Empty Pigeonhole |cs247

Ganz toll! Von grosser Klarheit in der Wahl der klanglichen Mittel, in den formalen Abschnitten und im Zusammenspiel! Mir gefällt das Klavierspiel von Elisabeth sehr, und ihr Spiel im Flügelinnern passt wunderbar mit deinen Klängen zusammen oder umgekehrt. Gratulation! Katharina Weber (Schindler & Weber – spielzeit  atemzeit  horizontzeit / unit rec. UTR4484)

Auch Salon #30 (26.10.12) mit ELISABETH HARNIK wird nun als Empty Pingeonhole (Creative Sources, cs 247) präsentiert. Wie dabei ein Radprofi in den Taubenschlag kommt, ist mir freilich ein Rätsel. Liesl Harnik ist mir gerade erst mit dem Barcode Quartet als eine der Freistil-Damn untergekommen, ihre Einspielung mit dem Wild Chamber Trio ist bei Not Two erschienen. Dass ihr weder Kammer noch Taubenschlag als Spielraum genügt, verrät schon das 'wild'. Von den ersten Tönen an werden extented techniques ausgereizt. Sie harfend, schleifend, glissandierend, rumorend mehr im als am Klavier, er fiepend und züllend, in sopranistischer Erratik, in zitternder, schillernder Schieflage. Mit gurrendem Zungenbeben und kontrabassgründelnd er, sie mit raunen­dem Saitenbeben und träumerisch gongenden Anschlägen. Sie mit tonarm klappiger Präparation, er mit sonorem Geröhre, dem sie sich nun klangvoll zuneigt. Bis er nur noch kräht, während sie schwelgerisch arpeggierend aufsteigt und die Action eine zeitlang allein bestreitet. Schindler springt ihr aber mit dem Kornett wieder bei, während sie klingelnd absteigt. Er gepresst und schnarrend, ploppend und züngelnd, sie hell irrlich­ternd, sprunghaft huschend und flirrend. Zweiter Set: Sie ratscht und federt, er klappert und schnaubt. Krimskrams und Spieluhr - Impression: Dämmerung. Sie funkelt, klingelt, pickt, klopft, er flötet dunkel, girrt, heult und murrt als seltsamer Nachtvogel. Lange geht das so, bis ploppend und aleatorisch tropfend Bewegung ins Spiel zu kommen beginnt. Ein intuitives Pianonotturno, in das Schindler erst dröhnend, dann mit Sopranogequirle einfällt, während Harnik im Bassregister wühlt. Sie rifft krabbelig, er keckert und schrillt, beide inzwischen mit harmonischen Bezügen in ihrer Motorik und Bruitistik. Die finalen Akzente setzt Schindler mit bassklarinettistischen Bocksprüngen, Harnik mit Bassge­wühl, das langsam ausloopt. Stark, bis zur n-ten Potenz. Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy)

Etwa einmal im Monat lädt der Architekt und Blasmusiker Udo Schindler sich ausgewählte Gäste in sein Haus in Krailling nahe München, namentlich in den Salon für Klang + Kunst (siehe freiStil #33). So finden sich auf Schindlers Liste Koryphäen wie etwa Katharina Klement, Frank Gratkowski, Manon-Liu Winter, Harald Lillmeyer oder Cordula Bösze. Die Spielregel besagt, dass Schindler immer selbst mit seinen Gästen musiziert. Zwei davon, beides Pianistinnen, haben ihn dazu angeregt, die Livesituation auf CD zu dokumentieren. Weitere sollen folgen. Auf Unit Records erschien soeben sein Duo mit Katharina Weber. Hoch hängt der Standard dieses modernen Jazz, der oft unvermutet Fenster öffnet, die den Blick auf freies Gelände gewähren. Katharina Webers Musik, verkündet das Intakt-Label, „bewegt sich in der großen Welt der heutigen Musik, in der Grenzen nicht mehr existieren und Neue Musik und Jazzimprovisation verschmelzen.“ Nicht von ungefähr outete sich Fred Frith als Weber-Fan.
Noch wesentlich weiter von herkömmlichen Klavier-Klarinette-Duospielweisen entfernt sich Schindler mit bzw. dank Elisabeth Harnik auf empty pingeonhole (gemeint ist wohl pigeonhole = Schublade; Anm.) des Lissaboner creative sources-Labels. Bis weit hinein ins Material, in den Klangkörper, ins Innerste der Musik und an die Quellen ihrer Herstellung reicht diese fulminante Interaktion. Harnik frappiert am und im Klavier durch hörbare Lust am Risiko, extreme Wendigkeit und durch die Wechselwirkung des kräftigen und des flüchtigen Anschlags; Schindler folgt ihren Spuren und Hakenschlägen mühelos und evoziert seinerseits inspirierende Temperamente. Kurz, wir erleben hier nichts weniger als eine Sternstunde der Duokunst, die den Weg von Bayern über die Schweiz und Portugal bis hinein in die offenen Ohren diesseits und jenseits des Weißwurstäquators zurücklegt Andreas Fellinger (freistil)

Since 2009, the German multi-wind player Udo Schindler has held monthly concerts at his home. The concert of 26 October 2012, pairing Schindler with Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik, is presented in this intriguing, multi-faceted release.

The title of the CD is well-chosen. The music that takes shape across these two long tracks doesn’t fit into the constraints of any stylistic pigeonhole. And this comes as no surprise: Both musicians are notably versatile in their choices of sounds and in the ways that they bind together and respond to the different moments in which they find themselves. Harnik makes use of every part of the piano, whether by tapping and rattling directly on the strings or wood, phrasing in ecstatic leaps of interval and dynamic, or putting out cascades of notes in measured motion upward and downward. Schindler, for his part, moves adeptly from soprano saxophone to bass clarinet to contrabass clarinet to cornet, at times functioning as the soloist in a sonata and at other times as a weaver of esoteric sound textures. Empty Pigeonhole Part 1 moves with a paradoxically emotional logic from section to section, each of which is defined by a mood as well as by instrumental color and the blend of conventional and unconventional technique that both players offer. Empty Pigeonhole Part 2 is more about texture and color as manifested by the exploration of primal sound elements, though it is expansive enough to include an explosive soprano sax solo over a piano pedal point. Daniel Barbiero (AvantMusicNews)

Elisabeth Harnik plays piano and Udo Schindler plays bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, soprano saxophone and cornet, in a strange but always fascinating dialogue, starting with hesitating explorations of empty space, changing into confident and fully voiced piano which fades away for quiet moaning clarinet.

Sounds are fragile and shifting, played cautiously in different ways by the same instruments, in long stretched phrases, or in percussive plucking, and then contrasted by the original and full-blown sound of either piano or clarinet, offering a moment of recognition and home-coming, yet even then the deep emotions expressed keep their sense of agony and distress, and the first long piece ends at full volume, with the cornet and the piano interacting nervously and agitatedly.

The second track is more homogeneous, with the clarinet taking the first part as the lead instrument, with the piano being plucked sparingly and lightly to accentuate, yet the mood shifts in the second part, when the piano takes the lead, coercing the clarinet into a more intense dialogue, with higher density of the sounds, becoming more frenetic as it develops, with maddening phrases played by Harnik, with a slightly shifting and halting repetitive pattern that completely drowns the clarinet at first until it gets a second breath.

This album will not be for everybody's ears, but the quality and the variety of the improvisation is sufficient to make this fascinating music that you will want to listen to again.

A great listening experience. Stef (The Free Jazz Collectice )

Dedicated to promoting improvised music in and around his hometown of Krailling near Munich, multi-instrumentalist Udo Schindler presents monthly home concerts throughout the year. Recorded three months apart in the same location, with the exact same instrumentation, Empty Pigeonhole and Spielzeit Atemzeit Horizontzeit are eloquent testimonies to the unprecedented plasticity of experimental sounds.
[…] More compelling, the clearer contributions from Gams-based Harnik lock tongue-in-groove with Schindler’s contributions. While Schindler’s unexpected smears of sound plus brittle striations quickly dispense with any clichés about architectural organization in his playing, the Austrian pianist’s varied experience may account for the creation of a more comfortable sonic zone. Harnik has duetted with saxophonists such as Dave Rempis and Gianni Mimmo, as well as playing in a regularly constituted combo with violinist Allison Blunt, vocalist Annette Giesriegl and drummer Josef Klammer.
During the course of Empty Pigeonhole’s improvisations any vocalized or percussive inferences created come from Schindler’s horn collection or Harnik’s underground mining of her instrument’s lowest reaches near the backboard and capotes. As well her harpsichord-like strums plus vibrations on the internal string set provide an equivalent amount of fiddle-like strokes for the program. Essentially the initial narrative features the pianist using key jujutsu to construct a concentrated carpet of shaded and bouncing notes or methodically stopping the keys in response to, or presaging, Schindler’s multi-horn strategy. During the course of “Empty Pigeonhole Part I” bites, yelps and tongue slaps emanate from the higher-pitched reeds, while Schindler use whiny brass farts or stentorian contrabass clarinet smears less frequently to asset his individuality. Creative resolution of segmented parts arises midway through the second track following detached sequences which are more solo with accompaniment than duets. Metaphorically rescuing timbres from desert island isolation, Schindler’s soprano saxophone slurs and Harnik’s rolling tremolo bond in an all-consuming cry of victory.
[…] While the end result of both these piano-horn duets is almost equally acceptable, the strategies expressed by Harnik-Schindler during their make that journey, make that one all that more bracing. Ken Waxman JazzWord)

Schindler's list of appreciated musicians from international improv scene gets longer and longer. I'm not referring to Oskar Schindler, the notorious German businessman who saved a lot of Polish-Jewish peolple, whose biography became the plot for a likewise notorious Spielberg's movie, but to Udo Schindler, a sort of contemporary patron who hosts concerts in his own house in Krailling, a small town just outside Munich, together with talented musicians and composers of mainly free-jazz and improvisational scene every now and then that he titled Salon fur Klang + Kunst. "Empty Pigeonhole" is the first of a planned series of releases, where he recorded a live performance where he demonstrates his ability and versatility with different wind instruments (soprano saxophone, bass and contrabass clarinet, cornet) together with brilliant Austrian pianist and composer Elisabeth Harnik on a Pleyel piano. The most remarkable aspect of the two long sessions is the reciprocal understanding of the two musicians, but whereas Harnik's piano haul Udo's winds in the first piece by means of wonderful harmonic mutation where a Chopin-like melody could suddenly turn into a tangle of seemingly dissonant chords and winds splendidly echo and comply with whims on Pleyet with the nervous musical squabble between piano and cornet in the final minutes, the second track opens with flickering sonic objects and piano stings and proceeds over a sort of battle between clarinet and piano in order to lead the session, where the initial supremacy of clarinet got overwhelmed by crazy phrasing from Elizabeth's Pleyel which manages to downgrade clarinet to a dead beat breathe. Vito Camarretta (Chain DLK)

Agora, dois duos com a participação de Udo Schindler, multi-instrumentista germânico que vem dando particular atenção às variantes baixo e contrabaixo do clarinete, mas também utiliza o saxofone soprano e, em “Empty Pigenhole”, a corneta. No primeiro caso, o do disco referido, ouvimo-lo com a pianista Elisabeth Harnik e no segundo, “Sounding Dialectis”, com o saxofonista alto e também um dos grandes cultores do clarinete baixo na actualidade, Frank Gratkowski. As companhias determinam-lhe os rumos tomados… Com Harnik faz pensar num Braxton de sonoridade rude, sem a influência cool/West Coast admitida por este, mas com a mesma dualidade referencial no jazz e na música clássica do século XX. Com Gratkowski é bem menos cerebral, chegando a uma espécie de animalismo sónico que antecede a própria musicalidade.
Ainda pouco conhecida neste lado da Europa, Elisabeth Harnik é, como Sophie Agnel e Eve Risser, uma cultora do piano preparado e da exploração directa das cordas. A construção de texturas abstractas é, manifestamente, a sua praia, e a esse nível será inclusive bastante menos convencional do que o seu parceiro – se bem que este aplique igualmente técnicas pouco usuais. Quanto a Frank Gratkowski, trata-se de um dos mais cativantes palhetistas aparecidos em cena no Velho Continente nesta última década, autor de um jazz pós-cubista, pós-surrealista e pós-Fluxus que é um enigma para a mente, mas só depois de nos atingir o estômago. Subtilmente, pois está muito, muito longe das lógicas brutalistas de um Brotzmann… Rui Eduardo Paes (Jazz.pt)