Sebastian Gramss

Thinking of … is a homage to the Italian double bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio, who died in 2012. Sebastian Gramss gathered eleven double bass players of very different styles, each recorded separately in their own country. He then assembled their parts into a ten-part suite, followed by eleven solos and a duo with Scodanibbio himself.

Scodanibbio was born in Macerata in 1956 and died in Cuernavaca on 8 January 2012; Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi and Terry Riley were among his collaborators. Gramss, born in Wilhelmshaven in 1966, produced the album and plays on it with Barry Guy, Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips, Mark Dresser and others. The recordings were made with ten sound engineers between January and February 2014, in seven countries: Japan, the USA, France, Norway, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. Guy recorded at Studio Central in Uster, Léandre at Fou-Records near Paris, Tetsu Saitoh at Izuruba in Tokyo and Håkon Thelin at NOTAM in Oslo. Martin Schmidt mixed and mastered the album at Spielraumstudio in Heiligenwald.

Because he could not predict what each player would contribute, Gramss wrote no long continuous composition. He built a set of short combinable modules instead, and connected them after recording. This suite, from A Catena through Macchina Basso and Moto Perpetuo to Soffermiamoci, both leans on Scodanibbio's music and pushes double bass playing further. The second part gives each player about three minutes of solo, including Guy's Outside-Inside, Léandre's For Stefano, Phillips's Tocarme and Thelin's h-Moll / D-Dur. The album ends with Virtù, a previously unpublished duo of Scodanibbio and Gramss recorded live at the Altstadtherbst Festival in Düsseldorf in September 2008.

Scodanibbio co-founded and directed the double bass ensemble Ludus Gravis, and many composers wrote for him, from Iannis Xenakis and Brian Ferneyhough to Salvatore Sciarrino. The solos here show how widely his approach to the instrument travelled, through jazz, free improvisation and contemporary music. The booklet carries texts by Gramss, Nina Polaschegg, Julio Estrada and Ana Lakčević, who also co-produced the album.

CD, Wergo WER 8052 2, released in 2014 in the WERGO Colours series, total time 70:03.