Paul Zetter – Subliminal Stimuli after the Rain

Our jazz reviewer discovers a group of experimental musicians finding balance in sound and beauty in silence.

Last Saturday night at the intimate Cheo Theatre in Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street, Hanoi art lovers were treated to some contemporary music that fused together past and present, body and soul, East and West, and musician with audience in a way that few manage to achieve in these days of seemingly constant cut and paste ‘cultural exchange’. It felt like dreamtime after the storm as the group produced some of the most sublime music I’ve heard for a while.

It felt like dreamtime after the storm

Led by Vietnam’s foremost contemporary musician Kim Ngoc and her exciting new Dom Dom experimental music education initiative, a core group of leading Vietnamese instrumentalists including:

SonX (percussion),

Dee. F (electronics),

Viet Hong (dan tranh)

Nguyen Hong Quang (dan nhi/tinh),

and Gentle Ohm aka Josh Kopecek (electronics)

were joined by leading Danish saxophonist, Lotte Anker. The concert title; ‘In The Moment’, was a fitting descriptor for the improvised music that followed.

As quietly, the musicians started each piece with a personal exploration of the shape, form and resonance of their own instrument, almost imperceptibly their individual tones fused into one conversation, forming a deeply collective musical experience of sounds made and imagined, breaths in- and exhaled. When Kim Ngoc on ‘voice’ formed a trio with dan bau and saxophone, her breathing formed the connection between reed and string, effortlessly moving in and out of their shared dissonance, making ensemble music of great etherial beauty.

forming a deeply collective musical experience of sounds made and

imagined, breaths in- and exhaled

Lotte Anker, whom I came to admire for her more jazz influenced work, is a musician of breath and meditation.  Her tone seems to emanate from deep inside, the slight delay between her blowing into the instrument and the sound coming from it both enticing and haunting. Switching between soprano and alto, which had more of her jazz inflection, the final piece built up momentum around a vamp by Kim Ngoc on hammered piano as the conversation deepened in complexity and tonal colour. Underpinned by SonX’s rhythmic hands on drum, the dignity and democracy of the group was evident in every shared, unjudged sound.

as the conversation deepened in complexity and tonal colour

And as the piece, as with all the pieces that evening, came to a conclusion, it was as if an invisible spirit guided each musician to find their own personal and collective ending – their convergence towards silence was so full of musical grace that I felt connected to their thoughts and feelings in a way that only comes when music is made from the body and soul and silence and sound have equal value.  In one final moment during a soaring electronics and sax trio piece, Anker seemed to come to an end but wasn’t quite sure – Kopecek looked at her to check -then, after a moment’s reflection, she confirmed, yes, it was the end in that moment. It was just one of several illuminating insights that underlined the deep improvisational nature of the music.

As the ebb and flow of each musical conversation gently shifted between traditional Vietnamese instruments, sax, drum, voice, piano and beautifully subtle electronics, I felt the musicians span the reach of culture and time, borrowing from past traditions, some of which are enshrined in that theatre, and creating new ones for the future.

I felt the musicians span the reach of culture and time

And as my son slept next to me, his head resting on my shoulder, gently rising and falling with his breath, I felt a connection to his dreams and found myself hoping that in his future the gentle ring of a cymbal in SonX’s hands or the simple strumming of strings in Viet Hong’s will be valued as much as breath itself.

Photographs courtesy of Dom Dom