Iva Bittová – Iva Bittová (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 41:47 minutes | 508 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM Records GmbH
Iva Bittova is the acclaimed Czech singer/performer/composer’s beautifully self-titled solo debut for ECM. This unique work expresses the essence of Bittova’s craft and explores the deep relationship between the violin and her voice. The pieces here, modestly-titled “Fragments I-XII” resist definition. An idiosyncratic ‘folk’ music, contemporary composition, improvisation, any and all of these may apply from moment to moment. Her music is lively and revolutionary.
Czech singer/player/composer Iva Bittová has said: “The violin is a mirror reflecting my dreams and imagination. I believe there are fundamentals to my performance, such as the music’s vibration and resonance between violin and my voice.” That relationship is beautifully explored on this album – recorded at Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano, and produced by Manfred Eicher – which expresses the essence of Bittova’s unique and extraordinary solo work. The pieces here, modestly-titled ‘Fragments I-XII’ resist definition. An idiosyncratic ‘folk’ music, contemporary composition, improvisation, any and all of these may apply from moment to moment. Bittová’s music is a living, changing thing: “Deciding on a name for my style of music is far from over yet”. Iva Bittová was previously showcased in 2007 on the widely-acclaimed ECM album “Mater” by composer Vladimír Godár. This eponymously-titled disc now marks her solo debut for the label.
Iva Bittová’s self-titled album for ECM is almost literally impossible to describe, let alone categorize. For listeners, this is a dream come true in an age when music is chopped and parsed into blurry genres and micro genres — and to be fully accountable in our descriptor tags accompanying the review, we are equally guilty — they cannot contain her music. She plays violin (bows, strums, plucks, and gently hammers its strings), kalimba, and sings. The music consists of 12 “fragments,” all but one composed by Bittová. While she has always used the folk music of her Moravian culture (stringed instruments) rather than that of Czech culture (brass and percussion), she uses it as a single referential element in an expansive musical world view that includes classical music, avant-garde, and improvisational elements. But she proves too mercurial to be boxed in by any of them. “Fragment I” commences with a kalimba and her voice in something approaching a lullaby, though it contains drama and desire. On “Fragments VII,” her vocal reaches, glides, and nearly soars in a haunting, nearly whimsical incantation, but her violin, with its roundness and warmth, gently binds it to the earth. In “Fragments VI,” she adapts a melody by composer Joaquin Rodrigo, and combines it with lyrics by Gertrude Stein and Chris Cutler. The piece is performed a cappella; the hint of reverb on her vocal and her intentional rounding of syllables make those lyrics nearly indecipherable. What remains is the simple beauty of pure sound that inhabits the ground between ancient folk music, Byzantine chant, and the open-voiced articulation of the language of the human heart. “Fragments VIII” is driven by her violin, which uses classical, Moravian, and Romany folk traditions. The instrument’s vibrations, via her bowed and hammered trills (the latter akin to those of a muted cimbalom) and drones, offer a dirge so mesmerizing and spacious that when her voice enters, haltingly at first, creating a more modern song form, it is almost, but not quite, jarring for a moment before it, too, becomes part of that dreamy equation. The kalimba returns on “Fragments XII.” The lullaby theme is again articulated, but syncopated, stretched, and intoned more deeply, sans drama, with only a sense of implied resolution sending the recording off into the silence gently, yet not passively. While there is no doubting the sophisticated musicality in the wonderfully strange and accessibly charming sparseness of this album, ultimately, her “Fragments I-XII” are just as close to the mercurial root of unbridled poetry itself. As such, Iva Bittová is the stuff of enigma. –AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
Tracklist:
01. Iva Bittová – Fragments I (02:58)
02. Iva Bittová – Fragments II (02:10)
03. Iva Bittová – Fragments III (03:35)
04. Iva Bittová – Fragments IV (02:10)
05. Iva Bittová – Fragments V (02:59)
06. Iva Bittová – Fragments VI (03:46)
07. Iva Bittová – Fragments VII (07:19)
08. Iva Bittová – Fragments VIII (01:53)
09. Iva Bittová – Fragments IX (03:06)
10. Iva Bittová – Fragments X (04:55)
11. Iva Bittová – Fragments XI (03:48)
12. Iva Bittová – Fragments XII (03:04)
