Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

“20/20”

(New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings NEWJAiM23)

Maggie Nicols – voice
Guro Gravem-Johansen – voice
Ann Pearce – voice, electronics
Ceylan Hay – violin, voice
Cliona Cassidy - voice
Atzi Muramatsu – cello
Peter Nicholson - cello
Jessica Argo – theremin, cello
Ken Slaven – strings, voice
George Burt – guitar
Mike Parr-Burman – guitar
Sia X-Ray – guitar, electronics
Raymond McDonald – saxophones
Faradena Afifi – saxophone, strings
Aviva Endean- clarinet
Corey Mwamba- vibraphone
Allan Wylie – trumpet
Robert Henderson – trumpet
Yasuko Kaneko - trombone
Gerry Rossi – piano
Maria Sappho – piano
Tom Butler – synthesiser
David Wilfred – didgeridoo
Daniel Wilfred – voice, clapping sticks
Helen Svoboda – double bass
Una MacGlone – double bass
Armin Sturm – double bass
Rick Bamford – drums, percussion
Jim Whyte – drums
David Robertson – percussion

“20/20” is the second album release for the NEWJAiM record label by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. The first, 2023’s “Flying A Kite On An Empty Beach” was favourably reviewed by The Jazzmann here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/flying-a-kite-on-an-empty-beach

This latest recording is actually the GIO’s fourteenth album overall and represents a celebration of the institution’s twentieth anniversary. It was recorded at the 2022 edition of the annual GIO Festival and was recorded live at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) on the last night of the Festival,  Sunday December 4th 2022.

The GIO is based around a pool of about twenty musicians from a variety of musical and artistic backgrounds. Although named for the city of its foundation it is an international organisation that regularly collaborates with artists from different countries.

For this special anniversary performance there was a particularly strong Australian contingent including clarinettist Aviva Endean and bassist Helen Svoboda, both members of the Australian Art Orchestra. Also members of the AAO David and Daniel Wilfred are first nation musicians, traditional songmen from Ngukurr in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Finally from Canberra the artist known as Sia X-Ray (aka Shoeb Ahmad), a guitarist and electronic musician involved in both the pop and improvised music worlds.

Other international musicians featuring on this recording are the Japanese trombonist Yasuko Kaneko and the Norwegian vocalist and researcher Guro Gravem-Johansen.

The album title refers to the fact that there are twenty separate pieces of music played by members of the Orchestra in various configurations in celebration of the GIO’s 20th birthday. All are relatively brief, particularly in a freely improvised context, and no item is allowed to outstay its welcome.

The Orchestra describes its approach on 2020 thus;
“Everything was performed freely by small groups emerging spontaneously from the whole, over the course of the complete performance. Nothing was predetermined and everything happened in the moment of creation”.

As other reviewers have observed the music is a lot less confrontational and aggressive than much free improv, possibly the result of the number of female musicians involved in the project. The brevity of the pieces helps to ensure that the music is not overwhelmingly idiomatic, the rapid turnover of musicians helping to ensure that there is a wide variety of instrumental sounds and a similarly wide array of colours and textures. As an album it all hangs together surprisingly well, almost like a suite of freely improvised music, with twenty movements in just sixty two minutes.

The individual tracks have no titles and are simply numbered one to twenty. The first features cellist Atzi Muramatau, guitarist George Burt and vocalists Ann Pearce and Maggie Nichols, the latter a mainstay of the GIO throughout its twenty year existence. Scratchy, high register cello, tautly plucked acoustic guitar and ethereal wordless vocals make for a tentative but compelling introduction.

The music segues seamlessly into track two with Mike Parr-Burman taking over on guitar joined by Raymond McDonald on sax, Aviva Endean on clarinet, Corey Mwamba at the vibes, Allan Wylie on trumpet and guest musician Helen Svoboda on double bass. Mwamba’s presence ensures that percussive sounds are heard alongside the reeds and brass, Svoboda’s bowed bass and the scratching of guitar. Again the mood is gently exploratory, recognisably free improv but never ‘in your face’.

Trach three sees Nichols return alongside pianist Gerry Rossi, drummer Rick Bamford, violinist / vocalist Ceylan Hay and trombonist Yasuko Kaneko. The two voices combine effectively with Rossi’s piano, sometimes pushing into the territory of extended vocal techniques. Bamford adds occasional drum commentary but Kaneko remains something of a peripheral figure.

Track four brings together trumpeter Robert Henderson, percussionist David Robertson and twin bassists Una MacGlone and Armin Sturm. Long, increasingly confident trumpet melody lines that almost sound as if they have their roots in New Orleans. float above an intriguing rhythmic backdrop featuring deep bass sonorities and the pattering and bubbling of Robertson’s percussion.

Track five is particularly intriguing and features the extraordinary vocalising of Cliona Cassidy alongside Tom Butler’s synths and Sia X-Rays guitar and electronics. Also contributing to this chilly,  other worldly sci-fi soundscape are Jessica Argo on theremin and cello and drummer Jim Whyte.

Track six is a duet between cellist Peter Nicholson and pianist Gerri Rossi, the percussive noises presumably prepared piano sounds emanating from the interior of the instrument. It’s another eerie, dystopian soundscape with grainy cello combining with highly unorthodox piano sounds.

Nicholson remains on board for track seven, the lengthiest track on the album at over seven minutes duration. He’s joined by an expanded line up featuring Nichols, Mwamba, pianist Maria Sappho, string player Ken Slaven and vocalist Daniel Wilfred. This emerges from the sounds of almost subliminal pizzicato strings to embrace the extraordinary vocal ululations of both Nicols and Wilfred while bowed strings emulate the barking of dogs. Mwamba’s vibes motif’s are shadowed by Sappho at the piano and Wilfred’s clapping sticks also come to the fore towards the close of the piece, adding rhythmic focus.

I suspect that there might have been some mistake with the running order, both on the CD itself and on the NEWJAiM Bandcamp page. Track eight is credited to Daniel and David Wilfred plus Mwamba and Slaven, but sounds to me more like the work of saxophonist Raymond McDonald, who produces some animalistic sounds from his instrument, accompanied by bassist Una MacGlone and drummer Rick Bamford. These three are credited with appearing on track nine.

Track nine itself sounds like the trio of vocalist Maggie Nichols, who produces some astonishing sounds that again verge on the animalistic at times, guitarist George Burt and saxophonist Faradena Afifi. On the sleeve and on Bandcamp this line up is credited with track ten.

Track ten sounds like the advertised line up for track eleven with the ethereal wordless vocals of Guro Gravem-Johansen accompanied by the almost subliminal drums and bass of Jim Whyte and Armin Sturm, with trumpeter Allan Wylie somewhere in there too.

Track eleven sounds like the track twelve line up, a truly international affair with both Wilfreds,  guitarists Parr-Burman and Sia X-Ray, trombonist Kaneko and percussionist Robertson. It includes the sounds of aboriginal vocals, clapping sticks and other percussion, scratchy guitars and the low register droning sounds of trombone and didgeridoo.

Things remain out of sync as track twelve features the advertised line up for track thirteen with Sappho on piano joined by vocalists Nicols, Pearce and Wilfred with further contributions from saxophonists MacDonald and Afifi plus Argo and Butler. As the extended line up suggests it’s one of the album’s most substantial tracks.

Track thirteen, billed as fourteen is a duet between cellist Muramatsu and drummer / percussionist Rick Bamford, the feverish bowing of the cello augmented by the metallic clank of percussion, the latter perhaps a reference to Glasgow’s industrial heritage.

Track fourteen, billed as fifteen, is another duet, this time between string players Ceylan Hay and Ken Slaven featuring pizzicato strings and a quirky spoken word narrative intoned by Slaven.

Track fifteen is a two part improvisation featuring the advertised line up for track sixteen with Nichols’ wordless vocals first augmented by the strings of Hay and MacGlone, both plucked and bowed. After a brief passage of silence Bamford’s percussion then assumes the lead, The contributions of Hay, Henderson and Sappho, who are also listed among the personnel are less easy to define.
This piece segues into the next, featuring the personnel listed for track seventeen with Henderson’s trumpet now coming to the fore with both Bamford and Robertson featuring on percussion, Hay on violin and both Sturm and MacGlone on basses.

Track seventeen features the personnel listed for eighteen with Allan Wylie’s trumpet taking the lead supported by the strings of Slaven and Hay plus Svoboda on double bass.

Track eighteen features the personnel listed for nineteen and is centred around the exchanges between Mwamba on vibes and Henderson on trumpet with Sturm on double bass.

Track nineteen seems to be a further deviation from the running order and is a melange of voices, led by Nichols. The sounds range from spoken word to extended vocal techniques and including an acknowledgement of the GIO’s 20th birthday.

The brief track twenty rounds things off with the sound of clapping sticks and the continuing hubbub of voices, a last farewell from the Australian contingent.

The missing track eight was supposed to feature Mwamba, Slaven and both Wilfreds but as far as I can ascertain no item features that particular configuration. It’s something that’s important to me as I’m attempting to write a review of the album but I suspect that most listeners probably won’t even notice, unless they’re also following the running order on the CD cover.

At the end of the day I guess it doesn’t really matter who is doing exactly what. This is music that the listener can immerse themselves in and the identification of individual contributors is also made difficult due to the extensive use of extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Arguably the singling out individuals is not particularly relevant, there are no conventional jazz solos here and the music is very much about the GIO as a collective entity. The sounds they create together are consistently interesting and absorbing and the album as a whole sounds surprisingly coherent. It’s music that won’t suit all ears but adventurous listeners should find much to enjoy here.

 

 

 

 

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