It also means that TRPTK has been in existence for nine years. Starting with three rebellious youngsters and a dream, growing into an extended family of seven crew members and 197 artists. Those 203 people have collectively recorded 97 albums, EPs and singles, and shared their music with hundreds of thousands of people all around the world. (for those doing the math: we didn’t miscount, one of our staff members is also an artist on the label)

You having this album in your hands, about ready to play it in your hi-fi system. It also means that you, our dear listener, have been with us for a part or all of these years. Words cannot describe my gratitude for your support, your generosity, and your endless thirst for new and exciting music. Without this — without you — none of this would be possible.

What it doesn’t mean is that we’re leaving it here, at just nine years. If it’s up to us, there will be a ten-year anniversary, a 25-year anniversary, … Heck, we’ll go on as long as we can, as far as the music takes us. Many more great projects await, many more releases we’re so excited to share with you in the future.

But for now, thank you so much for being here, for unwrapping this album, our nine-year anniversary sampler, and hopefully enjoying the content on it as much as we’ve enjoyed recording, mixing and mastering it.” – Brendon Heinst, TRPTK

Featured Musicians
Alma Quartet
Artem Belogurov
Dmitry Ferschtman
Ed Spanjaard
Helena Basilova
Konstantyn Napolov
l’Ora Blu
Luis Cabrera
Mattias Spee
Maya Fridman
Nicolas van Poucke
Postscript
Rembrandt Frerichs
South Netherlands Philharmonic
Vinsent Planjer

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Intizar: Songs of Longing is exclusively available in Stereo and 5 Channel Surround Sound DSD at NativeDSD.Com

Motamedi, a celebrated singer in Iran, is a masterful improviser and has a head full of Iranian poetry – he gets inspired by the mood of the music and then chooses a poem to improvise freely over the music. This album contains pieces that fit the more spiritual, traditional Persian repertoire, as well as a number of more worldly songs on which the Rembrandt Trio is expanded into a larger ensemble, with violin, cello and clarinet. Thus, the collaboration between the Rembrandt Trio and Motamedi becomes an adventurous journey through the colorful Persian musical landscape, where musicians from different continents find a shared language in music and improvisation.

Motamedi & Rembrandt Trio

The Rembrandt Trio, consisting of Rembrandt Frerichs (piano), Tony Overwater (double bass/violone) and Vinsent Planjer (drums and percussion), shares a deep curiosity and wanderlust, and has successfully collaborated several times with Iranian grandmasters like Hossein Alizadeh and Kayhan Kalhor. Because of their jazz background, the trio has extensive experience in improvisation, which is essential to their successful collaborations with Iranians; improvisation plays a crucial role in traditional Persian classical music.

Motamedi’s approach is fascinating; upon hearing the trio’s first bars, he delves into his memory to find poems that fit the mood. He knows countless poems from the Persian canon, which he recites and sings, while freely improvising on the trio’s music and being rhythmically guided by the metre. The text is fixed, but the melody and music intertwine, responding to each other and allowing for plenty of improvisation.

The collaboration between Motamedi and the Rembrandt Trio grew out of a special friendship that began with a spontaneous jam session at Tony Overwater’s kitchen table. For the trio, which rarely works with vocalists, Motamedi’s presence adds an extra layer of meaning. Now, in addition to notes, there are also words that carry meaning, even if it is a foreign language to them. The trio faces the challenge of feeling, interpreting and translating the content of Motamedi’s vocals into their own playing.

(Songs of) Longing

The album was recorded before the recent uprisings in Iran. However, in retrospect, almost all of the lyrics Motamedi uses are directly or indirectly about the suffering of his beloved homeland. The title, “Intizar,” represents the longing for freedom and a better time. It is a word used in Turkish, Farsi and Arabic and expresses hopeful anticipation. This album symbolizes the inner struggle in Iranian culture while offering hope for a new era, a return to a freer and more open society.

Two worlds

‘Intizar’ contains both worldly and spiritual music, reflecting the two facets of modern Iranian culture. Iranian worldly music often includes popular songs from the regional tradition, complemented by Western instruments and playing styles. This album contains two pieces from the worldly tradition and four pieces more in keeping with the classical Persian tradition, characterized by the use of poetry combined with instrumental and vocal improvisation. The Rembrandt Trio and Motamedi interpret these styles in their own unique way, combining instruments from Western and ancient music.

Location

The album was recorded at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, a former church converted into a concert hall for (church) organs. The venue’s diverse organs and exceptional acoustics, especially for chamber and organ music, made for the ideal place to record Motamedi’s vocals. The combination of organs with Motamedi’s improvisations is a rarity, making it a unique aspect of the album.

Instrumentation

The musical system of Persian music differs from the Western European system in that it is modal in nature and uses microtonal ranges, while European music uses harmony and tempered tuning. The piano, designed as a tempered instrument, is not ideal for microtonal music. Nevertheless, an Iranian piano school has emerged that experiments with the piano because of its similarity to the santur, a hammered dulcimer. In this, Rembrandt Frerichs has developed his own language by using the old fortepiano (from the time of Mozart) as a starting point. This instrument is more closely related to the santur and, because of its construction and more subtle sound, allows itself to be better used for the modal Persian ranges.

Rembrandt Frerichs played several instruments on this album: the Walter fortepiano (from 1790), an Erard fortepiano (from 1889) and a number of organs from the Orgelpark. For the piece “in the Middle of the garden,” he tuned the Walter fortepiano to the dasthgah Nava, using microtones. Tony Overwater uses both the violone, forerunner of the double bass and related to the viola da gamba, and the double bass on the album.

Vinsent Planjer plays a self-assembled set of percussion instruments that he calls the Whisperkit. Maya Fridman (cello), Maarten Ornstein (clarinet) and Myrthe Helder were invited to enrich some of the compositions and arrangements on the album with their playing.

Mohammad Motamedi – Vocals
Rembrandt Frerichs – Piano, Fortepiano & Organ
Tony Overwater – Violone & Double Bass
Vinsent Planjer – Whisper Kit & Percussion
Myrthe Helder – Violin
Maya Fridman – Cello
Maarten Ornstein – Clarinet

This album has been reviewed in our blog by music reviewer Rush Paul. Go To Article

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For pianist and composer Rembrandt Frerichs (1977), a new musical adventure began when viola player Michael Gieler invited him for an open conversation. Gieler is a solo violist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and leader of the IJ-Salon series, a cross-border ‘playground’ of chamber music with musicians of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Gieler planted a seed that grew into a composition commission for Rembrandt’s first Piano Concerto. Rembrandt took up the challenge.

It is a logical consequence of his artistic choices over the past decade that Rembrandt has come to be known as a forward-thinking free spirit for musicians who want to break out of the confines of their professional practice. In his projects, he makes every effort to test both his own limits and those of his fellow musicians. On this album this can be heard, for example, on the track “Finale,” where the strings are plunged into a rhythmic world not yet common to classical musicians.

It’s easy to forget, but imagine that you could travel in a time machine to a Beethoven or Mozart concert and you would notice that Ludwig and Wolfgang mainly played their own work. Moreover, they often did not have a notated piano score. Later, one of these performances was transcribed and notated for publishing purposes. This score, passed on from generation to generation, has led to the widespread misconception that in what we now call classical music all the notes were always the same.

As in their time, a performance of the piano concerto is an experience of tailor- made music for the individual piano soloist. Because of the improvisations, no two concerts are the same. An illustrative example of this is the 3rd movement of the first piano concerto “Musique au font”, where a joint improvisation begins from 3:20.

Rembrandt: “For a long time it was unclear how the concert would sound in its entirety. The string players didn’t have a picture of the embedding of the piano yet. At the rehearsals I would say something like: I’m going to do something here, but what that is I’ll figure out during the concert. The penny didn’t drop until we played for an audience for the first time at the Oranjewoud festival and the musicians heard the piece in its entirety. You could truly read on their faces, ‘Aaaah so this is what he meant…’ That moment can be heard during the second movement of the piano concerto no. 2.”

As a listener, you experience the musical battle between ensemble and piano. An exhilarating ritual dance of two partners. A new path is taken as improviser Rembrandt combines the best of two worlds with the classical musicians on stage. As with Ravel, Debussy and Gershwin, the composer himself sits at the piano.

Rembrandt tells us “I want to take the audience into my ‘Black page / white page’ approach, which is to say that the listener is aware that the classical musicians on stage have an actual part with black dots on paper. I, on the other hand, have a completely blank page. I re-imagine the conversation with the orchestra each concert, providing musical commentary and a counterpoint, as on ‘Cadenza 2’ from the first piano concerto. Classical pianists play from a score. With my piano concerto, I take a clear stand in order to shake up performance practice by involving the audience in the creation process. In doing so, I am following the practice of both Mozart and Beethoven, who usually did not write out their piano parts either: they knew the parts of all the other instruments by heart but only created their parts during the concert. My starting point in this is my many years of improvised jazz background, which I bring to the fore in the last movement of the 1st piano concert, ‘Blue Pencilled Outlines’. In how this comes together, that adventure, we take the listener with us during our concerts.”

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A Wind Invisible Sweeps Us Through The World is the third album by The Rembrandt Trio on Just Listen. The Rembrandt Trio features Rembrandt Frerichs (Pianist and Composer), Tony Overwater (Bass) and Vinsent Planjer (Drums and Percussion). This is the trio’s third album at NativeDSD following their earlier releases Same Self, Same Silence and The Contemporary Fortepiano (linked below). (The booklet for this album states that it was recorded in DSD 256. It was recorded in DXD.) It is Exclusively Available at NativeDSD in Stereo and 5 Channel DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and DXD plus Stereo DSD 512.

A Wind Invisible Sweeps Us Through The World

The album title, taken from a poem by the 13th century Persian poet Rumi, tries to capture the universality of music and conveys how curiosity drives the trio to travel and incorporate motifs, themes, and experiences from all over the world into their work. The wind, air blowing through the pipes of the organ, the invisible waves of sound that shape a song – the driving force that inspires traveling, broadening horizons.

Transcending boundaries by way of a shared musical imagination

The three members of the Rembrandt Trio, after fifteen years of touring the world together, found themselves grounded in The Netherlands when the world came to a standstill in 2020. Known for their curiosity-driven approach to music, incorporating many different musical cultures into their work and collaborating with grandmasters from different countries and continents (most notably with Persian grandmasters Hossein Alizadeh and Kayhan Kalhor) – the trio was now forced to stay put, stop performing, travelling, and collaborating.

Recorded at Orgelpark, Amsterdam

This time of reflection made The Rembrandt Trio realize how all their journeys of the past fifteen years had shaped a shared musical vocabulary that all three could draw from – and a musical trust that they had come to cherish deeply. They decided to record an album of songs that brought into play these collective memories, a shared imagination in which they still traveled the world. In February 2021, they secluded themselves in a former church in Amsterdam, called Orgelpark, filled with antique organs, and recorded with Just Listen Records. On “A Wind Invisible Sweeps Us Through The World” they take the melody as their guide and drawing on their communal experience on stages across the globe, they play compositions that feel timeless, have a universal quality about them, and connect across cultures. Songs to transcend boundaries – those of eras and places – as a much-needed release in times of suspension.

Just Listen Records and the Rembrandt Trio would like to express their gratitude to Maene Pianos for the use of one of their wonderful instruments, and Orgel­park Amsterdam for letting us record in their space ­the acoustics reflecting back a history of sound.

Universal Songs

While touring venues all over the world, the trio discovered that some compositions shared a special kind of magic that translated wherever they were played. Often, the pieces were based on themes from different times and cultures – a Bach motif, a Chinese folk song, a whiff of Armenian folklore. Beautiful, strong melodies that touched audiences no matter their background or culture. Like fairy tales told all over the world might have different characters but share the same plot: What it is to be human. The trio decided they wanted to create this kind of ‘universal’ music, keeping it concise and powerful – with melodies that have a universal quality, touching listeners everywhere. For this album, they chose strong, timeless melodies to try and transpose into song what we all share – our being human.

“When you have shared the stage for as long as we have, you become part of each other’s development, both as musicians and as people.”

Rembrandt Trio
Rembrandt Frerichs – Pianist and Composer
Tony Overwater – Bass
Vinsent Planjer – Drums and Percussion

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‘Same Self, Same Silence’ documents the unique collaboration between the Iranian grandmaster Hossein Alizadeh and the Dutch Rembrandt trio. In an ancient church, Persian melodies and oriental scales intermingle with echoes of jazz – all played on a set of one of a kind instruments.

Invited by the famously inquisitive jazz pianist Rembrandt Frerichs, the prominent lute-player Hossein Alizadeh transports melodies from Iran into a space where all four musicians bring their own traditions and backgrounds into play. Vinsent Planjer, Tony Overwater, Rembrandt Frerichs and Hossein Alizadeh play instruments especially built for them or collected from musical eras past, to find a common language in music.

On ‘Same Self, Same Silence’ – a line lifted from a famous Iranian poem – we can hear how, when we dare to immerse ourselves in a different culture, we discover new horizons.

About the project, and why there is no DSD for this one…

Same Self, Same Silence was recorded by Jared Sacks of Channel Classics & NativeDSD Music in DSD 256 back in 2017. The project underwent minimal post production and was finished, but then a hard drive failure (and a loss of a backup) resulted in our DSD files being lost forever.

Feeling very sad and at a loss, we had to get it out of our heads, until a 44.1 render of the final track selections was discovered on a different hard drive. This has been used to press a CD, and offer a download in that resolution, so at least this beautiful music would see the light of day and can be enjoyed over the world.

Hossein Alizadeh – Shurangiz
Rembrandt Trio
Rembrandt Frerichs – Fortepiano & Harmonium
Tony Overwater – Violone
Vinsent Planjer – Whisperkit

Project Making-of by Jonas Sacks 

Het Parool, December 2020

Trouw, December 2020

(Only available in PCM Wav download or Physical CD, unfortunately this music is not available in DSD)

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