Released by Another Timbre in 2023. Recorded by Simon Reynell at Goldsmith's College, London in 2022.

Beautiful 54-minute work by Magnus Granberg, written for and wonderfully played by Apartment House. As with almost all of Granberg's compositions, a strong ability in improvisation is essential as the score presents musicians with pools of musical material from which they have to select sounds according to what they are hearing in the moment from the other musicians Sumptuously gorgeous music.

Apartment House:
Bridget Carey viola
Simon Limbrick vibraphone & percussion
Anton Lukoszevieze cello
Chihiro Ono violin
Heather Roche clarinet
with Magnus Granberg prepared piano

Cover artwork: ’The City’ by Magnus Gramén

Interview with Simon Reynell:

Firstly, what are the musical source materials that you have used in this piece? And why the title ‘Evening Star, Vesper Bell’?

Well, the piece takes as its points of departure two very different songs, Abendbilder by Franz Schubert and So in Love by Cole Porter, both of which I more or less happened to stumble upon when I was about to start writing the piece. The rhythmic materials are mostly derived or extracted from Abendbilder, whereas the tonal materials are roughly derived from So in Love – though both the rhythmic and tonal materials were heavily transformed by various methods.

The title alludes on the one hand to the time of day during which both songs take place (in the evening or even the night), and on the other hand to the occurrence of stars in the lyrics of So in Love. And in addition to that, there is also the occurrence of a vesper bell (Abendglöcklein) in Johann Silbert’s lyrics of Abendbilder, and the Evening Star obviously also refers to the planet Venus or Hesperus (or Vesper) as it is also called. So it’s all something of a silly pun, I guess.

Though you’d worked with Anton Lukoszevieze before, this was the first time that you’d worked with Apartment House, and none of the other four musicians had ever played your music. How do you go about introducing musicians to your way of working, and to the feel of your music, and how did it go on this occasion?

Yes, I had worked with Anton a couple of times before on the Early to Late project with Jürg Frey and Ensemble Grizzana, but this was the first time I worked with the other musicians of Apartment House. I am often a bit shy speaking in front of people and don’t want to be too dominant, so I generally don’t say very much before playing the music, except for perhaps just a few words on how the music works and answering any questions that may occur. It’s also very much a matter of letting the musicians and the ensemble find their own way of navigating the music (individually and collectively), of developing a performance practice which the musicians are comfortable with, but which is also compatible with the general character of the music as I perceive it. So it’s very much a matter of just playing the piece together in order to develop a certain sense of the music and of the dynamics of the ensemble and how these things relate to one another, and then just making small adjustments, or encouraging the ensemble and confirming that things are working well. But it’s very much a non-verbal communication which mainly takes place in and through the music itself. And working with Apartment House was very easy: they are such a fine ensemble, so attuned to one another and with a very extensive experience improvising as well as performing open scores of various kinds, so the music fell into place very quickly.  I think we rehearsed for about ten minutes before recording the first take of the piece (which I thought was very good, by the way!).

I find this piece exceptionally beautiful, and have listened to it loads of times. But it uses a compositional method that you have been working with for quite a long time now. Will you continue down this path, or do you now want to explore other ways of composing?

Yes, this is a way of working which I have tried to explore and hopefully learned to refine somewhat in the past twelve or fifteen years or so. And that was also very much what I perceived as being my task or objective when I first started to compose: to try to develop a music which was coherent and consistent while at the same time hopefully being unpredictable and adventurous - a music in which the unknown sprang from the known and which was open to the improvisational dynamics of the individual as well as the collective. This kind of dynamic (and excitement!) is also very much what attracted me to music in the first place when I started listening to and playing jazz as a kid, and even though my musical language today possibly may be perceived as being quite different from the language(s) of jazz, I do think there is still a certain kinship to the music which I first was attracted to in terms of musical and improvisational dynamics.

In recent years I have been thinking quite a lot about how to explore other gradations of this spectrum between indeterminacy and freedom of action on the one hand, and coherency and consistency on the other, particularly when writing music for musicians and ensembles who do not necessarily have a lot of experience improvising or performing open scores. This is a path which I will most likely try to pursue further in the future: in the past year or two I have made some first attempts, but there is so much work to be done in this area and I hope I will have the time and opportunity to explore it further in the forthcoming years.

You play a lightly prepared piano on ‘Evening Star…’, as with most of the recordings of your works at which you’re present. But I remember that originally your instrument was saxophone, and then clarinet. Since you started composing with your system, the only disc I can think of where you play a woodwind instrument is ‘Would fall from the sky, would wither and die’, where you play clarinet. One of the things I really like about this new disc is that the clarinet features quite prominently – albeit played not by you, but by Heather Roche. Were you conscious of this, and why do you think you haven’t tended to compose much for saxophones or clarinets?

After having spent many years playing the saxophone and playing jazz and improvised musics, I kind of shied away from wind instruments when finally arriving at my own music. I somehow felt that wind instruments often tended to occupy too much acoustic space, almost regardless of how softly they were played. It was as if the sound of the wind instruments were almost sealing up the very light, transparent and permeable texture of the music and its proximity to silence (as opposed to the sound of instruments with a natural decay, or string instruments played with a very light bow pressure) which I treasured so much and which I somehow felt that my music was emanating from. The clarinet is a wind instrument which I feel is very much an exception to this, as it’s possible to play very softly throughout the entire range, blending very well with other instruments while at the same time potentially being very complex in terms of timbre. It’s also an instrument that I’ve tried to learn and play on and off during the past decade or so. But having had too little time to learn the instrument as well as I’d like, it’s actually a great pleasure (and something of a relief) to hand over the task to such a brilliant player as Heather. I think she plays the music wonderfully well.

The Apartment House percussionist, Simon Limbrick, said to me that even though you weren’t very vocal at the recording session, and you weren’t ‘leading’ the recording of ‘Evening Star…’ in any obvious way, he nonetheless felt that your piano playing did very usefully set the horizon for their interpretation. You told me that you were thinking of writing a string quartet. Obviously, even if you were present at a quartet performance, you wouldn’t be playing. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve composed for an ensemble that doesn’t include you, but does it feel daunting to be writing more music now for interpretation by ensembles when you are not present?  And are there other projects coming up where this will be the case?

Yes, as I said before, I become a little shy when speaking in front of people, and I also feel that making the music work is very much a matter of just playing it together in order to develop and cultivate a common performance practice which makes the musical situation interesting for the ensemble. That being said, saying a few words can of course also really help to clarify certain aspects of the music and what benefits it, but in the end I think this is mainly communicated through the music rather than through words. And yes, even if I’m not very vocal when ’leading’ an ensemble, my idea with the piano playing has always been to gently direct, or perhaps rather suggest certain possibilities to the ensemble, maybe a little bit like someone like Count Basie, who also happens to be one of my very first musical heroes. And yes, it’s true that I have been thinking of writing a string quartet for various reasons, one of them being writing music for a standard setting and for musicians who don’t necessarily have much experience of improvising or playing open scores. Another aspect is to get to explore different positions on the spectrum of musical possibilities and ensemble dynamics, of consistency and coherency on the one hand, and of indeterminacy and various gradations of improvisational dynamics on the other. And yes, not participating myself and somehow losing some control of the music may sometimes feel a little bit daunting on the one hand, but on the other hand there are many different positions and dynamics one is encouraged (or even forced) to explore when one isn’t playing oneself. Recent projects on which I didn’t play  include a series of pieces which I wrote for the Swedish Tya Ensemble last year, as well as a very recent piece for the Chicago-based chamber ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic. Upcoming projects of this kind include a solo piece for the American trumpet player Nate Wooley, and a new piece for the recently founded harp quartet AHA, comprised of harpists Stina Hellberg Agback, Hélène Breschand, Milana Zaric and Rhodri Davies. All of these musicians are just brilliant improvisers and interpreters though, so I consider myself to be in very safe hands, for sure!

Reviews:

Magnus Granberg has continued to refine his method of composing for ensemble, working with sympathetic groups of musicians to create music that is gentle but not necessarily soothing. His writing gives room for flexibility in the finer details while directing and shaping the overall course of the piece, building thoughtful expanses of complex but subtle counterpoint. Evening Star, Vesper Bell is a near-hourlong piece recorded late last year with Apartment House, Granberg’s signature prepared piano supported by clarinet, string trio and percussion (no electronics this time). This may be his most restrained, even subdued, work that I’ve heard, with slower and more isolated contributions between the six musicians leaving the textures more open than usual, eschewing anything too discordant or spiky. It’s a ruminative piece but it doesn’t ramble, with Granberg exercising his typical command over how the group’s forces channel the leeway given to them, while Apartment House embody his desired balance between spontaneity and self-control.

Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill

This album is the tenth on Another Timbre (AT) featuring Magnus Granberg's music, making him the composer who has appeared most often on the label, his first release having been Ist gefallen in den Schnee in 2012. Ironically, Evening Star, Vesper Bell also marks the first time Granberg has recorded with Apartment House, who have practically become the AT house band, this being their twenty-eighth appearance on the label.

Granberg has also released albums on other labels, most notably three releases on the Japanese Meena label; two of those were different versions of the same piece, "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth," with different instruments used; the third Meena release was an alternative version of a piece released on AT, "How Lonely Sits the City?" again with different instrumentation.

Such experimentation with different versions of his compositions is compatible with the nature of the pieces themselves. Instead of giving musicians a fixed score of a piece, Granberg gives them various musical materials which they are free to play at a time of their choosing, depending on the ensemble sound at that moment. So, given the decisions of the musicians, two renditions of a piece are very unlikely to be the same, note for note, although they may have similar moods. The musical materials Granberg uses are often derived from classical works, religious music, show tunes, etc, not necessarily copied note for note. For example, for "Evening Star, Vesper Bell" some of the musical materials were derived from the very different "Abendbilder" by Franz Schubert and "So in Love" by Cole Porter.

Recorded by Simon Reynell, at Goldsmith's Music Studio, in November 2022, the fifty-four-minute piece has Granberg himself on prepared piano with five members of Apartment House playing viola, violin, cello, clarinet and vibraphone plus percussion. The music they create is a testament to the experience the musicians have all had of improvising. The soundscape is never overcrowded or cluttered as all concerned display respect for their fellow musicians and for the composition itself. Throughout, every instrument can be heard clearly and every musician is a model of good taste and restraint. It would not seem right to single anyone out for praise as the success of this performance is due to all concerned. Highly recommended.

John Eyles, All About Jazz

Evening Star, Vesper Bell is a new fifty-four-minute work from Stockholm-based composer Magnus Granberg. The work was specially written for the highly respected modern ensemble the Apartment House. It’s a slowly unfurling, skeletal —yet tonally/ texturally detailed work, which is rather akin to staring up at a star-dotted night sky- making out shape and pattern, as well as breathing in the moody & glum chilled atmosphere of the night itself. With once again Granberg showing his skill for sonically sitting in a wholly distinctive sonic place between modern chamber music & gentle improvision. The work was recorded in Goldsmith Music Studio in November 2022. With the players been: Bridget Carey- Viola, Heather Roche- Clarinet, Anton Lukoszevieze- Cello, Chihiro Ono- Violin, Simon Limbrick- Percussion & Vibraphone with finally composer Granberg on prepared piano. The work comes in at fifty-four minutes and ten seconds- been presented here as a single track.
 
The work sort of slowly glides or cautiously shambles into sonic view. With lulling vibes, key and percussive strikes, hovering in a haze of gentle ‘n’ slowly sawing, whining, and simmering string work. Each instrument has its own place & point in the piece- with them jointly all building the things whole skeletal -yet- tonally detailed structure. It all feels constantly on the edge of sudden taking off from its slow drifting and hovering lull- yet it never fully does.
 
Over replays & time the listener starts to notice certain details and patterns- be they a clipped drone, the joining lines of sweep ‘n’ chime, very subdued- but- grimly stately hovers, or hints at fragile melody.  Evening Star, Vesper Bell is very much a work you have to slowly but surely sink into, and let it take you along at its own lulling and slowly darting pace.  Yes, there are moments of subtle wonder & light glimmering charm- but like much of Granberg's work- it seems more about the journey & small events along said journey- than any grand overriding theme or structure. Yes, there is a shape and structure here, with a start & a finishing-but to try & break it down into its parts/ moments rather defeats the point of the whole thing.
 
From the opening seconds of Evening Star, Vesper Bell, you know you are in a Granberg composition. And really with each new work the Swede solidifies his decidedly unique way of working & presenting his sound. It’s certainly wonderful to hear the composer working with the Apartment House, and each player fully understands what the composer wants & needs. I certainly hope they work together again down the line again.

Roger Batty, Musique Machine