This quartet of violists—Canadian Tanya Kalmanovitch and American Mat Maneri, Polish bassist Tomo Jacobson, and Danish drummer Kresten Osgood—shapes a five-part improvisation into a consistent program. While the group is unconventional in its makeup, its members share a musical language. The drum rumbles never distract from its harmonic purpose; instead, the integrated variations stretch from languid precision to intense sound mutation. Particularly crucial is Jacobson’s ingenuity, since he can join with Osgood for low-pitched rhythmic attributes or else with the violists to approximate string-ensemble patterns.
Maneri and Kalmanovitch’s narrative elaborations are usually as fragmented as they are melodic. In “Variation No. 3,” the string sizzles and stops emphasize bright tensile motifs. Cycling through several near-climaxes, the quartet is at its freest on “Variation No. 13,” where cymbal clanks and double-bass stops provide the continuum upon which the violists apply sawing metallic glissandi—until, that is, their staccato triple and quadruple stops signal the mercurial strength of joint communication.
The violists are harsher and more hypnotic on the concluding “Variation No. 10,” in which contrapuntal cross tones break down into col legno vibrations and barbed slices, which combine with the other players’ rebounding shuffles and plucks, resulting in a sound that both completes this program and is a portent of what the variations on Part 2 may express.
This multinational group may be atypical in its string orientation, but the textures the quartet offers for sound exploration remove any ambiguity about its potential.