Austrian performance artist Ingrid Schmoliner has reconciled her country’s pagan customs with original experimentalism. карлицы сюита entirely alters the conventions of the concert piano as Schmoliner adapts its interior to develop alternative means of performance for the depiction of native ceremonies and customs, as well as for the imitation/appreciation of seldom heard natural sounds. The first track, “Stampa,” without a second of hesitation, charges ahead as Schmoliner creates driving percussive dampered repetition on the piano’s strings without overdubs or electronic effects. Summoning the energy of Perchten, the piece celebrates the ritual that recalls the country’s forest-based traditions still enacted regionally during Carnival Fastnacht in Salzburg and the twelve days of Christmas. Attaining sounds from her prepared piano more akin to tribal drumming than melodic and harmonic production, Schmoliner creates an uninterrupted cyclical trance rhythm consisting of but two sustained tones. “Grul” continues the celebratory dance, this time suggesting coincidentally a Brazilian carnival or an Indonesian orchestra. With gamelan sonority, one conventional piano bass note provides ominous accents beneath the chiming frenzy, which is based on four quickly patterned repeated tones. “Баба-Яга” depicts the Slavic equivalent of Percht, Baba Yaga, another old female forest spirit with a dual personality for reward and punishment that enforces good behavior among the believers. Schmoliner performs “Баба-Яга” in the lower reaches of the piano for more darkly colored hammered and sustained tonal pulsation, less trance-like and incantatory than “Stampa” and more fearsome. Still, that doesn’t explain the album’s title, also written in Cyrillic, that seems to translate to mean Dwarf Suite. “Balaena Mysticetus,” inspired by the Arctic’s bowhead whale’s calls, departs from Alpine native rituals. However, it’s consistent with Schmoliner’s fascination with unconventional piano sonorities as she bows the strings to simulate the whale’s elongated swelling low-register song offset by higher-pitched dual overtones, flute-like in their similarity to bottle-embouchure breathiness. “Teadin” continues Schmoliner’s experimenting with sustained tones as she uses an e-bow to alternate long quietly produced high tones with a lower-pitched harmonically balanced buzz. “Zampamuatta” takes the listener back to the propulsion of the first two tracks as Schmoliner regains energetic skittering and gonging movement, derived from the Perchta legend, her original inspiration for карлицы сюита. Bill Donaldson
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Review: Ingrid Schmoliner — карлицы сюита in Cadence Jazz World
Austrian performance artist Ingrid Schmoliner has reconciled her country’s pagan customs with original experimentalism. карлицы сюита entirely alters the conventions of the concert piano as Schmoliner adapts its interior to develop alternative means of performance for the depiction of native ceremonies and customs, as well as for the imitation/appreciation of seldom heard natural sounds. The first track, “Stampa,” without a second of hesitation, charges ahead as Schmoliner creates driving percussive dampered repetition on the piano’s strings without overdubs or electronic effects. Summoning the energy of Perchten, the piece celebrates the ritual that recalls the country’s forest-based traditions still enacted regionally during Carnival Fastnacht in Salzburg and the twelve days of Christmas. Attaining sounds from her prepared piano more akin to tribal drumming than melodic and harmonic production, Schmoliner creates an uninterrupted cyclical trance rhythm consisting of but two sustained tones. “Grul” continues the celebratory dance, this time suggesting coincidentally a Brazilian carnival or an Indonesian orchestra. With gamelan sonority, one conventional piano bass note provides ominous accents beneath the chiming frenzy, which is based on four quickly patterned repeated tones. “Баба-Яга” depicts the Slavic equivalent of Percht, Baba Yaga, another old female forest spirit with a dual personality for reward and punishment that enforces good behavior among the believers. Schmoliner performs “Баба-Яга” in the lower reaches of the piano for more darkly colored hammered and sustained tonal pulsation, less trance-like and incantatory than “Stampa” and more fearsome. Still, that doesn’t explain the album’s title, also written in Cyrillic, that seems to translate to mean Dwarf Suite. “Balaena Mysticetus,” inspired by the Arctic’s bowhead whale’s calls, departs from Alpine native rituals. However, it’s consistent with Schmoliner’s fascination with unconventional piano sonorities as she bows the strings to simulate the whale’s elongated swelling low-register song offset by higher-pitched dual overtones, flute-like in their similarity to bottle-embouchure breathiness. “Teadin” continues Schmoliner’s experimenting with sustained tones as she uses an e-bow to alternate long quietly produced high tones with a lower-pitched harmonically balanced buzz. “Zampamuatta” takes the listener back to the propulsion of the first two tracks as Schmoliner regains energetic skittering and gonging movement, derived from the Perchta legend, her original inspiration for карлицы сюита.
Bill Donaldson