Lotte Anker Rodrigo Pinheiro Hernani Faustino ‎- Birthmark (2013)

Improvised music is one of the few fields where something like this can happen: having a new band with people we never imagined togetherand better still considering that the attempted combination results in something as astonishing as this studio recording. While listening to “Birthmark”the firstimmediateimpression we have is that the association of Lotte Anker with pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro and double bassist HernГўni Faustino makes all the sense. More: that it was written in the sky. If there was a common characteristic inviting to turn a reality this reunion of the Danish superb saxophonist with the two Portuguese members of the much acclaimed RED Trioit gets brilliantly evident in the music played here. Let’s call it “intensity”.

All the three of them are intense musicians. And take notice: intensityheredoesn’t mean they function as an elephant in a porcelain store. Sometimes it seems soindeedbut there’s also intensity when they restrain themselveschoosing to be subtle and meticulous in their static and very spatial group improvisations. There’s intensity even when AnkerPinheiro and Faustino lower the amount of notes produced and are more concerned with the maintenance of fluid atmospheres. Only density gives nuance to the shared power of the triogoing from the most transparent textures to the opaque mixing of several layers of soundwith all the dynamics in between.

If you liked Anker’s flights with Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaveryou’re certainly going to discover in this CD other good motives to keep her as a favorite horn playerand if the poetic abstractions of RED Trio with John Butcher and Nate Wooley made you happyhere is more material coming from the same mindset and the same sensibility to the here-and-now. Enjoy.