Frido Ter Beek - Cuentos de Lo Profundo (2020)

A new album by Frido ter Beek, saxophonist and Dutch composer based in Argentina. This time it is the record of improvised duets in the studio with Ernesto Snajer, Sebastián de Urquiza and Mariano Agustoni.

It would be necessary to do the test, if possible, to listen to this complete album blindly, without looking at the names of the tracks or seeing the illustrations of the graph. A complicated task because, whoever has the object in their hands will have seen at least the cover and part of the interior to remove the CD. In any case, you can try this experience on someone else: make him listen to everything without suggesting a frame. Because it is really suggestive how Frido ter Beek takes us to a very deep place, a region that we did not know in which everything is calm and serenity.

This is an album made without "any plan", as the Dutch saxophonist (sorry, from the Netherlands) lies a bit in the short text he put inside the digipack. Because entering the studio and improvising is also a work plan. They are all duets, plus some very short dividers where he experiments bending himself or playing with textures. Three hours were recorded, after which the thirteen tracks of this 45-minute album were left.

It is improvisation without a prior plan, but it is not free jazz. The deep places where the different duos that Frido put together for the occasion are submerged have rather traditional melodic and rhythmic characteristics. Much freedom is perceived but always within a framework: there are limits that do not cross.

The wise hands (and ears) of Florencio Justo recorded memorable moments, of the highest inspiration of Mariano Agustoni, Ernesto Snajer and Sebastián de Urquiza together with Frido, and without a doubt the happiest pieces are those in which the instruments dialogue fluently .

Although the format is experimental, in the sense that there was no note written on paper and it was a gamble, a coin tossed in the air, what is heard is far from material for a few lovers of rarities. It is enjoyed and makes you want to listen many times to return to those crazy and unusual landscapes through which we walk