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366
Album Review

Ernesto Diaz-Infante / Manuel Mota / Gino Robair / Ernesto Rodrigues: Our Faceless Empire

Read "Our Faceless Empire" reviewed by Mark Corroto


The meeting of four skilled improvising musicians--two from Lisbon, Portugal, and two from San Francisco--is cause for celebration on these nine ephemeral pieces. Surprisingly, Our Faceless Empire is not a live date; instead, it was made in an Oakland, California studio in 2006. By the very nature of this session, an audience--or any outside noise or distraction--might take away from the overall aura of its sounds.

The meeting emphasizes both the acoustic and the electric. Portuguese players Ernesto ...

142
Album Review

rev.99: Turn A Deaf Ear

Read "Turn A Deaf Ear" reviewed by Mark Corroto


The French Situationalist movement of the 1960s for the most part has been ignored here in the United States, but its call to re-examine art, media, and culture has been taken up by writer/poet 99 Hooker and the musicians that make up rev.99. Their “environmental improv,” Turn A Deaf Ear mixing rants with new experimental improvisation exists as a document of a sonic cultural jamming.

Parts of this disc feel as if it were consumed in fire. The musicians Ernesto ...

138
Album Review

Ernesto Diaz-Infante & Chris Forsyth: Wires and Wooden Boxes

Read "Wires and Wooden Boxes" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Multi-instrumentalist, Ernesto Diaz-Infante is apt to tackle either minimalist style themes, brimming with melodic frameworks and lush voicings or engage in John Cage-like musings with free-improvisational guitarist, Chris Forsyth. With their second collaboration, this 2001 release features more of the somewhat alien discourses witnessed on the duo’s previous effort, “Left & Right.” On the opener “NYC Journal excerpt (2000), Forsyth utilizes his electric guitar power cord and input jack as a vehicle to inject grounding hum and static into a ...

144
Album Review

David Dvorin: With(In)Communicado

Read "With(In)Communicado" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Along with folks such as Ernesto Diaz-Infante and a few others, guitarist/composer/educator David Dvorin is among the recent wave of Northern California-based – new music – artisans who often mold contemporary classical elements with folksy themes, free improvisation and digital electronics. And in his own words, Dvorin’s With(in)Communicado is inspired by notions that...”deals with the breaking down of transmission systems and social communication in an era of proliferating hi-tech communication devices”.

Here, Dvorin’s topical and relevant musings are partially conveyed ...

92
Album Review

Ernesto Diaz-Infante: Ucross Journal

Read "Ucross Journal" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Pianist Ernesto Diaz-Infante composed these 25 short pieces while he was an artist in residence at the “Ucross Foundation Ranch” located in Wyoming. On Ucross Journal, Diaz-Infante creates briefly stated tone poems while utilizing space and depth to his advantage, as he indicates in the liners: “A strong sense of location and the influence of a particular setting are vital to my work”. Throughout, these pieces are interwoven and somewhat contiguous as vivid imagery of the beautiful Wyoming landscape is ...

98
Album Review

Ernesto Diaz-Infante & Chris Forsyth: Left & Right

Read "Left & Right" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Ernesto Diaz-Infante is a musician who is apt to churn out delicate, minimalist passages and fragmented themes as a pianist (see Jan ’00 AAJ review - Ucross Journal ) or here on Left & Right utilizes a prepared acoustic guitar (left channel) along with electric guitarist Chris Forsyth (right channel). From the onset, it would be a fair summarization that the music presented here takes you on a journey which is often bizarre, at times harsh, surrealistic and most certainly ...

128
Album Review

Ernesto Diaz-Infante: Ucross Journal

Read "Ucross Journal" reviewed by Jim Santella


It’s an interesting concept. Let the piano chords paint images for you and ignore most of the other elements that make music what it is. Tonal relationships offer impressions. Most of us agree on the various moods that can be portrayed. A happy-go-lucky stroll through daisy-covered fields? No problem. The impending violence that issues from a demonic winter storm? Easy.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante’s latest album follows the pattern of his itz’at in that he provides only sustained piano chords throughout the ...

109
Album Review

Ernesto Diaz-Infante: Tepeu

Read "Tepeu" reviewed by Jim Santella


Improvised solo piano musings from gifted artist Ernesto Diaz-Infante allow the listener to share in the creative process. His two albums itz'at and Tepeu both serve to demonstrate the improviser's creative process from start to finish. Diaz-Infante begins with vague thematic material and molds it, through his choices of harmony and melody, into an image “suitable for framing." The pianist earned his master's in composition from CalArts in Southern California, studying with free and creative instructors that included trumpeter Wadada ...


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