Clairvoyance

[…] It is an architecture that naturally falls into place by virtue of very close listening and responsive playing on the part of all three.

[…] Orrù is a master colorist, a double bassist deeply conversant with the instrument’s broad array of timbral resources. We can hear this even in the very first minute of the recording, where he delivers a brief solo setting ordinary tones against harmonics and sliding ghost tones.

Mimmo is notable among freely improvising reed players for his refined lyricism and focus on the vitality of the line—but he too can be a colorist: just listen to the flute-like sounds he elicits on How Spider Sits and Waits, or the harmonics he counterposes against Orrù’s during the opening improvisation.

Corda’s pianism is informed by a profound grasp of the piano as a textural, as well as a harmonic voice, one whose function is to bind and separate by creating a dialogue between positive and negative spaces. Her role here is often understated but no less crucial for being so—in fact it is just this understatement that makes it so crucial. Her uncanny ability to keep sonic space uncluttered and open to the weave of lines around her is one of the keys to the trio’s distinctive sound. But these techniques and structures are here only to the extent that they serve expressive ends.

Which brings us back to clairvoyance. Clairvoyance purports to see the world as a network of significances linked by a revelatory, spontaneous rapport between things and events superficially unrelated. In a similar way, the musical clairvoyance captured on these six tracks sees in the meeting of advanced technique and improvised form both the prerequisite and pretext for revelation: the revelation of song lying latent at the heart of sound.

Daniel Barbiero (excerpts from the album liner notes)