Gijs Levelt

João Almeida

Solo Sessions* IIII

JARECORDS JAR001

Joe Moffett

Stress Positions

NeitherNor n/n 017

Expanding the solo trumpet paradigm, inventive players are advancing novel strategies coupling effects, electronics and extended techniques with improvisational strategies. Two brass stylists here build their advances acoustically, while the third uses a set of pedals to achieve personal effects. That’s Dutch trumpeter Gijs Levelt, known for his work with the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, who mated his trumpet with a Whammy Pitch Shifter, Echo 1 Delay, Ditto Looper, EHX Freeze and a Line 6 Filter Modeller during Spoken’s 11 tracks. In contrast the sounds on Solo Sessions* IIII by Portuguese trumpeter João Almeida, who has worked with Albert Cirera, uses only breath, fingering, valves, bell and tubing. It’s the same for Brooklyn brass player Joe Moffett, who plays with Carlo Costa and his five Stress Positions.

Able to affirm a personal touch in spite of his textural additions, Levelt wisely treats the add-ons as if he was working with another musician, creating tracks which are mostly notable for their highly rhythmic qualities. One such as “Dizzy” posits the brass amplifications as an entire orchestral section backing as open-horn Gillespie-like solos pulsate alongside as vibrating loops. Multiplying the concept, “Calling” brings out a collection of brass tones that cross and follow one another in a linear fashion, producing unison and replicated pitches familiar from trumpet battles. Not all the pedal wizardry is call-and-response however. Other sequences add vague Eastern layered or piccolo-trumpet-like tones. As they winnow back-and-forth chalk-on-blackboard-like shrills or Morse-code-like jittering pinpoint strategies predominate. At the same time as these vibrating timbres which spiral upwards with Gabriel-like attacks are heard, so are complementary percussive shuffles which frequently consolidate into percussive shuffles. However when expressed in a sophisticated fashion, as on “Nacht” and the title track the filters and freezes are secondary to the hardware’s ability to unite electronic and acoustic impulses without fissure. Delays also provide Levelt with a palate of twerking squeals and stops that mixed with clangs exposes variable strategies on the first track. Then on the lengthy “Spoken” a horizontal theme is established that moves progressively forward until it’s joined by a secondary layer of high pitches the connect with an underlying drone for a triple-decker sandwich of contrapuntal interest.

Besides the use of pedals, Levelt doesn’t evoke any other electronic connections or overdub. The spontaneity he exhibits is reflected on the two all-acoustic discs as well. Almeida, who never seems to have found a capillary texture he couldn’t alter with tongue slaps, mouth piece angling, overblowing or high squeaks, displays multiple strategies on his disc. They include combining watery whistles and squeaks, moving unaccented air to mewling smears and emphasizing the body tube innards rather than the valves. A trio of tracks in the disc’s centre, displays this at greatest length. Building logically, with bull-like bellows and squeaking slobbers against the mouthpiece, “Points” is a dialogue between strained high and low pitches, culminating in an open horn melody expression. In contrast “Stuck” is an exercise in tongue droning that reaches past altissimo pitches until staccato honks lead to a detour into valve-less, basso tube exploration. An unexpected horse whinny draws the sequence back to the initial sky-high cries. Combing both strategies, the thematic expression on “Train” is to repeat a single tone in varied high and low pitches until sliding down to lento tempo the two become fanciful call-and-response vamps, with additional subterranean growls creating kaleidoscopic triple layering.

More barbed and staccato in his track expositions than the other two trumpeters, Moffett also makes greater use of capillary stops-and-starts plus onomatopoeic vocalizing. He whizzes through a track like “Steel Die Crocus” in under-two-minutes while still slithering out dilated cracks, capillary pushes and tones which splinter and shatter into imaginative echoes. Sometimes slapping a metal plate over his instrument’s bell he vibrates harsher textures on “Feinting Bulb”. Yet with that track properly paced with place-making pauses, the gravelly and metallic split tones maintain logic. This canny mixture of regularized grace notes and squally high pitches along with vocalized horn glossolalia and metallic drones is exhibited throughout Stress Positions. While the concluding “Succulent Midnight Quicksilver” may not be as lip smacking as the title implies, Moffett’s astute movements between miasma and melody, with strained lip suction and thick open-horn blasts provides both contrast and expression.

The sessions are trumpet concertos, only in the way that each CD demonstrates the horn’s capabilities and the notable sound tangents which it can express. Following the lines of demarcation the CDs instructively also confirm the cerebral and improvisational talents of each soloist.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spoken: Also known as Sun 2. Nacht 3. Hemelstraat 4. Dizzy 5. Spoken 6. Sofia 7. Bangalore 8. Calling 9. Jon 10. Unanswered 11. Also known as Moon

Personnel: Spoken: Gijs Levelt (trumpet, effects pedals and body percussion)

Track Listing: Solo: 1. Awkward 2. Alternate 3. Membrane 4. Points 5. Stuck 6. Train 7. Steps 8. Wobble

Personnel: Solo: João Almeida (trumpet and mute)

Track Listing: Stress: 1. Milkweed Salad 2. Feinting Bulb 3. Luxury Drywall Manoeuver 4. Steel Die Crocus 5. Succulent Midnight Quicksilver

Personnel: Stress: Joe Moffett (trumpet)