#lina allemano

[dustedmagazine]

Lina Allemano — Canons (Lumo)

Photo by Manuel Meithe

A canon is a compositional technique involving the statement and restatement of a melody with controlled variations. Familiar examples include rounds such as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and Johann Pachelbel’s famous composition. In this recording, trumpeter and composer (and bandleader and label-runner) Lina Allemano experiments with the form in a set of small groups consisting of trumpet and one to three other voices, with cello by Peggy Lee, clarinet by Brodie West, bass by Rob Clutton, synth by Ryan Driver, guitar by Tim Postgate, trombone by Matthias Müller, and/or trumpet overdubs by Allemano herself; four other tracks include “live-processing/ effects” by Mike Smith. Allemano has worked with these collaborators before, and they commit fully to the project, which incorporates their improvisation into her compositions.

Especially given the variety in the instrumentation, each track has a distinctive feel. Opener “3 Trumpet Canon” begins with a classical-sounding flourish and ends in whispery breaths, while “Bobby’s Canon,” a lovely blend trumpet, cello, and clarinet, ebbs and flows through its variations. “Butterscones,” the first of the two tracks with Clutton, Driver, and Postgate, begins not unlike the opener but moves into atonal territory; the second, “Twinkle Tones,” begins in atonal territory and becomes more traditional-sounding near the end. Similarly, the sleek harmonies of the track with Müller are interrupted by a noisier middle section. The tracks with Smith represent an incarnation of BLOOP, his ongoing duo project with Allemano (Bill Meyer reviewed their 2021 release for Dusted). His real-time manipulation of her trumpet seems to stretch the canon form to its limits, with noise and effects serving to refract musical ideas often expressed in extended notes.

Canons is, according to the liner notes, the product of a kind of compositional game, and that lightheartedness pervades the album, in contrast with the more somber, Covid-focused Pipe Dream released earlier this year (which I reviewed in May), and this year marks the twentieth anniversary of Lumo, the label that Allemano founded and runs to release her music. So, this is a good opportunity to recognize her contributions to the scenes in Toronto and Berlin in particular and modern jazz in general. By providing an alternative to the corporate music industry, the hard work of Allemano and other musician-entrepreneurs such as, to choose a random example from the world of jazz, Whit Dickey’s Tao Forms, helps to ensure that adventurous and uncompromising music continues to be made and those with diverse tastes such as the readers of Dusted continue to have access to it.

Jim Marks

[marcogiovenale]

online i numeri 35 e 36 di 'utsanga'

www.utsanga.it (utsanga.it) – online i numeri 35 e 36 (marzo/giugno 2023) con: Francesco Aprile, Cristiano Caggiula, Texas Fontanella, Michael Betancourt, Leah Singer, Silvio De Gracia, Ana Montenegro, Viviane Houle, James Falzone, Sylvain Darrifourcq, Lina Allemano, James Meger, Sissel Vera Pettersen, GAP – Global Art Project, Carl Heyward, Wellington Amancio, Gianluigi Balsebre, Fabio…

[nuovaletteratura]

utsanga.it: online i numeri 35 e 36

www.utsanga.it www.utsanga.it – online i numeri 35 e 36 (marzo/giugno 2023) con: Francesco Aprile, Cristiano Caggiula, Texas Fontanella, Michael Betancourt, Leah Singer, Silvio De Gracia, Ana Montenegro, Viviane Houle, James Falzone, Sylvain Darrifourcq, Lina Allemano, James Meger, Sissel Vera Pettersen, GAP – Global Art Project, Carl Heyward, Wellington Amancio Da Silva, Gianluigi Balsebre,…

[clubw71]

Lina Allemano (tr) - Uwe Oberg (p) - Matthias Bauer (db) - Rudi Fischerlehner (dr) im Club W71

Ein sympathisches Quartet, in dem jede:r weiß, wann er sich auch mal zurück nehmen kann. Ein Konzert, das wieder richtig Freude gemacht hat...

...findet

Schorle

[aporias]

Discos favoritos de 2021

Alastor: Onwards and Downwards

Alex Ward: Gated

Andrew Durkin & The Quadraphonnes: Five-Pointed Star

Anna Webber: Idiom

Ben Goldberg: Everything Happens To Be.

Brad Mehldau & Orpheus Chamber Orchestra: Variations on a Melancholy Theme

Bryce Dessner: Impermanence/Disintegration

Danny Elfman: Big Mess

Ethan Iverson: Bud Powell in the 21 st Century

Giant Claw: Mirror Guide

John Medeski: Crawlspace

John Zorn: Chaos Magick

John Zorn: New Masada Quartet

John Zorn: Nostradamus: The Death of Satan

King Buffalo: The Burden of Restlessness

Krokofant: Fifth

Lina Allemano: Vegetables

Mark Feldman: Sounding Point

Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime

Motorpsycho: Kingdom of Oblivion

Pierre Vervloesem: 2020

Stöner: Stoners Rule

TEKE::TEKE: Shirushi

Throat: Smile Less

Thumbscrew: Never is Enough

Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Reid Anderson & Dave King: Broken Shadows

Yautia: The Lurch

[opsikpro]

Mark Segger Sextet - Lift Off (18th Note Records, 2020) ****½

Mark Segger Sextet – Lift Off (18th Note Records, 2020) ****½

[ad_1]

By Sammy Stein

The Mark Segger Sextet was formed in 2008 to play the music of drummer and leader Mark Segger. Currently a doctoral Killam scholar in composition at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, Mark Segger has performed with the likes of Allison Au, Lina Allemano, Jane Bunnett, Dave Burrell, Steve Swell, and Nate Wooley, among others. The title, Lift…

[podilatokafe]

Lina Allemano Four - Live At The Tranzac (2012)

Lina Allemano Four – Live At The Tranzac (2012)

[dustedmagazine]

Lina Allemano Four—Pipe Dream (LUMO)

Photo by Cristina Marx

Pipe Dream by Lina Allemano Four

The latest by Lina Allemano’s long-running quartet takes on the impact of Covid-19, though the inspiration of this heavy topic is not intrusive. Rather, Pipe Dream offers a reflection on one of the defining events of our generation with a kind of playful solemnity well suited to uncertain times.

In thinking about the impact of the pandemic on music, it seems useful to distinguish three phases. First, there are recordings made just before the lockdown and released in the thick of it that provided much-needed joy and relief at a time when live music had all but ceased, such as the Lina Allemano 4’s previous release, Vegetables, recorded in January 2020 and released in April 2021. Next, there are recordings made under lockdown conditions, a personal favorite being João Madeira’s Quartet Exquis, for which the musicians recorded their parts in isolation without hearing each other, released late in 2021 in the midst of the omicron wave. Now, some recordings made after things have opened up again are appearing that try to make sense of the experience, such as Eri Yamamoto’s A Woman with a Purple Wig, released in November 2022, in which the pianist processes the anti-Asian hate that the pandemic fueled. 

Pipe Dream also belongs to this third phase, having been recorded in February 2021 and appearing some two years later. According to the liner notes, Allemano wrote the music during isolation in Toronto, and the band has clearly spent considerable time working up the arrangements while leaving ample room for improvisation during the recording. The first three tracks establish a mood and sound consistent with the 4’s previous records, offering plenty of twists and turns and memorable themes. Often, double bassist Andrew Downing and drummer Nick Fraser provide a roiling, shifting framework over which Allemano’s trumpet and Brodie West’s alto chase and respond to one another, as on “Dragon Fruit,” in which their intertwined lines introduce the theme and evolve purposefully under the propulsion of bursts of bowed bass and nervous percussion; then the pace slows, the theme is restated, the group picks up steam and slows again, and, in the final two minutes, coalesces into a stirring return to the theme. 

The rest of the tracks form a four-part suite titled “The Plague Diaries.” The first part, “Longing,” is introduced with a tour de force two-minute trumpet solo that displays the circular breathing used to great effect on Allemano’s 2020 solo recording. The band joins in to reinforce the theme and help convey the titular emotion, with Downing both holding things together and contributing a third voice alongside the horns. Other emotions are explored as the suite proceeds, from “Trying Not to Freak Out,” which begins with a haunting solo by West and lurches from groans to outbursts that could be a soundtrack to the early pandemic experience. A solo from Downing gets things going on “Hunger and Murder” with a combination of arco and pizzicato initiating a dark, slow churn that eventually erupts into fireworks before coming reluctantly to a halt. Fraser opens the closing track “Doom and Doomer” with a furious solo and then the other instruments impose a pulsing cadence that gives way to a kind of march before the four blend back together in the final minute in a stately resolution to the suite and the record as a whole. 

After nearly 20 years together, the Lina Allemano 4 continue to make consistently interesting music. Pipe Dream can be a challenging record, but it’s also a lot of fun. It may be rewarding to reflect on the Covid experience while listening, but it’s certainly not necessary. 

Jim Marks

[chez-mimich]

LINA ALLEMANO: “ CANON”

Ho sempre amato i titoli rigorosi, magari anche un po’ austeri e così “Canon” di Lina Allemano, in uscita il prossimo 8 dicembre per l’etichetta Lumo Records, mi ha subito attirato. Coi canoni non si scherza, sono rigorose strutture entro le quali l’artista, il compositore in questo caso, fa nascere la poesia. E’ dal massimo rigore che deriva la massima libertà, come sosteneva Paul Valery. Con queste certezze (seppur relative) ho iniziato ad ascoltare “Canon” e nessuna fiducia fu meglio riposta. E’ il lavoro che mi aspettavo, nove brani originali (e non solo nel senso che sono frutto del lavoro della musicista), di cristallina bellezza, dove l’improvvisazione gioca un ruolo fondamentale nel solco del rigore e, a volte, dell’estremo rigore. È “3 Trumpet Canon” ad aprire il disco, brano dall’equilibrio pressoché perfetto e dalle simmetrie appena appena disturbate, in particolare dagli sbuffi e dai refoli nella parte finale del pezzo. Più caldo e colorato “Bobby’s Canon” dove la tromba di Lina è come “temperata “ dagli inserti di violoncello, morbidi e avvolgenti di Peggy Lee. Una melodia dolce e ricorrente percorre tutto il pezzo, facendolo inclinare verso le sonorità di una ballata quasi folk. Più inquieto e dissonante “Shadows”, uno dei quattro pezzi composti con Mike Smith: atmosfera sospesa e piena di attesa dove la tromba di Lina Allemano è sempre in un rapporto di equilibrio/disequilibrio nel tessuto musicale che sembra sfibrarsi per poi ricompattarsi. Anche “Butterscones” sembra strizzare l’occhio alla ballata benché, anche qui, sia il rigore e l’equilibrio la cifra stilistica del brano; tutt’altra musica con il rigore sperimentale di “Wilds”, con quella sua tromba creatrice di equilibrio nel quasi ossessivo refrain e poi dissolutrice dell’equilibrio appena creato. Con “Twinkle Tones”, minimale e sommessamente atonale entriamo nella intimità più profonda con lo strumento di Lina Allemano, un viaggio nel suono profondo come capita in questi casi, viaggio compiuto in compagnia del sintetizzatore di Ryan Driver, del contrabbasso di Rob Clutton e della chitarra di Tim Posgate. Più disteso e pacato, ecco “Moons” con la tromba che pare aprire lunari e placidi orizzonti che ancora persistono, anche col supporto del trombone di Matthias Müller, in “Canon of Sorts”. Chiude il lavoro “Ponds” solo di tromba, in compagnia degli effetti elettronici di Mike Smith. È qui, proprio in questo brano, che l’assoluta autonomia della tromba può dirsi compiuta, anche grazie a questo sentore “definitivo” del timbro. Lina Allemano è una originalissima compositrice ed interprete del jazz contemporaneo, e questo non lo scopro certo io, ma è anche, attraverso la sua musica e la sua ricerca, una delle più grandi assertrici della autonomia e della bellezza della tromba che del jazz ha contribuito a costruirne la leggenda. E siccome sono un inguaribile esteta, nota di merito alla cover di Lena Czerniawska. Disco super.

[marcogiovenale]

online i numeri 35 e 36 di 'utsanga'

www.utsanga.it (utsanga.it) – online i numeri 35 e 36 (marzo/giugno 2023) con: Francesco Aprile, Cristiano Caggiula, Texas Fontanella, Michael Betancourt, Leah Singer, Silvio De Gracia, Ana Montenegro, Viviane Houle, James Falzone, Sylvain Darrifourcq, Lina Allemano, James Meger, Sissel Vera Pettersen, GAP – Global Art Project, Carl Heyward, Wellington Amancio, Gianluigi Balsebre, Fabio…

[sissifm-radio-f]

SissiFM #93 :  Did we do our homework or what are we doing here? Over the course of the last two months, we’ve been wondering how to approach the history of jazz.  Not only the history of jazz, but the contexts in which it is played, learned, heard and (re)shaped in todays world, or let’s say, todays world inside of northern Europe.  During the festival re-shaping jazz to come, an almost all- but not exclusivelywhite female line-up interprets pieces of old and mostly iconic figures of jazz taking place in ausland-berlin, one has to ask themselves:  who has the right to play jazz and in which contexts? SissiFM was, just the same, confronted with a similar question:  who has the right to play jazz and why is it taking place in such contexts? (re)shaping implies that something should be shaped again or turned into a different form.   How can we re-shape a genre to come without deleting some of the more important attributes of its social and political connotations? the music you are hearing tonight has two points of entry:  both new and old editions to the following compositions played, heard and re-shaped in one way or another.  Andrea Parkins (piano, electronic accordion, objects and electronics) stands in dialogue with artist Albert Ayler and his compositions Bessl and Ghosts from 1964 and 1965.  Liz Kosack (piano synthesizer) and Lan Cao (piano) visited and reacted to the work and performance of Charlie Parker and Dizze Gillespie’s Bird & Diz album from 1951.  The trio, consisting of Els Vandeweyer (vibraphone) + Lina Allemano (trumpet) + Ute Wasserman (voice, objects) found their way to re-play and re-make 6 of the 12 compositions from Mary Lou Williams’s Zodiac Suite.

Sissi FM @ re-shaping Jazz to come plays recordings which are put into dialogue as part of the festival as well as recordings which are not, ponders about who re-shapes jazz and who doesn´t, follows and meanders on pathways of it´s own and visits some of the artists on their journey through jazz history up to the present. The Re-shaping Jazz festival program you find at: http://ausland-berlin.de/reshaping-jazz-come-dialogues-recordings-musics-pa

[diyeipetea]

HDO 362. Carrier - Lambert, Titanium Riot, Lina Allemano Four (Canajazz 2017 II) [Podcast]

HDO 362. Carrier – Lambert, Titanium Riot, Lina Allemano Four (Canajazz 2017 II) [Podcast]

Tres propuestas en la entrega 362 de HDO que se mueven por los terrenos del free y de la improvisación y que vienen de la escena canadiense: Out Of Silence (François Carrier – Michel Lambert); Squish It! (del cuarteto Titanium Riot); Sometimes Y (Lina Allemano Four).

Tomajazz: © Pachi Tapiz, 2018

HDO es un podcast editado, presentado y producido por Pachi Tapiz.

[chez-mimich]

a

[marcogiovenale]

online i numeri 35 e 36 di 'utsanga'

www.utsanga.it (utsanga.it) – online i numeri 35 e 36 (marzo/giugno 2023) con: Francesco Aprile, Cristiano Caggiula, Texas Fontanella, Michael Betancourt, Leah Singer, Silvio De Gracia, Ana Montenegro, Viviane Houle, James Falzone, Sylvain Darrifourcq, Lina Allemano, James Meger, Sissel Vera Pettersen, GAP – Global Art Project, Carl Heyward, Wellington Amancio, Gianluigi Balsebre, Fabio…