Jakob Heinemann Quartet’s resonant passage through the avant-garde

The post-minimalist chamber group performs at Arts + Literature Laboratory on April 13.

Since returning to Madison from Chicago this decade, bassist, composer, and sound artist Jakob Heinemann has been particularly active in the local experimental music scene, while continuing to build upon the creative partnerships he made in Illinois in the late 2010s.

This past December, one of his Chicago-born endeavors emerged in the form of Jakob Heinemann Quartet’s debut instrumental album Opacity, an avant-garde passage from unsteady post-minimalist tension to the ascendent moods of chamber jazz. Heinemann released the album on his solo imprint, Kashe Editions; and in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, the label notes that “25 percent of sales from this project will be donated to Jewish Voice for Peace.” The group will debut this material for Madison audiences at Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) on Saturday, April 13, at 7 p.m. Admission is free as part of the space’s Auricle series, but donations are encouraged.

Featuring a pair of string players—Heinemann (double bass) and Ishmael Ali (cello)—and another woodwindist duo of Molly Jones (flutes) and Jeff Kimmel (clarinet), the quartet molds dissonant beauty and structured improvisations of textural grace into an uncommon Midwestern avant-garde musical experience. Bolstered further by intermittently subtle and innovative use of field recordings like birdsong, Heinemann and collaborators create in-studio recordings on Opacity that sound like they’re living in the open world. The album’s intermingling sounds seem to radiate from a spontaneous spring show on one of Madison’s more inconspicuous lake beaches.

The effect of avian skitters and chirps lightly echo a recent record by Portuguese guitar virtuoso Rafael Toral; and Heinemann’s sophisticated compositions simultaneously recall the reverberant, post-minimalist splendor of intrepid New York chamber violist Jessica Pavone as well as English composer Mica Levi’s undulating, chilling score to the 2016 film Jackie. Opacity‘s first-half highlights, “Distance,” “Dew,” and “Opal,” each harness a distinctive harmonic sensibility, as the four players employ extended techniques to create off-kilter moods that go beyond simple, romantic responses to the natural world.

The polarity and density of emotional resonance in just a few measures near the midpoint of “Dew,” for instance, usurp the effect of more traditionally stiff and plodding chamber pieces (ones clearly outside his or Pavone’s purview). Further, the latter half of Opacity‘s taut 37 minutes primarily consists of the elastic 18-minute suite, “Shells,” a deeply textural and improvisatory exploration of musical ideas. Its three pieces are dotted with some surprisingly melodic moments, amplified by tempered drone. “Shells I-III” and closer “Interpolation C,” with its menagerie of found sounds (like a glass bottle uncorking, rattling of aluminum cans, and suction of a water bottle cap), are both in alignment with Heinemann’s most recent projects and collaborations.

Those efforts markedly include All The Sounds Are Done, an open-invite, once-per-month improv jam and workshop at Communication. From that Sunday series (the next installment is on April 21) and the sonic breadth he’s honed on Opacity, Heinemann isn’t putting limitations or tags on his musical identity. He even recently ventured into pure sound art without live acoustic accompaniment during a mid-February set at Communication. But principally, Heinemann is after something unconventionally symphonic and panoramic. And this performance with Ali, Jones, and Kimmel (with or without newfound field recordings) at ALL will be undoubtedly guided by that exceptional, inclusive scope.