Chimera
Facing Toward (2025)
Remembrance of Things Past (2025)
Composed of Now (2025)
Audience applause
Iva Bittová (violin, voice)
Timothy Hill (guitar, voice), Steve Gorn (bansuri flute, clarinet), Michael Bisio (bass)
rec. 2025, Brno, Czechia; Bratislava, Slovakia
Urlicht UAV5957 [39]

I was very keen to hear this disc as I have followed Iva Bittová for many years, almost always up entertaining hills and down some adventurous dales. This latest disc is no exception. It’s a disc of ‘in the moment’ spontaneous improvisations in which the Czech violinist is joined by likeminded improvisers Timothy Hill, Steve Gorn and Michael Bisio.

It’s wonderful to intuit the nature of the musical and expressive camaraderie between the four but even more instructive to watch the brief promotional video available to watch online. Here one sees in-concert footage which reveals the visual clues Bittová gives, such as an intense, avian hand fluttering, which encourages appropriate response from the players – in this specific case, trills on the bansuri flute. There are other examples that reflect the musical and physical bond between the quartet, the rapidity of response to these cues attesting to their affinity.

There are three long tracks. The final one is audience applause. Facing Toward exemplifies the compound of influences and textures open to such broadminded musicians. Bittová’s keening, melismatic vocal, an acceleration into jazz-inflected folklorism and Hill’s empathetic guitar playing are all exemplary examples of fully improvised warmth. This piece is structured, and tracked, in two so beware not to allow yourself to drift off. It’s the nature of some spontaneous music to segue from one thing to another so you rapidly become disorientated. In this case the relative languid but textually colourful first part contrasts with a more athletic second part.

Remembrance of Things Past is tracked in three and has some inspired episodes, not least when Hill vocalises with Bittová, and when Bisio’s tower-of-strength bass underpins the central panel, meshing effortlessly with Hill whilst Gorn’s bansuri flute introduces notes of amusing wit, some of them decidedly avian. Bisio’s energetic bass in the third panel shows awareness of the work of Malachi Favors in its energising patterns.

Finally, there’s Composed of Now, another piece sub-divided into three. Hill plays with dextrous clarity, whilst Bittová’s violin traces a resinous, snaking passage that contrasts with the tonal purity of the flute – the music generating a hypnotic rhythmic charge. It segues into a guitar-led bridge passage (track 8) and incantatory vocal that builds a warmly undulating theme that gradually thins. Finally, as Bittová sings, Hill gently responds, Bisio picks up the lick and the ensemble gently comes to a satisfying close, passion spent.

I concede this disc is not for everyone. 39-minutes of improv, even played by such exponents, may well tax the patience of down-the-line musical listeners. But I doubt you’ve read this far if that’s the kind of listener you are. Iva Bittová is a special musician and she and her group of equals have delivered a wonderfully vivid and enriching album.

Jonathan Woolf

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