In the quiet extremities of contemporary composition, few have ventured as far into the territory of disappearance as Jakob Ullmann. This release documents the simultaneous realization of two works from his remarkable series of Solo pieces - compositions that exist somewhere between notation and performance, between instruction and interpretation, hovering at the very threshold of audibility. Begun in the late 1980s as Ullmann sought to depart from strict Western notational conventions, the Solo series emerged from his experiments with disappearing musics, a piece where independent instrumental groups coordinated only by clock time. The breakthrough came through conversations with John Cage about graphic notation, leading to scores that grant performers unprecedented freedom while maintaining rigorous structural integrity. Each performance becomes a unique version, shaped by the acoustic situation, the specific instruments, and the musician's interpretive decisions.
The score materials resist conventional description. Performers work with colored graphic sheets, sequences of central pitches, complex diagrams of instrumental techniques, and transparent overlays for generating glissandi and multiphonics. The process of preparation involves fixing durations, mapping pitch regions, and determining which sounds can be realized acoustically and which must be supplied through carefully calibrated playback - recordings made specifically for each performance venue and instrument.
Rebecca Lane navigates the demands of Solo I with quarter-tone flutes, while Jon Heilbron's double bass anchors the later Solo IV in darker, more gravitational registers. The music unfolds with extreme softness over nearly fifty minutes, requiring both performers and listeners to recalibrate their relationship to musical time and sonic presence. What emerges is not simply quiet music, but music that questions the boundaries between sound and silence, between composition and ambient environment.
Ullmann's instructions specify that the music should last "at least 45 minutes" and remain "very soft" throughout - parameters that sound simple but prove profoundly challenging in execution. The performers must balance pre-composed elements with real-time decisions, acoustic production with electronic reinforcement, maintaining a delicate equilibrium where any imbalance would collapse the work's carefully constructed fragility.
This recording captures a rare convergence: two pieces from different periods in the Solo series, performed by musicians who have deeply internalized Ullmann's aesthetic of withdrawal and restraint. The result documents not just a performance but a philosophical stance toward sound itself - music that refuses assertion, that exists in a state of perpetual becoming, that asks us to meet it more than halfway in the act of listening.
