Nearly a year ago I reviewed Christopher Whitley’s album of pieces for solo violin and electronics Describe Yourself. In the same session Whitley recorded a series of short improvisations for violin using the same 300 year old Stradivarius. The half hour or so of music was recorded unedited in a single take and forms the album almost as soft as silence.

There are fifteen pieces ranging in length from 18 seconds to about four minutes.  They are quite varied in mood and method but tend toward the meditative.  He uses the full range of sounds from the violin.  Sometimes, as in “six” the music is very high and chattery.  For some reason it suggested squirrels discussing philosophy.  Other pieces, like “a5 b5 g5” seem to have an geometrical structure; a series of smooth crescendos are each followed by a very fragmented fade-out, rinse and repeat.

“song” takes the sound palette of the violin to extremes with a series of manic whistling, noises like scratched vinyl and squeaky balloons.  But others like “rhapsody” are quite lyrical, essentially tnal and meditative.  All in all it’s varied and virtuosic and constantly surprising.

The album is being released as a physical CD and digitally in MP#, standard res and 96kHz/24bit FLAC.  I listened to the standard res version which was clear if slightly resonant (it was recorded in a church).

Catalogue information:  It’s self published and available on Bandcamp.