at the edges, though here the sharp lines were just as clear as in the string quartet original, the fugue subject escaping its restrictions. The Britten Sinfonia found its core in a well-drilled performance.

Bartók’s Divertimento for String Orchestra was lighter in mood to begin with, the ensemble celebrating the great outdoors as the folksy first tune went with a swing. Yet here too there were troubled minds, the slow movement wary of its place in history. Bartók wrote the Divertimento in 1939 in Switzerland, with Europe on the brink of the Second World War. The oppressive approach of the conflict could be felt in a profound slow movement, which began with feathery violas and reached a forbidding climax, emotion wrought from its pages. Those worries were largely banished by the finale, whose powerful unisons were led by Gould as the piece swaggered and bustled to the finish.

Guy Johnston and the Britten Sinfonia continue their tour with The Protecting Veil to Dublin and Manchester – for more details visit the Britten Sinfonia website

Published post no.2,090 – Saturday 17 February 2024