Mario Cianca _ contrabbasso
Luca Venitucci _ fisarmonica
Andrea Biondi _ vibrafono

Registrato presso Abbey Rocchi Studio, Roma, 10 novembre 2022; mastering di ToMa presso Sonicray Studio, Roma, 11 gennaio 2023.

"(...) Komuso, by the Mario Cianca Trio, presents its tracks as honkyoku, a Japanese word meaning “original pieces.” The term was first applied to shakuhachi music collected in the 18th century by a group of Zen-interested masterless samurai, or ronin, calling themselves the “Lay Monks of the Non-Dual and None-ness”–the komuso of the album’s title. As its connection with Zen Buddhism betokens, this music had a primarily meditative function. The sounds, often slow-moving and static, were meant to foster the proper state of mind for gaining experiential insight into the metaphysical ground beyond being and non-being that Zen held to be foundational. To play music in this way was to engage in a discipline for which music was the vehicle rather than the endpoint. The Mario Cianca trio, consisting of Cianca on double bass, Luca Venitucci on accordion and objects, and Andrea Biondi on vibraphone, retains the spirit of honkyoku even as the three musicians update its sound with contemporary improvisational sensibilities married to advanced instrumental techniques.
Although the music on Komuso has a meditative purport, it doesn’t remain in a stereotypically quiet or lulling register. The group’s sound moves along a dynamic range that surges and recedes in parallel with the pace and density of its musical activity, which at times can be shot through with a tense, nervous energy. Accordingly, Cianca, Venitucci, and Biondi don’t avoid harmonies or timbres drawn from the more astringent end of the musical spectrum. Cianca, for example, can very well play delicately bowed harmonics or tolling plucked notes left to linger and dissolve into open air. But then he can turn around andbow two microtonally opposed notes at once to create a disquieting beating effect, or can grind the bow against the strings for a raw, unpitched sound of pure grit. Similarly, Biondi alternates slowly shimmering tones rising and falling with a pleasant, cascading sonority with single notes hammered out with a relentless urgency. Venitucci is as present on objects as on accordion, contributing a rattling, scraping clangor in addition the latter’s sustained harmonies and swirl of notes.
Beauty may be incidental to what Komuso sets out to achieve, but it nevertheless is present, albeit in some of its more challenging guises. It isn’t the kind of beauty we might automatically think of in connection with the classically austere Zen aesthetic, but Cianca, Venitucci, and Biondi put it out there as if to say that this is reflective of the contemporary life we actually live, not of an ideal serenity that may or may not be discoverable beneath the noise and the business of the everyday." Daniel Barbiero, Percorsi Musicali, 2023.

01 _ I Honkyouku 7:30
02 _ II Honkyouku 11:32
03 _ III Honkyouku 1:04
04 _ IV Honkyouku 6:45
05 _ V Honkyouku 1:03
06 _ VI Honkyouku 6:51
07 _ VII Honkyouku 1:02
08 _ VIII Honkyouku 10:08

(C) + (P) 2023

Mario Cianca _ double bass
Luca Venitucci _ accordion
Andrea Biondi _ vibraphone

Recorded at Abbey Rocchi Studio (Roma) on November 10th, 2022; mastering by ToMa at Sonicray Studio (Roma) on January 11st, 2023.

"(...) Komuso, by the Mario Cianca Trio, presents its tracks as honkyoku, a Japanese word meaning “original pieces.” The term was first applied to shakuhachi music collected in the 18th century by a group of Zen-interested masterless samurai, or ronin, calling themselves the “Lay Monks of the Non-Dual and None-ness”–the komuso of the album’s title. As its connection with Zen Buddhism betokens, this music had a primarily meditative function. The sounds, often slow-moving and static, were meant to foster the proper state of mind for gaining experiential insight into the metaphysical ground beyond being and non-being that Zen held to be foundational. To play music in this way was to engage in a discipline for which music was the vehicle rather than the endpoint. The Mario Cianca trio, consisting of Cianca on double bass, Luca Venitucci on accordion and objects, and Andrea Biondi on vibraphone, retains the spirit of honkyoku even as the three musicians update its sound with contemporary improvisational sensibilities married to advanced instrumental techniques.
Although the music on Komuso has a meditative purport, it doesn’t remain in a stereotypically quiet or lulling register. The group’s sound moves along a dynamic range that surges and recedes in parallel with the pace and density of its musical activity, which at times can be shot through with a tense, nervous energy. Accordingly, Cianca, Venitucci, and Biondi don’t avoid harmonies or timbres drawn from the more astringent end of the musical spectrum. Cianca, for example, can very well play delicately bowed harmonics or tolling plucked notes left to linger and dissolve into open air. But then he can turn around andbow two microtonally opposed notes at once to create a disquieting beating effect, or can grind the bow against the strings for a raw, unpitched sound of pure grit. Similarly, Biondi alternates slowly shimmering tones rising and falling with a pleasant, cascading sonority with single notes hammered out with a relentless urgency. Venitucci is as present on objects as on accordion, contributing a rattling, scraping clangor in addition the latter’s sustained harmonies and swirl of notes.
Beauty may be incidental to what Komuso sets out to achieve, but it nevertheless is present, albeit in some of its more challenging guises. It isn’t the kind of beauty we might automatically think of in connection with the classically austere Zen aesthetic, but Cianca, Venitucci, and Biondi put it out there as if to say that this is reflective of the contemporary life we actually live, not of an ideal serenity that may or may not be discoverable beneath the noise and the business of the everyday." Daniel Barbiero, Percorsi Musicali, 2023.

01 _ I Honkyouku 7:30
02 _ II Honkyouku 11:32
03 _ III Honkyouku 1:04
04 _ IV Honkyouku 6:45
05 _ V Honkyouku 1:03
06 _ VI Honkyouku 6:51
07 _ VII Honkyouku 1:02
08 _ VIII Honkyouku 10:08

(C) + (P) 2023