TT 398: Lina Allemano, CANONS + Manuele Morbidini, ALDO CLEMENTI FOR SAXOPHONES

a rich tapestry of dialogue

Voices, please enter one at time singing the same tune from the top! Thank you.

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Almost everyone has participated in a round: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” is famous.

Fugues are vastly more complicated and harder to classify. However the fugue subject should remain self-similar and identifiable.

Canons are like a round but are longer and can be as musically complex as a fugue. Strict canons, where the voices stay true to each other for a substantial period of time, are not that common in the repertoire. Composers of nearly any style will have a canonic moment here and there, but keeping an echo going for the length of a movement is difficult.

Probably the most frequently performed canons of quality are the nine magnificent examples from J.S. Bach in the Goldberg Variations.

(There’s also Pachelbel’s Canon, of course. Like many professionals, I have a mixed view of this popular work, not that this is really poor Pachelbel’s fault. In addition, Pachelbel’s Canon does not sound notably “canonic,” it is the repeated chord progression that made it a hit.)

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Certain modernist composers have seized on the canon as a way to organize abstract sounds. Since a canon is an operation, all sorts of further operations are possible to the material. Special mention must to go to Conlon Nancarrow: Canon X is one of the great musical experiences.

There has not been all that much done with canons in jazz and improvised music — until now. Lina Allemano’s fresh release Canons on Lumo Records places this somewhat unlikely technique front and center. The unexpected result is authentic and compelling.

Allemano plays trumpet and wrote all the music. Essentially the aesthetic is avant-garde, yet the themes are clear, and she certainly dares to compose a little bit of highly tonal sing-song.

The recording opens with “3 Trumpet Canon,” with Allemano in conversation with two of her clones. What does this sound like? Paul Hindemith meets Don Cherry, perhaps? A martial theme in wide leaps is embroidered by noisy runs, before the whole thing devolves into breathing and even choking. As far as I can tell, nothing is improvised until perhaps the extended techniques at the end.

Modern jazz has a fair amount of digital looping, a technique that can be heard on any Bill Frisell gig. By its very nature a loop is related to canon. Four of the pieces on the album are from the trumpet/electronica duo BLOOP (a going concern), where Mike Smith joins Allemano for live-processing/effects. These pieces seem a bit more stream-of-consciousness, where a trumpet cadenza gets a spontaneous echo or echoes. I really like these pieces. Allemano is a charismatic trumpet player who blows nice lines; how fun to hear those lines refracted into strange possibilities.

The rest of the album are real deal canons, where Allemano sat and worked out the notes for varied chamber ensembles. Usually these compositions are tonal and cheerful, contrasting with the relatively tense passages of solo or collective improvisation. “Bobby’s Canon” features celebrated cellist Peggy Lee and clarinetist Brodie West. “Butterscones” and “Twinkle Tones” include bassist Rob Clutton, guitarist Tim Posgate, and Ryan Driver on analog synth.

“A Canon of Sorts” with trombonist Matthias Müller is an album highlight. I suppose I have heard hours and hours of “out” duo improv over the years, and I’m afraid to say a lot of this sort of thing is more enjoyable live than at home. However, overall structural concerns restrict Allemano and Müller and keep the performance tightly argued. When blowing, they let go of the pure canon idea, but some sort of direction remains consistent. The written canons and the improvisations are a unified whole.

Lina Allemano, Canons, on Bandcamp.

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Aldo Clementi (1925 — 2011) was an important Italian composer. While his name is not too familiar in America, his work was powerful enough to endow a legacy of devoted commentators and performers in his native land.

My understanding is that almost all of Clementi’s work dealt with the canon, and much of it canon in deacceleration. I need to know more; perhaps for the Clementi centennial next year I will organize a survey. The CD Madrigale performed by the Ives Ensemble is very beautiful music indeed. This is a modernist sound world, of course, but over the course of each piece the composer teaches the listener how to make sense of the aesthetic. The title track has a helpful write up at 5:4.

Significant critic Paul Griffiths admires the composer. Griffths referred to the"Alexandrian simplicity of his solution to the current confusion in music.”

One of the Clementi disciples is jazz saxophonist Manuele Morbidini, who transcribed nine pieces for the 2015 recording Aldo Clementi for Saxophones. Morbidini is joined by Pasquale Laino, Pedo Spallati and Rossano Emili.

(Manuele is the musical director for Umbria Jazz, my friend, and the only reason I know about Aldo Clementi. He directed the band and played lead alto on my recording Bud Powell in the 21st Century; the brand new Bill Frisell album Orchestras also has Manuele’s name on the cover.)

There’s no improvisation on Aldo Clementi for Saxophones, the four players render this difficult and engaging music as the composer intended — except, of course, for the instrumentation.

There are not so many transcriptions of postwar modernist music for ensembles other than the original. It’s hard to imagine a compelling reason for something by Ligeti or Schnittke to make a leap to four saxophones. However, a gorgeous late Clementi work, “Tre ricercari,” has alto saxophone, so it was not an unknown sonority to the composer. More importantly, since Clementi dealt with the canon, there is a natural abstract purity to his expression, something more akin to baroque music or vocal writing. The rendering of Clementi’s music by four saxophones makes sense.

While these saxophonists don’t reference a jazz approach, the sonority inevitably leans toward the jazz world. As such, Aldo Clementi for Saxophones pairs smoothly with Lina Allemano’s new record Canons above.

There are even two Clementi pieces that use themes by Thelonious Monk, “Blues” and “Blues 2.” I believe the second is the first in symmetrical inversion. It’s rather unfriendly to do all this to Mr. Monk, but the result is undoubtedly something.

The other piece that references a familiar melody is “Vom Himmel Hoch,” an old Lutheran tune that Bach and Stravinsky made elaborately canonic. (Perfect for Clementi!)

A standout track is “Momento,” featuring Clementi’s most classic idiom, an atonal canon in slow decay. While originally written for string quartet, in this arrangement the breath of the saxophones and the clicking of the keys give a human imperfection to this beautiful but lonely landscape.