Quartet Improvisations with Extended Techniques

Tom Djll, Jacob Felix Heule, Kyle Bruckmann, and Kanoko Nishi-Smith improvising last year in Oakland (photograph by Lenny Gonzalez, courtesy of Heule)

This past October began with the release of an album of quartet improvisations entitled brittle feebling. The contents consisted of five tracks over the course of which the performers explored extended performance techniques, both individually and in combinations. The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jacob Felix Heule, one of the four performers. His contributions all arose from his playing a “floor tom,” basically a bass drum placed on the floor, allowing Heule to engage with the drum’s head in a variety of different ways. (See the above photograph.) The other members of the quartet were Kyle Bruckmann, alternating between oboe and English horn, Tom Djll on trumpet, and Kanoko Nishi-Smith on koto.

Most likely all of these names are familiar to those following Bleeding Edge articles back when they were weekly releases. More recently, Nishi-Smith performed a solo improvisation this past November when Karl Evangelista presented the first installment in his Unsolitary series of programs of improvised music. Those with longer memories may recall that Nishi-Smith improvised with Heule and Bruckmann (along with vocalist Danishta Rivero) at the Center for New Music in September of 2017. In addition to exploring the sonorous potentials of the trumpet, Djll is also an early pioneer of electronic music; and his album Serge Works, released by Other Minds Records in the summer of 2018, included duo compositions for trumpet and synthesizer.

By way of a disclaimer I should note that I have an enthusiastic interest in improvising with extended techniques. The discovery of new sonorities or new contexts for such sonorities has consistently made for absorbing journeys, particularly when attending programs organized by Outsound Presents. In that context it is probably important to note that brittle feebling is a debut album for this particular combination of performers. Experience has taught me that, where such improvisations are concerned, changes in personnel serve as a mother of invention.

Nevertheless, the “sonic lexicon” of the entire album is so diverse and so innovative that one can seldom (if ever) attribute any particular “sonic event” to the performer (or performers) responsible for that event. Thus, for example, I was never quite sure what Nishi-Smith was contributing. It was only after I revisited the video of her Unsolitary performance that I cultivated an awareness of at least some of her sonorities. Of course, where a quartet is concerned, a video of only one of the performers is more of a suggestion, rather than an “authoritative source.” For that matter, a quartet improvisation is only partially a matter of the sonorities that emerge. When one attends a physical performance, one is also aware of the visible cues through which the players engage with each other.

Perhaps the quartet will be invited to perform at a future Unsolitary concert, which would be a valuable experience, at least until we get to enjoy the physical presence of the performers. Even so, there is much to be gained from listening to the five tracks on brittle feebling without worrying about the origins of individual sonorities. At the end of the day, it is the mix that matters, a mix that is reflected by track titles, as well as the album title, that seem to be products of playing with anagrams while under some form of psychedelic influence.