Ecm Records
2006
Folio
About This Album
The liner notes for Barry Guy's extended composition/improvisation Folio (a printer's term for a piece of paper folded in half to create four pages) refer extensively to Nikolai Evreinov's 1912 play The Theatre of the Soul, in which three aspects of the soul are introduced by a pretentious professor who claims the Self as Trinity: Rational, Emotional, and Eternal (or subconscious). Performed a scant five years before the Russian Revolution and simultaneously as Freud's big exposition of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, the play is one of those moments where history seems to be suggesting bits and pieces of itself. What that all has to with Guy's piece is ponderous at best and known only to Guy. Even Brian Lynch's liner essay is speculative and academic. Guy suggests that since the piece called for two solo violinists -- Maya Homburger (on baroque violin ) and Muriel Cantoreggi -- and an improvising double bassist (Guy), the three characteristics revealed about the soul in the play seemed to suggest a parallel -- though even he claims he was in a dream sequence reading the play and later sketched it out in drawings. Also present is the Munich String Orchestra conducted by Christoph Poppen.
Track List (try tracks 4,5,8 and 13)

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