The Gift 2013
It is a gift of life- wind, water, peace and endless restlessness.
16 ТРЕКОВ (ВЕСЬ АЛЬБОМ В НАЧАЛЕ СТАТЬИ)
I am cloud in Heaven’s height
The stars are lit for my delight…
A clear,
beautiful voice and tiny icicles that pierce the soul. A melancholy lullaby of
calm and still evening air.
Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind,
I am a child of the heartless wind…
Pensiveness,
submission and inner revolt against fate. A tale of infinite melancholy.
The lines
are from the first song- The Cloud. It starts the tale that is told in the
album. Each song is a story, and all the stories are interwoven and are parts
of one whole picture. I listen and write with great pauses. The Gift album is a
gift of the wind, the air and the water, and one can only think of it as of a
painting in watercolors. I can see clear grey and misty blue and sea-green.
With the very
first sounds I am entranced. I realize I am in love with this woman and it is
impossible to speak long phrases about her or her music, because they are far
beyond words- they’re all sounds that become feelings and touches. Touches of
the brush, touches of the wind on the skin. I feel the rustling of the leaves
and I become the wind.
The Gift is
a journey into Susanne Abbuehl’s world. Listening to the songs I think that I
share in her feelings, and yet both of us remain separate, for this is a tale
of limitless freedom- we all are wandering about on the earth for countless
ages.
To me, Susanne
Abbuehl is a person of infinite calm, subdued but deep emotions which find their
expression in the minimalistic arrangements of the songs. Her voice reaches the
listener’s soul like a slow and sure arrow.
So many
impressions, and yet there is a sense of something left unspoken, to be divined
and discovered. And for everyone the discovery is different, although the
message of Abbuehl’s songs may be universe. Or maybe there is no message, and
one should not even attempt to look for it. As in some paintings, the more you
try to focus on it, the more the image slips away, the more indefinite and
blurred it becomes. The image of the Gift songs is more within one’s reach when
one is relaxed and unfocused.
Having said
this much about the impressions from the album, I decided to try and express my
thoughts on the technical part of the tracks and music as a whole and yet it
kept getting poetic again, never dispassionate. And for this there is a reason.
The lyrics in the album include poetry by Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronté, Sara
Teasdale, Wallace Stevens, and Susanne’s own lyrics.
The songs
are slow in tempo, pensive, infinitely melancholy, sorrowful, yet never too
heavy. As for the arrangements, they are very minimalistic. The list of instruments
played in the album is very peculiar. Matthieu Michel plays the flugelhorn,
Wolfert Brederode- the piano and Indian harmonium and Olavi Louhivouri is on
the percussion.
Her musical
biography is rather unusual. Susanne Abbuehl studied playing Baroque music on
the harpsichord since her childhood. Then she went to high school in Los Angeles
Besides and above all this, Abbuehl is Swiss, and, having graduated from Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Netherlands she taught Jazz-singing at the music colleges ofBasel India
As we can see, her music studying and experience is full of unexpected contrasts. Still, it makes a curious sort of sense when you view the result of all this hard work. You do not hear any elements of the Baroque music here, or Indian singing, or classic American jazz, and yet there is the flugelhorn, Indian harmonium and the harpsichord, all the elements being so naturally and easily put together.
Besides and above all this, Abbuehl is Swiss, and, having graduated from Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Netherlands she taught Jazz-singing at the music colleges of
As we can see, her music studying and experience is full of unexpected contrasts. Still, it makes a curious sort of sense when you view the result of all this hard work. You do not hear any elements of the Baroque music here, or Indian singing, or classic American jazz, and yet there is the flugelhorn, Indian harmonium and the harpsichord, all the elements being so naturally and easily put together.
Add to this
the mysterious, fairytale-like texts of Susanne herself, Emily Dickinson, Emily
Bronte and others, and it all becomes The Gift.
Thus, it is
a wonderous combination of minimalistic jazz noir music, beautiful classic
lyrics of some of the most mysterious poets, hypnotizing vocal techniques and a
curious combination of musical instruments.
Her discography includes the albums I Am Rose, 1997, April (2000), Compass (2006),The Gift (2013). All of the albums except the first one were released on ECM.
Her discography includes the albums I Am Rose, 1997, April (2000), Compass (2006),The Gift (2013). All of the albums except the first one were released on ECM.
