Loran Witteveen Trio – Twin Paradox

Review Loran Witteveen Trio – Twin Paradox

Thanks to the drums and the double bass, ingeniously operated by Tristan Renfrow and Clemens van der Feen, both of whom are well known musicians in the Dutch jazz scene, the content of the album Twin Paradox is such that the piano's contribution to the tonal and rhythmic events, which is consistently based on 12-tone rows, shifted meters, polychords and polyrhythms and thus relatively strictly academic, contrary to jazz, belongs to the world of jazz rather than to contemporary, so-called serious music. One could also put it this way: without drums and double bass, Twin Paradox would be difficult to appreciate over long distances as too academic. This is especially true for the numerous stretches with musically and even rhythmically contrary flow. Bouncing Ball" can serve as an example of this and "Karimikui" as a counter-example.

All compositions on Twin Paradox are by the pianist of the album Loran Witteveen, who graduated from the Amsterdam Conservatory, the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, which is part of the Amsterdam University of Art, with flying colors and who, as an extremely unconventional composer, obviously has no contact problems with the different musical styles of jazz and classical music in the broadest sense, as this debut album emphatically proves. Commenting on Twin Paradox, Loran Witteveen explains: “The goal I had when composing these works is to create pieces where the through-composed parts as well as the improvisation forms are rhythmically flexible. As time itself is relative and different based upon your position in space, speed of traveling and so many other factors, I wanted to create music where time is not constant.“

With this statement he refers to the content of relativistic time dilation. Since this relativistic effect has led Loran Witteveen to compose Twin Paradox title by title, its content, which is reflected in all the album's tracks, will be briefly touched upon: The time dilation described by the relativity theory causes all internal processes of a physical system to proceed more slowly relative to the observer, if this system moves relative to the observer. This means that clocks that move relative to the observer also move slower than the observer's clock. This effect is all the stronger the greater the relative speed, which is based on the speed of light. The idea of absolute time has no validity in view of the experimentally proven dilation of time.

It is thanks to the independent Munich label Winter & Winter, behind which stands Stefan Winter, who has been successfully producing unconventional recording projects beyond the mainstream between jazz, classical and new music for fifteen years, that Twin Paradox could be realized. This album represents a great achievement of its composer and is well worth listening to. It bears witness both to the editorial courage of the label owner and his obvious instinct for extraordinary music and musicians.

Loran Witteveen, piano
Clemens van der Feen, double bass
Tristan Renfrow, drums

Loran Witteveen Trio – Twin Paradox

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