French player Bertrand Denzler has often achieved his results through playing his own tenor saxophone, but today’s record Low Strings (CONFRONT CORE SERIES CORE 29) not only bucks that trend, it throws it out the window like a pair of old gumboots… scored for four double basses, and appearing here as two 20-min versions numbered 4 and 3.
Denzler has often surfaced in a free improv context (very minimal improv), but he’s emerging as a composer to rank with anyone on the insub.rec label or Pedro Chambel’s Rhizome.s label. Unlike those associated with the Wandelweiser affiliation, Low Strings might not be especially cerebral or conceptual in nature, and there’s plenty of heavy deep-bass action going down – as you’d expect when four of these lower-register brutes are gathered in the room. Originally composed for Sebastian Beliah (Paris and Warsaw) in 2016, to be joined by three other such bass players, who on this recording are Jon Heilbron, Mike Majkowski and Derek Shirley. Yes, it’s all about the overtones and long tones and groans and rumbles and producing sounds that are rarely associated with the bass, but it’s also about the interaction of these four players, listening to each other, working patiently, sustaining the delicate balance.
You may think the result would be a layering, a blending of sounds to the extent that no one voice is discernable and the competing frequencies building into a deep bath of mud…but listen closely and you will hear the careful separation, the control, the techniques, the concentration and the rigid attention to detail that makes Low Strings such a success, a triumph of composition being interpreted by exactly the right players. It’s getting more common these days for minimal-type composers to score their work for a single player, a named musician, with a very specific result in mind…there is another recent example (EWR 2101), that of Hannes Lingens with Félicie Bazelaire (also a double bass player as it happens)…we’re now some ways from the days of jobbing orchestral musicians who were expected to play exactly what was printed on the stave, and in a much more dynamic situation of collaborative process and engagement.
A rich plethora of varied sounds await the listener on this slow, challenging, but very deep piece of music. (23/03/2023)