CONNIE CROTHERS & MICHAEL BISIO / Session at 475 Kent
Connie Crothers (piano); Michael Bisio (bass)
Connie Crothers and Michael Bisio make an absolutely outstanding duo. The four improvised works on this recording radiate intensity and beauty. Crothers is known for her wide range of expression, originality and her uncompromising spontaneous improvisation. Bisio invariably astounds audiences with the beauty of his tone and the intensity of his very personal musical language.
As Connie writes: "One paradox of the improvising musical art is that after the music is created, it is gone. The musicians don't really get to listen to it. We hear and create the music in an instant, then move on to the next instant. Michael and I had wanted to record just to hear the music. My loft is 1,000 square feet of open space. The concrete pillars and ceiling, the tile floor and the raised wood platform in the center of the space where the piano is all cause the resonance to be greatly enhanced (the platform is even a kind of vibrating soundboard). This room is ideal for recording. I set up informally. I only used two mics, but they are great ones--my Neumann U87s. I placed them, we gave it a test, then just played. And played and played. From the first second (in fact, from the soundcheck), we were in another place altogether. What is it? Some dimension of energy, sound, feeling, beauty--every note a surprise. Michael is amazing. When we listened back, we were two astonished and very happy musicians. I couldn't believe the recording sound. After all, I can't monitor when I am also playing. And the music. It's wonderful when you listen and are so drawn in by the music itself that you don't think, "I'm doing that." Although I could know that I'm the one on the piano and that it's Michael, with all his resounding non-stop individuality, there was a merge. It was just music itself, an intrinsic organism, just meant to be."
TRACK LIST
Improvisation #4
Improvisation #5
Improvisation #7
Resonances
REVIEWS
Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Music
Improvisational music depends so much on the time, place and inspiration of the players. Once in a while, we are all lucky that the tape is rolling when everything conjoins wonderfully.
Session at 475 Kent (Mutable) is just such a recording. The place is Connie Crothers' studio, with great acoustics and a congenial environment to make some music. The time is May of last year, so late spring is in the air, and, well, let's just say that this is one of the most moving performances of free improvisation I've heard in a long time.
Connie Crothers makes pianistic things happen. She has devoted her life to a style that cannot be easily classified; even less can she be dismissed as "follower of so-and-so." It's Crothers who has gone her own way from the time of her first album in the '70s through to today. She has deep roots in the music, but whether she chooses to evoke them directly or not becomes a part of a performance on any given occasion. She has a very fertile, musically inventive gift and a pianistic touch that puts her in with the world-class few who can really make the piano sing. She does here.
Michael Bisio in many ways parallels Connie in that he is a marvelously inventive bassist that seemingly has burst forth over the years as a musical trunk rather than a branch. His technique is formidable, both pizzicato and arco, and he taps into a virtually inexhaustible wellspring of musical ideas when he plays.
These are two artists that have a perfectly simpatico viewpoint of what is possible in a freewheeling improvisational setting. The music they make on this recording is pure magic. Do not miss it.
