Lynn Cassiers and Jozef Dumoulin pay a luminous tribute to the music of the twelfth-century composer, abbess, mystic and poetess Hildegard von Bingen, in a setup of voice with electronics accompanied by pipe organ.
Lynn Cassiers and Jozef Dumoulin have been making music together since over 20 years. But it's a vast and fascinating list of unrelated events that brought them to make this recording, featuring the music of 12th century sage and mystic Hildegard von Bingen.
Yet it feels like an unexpected and vibrant evidence—coming home somewhere else.
The music of Hildegard von Bingen is essentially monodic, made to be performed by a voice and maybe one fixed pedal note played by an instrument. A big part of the work has been to find the right approach and tone for this setup. To see how this melodies resonate today and what they call for, inventing spaces where they can unfold simply. Improvisation played a key role in this process; listening, feeling, dreaming.
A tune of Robert Schumann and Tom Jobim have been added to enhance and stabilise the colours that presented themselves.The result—"Sibyl Of The Rhine"—is an object of a mesmerising beauty, made to be heard over and over. But it's also a clear blueprint and a powerful source for further live reenactments.
Lynn Cassiers and Jozef Dumoulin both established themselves in the realm of contemporary jazz and improvised music. Besides other collaborations they play as a duo called "Lilly Joel", mixing free improvisation with electronics. "Lilly Joel Plays The Organ" is a special edition of the duo with Jozef Dumoulin replacing his usual electronic setup by the ancient pipe organ, an instrument he played extensively as a teenager.
Quoted to be “one of the most remarkable voices of our improvisation scene” (enola), Lynn Cassiers (born 1984 in Antwerp, Belgium) has his own universe which covers a wide diversity of styles. Lynn is recognizable by her songlike approach in contexts that can range from noise over ambient to free jazz. She's part of impro-rock band Tape Cuts Tape on the sides of ex-dEUS guitarist
Rudy Trouvé and improv-jazz drummer
Eric Thielemans, and also performs with her solo project The Bird, the Fish and the Ball. Besides writing music for theatre and her various collaborations with great artists and ensembles such as Marshall Allen, Octurn and The Brussels Jazz Orchestra, she is a steady member in different bands on the actual music scene of Western Europe.
Jozef Dumoulin (born 1975 in Izegem, Belgium, lives and works in Paris) is known for his open and luminous approach to the piano and to music in general, always anchored in tradition without being burdened by it. Besides the Fender Rhodes solo, his own projects include The Red Hill Orchestra (a trio with Ellery Eskelin and Dan Weiss) and a duo with Benoît Delbecq. Highly-demanded as a sideman, Jozef Dumoulin has recorded and toured with the finest of musicians in the domain of jazz, improvised music, rock and traditional music.
See also
Jozef Dumoulin.
