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Picatrix: Picatrix (ICP 061, 2019)

by Bijma/Mulder/Oliver

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Robert Forgione
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1.
Vilegenzwaam 02:07
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2.
Get 'em up 00:57
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3.
Frigus Mundi 01:41
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4.
Birds 03:51
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5.
North Pole 02:36
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6.
Echo 01:58
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7.
South Pole 01:53
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8.
Donaudampfschiff 05:11
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9.
Picatrix 10:28
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10.
Wally Wally 04:00
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11.
Zimzimzim 01:43
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12.
Arnaaluk 00:20
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13.
Who's there 01:50
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14.
Le Petit Prince 02:28
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15.
Hootenanny 02:48
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16.
Whistler's Daughter 04:28
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about

Greetje Bijma voice
Nora Mulder (prepared) piano
Mary Oliver violin, viola, Hardanger fiddle

"Dutch singer Greetje Bijma is a special talent, a pyrotechnician with a virtuoso command of vocal timbres, Exorcist growl to Tibetan throat-singing to theremin high notes, possibly all in one breath. She can function as a human sampler, grabbing a syllable or short phrase (her own, or a bandmate’s) and subjecting it to timbral permutations as she loops it around, as if twiddling dials. Her range is intimidating, and she can get intense, but she leavens the intensity with playfulness and humor. Bijma has a phonographic memory, seems to have soaked up everything she’s ever heard, from songs everyone else has forgotten to a barely audible comment some drunk in the second row just made. She mostly avoids the dead ends and amateur gaffes that parroting leads to in open improvising.

Her talents are so particular, it can be hard to get her into a proper setting that works on record. She set a high standard with Tales of a Voice (Enja), with her longtime ally Alan Laurillard, which brought her attention in the early 1990s; on “Haden,” she acts out the Spanish Civil War. In that decade she also had a wide open free-associative duo with composer Louis Andriessen. Their improvised sets had zigzag energy and rolling momentum. He’d try to lead her from the piano, she’d resist, he’d move on to something else, she’d go back to his first idea: Bijma wouldn’t be led, but might follow. But their sole disc Nadir & Zenit (BVHaast) – more formal, working from texts – didn’t do the sportive duo justice.

Picatrix puts her in a very congenial setting, with two women who occupy other corners of Holland’s new music scene: Mary Oliver, with her long history of playing contemporary scores before getting rowdy in the ICP Orchestra; and pianist Nora Mulder, new-music interpreter and playful improviser who’s recorded with Cor Fuhler’s springy Corkestra (on cimbalom) and in the freewheeling trio Trolleybus. Oliver and Mulder can go for big gestures, or little ones: pieces range from a 10-minute, wide-ranging collective improvisation to a 20-second epigram. Oliver and Mulder may follow Bijma out on a limb, or hold the limb steady.

That leaves Greetje plenty of room to move. She brings high-art vibrato and commitment to “Donaudampfschiff”; juggles a triplety phrase on “Get ’em up”; ‘samples’ a pulsing beat from Oliver’s line on “South Pole” and then spins it like a top. Greetje starts the boisterous “Frigus Mundi” evoking late Billie Holiday and ends the same passage in a Hazel Dickens mountain holler – that’s smart dial-twirling. That one’s admirably short too, the album in a nutshell. Seven pieces are under two minutes, keeping everyone on point.

The trio is also a splendid vehicle for Oliver. Her technique is superclean – she can saw some precisely alarming minor seconds – but her resourceful choices are personal. After a couple decades roaming the Dutch landscape, she has many and varied and specific violin birdcalls under her fingers, as demonstrated by her avian obbligati (often in deliberately far keys) throughout “Birds,” which turns out to be Bijma’s surprisingly tender and straight reading of “Caged Bird” – Abbey Lincoln’s adaptation of a Maya Angelou poem inspired by a line from poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. So we get Oliver riffing on Bijma riffing on Lincoln on Angelou on Dunbar. Oral traditions are a beautiful thing. (I’d bet Bijma references other ‘found’ melodies/lyrics I don’t recognize.)

The oldest tune is the Cecil Sharp chestnut “The Water Is Wide,” appearing as “Wally Wally,” where Bijma comes close to channeling Joan Baez, and where Mulder and Oliver walk a very fine line, playing it straight but in their own voices, Mary on hardanger fiddle with its sympathetic drone strings, Nora strumming autoharp chords inside piano, and lightly outlining a slow bass (drum) line in prepared low harmonics. At least that’s what they all do before and after the free interlude the trio ease into and out of without wrecking the mood or breaking character. Oliver’s counterline on the last chorus is a beaut.

Nora Mulder has her own wild side, can take the lead, drop a depth charge or churn up the river bottom. But she approaches every situation like a member of an ensemble, or maybe comedy-team straight woman: Fletcher Henderson to her mates’ Bessie Smith and Joe Smith if you will. Like any self-respecting pianist who plays new music (and who’s friends with Cor Fuhler), she knows impacted harmony and a whole lot of procedures for treating/distorting piano sound in real time, junk shop to gamelan. She also knows such timbral devices are often most effective when the focus is elsewhere. Mulder can deftly underpin action already in progress without riffling the surface: jabbing bass tones on the airy kids-song “Le Petit Prince” where Greetje ghosts an owl.

It’s real selfless collective musicmaking, one for all. There is, in some Dutch-scene improvising, even today, a lingering, almost quaint macho quality notably absent here. You can hear this smart trio now, or (if there’s any justice) next summer, when they’re hailed as “the surprise hit of the festival.” –Kevin Whitehead

credits

released May 31, 2019

All compositions and arrangements Bijma/Oliver/Mulder (Buma/Stemra) except:
Whistler's Daughter by Mary Oliver (Buma/Stemra).
Birds contains fragments of Caged Bird by Abbey Lincoln.
Recorded by Marc Schots January 26 & 27 2019 at Splendor
Cover art Han Bennink
Graphic design Emma Fischer
Many thanks to Han Bennink and Susanna von Canon.

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ICP Orchestra Amsterdam, Netherlands

From ragtime to swing, composed pieces to improvisation, bop to free jazz, classical to carnivalesque, the ICP Orchestra continues to be at the forefront of the creative music that they have been so influential in founding, proliferating and supporting over the last five decades.

"Arguably the most dynamic, unpredictable and just-plain-fun jazz ensemble on any continent." - Boston Globe ... more

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