AN IMPROVISED CYCLE
Esther Lamneck: clarinet, tárogató | Eugenio Sanna: amplified guitar
Tracklist: 1 – 8 tárogató – guitar 9 – 18 clarinet – guitar 19 – 21 tárogató – guitar 22 – 26 clarinet – guitar 27 – 30 tárogató – guitar
It’s a real happening, that Esther Lamneck and Eugenio Sanna, who have been working for more than fifteen years close together, finally found the opportunity to show their partnership on record. The release of their Amirani cd “Intentions” proves thet they are not only two wonderful musicicans, but they even belong to a generation of creative artists, that open doors for new fresh ways of Improvisation. John Rottiers, Antwerp, Belgium, August 2007
Intentions is an inprovised cycle of brief pieces creating a narrative journey of evocative sound images and landscapes. Shapes which at first seem unrelated are interwoven in mysterious and arcane ways in a stream of relentness sounds intertwining hidden metallic, harsh, sharp, romantic, ethereal, sacred and profane connections. From the Balkan regions the Tárogató sound travels fluidly in a shrill yellowish fog. Played with a zinc plate, the guitar calls, tumultuosly and loudly, “a gathering of spirits” voices. Some dogs bark at the sound of the clarinet, magically attracted by frequencies almost beyond the limits of audibility, voluptuosly split and recomposed by the strings in decadent atmospheres and late Romantic unisono. Eugenio Sanna
c r e d i t s: music: Esther Lamneck – Eugenio Sanna | recording: Vecchio Mulino Recording Studio, Balbano, Lucca, Italy, August 2006 | executive producer: John Rottiers | photos: Beatrice Milani | concept: Gianni Mimmo | graphics: Mirko Spino | production: Gianni Mimmo for Amirani records.
CD version (incl. shipment cost world-wide)
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Ms. Lamneck is an established virtuoso on clarinet and taragato, as well as an advocate of contemporary music and a specialist in working with electronics and tapes. Eugenio Sanna was co-founder of CRIM (Center for Research & Improvvisazione Musicale) and active improviser who has played throughout Europe and collaborated with Ellen Christie. “Intentions” is an improvised cycle of 30 short pieces that create a narrative journey so says the liner notes and that is a good description. While Esther plays a variety of odd and unique sounds on her taragato or clarinet, Eugenio plays an equally diverse set of strange sounds on his amplified or electric (sounding) guitar. Eugenio seems to have a variety of devices to manipulate his sound, creating different distortions and bent sounds on his guitar. Esther does a fine job of matching wits and bending her notes along with his. In a blindfold test, the informed listener might guess Frith and Braxton (or Coxhill) while checking out some of these pieces. Esther is a formidable improviser, often aggressive and seems to push her partner into equally barbed areas of daredevil improvisations. ‘Intentions” is, without a doubt, one of the exciting and creative improv sessions I’ve heard in recent memory. You’ve been warned, it is that good!
— Bruce Gallenter, Down Town Music Gallery, june 08
Subtitled “An Improvised Cycle”, this CD pairs distinct personalities trying to nurture a common ground for intercommunication, with partially satisfying results. Lamneck (clarinet, tárogató) is the artistic director of the NYU New Music And Dance Ensemble, Sanna (amplified guitar, objects) was among the founders of CRIM (Centro per la Ricerca sull’Improvvisazione Musicale) in Pisa, Italy. The instrumental dialogue is intentionally saw-toothed, often frenetic, with rare moments of reflection soon discarded in favour of a stripped kind of anxiety. Lamneck irradiates feelings of incorrigible discrepancy, frequently inundating the environment via itching outbursts showing a piercing sense of reed-fuelled punctiliousness. Sanna operates the guitar following the path of extended techniques that are by now pretty well known and recognizable, choosing selected spots of the instrument to granulate and deteriorate the conventional aspects of playing. On a side, the conversational character of the music is nearly hilarious, two separated neuroses in confrontational mode; on the other, there’s not a really high degree of advance or novelty in what Intentions presents, the title involuntarily symbolizing what indeed remains more or less unexpressed at the end, despite the presence of attention-grabbing episodes. Still, no tediousness whatsoever, which is a major plus.
— Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault, may ’09