''50 Miniatures for Improvising Quintet'' is an album by cellist

Erik Friedlander Erik Friedlander is an American cellist and composer based in New York City. A veteran of New York City's experimental downtown scene, Friedlander has worked in many contexts, but is perhaps best known for his frequent collaborations with sax ...

, violinist

Jennifer Choi Jennifer Choi is a Korean-American violinist based in New York City. Choi graduated from the Juilliard School and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has performed in a variety of settings including solo violin, chamber music, and creative imp ...

, pianist

Sylvie Courvoisier Sylvie Courvoisier (born 30 November 1968) is a composer, pianist and improviser. Career Courvoisier, originally from Lausanne, Switzerland, has lived in Brooklyn, New York for years. She has led several groups over the years, recorded 10 albu ...

, bassist

Trevor Dunn Trevor Roy Dunn (born January 30, 1968) is an American composer, bass guitarist, and double bassist. He came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. While performing with Mr. Bungle, Dunn would dress similar to the ...

, and percussionist Mike Sarin released on the Skipstone label.

Reception

The Free Jazz Collective observed "Despite the incredible short length of the pieces, the overall result is quite coherent, with sometimes sudden unexpected violent intrusion in more sensitive pieces, but the contrast works well. Not only is the playing excellent, but Friedlander is full of musical ideas, sufficiently so to make the short snippets of music - sometimes quite structured, sometimes seemingly improvised - utterly compelling".Ste
The Free Jazz Collective Review
''Free Jazz Collective'', September 26, 2010 Carlo Wolff stated in

JazzTimes ''JazzTimes'' is an American magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by Ira Sabin as the newsletter ''Radio Free Jazz'' to complement his record store. Coverage After a decade of growth ...

that "The musicianship is extraordinary, its fullness informing each section no matter how brief or abstract. I consider this contemporary classical music more than jazz: While certain sections skirt chaos and are resolutely dissonant, others are outright placid".Wolff, C.
JazzTimes review
JazzTimes, March 2011

Track listing

''All compositions by Erik Friedlander'' # "Stepping/Tangle/Like a Dream/Spider/A Settling Fog/The Fool/Solitary" - 4:59 # "War Cry/Harbinger/Retaliation/The Fool: Repose/Blink/Express/Soul Bird" - 3:53 # "Bad Pool/The Moon/Night Flower/Death Rattle/No Answers/Machine/Hunted" - 5:18 # "Molting/Swift/Flow/Spikes/Dainty/The Fool: Serious Matters/Undulation" - 5:15 # "Liquid/Headlong/Bone/Run Into Waves/Taking Hold/Show of Force/Fracture" - 4:51 # "Drought/Balance/On Point/Crossing/Stacks/Soft Steps/Tussle" - 6:27 # "Meditation/A Story Ends/Hazards/Acorn/Noir/Salon/Blackberry/Persist" - 5:47

Personnel

–

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

*Mike Sarin -

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

References

{{Authority control 2010 albums Erik Friedlander albums