Label: Mode mode 316

イタリアCramps Recordsより1980年に1st LPを発表、その後アルヴィン・カラン、ケージ、フェルドマン、クリスチャン・ウォルフ等、大御所勢の楽曲を様々なアルバムにて演奏して来た女性名チェロ・プレイヤーのFrances-Marie Uittiが、ギター&ブズーキを演奏するAyman Fanousと共に作り上げた米コンテンポラリーの老舗Modeからのデュオ音源。クラシックとフラメンコギターの優れた演奏技術を持つAyman Fanous、片手で2つの弓を使用する等してチェロ奏法を開拓して来たFrances-Marie Uitti、美しい旋律の中東風の楽曲、強靭な音塊のドローン、ミニマルと、互いの共通の経験である即興が非常に上手い形で現れた名演。

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The music on this album was recorded in the studio the day after Frances-Marie Uitti and Ayman Fanous spent ten minutes improvising together in concert, in a first meeting. It represents bidirectional ideas in music often and erroneously thought to be opposites: western vs. eastern, improvised vs. through-composed. In this recording they are stood on their head, examined, dissected, tortured, and ultimately reconciled.

Fanous says: “Musically, Frances and I came from two distinct sets of emphases. In my case, these were non-western music, as well as chromaticism in both its contemporary classical and free jazz expressions, all funneled through the techniques of classical and flamenco guitar. In Frances’ case, it was a lifelong devotion to and mastery of parallel directions: improvisation, as well as contemporary composition at the highest level. Both were made infinitely more powerful by the deployment of ingenious extended techniques, including her revolutionary two-bow methods. Our backgrounds contained enough shared common experience to allow for a tentacular interdigitation of our improvisational languages, which was effortless and natural.”

The session began with bouzouki-cello duets, in which drones played a central role, calling up a middle-eastern sound-world. Fanous writes: “As the pieces evolved, they gradually became unmoored and reverted to who they really were, but together. This process of feeling one’s way through the darkness was like navigating towards some unknown endpoint, the way the ancients used the astrolabe to navigate using the positions of the stars — Negoum in Arabic.”

Ayman Fanous: guitars, bouzouki
Frances-Marie Uitti: cello