#exotic instruments

[plus-low-overthrow]

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Nat Birchall Quartet - Brother John (Jazzman)

wrt. Yusef Lateef, LP reimagined with exotic instruments, 2019.

[dustedmagazine]

Robbie Lee & Mary Halvorson — Seed Triangular (New Amsterdam)

Seed Triangular by Robbie Lee and Mary Halvorson

2018 might be remembered for many things, but for Mary Halvorson it’ll be one more year when she put out a lot of records. Seed Triangular is the fifth, following two Thumbscrew records, a duo with Bill Frisell and the complex, commanding song project Code Girl. It also represents a bit of a purple patch for Robbie Lee, a multi-instrumentalist who works often with other musicians but can go years without a record of his own. But this is the year he has decided to put a peculiar intersection of interests on display. Seed Triangular is actually his idea, and on it, as on Opalescence, his LP with Baroque flute player Norbert Rodenkirchen and double bassist James Ilgenfritz, he presents improvisations played on exotic instruments that encourage the listener to listen past the novelty of said instruments.

Lee and Halvorson are old friends, but while they’ve played together informally over the years they’ve never recorded before. This session was a bit of a dare. Lee invited Halvorson, who has spent most of her professional career playing a big hollow-bodied electric guitar through a fairly stable array of pedals, to come on down to the studio and play what he gave her. And while Lee’s showed up to plenty of other people’s sessions toting a guitar or a saxophone, he dug deep into his closet of curios for his own. He played antique flutes, chalumeau (Renaissance clarinet), soprillo saxophone (you didn’t know there was something higher than a sopranino?), and a common garden variety melodica.  And he gave Halvorson an 18-string harp guitar, a 6-string banjo, and an old Gibson acoustic. Each player picked up an instrument, they improvised, and then afterwards Lee fileted the good parts out of their jams.  

There are plenty of novel sounds on display. With its microtonal tinge and woody resonance, “Seven of Strong” sounds like a bleak campfire reverie played on Harry Partch’s invented instruments (none of which are on the record). The strings on “Potomogeton” reach impossibly low, and then leap up into a higher register like a flock of hungry birds chasing a flute-puffing prey. And the soprillo sax’s high, blurry tone pushes into places no familiar woodwind can go on “Rock Flowers,” almost obscuring the uncommon density of the strummed banjo. But the liner notes don’t break down what’s played track by track, and most likely the more you listen the less you’ll want to try. Instead, you might notice how quickly Halvorson seems to find a way to sound like herself when confronted with a totally alien signal chain, or how sturdy and graceful Lee’s lines are. His edits are well hidden, but one suspects that they have a fair bit to do with the cohesiveness of this record’s 15 mostly short-ish pieces. This music stands at least as much for the elegance of its construction as it does for the freakiness of the instruments used to make it.

Bill Meyer

[fairiesandbeatleslover]

THE FAB IN AUSTRALIA!!

The Beatles in their 1964 word tour, trying out indigenous musical instruments typical of the continent's culture; The Fabs have always been very curious about exotic musical instruments.

[antiquitymusic-blog]

Hated Learning Piano As a Kid? At Least It Wasn't the Wheelharp

The Wheelharp looks like a musical creation dating back to the time of Beethoven and Mozart, but believe it or not it's not an antique. It's a modern instrument co-invented by Jon Jones and Mitchell Manger, based on an instrument created just over ten years ago by Jones as a way to let a single...

Thanks to Gizmodo for sharing the wheelharp with their readers!