Hémisphère / Hemisfär brings together French, Paris-based guitarist Paul Jarret with Swedish, Gothenburg-based pianist Karin Johansson and double bass player Donovan Van Martens for an uncompromising, free-improvised journey of acoustic, lunar poetry. The suggestive artwork of Swedish visual artist-choreographer Ingerborg Zackariassen intensifies the poetic, mysterious spirit of this album.
Jarret, Johansson and Von Martens expand the sonic palette of their string instruments with preparations and extended techniques and turn their instruments into surreal yet highly captivating, enigmatic sonic generators. The guitar, piano and double bass often avoid their familiar, musical histories and merge into one, new and expressive sonic entity. The subtle employment of these extended techniques with an open and inclusive, deep listening approach to sound – in all its forms – creates a series of unpredictable, dance-like soundscapes, defined by the vibrations arising on and beside the strings. These soundscapes move between sound and silence, tone and memory, and fill the whole space with their delicate and constant shifts in tension building and release and their suggestive sounds, pulses and melodic phrases.
Gothenburg-based writer Magnus Haglund, described the listening experience to the album in his liner notes, as if «the room of nature is widened and the music travels, from day to night and back to the light of day». The 13 short and acoustic, unpredictable free improvisations often transform into concise, chamber-lyrical compositions, thorny collisions, or sculpt, imaginative sonic painting or poetry, never subscribing to familiar routes. Haglund finds in these improvisations echoes from the minimalism of Morton Feldman, the freeform playing of Derek Bailey and the impressionism of Claude Debussy But, eventually, Hémisphère / Hemisfär suggests the impressive and commanding work of three musicians, each one with his idiosyncratic musical language, who are fully immersed in the exquisite art of the moment.
Eyal Hareuveni
Paul Jarret (guitar. prepared guitar), Karin Johansson (piano, prepared piano), Donovan Von Martens (double bass)
