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Friday, October 4, 2024

Jordina Millá & Barry Guy - Live in Munich (ECM, 2024)

 

Pianist Jordina Millá may still only be regarded as a newcomer to the improvisational scene alongside such a prolific artist as double bass player Barry Guy, but the two are a fabulous match sonically, and one is unable to immediately determine from this performance who was the more experienced player.

Recorded in 2022 at the Schwere Reiter in Munich, a venue which has become a haven for avant-garde and experimental music of the jazz persuasion in southern Germany, the photo booklet depicts sharp, black and white stills of two very focused musicians who are not here to mess around. Spatially, Guy is slightly panned to the left with Millá slightly on the right, which sounds a rather simple production technique on paper, but it really does give the effect that they are right there in the room with you. This nuanced attention to detail on the production is mirrored by the beauty of the performance itself. Like just about anything on the ECM label, the quality of the mixing and mastering is exceptional.



The pieces are mostly ominous and foreboding. The prepared piano is used percussively or melodically in turns, as Guy and Millá explore a myriad of textural sound-making methods: deep sawing, rubbing, twangs, snaps, rough and vigorous harmonic flicks through to bone-rattling creaks and turns. This is interspersed with more tonal runs and harmonies.

It’s often difficult to distinguish from which instrument each sound is coming, as both string instruments resonate with a similarly chilling frequency. This dark, graphic sound collage is represented appropriately in the black and grey cover photograph by Thomas Wunsch.

The pieces are intense and sombre - the deepest notes are the most satisfying, especially towards the tail end of "Part I." It’s serious and introspective, but the tension is not anxiety inducing per se. It’s fascinating and compelling, stirring, brooding, and always interesting. However, there is a general calmness to the tension which is intriguing. The pizzicato piano harmonics and cello string accompaniment sound fabulous together, almost as if they were designed to be played this way. 

Every so often we will be blessed with a small, tangible melody on either instrument. Millá’s playing is deeply sensitive, wonderfully dynamic, glistening, and emotional. Transitions between her more melodic moments to atonal sections are gradual and seamless. So too are the more rapid instances, and those of reverberant beauty. Guy is completely in tune with Millá, and the idyllic nature of this balance is further underlined by the enthusiastic cheers that follow each of the six parts of this live recording. What they are doing sounds as if it was meant to be, and it’s obviously resonating with the audience.

Perhaps this is due to the chemistry of Millá and Guy, which has been established over several years – their previous album as a duo, String Fables, was recorded in July 2021, so they have polished this craft over time. 

This is a delicate, mature, and heartfelt release. Hopefully, thanks to the exposure of ECM and the support of Barry Guy, we will be seeing much more of Jordina Millá in the years to come.

More here: https://ecmrecords.com/product/live-in-munich-jordina-milla-barry-guy/

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