Clarinetist Dries Tack plays in several contemporary music ensembles: Odysseia Ensemble, Nadar Ensemble, Curious Chamber Players and STYX. Last month he released his first solo album. Adjacent Spaces explores the new sound possibilities of the clarinet through six composers. Each with a unique style and a unique sound brings a different sound aspect to the fore.
Over the years you build up a body of work as a musician. Were there certain pieces that you really wanted to include on the cd?
It has indeed grown over the years. In ensemble playing I also came across solo pieces and with some pieces you just click. Slowly the idea of a cd began to grow and thanks to the pandemic — which prevented us from playing together — a solo album came to the fore.
At first I had the idea of doing everything myself: recording myself, editing myself, playing myself. But after recording lessons and a few attempts it turned out not to be so easy. You need more material and experience than you initially thought. So I called in help for that.
The pieces themselves, many I already knew. But besides that, I also contacted composers to write a composition for this project. Those are the works by Stefan Prins (°1979) and Michael Maierhof (°1956). In the early spring of 2020 I had contacted Michael to ask if he wanted to write something and he mailed me back immediately: "it's already finished". He thought it was such a great idea that he immediately started composing. Stefan's composition took a bit longer since he was working on a commission at that time.
Is there a common thread running through the program?
The cd opens with a work by Salvatore Sciarrino (°1947). That is a classic in contemporary clarinet repertoire. It is also one of my favorite pieces. I often play it as a warm-up before I study other things. It is one of the first clarinet works in which no single normal note is used. It completely departs from the normal way of playing. And that became the starting point of this album.
Let me die before I wake (1982) is based on the book of the same name by Derek Humphry. It is a book about euthanasia and physical suffering. Sciarrino sounds this by creating sounds with resistance. Aesthetically this is very beautiful.
In the program booklet it says that for the recording of this work you went looking for a specific clarinet.
The work was originally written for the Voll-Böhm clarinet — an instrument that can play a semitone lower than the regular B♭ clarinet. In the 1870s they tried to make this clarinet the new standard but after about 100 years it fell out of circulation. Now these are no longer made as standard and are only available from a few small workshops.
I myself have a very good Voll-Böhm clarinet but for this piece I found it too good. It played too easily. The idea of Let me die before I wake is to create resistance. So that didn't fit the concept. I happened to have had a student who came to lessons with such an instrument. So I asked if I could use his instrument and on that instrument I eventually made the recording. In order to search the boundaries of the physical in that way.
With the piece the composer mentions a poem which says that the night is most fruitful for thoughts. So we recorded this work at night. Also with the idea that there would be no noise. But that turned out differently. We made the recording in the chapel in Asse and it is located along the road to the industrial park in Mollem. At night there was the supply of the industry and there were trucks passing all the time. The whole ground trembled. And then it sounded: "That was a good take but there was a truck. Do it again."
We started recording at 11 pm and stopped at 4 am. Because I was done and you can hear that throughout the piece. A fatigue creeps in. In retrospect I'm happy about it because it fits perfectly with the message of the composition. It became a real path of suffering.
Just as illness is accompanied by suffering, this recording was also a suffering.
Yes, and the traditional clarinet sound also dies in this work. At the same time it is reborn in a different way. With new playing techniques and new timbres to explore. That became the common thread throughout the album.
The next piece offers a stark contrast. Sciarrino balances on the edge of the audible. It is very quiet. On the cd the dynamics are of course leveled out. But the next piece refLEction refRAction difFRAction (2016/2019) by Hunjoo Jung (°1982) is normally very loud and in-your-face.
I have collaborated regularly with Hunjoo. We are also good friends with each other. Hunjoo went through a lot during his military service in South Korea and he also processes that in his music. He has created a very distinctive and characteristic musical language.
While I play bass clarinet, my sound is recorded and goes straight to his computer. In real time Hunjoo encodes the software to change my sound. At a live performance you see him typing away vigorously on his computer.
So Jung was present during the recording?
Yes, he actually plays along. It is chamber music. If I play a sound that he finds interesting, he picks it up and plays it later in the piece. And in turn I sometimes imitate his sound. You no longer know which sounds come from me and which come from him.
So every performance is unique because everything happens in the moment itself.
He did create a foundation. It's not free improvisation. There's a score with a defined structure based on modules that I can combine. Within the modules there's a lot of freedom but parameters like dynamics or certain sounds are fixed. It's almost co-composing. It's a completely different way of collaborating.
After Jung's work follows an interesting mirroring that occupies the middle of the cd. In the composition Splitting 47 (2020) by Michael Maierhof you play only with the mouthpiece. While in the work that follows, a reworked version of Split Rudder (2016/2019) by Malin Bång (°1974) the exact opposite happens and you use only the body. Very interesting to place these two compositions back to back as the centre of the cd.
The third work is one of the compositions specially written for this project. Michael's piece uses only the mouthpiece and the neck. Michael often makes his own preparations and he did that here too. He works with plastic cups with nails glued to them. He also gave me a glass ball on a stick (like a magic wand) and I also use a tuning fork. Through the mouthpiece I blow into the cups which makes them resonate. So in addition to the basic sound of the clarinet there's also a second sound source.
Michael experimented for a long time with the sounds he wanted to create. He tested different types of cups for their resonating qualities. He also sent me several to see how differently they responded to my way of playing.
The way Michael composes is completely the opposite of Hunjoo. Michael didn't send me a score but a wave graph with the sound waves. It was composed of his own recorded improvisations which he then cut and pasted together. The recording he sent you then have to try to reproduce as well as possible. You record yourself and compare it with the recording he sent.
It's almost conceptual. Identical can never be of course because you're in a different room, use a different microphone, etc. At first I tried to get as close as possible but we moved away from that. Ultimately the score became a video score with a sort of karaoke line. Dynamics, timing and techniques are defined in it.
Malin is again completely different in her composing. She has a natural and flowing flow. In Split Rudder (2016/2019) she essentially takes away the identity of the instrument — namely the mouthpiece. Much attention goes to the air. You hear a human playing. In that respect somewhat similar to Sciarrino.
Originally the piece was written for Paetzold, a contrabass recorder, and is based on the Swedish ballad Det var Blue Bird av Hull by Evert Taube. Malin doesn't interpret the song literally but conveys the atmosphere of the story, which is about a storm on the. In this recording we focused mainly on the energy of the airflow as well as the details in the sound, such as gradations of noise, pitches and articulations.
There's actually a microphone in the lower part of the instrument. If you play a wind instrument without closing the keys, the air escapes at the top and doesn't reach the microphone. If you play in the lower register, you create a sound bomb.
There's also a little bit of electronics involved. That works with a live looper, where you record fragments and can then replay them later. She had originally integrated it so you could easily turn pages. That was the basic idea, but since then it has grown into a fully-fledged musical element.
And how did the interaction with the composer go to create the version for bass clarinet?
I know Malin very well. She has a group in Sweden, the Curious Chamber Players, where I also play. During a portrait concert of hers Split Rudder was performed on Paetzold. I thought that piece was so great that I asked her if she wanted to make a version for bass clarinet. And then we experimented together to translate the techniques of the Paetzold recorder to clarinet. It's a piece I've played many more times since.
After Split Rudder follows again a completely different sound world with Inhibition Space #2 (2021) by Stefan Prins.
Stefan had already written a piece Inhibition Space #1 (2020) for a trio of bass clarinet, bass flute and English horn. Each musician has a microphone in the instrument and a speaker next to them. This creates feedback that (fortunately) first goes through a computer so it stays under control. I thought that was a really fun piece and had spoken to Stefan about it. He said he wanted to make a series of them, including a version for bass clarinet solo. Since I was working on the idea of the cd, I asked him if he wanted to write that version first.
At that point Stefan was still busy with his concerto for electric guitar but I couldn't wait and started experimenting with the concept.
The original idea was one microphone and one speaker but I found that a bit limited. So it became two microphones and two speakers. This way a microphone could be placed high and low in the instrument, with the speakers always at the same height and directed at each other. So one feedback group influences the other. It creates a kind of ecosystem where the slightest movement provokes a reaction. It's a butterfly effect. Even a pressure change from my fingers on the keys brings about a change in sound. You can barely move without generating a sound.
After I had built the instrument, I experimented with movements and actions. Stefan would then say what he found interesting and pushed me in other directions. Based on that, the score came about. Just before the creation, Stefan made a first score backstage. It consisted of drawings with the actions we had agreed upon.
The last work is again by a South Korean composer. You end the cd with AS LONG AS you LOVE ME(2014/2015) by Ui-Kyung Lee (°1984).
It is entirely by chance that two Korean composers are featured on this cd. I absolutely wanted this work on the cd because with it the circle is actually complete. The instrument is completely taken apart here. The work consists of six parts with each part being played on a different piece of the clarinet. It starts on the barrel and ends in the last part even without the instrument. The part on the barrel is somewhat reminiscent of Helmut Lachenmann.
It does indeed sound like the playful and humorous style that typifies Lachenmann so well. But if you then read the text in the program booklet, there is actually a serious and political meaning behind it.
That is somewhat difficult to say given that the language barrier played a role in this collaboration. I don't speak Korean and Ui-Kyung speaks little English. Based on his explanation it seemed to be about that but I myself am also not completely sure.
The work was originally written for clarinet and keyboard. On the album it is a version for clarinet and tape with sounds and samples being played in stereo from a computer. So in the last part without instrument, sounds of kisses and fish sounds can be heard — the same sounds that I am also making at that moment. It is a dialogue between man and machine.
This work is actually a concentrated version of drifting away from the traditional clarinet sounds.
Indeed. It starts as mentioned on the barrel. The second part also still contains clarinet sounds because of the mouthpiece. From the third part onwards the traditional sound is completely gone. In this part the middle section of the instrument is clamped between two vices and you play the keys like a typist. In each part you actually take a step further away each time. It ends in the humorous last part where I play completely without an instrument but instead I make playful and childish sounds with my mouth. And it is precisely this reduction to an apparently banal, but idiosyncratic material with a positive connotation that can create the space for the emergence of new ideas.
Each work on this cd is characterized by a completely different sound world and completely different composition process.
That is what is interesting about the contemporary composition process. Every composer has his or her own method which results in a unique sound result that is so typical of them. Michael Maierhof who records everything or Hunjoo Jung who codes live: two extremes with everything in between. That was also the aim of the cd. They are all separate spaces. They are all Adjacent Spaces.
WHO: Dries Tack [clarinet, bass clarinet]
WHAT: Adjacent Spaces
LABEL: Orlando Records OR0046
ORDER: JPC