Fantasm, the title-piece has been created by an amazing deep listener, eminent New York musician, drummer Paul Motian (1931-2011). He was a master of encrypting his deep listening dynamically into imperishable gestalt. Fantasm, a paradigmatic piece here, is fed by heterogeneous sources but unified by composer and composition carrying and keeping its secrets. Mat Maneri used to play in Motian’s bands a lot, nourished and nourishing. On this album nothing sounds like ordinary strings. It has dark moods not fading into ordinary melancholia, contains limping dances into lightness, wondrous fusing dissolving in finale of quiet grandeur, uncatchable creep up shadows, splintering bop and bright solitariness per exemplum. Concentrated. Enjoyably disturbing. — Henning Bolte, Amsterdam, October 2014 Continue reading →