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GARETH LUBBE / SIMON NABATOV - Lubatov
Leo Records CD LR 762
Gareth Lubbe, viola, voice; Simon Nabatov, piano
Recorded live at Loft, Köln, Germany, April 2010 (Plush Suite tracks) and January 2014 (Suite in Be tracks and Psalm)
Now here is a really profound album. The problems associated with categorisation arise again here – what shall I call this music? Is it Modern Classical or perhaps classically informed Free Jazz? Who cares? Passages of both callings are freely heard here and there’s nothing new in that. I like the expression Free Improv because within that genre there are no rules intimated.
The viola is a beautiful instrument and Gareth Lubbe is its professor at Essen, Germany. What he is doing here is trying to bring new sounds to his instrument by including sometimes simultaneous overtone singing, or throat singing as it is sometimes called. I think he is then attempting to reproduce the voice sounds through the viola. It is extraordinary, astonishingly stimulating and highly effective.
Essential and overtone harmonics can be affected by altering the shapes of the larynx and pharynx; this stimulates intensification and prolongation of musical tones, through sympathetic vibration. This resonant tuning allows the vocalist to generate seemingly more than one tone at the same time while actually generating only a single fundamental frequency with the vocal folds. It is believed that the technique of overtone singing originated from south western Mongolia and was also commonplace in Siberia. ‘Styles’ may depend on which cavities are altered: chest, glottal, labial, nasal or palatal. Bizarre? You bet.
The Russian pianist Simon Nabatov has stood at the crossover cusp of different genres of serious contemporary music including avant-jazz for many years. Lubatov shows how this duo creates sounds which are opulent with poetry, such is their appetite, their empathy and energy, the wonders they leave behind with us.
The power that proceeds from a music with little embellishment, the shades, the harmonious articulations are really remarkable yet full of subtlety, and the quality of the performance is outstanding.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Leo Records CD LR 762
Gareth Lubbe, viola, voice; Simon Nabatov, piano
Recorded live at Loft, Köln, Germany, April 2010 (Plush Suite tracks) and January 2014 (Suite in Be tracks and Psalm)
Now here is a really profound album. The problems associated with categorisation arise again here – what shall I call this music? Is it Modern Classical or perhaps classically informed Free Jazz? Who cares? Passages of both callings are freely heard here and there’s nothing new in that. I like the expression Free Improv because within that genre there are no rules intimated.
The viola is a beautiful instrument and Gareth Lubbe is its professor at Essen, Germany. What he is doing here is trying to bring new sounds to his instrument by including sometimes simultaneous overtone singing, or throat singing as it is sometimes called. I think he is then attempting to reproduce the voice sounds through the viola. It is extraordinary, astonishingly stimulating and highly effective.
Essential and overtone harmonics can be affected by altering the shapes of the larynx and pharynx; this stimulates intensification and prolongation of musical tones, through sympathetic vibration. This resonant tuning allows the vocalist to generate seemingly more than one tone at the same time while actually generating only a single fundamental frequency with the vocal folds. It is believed that the technique of overtone singing originated from south western Mongolia and was also commonplace in Siberia. ‘Styles’ may depend on which cavities are altered: chest, glottal, labial, nasal or palatal. Bizarre? You bet.
The Russian pianist Simon Nabatov has stood at the crossover cusp of different genres of serious contemporary music including avant-jazz for many years. Lubatov shows how this duo creates sounds which are opulent with poetry, such is their appetite, their empathy and energy, the wonders they leave behind with us.
The power that proceeds from a music with little embellishment, the shades, the harmonious articulations are really remarkable yet full of subtlety, and the quality of the performance is outstanding.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
