North Country Sponsored Strings

North Country-Sponsored Strings

Inherent danger always exists in naming an ensemble after an established icon. Bassist Dominic Duval threw such cautions to the wind when he coined the C.T. String Quartet in honor of Cecil Taylor. It certainly helps the cause that piano isn’t among the components, but there are still strong seasonings of Cecil in the group’s strategies. Two recent North Country-sponsored releases provide handy points of contrast in the ensemble’s history as well as illustrate a tenable evolution in terms of execution and effectiveness.

Cadence Jazz 1197

Recorded at The Knitting Factory in the summer of 1999, the three-part Reqiphoenix Nexus Trine visits ringleader Duval in the company of three other string-torquing talents: violinist Jason Kao Hwang, violist Ron Lawrence, and cellist Tomas Ulrich. Staying true to its H.R. Giger worthy title, the hour-long program is often both stark and sobering in its content. The instruments are captured close, the full potency of their sharply cutting sonorities coming through emphatically in the mix. Also audible are occasional coughs and suspirations from both the ensemble and the audience. Compositions are credited to Duval, but any written parts of the larger suite sound more like cues and tags for collective improvisation than intricately engineered blueprints.

The four musicians operate from an array of variable saw speeds, vigorously abrading their strings with bows and saving pizzicato play for rare interludes of comparative tranquility. Solos are few and the emphasis on larger group dynamics coupled with brittle acoustics sometimes makes it difficult to discern who is doing what and when. But the quartet’s heightened tonal proximity seems to be the point, to create a simultaneous sonic space of striated drones and glissing slides. The duration of the parts works against the whole leaving several sections where the momentum lulls into stasis. Even divided into three distinct sections the concert ends up feeling overwrought in spots. A guest appearance by Joe McPhee is mainly peripheral and falsely advertised on trumpet, though he does hoist his soprano in an Evan Parker-style circular breathing sortie on “Part Two.” He serves as a welcome leavening agent to the otherwise severe action of the strings.

CIMP 347

Recorded six years later under the auspices of CIMP, Mountain Air presents a different aural experience than its predecessor, one that benefits from a greater variety of material and better fidelity. Listening to the music, the fanciful image of producer Bob Rusch wheeling in tubs of rosin springs to mind, the smell of singed horsehair hanging heavy in the air by session’s end despite his best efforts. That is to say, there’s still plenty of stern tree felling and gravitas, but this time in the service of more numerous and varied string frescos. The Spirit Room’s kindling dry acoustics add an even sharper edge to the quartet’s more vehement constructions. The “C.T.” signifier is now replaced by Duval’s surname, but the roster is the same save for relative newcomer Gregor Huebner filling in Hwang’s vacant spot. The highly percussive and density-dominated approach on early pieces like “First Movement” and “Energies Up” pays audible homage to the ensemble’s now downplayed namesake. In the context of music this split-second and reflexive, prefigured charts aren’t even an option. Bows bounce against and off strings with punishing regularity. Considering all the rigorous tugging, clawing, stabbing and scraping, it’s a minor miracle that more strings weren’t broken or flayed in the process.

The players work diligently from their respective pitch jurisdictions and each instrument is cleanly discernible from its neighbors. Huebner is the hummingbird, his violin frequently sailing in swiftly arcing sweeps. Situated on the other side of the stereo spectrum, Lawrence’s viola scurries across a strata several steps lower, still transmitting well above Duval. Breaking ranks with his colleagues, the bassist leaves his stick mostly sheathed, his stout fingers summoning anchoring pizzicato patterns. The others get in on it too, as during the plucked thicket that is “Questions & Answers.” Sometimes the string-meted violence gets to be too much and it’s a high wire act between exhilarating expenditures of energy and excessive force. When they click, as during the harmonics-gilded middle section of the danse macabre “Next” and the convergent arco ribbons of “No Lax Here”, it’s a magnificent marshalling of string power. Of the two albums, this second is definitely the one to pick up in a financial pinch.

~ Derek Taylor