music of wheel |cs086

"Music of wheel" is a composition by Joël Merah, in which the performers should follow "a course generated and determined by the tossing of the dice which decide and direct the musician towards the action of silence or the action of sound". Thus, different interpretations yield music completely new each time in a style that, generally speaking, should remain "soft" according to the author. The quartet is formed by Merah (piano, toy), Sylvain Chauveau (electric guitar, toy), Maitane Sebastian (cello, toy) and Stéphane Garin (trombone, glockenspiel, cymbal, toy). It goes without saying that there is an obvious point of reference in this kind of approach to chance composition, and I won't even name it; on the other hand, a distinct Feldmanesque trait is clearly audible throughout the disc, which presents six extracts from the three versions that Ensemble 0 recorded in the studio. Given the above mentioned conditions, the sounds seem to respect silence all the way; after the rolling of the dice, clearly audible at various times during the piece, we get long pauses, rarefied shadows and elongated tones whose frailty is much more than a sheer nod to that kind of meditative concentration that this music requires and quite often generates. Every gesture seems to imply something deeply necessary, but we can't really understand what it is. Nevertheless, the picture of seriousness resulting from these tracks remains bright and pretty easy to decode, making this album one of the most accessible releases by the Portuguese label. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

They eke some reasonably intense static sounds from their playing, evidently very tightly-focused on their work… Same could be said for Ensemble 0, who released Music Of Wheel (CREATIVE SOURCES RECORDINGS CS 086) on this Portuguese label. Here, Chauveau joins a foursome with Joël Merah, Maitane Sebastian, and Stéphane Garin. They mostly play acoustic instruments, including cello, piano, and a fine glockenspiel…
This slow and quiet material may take some time to yield up its secrets, but it has accuracy and clarity… Surface appearances bring to mind the work of Tilbury in AMM. The six 'fragments' on the CD came out of a project based on generating different musical pieces all based on the same score by Merah. In the right mood, this exacting musical emptiness could actually yield dividends to the stress-free ear." Ed Pinsent (The Sound Projector)

Ensemble 0's "Music of Wheel" gives Sylvain Chauveau a new playground full of folds to coil in: the one of a score by Joël Merah - for piano, cello, percussion/trombone and guitar - using chance to create breathtaking spaces of improvisation, as testify the six extracts compiled on this record, released by portuguese label Creative Sources. Valérie Paillé (Mouvement)

The ensemble 0 (pronounced « zero ») is a French quartet that last year were heard, or more pertinently not heard, realising John Cage's 4'33. Music of wheel is a chance-driven composition by their pianist Joël Merah that might conceivably bear the frequent instruction « make a New York School sound here ». This appealing music ultimately has
its own character, but it seems clear that Merah and his associates – electric guitarist Sylvain Chauveau, cellist Maitane Sebastian and trombonist Stéphane Garin – are steeped in the music of Cage's groundbreaking circle, especially that of Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff. Music of wheel has comparable delicacy, reserve, and poise.
Although the performers were allowed extensive freedom of choice, Merah specified that the overall dynamics of interpretation should remain soft. It's well-ventilated music, and its combination of spaciousness and subtly variegating timbres results in an atmosphere of translucency. Toys, glockenspiel and bowed cymbal are brought to play along with sustained tones on guitar, bowed and plucked cello, sparing trombone sounding and well-defined yet evasive piano phrases.
For this release, six « fragments » were taken from three studio recordings of the piece. Fragmentariness is more fundamentally ingrained in the music's fabric : part of its non-cumulative progression as it negotiates silence and stasis. The throw of dice is heard at intervals. It's a paradoxical music that's indeterminate yet manages still to establish an evident identity, music that's immediately attractive and persistently elusive. Julian Cowley (The Wire)

Fixar as coordenadas, estabelecer o lugar do Ensemble 0, encontrar um ou mais pontos de apoio para o ouvinte se situar, não é tarefa isenta de riscos, na mesma medida em que a música aqui erigida se apresenta de modo avesso a quaisquer classificações, refractária a qualquer esforço de catalogação. Na melhor, o Ensemble Zero é um quarteto francês de composição/improvisação lowercase, composto pelo pianista Joël Merah, que assina Music of Wheel, composição que no original tem uma duração superior à do CD (no limite, chega a levar duas horas e meia de execução), daí que tenha sido opção deliberada do autor destacar 6 fragmentos da peça para inclusão no CD, confinado a uma hora e três minutos de duração total. A execução ficou a cargo, além de Joël Merah, em piano, do guitarrista Sylvain Chauveau, da violoncelista Maitane Sebastian, e do trombonista Stéphane Garin, também em glockenspiel e címbalo. O curriculum dos membros do Ensemble Zero impressiona: trabalharam com o Ensemble Intercontemporain, sob a direcção de Pierre Boulez, com a Filarmónica de Tóquio, com Phil Durrant e Mauricio Kagel, entre outros, e editaram na FatCat, Ant-Zen, Type, Amanita, DSA, Ameson, e agora na Creative Sources.
O Zero pega onde ficaram os avanços de John Cage e Morton Feldman, e fazem evoluir a música no sentido da completa simbiose entre composição prévia e criação instantânea, através de uma escrita totalmente aberta, na qual os espaços de som e de silêncio se articulam enquadrados por uma moldura virtual de extrema flexibilidade, fixada com reserva, contenção e dinâmica restringida ao mínimo. O paralelo nas artes plásticas encontrar-se-á no expressionismo abstracto de Mark Rothko e na sua criação de atmosferas e combinações de cor espaço e forma, de forma a transcender os símbolos e as referências comummente aceites e validadas pela prática reiterada de repetição de fórmulas sucessivamente reinventadas. A escrita de Joël Merah, caracterizada por privilegiar a mais ampla espacialização, decorrente dos aspectos aleatórios associados, facilita a apreensão da variedade tímbrica e a intersecção de diferentes planos, com um mínimo de sobreposição, favorecendo a criação de atmosferas de extrema limpidez. Enfim, uma música bela, cheia de espaços em suspensão e silêncios misteriosos, para fruir de maneira puramente emocional. Para meu gosto e satisfação pessoal, Music of Wheel é uma das melhores edições de sempre da Creative Sources Recordings. Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)