QUOTES ON DENMAN MARONEY'S MUSIC
"There are few minds as agile and inquiring as that of pianist, composer and educator Denman Maroney.
Over nearly 40 years, he has managed to rethink the piano’s vocabulary,
creating a readily identifiable language on the instrument. He calls
his contribution “hyperpiano”, a method of playing inside the piano
that is characterized by a dizzying and diverse pallet of sonorities
that make the instrument into an orchestra. He has also developed an
equally unique compositional language involving combined pulses,
employing the phrase “temporal harmony” to describe it. Yet, there is a
directness, at times almost a simplicity, in his music. With his
playing and in his compositions, Maroney combines musical genres and
transforms sounds we think we understand, adding depth and color, often
at great speed, while never sacrificing clarity."
Mark Medwin, All About Jazz-New York, August 2010
DOUBLE ZERO
"dazzlingly creative... a stunner" - Jason Bivins,
Dusted"a jeweler with precise attention to detail unearthing exotic gems" - Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"a major achievement" - Geoff Winston, Londonjazz.blogspot.com
"une suite solo particulierement convaincante" - Luc Bouquet, canalblog.com
"un mondo magico" - Enrico Bettinello, All About Jazz Italia
"intense, restless and beautiful" - Jacob Green, monk pink pink punk
"oddly soulful... richly emotional... a vocabulary that opens up new voices" - Mike Wood, foxydigitalis
GLEAM
"fits comfortably among the best improvised music" - Ken Waxman, All About Jazz - New York
MARK DRESSER & DENMAN MARONEY "LIVE IN CONCERT"
"a great synthesis of sound" - http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/
"une mousson de bonheur sonore" - Noel Tachet, Improjazz
"masterful... slippery, serene" - Kurt Gottschalk, squidsear.com
"he makes a keyboard instrument sound like anything but, but for him that's no end in itself." - Nic Jones, allaboutjazz.com
"never less than compelling" ***** - Charles Farrell, emusic.com
GAGA
"quirky, unpredictable and yet, oddly charming"
- Bruce Gallanter, DMG Newsletter 2 May '08
"ear-candy from beginning to end.” - Stefan Gijssels http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/
"a masterpiece on which all the playing is top
drawer" - MarkMedwin, allaboutjazz.com
DISTICH
"completely alien pianistic territory" - Scott Verrastro, Jazz Times
"fascinating... incredibly unique soundscape"
- Fritz Schenker, WNUR-FM
"an astounding level of cohesion" - Matthew Miller, allaboutjazz.com
"remarkable... in-the-moment intuition" - Nic Jones, allaboutjazz.com
TIME CHANGES
"effortless and alluring" - John Kellman, allaboutjazz.com
"Every track... is stunning and every note feels
perfect. It's a masterpiece" - Michael Anton Parker, downtownmusicgallery.com
"a delightfully surprising album... worthy of
repeated listens" - Troy Collins, Junkmedia
"strangely wonderful stuff" - Mark Keresman,JazzTimes
"delightful" - Jason Bivins, www.bagatellen.com
"* * * * [4 stars]" - John Ephland, Downbeat
"ravishingly exquisite" - Jay
Collins, One Final Note
"wild" - Brian
P. Lonergan, allaboutjazz.com
"deeply
satisfying... telepathically swinging" - Larry Appelbaum, Jazz Times (re 2005 Jazz em Agosto concert)
"The strength of the trio is that they
are remarkably similar players" - Kurt Gottschalk, allaboutjazz.com
FLUXATIONS
DUOLOGUES
"When I saw Denman
Maroney and Mark Dresser
perform at Victoriaville in May of 2000 I was on the edge of my seat, breathless,
agog." - Fred Frith
"extraordinary... an epic adventure" - Sam
Prestianni, Jazziz
"a whole new kind of poetry... beautiful" - Francois
Couture, AMG Expert
"superb... Be prepared to be completely transformed
and transfixed" - Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"absolute musical intimacy" - Greg
Buium, Cadence
"magic... reconceive[s] the instrument's potential
in extraordinary ways" - Julian Cowley, The Wire
"an encounter between two string instruments,
one happening to be a piano... fascinating" - Jon
Andrews, Downbeat
TOOLS
OF THE TRADE
"marvelous... passionate dialogue... astonishing"
- Philippe Elhem,
jazzreview.com
"a genuine tunefulness and even lyricism invades
the music" - Derek
Taylor, allaboutjazz.com
"[Maroney]
coaxes dreamy, drifting sonorities from inside the piano" - Bruce
Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
BILLABONG
"Brilliant!"- Steve
Koenig, Jazz Weekly
"a master of the prepared piano... intriguing,
evanescent" - Phillip McNally, Cadence
"mind-bending yet incredibly seductive" - Glenn
Astarita, allaboutjazz.com
"clear-eared listeners... will revel in the multiplicity
of sounds" - Ken Waxman, www.jazzweekly.com
FIRE
SONG
"fascinating" - Bruce
Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"refreshing" - Phil
Waldorf/Robin Edgerton, Other Music
"fantastic slithering, sliding, and spiraling"
- Gil Gershman, Muze
"a fascinating journey into sound" - Robert Iannapollo, Cadence (July 2000)
"satisfyingly disorienting" - Francois
Couture, All Music Guide
"a wild and wiggy workout" - Opprobrium
HYPERPIANO
"chillingly good" - Jeff Gibson, Other Music
"exciting... exhilarating" - Richard
Cochrane, Musings
"hypnotic... intriguing" - Frank
Rubolino,
Cadence
"satisfying and diverse" - Howard
Stelzer,
Intransitive Review
"scary" - Bruce Gallanter,
Downtown
Music Gallery
"sonic treasures" - Michael
Nastos, WEMU-FM, Ypsilanti MI
"shimmering partials hovering luminescent in
the air" - John Chacona, Signal To Noise
"a development of both Cage and Nancarrow" -
Andy
Hamilton, Wire
"intellectual, strong and a workout for adventurous
ears" - John Barrett, Jr., Green Mountain Jazz Messenger
AQUIFER
"transform[s] the piano into a machine capable of producing almost any sound imaginable" - Robert Bush, allaboutjazz
"Wow. I don't think I can rave about this album
enough." - Fred Barrett, http://www.beyondcoltrane.com
"almost unspeakable" - Thom
Jurek, Allmusic.com
"marvelous and multi-faceted" - Jason
Bivins, onefinalnote.com
"remarkable" - Ken
Waxman, jazzweekly.com
"Maroney
is capable of unbelievably bizarre and eerie noises" - Charlie
Wilmoth, dustedmagazine.com
"cet étonnant trio... mérite une
écoute particulière" - www.lamediatheque.be
"[Maroney]
has the boneless fluency classic pianists... pray for" - Kitty
Montgomery,
The Daily Freeman (Woodstock NY)
THE
CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI
"keyboard genius... the only slide pianist worth
mentioning" - Wolf Kampmann,
JazzThetik
"far more sophisticated than most" - Harvey
Pekar, Downbeat
"spontaneously prepared piano" - Kevin
Whitehead, Pulse
SEGMENTS
"outstanding performances" - Jay
Collins, One Final Note
"most compelling" - jazzreview.com
"Denman plays some fine angular and out piano"
- Bruce
Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
THE
ART OF IMPROVISATION: LEROY JENKINS' DRIFTWOOD
"edge-of-your-seat mesmerizing" - Bruce
Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter
"[Maroney's] control is phenomenal" - Michael
Rosenstein, One Final Note
"a universal new music" - Kevin
Whitehead, emusic.com
"brilliant... shimmering metallic highlights
of Maroney's preparations" - Bill Shoemaker,
Point of Departure
"roils with sound and ideas" - Rex
Butters, allaboutjazz
"a beautiful work" - Chris Kelsey, Jazz Times
"Last month (in November of 2011) when Jeff Gauthier from the Cryptogramophone label was curating at The Stone, I caught the great duo of Vinny Golia & Denman Marony play two sets on two different nights. Vinny played assorted reeds while Denman was playing inside the piano with selected objects. In between sets I had the opportunity to discuss at length with Mr. Maroney the development of his technique for working inside the piano with specific objects (mainly metals) that he has used for many years starting with a recording he made with the Negative Band of two Stochausen pieces while attending Cal Arts in the early seventies. I now have a better idea of how certain sounds are made with his unique 'hyperpiano' techniques. "Maroney has recorded a number of duos (Mark Dresser, Mat Maneri, Earl Howard & Ned Rothenberg), but has also done solo recordings. This is the 2nd of his hyperpiano-titled recordings [the first was released on Monsey]. Although the basic sound of prepared piano is recognizable, Denman focuses in on certain ideas and then expands and explorers certain textures and sounds. The first piece sounds like ping pong balls being bounced on the strings or clock gears winding down slowly. Sometimes Denman will play bent melodies on the keyboard while rubbing the strings inside with certain metal objects. The overall sound is like a fractured fairy tale. Mr. Maroney explores a different themes or ideas on each piece, often nuance by nuance. In between eruptions of varying dissonant sounds, certain melodies or fragments of are strategically employed. All in all, Denman works like a scientist or a jeweler with precise attention to detail unearthing exotic gems a few at a time. Although it sounds as if he is exploring alien terrain, it still makes sense and reveals fascinating worlds within worlds." Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"This is a departure from just about anything
we've heard from Mr. Maroney in the past. Denman is most often recognized
as a great pianist who continues to explore unusual sounds often produced
by rubbing objects inside the piano, which he refers to as "hyperpiano".
For this disc, Denman has taken the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens
and has written his own music for the words to be sung by Theo
Bleckmann (Yeats) or Shelley
Hirsch (Stevens). The title piece, "Music for Words, Perhaps" is from
a poem by Yeats and it features the duo of Theo
Bleckmann and Denman Maroney.
It is a long work (36 & 1/2 minutes), broken into 10 parts. Denman's
piano playing, Theo's voice and the music itself are consistently adventurous
and engaging. The words are printed in the booklet, so we get a chance
to consider what wonderful poetry it is. On "The Second Coming", Denman
does an impressive job of coaxing eerie sounds out of his manipulated piano
while Theo sounds like a mildly disturbed spirit. This piece works since
the words and music, voice and piano, exist as one strong integrated spirit.
"A Thought Revolved" was written by Wallace Stevens and it features the
great voice of Shelley
Hirsch with strong quintet backing. Again, it is Denman's exuberant
piano playing that keeps this piece so invigorating, adding the ever crafty
trumpet of Herb Robertson and
Shelley's distinctive voice to the brew. The words are again filled with
fascinating ideas and images and Shelley does a special job of bringing
them to life with her humor and her unique vocal spice. It is great to
hear a new direction explored by Denman
Maroney, especially since it is so successful on a variety of levels."
- Bruce
Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"Pianist Denman Maroney is a restless spirit,
seeking new ways to express himself, joining careful structural compositional
elements with free form, and the result is utterly perplexing and warm.
I have listened more than a dozen times to this album in the past days
and it is extremely difficult get familiar with it. Each time I listen
to this record, it sounds different. It is hard to identify themes, or
even structures in it, but the music is carefully crafted nevertheless
: the rhythms and tempos are different for the various instruments in the
quintet, and so is the harmonic development. It is at times puzzling for
the listener: once you focus on one thing, the other parts seem to escape
attention, and vice versa. A kind of musical "trompe l'oeil" with ever
ongoing shifts and differing perspectives. Musical time becomes a relative
thing. On top of that, Maroney uses his hyperpiano extensions: anything
that is handy to give his strings a different sound color will do: slides
and bows of metal, rubber, plastic, brass bowls, CD jewel cases, tape cassette
boxes, you name it. But the brilliant thing about Maroney's approach is
that his music sounds great. In contrast to many experimenters, the music
still prevails here, and how. With a band consisting of Ned
Rothenberg on clarinet and sax, Dave
Ballou on trumpet, Reuben Radding
on bass and Michael
Sarin on drums, what more do you want? And I think you would need such
technically gifted musicians to bring Maroney's musical concept to a good
end, and adding some. It must have required great efforts of concentration
for them, yet the quality of the improvisations is such that all five musicians
dance their way through even the most difficult parts. And despite all
the complexity, the album is great fun. It is serious at times, but Maroney
does not take himself too seriously. And because of the different tempi,
it funks too at times. Music for the mind, heart and body. And like any
good music, its quality increases with each listen. More joy to come."
Stefan Gijssels http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/
"Denman Maroney plays 'hyperpiano'. Before
you start thinking that might be a very large piano set on the outskirts
of town, think again. it's actually his term for the process of playing
the piano in any number of ways other than just simply hitting the keys
(though he does that as well). This use of prepared piano owes equal amounts
to John Cage, Ornette Coleman and Charles Ives. He uses copper pipes, Tibetan
bowls, bits of wood and rubber or even CD cases to coax micro harmonies,
creaks, groans and unearthly sounds from the strings over a series of improvisations
by a band made up of Ned Rothenberg
(reeds), Dave Ballou (trumpet),
Reuben
Radding (bass) and Michael
Sarin (drums). It's a surprisingly accessible success, too.
"While you may assume that such free form exercises
in tone and texture may be a little lacking in form you'd be wrong. Maroney's
system of temporal harmony allows him to improvise and compose in several
tempos at once. Aided by Sarin, Udentity - split into seven parts - contains
some remarkably toe-tapping moments. While the shorter numbers throw up
some interesting ideas it's the longer work here (I, III and VII) that
bear the most fruits. Mixing rhythms, changing focus and giving themselves
space to, say, move from a funky backbone to a softly morphing display
of bowing and scraping, aided by the grunting of Ned
Rothenberg's sax or oboe [sic].
"Indeed the whole album contains not only forays
into the avant garde, but manages to root itself in some pretty traditional
arrangements at times. It's playful while deadly serious about the way
in which new sounds can be applied to the form. And ultimately, it's a
fascinating journey."
Chris
Jones, BBC
"This is the third duo album by bassist Mark
Dresser and pianist Denman Maroney, after "Duologues" and "Time Changes".
In contrast to some of the other material by the two players, this one
is fully improvised in three long pieces. The first 30 minute track was
recorded live at Vision Festival on June 10, 2008, the two other pieces
date from a performance in Chicago in 2001. It's hard to call this jazz,
since none of the two plays anything which ressembles anything which could
fit in a category. It is music that evolves, following its own logic of
feeling, interaction and sonic pallette: highly unpredictable yet very
focused. Maroney's "hyperpiano" becomes a different instrument in his hands,
with all kind of materials muting the strings, vibrating along, or any
other kind of bizarre sound that can be extracted from your standard piano.
The new sounds that are created push Dresser along on the same route, re-inventing
the bass as well. This does not mean that this music is experimental per
se. Art is at the center of what they do, using their skills to generate
feelings and intellectual play, with at times even beautiful passages,
and through all the sonic novelty, jazz, blues and classical music emerge,
like wisps of memory, in a great synthesis of sound. It is better than
the two previous albums, soberer and richer at the same time, and strangely
enough more focused despite the difference in recording dates."
Stefan Gijssels http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/
"Enregistré à Chicago en 2001
et au Vision Festival 2008, Maroney au piano et Dresser à la basse
semblent suivre indéfiniment un fil musical dans une activité
agile et passionnante. Les deux sources utilisées pour ce disque
sont d'une unité sonore et musicale frappante, les deux musiciens
manifestent une très grande maitrise à la fois des techniques
musicales classiques et du son qui est la matière première
de l'improvisation. Au point qu'ils semblent se laisser jouer par la musique.
Être attentif avec cette acuité, agir avec cette vitesse,
cette précision et cette élégance de verité
est un art profond et joyeux. Le piano de Denman Maroney, hyperpiano ainsi
qu'il le nomme puisqu'il a fait de l'usage du piano préparé
de très approfondie (disponible sur son site), est un déluge
qui tombe sur le crane de l'auditeur, une mousson de bonheur sonore. Mark
Dresser n'est pas en reste de créativité et traite sa
contrebasse comme du chewing-gum pour l'adapter à toutes les configurations.
Le duo déroule sa musique comme le fait un ruisseau, à chaque
instant se choisit la ligne de plus grande pente, imprévisible,
sans cesse réoriente. Un grand disque."
Noel Tachet, Improjazz
"Deep in the course of the 2008 annual saxophone
conference that the Vision Festival in large part always becomes, there
was a quiet, lovely (and hugely well received) recital by a pair of masterful
players. Bassist Mark Dresser
and pianist Denman Maroney are rarely if ever about flamboyance or velocity,
or even volume really, but they managed to put a hush over the packed house
with their slippery, serene music.
"Thirty-one minutes of that set make up the first
half of the duo's Live in Concert, the balance being culled from a show
in Chicago seven years earlier. Maroney tends to spend considerable time
inside the piano case, sliding and scraping objects around to undermine
the instrument's fixed intervals. Paired against Dresser's double bass,
there is often considerable overlap in the voices, which creates a wonderful
sense of possibility to the recording like the aural equivalent of a pond,
seemingly still but always in motion, and with the potential at any moment
for a surprising little eddy, a buzzing insect skimming the surface or
an unanticipated croaking frog. Dresser and Maroney have a strong understanding
of their common territory, and a shared determination to explore it fully."
Kurt
Gottschalk, squidsear.com
GAGA
“Pianist Denman Maroney is something else.
Already on "Distich," with Mat Maneri, his cerebral approach to creating
new musical universes became apparent, while maintaining a high sense of
emotional lyricism. Music can sound clever, yet awful. The real challenge
is to create something new that still sounds great, as on this album. Maroney
is joined by three stellar musicians: Ned
Rothenberg on reeds, Reuben
Radding on bass and Michael Sarin on drums. Because of Maroney's calculated,
even mathematical approach to music, every piece sounds extremely precise
and finished, even the long title track, while still sounding very open
and refreshing. "Gaga", the track, changes the whole time, while remaining
essentially the same, giving the impression of watching the flow of the
water just next to a river bank, very repetitive, very minimal, yet every
few notes adds something different, either rhythmically or musically. The
music is measured, thoroughly composed with limited improvisations and certainly
not very expressive. In that sense it's very un-jazzy in its approach,
despite the line-up, and yet, it has a jazz sensitivity in mood and tunes.
While searching for a clear aesthetic form, it does not sound distant at
all. "Social Security" is probably the most jazzy tune, while "Frogs" has
some Latin influences and "Blip" has a march-like cadence. But genre has
become irrelevant for Denman Maroney's music. He loves rhythmic and compositional
complexities while keeping the surface of the music appealingly simple
and accessible. And the four musicians are absolutely a pleasure to hear.
This is ear-candy from beginning to end.”
Stefan Gijssels http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/
"Denman Maroney has had a completely unique
and distinctive approach to playing acoustic piano, which he has developed
for more than a decade [sic]. Denman's contribution to each of the discs that
he has worked on with Mark Dresser, Ned
Rothenberg, Mat Maneri, Earl Howard and Hans Tammen, has never been
less than stunning. This is Mr. Maroney's second disc as leader [sic], his first
a fine disc on New World from last year [sic] and he has chosen his ensemble
most selectively. Ned Rothenberg
has a great duo disc out with Denman on CIMP and is part of Denman's quintet
for New World. Reuben Radding
is one of downtown's finest, most diverse and busiest bassists working
with the likes of Daniel Carter, Mary Holvorson, Jack Wright & Ursel
Schlicht. Similarly, [drummer] Michael
Sarin also gets around, having played with a host of downtown greats
like Mario Pavone, Thomas Chapin, Dave Douglas, Myra Melford and Brad Shepik.
I knew from the start that this was going to be fine disc.
"Fowler's Blues" opens
and is an odd minimal bluesy song with Denman playing most skeletal and
Ned playing even less notes, while Michael spins more quickly on brushes.
The mid-section has Denman cautiously muting the piano strings with as
he plays those eerie rubbed string sounds. There is something quite elegant
and charming about this piece. I love the way Denman combines that twisted
Latin-like groove on "Frogs" while playing those bowl-rubbing notes inside
the piano. The title track, "Gaga" is the longest and it is a spacious,
haunting and minimal piece. Michael's melodic mallet work is featured as
the rest of the instruments just add occasional punctuation. It is as if
there is a couple of intersecting stories going on simultaneously in slow
motion and then building in tempo slightly as it unfolds. When Ned finally
comes in, his own playful sound to the sly, oddly funky vibe. The thing
I dig most about this disc is the strange yet charming melodies that Denman
has written. Each piece seems to have a theme that is quirky, unpredictable
and yet, oddly charming. "Kilter" reminds me of a merry-go-round as it
accelerates and then slows back down. "Social Security" sounds suspiciously
like a Thelonius Monk theme with a theme that is instantly memorable. In
a way, I can see/hear how Monk could be an inspiration for this quartet as Denman does write
those quirky slightly twisted songs. This disc is not what we might have
expected from an experimentalist like Denman Maroney, although it is just
as engaging nonetheless."
Bruce Gallanter, DMG Newsletter 2 May '08
"In free jazz, the possibilities may seem
endless, only grounded by the usually loose framework of swing. In the
world of free improvisation, anything goes: Obnoxious bursts of noise and
the use of silence and found sound can play just as important a role as
limited blues and jazz scales. Microtonal five-string violist Mat Maneri
and prepared pianist Denman Maroney’s recent union, Distich, falls firmly
into the free-improv camp, eschewing predetermined motifs and rhythms for
aleatoric noises and melodies culled from intrinsic logic.
"Maroney—who has played with artists as diverse
as Mission of Burma’s Roger Miller, Tim Berne, Elliott Sharp, Ed Schuller
and Bobby Previte—plays his Hyperpiano here, a Steinway B piano custom-made [sic]
with metal, including the soundboard, tuning pins and strings. Taking Henry
Cowell’s “The Banshee” and John Cage’s landmark 1946-48 recording “Sonatas
and Interludes for Prepared Piano” as a springboard to dive into completely
alien pianistic territory, Maroney has, throughout his career, continued
to find new ways to strike and scrape his instrument, coaxing myriad whines,
howls and plinks from it. With a foil as advanced and creative as Maneri,
Distich shows the pianist expanding his vocabulary even further.
"At numerous occasions throughout the disc, it
sounds as if the viola and Hyperpiano are the same instrument; their microtonal
properties make it almost impossible to discern who is playing what. Maneri
does play fractured melodies that can be briefly identified as Eastern
European gypsy folk or the avant-classicalism of Schoenberg and Stravinsky,
but mostly he just darts around Maroney and saws and plucks with abandon,
refusing to settle on a rhythmic or melodic idea."
Scott Verrastro, Jazz
Times, August, 2007
"On this album, Maroney plays hyperpiano,
meaning he plays with an extended piano technique that includes playing
the inside of the piano and manipulating the strings with various objects.
Maneri, known for his micro-tonal 5-strong viola playing, jumps into the
wide sonic world that Maroney creates and engages, prods and sympathizes.
Free improvisation within this range of sounds becomes all that more fascinating,
since not only are we drawn into their dialogue, but also their incredibly
unique soundscape of plucks, buzzes, glissandos, squeaks, harmonic wails,
and tears."
Fritz Schenker, WNUR-FM
"Distich is a duo testing the limitations
of its instrumentation. Mat Maneri brings his 5-string viola to bear and
Denman Maroney his piano, on music that to all intents and purposes is
concerned largely with new sonic possibilities.
"This is especially pertinent in view of what
might be called Maroney’s extended use of the piano, through which he utilizes
other elements of the instrument apart from the keyboard itself. The end
result is a program of music as soundscape, in the best sense of the term,
as much as it is the product of the two musicians interacting. The balance
they consistently manage to strike between the two is remarkable.
"It could be argued that the devil there undoubtedly
is in this music lies in the detail, and with that in mind the fact that
it’s been recorded with such clarity and precision is only a blessing.
On the title track even the tiniest nuance has been captured, and the effect
of this is a truly intimate portrait of precisely where the music is going.
By the same token the initially disorientating effect of “Bicinium” is
not so much resolved as it is incorporated into a greater whole, like one
of the pieces in a mosaic of sound the full life of which is conveyed through
the sonic clarity.
"'Brace' offers up something of a snapshot of
how the duo works. Their in-the-moment intuition comes out here in the
way the two indulge in an out-of-pitch exchange, the music seeming to move
stealthily towards some ever indeterminate point, if that’s possible. The
effect of it is a kind of opposite to musical conservatism, especially
as what music might be, as opposed to what it already is—this seems like
an abiding preoccupation. Not even the fact that this piece enters the
realm of a kind of warped formalism alters that impression, especially
as its development thwarts expectations of even the closest, most diligent
listening.
"In this setting a title like “Couplet” is only
too apt. In contrast with a lot of the music, a form of hyperactivity pervades
the piece, both musicians seemingly intent on staking out their own musical
space at the same time as they are servants of the duo’s bigger needs.
That might sound like a paradox, but it could be argued that it’s a paradox
which lies at the very heart of music like this. When the results are as
stimulating as they are here, the issue seems irrelevant anyway."
Nic Jones, allaboutjazz.com,
August 10, 2007
"Although in complete musical agreement,
pianist Denman Maroney and violist Mat Maneri spar good-naturedly on “Doublet”,
the fifth track of Distich. Maneri’s five-string viola bobs and weaves
through a volley of clipped piano lines and sharply accented dyads before
he’s finally allowed to emerge, sounding a series of long, doleful strains
before dropping back into the fray. The duo strikes a satisfying balance
throughout the album, challenging each other musically while maintaining
an astounding level of cohesion.
"Those familiar with Maroney and Maneri’s previous
work won’t be surprised to hear the other-worldly sonic effects conjured
throughout the album’s nine tracks — extended techniques are second nature
to both men. Maroney leans over to pluck strings and hammer notes as often
as other pianists step on the sustain pedal and Maneri is right there with
him when the mood is right. On “Match”, the duo are once again in the thick
of a cat and mouse game when Maroney smothers a high run with his left
hand; Maneri doesn’t hesitate to dampen his own strings while tapping a
rhythmic counterpoint on the body of his viola. This moment, a climax in
a performance of lesser merit, is only a preface to the gorgeous, meandering
ascent that is the wrenching finale."
Matthew Miller, allaboutjazz.com,
Dec. 8, 2007
"Mark
Dresser and Denman Maroney
have
covered a lot of territory in their 16 years of frequent collaboration,
but this may be their most successful attempt at synthesizing diverse moods
and concepts. While the experimental, challenging side of their musicality
is de-emphasized on Time Changes, this program is a delirious swath of
contemporary musical aesthetics "integrated not segregated"--to use Dresser's
own words. These guys have invented fresh new ways to go way OUT while
still being gloriously, heart-achingly, toe-tappingly IN; sometimes it
feels like they've hidden a Kagel composition in the interstices of a jazz
ballad. What's so special about Dresser
is how he's developed an incomparable vocabulary of extended technique
on doublebass, but he's found a way to incorporate this goldmine of timbral
and dynamic detail into a conventional jazz context instead of the more
straightforward and common approach of playing these techniques for their
own sake. Dresser is no stranger
to the latter approach of placing sound discoveries on center stage to
speak for themselves and I personally find that musical direction endlessly
rewarding as a wellspring of new musical parametrizations and forms, but
it's a rare and joyous occasion to hear this kind of microstructural avant-gardism
elevate an older form like jazz. And, wow, is this music elevated;
it's floating in the celestial spheres of creative jazz.
Accounting for its title, the album is highlighted by complex and innovative
rhythmic interaction, an area of compositional investigation that Dresser
and Maroney have both pursued
to rare depths. Michael
Sarin is a master of intricate post-jazz drumkit and he not only nails
the tricky details of timing in these works, but also offers a degree of
timbral detail that matches Dresser
and Maroney. At times they
deliver the sort of staggered, off-kilter, punchy, tightly wound, cyclical
rhythmic structures that would appeal to fans of the RIO tradition in avant-rock
(Nimal, Univers Zero, Henry Cow, etc) in addition to fans of the robust
avant-jazz tradition of intricate "heads" (Chapin, Berne, Masada, Threadgill,
etc). This album is a showcase for Maroney's
flexibility; he freely moves between precise, economical keyboard parts
and his famous "hyperpiano" vocabulary. On "Pulse Field" he treats the
piano as the giant zither it is, with buzzing darts and clusters of high-pitched
microtonal plucking. Even when the trio is in their post-Euro-improv/serialist
zones, they favor repetition and fairly smooth timbres that sustain the
album's subdued, gentle flow and nearly romantic mood of lush prettiness,
which finds its peaks in the four tracks featuring mezzo-soprano female
vocalist Alexandra Montano.
As much as I love the contrasts from track to track that make it an intoxicating
and varied total-album experience, I'd be just as happy to hear Montano's
heavenly voice on every track! "Between 17th and Bliss" is not only the
highlight of the album for me, but this miraculous triumph of creativity
and beauty is probably the most gorgeous piece of music I'll hear all year.
Towards the end an understated bass, piano, and cymbal composite gracefully
glides down a breathtaking, shimmering arch with Montano's
lilting, slow melodies. It's one of those moments where I feel truly transported
by music. Transported to where? Perhaps an expansive flower garden on a
warm day with a gentle breeze carrying the ephemeral scents of fresh blooms.
At times, Montano recalls
the pastoral, floating moments of Aina Kemanis' vocals in the Alex Cline
Ensemble, and on "M.C." she rivals the darting, light bliss of Flora Purim's
work with Airto Moreira and Chick Corea. Every track on Time Changes is
stunning and every note feels perfect. It's a masterpiece rendered with
audiophile recording clarity and presented with Cryptogramophone's customarily
lavish packaging and artwork."
Michael Anton Parker, Downtown
Music Gallery
"While Mark
Dresser is best known as one of avant-garde jazz's leading bassists
(he was a long-standing member of the Marilyn Crispell-era Anthony Braxton
Quartet), pianist Denman Maroney
is known primarily (on recordings, anyway) as one of Dresser's
most faithful collaborators. It's a great matchup: Both Dresser
(whose firm dark-hued, robust tone is marvelously Mingusy at times) and
Maroney
- credited with "hyperpiano," as his keyboard's innards are altered a la
John Cage and Henry Cowell's prepared pianos - employ extended techniques,
stretching and expanding beyond what's typically thought to be their instruments'
ranges.
"Fortunately, both draw upon these methods to
serve the music, not to merely explore-for-the-sake-of-exploration - note
the delicately dramatic guitar-and-cello-like sonorities and jungle of
percussive tones of "One Plate." Time Changes features an enigmatic mix
of reflective lyricism, edgy improv and wry swing. Maroney's
soloing throughout "M.C." smacks of '60's era Vince Guaraldi in its joyful
directness and Horace Silver in its earthy, graceful groove. The
duo is frequently joined by the elegant, wordless mezzo-soprano of Alexandra
Montano and the subtle, judicious drumming of Michael
Sarin, who shines on the harrowingly taut, almost cinematic "Lateral
Mass." It's strangely wonderful stuff."
Mark Keresman, Jazz
Times
"'Time Changes' (Cryptogramophone
124) focuses on a quite different style of improvisation. Bassist Mark
Dresser and hyperpiano specialist Denman Maroney have been working together for a very long time, exploring
a fairly unique blend of timbral experimentation and rhythmic diversity.
In the collective Tambastics (with Gerry
Hemingway and Robert
Dick) and on their own recordings (notably Dresser’s Force
Green, with vocals by Theo
Bleckmann being a possible antecedent of this release), they’ve slowly
developed their joint language. Along with drummer/percussionist Michael
Sarin and, on several tracks, vocalist Alexandra
Montano, the co-leaders explore material quite different from that
heard on their previous Crypto release Aquifer.
There’s a much stronger emphasis on rhythm here, both in the way their
composed lines are structured and in the sense of providing pulse tracks.
Montano
has a rich, colorful soprano and her doubled lines with Maroney
are delightful. And somehow the knotty, constantly permutating rhythms
make sense, like Eddie Palmieri tunes from Saturn (one of the finest examples
of which is the favorite “Aperitivo”). There are plenty of moments of Dresser
magic, thankfully, and if you’ve never heard Maroney’s
work you’ll be delighted to listen to the otherworldly sounds he generates
(just check out the extremely abstract “Harkemony”). He can, of course,
also play straight-laced piano trio as he does on “One Plate.” It’s really
the blend of extended techniques with slightly abstracted idiomatic materials
that makes the sound of this one so distinct. It’s the best disc of this
batch [of the four Cryptogramophone
CDs discussed in this review]."
Jason
Bivins, www.bagatellen.com
"* * * * [4 stars] This co-led date with
bassist
Dresser and "hyperpiano"
player
Maroney has the
appeal of an open ended conversation. The tunes weave together, with stylistic
changes suggesting a mood change, an opinion or a flight of fancy. The
recording quality keeps things intimate as well, each instrument (including
the singing voice of Alexandra
Montano) heard close-in, without need to 'raise one's voice.' Drummer
Michael
Sarin is sensitive and dynamic. Montano's
voice is a cooing chirper ("Double You," "One Plate"), while the outside
tendencies toward angularity or abstraction ("Aperitivo," "Heap") are balanced
by a sense of lightheartedness ("One Plate")."
John Ephland, Downbeat
"...Better still [at the 2005 Jazz em Agosto
Festival in Lisbon] was a deeply satisfying set by bassist Mark
Dresser’s trio with pianist Denman Maroney and drummer Michael
Sarin. Their telepathically swinging soundscape combined odd metered
stomps, vivid splashes of color, abstract blues and thorny, challenging
compositions, most notably their final piece dedicated to Yvonne Vera,
the celebrated, recently deceased writer from Zimbabwe. It was a performance
informed by joy and a sense of discovery that, like much of Jazz em Agosto
and the city of Lisbon, left me wanting more."
Larry
Appelbaum, Jazz Times (Aug. '05)
“Over the course of nine hot August [2005]
days in Lisbon, the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation managed to present major figures in European
free improvisation (Alexander
von Schlippenbach, Evan
Parker, Paul
Lovens, Paul
Lytton, Paul
Rutherford, Conrad
Bauer, Irene Schweizer, Pierre Favre), American master instrumentalists
(Mark Dresser, Gary
Lucas, Erik Friedlander),
some of the smartest piano preparers in the world (Sylvie
Courvoisier, Denman Maroney,
Schlippenbach again)... The foundation has been hosting the festival since
1984. At one time a more mainstream affair, under the guidance of artistic
director Rui Neves, Jazz em Agosto has become a considerable showcase for
innovative improvised music…
“American pianist Maroney
is usually more concerned with the piano’s guts, but in trio with Dresser
and Mike Sarin he showed a propensity for jazz keying, only occasionally
reaching inside the case. The strength of the trio is that they are remarkably
similar players: they all play percussively; all create prolonged tones
that hang in the air; and they can become a piano trio at the drop of a
hat.”
Kurt
Gottschalk, allaboutjazz.com
"Disque de compositeur ne bridant pas les
solistes, au contraire, leur offrant de larges plages improvisées
que ces derniers se chargent de généreusement exalter, Fluxations
est un disque profondément abouti, inspiré et malheureusement
passé inaperçu lors de sa sortie, l’an dernier. Fluxations
est une suite en six parties à l’évidente souplesse compositionelle
; des enchevêtrements contrapuntiques, des dialogues inspirés
entre instrumentistes et surtout des interventions solistes emportées
: l’hyperpiano (sensible) de Denman Maroney, les phrasés pénétrants de Dave
Ballou (musicien qu’il serait enfin temps de reconnaître), les
tendres frénésies de Mark
Dresser, l’alto défait de Ned
Rothenberg, le vibraphone impénétrable de Kevin Norton.
Un disque important, qu’un se le dise !"
Luc Bouquet, Impro Jazz #110, novembre-decembre
2004
[translated from Italian]
"...Through the use of different modes of
direct intervention on the strings... Maroney deepens and enlarges the
idea of prepared piano. But the originality of his method undoubtedly is
a result of the fact that, while the prepared piano is 'prepared' before
the actual playing, Maroney's techniques are impromptu interventions
in real time.
"The performer is offered rich, expressive possibilities.
From an enlargement of the sonic spectrum of the piano in both dynamics
and attacks, the instrument produces sounds recalling the percussive
gamelan, the light pizzicato of harp or sitar, the mallet sounds of marimba,
or evanescent masses of sound arising from simultaneously playing the keys.
A new instrument, this, as Maroney has precisely named it [hyperpiano].
"But what is special about 'Fluxations' does not
stop here. All the music composed by Maroney follows a technique defined
as 'pulse fields,' in which differing meters come together and respond
or react to each other, not, as polyrhythmic or polymetric, where the different
meters resolving in the arc of the measure, but as following their own
course of variable periods, arriving to meet each other after many beats.
"This treatment, similar to those of Charles Ives
and Conlon Nancarrow, has been utilized frequently by Maroney. See his
duos with Mark Dresser [Duologues]
and Earl Howard [Fire Song] and his
own solo disc Hyperpiano. But the first
disc of the hyperpianist that presents this compositional process through
the course of an entire work is 'Fluxations,' a suite in six parts that
involves Ned Rothenberg, Dave
Ballou, Mark Dresser and
Kevin Norton as well as Maroney. Musicians who are perfectly equipped to
present Maroney's complex structure and to collaborate with him at the
same time, as in the case of Dresser, whose activity incorporates a complex
polyrhythmic and polymetric approach; as in the case of Rothenberg and
Norton, habitual collaborators with Anthony Braxton...
"Far from being mechanical or rigid, the musicians
succeed in imbuing this complex compositional operation with a vital spirit
that is completely natural and fluent. The fusion between the written and
improvised parts is well calibrated. Even more, the components, so stimulating
to change, reveal in Maroney a subtle 'stirrer-upper' of timbres. The subtle
metric
shifting creates a continuous displacement of accents, an effect now dramatic,
now alienating, rich in stimulus. A texture finally woven but transparent
in its complexity..."
Giuseppe Segala, allaboutjazz.com/italy
"A good amount of free jazz is made by improvisers
attempting-consciously or unconsciously-to adapt post-Schoenberg compositional
techniques to a largely improvised music. Pianist/composer Denman Maroney can be distinguished from most in that he brings to the table
at least as much experience with European-derived music as with jazz. As
a consequence, his music is more fully (and perhaps more authentically)
informed by the classical principles he's adopted. The concept governing
the music on Fluxations (New
World) is, according to the liner
notes by JazzTimes contributor Bill Shoemaker, based on a technique
of rhythmic organization utilizing "pulse fields"-something too complicated
to explain here and probably just as difficult to perform in a jazz setting.
Fortunately, Maroney and
his band - Kevin Norton, drums and vibes; Dave
Ballou, trumpet; Ned Rothenberg,
bass clarinet and alto sax; Mark
Dresser, bass - do a good job of translating theory into action; the
music here is well-organized, but you're not overly conscious of its origins.
"The pulse-field stuff makes for some interesting
ostinati over which to blow, as on the suite's "Part 3," where Ballou's
elastic trumpet is given room to shine. One might expect such music to
seem about as spontaneous as building a skyscraper. It's true, an air of
reticence does lie over some of this music, as if the players aren't sufficiently
comfortable with the material to cut loose. Nevertheless, it's quite attractive
in its peculiarly brainy way-a bit dry and fussy at times, but never less
than fascinating."
Chris Kelsey, Jazz Times, May 1, '04
"Hyperpianist Denman Maroney has distinguished himself as one of the most unique pianists
to emerge in the '90s (although his discography goes back to the '70s).
Utilizing an extreme prepared piano technique and a unique rhythmic sensibility,
both instrumentally and compositionally, he has become one of the most
intriguing composer/performers around. His most recent release is a six
part composition for quintet: Fluxations
(New World
80607).
"I haven't heard a lot of Maroney's
work, but it strikes me that this disc is probably his most jazz-oriented
release. Having four high caliber players from the genre in his group (Dave
Ballou, tpt; Ned Rothenberg,
as, b cl; Mark Dresser, b; Kevin
Norton, d, vib) reinforces the connection. But while, at times Dresser
and Norton function in the manner of a traditional jazz rhythm section
(e.g. at the beginning of "Part 3"), there is an equal amount of compositional
material for them. And, frankly, timekeeping in these pieces must be difficult,
since Maroney's rhythmic
concept is tied up in a technique called "pulse fields," one where three
or more players are working in diffferent rhythmic cellular structures.
A good example of this is the beginning of "Part 4," which has Maroney,
Dresser
and Norton playing out ping-ponging rhythms (sounds like Maroney
is doing two different rhythms with each hand) and Ballou enters with the
theme - a line that soars around and through the various rhythms created.
"But don't be put off by this music thinking it
may be too academic sounding. The music flows even when it's venturing
into such areas as prepared piano and rhythmic juxtaposition. What's impressive
is the way Maroney switches
from regular piano to hyperpiano mode in the blink of an eye. Once again,
"Part 4" is an excellent example of this when the group pares down to Ballou,
Dresser
and Maroney, and the pianist
begins sliding something up and down the strings, which creates an effect
that seems to stretch the music. Subsequently Ballou drops out and Maroney
and
Dresser engage in a fascinating
string dialogue.
"There's much to this music to absorb. It's complex
and intricate, yet, with these musicians it also flows with a naturalness
and ease. One suspects it belies the difficulties inherent in learning
and playing these pieces. This is a recording definitely worth hearing
and one of the best I've heard so far this year."
Robert Iannapollo, Cadence, Jun. '04
“Denman Maroney is perhaps best known to readers as a virtuoso improviser...
but Fluxations reveals his considerable
skills as a composer. It's a six-part suite based on what Earl Howard calls "pulse fields," i.e. complex cycles of overlapping polyrhythms,
and perhaps the most rigorous instance to date of improvised music turning
its attention to compositional techniques that have existed in more academic
circles since the middle of last century... Recruiting a first-class band
including bassist Mark Dresser,
percussionist Kevin Norton (who both have in-depth experience of notational
intricacy through their work with Anthony Braxton), clarinettist/saxophonist
Ned
Rothenberg and trumpeter
Dave
Ballou, Maroney certainly
has the men for the job, and his scores, though obviously detailed and
notated to a high degree of precision, leave room for the occasional juicy
solo (Ballou's the guy to watch here). One slight reservation I have about
such a line-up is that it inevitably – perhaps deliberately? – resembles
the traditional jazz quintet, meaning that Dresser
and Norton are often heard more as a rhythm section (i.e. accompaniment)
than as rhythmic elements of equal importance. The other quibble is more
strictly compositional; in concentrating his attention on the pulse field,
Maroney
intentionally focuses the listener's attention on the horizontal rather
than the vertical, the melodic rather than the harmonic. The lack of strong
harmonic identity in most of the music reinforces the rather dry nature
of the polyphony. Braxton, whose own GTM music is not too far removed from
Maroney's
in its concept of pulse, gets round this problem by building spaces into
his compositions that allow for abrupt changes of direction, unfettered
free playing, and even the incorporation of other Braxton pieces. One wishes
that some of these fine players would just let rip once in a while – it'd
make the return to the pulse field even more riveting."
Dan Warburton, bagatellen.com
"When I saw Denman Maroney and Mark Dresser
perform at Victoriaville in May of 2000 I was on the edge of my seat, breathless,
agog. It had been a long time since a concert had drawn me in and
held me in that way, and I was fascinated by the effortless melding of
different ways of 'composing', spontaneous and otherwise. Duologues confirms
this reaction eloquently, even though it is, predictably, a different kettle
of fish. And while it would be tempting to focus on technical matters,
since these two are nothing if not radical in this direction, I have to
admit that in spite of my awe of their skills in unusual techniques, this
is not, when it comes down to it, what the music IS. So......what is it?
"Precise? Loose? Dense? Airy? Broken up?
Sustained?
"Well, yes. Imagined instructions: Berate - Caress
- Swing - Sing - Lurch - Groan "Be: Insistent - mechanical - forceful - implacable
- playful - enigmatic "The result? Irresolute beauty, hesitantly definite,
wide, wild."There's a lot in this sound world that I
can't relate to modern human interchange at all, not only from the perspective
of wind on an Aeolian harp, but of the action of natural elements on other
natural elements, something you might hear in winter in the Andes or spring
by the ocean, not here in a concert hall, or there in your living room
- birds, insects, dolphins, wolves, trees, streams, slap of water, flick
of tail, earth's vibration under rain, insistent breakers, drips, slides.......
"Ecstatic wail of a wall it could be anywhere
but now it's here right? Identifiers hard to come by, how come? I can't
even write about it without adopting this syntax stretching that grammar.....
"Obscurely familiar if I know what you
mean, roiling, is that the word? Darkly hyperactive, punctuate that, punch
through, don't, I'm all yours, mine, yours is mine....
"You ask, I answer. "Arc to arch. "Precious metal.
"There's a monumental sweep to the music,
great swells, climbs, plunges, movements grounded in granite, siren songs
to turn any head. At other times, that disarming quality, something I've
always liked about improvisation, of ordinary people going about their
business. This is what we do - you have a problem with that? Often the
tension comes precisely from that contradictory aspect - a couple of blokes
doing stuff, but the stuff happens to be magic, transformative and transforming,
beyond our mundane ability to analyse, we just have to let it shove us
over and pull us in, a riptide, a hurricane, a kiss, hypnosis."
Fred Frith, CD liner notes
"Since their performance in Victoriaville
last year, the duo of Mark Dresser
and Denman Maroney has
been a common sight. Recorded in Brooklyn six months after that Quebec
concert, Duologues might just be the start of a prodigious run. Indeed,
this spring they've played a handful of shows in the Northeast.
Dresser
and Maroney communicate
exquisitely—at a level of absolute musical intimacy. For those unaccustomed
to microtonality or to the use of hardware store accessories, there might
be a suspicion that these men conspire against us. That would be dead wrong.
Duologues, in fact, befriends quiet, careful spaces. And Maroney's
appliances—tools, copper bars, aluminum bells, knives, rubber blocks, plastic
cassette boxes, plastic bottles, mallet, potato mashers, cowbells—are communication
and sound devices. He's impervious to discord or aggression; fine connections
are his strong suit. Then Dresser,
who must possess one of the great modern bass sounds, can't feign intimacy
either—his voice is simply too rich, too expansive. His vast vocabulary
permits choices so shrewd that he punishes wayward listeners. Dresser
gives any duo (or any configuration, for that matter) instant gravity.
Bowed, he can set sound adrift, ethereal or ragged, but then, reaching
down to his bass's bottom end, he draws a platform good and wide. These
short conversation pieces sketch beauty with the rigor and the complexity
of the high avant-garde. Thankfully this isn't a one-off—they might even
be in it for the long haul. Duologues must be a signal event for Mark
Dresser and Denman Maroney."
Greg Buium, Cadence, Jan. 2002
"The prepared piano repertoire has evolved
its own set of formulas and cliches. Denman Maroney sidesteps those and discovers new magic in the instrument's
dusty interior. His 'hyperpiano' techniques (as he terms his subtle bowing,
plucking and rubbing) reconceive the instrument's potential in extraordinary
ways, subordinating the keyboard's conventional use to the huge range of
sounds latent within the strings. The result is concentrated music, never
mere effects. With that great double bassist
Mark
Dresser, Maroney summons
up timbres usually confined to electroacoustic compositions with an extra
freshness and life."
Julian Cowley, The Wire, Oct. '01
"Consider Duologues
an
encounter between two string instruments, one happening to be a piano.
Maroney
focuses on manipulating the strings, apparently through plucking , scratching
or hammering techniques. His fascinating approach recalls works by John
Cage or bowed-piano innovator Stephen Scott. What does it sound like? You
may hear slide guitar, gamelan, harp, doussn'bouni or even synthesizer.
Dresser
plays multiple roles. On tracks like "Amalgamon," his bass lines offer
a center of gravity in contrast to Maroney's
flights. When Dresser applies
extended technique to the bass as on "Arco Optic," the identity of the
instruments can be obscured in the exchange of drones and textures."
Jon Andrews, Downbeat, October 2001
"...Bassist Mark
Dresser and pianist Denman Maroney's extraordinary Duologues
(Victo) is an altogether different type
of bass-drums affair. Actually, considering Maroney's
manipulation of the piano - which he hammers, taps and plucks, all with
merry abandon - it's more of a bass-percussion combo.
"The album's suite-like series of 14 improvisations,
which vary in length from one to eight minutes, is cleanly executed with
a sneaky, smart sense of purpose - a well-defined compositional arc - from
start to finish. The music's sober intensity and complete absence of anything
remotely resembling jazz groove (a.k.a. swing) give it the experimental
imprint of the European avant-garde or 20th century classical music. In
particular, Maroney's muted,
metallic patter on more than one occasion echoes the out-of-this-world
timbre of late composer Conlon Nancarrow's player-piano studies.
"With rapid-fire imaginations in almost unreal
union, the twosome winds through action-reactions that will make the average
listener's head spin. Technically, these players are at the top of their
respective games: Maroney
as a rhythmic-harmonic colossus, teasing out tasty sounds from deep inside
the piano and more conventionally on the keyboard; Dresser
as the four-string maestro whose melodic precision and shimmery arco are
second to no one's. Whether stormy with filmic portent ("Fanfare for the
Rare Woman") or dirge-like with heavy minor chords on the 88s and the bass
mimicking a backwards tape loop ("Throso"), each piece opens a door to
fantastical dreamscapes - Alice's Wonderland, Freddie's Nightmare - a hall
of mirrors with the ecstatic luminosity of a night-long rave. Duologues
is an epic adventure."
Sam Prestianni, Jazziz, Oct '01
"Mark
Dresser's first bass line on Duologues
is a very jazzy one, but do not be fooled: This CD is one of his most adventurous
from this period. Thanks should go to Denman Maroney, a very peculiar pianist who forced the bassist to reinvent
himself. Over the years, Maroney
developed a highly personal musical language focused on the inner resonances
of his instrument. Even when considered from the angle of prepared piano
playing, his approach remains unique. He does not exploit defects, mishaps,
and accidental resonances of objects placed on the strings, but frees a
whole new kind of poetry from the wood and strings of the instrument by
moving bowls around, bending strings, and working simultaneously inside
and outside the instrument. Dresser
was inspired by the pianist's art and complemented his playing beautifully,
extending his own techniques and concentrating a lot more on resonance
himself, as can be heard on "Fanfare for the Rare Woman," "Oscicaglia,"
and "Bozcaada." The duo chose to play short improvisations, from one to
eight minutes long, a decision with beautiful consequences. The sonorities
don't have a chance to become tiresome: When a piece ends, the listener
is left still wondering how such sounds could emanate from a piano and/or
a bass. Duologues makes a very nice companion to Maroney's
2000 CD with guitarist Hans Tammen
(Billabong, on Potlatch).
As for Dresser, this album contains
some of his best playing in years. This is not the live concert these two
gave at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville
in May 2000, but a studio session recorded six months later.”
Francois Couture, AMG Expert
"This challenging duo played at the last
Victoriaville festival and blew away all those in attendance with riveting
contrabass and hyper-piano explorations. This superb release is a studio
effort and it also captures their ever-inventive sonic seasoning. Each
piece works through a focused area of strange minute sounds - "Pulse Feel"
contrasts Mark [Dresser]'s thick
throbbing tone with Denman [Maroney]'s
shrill inside-the-piano rubbings - soon the piano becomes more playful
as Denman deals with the keyboard itself. "Fanfare for the Rare Woman"
is pretty scary as both musicians coax ghostly sounds from their manipulated
artillery. Denman goes for even more frightening sounds on "Slithereens"
- both players rubbing a series of elongated alien notes. You can tell
that this duo has been playing together in numerous contexts through the
years, since they often anticipate each other's sonic palette and arrive
in similar places together. The majority of these pieces are under 5 minutes
and each one successfully explores a focused sonic terrain, evoking a wealth
of altered spirits. "Amalgamon" is the longest piece and it explodes with
layers of strange shrapnel and cosmic spirits. "Throso" is filled with
sinister suspended sounds as Mark's bowed bass and Denman's dark clouds
unleash a series of harrowing images. On "Bozcaada" and often elsewhere
Denman comes up with alien brain-melting sounds which shimmer in both frightening
and fascinating ways, Mark consistently matches many of these sounds with
equally riveting results. Be prepared to be completely transformed and
transfixed by these astonishing sounds. Almost too much."
Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"I have known Ned [Rothenberg]
for more than twenty years and I'm always excited by each and every project
he works on, since a great deal of work goes into each endeavor. Each project
is very different, each a challenge. Although, I've mainly seen/heard Ned
on alto sax and occasionally shakuhachi, he has been also concentrating
on clarinet and bass clarinet in recent years. On this duo CD Ned
plays all three - alto sax and both clarinets.
"Denman Maroney plays hyperpiano in that he explores sounds often inside the
piano with metal bowls and other objects. I have also been watching him
evolve over the past decade playing solo or in duos with Mark
Dresser, Earl Howard
and more recently with Hans Tammen.
"Here we have yet another duo excursion by two
local masters. In the liner notes, Denman explains how each piece works
in terms of which objects are used and overall structure.
"Saw" starts things off with wooden-toned bass
clarinet and piano throbbing quickly together - Ned
plays slower, more ponderous bent notes at the center as Denman spins more
quickly around him - sprinkling notes both on the keyboard and occasionally
inside as well.
"Jug" is a playful, sort of Monkish jazz-like
tune that swings in an odd, twisted sort-of way - Ned
sails on alto sax as Denman also spins quickly with his fragmented lines.
I dig the way certain notes connect, while others fly around each other
and come close, just a bit off-center.
"Denman does bend and mute notes inside the piano
on "Plank" while Ned also flies,
often also bending certain notes so that they also intersect in a fractured
yet focused way. There is fascinating section where Ned
spins a tight stream of notes while Denman also matches him with quick
note-bending inside-the-piano flurries - eventually both players begin
twisted their notes into strange alien sounds which sound just right together,
but eerie and bizarre none-the-less.
"Plane" is even more sinister with lone notes
buzzing or humming as Denman coaxes dreamy, drifting sonorities from inside
the piano and Ned slowly caresses
each note, only slightly bent, but more lyrical in tone as Denman rubs
the strings with buzzing and banging activity as punctuation.
"On "Crab", Denman shifts between percussive buzzing
inside the piano and low-end rumbling at the keyboard while Ned
keeps a fairly normal clarinet tone mostly until both begin bending sharp
notes into the higher toned regions.
"Ned's
"Skeleton" has a fine slow walking memorable melody which sounds perfect
on bass clarinet and regular keyboard piano - Denman plays an interesting
solo with one hand at the keyboard and the other rubbing a bowl muting
notes inside.
"Ned
opens "Feet" by stretching notes out on alto - both players begin playing
flurries of notes following each other as the scenery thickens - soon the
notes get thinner as Ned starts
popping percussive sounds as Denman both rubs inside and spins webs at
the keyboard - later they swirl together as the plot thickens once again.
"Both players switch roles throughout "Ham" as
each short section shifts into different textures, densities and shapes
- this is the most exciting piece here, as it leaves on the edge of their
sets with anticipation.
"Drill" is the final piece and it is a solo work
for mutated inside-the-piano dark and twisted sounds - like alien insects
buzzing around their hive."
Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter
#63
"Denman Maroney is a master of the prepared piano who has come to focus on
the instrument’s insides. He not only tampers with the strings, but he
is experimenting with ways of attacking the strings without the use of
the keyboard. This is what he means by “hyperpiano.”
Hans
Tammen approaches the electric guitar in much the same way, by altering
the strings with objects and then experimenting with ways and objects that
pluck, strike, bow and bend those strings. This is what he terms the “endangered
guitar.”
"So this duo is a dream team for fans of prepared
instruments. Yet this is not the music of AMM. While they alter their instruments
and play in unconventional manners, you as a listener always know you are
listening to a piano and an electric guitar. And there is no confusion
about which player you are hearing is which. The aesthetic here is to expand
the voice of the instrument into new territories, not to abandon or alter
its own special characteristics, or even to disappear into a group sound.
One has to admit, with music like Maroney’s
and Tammen’s, that the listener misses
the visual element. How much more enticing this music would be if we were
seeing it played!
"The music itself, as you would expect, is abstract
and free form. As with much free improvisation, when it is clicking there
is nothing better in music. But it is a high wire act to stay up there
in the world of flying invention. One misstep and you have no net, you
have no nothing to land on. Maroney
and Tammen don’t always manage to
stay up on that wire. But particularly in their most delicate moments,
in improvisations like “Bog” and “Jag,” the duo can create intriguing,
evanescent structures.
"Music like this is not for everyone, but there
is real beauty here to be had, especially for the patient and the quiet.
For admirers of Derek Bailey, Billabong is worth checking out, if only
to hear where Bailey’s disciples are heading."
Phillip McNally, Cadence, May 2001
"This new release, titled Billabong, presents
the listener with a series of duets by two eminent improvisers who pursue
relatively unusual implementations as Denman Maroney mans the "hyperpiano" in concert with Hans Tammen's
permutations on the "endangered guitar".
"With this effort, the duo converges for
eight pieces that might depict some sort of bizarre and thoroughly imaginative
musings among creatures from outer space as the musicians offer a very
special language atop a seemingly uncontrollable path of improvisational
deconstruction. On the opening track "Stud", Tammen
performs scathing lines amid disjointed sequences of maniacal interaction
with Maroney's percussive
block chords and somewhat patented techniques and explorations from within
the inner workings of his piano. Here, the musicians explore ethereal yet
roughly hewn soundscapes, in conformance with their protean statements
and frenetic interplay. Yet on "Bog", Tammen
produces a horde of downright eerie tones on his amplified ax, which elicits
imagery of something intangible yet imminently catastrophic. Whereas on
"Jag", the twosome renders a motif that could signify a schizophrenic or
warped tiptoe waltz, accelerated by Tammen's
strange articulations that sound like tape loops replayed in reverse. Maroney
launches an attack on his detuned piano strings yet counters with a humorous
sonata on "Bounce". - Throughout, the duo elicits a distinct sense of playful
mayhem via their nearly indescribable methods of execution and often mind-bending
yet incredibly seductive improvisations."
By Glenn Astarita, AllAboutJazz.com
"What is that noise?" is the usual question
asked by those hostile to experimental sound when confronted with a fine
session like this. The follow up is often a demand to explain how this
seemingly random collection of scrapes, scratches and reverberations could
even be thought of as music.
"The answer, as Louis Armstrong was once reported
to reply when asked for a definition of jazz, is: "If you don't know what
it is, don't mess with it."
"Simplistic perhaps, but applying one set of standards
to a different style of expression is as fallacious as condemning a dog
for not having cow horns. Both creatures are domesticated, have a tail,
walk on four legs, don't talk and are reasonably loyal and friendly. But
no one expects Rover to resemble Elsie, so why should pure improv approximate
conventional popular sounds?
"Just because isn't good enough. Since sound explorers
like the American [Denman] Maroney
and German [Hans] Tammen have decided
to devote their careers to inserting objects under a piano's strung frame
or radically de-tuning and reverse-engineering an electric guitar, they
should really be celebrated for the new tones they create.
"Someone once theorized that the history of Western
music over the past couple of centuries has been the gradual acceptance
of what once was thought of as "noise" as conventional music. Billabong
may seem "far out" today, but will it still be so in 2050? After all, some
of the eclectronica practiced by Tammen
isn't so far from what you'll hear, bloated with a heavier rhythmic thud,
blasting from the speakers at a dance hall rave. Plus any loudness here
can certainly never compare to the wall of sound produced by a heavy metal
band at full-throttle.
"That too isn't exactly the point either. On the
contrary, clear-eared listeners of this session will revel in the multiplicity
of sounds, tones and even "noises" coming from these traditional instruments
-- and note how they're mixed and matched. On "Bilge," for instance, what
could be a 1960s guitar rave up is played off against something resembling
harpsichord crunches, while the futuristic spaceship beeps on "Bog" have
to coexist with what could be harp string glisses from the piano. Heck,
about half way through "Bounce" you can even hum along to a pretty conventional
"bouncy" melody.
"Billabong
is an Australian expression for a blind channel leading out from a river.
Brave souls unafraid of adventure or "noise" will follow this Billabong
into the uncharted waters to see what adventure results."
Ken Waxman, www.jazzweekly.com
“[Denman] Maroney
and [Earl] Howard
have been working together for 25 years, yet [Fire
Song] is the first time their improvisational and compositional projects
have sprouted in full CD form (they have a track on Einstein records' Confederacy of Dances from a few years ago, too). Maroney
is most known for his work on his "hyperpiano", where he redefines the
use and sound of a prepared piano. Four pieces make up the CD: a dizzying
dialogue between hyperpiano and synthesizer of otherworldly sounds, percussive
rumbles and spacious electronics; solo "hyperpiano" with the instrument's
full spectrum of sounds and melodic tension; a saxophone/hyperpiano piece
where the latter gives a gentle backbone to the former's extensions; and
one of Howard's
solo sax pieces. In these, Maroney
and Howard have
laid out some turns and directions before them, then started down the paths,
allowing each other to wander off, even get lost, and come back together
cohesively. To something that has become a bit of a tired tradition, they
manage a refreshing approach.”
Phil Waldorf/Robin Edgerton,
Other Music
"Veterans of New York City's "downtown" jazz
and contemporary music scene, Earl
Howard and Denman Maroney
have been friends since their days as composition students at Cal Arts.
The two musicians share an interest in extended instrumental techniques
and in improvisation within the parameters of composition. Maroney's
"hyperpiano" approach takes the piano beyond its 88-key tonal range as
he plays the instrument-from within and without-using such resourceful
implements as knives, bowls, mallets, bottles, and potato mashers. In his
alto sax and Kurzweil synth playing, Howard
strives for novel treatments of timbre, texture, and technique.
"Howard
and Maroney each contribute
a pair of solo and duet compositions to FIRE SONG. Maroney's
dynamic solo "UnCaged Bacchanal" presents hyperpiano's fantastic slithering,
sliding, and spiraling signatures and watered-metal sonorities in dazzling
contrast to traditional low-note figures and trickling treble motifs. The
sax solo "Orchid" introduces Howard's
restless exploration of mid-range melodies and elaborately overlapping
phrases. Of the duos, Maroney's
"Pulse Field" is the more "musical," leading
Howard's
convoluted sax into progressively less definable hyperpiano provinces.
Howard
switches to synthesizer for the extraordinary abstraction of "Fire Song,"
matching the metaphysical ruckus of Maroney's
deft keyboard-and-wire maneuvers with an equally unearthly electronic spectrum."
Gil Gershman for Muze
"[Fire
Song (Erstwhile
Records 003) is] Four long solo and duet pieces totalling 54 minutes
from these two NYC-based, criminally underdocumented musicians. [Earl]
Howard
and [Denman] Maroney have
been playing together sporadically since 1975, when they recorded a version
of Stockhausen's 'Kurzwellen' as part of the Negative Band (a record engineered
by Carl Stone for the Finnadar label).
Howard
plays alto saxophone and synth, while Maroney
plays hyperpiano, which is further explained below. Howard
has played over the years with such luminaries as Derek Bailey, Han Bennink,
Takehisa Kosugi, George Lewis, Nam June Paik, and Richard Teitelbaum, but
has barely recorded, except for a mostly solo electronics CD on Random
Acoustics, Pele's Tears. Fire Song contains his first composition for alto
to be documented on disc, the solo piece 'Orchid'. Maroney
has pioneered a technique for the piano which he refers to as 'hyperpiano',
which involves stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, strumming and striking
the strings directly with a variety of tools including bars, bowls, knives,
bells and mashers of metal, boxes and bottles of plastic, mallets of various
kinds, and blocks of rubber. Hyperpiano differs from prepared piano in
that the piano is not prepared beforehand.
"The week that I heard this CD, I also witnessed
Wally Shoup put a rubber glove on his saxophone, his breath causing it
to wave like a sarcastic hand. One could not find two more disparate, conflicting
values in music performance, though both Shoup's gesture and the Maroney/Howard
CD share something in that they are both instilled with an awareness that
conscientious abstraction is an empty gesture -- Maroney
and Howard perform
with a humility that speaks more of functionality in a musical language."
Dean Roberts, Forced
Exposure (April 2000)
"A duo using a different sort of method is
found on Fire Song by Earl
Howard and Denman Maroney.
Rather than free improvisation, this duo improvises freely within situational
guidelines and structures. Of the four pieces, Howard
wrote the title track and his alto solo Orchid, and Maroney
wrote Pulse Field and his solo UnCaged Bacchanal.
"Fire Song
is a fascinating journey into sound where Maroney's
hyperpiano (which sounds like an extremely prepared piano) sounds as electronic
as Howard's synthesizer
(a Kurzweil 2500). Frequently their instruments meld into one voice. Maroney's
solo gives a good indication what his instrument can do and the recording
picks up every scrape and scratch as he attacks the insides of the piano.
Pulse Field and Orchid feature Howard
on alto, and he possesses a dry, almost vibrato-less sound. He also applies
well-placed tonal distortion and bending to his phrases. Although the orientation
of this music leans toward the contemporary classical end of the spectrum
it should still interest the catholic taste of many readers of this magazine."
Robert Iannapollo,
Cadence (July 2000)
"Fire Song
presents two duets between Earl Howard (synthesizer, alto saxophone) and Denman Maroney (hyperpiano), plus a solo performance from each. Up to the
release of this CD in 1999, both of these musicians were underdocumented,
considering they have been active since the mid-1970s. "Fire Song" is a
composed piece for synthesizer and hyperpiano... Howard's
digital keyboard intermingle with Maroney’s
very organic approach of the piano.The latter plays almost as much inside
his instrument as on the keys. His extended techniques are wonderfully
showcased on his solo piece "UnCaged Bacchanal," which starts with
the pianist playing directly on the strings (he makes them sound like a
slide guitar) and then moves into a strange free-form oompah, both rhythmical
in form and exploratory in nature — a fascinating number. "Pulse Field"
is a hyperpiano/saxophone duet. This is the first time Howard
is documented on alto saxophone. Two different meters collide in this piece,
a satisfyingly disorienting number where both musicians show how much they
can leave room to each other. If only for Denman
Maroney's impressive piano vocabulary,
Fire
Song deserves attention."
Francois Couture, All
Music Guide
"Earl
Howard and Denman Maroney
are NY-based improvisers of long standing. Their association goes back
25 years, but short documentation; the pair’s conflated discography lists
only a Howard solo
disc on Georg Grawe’s Random Acoustics label. Fire
Song hence, inevitably, has something of an introductory feel, and
is evenly divided: each gets a solo piece, and each gets credit for one
of two duos. The first pits Howard’s
synthesizer against Maroney’s
“hyperpiano” (his term for playing the strings of an unprepared piano with
various objects) in a wild and wiggy workout;
Howard
shifts to alto sax for the second, lending proceedings a more traditional
jazz/improv air. Maroney
gets to show off the hyperpiano’s range of tricks on his “UnCaged Bacchanal”
solo spot, and Howard
rounds things off nicely with “Orchid,” a literate and accomplished alto
solo. An impressive disc, introducing two names who, in future days, will
surely become increasingly familiar."
Opprobrium
“One of the first Stockhausen records I ever
bought & dug was performed by the Negative
Band (on Finnadar), a trio [sic] of musicians who were attending Cal
Arts in the mid-seventies. Two members—Earl
Howard (alto sax & synth) and Denman
Maroney (piano innards or hyperpiano)—eventually found their way into
the downtown scene. Sadly, both of these truly adventurous players have
been under-recorded. Denman, who specializes in playing inside the piano
with various objects, can be heard on two fine CD’s for Mark
Dresser [Force Green and The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari] and also released an outstanding solo piano
CD [Hyperpiano] earlier this year [1998].
Earl
Howard, who has also done engineering for a number of sessions, has
collaborated with Gerry Hemingway & Ernst Reijseger in recent memory
and has a solo CD on Random Acoustics. "Fire Song" consists of four long
tracks, two duets and two solos, one for each player. The title piece is
17 plus minutes of dark, rumbling, low end inside-the-piano manipulations
and equally ominous synth seasoning. It does seem as if both of these musicians
have been collaborating for quite a long time, since they follow each other
into well blended terrain, shadowing each other most effectively. "UnCaged
Bacchanal" is for solo piano manipulations and Denman continues to expand
his palette of other-worldly sounds by playing both inside the piano and
the keyboard often simultaneously, deal with both fascinating and scary
textures. The other duo piece, "Pulse Field," is for hyperpiano & alto
sax, and both players once more flow together in well matched streams,
commencing with more restrained sounds, eventually building and interweaving
into denser & darker waters. The final piece is "Orchid" for solo alto
sax, a first recording of this endeavor for Earl. Earl takes his time,
playing with a softer tone early on, before he begins to unfurl layers
of quicker lines, never screaming or squealing, but letting things erupt
slowly into more & more complex streams. More challenging sounds from
the great Erstwhile label.”
Bruce Gallanter,
Downtown Music Gallery
e-newsletter
"Maroney's
wacky prepared piano is a development of both Cage and Nancarrow. He attaches
moving as well as fixed parts to the instrument, sliding objects across
the strings, making some tracks sound more like a percussion ensemble.
Cage and Nancarrow turned to 19th century technology in the middle of the
20th, and Maroney looks
like continuing it into the 21st."
Andy Hamilton, Wire
"Pity the poor pianist with progressive predilections!
While the rest of the avant-garde was warping sound through extended techniques,
pianists were stuck with those 88 damn keys that sounded pretty much the
same no matter how you pushed them. Many pianists plugged in and found
unlimited vistas of sound. Others were determined to wring something different
out of their intractable iron-framed monsters. Now comes Denman
Maroney who has wrung something very different indeed from his piano.
He calls his techniques "Hyperpiano", also the title of this self-published
CD. Without going into too much detail of how it's done... Hyperpiano involves
bowing, striking, plucking, strumming, stopping and sliding the piano's
strings with various objects. Once you get past the "gee whiz, how'd he
do that" stage, you find yourself in the midst of shimmering partials hovering
luminescent in the air like aurora borealis. And after a while, you lose
consciousness of the fact that you are listening to a piano at all. It's
all very beautiful and quite unearthly. It's hard to see this CD unleashing
a torrent of Hyperpianistic imitators, but so what? Maroney
has created a singular and very personal style of playing that's very much
his alone."
John Chacona,
Signal To Noise
“[On his Hyperpiano CD] Denman Maroney delves into three extended improvisations as he explores the
alternate sound possibilities capable of being projected from a piano and
its strings. He describes hyperpiano playing as the percussive attack on
the strings by bowing, plucking, strumming, and striking the strings with
various objects. He uses these techniques in conjunction with the keyboard
to produce music that is dense, moving, and highly involved. The combination
of this keyboard action and the string assault develops into a freely expounded
session that would appear to be coming from multiple players. It is almost
as though he had a string section and a percussionist playing along with
his piano.
“On the keyboard side, Maroney
uses a stabbing, staccato approach to produce an irregular heartbeat. His
opening Flux Time contains three tempos that he produces simultaneously
and explains with the astuteness of a numerologist. The use of multiple
tempi expands the sound platform to its fullest, while the conjunctive
string fingering or striking adds a further dimension to the already dense
textures. Artemisia has a more eerie soul to it. Maroney
concentrates more intently on using a bowing action on the piano strings
and thus produces illusive images of wispy spirals of smoke rising from
the bogs. This selection has heavy spiritualism attached to it, being music
suitable for a séance. The final cut, On the Contrary, finds Maroney returning to the dual key/string mode. On this, he slides objects across
the strings and vigorously develops a zither-like drone from the piano
strings. It is an extremely fast paced exercise in string manipulation
with complementary keystrokes.
“Maroney’s
piano methods are spellbinding while requiring deep concentration to slip
into this mystic world. His music is hypnotic and extremely challenging.
It allows you to drift into a nether world where images from Maroney’s
symbolism spill over you. It is a most intriguing performance.”
Frank Rubolino,
Cadence (March '00)
"John Cage was fascinated by it, and Fred
Van Hove is a master. They are reference points of departure for Denman Maroney,
whose playful, 20th Century contemporary improvised approach at playing
the inside of the piano, owes debt to the aforementioned pair. These unique
explorations go well outside conventional boundaries, brandishing non-tonic
manipulations, microtonal extravagances, and the restless soul of a nervous,
twitchy composer who is truly hyper, but quite aware of infinity within
the possible.
"Three pieces comprise the CD, all over 20
minutes. The first, "Flux Time," is pattern-oriented, using quirky rhythms
and a banjo harmonic effect, pure percussive accents, and even an
extended piano keys section quite reminiscent of a groove laden Thelonious
Monk angular foot tapper! Cut #2, "Artemisia," is an exercise in bowing
the piano strings, and all a space journey, at 1/2 impulse, riding through
sounds of solar jig adjustments and ion storm interference. The third spontaneous
composition, "On The Contrary," emphasizing objects slid over the piano
strings, is also developmental, going through phases of contrast between
the two, but pretty much based in a true combination of inside-and-outside-the-piano
balance and hegemony.
"If one can appreciate the bold audio astronautical
approach of Maroney, and
can be patient enough to allow it to unfold, there are some real sonic
treasures to be heard. For special tastes, ones that lean toward Cecil
Taylor, Conlon Nancarrow, Misha Mengelberg, the brilliant VanHove, etc."
Michael G. Nastos, WEMU, 89.1 FM, Ypsilanti
MI
"…the first and last tracks [of Hyperpiano]
are very percussive, and there were moments during each that I forgot I
was listening to a solo piano record. The precise, mechanical metal clanging
frequently overtakes the Roger Miller/Peanuts-theme-like (you know what
I mean) motif, and those are the moments I like best. They make the recurring
melodic line that much more surprising and effective. Track two is the
big winner, though, consisting entirely of bowed piano insides and scraping
objects along the strings. At twenty minutes long, it sounds like mid-period
Organum (which is quite something). A satisfying and diverse disc, really
nice stuff."Howard Stelzer,
Intransitive Review
"I have always been both fascinated and perplexed
by all of the unique sounds [Maroney]
gets. Hyperpiano is in a world of its own. There are three 20 plus
minute pieces found here, and each explores new realms of inner piano weirdness.
Each piece involves a specific idea to explore. Flux Time utilizes
three tempos simultaneously, but sounds like a music box breaking down,
going in different directions at the same time. Artemisia involves
moving objects across the piano strings, producing high end spirits whispering
mysterious clouds of fractured notes. Pretty scary at times. On the
Contrary employs sliding objects along the strings, rumbling through
a dark terrain, ancient ruins uncovered, myths revealed."
Bruce Gallanter,
Downtown Music Gallery
e-newsletter
"For a music proud of its innovation, the
techniques of jazz remain in the past. Cecil Taylor's most radical move,
the tone cluster, was devised by Henry Cowell in the '20s. Since then have
come new ways to play the piano, all in the field of classical music. Now
they appear in improvisation—it’s pungent, challenging, and very intense.
If you're into modern classical, you've heard these sounds—but not like
this.
"Cowell also plucked the strings inside a
piano, one of the first to do this. Maroney
does it, in
Flux Time, in three melodic lines with different tempos.
The piece has nervous rhythm and percussive slams. As the left hand strikes
keys, the right gives the strings a vigorous snap. Strings buzz and bend
like a sitar. The lines swoop low, and there's a spooky sound like bridge
cables. Notes melt, with weird quavers, then twinkle like a music box gone
mad. The sound of the city: busy, chaotic and beautiful. Artemisia
is a creepy night in an ancient factory, a storm, and it bathes you in
sound. In On the Contrary, objects hit the strings, and slide down
them. It's an active drone with a vicious twang. This CD is intellectual,
strong and a workout for adventurous ears."
John Barrett, Jr., Green Mountain Jazz
Messenger (Vol. III, No. I, Sept./Oct. '99)
“Three extended compositions by Maroney,
each lasting over twenty minutes, for piano; but there's very little completely
"straight" piano playing here. In common with many improvisers, but relatively
few composer-performers, Maroney
likes to play directly on the piano strings using an array of objects,
often using one hand to modify the sound while striking the keys with the
other.
“In terms of techniques, most of these sounds
will be nothing new to anyone who knows, say, Keith Tippett or Chris Burn.
In fact, Maroney uses only
a small selection of objects whose effects he has obviously researched
very thoroughly, perhaps so as not to burden future performers with the
need to acquire a vast array of oddments. You can read his very detailed
descriptions of what he does on his web site; it's interesting, but there
probably won't be many general points here which are unknown to anyone
who has experimented with piano interior techniques before.
“The first piece, "Flux Time", is built around
a bafflingly complicated set of rhythmic ratios. Like one of Xenakis' mathematical
schemes—although of course less baffling than those—there's no way to work
out the ratios just by listening, but the effect is somehow audible nonetheless.
Maroney
doesn't stick rigidly to his scheme any more than Xenakis used to, but
uses it to generate material which is sometimes freed up from the constraints
he's created. What does it sound like? Well, there's a proliferation of
rather funky bass lines here in amongst the rattling rhythmic texture which
predominates. The word "Cageian" was bound to come up, but there it is;
like an updated "Totem Ancestor", this swaggers and dances around its own
complexity, and is a lot of fun.
“"Artemisia" is more of a technical showcase,
in which the class of techniques which Maroney
calls "bowing" comes to the fore. By "bowing", he really means rubbing
the strings in order to produce a bow-like sound, and there are none of
the distended bow-strings which one finds elsewhere in piano interior music.
This approach is much more dynamic, in fact, because the timbral possibilities
are far richer (once one realises one could "bow" the string with virtually
anything, then virtually anything becomes possible) and there's none of
the awkwardness associated with actually using a bow intended for a stringed
instrument of rather more amenable dimensions.
“It's inevitable that this technique will
result in a lot of clusters, but what's nice is how varied Maroney manages to make this music. Eschewing the frenetic jazziness of "Flux Time",
"Artemisia" hangs in the air, slowly transforming itself from harmony to
harmony while scratching, clicking and rattling effects go on under or
above it. It has that dense but fragile sound of Ligeti's string writing.
To some extent, it's a technical demonstration, with different implements
being used in turn to create very different effects, but that shouldn't
be taken to imply that it's unmusical. There's a believe-it-or-not sensation
of wonder at the sheer range of really inventive ideas in these twenty-three
minutes. It may be a bit episodic, but it's no less gripping for that.
“The final piece, "On the Contrary", again
uses a specific concept and explores it very thoroughly. This time, it's
the idea of placing a moveable bridge on the strings and then, well, moving
it around, to create a contrary motion—on one side, the pitch goes down,
while on the other it goes up. That sounds facile, but Maroney's
love of microtonality isn't going to see him sweeping wildly up and down
the strings for nigh-on half an hour. It begins, instead, with a rapid-fire,
cymbalom-like passage using mallets [no; keys] while somehow (Maroney
really does have at least four hands) gently detuning them to create hugely
complex microtonal clusters. It's a big sound, which breaks down beautifully
into a brief section of straighter playing before exploring that moveable
bridge a little more.
“The tempo this time is firey, but the approach
is similar to that in "Artemisia", a slowly unfolding spectrum of techniques
in their corresponding contexts, often moving undetectably and inexplicably
from one to another. There's a trompe l'oreille effect in much of the music
on this disc, and especially this track; for all the detailed information
on how he does it, there are many passages which leave the listener hopelessly
unable to imagine what combination of movements could have produced the
sound coming out of the speakers.
“So this is an exciting record, no question
about it. It's exhilarating, even, and the music has enough energy and
internal coherence to carry it forward over these quite long durations.
Those with an interest in extended piano techniques are seriously urged
to add it to their collections—it isn't quite like anything you'll have
heard before, for all that the techniques will sound familiar—but this
isn't just one for the specialists.
"Wow. I don't think I can rave about this album
enough. When it clicks, it truly clicks, deep inside the mind where it
grabs hold of a section of your brain and builds a home. This incredible
trio is the brainchild of Mark Dresser,
who plays an upright bass with a pickup near the headpiece, under the nut.
Called the "giffus", this little dealy can pick up harmonics and tones
in the opposite direction: from the pinched string upward. Using a volume
petal, Dresser can mix the top sound with the bottom sound, sometimes fading
out one and bringing up the other. Pretty innovative, eh? Who can match
this technique? Well, Mathias
Ziegler, for one, has brought his flutes: his electro-acoustic flutes
that range from contrabass to piccolo. Have you ever seen a contrabass
flute? It looks like a piece of modern art: a twisted, angular tube that
rests on the floor and bends at the end so that one can actually play it.
Who rounds out this trio? Well, Denman
Maroney plays "hyperpiano", which is what he calls a prepared piano,
playing the strings on the inside with knives, bowls, forks, etc. to get
that "different" sound. This trio sure is different, but how does it actually
sound?
"There are many moments of "scary" freedom, in
which other-worldly sounds are brought forth from the depths of . . . who-knows-where,
but then, like any great Avant Garde album, moments of clarity spring forth,
in this case some of the most breathtaking jazzy-classical passages in
frenetic unison! This album is not for everyone, because it does need to
"click" in the mind, and not everyone has a mind that will "click" to this.
When one does "hear" it, like I have done, one cannot stop playing it.
I spun it three times in a row the day it clicked. I spun it twice yesterday,
and I am listening to Dresser's giffus howl this very moment, as I write
this. This has become one of the true gems in my collection and may have
achieved the title of Desert Island Disc. That is how much I like this!"
Fred Barrett, http://www.beyondcoltrane.com
"As a composer Mark
Dresser walks no lines; he enters and exits the musical body without
regard for boundaries or conventions imposed from outside his musical view.
As a soloist, improviser, and band leader, Dresser is well-known for turning
the musical tract inside out in order to get what he needs from his instrument,
his ensemble, or a particular piece of music. On Aquifer,
his second album as a leader for the now-venerable Cryptogramophone label,
Dresser uses the title as a veil-lifting exercise on what it is this ensemble
does with music. They act as the ground from which all force is created.
They are unchanging and look at everything with equanimity, yet, based
on the dictates of a particular composition or interaction, cause chain
reactions of force, silence, ebb, and flow with each movement or consideration.
Here with Mathias Ziegler,
with the entire family of flutes played electroacoustically and the hyper
piano of Denman Maroney,
the ensemble charts more unknown, perhaps unknowable territory while keeping
their focus on the axis of purely musical expression.
"That musical expression finds its means of erudition
in the array of sounds this trio is capable of dredging out of the creative
heart. Where the jazz and blues of Horace Silver are tracked via Jaki Byard
on "Digestivo," so are serial components à la Alban Berg. "Digestivo"
and "Modern Pine," which closes the album, have been performed quite extensively
by Dresser with Mark Helias, but
the textured sounds of the flutes and the angular piano of Maroney
create a depth and dimension that the originals didn't touch. Ideas here,
in both structure and improvisation, don't drone or breathe; they all have
edges and move through their chosen frameworks with deceptive ease. The
abstracted soundscapes on "Sonomatopoeia" give way effortlessly toward
poetically inspired compositional sketches that are precise and expansive,
having integrated the sonic palette. Where improvisation is called for
in order to reveal the invisible foundations of a particular musical notion,
as on the title track, it sidles the premise of an integral, interchangeable
sonic and sonant amalgam of cooperative sound exchanges that shore the
idea while making its utterances so vast they are almost unspeakable. Mark
Dresser hasn't missed in his quest to integrate all the values of sound
and music creation into a refracted, prismatic whole, and the Aquifer
trio is a band whose potentials have merely been tapped here.
Thom Jurek,
Allmusic.com
"NORTH ADAMS- The 1929 silent film classic
"Un Chien Andalou" by Luis Bunuel and Salvadore Dali has finally gotten
the original score the cinematic landmark deserves. Bunuel and Dali's uniquely
disturbing and provocative vision could not have bee better served than
it has by composer Mark Dresser
and his innovative trio.
"Like Bunuel and Dali did in their chosen
form, Dresser and his trio take
the raw tools of their chosen form, in this case the musical instruments
and the basic rules of composition and improvisation, and explode and invert
them to explore what's typically hidden or overlooked in performance and
composition. The result is, like "Un Chien Andalou," a subterranean voyage,
in this case a sonic one, although at times the music strikes with such
visceral shock and force that to insist on thinking of it only as sound
to the exclusion of other sensations is in itself a limiting point of view.
"As heard on Saturday night at the Massachusetts
Museum of Contemporary Art's B-1- Theater -- a venue that is fast becoming
a haven for the most experimental cutting-edge art ever seen or heard in
the Berkshires and, indeed, far beyond -- Dresser's
trio is about nothing if not pushing limits.
"In a two-act program with intermission, the group
played seven original compositions and accompanied two films, "Un Chien
Andalou" and a short video, "Subtonium," also with original music.
"As an instrumentalist, Dresser
gives new meaning to the term "contrabass." While on the one hand it is
the name of his instrument, more often called double bass or just plain
bass, the use of the term also slyly evokes Dresser's
approach to the instrument, which is contrary to any and all preconceived
notions of how a bass can and should be played.
"And in flutist Mathias
Ziegler and pianist Denman
Maroney, Dresser has found
the perfect foils, nay, mirror images to his style and approach. While
at times Ziegler and Maroney
made clear their conventional mastery of their instruments, they also spend
much of the evening exploring the near-limitless possibilities of what
their instruments could do, with only a bare minimum of electronic effects.
"For example, the concert began with the aptly-titled
"FLBP," a 1998 composition by Dresser
which began with Maroney
scraping the strings of his "hyperpiano," while
Ziegler
blew air through one of his arsenal of electro-acoustically amplified
flutes, which included traditional flute, piccolo, contrabass-flute and
his own invention, the "Matusi flute," with a vibrating membrane of his
own design.
"Maroney
went on to play the inside of his piano with an aluminum mixing bowl, just
one of many ordinary household utensils -- including knives, bells, mashers,
bottles, bars and pieces of rubber -- that he utilized throughout the evening
to elicit a broad palette of sounds.
"The sum effect, and this was just the first half-minute
of "FLBP," was what one might imagine the "music of the spheres" to sound
like -- the music of air or space itself, with high-pitched sounds evoking
arcs of light from distant stars. Soon Ziegler
brought the piece back to earth playing, of all things, what sounded
like percussion. Indeed, anyone who thinks that percussion is limited to
drums, or that percussion is not a form of melody, should hear the Dresser
trio. At various times each instrumentalist assumed the role of what we
conventionally understand to be percussion and then they manipulated that
percussive element to suggest a melody.
"These sorts of revelations were sprinkled thoughout
Dresser's
two-hour program. His "Digestivo," an excerpt from a larger work called
"Banquet," was a kind of inverted pop tune, with inklings of early jazz,
blues, and Thelonius Monk occasionally surfacing through the gauzy scrim
of dissonance.
Maroney's
two-handed melody gave each note an odd, crippled twin, as if they were
meant to by played together but could never get in sequence. Dresser
was an aggressive soloist, leaning into his instrument, spinning it and
dancing with it, slapping it stroking it, chording it, pulling the strings
and singing with it.
"Maroney
variously made his piano sound like a banjo, a steel drum and yes, a piano,
while Ziegler's flute evoked
a violin, and an electric guitar; again, not through gimmicky MIDI programming,
but through simply innovative approaches to eliciting sounds from the instrument
and, with the aid of amplification, making use of the nearly infinite acoustic
possibilities inherent in them.
"The second half of the show began with "Subtonium,"
which featured the trio accompanying a video by the Kunst Brothers, a husband-and-
wife team known in real life as Alison Saar and Tom Leeser. The video was
inspired by a piece of the same name previously written by Dresser.
In a sense, this was a "music video," arranged to fit the music albeit
music that must be played live as per Dresser's
request.
"Dresser's
"Subtonium" was in large part an exploration of the undiscovered acoustic
potentialities of his contrabass, and the video was aptly comprised of
subterranean dark-hued, dreamlike imagery, sort of David Lynch meets "The
Blair Witch Project." Beginning with a shot of the deep blue sea, the screen
faded to human faces, skeletons, a paper cut-out of a house, gambling dice,
an X-ray of a hand, stars, starfish, a Madonna (the original, not the contemporary),
a printed page, a clock face and a forest.
"Seventy years after its creation, "Un Chien Andalou"
still has the power to shock and amuse the audience. Viewers still audibly
gasp at the sight of an eye being sliced by a knife, and Maroney
underlined that iconic image with some appropriately jagged, wild sounds
from his hyperpiano. Dresser's
score tended to underline the visual content, suggesting either character's
inner-emotional states or commenting on action when something of dramatic
impact took place.
"Ziegler
played a thematic figure with a Balkan resonance through out the piece,
ranging in mood from jaunty to comic to utterly terrifying."
Seth Rogovay, The Berkshire Eagle
(N. Adams MA) (April 19, 2000)
"WOODSTOCK - About a half dozen unmeasured
measures into conbrabasso Mark Dresser's
first composition at the Kleinert-James Art Center Friday night, the mind
movies started.
"With Dresser
assisted by sonic masters Mathias
Ziegler and Denman Maroney
on flutes and tampered piano, weird images drawn from the abyss of inner
space and the cosmic infinite drifted across consciousness, gathering and
dissolving like eddies of smoke, with listener a transfixed, sensate screen.
"How come the plucks, taps, clicks, toots and
bowed slides sent up by this gang of beatific musical terrorists mesmerize,
while another trio might set off the same noises and merely seem pretentious,
boring and annoying?
"It's where they're coming from - a place in the
timeless that is unlimited to, though informed by, country of origin and
music pedigree. Dresser has
been eviscerating acoustic bass before international audiences with a collective
of jazz and "new" music practitioners, including a nine-year performance
and recording stint with the Anthony Braxton Quartet, since the early 1970s.
Accomplices in that stretch past avant-garde boundaries also involved Marilyn
Crispell and Gerry Hemingway.
"Definitely an axman pulling strings, this giant
revealed a swinging, gentle side in the sweet song the trio played after
Friday night movies, a piece dedicated to the memory of the Chicago Art
Ensemble's trickster trumpeter Lester Bowie.
"It may be interesting to note in passing that
the multiple percussive and musical sounds produced flutist Ziegler
are informed by a double career in classical and jazz genres. Ziegler
is principal flutist of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the Collegium
Novum Zurich, and in evidence at the Kleinert concert was his innovative
work in electro-acoustically amplified sound, expanding the reach of traditional
instruments he plays, including the ultimate deep throat of flutes, the
contra-bass. In spite of all this, or undeflected by it, whether Ziegler
pipes or pedals, every sound produced rises through the deepest well of
mortal commitment to immortal source. While most virtuosic flute players
in jazz and classic are seduced to riding vain winds, Ziegler
is purely humble.
"Maroney
describes his assault on the piano by an implement he can lay hands on
- including, well, hands - as "hyperpiano" play. He derives his effects
in the course of execution (we use the term literally), but when he takes
measures on the board - and you catch him in the act during that Bowie
tribute - he has the boneless fluency classic pianists who chase the dreams
of Chopin and Debussy pray for.
"Visual artists who see an affinity between Dresser's
music and their work invited him to collaborations, and the Kleinert audience
witnessed the Trio's live improvisational accompaniments to two films -
[Subtonium] by "The Kunst Brothers," sculptor Tom Leeser and digital
artist Alison Saar, and [Un Chien Andalou], a surreal horror film
by Salvador Dali and by Luis Bunuel.
"Fun, guys, but the truth is, the video folks
are just drafting off you. The visceral, multi-faceted imagery your music
evokes flies quicker than the eye can see, the hand draw."
Kitty Montgomery, The Daily Freeman
(WoodstockNY) (April 18, 2000)
"To an experienced reviewer, it doesn't happen
too often that the music makes you speechless. It might be due to the genre
of the silent movie that its music is hard to verbalize, maybe the film
itself can possibly describe this wonderful music. Mark
Dresser not only pays homage to a great German movie and its expressionist
director, Robert Wiene, but also makes a statement about Neo-Nationalism
and the current ethnic cleansing all over the world. So far, accompanying
silent movies has been the domain of pianists. Therefore you may expect
that Dresser approaches this
classic with a completely different point of view. He departs from the
old tradition of Leitmotiv and creates atmospheres, similar to those of
Gary Lucas in Golem. He also drops the patina of the nostalgic peephole
sound. Trumpeter Dave Douglas and
keyboard genius Denman Maroney
are carefully chosen musicians who are able to create and unfold a spectrum
of sounds that range from new music to free jazz. At first listening, it
seems to be primarily them creating the sound images for Caligari.
Douglas'
horn is full of pain; distant; scornful but nevertheless calling; leading
you astray through seduction. The piano is so much estranged that it gives
you the full array of sounds. Once again, Denman
Maroney seems to be the only slide pianist worth mentioning. Nevertheless,
the bass controls the direction, stays in the background, treacherous,
waiting. At one time, everything together reminds you of the gruesome wonder
world of Alfred Kubin; another time of a dull piece of brass. This music
makes you somehow uneasy. You are trying to get away from it but are captured
at the same time, making any escape from it impossible. This is the masterpiece
of a masterful musician, who has been holding back with releases of his
own."
Wolf Kampmann, JazzThetik
"Requested to compose a soundtrack for the
provocative silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, bassist
Mark
Dresser has, along with his trio members, trumpeter Dave
Douglas and prepared pianist Denman
Maroney, responded with a memorable CD that can stand on its own. It
came into being in a rather unusual way.
Dresser
watched the film and improvised music which he taped. He then transcribed,
arranged and developed the result and played it back for Douglas
and Maroney. The trio then
revised and added to it.
"Dresser's
very interested here in producing timbre variation, his ideas hearkening
back to Arnold Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie, or melody of tone
colors. In fact, the bassist has spoken of his goal here as making timbre,
rhythm, harmony and melody becoming interchangeable. This is accomplished
by brilliant collective improvisation, with Douglas
playing both open and employing various muted effects, Dresser
doing a fine job plucking and bowing his instrument and Maroney
producing subtle, percussive effects.
"The improvising is restrained but moving:
at times sinister, haunting, foreboding, ethereal. Douglas,
a great jazz trumpeter, here augments his vocabulary with ideas from the
compositions of Stravinsky and Webern. Maroney,
who concentrates on prepared piano playing rather than doing it occasionally,
is far more sophisticated than most. He attaches, for example, moving as
well as fixed parts to his instrument.
Dresser
has performed in all sorts of settings: classical, jazz, klezmer. He was
brilliant on John Zorn's
Kristallnacht and continues to record top notch
playing here. Like a number of admirable new musicians, his achievements
have gone virtually unrecognized. I hope this CD elicits at least some
of the attention and praise it, and he, deserve."
Harvey Pekar,
Downbeat
"The virtuoso bassist and ubiquitous New
York sideperson [Mark Dresser]
makes his overdue debut as leader with trio music written to accompany
1919's German expressionist classic [The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]. Each player mirrors the film's mood from
a different angle. Dave Douglas'
tinny trumpet tone and precise articulation lend a period flavor; Dresser's
in-your-face extended techniques catch the over-the-top visual style; Denman
Maroney’s spontaneously prepared piano—he’ll scrape a metal bowl across
the strings for slide guitar effects, for example—adds to the psychologically
unsettling air. Like Robert Wiene's film, with its eerie painted sets,
Dresser
achieves striking results with economical means."
Kevin Whitehead, Pulse
(Mar. '95)
"Featuring Leroy
Jenkins on violin, Min Xiao-Fen
on pipa, Denman Maroney
on piano and Rich O'Donnell on percussion. Leroy
Jenkins remains the most distinctive modern violinist we have and appears
to work hard at each and every project he is involved with. His new quartet,
Driftwood, is again a completely unique band of gifted improvisers. Denman
Maroney plays what is known as 'hyperpiano' by playing often inside
the piano with bowls and other objects. Min
Xiao-Fen has become the most in-demand and adventurous pipa player,
since moving here during the nineties. I can't say that I was familiar
with the percussionist here, Mr. O'Donnell, but he fits perfectly in this
marvelous quartet. Each of the four pieces is part of "The Art of Improvisation"
suite. "To Live" or the first part has the pipa and violin swirling around
one another as piano and percussion also swirl intricately below with delicate
precision. The interplay between all four musicians has that edge-of-your-seat
mesmerizing quality. On "To Sing", as Denman
plucks, bends, mutes strings inside the piano, he also plays the keyboard,
balancing the two approaches just right, creating strong suspense. Leroy
then adds an eerie vibe by bending his strings, creating harmonics and
letting his notes drift in the air like feathers falling through the air.
Both Rich and Min take incredible
unaccompanied solos here as well. The quartet erupts on "To Run", with
all four players sailing and spiraling layers on lines together. Very intense.
Finally, on the last piece, "To Believe", they slow down to a more cautious
pace and explore more freely together with sublime results. Well worth
the long wait since it was delayed a bit and advertised last month."
Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter,
27 Jan. 06
"[Leroy Jenkins'] quartet Driftwood, recorded
live in 2004, was one more mixed ensemble: virtuoso Min Xiao-Fen on pipa,
the raised-fret Chinese lute; Denman Maroney on hands-on/hands-in spontaneously
treated piano; Rich O’Donnell on clackety percussion from hand drums to
hi-hat. The emphasis is on timbre and texture, and you get multiple perspectives
on what strings can do, from violin, pipa and rattling slide piano. Momentum
is more a matter of pulse than localized rhythms (or melody). Driftwood’s
sound wasn’t that universal folk music some players aim for, but a universal
new music: compositional, improvisational, international. So Leroy Jenkins’
career had a happy ending straight out of Emerson: he merged with the universe."
Kevin Whitehead, emusic
"New methods of structuring improvisations are
devised daily; but rhythm remains one of the most reliable. It is open-ended,
as it does not address pitch or timbre; at the same time, rhythm is a catalyst
that assures at least an initial continuity. Violinist Leroy Jenkins uses
this approach with brilliant results on the debut of Driftwood, a quartet
with pipa player Min Xiao-Fen, pianist Denman Maroney, and percussionist
Rich O¹Donnell. The parameters of each of the four movements are set
with infinitive verb, a tempo description and a metronome setting
i.e.: To Sing Andante Cantabile (quarter note = 80). Taking
the prompts of each movement to heart especially the intriguing To
Believe Pure Motion (quarter note = 0) Jenkins and his
collaborators almost instantly coalesce as ensemble, while giving each
musician enough space on an ongoing basis to truly add to the unfolding
music. The ensemble's complementary textures the sustain of Jenkins'
bowing, the quick decay of the pipa, the shimmering metallic highlights
of Maroney's preparations, and the small details of O'Donnell's percussion
also play a large role creating and sustaining the music's momentum.
Yet, Driftwood's most admirable quality is their restraint. Each of its
members are virtuosos (for those not familiar with O'Donnell, he is the
former principal percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra),
but they never disrupt the collectively articulated equilibrium."
Bill Shoemaker, Point
of Departure
"Leroy Jenkins’ Driftwood rarely floats, but readily
burns. In addition to the violinist leader, pianist Denman Maroney and
percussionist Rich O’Donnell, Min Xiao-Fen joins on pipa, a four-stringed
lute from 7th Century China. A classically trained musician, Xiao-Fen began
improvising with the encouragement of John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith and Derek
Bailey. The quartet roils with sound and ideas, frequently creating tones
and timbres that seem anything but acoustic.
"Jenkins and Xiao-Fen lead the momentum on “To
Live,” with O’Donnell busily beating and Maroney adding unusual acoustics
from his prepared piano. Jenkins spins a ribbon of melody while Xiao-Fen
deftly plucks plenty pizzicato.
“To Sing” offers each player an extended solo
statement. Maroney opens with the piano prepared in such a way as to make
the muted strings sound like they’re sliding on their own. Jenkins enters
keening high delicate spiraling tones. O’Donnell bubbles up out of deep
sound, before settling on drums. Xiao-Fen begins subtly but digs in sounding
like her instrument is looped. The others join for an ensemble finish.
"After a fast start, ”To Run” features a furious
group improvisation that keeps all parties highly engaged.
"Jenkins slyly introduces “To Believe,” a quieter
ensemble piece that swells and retreats around Jenkins’ probing bow.
"Living up to its title, The Art of Improvisation
features four bristling performances crafted in the moment by the highly
attentive ensemble, merging and emerging through their shared creations."
Rex Butters, allaboutjazz
Having
long been a fan of Denman Maroney’s unique sound world—his “hyperpiano”
is the most radically prepared innenklavier imaginable—I confess that
it’s really only with this recording that I realized how rhythmically
acute a musician he is. His bowls, and buzzing devices, and blocks have
created a richly textured idiomatic extension of the piano, but these
nuanced, percolating compositions are bouncing inventions that recall
some fusion of Rothenberg’s Double Band, John Hollenbeck’s Claudia
Quintet, and Mark Dresser’s Force Green band from the 1990s (of which
Maroney was a key member). This high praise is emphatically deserved.
Beyond this general appraisal (and really, just go get this one), I
have to give it up for the engine room specifically. Radding and the
superb Sarin are so good, with power and grace combining almost
imperceptibly, that you could risk overlooking everything else as you
simply concentrate on their playing. But then there’s the exceptional
contrast between the clarion lines Ballou reels out, and Rothenberg’s
intense playing, with horns as rhythmic generators fueled by circular
breathing, overblowing, and more. And the tunes are pretty fabulous
too, with the post Bop line on “II” sounding almost like a late 1960s
Ornette tune. The loping pulse of “III” is a perfect context ready to
be agitated by the heady sound of scraped metal, a continual staggering
which eventuates in a stunningly inventive “piano trio” improvisation.
Absolutely killer alien tones! There are soft percussive thwacks and
layered tempi from the horns on “IV” and a post-Dave Burrell mutated
stride thing that opens up “V.” The disc eventually loops back to the
feel of beautifully fractured post Bop on “VII,” with a brilliant piano
trio section again. A fantastic disc, and a strong candidate to show up
on my year-end list.
Jason Bivins, ©Cadence Magazine 2009
"Pianist
(or “hyperpianist”? Hold on, please) Denman Maroney is clearly trustful
in the abilities of an average mind. Trying to explain the polyrhythmic
concepts that underscore the large part of this music, he says that
“there are at least two and more often three tempos going; the listener
is free to choose which one(s) to relate to”. Perhaps this musician is
not aware of the fact that the majority of a typical audience is not
even able to stay anchored to a rudimentary 4/4 with a couple of
shifted accents, let alone a superimposition of composed metres. Many
pathetic characters come out with various kinds of bullshit about
complex mathematic “mysteries” underlying the perfection of the
universe, yet they could not name an interval or an elementary beat if
threatened at gunpoint. Such sorts of involuntary victims of artistic
diversity are not likely to be grateful for the labyrinthine qualities
of this excellent album. Hell, this group doesn’t swing, if not for an
allowed minimum.
"Right,
the hyperpiano. Besides numerous interlocking figurations executed with
concentrated investigational attitude, Maroney – who appears positively
gifted with a scintillating musicality coming from the insides of his
brain - frequently plays the “regular” keyboard with a hand while
enjoying the pleasures of extended techniques with another, the whole
enhanced by the exploitation of several objects on the strings which
generate “complementary overtones that move in contrary motion, one
down toward the fundamental and the other up toward infinity”. Already
fantasizing in regard to enhancement of awareness and realization?
Wrong: the record’s title is the contraption of “undertone identity”, a
concept introduced by Harry Partch which is too complicated to tackle
in a sheer review. You can still learn the definition and use it in
your intellectual conversations: nobody - except a few brighter
individuals – go actually checking for the truthful core of these
things, otherwise a lot of sapient icons would be swallowed by the very
blob of their appalling ignorance.
"Let’s
not digress, though: the quintet performs fabulously throughout
Udentity. Ned Rothenberg (alto sax, clarinets) employs a toothsome
transitoriness in the methods applied, alternating altruistic
repetition bathed in cutting dissonance and interchangeable
anti-patterns which dignify the entire timbral tissue. He’s perfectly
corresponding to the trumpet of Dave Ballou, who on a different side of
the blowing spectrum avoids any kind of hypertrophic irresponsibleness,
privileging lines that – although extremely respectful of the
composer’s original plan – shine for intelligent restraint. If Michael
Sarin’s drumming is entirely perfect for the overall design of these
creations, his sober delivery a true injunction against the smell of
stale freedom characterizing the bulk of jazz drummers, bassist Reuben
Radding is to be admired both as a solid donor of corpulent foundations
for the general structure and an extemporaneous originator of
bedazzling melodic sketches in places where an arcoed elegy is probably
going to lead a sensitive receiver to deeper perceptions than an
innocuous “pulse”.
"Just
to give a vague idea of how this stuff sounds, let me tell you that
those whose ear-training includes Stravinsky and Zappa should greet
this CD pretty warmly. Maroney has managed to tickle our interest with
complications that sound good, lively, natural, without a hint of
agony. Discomposure and angst are to be found somewhere else; here, we
only appreciate an outstanding collective control over a series of
well-developed strategies."
Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes