Singer Sara Serpa refracts, bends, suspends, and shifts sounds and syllables, creating a kind of linguistic limbo.

Close Up, Sara Serpa (Clean Feed)

Singer Sara Serpa — Photo: Pauliana Valente Pimentel.

By Steve Provizer

Sara Serpa is a vocalist-composer from Lisbon, Portugal. The performances of the singer and her collaborators, German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and American cellist Erik Friedlander, in her new album (Close Up) walk the thin line between composition and improvisation. Their inventive approach touches on various musical threads, but it is not tethered to any.

In some cases, one is sure that individual parts of a song have been composed or were evolved through rehearsal and then codified. At other times, it’s clear that a particular instrument is improvising. However, for long stretches, I wasn’t sure how the music had been created. Interplay and melodies that seemed to have been composed might have been invented on the spot; background lines that seemed to be improvised may actually have been composed.

Serpa’s treatment of lyrics, words, and vocalizations adds to the ambiguity. She flows in and out of recognizable languages. She sings in English, Portuguese, and at times in no recognizable language: sections of lyrics distinguishable and indistinguishable are unpredictably repeated, discarded, or changed. She refracts, bends, suspends, and shifts sounds and syllables, creating a kind of linguistic limbo.

The harmony is also often de-stabilizing; it tends to either shift constantly or be based on non-resolving, modal–oriented scales. In the end, these songs seem to float in their own singular bubble. Vive le bubble.

Let’s take a look at the tunes.

1. “Object” – Cello and voice (articulating syllables) are in counterpoint. Soprano sax enters in higher register. I note some intonation issues with the sax; her playing may be improvised, but I’m not sure. Pizzicato cello and staccato sax follow, closely aligned. Serpa draws on longer tones and there’s a different cello riff; voice changes to more chromatic lines, with longer tones and a more dramatic quality to the singing. The last section is arranged, with tricky rhythmic interplay among the three musicians. Song ends with brief tag — last note is held.

2. “Pássaros” – Some of this reflects a Ned Rorem-type setting of the lyrics, which are taken from Ruy Belo’s “Homem de Palavras.” Cello enters in melancholy lower register; tenor enters in solemn counterpoint; voice sings Portuguese. The modal melody sounds like a folk song gone a bit off the rails. A more pointillist section follows that begins to breathe more and become until it becomes improvisational; voice becomes more declamatory, even slightly bel canto-ish. Then the cello takes off on improvised bowed lines. A brief interlude with a “walking” cello line moves into quickly changing sections of close interplay. All ritard together, moving to a melancholy coda.

3. “Sol Enganador” – Cello enters with a pizzicato improv that mines an interesting modal vein; voice enters sparsely, leaving space. Voice and tenor sax then move in unison. The tenor has a very light tone, alto sax-like. Cello continues with a highly varied continuo. Then sax and voice join in close harmony. A tritone resolves with no disguise and it seems almost out of place because of its conventionality. The time stops, then we hear breath and blown non-note sounds from sax, with sparse hits from voice and cello. Sax begins to take off as voice and cello continue sparsely. A sprightlier section follows, with accelerated cello line and a unison riff involving voice and sax. This breaks up into 3 parts, each player improvising; cello playing up high on the neck. They feed off each other’s energy, but never completely go off into a wild, free energy field.

4. “The Future” – Lyrics taken from The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919. When Serpa-as-Woolf sings that the future is dark she means it. Voice and sax enter with repeated notes; this background outlines the harmony as cello improvs in a minor vein. Cello moves to double stops and then the voice takes over the lead with long tones, joined occasionally by the sax. The dissonance is relatively strong. The line “The future is dark” is repeated; some harmonic guideposts move all three musicians together through changes as the line is repeated many times. Voice and sax move together, sometimes in unison, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in dissonance. Past this point in the tune I can’t understand what she’s saying: “We should start those things?” “I think the future can be.” “I think we should start those things the future can be?” Repeated last note fades out.

5. “Listening” – Cello pizzicato opens, voice enters with an unresolved melody. The evocative syllables she sings have the quality of language without actually having any meaning. More minor work: large interval harmony between voice and sax — a hint of Gregorian chant; sliding exploration of space between the notes with sax and voice; cello moves on cat’s feet. All three move into an arranged section with some very unresolved harmony at the end.

6. “Storm Coming” – Tenor sax playing harmonics/multiphonics. If not overdubbed, this is a very good technical job. Sax extends the improv, going in and out of harmonics. Then comes one of my favorite passages — long tones by all three in harmony. It this improvised or arranged? Up to the listener to decide. Dynamics swell and abate. This is the bulk of the tune. The storm keeps getting closer, but it never arrives.

7. “Woman” – This is the most song-like entry and seems the most highly arranged. It is “an homage to earth mother goddess” that draws on a text by French philosopher Luce Irigaray: “She shares her life her breath. She shares but what she shares is not seen.” Cello enters pizzicato in fairly wide intervals. Voice comes in — “All my life, the creator god engenders with her breath but she does it from the inside without demonstrations.” This repeats. Then, “She does it silently.” Cello repeats pizzicato line, sax does obligatos behind voice, which delivers syllables. This track offers some of the most forceful singing on the disc — it is very varied in dynamics.

8. “Quite Riot” – I speculate that the process of creation might have been — “create moving riffs of 1, 2 or 3 notes; keep improvs in a tonality as the cello defines it, but play with the lines.” Soprano sax solos over cello lines — similar to the first tune, only mostly in a lower register and also using some notes “off the horn.” Cello begins to free improv and cello and sax find a mutual ending before the voice returns and we go to single held notes in harmony — a technique used elsewhere, but particularly effective here. Voice uses syllables in an interesting counterpoint section among the instruments, ending on a rare forte.

9. “Cantar Ao Fim” – Voice enters in a flexible modal riff with a folk quality, reminiscent of Bartok and then Kodály. Again, hard to discern whether we are hearing syllables or language. Serpa shows impressive intonation and range. Finally, she’s joined by cello in a minor almost-blues lick, which mutates, as the voice improvs. Tenor sax sparsely riffs behind, then they join in an arranged melodic section. Sax solos melodically over harmony set by the cello. All three voices enter. Again — are the lyrics syllables or language? Some dissonance comes in to darken an ending that would otherwise have a somewhat triumphal quality.

These musicians explore sparsely inhabited musical territory: not as invaders, but as scouts. They make forays into this new land, carefully examining its darker corners and testing the atmosphere’s emotional pressure. They turn over rocks, noting what lives underneath, sniffing and prodding the local flora and fauna, testing what they find — savoring some things and labeling others as poison. Their adventure is deeply serious, weighted toward the melancholy, and rarely leavened with humor. But this listener found that the demand placed on his concentration was well rewarded with musical discoveries and insights.

Steve Provizer is a jazz brass player and vocalist, leads a band called Skylight and plays with the Leap of Faith Orchestra. He has a radio show Thursdays at 5 p.m. on WZBC, 90.3 FM and has been blogging about jazz since 2010.