Vancouver pianist Gestrin improvises in 9 different small groupings with friends from Vancouver's creative music scene.

In the summer of 2004, Vancouver keyboardist Chris Gestrin spent three intense days in the studio on a Steinway D, recording to DSD with nine different duo and trio groupings of musicians from Vancouver's vibrant creative music scene, including Peggy Lee, Dylan van der Schyff, Ron Samworth, Gordon Grdina, JP Carter and Jesse Zubot. Apart from a handful of compositions, including a few solo piano pieces, all the music was completely improvised. In a sense it was a follow-up to his acclaimed 2002 Songlines release Stillpoint, an electro-acoustic sextet which includes three of the participants here. But there the emphasis was on a group concept and Chris as composer and producer; in the exposed settings here, success depended on sustaining the inspiration of the moment. In the course of a long process of listening, selecting and mixing, Chris sequenced two discs of music, released as a double SACD (stereo and 5.0).

The collaborators Chris chose for the project were either longtime friends or people he was eager to work with in this context - musicians who, like him, are skilled at both 'inside' and 'outside' playing and who like to develop ideas without limitations or preconceptions. So there are pieces here that sound like some kind of ambient/world music, contemporary chamber music, more 'traditional' improv, or jazz, but most of them don't take well to simple categorization. The discovery of an expressive pathway through each piece, and from piece to piece, is the record's artistic statement, and it has a lot to do with Chris's approach to music as a discipline: 'I live music like I wish I could live my life. It's not always possible to be 100% present when I'm creating music, but when it happens it really is true enlightenment. The music happens exactly as it should without any effort on my part. I am happy that this recording has captured a number of these moments.'

Track Listing

• Metres per second
• To sink in posture
• Living candles
• Viewpoint
• Prelude in D
• Turnstile
• Many skies
• Beauty walks in the world
• Bees
• The seeds of my departure
• Viewpoint 2
• As pointless as the weather
• D.S.
• With such unsettled heart
• The loves of the angels

• Write by return to your longing
• The melody that is
• Guilty gates
• #47
• Moonshine run
• Command and promise
• On the back of a tiger
• The lasting taste of spring
• Storied walls
• Silence of faded emblem
• The evening's influence
• The phonometrographs and the Turing machine
• Meet me at Uji bridge

Additional Details

Label: Songlines

Genre: Jazz

Run Time: 121 mins

Release Date: 11/13/07

UPC: 774355156827