Amsterdam String Trio

The Amsterdam String Trio emerges from Europe's most vibrant improvised music scene: Maurice Horsthuis on viola, Ernst Reijseger on cello, Ernst Glerum on double bass. No violin. An unusual configuration that delivers, as Glerum puts it, "a dark sound, a kind of obscurity, and we like that very much." Three instruments exploring music's lower registers, without the violin's brightness to lead. Recorded live at the Academy of Music of the West in Santa Barbara on December 2, 1988, Wild West captures over seventy minutes of chamber music that escapes all categories. Titles mix Dutch, French, English: "...Vnl. Uit Muziek & Kartonnen Dozen..." (sixteen minutes of journey), "La Tour Qui Chante," "Ghemoeielijk & Makkelijk." Horsthuis, the group's main composer, also writes theater music - and you can hear it in these suites that feel like soundtracks for films not yet made.

Reijseger - future film composer for Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, The White Diamond) - brings his experimental approach: the cello as percussion instrument, sound imitation, constant dialogue. Veteran of Derek Bailey's Company, Misha Mengelberg's ICP Orchestra, winner of the Boy Edgar Prijs in 1985. Glerum, conservatory trained with Concertgebouw Orchestra experience, anchors everything with a singing double bass. Both pillars of the Dutch scene alongside Han Bennink and Mengelberg.

The title plays on multiple levels: Nimbus West, the California Wild West, but also that borderland where chamber music meets improvisation, where Europe converses with America. Three strings in the desert.