Timotheé Quost (FR): trumpet/electronics / Sture Ericson (SE): reeds / Michaela Turcerova (SK): reeds / Mika Persdotter (SE): viola / Simon Toldam (DK): keys / Håkon Berre (NO): percussion / Szymon Gasiorek (PL): percussion / Asger Thomsen (DK): double bass, composition
Cyclic structures interweave like cogwheels behind sonic explorations, flowing and interacting, suddenly cut off by a barrage of junk. Screeching multiphonics create a layer of friction before a cluster of silence.
A long form composition for eight improvising musician dealing with the relation between total freedom and construction. Composed for MINU_festival for expanded music 2022.
The ensemble plays long form compositions by Asger Thomsen, aiming to distill the best of free improvisation and mix it with composed elements. The music unfolds organically with room for original expressions of the individual musicians framed in constructed sequences dealing with many different parameters.
Similarly, the world premiere of Danish composer and double bassist Asger Thomsen’s work Rhizom was a memorable concert, where the eight-man ensemble assembled for the occasion engaged in some of the most impressive interplay I have ever seen: As if in a kind of musical escalator, one instrument pulled the next behind it in an endless circuit that – true to the title of the work – consisted of incalculable, tangled sequences of notes in collision with each other, which then suddenly came together and culminated in small explosions of beauty. Sometimes the otherwise abstract composition turned into a mechanical, rhythmic body that almost swung, other times it was the exploration of the sonic potential of the individual instruments that was in focus – such as when the trumpet player managed to make his instrument sound just like someone desperately trying to suck up the very last remnants of a liquid through a straw.
Rasmus Weirup, Seismograf 23. november 2022
