Stof by Duo Baars-Henneman

With music that doesn't refer to well-known themes or schemes, one can feel dislocated and estranged; "Stof", by Ig Henneman (viola) and Ab Baars (tenorsax, clarinet, shakuhachi and noh-kan), evokes such feelings.
At times you can imagine you're in a scenic area with only birds and rustling reeds; then you see dancing gnomes or unexpectedly a stuttering giant pops up: "Sorry, bird-watcher, for being so tall." A poetic soundscape, a musical fairy tale, a walk without a key map; this CD is as intangible and ambiguous as the little word "stof".
--Frans van Leeuwen NRC Handelsblad11 April 2007

(…) But, while Baars is a game foil for the whimsical and occasionally broad humor of Circus (ICP045), his own music, of which the color-rich duets of Stof are only partly representative, is pretty serious fare. This is not to suggest the composer/woodwind player is humorless, but that Baars favors pith over japes and rarely plays for more than a knowing smile. His oft-cited Webster-like tone on tenor stops well short of garrulousness when Bennink kicks into shuffle mode and his quavering post-Ayler deformations are pointedly unecstatic when violist Ig Henneman stirs undercurrents of texture and rhythm. Something of the same applies to his clarinet playing; on Circus, his high notes have a Carteresque edge, while on “Stof,” they project a super-heated classicism. His flute playing – be it on a standard instrument, shakuhachi or noh-kan – has a refreshing lightness and lucidity. Hearing Circus and Stof in tandem illuminates connections between the Fluxus via jazz approach personified by Misha Mengelberg, whose notional playing is noticeably blithe in proximity to the radiant Patrucco, and the compositional trajectory established by Louis Andriessen and extended by Maarten Altena and now Henneman and a few others.

In her duos with Baars, it becomes plain that the viola is central to Henneman’s compositional sensibility. An instrument that can suggest the depths of a cello and has some of the violin’s loft, the viola has specific utility. In the past, Henneman has ingeniously used this chameleon-like aspect of the instrument in her music for string quartet (also documented on Wig CDs). This is complemented by the tone of the instrument, which lacks the sweetness of the violin at its high end or the swoon-inducing affect of the cello’s mid and low register. The viola is the perfect cornerstone for Henneman’s penchant for initiating compositions and improvisations with what proves to be a cohering texture. “Whirligig,” her solo piece on Stof is a casebook example of how Henneman uses finely calibrated, if seemingly skittering bow technique to build a sturdy piece based on permutated rhythm and color. Henneman also knows how to extract the dramatic implications of initially astringent thematic materials. Such is the case with the title composition of the duo album, an elegy for her sister
Bill Shoemaker www.pointofdeparture.org Issue 9 - January 2007
Point of Departure: an online music journal