Dreams And Dust: Two From Pianist Izumi Kimura

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2025 will go down as a busy year for Ireland-based, Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura. The first half of the year served up the solo album Butterfly Effect (Codama Records) and Glacial Voyage (Between The Lines)—the latter a free-form duo collaboration with guitarist Christy Doran. Both albums favored explorations of mood and textures over virtuosity. Two further collaborative albums once again find Kimura on improvisational terrain, though they are quite different in character. Taken together, these albums are windows onto Kimura the improvisor, the conceptualist and the soundscaping artist.

This live recording from the National Concert Hall, Dublin, in May, 2022, finds Izumi Kimura in the company of Australian flautist Lina Andonovska and French violinist Dominique Pifarély. All three musicians are renowned for their virtuosity, the breadth of their respective projects and an affinity for improvised music. These seven pieces, ranging between three and ten minutes in duration, are spontaneous dialogues of broad-spectrum dynamics and no little lyricism.

Despite scratching, wheezing strings, the percussive flutter and pop of flute pads and the pluck and flashing strum of piano strings the music never falls into outright abstraction. The closest the trio comes to experimental soundscaping is on "Dream Op. 1," an edgy, twitchy encounter where the contrast between low-end piano and high-pitched violin stirrings is pronounced. On the whole, the dialogues take shape quickly, with tentative undercurrents giving way to sure-footed momentum and collective potency.

There are several duets. Piano and flute ("Dream Op. 2"), violin and flute ("Dream Op. 3") and piano and violin ("Dream op. 4")—team-tagging that makes for a more varied sonic experience. The contrasts between soft-toned lyricism and urgency, between legato lines and staccato riffing are striking. But it is when all three voices intertwine and overlap, reaching out to one another, that the music is at its most adventurous and its most rewarding.

A poem by Mary Rafferty adorns the CD gatefold. It speaks of earth's groans and tremors. It talks of the song of extinct birds and of sacred ritual. It alludes to the unthought and of dreaming—who says that words cannot capture music?

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