In The Sea (Tristan Honsinger, Nicolas Caloia, Joshua Zubot)

Saturday, June 3rd @ The Comet

IN THE SEA
Tristan Honsinger – cello (active since 70’s; recorded w Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Peter Brotzmann, William Parker, David Toop, etc; a founder of the ICP Orchestra; and has collaborated with The Pop Group, The Ex, Borbetomagus, etc)
Nicolas Calioa – bass
Joshua Zubot – violin

+ an opening set from:

C.I.G. (Cincinnati Improvisers Group)
Jon Lorenz – sax
John Rich – clarinet
Tim Schwallie – guitar
William DeWolfe – guitar
Mark Milano – bass
Zach Larabee – percussion

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Saturday, June 3rd
9pm / 21+ / Free

The Comet
4579 Hamilton Ave.

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Tristan Honsinger started improvising in Montreal more than forty years ago, prior to his decisive move to Europe, where he’s been at the centre of improvised music activity ever since. So this group represents an oblique sort of homecoming. Their rapport is obvious, the results a satisfying mixture of musical empathy and creative conflict. Tristan plays with characteristic daring from his reserves of readymade tune fragments and shards of poetry and into the protean unknown that is the foundation for the best group improvising. Josh Zubot,and Nicolas Caloia don’t merely follow him there, but provoke him – and each other – in ways that are, by turns, subtle, assertive, and irreverent. A superb encounter.

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Born in New England, the cellist Tristan Honsinger studied at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. By the ’70s, the Trans-American had moved to Amsterdam and formed the Instant Composers Pool with drummer Han Bennink and radical pianist Misha Mengelberg. With this avant-jazz group, his music transcended the classical conservatory background he had and he began to incorporate wild, free improvisation, jazz, and European folk music into his cannon, not to mention a kinship with Bertolt Brecht theatre, which would put an edge on performances and recordings that take on experimental strategies, some of which include what could be considered violent attacks on the instrument. Here he would find a kinship with Cecil Taylor, who also liked to make small explosions inside his piano. Honsinger worked with the great pianist in Europe, with Steve Lacy, Lol Coxhill, and Louis Moholo among them in the European free jazz community — which, in the ’70s, was thriving as far away as Florence, Italy. Honsinger found a home there in 1978 for a number of years. Working with the more extreme experimental Gruppo Du Improvisazione Nuovo Consonanza (Improvisational Group for New Consonance) members Giancarlo Schiaffini and Gianluigi Trovesi. Having worked with many groups and ad hoc improvisation setting through the years, interests in theatre, dance, and opera influenced his performances considerably.

His optimum is as a solo cello improviser, and on the album A Camels Kiss, he extracts a dense and unworldly combination of jazz techniques, text-less vocalizing, total free improvisation, hints at J.S. Bach, quotes from Kurt Weill, and flirts with the fantasia of gypsy folk music. All with an astounding technique that surpasses many of the greatest of contemporary music interpreters. Often compared to the late Tom Cora, another outlandish jazz cellist whose love for folk and classical music inflected his improvisations. The range of emotions that is covered in a piece by Tristan Honsinger is striking in that it is very accessible for so-called avant-garde music. In the ’80s, he recorded for the prestigious FMP label and in the ’90s, numerous companies, including Winter and Winter, I.C.P., and legendary jazz archivists Hat Hut from Switzerland. Performing with the Instant Composers Pool, the group was highlighted at many European jazz festivals if not only for their astounding improvisational musicianship, but for the theatrical antics — spectacles even more unpredictable than there schizophrenic jazz structures. All written in real-time of course.