Cello Power

by Bob Pomeroy

Think of certain instruments and you think of specific genres. Think pedal steel guitar and you think country. Think electric guitar and you’re probably going to think of rock and roll. Think cello and most of you are going to think of classical music. It’s probably true that most cellists making a living playing music are playing in the classical genre. That doesn’t mean that the instrument can’t rock. There is a really great rock band called Rasputina who are essentially a cello trio. The cello can also wail in the world of jazz and improvised music. In this edition of Target of Flag, we’re going to look at some recent releases that feature cellists. We’ll begin will somewhat familiar configurations and move out into uncharted territory from there.

Maurice Horsthuis, Ernst Glerum and Ernst Reijseger are versatile and gifted musicians. All were trained at European conservatories. Bassist, Ernst Glerum, and cellist, Ernst Reijseger, have played with a variety of European jazz players. Violist, Maurice Horsthuis, leads the 32-piece Orkest Amsterdam Drama which focuses on theater music. When they get together, they are the Amsterdam String Trio.

Winter Theme (Winter & Winter) is the latest offering from the Amsterdam String Trio. The trio does not stray too far afield on this collection of Horsthuis compositions. “Le Tombeau se Jean Nicot” starts things off in a very familiar mode. The music is fresh and vibrant while staying very much in the chamber music tradition. You can hear the players’ outside influences in Glerum’s scatting runs on “De Spul” and Reijseger’s dissonant harmonics. With Winter Themes, the Amsterdam String Trio gives us chamber music spiced with hints of jazz and other more outwardly daring music. This is a good place to start corrupting your classical music snob cousin. Start them out slowly, and then work your way to the wilder stuff.

Our next stop is Storrs, Connecticut and the Mew Directions Cello Festival. Matt Turner recorded Improvisations for Cello (Meniscus) at the festival. It’s hard not to think of classical music when you encounter solo cello. The first improvisation has a very strong chamber music feel, albeit a very aggressive one. The second improvisation takes us away from what you think of as cello playing and into an extended range of snarls, scrapes, pops and drones. Part of what I like about Turner’s performance is the way he forces us to rethink an instrument we thought we knew. Turner can make his cello sound like a percussion instrument, some programmed electronic device or a wild animal. He can then turn around a make his cello sing sweetly.

I wish I could have seen Matt’s performance. What’s captured on digital media is pretty cool. It just would be so much cooler to see how Turner made his cello howl like a wounded beast or plonk like a broken sampler. Those are the sort of things you just had to be there to see for yourself.

Moving further west, we encounter Terminal 4 (Truckstop). This group features some of the hottest players on the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene. The group is led by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who has played with everyone from fractured punk rockers God is My Co-Pilot to Ken Vandermark. He’s aided by guitarist/trombonist Jeb Bishop who is best known for his work with the Vandermark 5. Ben Vida (guitar) and Josh Abrams (bass) round out the quartet. Terminal 4 is essentially an instrumental pop group. Vocalist Terria Gartelos does sit in on the lush ballad, “She Caught Herself.” Terria’s vocals are so rich and sultry that you don’t notice at first that she’s singing a very strange song about tax tables.

There is a jazz feel to these songs simply because they’re instrumental and that sort of vibe comes naturally to these players. Lonberg-Holm is front and center taking the melodic lead, but Bishop gets a lot of solo space too. More than anything else though, this is a record about songs. All of the sounds on the record are there to serve the composition. In a strange way, this disc could almost be considered modern exotica. It’s a whole lot fresher than Martin Denny and a lot more soulful

Up to this point, we’ve been looking at discs that are fairly easy to assimilate. There are some rough patches, but even fairly conservative ears will be able to listen without too much difficulty. That’s not true of the sounds on Claque (Meniscus). When I played the song “Satchel” from this disc on WMNF’s Step Outside program, we got a caller begging us to play something less scary.

Claque is a disc by trumpeter Axel Dorner, percussionist Michael Zerang and our friend Fred Lonberg-Holm. It’s almost misleading to call the pieces on Claque songs. They are like conversations between three instruments intent on using alternative vocabularies. Dorner speaks through his horn, literally and figuratively in a host of extraordinary ways. Occasionally, he flat out plays recognizable notes but he’s just as likely to blow air through the horn to make unearthly sounds. Likewise, Lonberg-Holm scrapes and plucks at his cello in a variety of unusual and unnatural ways. Zerang uses a variety of percussion instruments to accent the proceedings and add a variety of other noises. This is another recording where it would have been very cool to see just how they made these sounds. Is that scraping sound Fred dragging on strings or Michael rubbing on a drumhead? Just where is that drone coming from? This is not easy listening. It’s not meant to be background music at a party.

Thus concludes our tour. We’ve seen people bringing jazz and other extended techniques into a fairly conventional European classical mode. We’ve seen other people tearing up the rulebooks and using the pages to make paper airplanes. Most people see the cello as a pretty conservative instrument that plays a fairly standard role. Ernst Reijseger, Matt Turner and Fred Lonberg-Holm are people who know what the conventions for their instrument are but refuse to be bound by tradition.

Contacts:

Meniscus 3010 Hennepin Ave S. Ste.217 Minneapolis, MN 55408.

Truckstop 2255 S, Michigan Ave. 4W, Chicago, IL 606016.

Winter & Winter Munchen, Germany.