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Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Germán Bringas — Improvaciones en NY
(Jazzorca JRCD04, 1998, CD)

by Mike Ezzo, Published 2002-04-01

Improvaciones en NY Cover art

To paraphrase Isaac Newton: for each number of Exposé, there is a CD released by Germán Bringas. Everything he puts out finds him in different guise: avant pop, big band noisy stuff, improvisations with Cutler and Frith. This time around he appears solo, playing simply sax and piano. Well, I am guilty of having faced this CD with exceeding trepidation — that title conjured images of Knitting Factory nonsense and other crimes against art often committed in New York — but how wrong I was. The music here doesn’t even sound like improvisation! Certainly it’s another planet from Anthony Braxton or Roscoe Mitchell. One can hardly tell by his previous albums, but Bringas has a great gift for melody, and these miniatures are well structured, displaying a much greater classical influence than a jazz one. I love the resultant irony: give him a stage all to himself and he shows restraint and precision. He divides the work into equal halves of piano and sax solos, keeping it all short and to the point. Yet somehow a marked sense of contrast is maintained between each piece. The man never repeats himself! One’s glitches and foul notes are easily exposed in this kind of environment, but Bringas has the chops to pull it off. Sympathetic theater ambience substitutes for absent guest musicians.

Filed under: New releases, Issue 24, 1998 releases

Related artist(s): Germán Bringas

 

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