Cover of the album being discussed
One week from today, ECM Records will release the latest solo album of performances by pianist Jon Balke. On this new album, Balke’s performances are augmented with live-processed software. This is enabled through the Spektrafon, an electronic audio tool developed by technology professor Anders Tveit (with Balke’s assistance) at the Norwegian Academy of Music. The tool basically creates a “background” for the “foreground” of Balke’s piano performance.
The title of the album is Skrifum; and it consists of fourteen tracks of durations as short as less than one and a half minutes (“Calligraphic”) and a little over five minutes (“Tegaki”). As is usually the case, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders. The title is Icelandic for “write;” and the composer apparently tried to capture “an almost calligraphic quality” in his melodic lines. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what that means; but it would be fair to say that the individual phrases (most of which are separated by extended episodes of background) reflect gestures of writing.
There is nothing particularly original about a monophonic foreground traversing a series of gestures across a synthesized background. Thus, while I can appreciate the interplay of technology and solo piano, I have to confess that my listening experience reminded me of little more than my composition teacher’s favorite disparaging assessment: noodling. In the words of one of my former (and cynical) colleagues, this is music that “fills a well-needed gap!”
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