Esteban Algora, Alessandra Rombolá, Ingar Zach
...de las piedras

Esteban Algora - accordion
Alessandra Rombolá - flute & tiles installation
Ingar Zach - percussion

1. ámbar                                  7:45
2. Alabastro                             4:21
3. Galena                               12:19
4. Turmalina                            6:53
5. Jade                                     6:48
6. Amatista                              5:28

Recorded at the Eremita de la Anunciada, Urueňa, Spain, August 2007

INTERVIEW WITH INGAR ZACH, MARCH 2008

How long has the trio with Esteban Algora and Alessandra Rombolá been in existence, and how did this group come about?

I got to know Esteban and Alessandra when I moved to Madrid in 2004.  Esteban is a very special musician and he is the first choice on accordion in Spain, when it comes to contemporary music.  Esteban and Alessandra have played together for a long time, in duo and in other constellations such as the trio MEI (with Horacio Curti on shakuhachi), where they exclusively play Japanese music, both traditional and contemporary.  Alessandra and I play together with Rhodri Davies in MUTA .  Esteban, Alessandra and I had our first and so far only performance as a trio in Madrid in March last year.  We wanted to play together and investigate the combination of instruments.  And after the concert we all felt that this was certainly something to take further.  

We decided to call Pierre Olivier Boulant from Toulouse to come to Urueňa with us, to record music in the beautiful small stone church close to Valladolid.  So, basically  the trio is very fresh still, but right now, we have lots of plans, and we are all three very happy with the outcome of the recording.

The church has a very particular acoustic that you are clearly exploiting in the music.  Could you tell us about this?

Yes, Alessandra recorded her solo cd there in 2005, and we both fell in love with the place and the acoustics.  After our first concert we decided that it would be very natural to choose a space for the recording which had a special and reverberant acoustic, and we immediately thought about the church.  We wanted our sounds to melt together in the space, and work on the total group sound where the room became a fourth member of the group in a way.

Could you explain the title of the disc, and of the individual tracks?

As it is an old stone church we thought it would be a nice connection to name the tracks after minerals, and the title of the cd, ‘...de las piedras’  (which means, "...of the stones") could give the listener a sense of understanding of the space we are playing in.  Alessandra also uses tiles which gives a direct association to the sound of stones.  It's nice to try to find connections between the music and the titles, even if sometimes the connection can be very vague.  But in this case I feel we managed to find titles that have some kind of meaning with the music.

Much of '....de las piedras' sounds like contemporary classical music.  How much of the music was at least partly composed or at least pre-planned?

I don't think of it like that.  In fact I don't even try to separate or distinguish between composed and improvised.  What we do in the trio is to talk about sounds we like, and also different possibilities of structure and form.  And then we try to improvise with the material and/or structure we have agreed upon.  In the recording I think we had 7-8 ideas in total, and we did three or four versions of all of them.  Finally we ended up choosing just six, because it made sense musically and we thought the form of the cd worked well with the final six tracks.

 

You and Alessandra also play in the trio MUTA, with Rhodri Davies rather than Esteban Algora, and have produced an excellent cd on the Sofa label. Given that two thirds of the group is the same, how similar are these two trios?

In the way of working the two trios are very similar, but in terms of the music that comes out, there are differences.  One obvious difference is that MUTA is amplified and uses electronics, while this other trio is totally acoustic.  But also in terms of the density of sounds and aesthetics there are differences.  MUTA is more harsh and noisy, while this trio is more melodic, more dynamic maybe. In any case MUTA haven't played for a while, so this may all change the next time we meet....

In the past few years the music you play has changed in character.  You seem to be being drawn more and more closely towards contemporary classical music, whilst retaining a strong commitment to improvisation.  Can you say more about this?

Well, as I said earlier I don't think of it in these terms, but I guess it is the hunger for change and development in my expression that is the reason for the change in character.  I need to use improvisation to create my music, but after playing so-called "free improvised music" in ad hoc settings for a long time (where normally nothing was said before or after playing), the urge to set in place limits, discuss solutions, or predetermine structures became more important to me.  It's just that I felt that all the music I played sounded the same, even if the people I played with changed.  In the last 5 years I have deliberately focused on playing differently in each group I’m involved in, or changing the material or instruments I use to fit each project.  Nowadays I work steadily with fixed groups, and do very little ad hoc playing.  I am into group playing and working with steady ensembles over time, and I think that this has been the right path for me over the last five years, because better music has come out of it. 

One of your fixed groups is Looper, the excellent trio with Martin Kuchen & Nikos Veliotis, who collaborated with John Tilbury on the ‘MASS’ project (documented on Esquilo).   Can you say something about Looper?

In Looper, the music flows very easily.  All three of us have a very clear, common idea of what we want to do.  It’s all about layers, and how to start and stop these layers, and where to put them dynamically and pitchwise.  Silence is also very important in this trio.  That’s when all three of us stop our actions at the same spot, and the space that this creates can be really magical.  We decided to bring in John Tilbury on MASS, and the choice was very natural to us.  We didn't need another layer in the music, but something that could be a contrast, yet still an equal part of our sound.  And we knew that John was a musician who valued time and space in a very particular way. To me we couldn't have chosen a better musician. John is one of a kind.

In spring 2004 you moved from your native Norway to Spain.  What made you decide to make this shift?

Actually I wanted to move to Berlin in 2004, but then I met my wife here in Madrid, and then there was no other way really.  And I don't regret it for a second!

Prior to moving to Spain you worked for several years with a number of other Norwegian musicians (Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften etc.)  Have you been able to maintain these collaborations from afar?

Oh, yes. The trio with Ivar Grydeland and Tonny Kluften is very active.  It's called Huntsville, and it has taken a totally different direction the last three years.  In Huntsville, I play mostly rhythmical patterns with my two snare drums, a bass drum, an electronic tabla machine and a Cajón!  Ivar works with the whole guitar family: banjo, pedal steel guitar, acoustic and electric guitar, and Tonny plays double bass, bass pedals and an old analogue rhythm box.  It's a very bizarre mix but it works.  The method of working is kind of similar to the way I work with Looper, although the music sounds completely different.  Huntsville is minimal in the sense that small ideas are put in motion, loops are introduced that go on for a long time, the same groove going on for 15 minutes with very small changes.  Huntsville work with layers, and the dynamic between all the layers makes up the form of the pieces which always last between 40 and 50 minutes.

You also played with Derek Bailey on a number of occasions and produced two duo CD's, one of his Incus label and one on your Sofa label.  Derek had the reputation of being brilliant but sometimes difficult.   How did you find him, and what did you learn about improvising from working with him over a period of years?

I learned a lot by just being together with him and his wife Karen. They were fantastic company and I'm still in touch with Karen.  For me there was nothing difficult in my relationship with Derek.  I am just very happy and honoured to have got to know him and to have shared music with him.

Going back still further can you say how you first discovered 'free improvisation', and what were your first inspirations in this area?

Difficult to say, but it was my meeting with Raymond Strid and David Staceknás in Stockholm in 1996/97 that really got me into improvisation.  Earlier I was playing jazz, and I had difficulties in finding my voice inside the jazz-idiom. 

Coming back to the present, how would you characterise the improv/new music scene in Spain today?  Are there any musicians you would pick out as ones to watch?

Well, I can only say that both Esteban Algora and Alessandra Rombolá are fantastic musicians, and I am really happy to have the opportunity to work with this trio in my home town.  I also work with Wade Matthews from time to time, and there are a couple of young guys; Julio Camarena and Andrés Arregui who are really playing interesting stuff.  The scene is very small, and the activity is very spread, but Wade Matthews is putting on concerts in a Gallery in the centre of Madrid, and many great musicians have passed through there.  

Apart from Madrid, you have Barcelona and the great musicians Ferran Fages, Pablo Rega, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ruth Barberan and Agustí Fernández just to name a few.  There are more people up there as well, but I am not sure about recent activity.  It's been some time since I've been there.

What other groups are you currently working with?

Right now I’m working with the quartet "Dans les arbres" with Christian Wallumrød, Xavier Charles, Ivar Grydeland.   We are releasing our cd in late april on ECM, and looking forward to touring with them in May and the forthcoming summer.  Huntsville with Ivar Grydeland and Tonny Kluften.  Our second cd will be out in the autumn on Rune Grammofon with Nels Cline and Glenn Kotche as guests.  Looper with Martin Kúchen and Nikos Veliotis and John Tilbury, and the duo LabField with the Swedish guitar player David Stackenás. Point 4 with Kenneth Karlsson, Jon Balke and Bjørn Rabben.  MUTA with Alessandra Rombolá and Rhodri Davies.  Flore de Cataclysmo with Michel Doneda and Giuseppe Ielasi.  I also do solo concerts from time to time, and at the moment I am working on my third solo disc. Hopefully it will be out before the summer.  We'll see.  I also hope I will have a chance to play with Agustí Fernández.  We just finished a duo CD which will be out in June on the Norwegian label Plasticstrip.

You’ve played with many of the leading figures in improvised music, but is there anyone you'd particularly like to play with who you haven't yet had the chance to?

At the moment I am very happy with the constellations I am working with, and I haven't had time to really think about any future collaborators.  Right now I have got my hands full….

Reviews

“The title, taken from a poem by Pablo Neruda, suggests in an exemplary way the use of the space where the recording was made – an old stone church in Spain, the eremita de la anunciada.  On this cd the instruments amplify and extend the potential of the location, indissolubly tying the music to the place of its recording.  The stones of the church transform themselves into sound, gathering within its walls the trio of Esteban Algora (accordion), Alessandra Rombolá (flute and tiles) and the fantastic percussionist Ingar Zach, known amongst other things for his work with the trio Looper.  As you’d expect these are improvisations, and yet the music is not far from the more ‘conventional’ sound of contemporary classical music.  It is relatively placid, though charged with an inner drama that can be both explosive and expansive.  All the track titles refer to the names of minerals, and the opening piece, ámbar, sets a mood of extreme melancholy with the disconsolate accordion impregnating the cold sacred stones with sorrowful tears.  Here Algora brings to mind the playing of Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band, but set against a background of concrete percussive sounds which add a sense of harshness and suffering to the acoustic experience, while the flute emits flurries of dancing sounds.  There are very beautiful moments when the flute slows the music down and offers some consolation.   Alabastro is a more classical piece of improv, in which the flute delicately underlines the tinkling of the percussion with short reproachful bursts.  Galena sets in motion and then cuts across a set of drones, constructing an architecture of brilliant lights and dazzling reflections which finally undergo a slow collapse into cacophonous clusters of dark, roaring sounds.  There is some great percussive work in Turmalina, sometimes gentle, sometimes screeching, while the accordion periodically tears apart the space to open up a black abyss.  A great and unusual disc, full of ideas and sounds of extreme beauty played by musicians with an uncommon touch and sensibility.”                                                         Alfio Castorina, Kathodik

”An ensemble of flute, accordion and percussion could raise expectations of rehashed folk music: but aren’t albums that trash instrumental archetypes great?  Accordionist Esteban Algora, flautist Alessandra Rombolá and percussionist Ingar Zach operate from Madrid and ...de las piedras is their canny negotiation between composed and improvised ideologies.

The title translates as ‘of the stones’ and the disc is prefaced with a poem by Pablo Neruda about the alchemy of transforming stones into music.  There is the literal symbolism of Rombolá switching between her flute and an installation of hanging tiles that lend a pebbly, granite quality.  Zach is credited specifically as playing percussion and  bass drum, and uses the latter to roll sonic boulders across the soundscape.   Algora’s accordion embraces a similar range: a fluid, watery treble is met with thunderous sounds from the bowels of the instrument.

The first sounds heard are isolated accordion pitches placed in counterpoint with Zach’s percussive rumbles, as Rombolá bows her tiles to produce a halo of harmonics.  The result is stratified like stone or rock formations, but with each voice also allowed freedom of movement.  Algora’s broken accordion figurations evolve into harmonic swells, as Zach morphs his fragmentary gestures into an erratic pulse.  If there is a connection with composed music, Xenakis’s stochastic principles and the ‘anarchic harmony’ that gave birth to Cage’s late number pieces both come to mind.  But the intensity of instrumental nuance, especially as the music begins to occupy ruder and more complex gestures, is the trademark obsession of the improviser.”                                                  
Philip Clark,  The Wire

“Percussionist Ingar Zach met Spanish flautist Alessandra Rombolá and accordion player Esteban Algora when he moved to Madrid back in 2004. They began to play together as a trio a couple of years later.  The location for "…de las piedras" – a stone built church - was chosen partly because Rombolá's solo recording "Urueńa" was recorded there, and the church's acoustics play a crucial role in the music's development. Many of these sounds resemble chamber music; its insistence on pre-conceived ideas is equal in scope to its improvisational focus.  Algora and Rombolá stagger their sounds apart generously.  Each one plays off the other with perfect timing while keeping their options open to sounds that occur by pure chance.  To say these sounds are subtle would be an understatement of the year.  Each breath given off on the flute, each move of the accordion arms, each squeak on the percussion is not only perfectly executed but delicate by its very nature.  The reverberation of the church as the sounds bounce off its wall further propels the music along.  Gentle scrapes on the tiles installation that Rombolá produces leaves a directly vibrant sound in one’s ears. Much of this music possesses a strange, nearly alien quality about it.  The first few minutes are spent simply adjusting to the slow pacing.  As the minutes go by, one starts to appreciate this music simply for its discreet dexterity and its humble nature.  If more groups would take up this type of a challenge, the musical landscape would be a much better place.”
Tom Sekowski, Gaz-eta

“This Spanish-Norwegian trio made these recordings in a small stone church near Valladolid, and the ambience is beautiful.  With accordion, flutes and percussion, they make chamber improvisations full of nourishing content.  Sound, form and structure are combined in original ways, and the music acquires an attractive and edgy character.”        - Arild Andersen, Aftenposten