Heart Mountain is the first duo recording of pianist Myra Melford and violist/violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch. Ajay Heble, artistic director of the 2003 Guelph International Jazz Festival, suggested a duet with Melford when unforeseen circumstances prevented the scheduled performance of Kalmanovitch's quartet. So successful was their unplanned meeting that they decided to reconvene for this 2005 studio effort.
Traveling similar artistic paths, Melford and Kalmanovitch share common interests and academic backgrounds. Melford, one of today's most original pianists and an exceptional bandleader, comes from a classical background with extensive studies in North Indian Music. Kalmanovitch's classical training follows a parallel path to Melford's, complete with academic studies in India.
With song titles inspired by locations in Alberta, Canada (Kalmanovitch's birthplace) and the Himalayas (where both have traveled), these brief free-form explorations uncover a variety of moods in short order; the average piece is less than three minutes long. Blending cautious accompaniment with imposing delivery, they share a conversational dialogue that moves from whispered confidence to impassioned argument with ease.
Revealing a wellspring of timbral potential, the pair uses extended techniques to generate a rich palette of tonal color. Melford's touch veers from resonant, pulverizing clusters to ghostly, under the lid string glisses. Kalmanovitch bows with sinewy élan one minute, tenuous grace the next; varying her attack with dramatic flair, she makes a perfect foil for Melford's all-encompassing style.
Despite their jazz credentials, it's their classical backgrounds that come to the fore in this unadorned setting. Folksy Bartokian dissonances ("Cave and Basin"), soaring romantic modernism ("Kaligandhaki"), Viennese school-inspired pointillism ("Wapama") and throttling, Carterian linearity ("Into a Gunnysack and Into the Kootenay River") all ebb and flow throughout the session. Only on "Annapurna" does Melford unveil her harmonium, invoking atonal minimalism more than Asiatic tradition. The only non-improvised piece on the album, the traditional "Kailash," closes the record on a sumptuous lyrical note.
Not exactly jazz in a conservatively traditional sense, this is freely improvised music played with heartfelt passion and soulful exuberance. Ripe with possibilities for further examination, Heart Mountain sounds like the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership. - Tony Collins / allaboutjazz.com
It's getting harder and harder these days to categorize jazz musicians, as Tanya Kalmanovitch and Myra Melford remind us with their new release, Heart Mountain (Perspicacity Records). Both carry heavy credentials in other genres of music: violinist/violist Kalmanovitch holds a bachelors degree from Juilliard, and classically trained pianist Melford traveled to Calcutta on a Fulbright scholarship to study the harmonium. In their work they urge listeners to dispense with such categorization, however, and find "the spaces between musical genres, where music really lives, writes Kalmanovitch on her website. Free improvisation is how they occupy those spaces.
Every track on this CD, which is the first for the duo, was freely improvised and duly recorded on a recital stage at The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. Unlike conventional jazz improvisation, where players agree on specific melodic or harmonic guidelines within which the spontaneous composition occurs, Kalmanovitch and Melford set into their improvised performance with little discussion beforehand. The end result is a collection of 19 pieces that range in mood and temperament and, in fact, defy ready classification.
Even a cursory listen confirms the team's technical expertise in classical music: Kalmanovitch elicits gorgeous tones from her instruments, and Melford plays with alacrity and stunning precision. Technique is beside the point here, however. More to the point is the pair's musical statement of the moment, whatever its harmonic, melodic, or rhythmic genesis. In less capable hands the experiment could be quite a noisy one; what is most surprising is how much sense their impromptu music makes.
To see Kalmanovitch and Melford live is to understand their process better. The duo released their debut CD with a concert at the Tenri Cultural Center on May 13, creating four new pieces extemporaneously and playing three of Melford's written compositions. Both performers explored the breadth of sounds their instruments could produce: Melford used tape, putty, and bells on the piano strings at different times to alter their timbral quality; Kalmanovitch switched readily between lush bowing and pizzicato, straight tone and vibrato, depending on the emotional tenor at the given point in time.
The work of Kalmanovitch and Melford might not be for jazz fans expecting a clearly articulated tonal center and a predictable groove. But for listeners looking to expand their notions of what music is and could be, the pair deserves a close listen. One might come to understand that music (and other perceived realities) can be otherwise. - Suzanne Lorge
Tracks
01. C ave And Basin
02. Three Sisters
03. Medicine Lake
04. Pika
05. Sulphur
06. Hoodoo
07. Babel
08. Kaligandhaki
09. Indefatigable
10. Into A Gunnysack And Into The Kootenay River
11. The Kid On The Mountain
12. Athabasca
13. Annapurna
14. Daulaghiri
15. Wapama
16. Tueeulala
17. Anthracite
18. Heart Mountain
19. Kailash
MYRA MELFORD piano, harmonium
TANYA KALMANOVITCH violin, viola
All music composed by Myra Melford and Tanya Malkamanovitch
Perspicacity – PR03 (Canada)