Pago Libre Mountain Songlines

John Wolf Brennan Arkady Shilkloper Florian Mayer Tom Götze What the Mountains Whisper

Ten albums and a few lineups into its recording Gassmann stated two curious hypotheses. First: that history, Pago Libre remains one of the most distinc- a particular sound motive – a sort of sonic DNA – tive of bands in any of the various genres it has a foot seemed detectable within all Swiss folk songs. He gave in. the name “Holdio Uri” to that “Urmusik-Motiv.” He The quartet traverses so many. Most prominently, it even identified that primeval motive as a six-four chord combines the drive and groove of jazz, the melodic im- in F: C-C-C-a‘-f‘. pulse of folk music, and the timbral qualities, density, Did Gassmann intend to claim that that precise and orchestration of chamber music. chord was within every Swiss folk tune? Certainly, That is what Pago Libre has pursued since 1989. Its Brennan notes, many folk tunes don’t contain the 30-year history equips it with profound purpose and Ur-Motiv, and yet “you could say that folk music certainly with dazzling ensemble intuitiveness. neverthelss includes the idea of the motive, or maybe the spirit of it.” It embraces thrilling collaboration through “com- provisation,” where composition and improvisation are He continues: “I truly think Gassmann found inseparable – “where the borderline is, listeners don’t something like the holy grail, not only of Swiss folk need to know, and it might even be better if they music, but of the whole alpine sonic world. And of don’t,” says Russian horn virtuoso Arkady Shilkloper. course the alphorn, on the one hand, and yodeling, on the other, are the perfect epitomy of this hypothesis.” With Mountain Songlines, the quartet arrives at a high point, inspired by alpine vistas and other gran- deur. To explain the title, Irish-Swiss pianist and com- poser John Wolf Brennan cites two texts, both touch- stones for him – and his own vast experience of exploring the Swiss Alps. The first is a curiosity of ethnomusicology: Alfred Leonz Gassmann’s book Zur Tonpsychologie des Schweizer Volksliedes (About the Tone Psychology of Swiss Folk Music, 1936). That monograph is long out of print, so Brennan cherishes his copy all the more: “Pure electricity!” Mountain Songlines’s eighth track, Hol-di-o-U-ri, lines” as they went out into the world, including to tests the hypothesis both comically but also quite ancient Australia. devoutly. “In my mind, the two books became one,” says But first let’s consider Gassmann’s second hypothesis. Brennan. “Whenever I look at the mountain skylines It was just as arcane. He posited a specific relationship – and I live in a place surrounded by them – I not only between soundscape and landscape: the shapes, see them, I hear them.” contours, and outlines of mountain panoramas or the As in the cases of Gassmann and Chatwin, Brennan’s silhouettes of mountain ranges impressed themselves personal response resonates with the mythical bases of into melodies composed among them. (This CD’s Art and Song. cover illustrates the concept.) No doubt, he says, that effect stems in part from the Of course, as Brennan notes, such relations would weekly hikes that he and his brother Peter, during their depend on the composer’s position within any moun- teen years, took in the Alps with their father, Hans tain setting. So, as with the Ur-Motiv, the effect could Wolf, a talented amateur classical pianist (while their hardly be literal, but rather metaphoric, almost mythic. mother was a fine singer of classical and Irish songs): Brennan says: “Gassmann’s idea is bewildering, but at “Every time he saw a special rock formation, he stopped the same time it strikes a deep chord somewhere within and put his ear to the rock and said to us: ‘Listen to the the soul. You just feel there must be something to it.” song the mountain is singing or whispering to you.” Some 50 years after Gassmann offered his theses, Unsurprisingly, “we considered that to be utter Bruce Chatwin, the British author of merged baloney,” says Brennan. “But years later I found myself fiction / non-fiction, published The Songlines, an sharing and passing on this ‘myth’ to my three account of his time among Aboriginals of Australia. daughters.” Interpreting their mythical perceptions as best he could All this explains why, for many years, Brennan from his Western viewpoint, Chatwin reported that the dreamed of recording an album of the songlines he Aboriginal “Dreamtime” held that language started as joined upon looking at the mountains. song, and the ancestors sang the land and all it contained into existence. Now it has happened. Chatwin further speculated that when early humans, evolving on the African savanna, persistently fled large predators, they took – dreamed – their “song- In Pago Libre’s translation of such concepts into The horn is the instrument for hymns, Brennan music, the literal and metaphoric merge into a way of believes, and he says “I composed the piece with interacting with the world around, with the elusive Arkady’s unique tone in my head.” But his piano ably nature of nature, and of existence. In Brennan’s case, assists – after all, he notes, its name in German, Flügel, his own imaginative reach scales the Alps’ contours and also means “wing.” heft, at the same time drawn aloft and grounded to the It may be surprising to learn that Brennan relates earth. this piece, and the Pago Libre project, to his early fasci- “Exactly,” Brennan exclaims, presented with this nation with earthy yet buoyant African rhythms. The interpretation. “And remember,” he says, “I live in a likes of Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and country with lots of exact clocks’n’watches.” Hence he the Nigerian Highlife icon Tunji Oyelana were crucial has inherited the urge to create and capture reality both influences on his musical directions. imaginatively and mechanically.* He has traveled far, since. Last year he hiked the This is the first new studio album by Pago Libre in whole of the GTE, or Grande Traversata Elbana, and 11 years, since Fake Folk (Zappel Music, 2009). Inter- it inspired the album’s second piece. The GTE is a vening was got hard (Leo Records, 2018), recorded 60-kilometre trekking path that crosses the ridges of live with orchestra at the International Music Festival the whole of Elba. Alpentöne in 2017 and, like Mountain Songlines, Brennan has hiked the GTE several times, climbing alpine themed. peaks along the way including, last year, Monte Capanne. The lineup now is the same as it was then: John At only 1,019 metres, Capanne might not sound like Wolf Brennan on piano, Tom Götze on bass, Florian much, but those metres are all above the level of a sea Mayer on violin, and Arkady Shilkloper on horn and that is visible all around. Sea and mountain beckoned alphorn. Brennan to this composition.

The title of Brennan’s Hornborn Hymn seems self- *cf. “Born in Ireland, now a Swiss resident, Brennan explanatory, but Brennan jokes that while being in the perfectly matches the romanticism of the one place mountains takes you closer to heaven, one must beware with the watchmaker exactness of the other.” of getting “stuck on cloud 17.” He achieves this by Brian Morton, THE WIRE “earthing” the piece, and all of his music for this drum- less quartet, with deep beats and grooves (in 5/4 and 6/4), as well as busily burrowing earworm melodies. Fotos: Michael Brändli, Hardstudios Winterthur, Feb 2020 With shifting, canny variations in time and tone, it is Mayer, and Tom Götze too, heard while growing up in classic Brennan. It begins with piano preparations: the the former German Democratic Republic. first 2 minutes and 22 seconds you can hear his master- Armenian Princess is the second piece Tom Götze ful “arcopiano” (with bowed strings) and “oudpiano” wrote for Pago Libre after joining the band in 2012. (with damped strings). Then comes the main theme in The first was the entrancing Cümbüs¸ (below). The 7/4, a capricious violin escapade, echoing gypsy and haunting melody echoes with ancient legends of the klezmer elements, and a haunting horn solo, riveting Armenian people whose holy mountain is the mammoth even by Arkady Shilkloper’s extremely high standards Ararat (5,137 metres). The composition’s tone of – it soars over Capanne. The next section alternates longing relates to Ararat’s complicated geopolitical from 6/4 to 5/4; that, Brennan explains, “means 11/4 location within the territory of archenemy Turkey. together – and the intriguing thing about this bass There, to the Armenians, it resembles a captive ostinato is that you can tap it with your foot in 11/2 princess. and every two bars you get the ‘1’ accent on the down- Sorrow gives way to the anxious, awe-struck beat, then on the offbeat, and so on …” co-composed and “comprovised” interlude At the Give it a try. Tap your foot, or just let the tune Abyss of Nothing which prefigures Götze’s show-stop- tumble you along! ping Cümbüs. That’s the name of a Turkish-Kurdish Urwuchs, which means “primal growth,” is Florian “poor man’s oud,” part lute, part banjo. Its inventor, Mayer’s first composition for the quartet. The title Zeynel Avidin Cümbüs, took his name from the instru- refers to an experience the violinist had while the band ment, not vice-versa. It became common in the 1930s was recording. They were in an old guesthouse in in the mountain area of Eastern Turkey, home of many Neftenbach, a village near Winterthur. Mayer emerged Kurdish people (which is why Erdogan, the current one morning to tell his quartet mates over breakfast Osmanian despot, refers to the Kurds as “Mountain that he’s been kept awake by “strange voices” from Turks.”) within an ancient tree outside his window. The piece refers back to the Armenian princess, “Oh yes?” the band replied. Ararat, and all those same troubles. Götze drives its The voices inspired this piece. It demonstates how infectious rhythm by slapping the top of the body of far Pago Libre can reach into experimental contem- the bass with his hands in between playing the bass porary music, but it also hint at the jazz anarchy that line. Again co-composed by Pago Libre, Ridge Walk (six-four chord) of a kind that often serves in classical (whose German title “Gratwanderung” literally means music as a sort of Romantic flourish – a musical curlicue. “walking on the ridge”) evokes a climber’s sense, when “But of course there is more to it. The six-four is, in walking on a narrow ridge trail, of the earth falling classical music, something like the “sus4” chord in away on both sides in an awe-inspiring but unnerving modal jazz. You can hear it in John Coltrane’s ‘My way. Brennan says: “If you hike in the mountains, espe- Favourite Things’ and in Miles Davis’s modal composi- cially in bad weather, with an icy or snowy surface, with tions. fog and mist, every step has to be taken cautiously. And “The six-four often serves as a kind of prolongation standing still is not an option.” of the cadenza. This ‘trick’ is used quite often in African Beware of vertigo. music, as in Miriam Makeba’s ‘Pata Pata’ and many Brennan calls attention to the track’s sense of what pieces by Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand).” Arnold Schönberg called “Klangfarbenmelodie”: melo- Into his explorations of Gassmann’s chord, Brennan dic snippets “travel” through the timbres of a sucession entwines another variant of the six-four – Tü-da-do. of instruments as if it were one big instrument, “as if a That has special significance for him, and for any Swiss hovering spirit pulls the strings at the right moments.” mountain dweller, because it’s the world-famous triad Hol-di-o-U-ri is the quartet’s interpretation of Alfred horn of the Swiss Postauto (postal van). Leonz Gassmann’s “Ur-Motiv.” It’d be a short composi- The characteristic horn of every yellow Postauto is tion, standing alone – about seven seconds – so an iconic triad in A: c#-e-a. Brennan recalls the triad as Brennan elaborates on it and combines it with his one of the first sounds he heard as a seven year old cheerful, ever-so-Swiss Tü-Da-Do. when Switzerland became his home. In the Swiss Alps, The combination is part fun, with its hilarious thousands of people in hundreds of valleys know it very ensemble yodel at the outset, but there’s much more. well, too, as the Postauto is their only public transpor- What starts as an evocation of Gassmann’s motive – the tation. Postauto drivers are renowned for politeness, one he claimed he had found within all Swiss folk music helpfulness, and breathtaking skill in driving on extre- – expands to embrace Brennan’s life and musical mely steep, narrow mountain roads and tracks. journeys. The quartet interprets Brennan’s 7x7 variations on To a musicologist, says Brennan, Gassmann’s chord the triad which, if sung, sounds a bit like the “tüüü-da- “might just seem like an ordinary Quartsextakkord do” of the title. Swiss yodel singer Sonja Morgenegg echoes the Alpine horn with some Jüüzli. As the van Last year, friends from the Embassy asked me to wends its way, it rambles along in 4/4, taps an alphorn write a composition.” It would be for the inaugural groove in 5/4, and don’t miss the crazy solo that assembly of the organization, Nature of Wonder, in Shilkloper plays with only the mouth piece of the Delphi, Greece. alphorn over a sequence of 11/8, 9/8, 7/8, 5/8 and 3/8. For his melody, says Shilkloper, he took 82 points It may make you see the postal van heading past a along the 30th parallel, ones that the expedition of paddock of whinnying horses. the Embassy of the Dolphins traveled, beginning in There’s an alphorn towards the end, too. Over a Tenerife, then towards Africa through Morocco, Libya, series of harmonic changes, the instrument can play Egypt … He located the points on a musical stave, in only overtones, including the famous “alphorn fa” sequence, according to their altitude: Easter Island, the which is higher than “f” but lower than “f#”. Giza pyramid complex, the Bermuda Triangle, the Selbsanft (comprovised by Pago Libre) takes its Great Wall of China … name from a majestic mountain (3,029m – Brennan Of course, some of the 82 points were under water, the mountaineer never names a mountain without in the depths of bays, seas, and oceans “for which, as we citing its altitude) in the Canton Glarus, at the remote know, whales and dolphins are responsible.” end of a long, narrow valley. The name means “gentle He charted those on his stave, too. self,” which seems paradoxical because the mountain’s To cap off the voyage, he called on vocalist Sonja majesty is a bit intimidating. “But play it by ear!” Morgenegg, from another of Brennan’s projects, Brennan recommends. SOOON, to sing for the dolphins. After all, she had Most of this album’s pieces evoke the world above just returned from swimming with some, in Hawaii, sea level. In The Melody of the Earth, Shilkloper and she reported that as her body remembered the contemplates points both above and below sea level. sensation, she would sing them back into being. The composition is, he says, one for the dolphins, Peter Monaghan, Canberra / Australia so follow his explanation as it sports above and below the waves: “I’ve been friends with the Embassy of the Dolphins for several years and am myself its messenger!

Foto: Alexander Panov, Live at Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Oct 2019 Selbsanft, Glarus, Switzerland (Foto: JWB)

Foto: Alexander Panov, Live at Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Oct 2019 URWUCHS URWUCHS hast du’s gehört? did you hear that? es war wohl schon immer da it was probably always there aus der tiefe / der grund / die wurzel from the deep / the ground / the root aufgebrochen nun now breaking off über dem schutz der rinde / runzelig / schrumpelig above the protection of the bark / furrowed / wrinkled moosbäumchen zärtlich grünend / wie des small trees of moss greening tenderly / like the berghangs mikrokosmos microcosm of the mountain slope hast du‘s gesehen? did you see it? am fenster morgens / füllte der knorrige at the window in the morning / the gnarled filled deinen weiten / deinen dauernden blick your wide / your grieving glimpse fühltest gemüt / und gang you felt your soul / and pace die hand griff nach dem weissen tuch the hand reached for the white handkerchief der grund gab dir halt / nahm dich bei der hand the ground gave you hold / took you by the hand spielt libre / scherzt mit nadel / faden / pustekissen playing libre / joking with needle / string / puffing alles kann wachsen / denn was ist schon tempo pillow anything can grow / because what does tempo really tanz! mean der sonne entgegen / die durch die pagodenäste bricht dance! auch wenn’s komisch ausschaut / auch wenn du towards the sun / when it‘s breaking through the humpelst pagodian branches wie ein knurriger / hurriger waldschrat even if it’s looking funny / even if you‘re walking with a limp Florian Mayer like a growling / howling wood gnome

Florian Mayer

Fotos: Alexander Panov, Live at Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Oct 2019 Fotos: Alexander Panov, Live at Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Oct 2019 Foto: Alexander Panov, Live at Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Oct 2019 Foto: Alexander Panov, Live at Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Oct 2019 Fotos: Michael Brändli, Hardstudios, Winterthur Fotos: John Wolf Brennan Brienzer Rothorn, Bern / Obwalden / Luzern (Foto: JWB)