The Free Elephant label may not have a bevy of international acclaim or a roster of European heavyweight improvisers, but the small label out of the German city of Wuppertal shouldn’t be ignored. The imprint takes the late Peter Kowald as inspiration, and released some of his last recordings posthumously after his death in 2002. As did Kowald’s late work in the group global village, the label features contributions from unlikely voices, and improvisational cooperation between not just the heavyweights of free playing, but also instruments that are frequent afterthoughts in the world of improv. Partita Radicale is an unlikely quintet of strings, flutes, and accordion who have been performing together since 1991, a group that, despite the musicians’ shared German heritage, symbolize, musically, the adventurous spirit and desire for newfound participants in improvisational discussion that Kowald so empahtically championed.
Frutas Azules is an album full of the unexpected. A quintet of viola, cello, flutes, and accordion is unconventional enough, but even within this context, the assortment of voicings on the album is a surprise. Each of the musicians seems able to coax a varied collections of sounds from their instruments, and none of the five seem comfortable leaning on a favorite sound or technique as a crutch, something to which even the most legendary improvisers can fall prey. Violinist Gunda Gottschalk, who previously proved her mettle on the excellent solo disc Wassermonde, plays in tandem with Thomas Beimel, another musician of many voices, though the two are as likely to walk the same musical path as they are to catapult in completely opposite directions. The accordion of Ute Völker is unmistakably the disc’s most distinctive voice, often staking out a theme or role which he explores within and around the others’ more fluid contributions. The unlikely heroes of the disc, though, if such a term applies to such a collective effort, are the flutists Karola Pasquay and Ortrud Kegel, who, though perhaps representing the most traditional sector of Partita Radicales approach, tend to find their way to the foreground most often, engaged in dizzying displays of movement and flittering trills. No one member takes too much of the spotlight, however, Partita Radicale seems a very egalitarian quintet, and naturally so, without marked delineation between moments more prominently featuring one or two of the group.
With such a collective, free-spirited approach to improvisation, it’s not unexpected that Partita Radicale experience their share of rough moments on Frutas Azules, times in which their fragmented phrases juxtapose at awkward angles, or moments when one of the opts for an approach at odds with that of their peers. But, with a group such as this, these bits aren’t mistakes, per se, or things to be regretted, but merely the rockier moments in an open discourse. If the last statement seems like a teacher saying there are no dumb questions, carte blanche for a performer to do anything, perhaps it is, but isn’t that the spirit of improvisation? Partita Radicale surely aren’t “on” throughout the whole of this disc, but there’s enough adventurous improv to make it worthwhile.
