Arve Henriksen, Harmen Fraanje - Touch of Time (2024)

Arve Henriksen and Harmen Fraanje are at the helm of the contemporary improvised scene on their respective instruments and Touch of Time, the duo’s debut, is exemplary of their uncanny sensibility for each other’s timbre, phrasing and melodic approach. A striking musical rapport between the Norwegian trumpeter and Dutch pianist is palpable throughout these quietly lyrical investigations. In both freely improvised forms and carefully wrought themes, their instruments connect gracefully, picking up and finishing each other’s sentences.

Initiated in light of ECM’s 50th anniversary celebrations at the 2019 Transition Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands, where the duo first met and performed a captivating improvised set, the collaboration between Harmen and Arve has since morphed into a fruitful partnership, where the players are able to riff off each other’s ideas seamlessly and in-the-moment. Harmen: “With Arve, from the beginning it felt so easy to find each other in the music, to follow the flow, to feel the direction of the melody, and to sense the emerging harmonies. After that very first concert we immediately realized we should continue performing together – and a new duo was born.”

Where that first occasion was freely improvised, on Touch of Time the duo also introduces prepared melodies and progressions into the mix, as extended vehicles for the musicians’ soft-spoken interplay. “Redream”, “What All This Is” and the title track are such frameworks – penned by Harmen – and point to the contemplative, concentrated character of the album, revealing both chorale-like cadences and stream-of-consciousness melodic development.

Arve and Harmen: “We consider Touch of Time to be exactly where we meet in music. Although there are solid structures within these pieces, we form the material very freely, as a holistic process, rather than a static approach borne from preconception.” The music was shaped together with Manfred Eicher, who produced the album, recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano in early 2023.

TRACKLIST

1. Melancholia
2. The Beauty Of Sundays
3. Redream
4. The Dark Light
5. What All This Is
6. Mirror Images
7. Touch Of Time
8. Winter Haze
9. Red And Black
10. Passing On The Past