As if the stormy years had passed Hayden Chisholm & Philip Zoubek

• 1 Pity for One’s Self 04:45
• 2 Oriental Song 03:26
• 3 Song of the Molokans 02:40
• 4 As if the Stormy Years Had Passed 04:27
• 5 Tibetan Melody 00:57
• 6 Persian Dance 02:30
• 7 Women’s Prayer 04:12
• 8 Song of the Fisherwomen 03:51
• 9 Laudamus 03:46
• 10 Greek Melody 02:20
• 11 Kurd Medley from Isfahan 02:24
• 12 Greek Melody 2 00:59
• 13 Hindu Melody 03:02
• 14 Sayyid Chant and Dance 03:10
• 15 Readings from a Sacred Book 02:34
• 16 When Gafar and Zeinab Walk in a Somnambulistic State 02:39
• Total Runtime 47:42

Info for As if the stormy years had passed

Hayden has a book containing many markings and notes collected from "a bespectacled man’s scribbles on a night in Central Asia". The lines have been straightened and the form polished, but the melodic essence of that encounter in Central Asia is preserved. He and Philip have explored the contents of that ragged book for well over a decade, picking out nuggets and turning them inside out in their many improvisations. The melodies etched themselves into their shared musical memory, so that when they play now, these motifs and phrases regularly emerge as new and fantastic forms.

This album is a collection of concentrated works that reflect the qualities, delicacies, and often transcendental spirit that informs this duo’s unique, beautifully poetic musical interactions.

He and Philip have explored the contents of that ragged book for well over a decade, picking out nuggets and turning them inside out in their many improvisations. The melodies etched themselves into their shared musical memory, so that when they play now, these motifs and phrases regularly emerge as new and fantastic forms. This album is a collection of concentrated works that reflect the qualities, delicacies, and often transcendental spirit that informs this duo’s unique, beautifully poetic musical interactions.

Hayden Chisholm, alto saxophone, kōauau
Philip Zoubek, prepared piano

Recorded 15/16 July 2021 in Loft Cologne by Stefan Deistler
Mixed by Pedja Avramovic
Mastered by Seán Mac Erlaine at Studio Sáile, Dublin
Produced by Hayden Chisholm and Philip Zoubek

Hayden Chisholm
is a New Zealand saxophonist and composer. After studying in Cologne with a DAAD scholarship he continued his music studies in Japan in India. In 1995 he developed a new microtonal system he termed "split scales" for saxophone which he revealed on his debut solo CD "Circe". Since then his compositions have been recorded by BBC and WDR radios and he has toured and recorded extensively worldwide. He has created music for several Rebecca Horn installations as well as composing scores for her films. In 2008 he was assistant director in the Salzburger Festspiele. He has taught at Universities throughout the world and gives yearly master classes in Greece. He curates the annual Plushmusic festival in Cologne and Bremen. In 2013 he released the 13 Box Set "13 Views of the Heart's Cargo" and received the German SWR Jazz Prize. In 2015 he was "Improvisor in Residence" in Moers and opened the Moers Jazz Festival. In 2016 he released his second 13CD box "Cusp of Oblivion" on the Moontower Foundation Edition and directed his first short film "Sisyphus Runs".

Hayden has contributed to three Rattle releases: Small Holes in the Silence (with Norman Meehan and Hannah Griffin, 2016), Unwind and Orange (with Norman Meehan and Paul Dyne, 2017, 2018).

Philip Zoubek
born 1978 in Tulln / Austria, lives and works in Cologne as pianist and composer. At the centre of his multifaceted musical work lies »sound exploration«, consistently testing the dimensions of the prepared piano as well as the full potential of analogue synthesizers.

Zoubek collaborates with Frank Gratkowski, Wilbert de Joode, Thomas Lehn, Clayton Thomas and Paul Lytton. He has played concerts at the Konzerthaus Vienna, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, at moers festival, Ullrichsberger Kaleidophon and GetItLouder Festival Shanghai/Beijing.

In 2008, he was awarded the Horst and Gretl Will Scholarship by the city of Cologne. In 2020 he was awarded the WDR Jazz Prize Composition.

As Philip Zoubek wrote, it is his desire “to think, realise and communicate his music within a broader musical horizon”. This sounds logical and stringent for a musician who was born in Tulln in Lower Austria in 1978 and has been on a piano stool since the age of 5. Only eleven years later, Zoubek explored new perspectives and expanded his horizon as a young student at the Conservatory of the City of Vienna and later at the Vienna University of Music.

Initially it was all about the piano and taking his first steps out into the big world along the guard rails of Blues. Before long, he felt that what could be learned from music labelled as Jazz was too schematic, formulaic, too confining. Philip Zoubek was ready to look beyond stylistic boundaries. In Cologne, he found what he was looking for. The jazz course at the HMT was stylistically open and, with teachers such as John Taylor and Hans Lüdemann, Dieter Manderscheid and Bill Dobbins, the course also warranted for an open-mindedness in many directions, toward traditional and modern Jazz, toward various styles of free improvisation, all the way to New and Electronic Music. And, the young Cologne scene was really diverse and abundant at that time, open to experiments and musical shifts, open to confrontation and friction, allowing for a smooth transition from student to professional level – an absolute treasure trove for a musician who is all about expanding his musical horizon.

Philip Zoubek’s multifaceted music, where improvisation and composition meet, is centred around ‘sound research’, aka working on an expanded array of sounds extending into the realm of noise, with a horizon far beyond what can be played on traditional instruments and traditional techniques. While he explores the dimensions of his prepared piano just as consistently as the potential of analogue synthesizers, he is also interested to overcome the structural separation of composed and improvised components in his music. The intention is that they should merge into one another, seamlessly, and result in music that is both composed and improvised at the same time, or at least could be. During his collaborations with internationally distinguished representatives of various European schools of improvisation such as Wilbert de Joode, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Frank Gratkowski or Franz Hautzinger, or during his collaboration with Niels Klein, with whom he prepared his trio music for the WDR Big Band on the occasion of the WDR Jazz Prize for Composition in spring 2020, it is evident how far Philip Zoubek has expanded his musical horizon beyond the world of stylistic definitions, conventional distinctions and categories.

This album contains no booklet.