#brechtameel

[kraaks-avant-guardian]

Brecht Ameel

Apart from being the half core of Razen, embodies Ameel Brecht the personae of the master guitar player in the purest form. Using resonator mandolin and guitar he blends European traditions of finger picking into a silent, melancholy world in which suppressed emotion and unspoken poetry are the key words.

— by Niels Latomme

The man will release his first solo record this year on KRAAK, so we had a lot to talk about. He will be playing on Sunday at the KRAAK festival 2017. We are sure that after 2 days of madness, his songs will be the perfect cure for the emotional black hole you might experience.

NL: As you know, I described your music as finger-picking based on European traditions rather than on American ones. What is your take on this?

BA: I think this is correct. When I start playing my music or when I am working on some of my tunes, I’ll never have something even remotely resembling a blues lick. It just does not come out of my fingers. Curiously, this has nothing to do with my listening habits, I grew up hearing a lot of blues and Takoma records, my father had John Fahey and Leo Kottke LPs so I was aware of that music very early, also stuff like Tampa Red, Bukka White…

But as a guitar player, I feel a stronger connection to renaissance and baroque music, to the music of Kapsberger, O’Carolan, and if I have to think of guitar players I will say John Renbourn, the dark sound of Julian Bream on his early Granados recordings, and the young Mike Oldfield – ‘tubular bells’, even with all of the off-the-wall instrumentation, it’s just a great guitar album.

NL: How important is the notion of craft for your music?

BA: I do think ‘craft’ is tremendously important, or ‘technique’, to use a really dirty word. A lot of people get it wrong when those words are used, though. Because it does not necessarily mean speed or agility. For me it has to do with a sense of commitment to the material, and a sense of control. I mean, a musician who chooses a no-input mixing board as instrument will need a great technique to get his or her story told. I think an audience always feels if the person on stage has made this commitment, no matter if it’s about playing a tuba or getting sound from contactmiked cans, no matter if it’s improvised or fully scored, no matter if there are a thousand tones or just one.

NL: In the interview you did with Stéphane Ginsburg, he mentioned that music in itself does not contain any emotion. What is your opinion on this as a musician yourself?

BA: If I remember correctly, what Stéphane meant, is that a combination of notes or tones in itself carries no meaning or emotion, it’s the person(s) hearing it who interpret it with a certain emotion. Well in a way that is right, ofcourse. On the other hand you have Pärt who claimed that the simple combination of a few notes holds the key to cosmic mysteries. Let’s say that I see ground to believe both of them. I’m pretty sure that sound in general, not just music, has a really strong connection to the primal beings that are still locked within ourselves. A part of our brain will react with a sense of either fear or relief to certain sounds. All great music plays on this, I think.

NL: How does your solo music relate to the music of Razen?

BA: Both fulfil certain extremes of my musical practice and of what I want to do and try as a musician. They stem from the same branch, the same interest in sound colours, timbral shocks and overtones, but they go in a different direction. My solo music is composed, there is room for change ofcourse and live I will always try out different things, but essentially every tune is composed, written down from start to finish. The music of Razen is improvised ensemble music, and those improvisations, live and on recording, are based on visual or aural fantasies that Kim and me will come up with, they are not based on a score. Also, my solo music is played mainly on guitar, an instrument which I would never use in the context of Razen, where a guitar would be a kind of blasphemy. My guitar and mandolin music is the music I play at home on the sofa, or in the kitchen, it’s the music of day-to-day, not meaning this in a derogatory way at all. The music of Razen for me is the music of night-time, of dreams within dreams, of pushing sound in order to discover new territories… The ambition for my solo music is an entirely different one, namely to write good tunes for my resonator guitar and resonator mandolin, and to be able to play them to the best of my abilities.

NL: I know that you went through a phase of nineties techno and electronic music. Is this (still) a part of your music?

BA: For sure electronic music, dance music, still has an important role for me as a music listener. It would be hard to pin down if there is a connection to my guitar playing. I think the strongest item coming from electronic music, for me, is a sort of sonic awareness. When my brother and me discovered raves and the club scene in our teens, and we replaced Voivod and Jesus Lizard with UR and Skam 12inches, it was ofcourse about the partying, but it was also about the experience of sound. A club environment tends to have a great sound system, and the music will be overwhelmingly loud, but never (or rarely) harsh, it won’t be Manowar playing live. I remember that we were in London for a Bloodsugar set in one of the clubs there. And we were queueing outside the building, and I suddenly realized that I was not really anticipating the party so much, I was anticipating what it would sound like inside. This was really magnetizing to me. Also, those early Warp tunes, early Detroit Techno, there was a strong narrative drive to those tracks, great mood and melodies. But going to clubs, you could say that I had a deep listening experience. Some of the music of CC Hennix or Eliane Radigue would have the same effect on me later on, the same mystery.

NL: Do you consider yourself a nineties kid? And how does it feel to be alive in 2017?

BA: Partly nineties, partly end of 80ies, I think. 2017 is a beautiful number, and it will be a good year – I hope. For me, the major personal difference living in 2017 is not the change of pace, internet and post-internet, or the way the world has evolved compared to the 80s or 90s. The big change is the change of perspective; from being a kid growing up at a time when the world was probably equally bewildering, to being an adult now with kids and a different set of responsibilities.

NL: Your record sounds as if a romantic soul was at work. Do you yearn for some remote, impossible past or place where life was better?

BA: Romantic or nostalgic, I wouldn’t know, really. What I do strongly believe is that whatever your age is, devoting time to reverie and imagination is as important as food or prayer. I do obsess over the notion of time… but in the end I’m quite convinced that there is only now.

[kraaks-avant-guardian]

Stephane Ginsburgh

La Monte Young once confessed ‘November’ to be the inspiration of his own magnus opus ‘The Well-Tuned Piano’. Written in 1959 by his friend composer Dennis Johnson, ‘November’ is a 5 to 6 hour composition that can safely be regarded as the first real piece of minimalism. Johnson unfortunately disappeared from the pages of music history to devote his life to the study of advanced math. It wasn’t until musicologist Kyle Gann, who heard the piece on a well worn cassette tape in the mid nineties, was blown away by it that ‘November’ was saved from obscurity. He tracked down Johnson, who was by then battling dementia, and painstakingly reconstructed the piece together with him.

During Eastern Daze III ‘November’ will be performed by Stephane Ginsburgh, a pianist who’s renowned for performing avant-garde and modern classical works. Ginsburgh’s repertoire goes from Morton Feldman to Marcel Duchamp to Prokofiev and he’s also a frequent collaborator with Ictus. This will be a one of a kind performance that is the perfect ending to Eastern Daze III

— By Brecht Ameel

Stephane can you tell us a little about your background, both as a pianist and as a listener?

My first experiences as a listener happened in a music loving family where I could hear all kinds of styles ranging from the early classical to the modern, opera, Lieder, chanson française as well as alternative rock, and even some electronic music. The transition to playing music was therefore quite natural and I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old. I never stopped since then. What followed consisted mainly in encountering musicians, all of them somehow influential in my evolution, and discovering the vast territories of music and knowledge in general.

Do you remember when you became aware of Dennis Johnson’ s music? What was it that attracted you to his work in particular?

I have been familiar with so-called minimalist music for many years when I participated in my first recording of Morton Feldman’s music for Sub Rosa with Le Bureau des Pianistes in 1990. Minimalism has played an important role in the way I consider doing music today.

In 1992, American composer Kyle Gann received a tape and a few sketches of Dennis Johnson’s November from La Monte Young. Young told Gann that the piece had influenced him a lot in writing his Well Tuned Piano. And it’s only quite recently that Gann proceeded to work - hard - on the material he had received in order to reconstruct what seemed to be a 5 to 6 hours long minimalist and tonal piece, probably the first one of its kind. I became aware of the piece when pianist Andrew Lee released his recording of it a few years ago.

Do you think there is a reason why Mr Johnson chose ‘ November’ rather than ‘December’ or ‘January’ ?

I haven’t found any information about that except that one fragment is dated from early December which could mean that the piece was started in November. But that’s only a very weak hypothesis.

Is the indication to start off with a ‘ Very Slow’  tempo Johnson’ s, or is it an addition made after Johnson’ s own recording was discovered?

Dennis Johnson: November by R. Andrew Lee

The indication is not found on what seems to be the original sketch and might have been added by Kyle Gann after listening to the recording.

If there would not have been any indication, how would you decide on a tempo for a piece like this?

Well, in this case, the recording is important in reconstructing the piece and apparently, the tempo IS very slow. On the other hand, the style is clearly minimalistic and invites the performer to play slowly. This is also the case with some of Feldman’s pieces which have no indication but cleary belong to a universe of slowness.

I mean this in the sense that with instrumental pieces which obtain a sort of ‘ canonical’  status, there often tends to be a sort of established notion about tempo. For example, a Satie Gnossienne needs to be slow. No one dares to take it fast (anymore).

Of course, but there still remains quite a large range of speeds even in slowness. You can always play slower than slow. I think speed is not necessarily an absolute data but also depends greatly on the length, the harmonics and the quality of sound.

If you could choose, who would you like to be: the performer of “November Music” or a member of the audience who hears the performance?

I always prefer being the performer but I think in the end that in all musical experiences, the performer and the listener tend to merge somehow. We are not considering anymore performing as the active part and listening as the passive one. Every person present become an actor in the listening experience. The performer simply being an operator of sound or a transmitter.

I wonder how much of any current recording of “November Music”, or any current performance of this piece, is actually an improvisation based on just a couple of ideas that were outlined by Johnson?

Well, the piece is basically a series of harmonic patterns which are played rather freely. There is absolutely no notated rhythm. So you could say there is some improvisation involved. But improvising does not mean you do whatever without reason. The material somehow always imposes its own way to the performer. As Feldman once said to Stockhausen: “You don’t push the sounds.” This means for me that the sounds themselves take part in the way they are played.

Do you need to physically prepare yourself for this piece? Or is it a mental thing?

I do indeed prepare myself physically because playing for 5 hours is quite demanding for the back. The longest piece I have ever played was Feldman’s For Philip Guston which lasts 4 1/2 hours. But I know pianists who play much longer. The mental preparation is very important in order to remain concentrated for a very long time. One of the best exercises I know for this is walking and mountain hiking.

When I listen to piano music of Dennis Johnson, La Monte Young and Morton Feldman (to name three composers who were involved in creating looooong piano pieces) , Johnson’ s seems to be the most clearly overtly emotional. Would you agree on this?

No I don’t agree. I think music rouses emotions, but it does not contain any. Music is made of sounds and as such, it can touch the listener in many different ways. The difference between Johnson & Young on one side, Feldman & Cage on the other, resides in the fact that the first ones rely on tonality while the two others are mostly atonal.

Music of long duration… I can’ t wrap my mind to decide what is the most thrilling moment of a 5 hour voyage: the beginning, when all is still open, and you wonder what will be next, where and how it will grow, what it will lead to… or the end of such a piece, when all of the notes themes reverberations suddenly turn out to be a conclusive thing, leaving a listener with a ring in the ears to take home and brood over.

I sometimes wonder if there is a beginning and an ending. There are certainly in the performance, but not in the music. Music is almost infinite.