Kevin Kastning & Carl Clements: Even this late it happens
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Kevin Kastning & Sándor Szabó: Ethereal I
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Kevin Kastning & Sándor Szabó: Invocation
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Kevin Kastning & Mark Wingfield: The Line to Three
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All four of these recent Kevin Kastning releases have things in common with the American guitarist's earlier output. They're duo recordings, for one, that see the Berklee College alumnus partnering on real-time improvisations with fellow artists with whom he's developed long-standing relationships; all feature the signature sound of his remarkable custom-designed instruments, among them the 36-string Double Contraguitar, 30-string Contra-Soprano guitar, and 17-string Contraguitar; and with each release typically weighing in at about seventy-five minutes, all four give consumers their money's worth.

But each release is different from the others, and further to that Kastning goes out of his way to ensure that the recordings don't simply repeat what each duo has done before. There's no better illustration of that than The Line to Three, his 2017 set with Mark Wingfield. In again coupling Kastning's acoustic guitar with Wingfield's electric, the sound they generate is as arresting as it is on their earlier releases. The latter's distinctive and instantly recognizable voice is on full display throughout, and, as the three “Invisible Landscapes” so strikingly show, the clear definition of Kastning's acoustic picking makes for dramatic contrast when paired with Wingfield's bent notes, bold soundscape textures, and laser-sharp lines.

Yet the new set distances itself from the duo's others by expanding significantly on the sonic palette, with Kastning supplementing his 30-string Contra-Alto and 15-string Extended Classical guitars with piano and percussion and Wingfield adding soundscapes and live electronics; long-time Kastning listeners might be surprised to discover, for example, that on four of the album's nine pieces he plays acoustic piano only. That change in sound design builds upon the guitar contrast that grounds the project by juxtaposing Wingfield's electric musings with Kastning's piano and percussion. The pieces are anything but static: “Momentary Books of Leaving,” for example, advances through multiple parts, among them dark episodes featuring loud, low-pitched piano chords and frenzied sequences where the electric guitar arcs across Kastning's high-register keyboard expressions. With the latter shifting his attention between three instrument types, it's Wingfield who acts as the unifying element for explorations that typically unfold as deeply engaged conversations between the two.

Kastning followed The Line to Three with Invocation, another guitar-based collaboration on which his 36-string Double Contraguitar, 30-string Contra-Alto guitar, and 15-string Extended classical guitar pairs with Sándor Szabó's 16-string classical guitar; the all-acoustic focus naturally makes for a different soundworld than the one presented on the Wingfield outing. But though the timbres are less contrasting than they are in the acoustic-electric combination, it's not as if the sounds generated by Kastning and Szabó render them indistinguishable. The latter's are characterized by crystalline clarity and often assume the lead, Kastning content to support the melodic paths his partner pursues. Adding to the separation between their contributions, Kastning sometimes plays in the lower register and Szabó higher, the former thereby acting much as a bassist would in another context.

The fourteen pieces run the full gamut of techniques associated with acoustic playing, with strums and picking abundant. At the outset, a strong rhythmic insistence animates “Akathist,” propelling it forward as the players build interlaced latticeworks; taken at a slightly slower clip, “Psalm” captivates in the seeming ease with which the two deftly coil lines in and around one another. The staccato style deployed in “Chant” lends the music a rather spidery character; “Vigil I” and “Vigil II,” by comparison, exude a ruminative, stream-of-consciousness quality in their fluctuations of tempo, the material developing organically through the thought processes manifested in their playing. Szabó's considerable technical command and sensitivity to tempo, dynamics, and melody add greatly to the pleasures the listener derives from Invocation, and though eighty minutes is a lot, the duo's interplay is so in-the-moment engaging that the set doesn't, ultimately, feel overlong.

No Kastning pairing offers greater contrast than his recordings with woodwinds player Carl Clements, the most recent being last fall's Even this late it happens. The release is well-served by Clements' versatility, with its eight tracks featuring his tenor saxophone playing on three, soprano on four, and alto and bansuri flutes on the eighth; interestingly, Kastning uses the same three guitars as on Invocation. Contrast here isn't limited to the woodwinds-guitar combination but extends to the contrast between the woodwinds themselves; there's a marked difference, for example, in the soundworld of the opening track, “To the presence of movement,” when tenor sax is featured versus the one presented in the subsequent piece, “No longer known; no longer in sight,” where his bright soprano appears; Kastning switching from the 15-string Extended Classical guitar to the 36-string Double Contraguitar also adds to the total degree of contrast.

Compositionally, the material is very much consistent with the style of Kastning's work in general. The partners, so clearly comfortable in each other's company, take their time as they methodically undertake their explorations, four of them pushing past the ten-minute mark and the longest, a brooding meditation titled “Corridors unconsidered” whose mystery is intensified by Clements' flute playing, fourteen. The two operate in tandem, with one shadowing the other as the material accelerates and slows, and respond to each other in counterpoint-like manner. The soprano sax works especially well in this context, given the degree to which its serpentine quality is accentuated on representative settings such as “A veil of absence” and “Circles and waiting,” but so too does the tenor, whose robust, full-bodied tone is effectively showcased during “Imaginary chapters,” not to mention well-complemented by the sympathetic accompaniment of Kastning's classical guitar.

He reunited with Szabó for the early 2018 release Ethereal I, but this one's hardly Invocation Part II: for the follow-up, Szabó exchanged his customary acoustic axe for electric and electric baritone guitars. It's not the first time a recording featuring his electric playing's been heard, that distinction falling to 1997's Echolocation, a set on which he applied then-nascent digital effect processing technology to his performance. The duo release, on which Kastning augments 36-and 30-string guitars with piano, finds Szabó again embracing the possibilities of live and studio effect processing. Though the two have recorded many duo and even trio albums since 2007, this is the first time they've deviated from an all-acoustic setup, the result being so satisfying to its creators they view it as the first in an intended series.

If anything, the billowing washes generated by Szabó complement splendidly Kastning's acoustic expressions; further to that, the former's focus on atmospheric gestures allows the latter to adopt a more dominant soloistic role, which comes as a refreshing outgrowth when it's Kastning partner who's often the more prominent presence on the other three collaborations. In the opening “Choros Nympharum,” for instance, the central element is Kastning's acoustic, which Szabó adorns with ambient-soundscaping textures. Helping to keep things interesting is the fact that the balance shifts from one track to the next, such that “The leaves are full of voices” and “Spoken by wind” place Szabó's painterly strokes and melodic phrases at the forefront with Kastning's piano acting as an anchor; by comparison, “And in the water” and “You never seem to have discovered” place the two on equal footing, the acoustic and electric engaged in the kind of to-and-fro characteristic of the other releases reviewed here. Of course, the presentation is never so simple, it more being the case that the focal point re-adjusts itself constantly, with each player transitioning smoothly between background and foreground as dictated by the material as it advances in real time.

March 2018