A strikingly unorthodox album, with a unique sense of flow, Relations brings together kindred spirits from scattered compass points and traditions, and tells us something new about each of them. Conceived and realized over a four year period, the album is both a thoughtful collection of duos and solos and an improviser’s response to circumstances. At the core of things is Thomas Strønen’s percussion playing, heard alone and joined by Craig Taborn or Jorge Rossy on piano, Chris Potter on saxophones, and the voice and kantele of Sinikka Langeland.
For the start of the story, however, we have to go back to the summer of 2018 and the completion of the album Bayou, with clarinetist and singer Marthe Lea and pianist Ayumi Tanaka. When Strønen’s spontaneously inventive trio wrapped up its recording ahead of schedule, producer Manfred Eicher suggested making creative use of remaining studio time: “Play some solo percussion. Let’s see what happens.”
Embracing the proposal, the Norwegian drummer was also able to augment his kit with percussion instruments of the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, for whom Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo is a home base. Thomas Strønen: “I wanted to take more of a ‘classical’ approach in how I played this time. To be more direct and confronting in my own playing, to challenge myself about the kind of player I am and the approach I could have in this context. Still with a focus on details and silence and breaks, but being more concrete in the way I was playing. This was the general umbrella...”
The album’s opener is the solo “Confronting Silence”, its title borrowed from Toru Takemitsu’s Selected Writings, setting the conceptual tone with shimmering gongs and the deep rumble of the gran casa. Strønen recorded many tracks of solo drums in Lugano and the option of a pure percussion album was considered, before deciding to invite other musicians into the process.
“Meanwhile, the pandemic was making it difficult to get together for direct collaboration and I suggested we send some pieces around to people who could add their voice to the music. We started making a list. Manfred made one premise: that I was only going to ask people I hadn’t worked with before. And this is how we ended up with the names that appear here. I sent each of them several tracks, and they could choose what they wanted to play on and their approach to it. They had 100% freedom. Everyone was willing and happy and responded with lovely contributions, and what had been just tracks of drumming really became music. With two players everything made more sense, I felt. Besides, there’s still plenty of drums. It’s enough drumming!”
The contributors, in some cases, took opposite approaches to the work. Sinikka Langeland, coming from the aural traditions of Nordic folk music, committed the percussion pieces to memory before adding her kantele and her singing. Craig Taborn, on the other hand, as a dedicated real time improviser and spontaneous composer, decided not to listen to the drum music at all before recording, and dived in from the first second, responding in the moment. If Langeland and Taborn represent contrary sound-worlds, their dramatically different approaches are constructively embraced on Relations. Interestingly – and it’s a measure of the project’s success – Thomas Strønen has gone on to play more with both of them in the interim, performing with Taborn in the US, and joining Sinikka’s band for her newest album Wind and Sun.
Chris Potter’s tenor sax and Thomas Strønen’s drums move on independent orbits on “Weaving Loom” in a manner that at times recalls the fearlessness of Coltrane and Rashied Ali, circa Interstellar Space. “I like that New York quality of just going for it,” says Strønen. “If we’d been in the room together I’d probably have adjusted more closely to Chris’s playing, which is the more Norwegian-Scandinavian way...” Yet the power of this particular duo, he agrees, derives from the tension of contrasts.
Spanish multi-instrumentalist Jorge Rossy worked overtime on the Strønen tracks, initially delivering versions variously featuring his vibraphone and drums as well as the piano pieces that Thomas selected. “Jorge’s a tremendous drummer, no question. But we had enough beats, for this project, already. I was interested in more textures and sounds, and in the special quality of his piano playing.” In the larger context of the album, Rossy’s spacious, atmospheric playing effectively complements the rigorousness of Craig Taborn’s approach.
In summarizing the characters involved in Relations, the space where the story started – the highly responsive Auditorio Stelio Molo – should not be overlooked. “It’s my dream room to play in,” says Thomas Strønen. “Everything you do is so transparent. Every texture, every little beat. You have to be extremely accurate because it’s a proper acoustic room. When you hear the brushwork, it’s really loud. Even though I’m barely touching the drum, it resonates in the whole room. It can also be tense. You can’t overplay. I felt I had to take away everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
Once the responses of Taborn, Potter, Langeland and Rossy were returned from New York, Oslo and Basel, Manfred Eicher and Thomas Strønen mixed the material with engineer Michael Hinreiner at Munich’s Bavaria Musikstudios in February 2023, bringing the musical episodes into a compelling new narrative.
