JACQUELINE KERROD - 17 Days in December
Orenda Records CD ORENDA-0093
JACQUELINE KERROD, acoustic and electric harps
Recorded at Oktaven Audio Studios, Mount Vernon, NY. USA
During her COVID lockdown, Jacqueline Kerrod chose to investigate her own musical direction, having worked largely in classical collaborations for much of her professional career. She elected to compile a musical diary, setting out each day with no fixed agenda or any intention of releasing her results formally, setting a timer and starting recording. This was pure improvisation, with no preparations on the harp and no overdubbing or looping on the album. She used a metallic harp tool on one track (Screwed) a small glass bowl on another (Glassy Fingers) and a viola bow (Rust On Bow) and used distortion techniques on the electric harp.
The results were never foreseeable, nor incoherent or illogical, yet there is really no beginning nor end. Experimentation seems to be her leitmotif throughout, as she continuously pursues new approaches to articulating her individual celebrations and to keep her music alive and forever moving.
Much of what Kerrod achieves here is likely due to her working with Anthony Braxton, which opened new avenues for her as they performed together on numerous occasions across Europe and the USA. She admits to a debt of gratitude to master composer and improviser Braxton for the experiences gained in working with him in the world of creative improvised music. She says that it was through him and his Language Music that she learned “a simple, yet powerful, strategic way of getting inside the creative space.”
Hear Jacqueline’s soft trilling as she buoys up and sustains the drones, an imported technique from Braxton’s Long Sounds Language, sustaining a drone in spite of the harp’s expected propensity for sonic decay. Chatterbox presents the ominous and unfamiliar sounds of her electric harp and each day reveals new, precious, sonic encounters arising from diverse conceptions, including techniques from classical music remembered and faded recollections of once-heard jazz.
Solo harp performances are believed to have been around for some 4,500 years and the instrument has been modified and transformed to meet the artist’s needs of the day. Jacqueline Kerrod’s raw success in continuing this history reflects her ability and flair, her heady playing arising like sap from a profound and sensitive undercurrent which would not let her rest satisfied by whatever came before. She is a truly intrepid extemporizer and experimentalist.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Orenda Records CD ORENDA-0093
JACQUELINE KERROD, acoustic and electric harps
Recorded at Oktaven Audio Studios, Mount Vernon, NY. USA
During her COVID lockdown, Jacqueline Kerrod chose to investigate her own musical direction, having worked largely in classical collaborations for much of her professional career. She elected to compile a musical diary, setting out each day with no fixed agenda or any intention of releasing her results formally, setting a timer and starting recording. This was pure improvisation, with no preparations on the harp and no overdubbing or looping on the album. She used a metallic harp tool on one track (Screwed) a small glass bowl on another (Glassy Fingers) and a viola bow (Rust On Bow) and used distortion techniques on the electric harp.
The results were never foreseeable, nor incoherent or illogical, yet there is really no beginning nor end. Experimentation seems to be her leitmotif throughout, as she continuously pursues new approaches to articulating her individual celebrations and to keep her music alive and forever moving.
Much of what Kerrod achieves here is likely due to her working with Anthony Braxton, which opened new avenues for her as they performed together on numerous occasions across Europe and the USA. She admits to a debt of gratitude to master composer and improviser Braxton for the experiences gained in working with him in the world of creative improvised music. She says that it was through him and his Language Music that she learned “a simple, yet powerful, strategic way of getting inside the creative space.”
Hear Jacqueline’s soft trilling as she buoys up and sustains the drones, an imported technique from Braxton’s Long Sounds Language, sustaining a drone in spite of the harp’s expected propensity for sonic decay. Chatterbox presents the ominous and unfamiliar sounds of her electric harp and each day reveals new, precious, sonic encounters arising from diverse conceptions, including techniques from classical music remembered and faded recollections of once-heard jazz.
Solo harp performances are believed to have been around for some 4,500 years and the instrument has been modified and transformed to meet the artist’s needs of the day. Jacqueline Kerrod’s raw success in continuing this history reflects her ability and flair, her heady playing arising like sap from a profound and sensitive undercurrent which would not let her rest satisfied by whatever came before. She is a truly intrepid extemporizer and experimentalist.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
