Open Border
Luigi Ceccarelli – live electronics, Hamid Drake – drums and percussions, Gianni Trovalusci – flutes, Ken Vandermark – sax and clarinets

Vynil version 12″ and digital download version – from March 23 2020
Catalytic Sound

Live recording by Luigi Ceccarelli
Lacquer cut by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. Art by Fede Peñalva. Jacket includes download code.
Includes unlimited streaming of Open Border via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Produced by Area Sismica and Ken Vandermark

Buy here
https://vandermark1.bandcamp.com/album/open-border

This first-time encounter was recorded during a concert at the magnificent Chiesa di San Giacomo – Complesso Museale San Domenico – Forlì, for the Forlì Open Music Festival on October 14th, 2018. The music performed has the impact of that magnificent space and, like the architecture, is both expansive and extreme. Configurations of the participants shift from passages of solo to quartet, and the improvisations move between pure texture and evolving melodicism.

Luigi Ceccarelli, who has been working with electronics since 1970, and has won numerous electronic music awards, not only creates his own incredible web of sound, but also processes the other musicians’ playing in real time. Hamid Drake, one of the most respected percussionists in the world today, goes deep into free territory here, making the recording an even more unique document. The reed combinations between Gianni Trovalusci’s flutes and Ken Vandermark’s clarinet and tenor sax give the proceedings a unique spacial and dynamic character, one that is informed by Trovalusci’s investigation of the contemporary repertoire and early music, along with Vandermark’s decades-long history of collaborating with musicians from around the world.

The music on Open Border defies musical conventions and boundary lines. Instead it focuses on a search for creative ground without categories. It is a recording of improvised music invented at the highest level, spontaneous and timeless, energized and austere, always exhilarating.

 Reviews

Time to live in the desire for research
“Open Border”, the album that reproduces the concert of the ensemble of the same name at the Forlì Open Music festival in 2018

Occasionally radical free improvisation and contemporary music of radical “learned” origin intersect and become the same thing. Contemporary music understood as the time of living with the desire for research, pleasure, the composition of open relationships. An event like this took place in October 2018 at the Forlì Open Music festival. The ensemble gathered for the occasion was called Open Border (precisely …). And this name is also the title of the album that reproduces that concert.
LUIGI CECCARELLI, a well-known composer in the “contemporary” anti-dogmatic, makes the director (re-inventor, inventor) of the completely improvised session somewhat to electronics. Hamid Drake, a beloved jazz percussionist, a great virtuoso, a practical seducer of avant-garde and Africanism, pantry touches that would make Stockhausen’s envy. Gianni Trovalusci, flutist who willingly switches from free music to neue musik (he is Roscoe Mitchell’s favorite partner), blows long and pointed sounds that travel in galaxies into tubes of various sizes. Ken Vandermark, saxophonist and clarinetist, shows off his best skills as an ultra-free jazzman, forgets Rollins and draws on Ligeti. Yummy cocktail.
(Mario Gamba- Il Manifesto (https://ilmanifesto.it/edizione/il-manifesto-del-08-04-2020/)

Music and More
General thoughts of fun stuff, like music, books and the like. Thanks for reading.SATURDAY, APRIL 04, 2020
Vandermark / Drake / Trovalusci / Ceccarelli – Open Border (Audiographic, 2020)
Open Border is a beautiful, truly collaborative project between Ken Vandermark on reed instruments, Luigi Ceccarelli on electronics, Hamid Drake on drums and Gianni Trovalusci on flutes. The music was recorded by Ceccarelli live at the Forlí Open Music Festival in October of
2018, and captures a gracefully flowing and exploratory performance. Musicians weave in and out of the sound tapestry, shifting from solo to full quartet sections, as the improvisations evolve from melodic to abstract freedom. There is only freely improvised track, “Open Border” which emerges slowly as the music has pops and clicks like a transmission from a far off world, Vandermark’s clarinet meeting electronics and fluttering in open space, gradually gathering intensity with percussion and piercing flute entering the frame. Drake’s masterful fractured free drumming and Vandermark’s caustic clarinet further slip the boundaries, with sparse electronics adding to the action. Drake’s solo drumming reverberates through the theater, as Trovalusci joins him on flute providing an ethereal sound amid swirls of electronic noise building an alien soundscape. The instruments can create a alarming buzzing motif, then change just as rapidly into with popping and chattering reeds in a nervous, yet fascinating section. Vandermark moves to tenor saxophone for powerful bursts of loud and stark playing, backed by Drake’s excellent drumming, and swirls of electronic sound, creating a raw and vibrant section of the overall performance, and diving into an excellent collective improvisation with flute soaring and flowing amid the other instruments. Interplay between Drake and Vandermark stellar as always, as is the light and fluid section for flute and electronic sound, and graceful spoken vocalization leading everyone to come together for a elegant and memorable conclusion. This was a unique and very enjoyable album, taking three stellar instrumentalists and adding Ceccarelli to create electronic sound and process the other band members playing in real time creates a vibrant and rich performance that continuously moves in dynamic and spontaneous ways. by Tim Niland
https://jazzandblues.blogspot.com/search/label/Luigi%20Ceccarelli