3/18/2013

Tenhi - Maaäet



Artist:             Tenhi
Album:           Maaäet
Year:              2006
Line-Up:         Ilmari Issakainen - Drums, piano, guitar, bass, percussions, backing vocals
                       Tyko Saarikko - Vocals, piano, harmonium, synth, guitar, percussions
                       Ilkka Salminen - Vocals, guitar, bass, harmonium, percussions
                       Inka Eerola - Violin
                       Jaakko Hilppö - Backing vocals
                       Janina Lehto - Flute
                       Tuukka Tolvanen - Backing vocals
Label:             Prophecy Productions

Tenhi’s music is Finnish melancholy in its' finest. The dark, soft ambience that these musicians create is minimal and small, but at the same time kind of huge and even epic. Tenhi takes great inspiration from nature, especially from Finnish nature. They claim it to be an endless source of amazement and beauty. Maaäet is their third studio album and they describe its theme as follows:

We compare our album Maaäet to an autumnal forest. It was its feel that we aimed for when we were creating the music. Life slowly fleeing from everywhere, fatalism, acceptance, gentle fall to sleep, turning towards an end of a cycle, giving energy back to earth — giving it to be a seed of new life.”

The album contains 12 tracks, almost all including vocals sung in Finnish. I usually tend to understate the beauty of the Finnish language, and even consider it occasionally pretty ugly, but I have to admit that Tenhi makes my mother tongue sound enchantingly beautiful and it suits this kind of music perfectly. Their use of the violin together with piano is brilliant and smooth while guitar, drums and bass are actually used rather rock-oriented. Only a few graceful melodies and some minimal fingerpicking with the guitar can create lovely emotions and soundscapes. Some tracks even include heavy riffs, but mainly the music is pretty folky with a progressive touch.

Tenhi is an old Finnish word meaning a village elder, wise old man, or seer. For Tenhi, visual arts are almost just as important as the music. The band creates the album covers by themselves. The dark artwork dominating in the sleeve of the CD works as a window from where the themes are captured, as it has guided the band in composing the music for this beautifully floating piece. Maaäet is a very interesting album, and if you want to explore the Nordic melancholy Tenhi is a good place to start. Varpuspäivä (Sparrow Day) is the opener of the album, enjoy:


Written by: Oz



3/11/2013

Jorge Cardoso - Origenes

 
Artist:       Jorge Cardoso
Album:     Origenes
Year:        1998
Line-up:    Jorge Cardoso – Vihuela, modern classical guitar, baroque guitar, 
                                             classical-romantic guitar
Label:       Guitar Masters

Continuing to cover albums of artists which I have had the pleasure of seeing perform live, today I am going further back to the year 2009. I was attending a world music festival where I saw the Argentine guitarist/composer/musicologist give a solo recital concert on the classical guitar. Cardoso has done an impressive life work on studying the deep roots and secrets of Latin and Spanish classical guitar music. The recital performed in the festival was based on his album Origenes which tries to build a musical and historical bridge between Spain and South America originating from several hundred years ago to the present. I was so enthralled by the concert that I absolutely had to purchase a copy of the Origenes album afterwards.

The album contains 15 compositions the oldest dating from the 16th century and the newest being the compositions of Jorge Cardoso. Some of the composers featured on here are Luis de Narváez (Spain, 1526-49), Francois Le Cocq (Belgium, 1685-1729), Ferdinando Carulli (Italy 1770-1841), Matteo Carcassi (Italy, 1792-1853), Napoléon Coste (France, 1805-1883), María Luisa Anido (Argentina, 1907-1996), Eduardo Falú (Argentina, 1923) and the master himself, Jorge Cardoso (1949, Argentina). In addition, the album contains also works of less known composers from Latin America. In the concert Cardoso performed only on one modern classical guitar, a type of guitar which was established in the 19th century Spain. However, on the album the maestro strives for authenticity by performing each piece with respected instrument of the given time period. Thus, we are being treated with the sounds of vihuela (a guitar-shaped instrument from 15th and 16th century Spain, Italy and Portugal), baroque guitar (a string instrument with five courses of gut strings and moveable gut frets) and romantic guitar which is the immediate precursor of the modern classical guitar.

The actual music on the album is a pleasant and lovely collection of solo guitar and vihuela works which explore, in the most interesting manner, the origins and the evolution of this fine instrument and the similarities and differences between the European and the South American tradition. The playing and the performances of Jorge Cardoso are absolutely brilliant. The virtuosity and the control which he has over the guitar is astounding, resulting in delightful performances which are not are not only technically flawless but also full of purity, clarity, dynamics and, above all, emotion. In addition to being a virtuoso on his instrument, Cardoso also proves himself to be a quite talented composer who writes very subtle and delicate pieces never putting his technical proficiency ahead of the actual music. Along with the compositions of Cardoso, one of the definite highlights of the albums has to be the 14-minute long tour de force Folías de España, which is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes.

It goes without a saying that this record is a must for all fans of the classical guitar for having such lovely and rare repertoire and featuring also various precursors of the modern classical guitar. The album is also quite relaxing and smoothing and serves well as music to have playing while reading, having a cup of coffee or tea or before going to bed. Yet again, the more careful listens bring forth the rich details of the featured compositions and Cardoso's playing.

Please enjoy a composition of Jorge Cardoso, a beautiful milonga:


Written by Παναγιωτιης

3/04/2013

ECM


ECM Records (Edition of Contemporary Music) is a German record label founded in 1969, in Munich, Germany, by a record producer and double-bass player Manfred Eicher. Musically, the origins of the label lay in jazz music, and especially in modern jazz, but nowadays ECM has broadened its' catalogue to western art music and various world music traditions. However, many ECM artists and Mister Eicher himself have been reluctant to categorize their music and move fluently across the borders and boundaries of traditional genres. To date, ECM has released over 1200 albums covering a wide variety of different musical idioms.

The first release of ECM was Free at Last by American pianist Mal Waldron, and at first the label was known for releasing records by great modern American jazz masters such as Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner. Nonetheless, from very early on the label served also as a medium for putting many gifted jazz musicians from all over Europe on the map and bringing various musicians, often with very different backgrounds, together in new and exciting combinations and ensembles. In 1984 ECM New Series saw its' daylight originally launched to introduce the composition Tabula Rasa by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Since then, the series has become an essential part of the label as a platform for documenting the works of western art music ranging from early music to modern compositions. Eventough lacking its' own series, world music has also become an important ”genre” of the ECM catalogue. In the label's true fashion, their catalogue also include a great deal of releases where the idioms of jazz, classical music and different world music traditions are mixed seamlessly.

ECM has also a very special relation to the art of cinema. Founder Manfred Eicher is himself a passionate aficionado of cinema, and thus his label has been active in various film projects. For example, ECM has released the soundtracks of the films of such directors as Theo Angelopoulos, Jean-Luc Godard and Andrey Zvyagintsev. The collaborations with Godard have expanded to the usage of various still photos of numerous Godard's movies as album covers and to Eicher's involvement on Godard's films as a musical director. Additionally, a number of prolific European actors have released spoken word-albums for the label and some projects and albums are dedicated to iconic people in motion picture history. ECM has also released a couple of concert performances of its' artists, a collection of short films by Godard as well as a quality documentary named Sounds and Silence which captures the daily routine and work of Manfred Eicher with various musicians.

The founder and producer of ECM Manfred Eicher continues to the date to take active interest in the music which is released by the label by picking new artists usually based on his own very wide musical taste and he is also close friends with many of the artists. Yet, the integrity and the musicians' control over their art and creations has always been an important policy of the philosophy of the label. Eicher acts as the producer on the majority of the releases being almost always present in the recording sessions which usually last only three days: two for recording and one for mixing. The ECM's motto, taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases by Canadian jazz magazine called CODA, is the Most Beautiful Sound Next to Silence. This motto sums up very well the very prolific, iconic and recognisable sound which the ECM albums are known for. Despite the difficulty of verbal expression of sound, one could use such words as ”ascetic”, ”pure”, ”clear”, ”meditative”, ”ethreal”, ”dreamy”, ”peaceful” and ”reflective” while trying to capture the general atmosphere of a typical soundscape of an ECM record. The importance of texture and atmosphere are usually the key elements of the sound engineering on an ECM album. Part of it is based on producer Eicher's tendency to approach the sound engineering with the aesthetics normally associated with classical music production which aims for clarity and detail.

Altough ECM is without a doubt a familiar name to many music connoisseurs, such a fine and quality record label can never get too much attention. For the end, I have picked a number of less known samples of the vast catalogue of ECM.

A piece from the soundtrack of the the film The Return:

A collaboration between Norwegian saxophone player Jan Garbarek and musicians from Pakistan:

Modern jazz by the masters, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell and Dave Holland:

Modern classical music by Slovakian composer Vladimir Godar:

New age-ish music by interesting world music artist Stephan Micus:

Nu-jazz by Nil Petter Molvaer:

Modern art music in memory of the great film director Andrei Tarkovsky:

Written by Παναγιωτιης