Sofa Music is proud to add the powerhouse flutist Alessandra Rombolà to its ranks with Out of the Playground, documenting Rombolà’s latest commissions and collaborations for solo flute and electronics with composers Daniela Terranova, Jan Martin Smørdal, Ingar Zach, and Lasse Marhaug. The album’s five contributions, drawing on Rombolà’s polyvalent musical background, are united in their mission to venture “out of the playground” of scenes and genres, as Rombolà puts it. Across these incisive, exploratory works, Rombolà’s impassioned performances convey fresh visions of freedom and discovery.

Opening the album is the Norwegian composer Jan Martin Smørdal (b. 1978)’s Répétitions II, followed later by Répétitions I (both 2020). These works enlist the addcoder—an audio device, developed by the composer in collaboration with the Norwegian Center for Art and Technology (Notam), that can simultaneously record, amplify, and play back—in two studies of iteration. The flutist begins both with a phrase that, through the addcoder, she is to try and repeat exactly. The device layers these attempts, and, in time, wrangles an avalanche of iterations. In character, the two Répétitions are diametric—the first languid, the second practically carbonated, built on a short, effervescent phrase that Rombolà improvised during a technical mishap. These “sonic sculptures,” as Smørdal describes them, grow their contours from minute variations; in the slight space from one iteration to the next, there is a portal. With the superlative contribution of Giuseppe Ielasi (recording, mixing and mastering)

CD is a 6 panel digipack. Lovely design by Stephen O'Malley and beautiful artwork by Chiara Caredda.