- Joe Fonda - bass, voice
- Xu Fengxia - guzheng, voice
- Happy Chinaman 12:39
- Journey Into The Desert 13:01
- Underwater Market Selling Clocks 17:59
- Monastery On The Peak Of A Glacier 9:29
- Some Silent Movies 8:19
| Discography of Joe Fonda | 1999 |
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Lineup
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Recorded in May 1999 at the Bunker, Ulmenwall, Bielefeld, Germany.
Released in 2000 by Leo Records [LeoLab 069]
| This CD can be ordered at the → Online Shop |
Xu Fengxia's guzheng has 21 strings.
Their pitch is defined by the position of the bridges.(the wooden triangle things in the middle).
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CD Reviews
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December 1, 2000 by Nils Jacobson for All About Jazz This brand new disc documents a May '99 collaboration between New York bassist Fonda and Shanghai guzheng player Fengxia. (The performance, oddly enough, took place in Germany. The guzheng is a stringed instrument resembling the koto.) The ironic title of Distance refers to both the geography and the musical conception behind this disc. Given their relatively brief collaboration, these two players have a remarkable intuitive understanding of each other's approach to the music. For the most part, Fengxia takes the lead, directing changes in style, dynamics, and tempo. Each player brings a distinct personal collection of ideas to the plate. Fonda, who has at various points in his career steeped himself in straightahead jazz, the blues, and the avant garde, pursues a on-and-off combination of all three. His bass playing is pulsing and understated, avoiding the busy approach that generally characterizes bass playing on solo and duo records. He tends toward a rhythmic plucking approach, avoiding the bow, and inserts plenty of legato vocals. Fengxia, who has a similarly eclectic range, also brings a great helping of traditional Chinese music to the plate. If you can imagine a Shanghai musical conception with touches of a rockin' groove on top, you've captured the essence of much of her playing. Unlike Fonda, who tends to exclusively perform either vocals or bass, Fengxia demonstrates a capacity to vocalize and play at the same time. (Perhaps a relic of her experience in rock bands.) The fundamental question with this recording (like any cross-cultural, cross-stylistic experiment) is whether there are enough sympathetic vibrations to make it work. On Distance, the answer is a definite yes. Of course, the listener must be prepared for some peculiar combinations of sound, as well as some abrupt changes of course during the improvisation. An open-minded listener will find this record offers much novelty and depth. And it's strikingly well-recorded, with attention to bass extension and dynamics. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 AllAboutJazz.com and Nils Jacobson. All reviews written by Nils Jacobson: |
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By Richard Cochrane for Musings Fonda-Stevens Group: Live at the Bunker Joe Fonda & Xu Fengxia: Distance Joe Fonda is a powerful, technically facilitous bassist whose presence on the American jazz scene continues to grow. He's ne of those people who speaks of jazz as "the music"; an old-fashioned jazzman, in other words, albeit an unusually catholic one. Like his sometime employer Anthony Braxton, he's excited about the whole of jazz, and although the music his qaurtet plays on Live At The Bunker can be angular and freewheeling, it's rarely "free jazz" per se. Opening with a sweet, beautifully-handled post-bop ballad worthy of Clifford Brown, the group sets out its stall as a proper jazz band, with proper chord changes and cool, smouldering solos. This opener is one of three compositions contributed by the pianist — the other three are Fonda's. Stevens's Don't Go Baby is a funky modal piece strongly reminiscent of Miles, but Haiku has a mysterious, undulating quality which feels rather unique, with Smoker sounding like a rather sultry Freddie Hubbard, then transforming himself for a beautifully tremulous duet with Fonda arco. All three pieces are strong, but they're as different as can be, which seems to be a part of what this group is about. The bass player's own compositions are more spikey affairs, wih sharp corners all over the place, liberally peppered with free sections but always structured. The opening of "Circle" shows him to be an accomplished soloist, too, with that rare ability to create drama and old the attention on an instrument which seems sometimes insufficiently declamatory for such a purpose. The band throughout prove themselves to be unspeakably swinging. Smoker on the aforementioned "Circle" almost catches fire, but elsewhere he smooches up to the mike and plays fine ballad solos. Stevens really does seem to have whole swathes of the jazz tradition under his fingers (apparently he cites Evans and Taylor as influences, as if rather self-consciously making a poitn, but it's a valid point anyway). Sorgen is a swinger, but his free playing is capable and supportive, finding sensible and proactive things to do in an environment in which most straightish jazz drummers often flounder. Fonda, throughout, is a monster, as he is on Distance; and a more different record you culd hardly hope to ask for. Quite what kind of music this duo plays is something of a mystery, but it's infectious, exciting and barrels of fun. The guzheng sounds like some kind of silk-stringed koto, perhaps tuned down a little because the strings sound loose and floppy, and are open to being bent up some considerable distance by means of pressure on the opposite side of the bridge. Xu plays it with rhythmic fervous, making it shudder and shimmer with a kind of elasticated bounce. Fonda leaps into the fray, pushing the pulse home where there is one, revelling in the freedom when there isn't. Xu has a melodic side, too, as evidenced in the opeing of A Journey Into The Desert, in which her notes seem to curl up off the soundboard, twist in the air for a moment and then expire. The results can be breathtakingly gorgeous, but there's always a sense of mischievous fun in this music which never quite lets it get too serious. Highly recommended. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 Richard Cochrane. All reviews written by Richard Cochrane: |
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June 9, 2003 by Ken Waxman for Jazzword THE NEW FLAGS JOE FONDA/XU FENGXIA There may be more than one billion people in China, including a goodly collection of pop music stars and classical music interpreters, but so far the country has yet to produce one major — or even middling — free improviser. By sheer force of numbers and the society's gradual liberalization, that lack will eventually be rectified. But right now, at least on the evidence of these CDs, the person coming closest to the ideal is Xu Fengxia, the Shanghai-born guzheng player who has lived in Germany since 1991. Proficient enough in her playing of a group of traditional stringed instruments to be a soloist with the Shanghai Orchestra for Chinese Music, the conservatory-trained Xu also played in a Chinese rock band. Following her move to Europe she collaborated with players who combine traditional Chinese music, jazz and contemporary New music, and worked with the late German improv bassist Peter Kowald. Erudite in many styles, she can adapt her 25 string chamber instrument to different circumstances and hold her own with some of the most accomplished improvisers. DISTANCE captures a one-off meeting with America bassist Joe Fonda, while the New Flags is a cooperative group she has joined. Her partners in it are German multi-reedist Wolfgang Fuchs, best known for his leadership of the King Übü Orchestrü, and British percussionist Roger Turner whose playing partners have ranged from German synthesizer player Thomas Lehn and American bassist/synthesizer player Alan Silva to outlandish British vocalist Phil Minton. Familiarity with outlandish vocal techniques serves him in good steed here, since Xu sometimes vocalizes while she plays. With echoes of Tuvan vocalist Sainko Namtchylak and Peking operatic divas, not to mention improv eccentrics like Ellen Christi and Lauren Newton in her voice, most of the time you're unsure whether she's rhyming words or merely sounding syllables. Through these peaks and valleys she moans soulfully at times, peeps bird-like elsewhere and sometimes harmonizes with her axe. Instrumental sounds are on tap too, of course, in New Flags's first two tracks that each hover around the 24 minute mark, and in an almost nine minute coda. Multi-stringed and multi-toned, the guzheng can take on the properties of many Western instruments. That means that during the course of a tune like "Lichtvögel", she slide from correct harp glissandos to string bass pummeled low notes and rhythm making, to what could be acoustic 12-string guitar flat-picking and strumming. Contrast this with Turner minutely working away on a bell tree, bopping his snare with a single stroke, getting a campfire sizzle from his cymbals or dragging a stick over a metallic, abrasive surface. Additionally, split tone and tongue slaps enliven Fuchs' modus operandi. But how he moves from wheezing sopranino squeaks and duck calls to burbling underwater blasts on his contrabass clarinet within seconds is a feat for the record books. There are points where the chugging lower tones provide an aural perch for Xu's bird-like cries and others where her orgasmic soprano wails are drowned beneath unvarying circular breathing from the bass clarinetist and percussion sounds that suggest bells, thunder sheets, or Turner lost in a warehouse filled with tin cans and garbage can lids. On this tune and the other twos, Xu doesn't neglect the Orientlaisms her instrument can produce either. Though it is possible that a traditionalist would be as confused by her improvised, instrumental forays as her voice. On "Wellenflug", for instance, it ranges from serene lullaby syllables to a weird admixture of operatic and throat singing that could as easily be Arabic, Inuit or Sephardic as Chinese. Meanwhile Fuchs bites off sharp notes from his horns or puffs out a continuous drone of notes. Interaction is such that when that happens she mimic his tones vocally or with strings, the percussionist trumps them both with a speeding train rhythm, the click of wooden stick upon wooden stick, or something that sounds like rolling dice. Elsewhere, Woodwind triple tonguing, whistles and multiphonics lead her to gibber out what sounds like tongue twisters, or turn dramatic so that she seems to be acting out many roles in different voices. Recorded more than three years earlier, DISTANCE finds Xu less vocal than she would be later on. But, paradoxically, perhaps because it's an American with whom she's interacting, her instrumental work takes on the characteristics of mountain string bands, with hints of Appalachian banjos as pronounced as sounds from the Han or Ming dynasty. Fonda is also an out-and-out jazzer, unlike her European partners, so he's able to adapt the Orientalisms to improv time, and have his bass hits in both mid- and low-range. This is most apparent on "A Journey into the Desert", where the echoing plucks of the guzheng reconstitute themselves as clawhammer banjo runs, while he creates a slap bass line that wouldn't have been out of place in Duke Ellington's Jungle band. Wonder if Wellman Braud ever made it to Shanghai? His solos get darker, buzzier and lower when she plays enhanced Far Eastern and higher pitched notes. However, when she sings out melismic drones of repetitive syllables it appears to be a weird version of the sort of mountain blues someone like Dock Boggs recorded in the 1920s, and her string bending reflects his playing too. Meanwhile the bassist holds down the bottom with la note juste. "Underwater Market Selling Clocks", the longest track here at nearly 18 minutes, extends these parallels still further. At first her plinking and plucking in several timbres and pitches at once sounds like what you would have heard from an early 20th century orchestra of fiddles, banjoukes and harps. Then Fonda's rhythmic thumping gets her to approximate swing. Soon both string players are pulling circular lines back and forth as if they were the dual guitars of Doc and Merle Watson or perhaps Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson. Fonda produces a whistling sound from stroking the highest strings in the highest pitch on his bull fiddle, as Xu flails away in the broad brush strokes of an Appalachian banjo player. Is it any wonder that often when she vocalizes here she probably unknowingly duplicates cowboy yodels and the high lonesome sound of Old Timey music? Sometimes, Instrumentally, Xu sounds like an Oriental string orchestra playing the Peter Gunn theme, elsewhere Fonda turns his bass into a percussion instrument, rhythmically banging it like a conga drum for modulated emphasis. Should he produce walking bass lines, she created tones and harp glissses. And there are times when both forget themselves in the activity long enough so that her nonsense syllables are joined by his groaning in unison with his bass forays. At times, both players seem to be able to finger pick backward, and the disc ends with a flourish. After his modern jazz line intersects her nursery rhyme pattern, there's a pause and she terminates with a steel string crescendo. When it was invented about 220 B.C. guzheng craftsmen never imagined that the string set would be used in 21st century improv. But those who fashioned the Western string instruments later on would probably be equally as shocked as well. That's the strength of free music, especially as on these discs when Chinese impulses are mixed with those from North America or Continental Europe. THE NEW FLAGS Reprinted with kind permission of the author. Copyright © 2006 Jazzword and Ken Waxman. All reviews written by Ken Waxman:
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Rui Eduardo Paes Mais um encontro do jazz contemporâneo e da música asiática sob o signo da experimentação de novas situações. O contrabaixista americano e a executante chinesa de guzheng não procuram entrar no território do outro, adoptando estratégias de "intercâmbio cultural" que só poderiam soar a falso e parecerem forçadas. Em vez disso, o ponto de encontro entre os dois intervenientes é proporcionado pelos seus próprios instrumentos - é a exploração das possibilidades técnicas e expressivas destes, por vezes até aos limites ("a liberdade denuncia a sua propensão para os extremos", lemos nas notas que acompanham o disco), que lhes permite encontrar factores de relacionamento. De resto, se a improvisação é já por si uma espécie de "língua franca", os cordofones são uma grande família, sendo menores as diferenças regionais do que a identidade comum. Um belo trabalho, com títulos desconcertantes nas suas peças como "Underwater Market Selling Clocks". Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 Rui Eduardo Paes. All reviews written by Rui Eduardo Paes: |
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François Couture for All Music Guide Up to the year 2000, Distance is Joe Fonda's most experimental and simply unusual recording. It is also one of his most powerful projects. The jazz bassist performs duets with Xu Fengxia, who plays the guzheng, a traditional Chinese instrument closely related to the Japanese koto. Two traditions meet harmoniously in Distance, each musician bringing an extended vocabulary to the other's improvising style, enhanced by the use of the voice. Fonda always "sang" his lines in the background (he can be heard through his instrument's pickup on most of his recordings) but here he uses his voice as a complementary form of expression, producing entrancing Tibetan-like drones on "A Journey Into the Desert," the album's best moment. Fengxia's vocal approach is somewhere between Asian tradition and the contemporary experiments of Sainkho Namtchylak. If a jazz frame can be felt in the groove of the bass on "Happy Chinaman," everything else on Distance sounds out of time and space, providing a unique experience for the adventurous listener. Fans of the Fonda-Stevens Group will be puzzled, but as long as they're a bit open-minded, there is enough stellar bass playing here to captivate them also. Strongly recommended. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 All Media Guide, LLC and François Couture. All reviews written by François Couture: |
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Anonymous for JazzoSphère Joe Fonda fourmille de projets. Il aime participer à des formations différentes. Différentes par les musiciens qui les composent et par la musique qui s'y joue. Cette curiosité, ce besoin de côtoyer et de prendre part à des entreprises multiples donnent au jeu qu'il développe une grande richesse et provoquent des improvisations aux saveurs sans cesse renouvelées. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 JazzoSphère. |
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