DUOT is the duo of Argentinian, Barcelona-based prolific sax player Albert Cirera and Spanish drummer Ramón Prats, coming from Banyoles in northeastern Catalonia. The sixth album of DUOT is a meeting with the Portuguese groundbreaking string quartet ZARM Ensemble (called before StringChamberPot) comprised of violin master Carlos «Zíngaro», violinist David Magalhães Alves, German-born cellist Ulrich Mitzlaff and double bass player Alvaro Rosso, who collaborated a few times before with Cirera. This meeting was recorded live at Igreja do Espírito Santo in Caldas Da Rainha, Portugal, in December 2021.
The origins of this meeting can be traced to Cirera’s previous recorded meeting with «Zingaro», Mitzlaff and Rosso with Swedish baritone sax player Olle Vikström, Cròniques 5: Ao Vivo! (Discordian, 2016), or to the first recording of «Zingaro», Mitzlaff and Rosso with fellow Portuguese clarinetist João Pedro Viegas, Day One (JACC, 2014). Such a summit meeting focused on acoustic instruments, relying on the extensive experiences of the six musicians in the collective art of the moment allows a careful exploration of contrasting, resonant and reverberating sounds.
The six pieces of DUOT with Strings stress the immediate and adventurous dynamics as well as the common language of DUOT and the ZARM ensemble. The music sounds as if made by a highly empathic, brotherly union, and suggests unpredictable urgent, but poetic, nuanced and layered dramatic narratives. It clearly follows the ethos of ZARM Ensemble that sacralizes the profane or profane the sacred. This kind of bold, powerful and uncompromising dynamics highlights even the slow-burning and more subtle pieces of this meeting like «Sky Skating» and «Roaring Jellyfish», but even these pieces affirm that DUOT and ZARM Ensemble can not but gravitate eventually into ecstatic and wild dynamics. It ends in an even wilder, raw and chaotic mode with «Crumbled Time» that already justifies a second meeting of DUOT and ZARM Ensemble.
Eyal Hareuveni
Albert Cirera (saxophones), Ramón Prats (drums), Carlos «Zingaro» (violin), David Alves (violin), Ulrich Mitzlaf (cello), Alvaro Rosso (double bass)
