LINA ALLEMANO FOUR - Vegetables
Lumo Records CD LM 2021-11
Lina Allemano: compositions, trumpet; Brodie West: alto saxophone; Andrew Downing: double bass; Nick Fraser: drums
Recorded at Union Sound Company, Toronto, Canada, January 3rd/4th 2020
The Lina Allemano Four, in Vegetables, performs six original pieces, written by Lina Allemano specifically for the band, with the intention that they concentrate on sonic exploration, improvisation and collective interaction between the musicians. Thus, they have been working together in a highly creative and expressive way for some fifteen years. Lina Allemano is a prolific, Canadian composer, improviser and trumpeter, working intensely in Avant-garde, contemporary and conceptual music in the fields of improvisation and jazz, as well as in a broad gamut of other forms. She studied both classical and jazz trumpet as well as the use of extended techniques as applied to her instrument. She composes also for her Berlin-based, power-trio, OHRENSCHMAUS. Her time is essentially split between Toronto and Berlin and she works with a number of bands in both cities. Her trumpet playing, as a session musician, can be heard on countless albums, film and television soundtracks.
There is equilibrium in the music here, neither composition nor improvisation running away with the accolades deservedly earned. The compositions are intelligent, diversified and feisty and combined with the quartet’s exuberantly stylish performance, and the skin-tight interplay within the improvisational passages, this foursome delivers an exposition of its comprehension of the composer’s musical ideas. They listen, they hear and they react to each other, seemingly without the need for any ordinary senses. Through this process, customary, fundamental though multifaceted elements smash together with Avant-experimentation in contemporary music resulting maybe in something like Brussels Sprouts, Maybe Cabbage. Animated, forceful, intricate, sharp and vibrant, this sees sax and trumpet playing in contrast to each other, the drama emphasised by shifts between establishment and disorder. It is fascinating to see the forte of the composition set against the honed quality of the spontaneous rejoinders to each other, when much of the music is, perhaps simply, chatty, cooperative invention.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Lumo Records CD LM 2021-11
Lina Allemano: compositions, trumpet; Brodie West: alto saxophone; Andrew Downing: double bass; Nick Fraser: drums
Recorded at Union Sound Company, Toronto, Canada, January 3rd/4th 2020
The Lina Allemano Four, in Vegetables, performs six original pieces, written by Lina Allemano specifically for the band, with the intention that they concentrate on sonic exploration, improvisation and collective interaction between the musicians. Thus, they have been working together in a highly creative and expressive way for some fifteen years. Lina Allemano is a prolific, Canadian composer, improviser and trumpeter, working intensely in Avant-garde, contemporary and conceptual music in the fields of improvisation and jazz, as well as in a broad gamut of other forms. She studied both classical and jazz trumpet as well as the use of extended techniques as applied to her instrument. She composes also for her Berlin-based, power-trio, OHRENSCHMAUS. Her time is essentially split between Toronto and Berlin and she works with a number of bands in both cities. Her trumpet playing, as a session musician, can be heard on countless albums, film and television soundtracks.
There is equilibrium in the music here, neither composition nor improvisation running away with the accolades deservedly earned. The compositions are intelligent, diversified and feisty and combined with the quartet’s exuberantly stylish performance, and the skin-tight interplay within the improvisational passages, this foursome delivers an exposition of its comprehension of the composer’s musical ideas. They listen, they hear and they react to each other, seemingly without the need for any ordinary senses. Through this process, customary, fundamental though multifaceted elements smash together with Avant-experimentation in contemporary music resulting maybe in something like Brussels Sprouts, Maybe Cabbage. Animated, forceful, intricate, sharp and vibrant, this sees sax and trumpet playing in contrast to each other, the drama emphasised by shifts between establishment and disorder. It is fascinating to see the forte of the composition set against the honed quality of the spontaneous rejoinders to each other, when much of the music is, perhaps simply, chatty, cooperative invention.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
