Lucio Capece & Birgit Ulher
Choices

1.  physical   9:13
2.  chance  28:09
3.  orbital     4:51

total time:  42:14

Lucio Capece    bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, preparations, mini-megaphone
Birgit Ulher      trumpet, mutes, radio, speaker

Interview with Birgit Ulher

Listening to Choices there seems such a similarity between your and Lucio’s approaches to your respective instruments, that it’s almost surprising that this is your first disc as a duo. When did you first play with Lucio?  

In September 2008 I shared a concert with him at Alberto Ukebana in Berlin, where we both played with other musicians. As we liked each other’s playing we decided to try playing together, and did this the next time I came to Berlin. I felt an affinity with his approach straightaway and it worked musically from the beginning.

You both use preparations to great effect, and at times Choices sounds as close to percussion as it does to wind or brass music. Have you made a conscious decision to distance yourself from the ‘natural’ sound of a trumpet?  Or do you sometimes play ‘pure’ notes in an improvising context?  

I always had an affinity with percussion and used to play it for several years, though mostly just for myself. I rarely play 'pure' notes in an improvising context because I think everything in this area has been done already. I’m more interested in the subtle tonality and fine gradations between sounds than in the obvious one, which is generally called tonality. The sounds have an internal structure, and the preparations are used as resonating systems. For me this is the result of many years working on the sound of the trumpet and not a question of how far I can get away from its 'natural' sound. But it’s also been a conscious decision to work in the field which interests me most. I’d describe this field as material research and the placement of sounds in a time structure.

 

You trained as a visual artist, and are largely self-taught as a musician.  Does your background in the visual arts affect the way you approach your instrument?

Absolutely. As a visual artist I have been into material research as well. In the visual arts it is much more common to work in very specific areas, while in music it is still common to play different styles of music. Maybe it has to do with the different tasks of composers and interpreters, which never existed in the visual arts. Morton Feldman has a great point on this in his essay 'The Anxiety of Art'.

Lucio has frequently been linked with the term ‘reductionist’, and on Choices your playing is very similar to his.  But I know it’s a term that you’re not altogether happy with.  What are your reservations about the concept?

My playing on Choices isn't that far from my playing on my solo CD 'Radio Silence No More' and the CD 'Tehricks' with Gregory Büttner. I have always been interested in reductionism, but I don't like to be categorised by any 'ism'.  What I didn't like so much about the early Berlin reductionism was the strict concept and rules that came with it. On the other hand it might have been important at that time to make a radical break for creating something new. But I’ve always been suspicious of categories and somehow I don't care whether something is ‘reductionist’ or not as long as I’m convinced by the music.

Do you feel that in general there’s been a gentle stepping away from the extremes of ‘reductionism’ within improvised music in Germany over the past five years?

Yes, it’s quite a while since the term reductionism was established and the work of the musicians who were mainly involved has developed in many different directions. Also the improvised music scene in Berlin has changed a lot.  Many musicians have moved there from all over the world and brought their own approaches, so there are lots of different approaches at the moment. In Berlin there’s currently a tendency to dissociate from the term ‘improvised music’ and work more on conceptual or composed pieces.

 

Berlin has historically been the centre for improvised music in Germany, and you went there to record two of the tracks on Choices in Lucio’s studio.  But the long piece on the disc was recorded at a festival in Hamburg, where you’ve been based for nearly 30 years.  Do you think being outside Berlin has advantages as well as difficulties for an improvising musician in Germany?  

Yes, it does. Now I’m quite content living in Hamburg, but for many years I thought about moving to Berlin, and would have for sure if Hamburg wasn’t so close.  I’ve always played with Berlin musicians like Chris Heenan  and Ute Wassermann, to name just those I work with regularly.   What I like about the Berlin scene is that improvised music is taken and discussed really seriously, which isn't always the case in Hamburg. And there are certainly many more interesting musicians in Berlin. But there are so many musicians there that there’s more of a separation from other musicians, which doesn't happen so much in Hamburg, because the scene here is very small. Sometimes there’s a hype about certain ideas or concepts in Berlin, which is quite uncritically taken over.  I’d be afraid of getting stuck in Berlin; you can play a lot of gigs there, and great musicians come to town all the time, but I guess that while this would keep you very busy, maybe you’d forget about working outside the city.

If you live in Hamburg you really have to work on getting around, otherwise you’ll be stuck there with very small input. But the advantage of living in Hamburg is being able to concentrate on your own work without the distraction of hundreds of concerts happening every month.  And since the improvised music scene is very small you get in contact much more with other scenes like electronic or new music.  There’s been a lot going on here in the last few years, since we founded an association for sound art, improvised, electronic and composed music.  We found new ways of organising concerts like the ‘blurred edges festival’, where one track of Choices was recorded.

Reviews

“On this album Lucio Capece plays bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, as well as various prepared things, and Birgit Ulher can be heard on trumpet and radio. Among many musicians Capece has collaborated with Radu Malfatti, and this may give you a hint of the approach – no firm conventions. The shimmer of the minutest sound is examined.

More and more Ulher proves to be one of the most remarkable trumpeters in the new generation of reevaluating instrumentalists, and when the two play together remarkable things happen. It is a music that comes in dense structures. For start, it can be heard clearly who is who. Actually, it can be heard all the way, but not in the way we are used to.

Inspired by each other the playing becomes a kind of echo-game. A call is matched by a truncated response. Where are you? - are you ... Affinities of sounds arises, captured and processed by the qualities and possibilities of their instruments.

The result is a slow and snaking stream of sound that also is remarkably rhythmic. Yet, how does this shimmer? It is streaming as a flow of light, where mirror images are complementing the reflections. The result is undeniably irresistible. It is an impressionistic art of sound without impressionism, where the only thing that is left is the light. The music of this duo is so dense that it reminds of the tension in the air that arouses by unexpected pauses. It sounds incredibly fresh and clear.”    Thomas Millroth, Sound of Music

“Choices features two wind instrumentalists who are clearly affiliated to the reductionist scene: Birgit Ulher on trumpet and Lucio Capece on saxophone and clarinet, both players also using numerous objects and preparations.  Many landscapes emerge, indeterminate sounds occur, while notes and orthodox instrumental techniques are suppressed; in short, Ulher and Capece open a vast universe of sounds.

Physical, which opens the disc, is based on a drone played alternately by Ulher and Capece, a drone which is as mechanical as organic, and which lets us hear wood, metal, breath and internal mechanisms.  Birgit Ulher imposes herself on this unstable drone (which evolves minimally) and spits, burps, whistles, coughs and splutters across the mouthpiece.  In short this is a relatively traditional duo, where one player is grafted onto the base, except that the tempo is bizarrely striated, and pitches give way to an indeterminacy of sound.  Ulher and Capece in fact demonstrate that a style of music is possible that exists beyond the chromatic scale while retaining past forms, even if the structure is a little heterodox on account of the numerous alternations, fractures and unexpected silences.

On Chance, which at almost 30 minutes is by far the longest piece, the soundscape has something desolate about it on account of the ubiquitous breaths which recall the winds of the apocalypse, and irregular metallic resonances that suggest abandoned industry.  The perception becomes more acute and it becomes very difficult to know who is doing what and how, and if the sounds are prepared or ‘purely’ instrumental, organic or mechanical.  Chance involves a vast horizon of unheard creative timbres which are assembled and interwoven, opposed and confronted, but always seeming to connect with the intentions of the playing partner.  The players’ listening is extremely attentive and sensitive, so that the partnership is very successful, this duo knowing how to seize chance opportunities (while using certain choices) and deploying all the qualities and talents of each player in such a way that one single musical personality is formed by the end without either player losing their personality in the musical dialogue.  

Birgit Ulher and Lucio Capece conclude with a short 5-minute piece, Orbital, which completely assimilates instrumental and electronic sources (using radiowaves).  Capece discretely and affectionately allows certain unstable, fluctuating notes to emerge from his soprano onto the aggressive montone drone of the radiowaves in order to rebalance and harmonise the ensemble. A beautiful electroacoustic piece where the acoustic element knows how to tame the electronic, where the balance between the two becomes music, and which opens up and holds in suspense a new world made of new energies and timbres.  

Choices only rarely varies its level of intensity, but energy levels are constantly modulated according to the equilibrium created both by the duo and by the qualities of the timbres themselves (be they essential or accidental).  The three pieces stretch across very different durations, and this temporality also contributes to the diversity of the music’s energies.  These varying temporalities allow many aspects to emerge, from a sense of urgency to the slow, serene development of different timbres and a variety of energy balances.  Three strong, coherent and rich pieces which together install a new regime of sounds, of complex and lush timbres, a regime whose advent is desirable and even preferable.”
Julien Heraud, Improv-sphere