At this point in his career, Oxford-born pianist, organist and composer Alexander Hawkins really needs little introduction. A virtuosic improviser who can draw on seemingly infinite musical frame of reference, each of his half dozen or so recordings for the Zürich-based Intakt Records has been strikingly different.
This duet with Swedish / Ethiopian-born singer Sofia Jernberg is no exception, and the music, recorded in Stockholm in September 2023, has its roots in a 2016 encounter at an improvised music ‘Meeting’ at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis. Both artists share a longstanding interest in Ethiopian music, Hawkins via his lengthy association with Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke and Jernberg both through her cultural bonds and her collaborations with keyboardist Hailu Mergia. Yet great improvisers are rarely constrained by genre, and Hawkins and Jernberg tap into a variety of traditions to create a music that is unmistakably their own. David Toop’s thoughtful liner-notes explain that “Musho” is an old Amharic word describing songs of mourning, sometimes involving socio-political commentary. He invites us to reflect on the themes of displacement, home and cross-cultural seepage, and in many respects this music is a living embodiment of those eternally relevant
questions.
Drawing on folk songs from Ethiopia, Armenia, Sweden and England, but whatever the milieu Hawkins and Jernberg invariably discover the connecting threads. The songs are frequently riven with anguish, and Jernberg’s extraordinary vocal range and extended techniques take free rein as she explores their every nuance. Hawkins matches her every move, his dark chords creating instant gravity on opening “Adwa”, a battle song celebrating the repulsion of Italian colonisers from the town in 1896. As Jernberg’s cries become ever more passionate, the intensity of the unfolding drama is as exhilarating as it is crushing.
“Mannelig” by contrast takes us to Sweden to re-tell a dark folktale, and the juxtaposition of Jernberg’s crystalline melodic purity and Hawkins’ fractured accompaniment is utterly spellbinding. “Gigi’s Lament” has a crepuscular feel, the soft piano preparations setting the mood before Jernberg’s splintering voice pushes the music towards more abstract realms. “Groung” is a relatively conventional lament, a haunting piece from Armenia, and as Toop explains it is evidence of a long tradition of cultural exchange between Ethiopia and the West Asian territory. The echoes of the blues on the deeply spiritual “Y’shebellu” introduces a whole new raft of trans-continental connections, while Jernberg’s “Correct Behaviour” oscillates between serenity and something altogether more raw, her shattering birdsong raising hairs on the back of the neck.
The brevity of “Willow, Willow”, an old ballad from Elizabethan England, is more than outweighed by its emotional heft, while the closing “Muziqawi Silt”, an Ethio-jazz classic forever associated with Girma Bèyènè, positively bristles with energy and movement. As the duo’s free exchanges dissolve into a ghostly prepared piano coda, it is the perfect ending to a wonderfully inventive and sui generis collection.
