(Modern Composition) Robert Dick / Ursel Schlicht - Photosphere - 2005, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Robert Dick -- improviser, composer, author, teacher and inventor -- is known worldwide for redefi ning the fl ute,
creating revolutionary visions of its musical role. His music is rooted in free improvisation, new jazz, and classical
music, contemporary and traditional. Dick has performed solo concerts throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and
Australia. He has released numerous solo recordings and recorded with New Winds, Tambastics, the Soldier String
Quartet, the A.D.D. Trio, Paul Giger, Jaron Lanier, Randy Raine-Reusch, Barry Guy, Mari Kimura, Klaus Kugel
and others. His grants, fellowships and commissions include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment
for the Arts Composer Fellowships, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, and two Meet the Composer
commissions. For the past quarter century, Dick has contributed to the evolution of the fl ute. Since the early 1990s
Emerson Musical Instruments has produced the Robert Dick Model bass fl ute. He is presently collaborating with
Brannen Brothers Flutemakers, the leading maker of fi ne fl utes worldwide, in the production of his invention, the
Glissando Headjoint®, which does for the fl ute what the whammy bar does for the electric guitar.
Pianist and composer Ursel Schlicht has played improvised music, jazz, new music and world music throughout
Europe, North America, Russia, Mexico and Australia, including recent performances at the Guelph Jazz Festival
(Canada), Festival for Creative Music in Seattle (US), International Music Meeting in Monterrey (Mexico),
Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival (Australia), Symposium für Aktuelle Music and Jazz Festival
Kassel (Germany). She has written for large and small ensembles, dance theater and improvisational scores for
silent fi lm. As an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in New York, she created a score
for F.W. Murnau’s silent classic fi lm Faust. Fostering intercultural collaboration has become an important focus
of her work. Her ensemble Ex Tempore, formed in 2002, has featured artists from Europe, India, Eritrea, Mali,
Japan, Afghanistan and the US. Her current projects also include duos with Reuben Radding, Bruce Arnold, Adam
Simmons, Ute Kaiser, and a sextet with Ned Rothenberg, Robert Dick, Tomas Ulrich, Ken Filiano and Klaus Kugel.
She has recorded on Leo, Cadence, CIMP, Hybrid, Konnex, Muse-Eek and Nemu Records.

In this age of shoebox-budget labels and shoebox-sized recording technology, the concert stage has swiftly become the new studio. As a result, home listeners are privy to more live music than ever before. This rhyme-ready pairing of flautist Dick and pianist Schlicht illustrates the immediate benefits of the progress with this performance taped in front of a respectful German audience.
Both musicians are masters of extended techniques on their respective instruments. Dick has been expanding the capabilities of the flute family with a virtuosic command for several decades. His blend of jazz, classical, new music, Eastern and even rock influences (in the form of Hendrix covers) has repeatedly garnered both accolades and consternation at its wanton diversity. Schlicht is similarly disposed to a diaspora of genres and styles. She’s just as likely to outfit her piano with all manner of preparations and manipulate its innards as attend to the conventional ivories in shaping an elaborate improvisation.
This set’s five pieces distribute compositional honors evenly between the two players. Dick’s “Lapis Blues” unfolds like an Asiatic variant of the titular idiom. Shakuhachi-like gusts, augmented by a special Dick-designed flute attachment, vie with twittering accents to create a brooding cerulean brew. Schlicht mimics the sounds of Eastern percussion devices with dampened strings, further establishing the feel of a court music fantasia tinged with dark Delta mud. “Emergence” also traffics in somber and dispersive percussive tones. Dick’s whispery breath sounds and popping bass flute patterns butt against more pedal-suppressed piano clusters to create a disconcertingly spooky combination of floating tonal shapes. Oddly enough, I found myself thinking of Herbie Mann’s classic “Purple Grotto” from his vintage Bethlehem album Plays.
“Piece in Gamelan Style” is a solo tour de force for Dick’s circular breathing and precision multiphonics. At nearly twelve minutes, it tests his mettle in matching the polyrhythmic traditions of named in the title, but remains meditative and highly melodic throughout. Calling him the Evan Parker of the flute based on this performance isn’t an exaggeration—in fact, it’s probably an inadequate pigeonhole given the breadth of his interests.
“Faust” and “Fragments,” both by Schlicht, offer what appear more standard flute and piano pairings, at least on the surface. The first sounds largely through composed and chamber-oriented. It comes from the pianist’s score to F.W. Murnau's silent film of the same name, and there’s certainly a cinematic element to the duo’s closely calibrated interplay. The second is largely devoted to the composer’s contemplative rhythmic constructions. Dick returns in the second half to voice a rapid galvanizing retort through aerated spiraling inflections.
Flute and piano may sometimes yield a limited, classically tethered palette, but in the hands of Dick and Schlicht, any such shortcomings swiftly succumb under the amount of shared intellect and imagination placed in the service of breaching preconceived parameters. ~ Derek Taylor, AAJ

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009
EAC extraction logfile from 7. November 2009, 19:19
Robert Dick / Ursel Schlicht / Photosphere
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