In Four Fold, David Rothenberg gathers an ensemble of rare musical synergy — NEA Jazz Master Marilyn Crispell, Norwegian folk violinist Benedicte Maurseth, and Czech avant-garde icon Iva Bittová — to form a quartet where boundaries between genres dissolve into pure sound exploration. Known for his work at the intersection of music, philosophy, and nature, Rothenberg once again delivers a project that defies easy categorization. Four Fold unfolds as a tapestry of ambient textures, Balkan tonalities, and new age atmospheres, merging improvisation with the organic patterns of the natural world.
The project’s conceptual roots lie in the birdsong transcriptions of Olivier Messiaen, which Rothenberg and his collaborators reinterpreted as open frameworks for improvisation. This choice injects the album with an unpredictable rhythmic flow — one that mirrors the freedom of flight itself. Instead of conventional time signatures, Four Fold builds its pulse around micro-rhythmic gestures, pauses, and the delicate tension between stillness and movement. The percussive presence of Crispell, subtle yet deliberate, underpins much of the record’s architecture. Her piano lines, at once fragile and assertive, become the gravitational center of several tracks, guiding the listener through the ensemble’s expansive soundscapes.
Rothenberg’s clarinet, bass clarinet, and contralto clarinet provide the record’s primary voice — warm, woody, and unmistakably alive. His phrasing alternates between lyrical and abstract, evoking bird calls, echoes of distant folk songs, and the low hum of forest wind. Occasionally, his tones blend with field samples of the Death’s Head Hawk Moth and Australian Magpie, dissolving the line between human and non-human expression. This interspecies dialogue, a recurring theme in Rothenberg’s oeuvre, feels here both intimate and transcendent.
Bittová’s contribution — voice and violin — introduces a distinctly Eastern European color to the mix. Her vocalizations, oscillating between wordless chants and earthy folk intonations, create a spiritual counterpoint to Rothenberg’s reed instruments. The timbral interplay between her violin and Maurseth’s Hardanger fiddle is one of the album’s most compelling dimensions. Together, they weave drones and modal fragments that evoke the rugged landscapes of the Balkans and the Norwegian fjords alike.
The synth work throughout Four Fold is subtle but crucial. Rather than dominating the acoustic instruments, it acts as an invisible current, shaping the album’s emotional temperature. Ethereal pads drift beneath the improvisations like mist over water, enhancing the sense of suspension that permeates the record. The mix, handled with precision and restraint, allows every instrument to breathe. There’s an ECM-like clarity to the production — unsurprising, given that each musician has previously recorded for the label. Engineer Chris Andersen, a frequent collaborator of Crispell and Rothenberg, captures the session’s spontaneity with remarkable fidelity.
Recorded in a single day at Nevessa Studios in Woodstock, Four Fold carries the immediacy of live performance, yet its post-production reveals a patient, reflective approach. The quartet spent years refining the material, sequencing trios, duos, and quartets into a coherent emotional narrative. The result feels both spontaneous and deeply considered — a rare balance in modern improvisational music.
The atmosphere that pervades Four Fold is one of quiet revelation. It’s an album that resists spectacle, preferring nuance and resonance over grand gestures. Each piece breathes with the patience of nature: sound emerging, fading, reappearing. The rhythmic logic is less about repetition than evolution — patterns grow, morph, and vanish before taking definitive shape. This openness makes the album an immersive listening experience, one that rewards attention with new details on every encounter.
Rothenberg’s decades-long exploration of the relationship between sound and ecology finds one of its purest expressions here. Four Fold doesn’t simply imitate nature; it collaborates with it. In doing so, it extends the lineage of Messiaen, while venturing into uncharted territory where ambient improvisation, Balkan mysticism, and new age introspection coexist in harmony.
As a collective statement, Four Fold reaffirms Rothenberg and his ensemble as masters of subtlety — musicians capable of turning silence into song and noise into poetry. It is, without doubt, a release of exceptional quality, one that we are delighted to host and celebrate on our webzine.