Search - Ursel Schlicht Bruce Arnold :: String Theory

On "String Theory" pianist/composer and sometime musical feminist Ursel Schlicht and guitarist, composer and educator Bruce Arnold team up for an outing of free improvisation that stretch the limits of both their instruments. The two met at a Jazz festival in Monterrey Mexico and immediately felt an affinity for improvising with each other. Ms. Schlicht is one of a handful of contemporary players who are successfully using extended techniques to expand the vocabulary of the piano and who finds her true voice in these free expressions. Arnold has a field day reacting with his processed guitar to all of the acoustically generated sounds that Schlicht throws at him. Indeed in this recording, the juxtaposition of acoustic versus electronically generated sounds is one of its strongest characteristics. Bruce Arnold is best known for his explorations into the possibilities of twelve tone applications to jazz improvisation. But here his use of guitar and SuperCollider, (an object oriented computer program that allows for unlimited sonic processing) takes center stage. Both artists go back and forth between straightforward playing, i.e. linear and tonal passages, and more avant sorties into texture and atmosphere. The two feed off each other with ideas and passages of remarkable coherence; it is a delight to witness interactions of this clarity.