Tierkreis CD on The Wire's 'REWIND' releases of the year chart.
“Some of the most impressive musical thinking I've ever heard, almost beyond belief for how she and pianist Beck make this stuff not only swing but sound almost like casual jazz tunes." (about TIERKREIS )
“Astonishing in it's conception, daring, and execution.” (about TIERKREIS )
“What Sophie Dunér does reinventing Stockhausen is mind boggling.”
“The 12 songs are full of character, more artful than the verse/chorus structure of generations of popular music. At an album release show at Brooklyn's ShapeShifter Lab, Sophie articulately negotiated intervallics, executing tightly-arranged syllables and dissolving into unique scat improvisations.”
“Vocalist Sophie Dunér is a jazz singer with an avant lean; Jay Clayton might be a reference, although the core of Dunér’s sound is richer, more like a professional lieder recitalist. The final effect is a bit sci-fi cabaret."
“Hot new cool jazz release. The Urlicht AudioVisual label has just released a new album by Sophie Dunér and Steve Beck featuring Karlheinz Stockhausen's Tierkreis and Francis Schwartz's The Neon Pterodactyl. Stunning recordings that are anything but conventional.”
“Dunér and Powell’s exposition was an edge-of-the-seat experience, the singer’s obvious facility with the weird contents of the piece (Stockhausen's TIERKREIS) fully on show. There are other versions of the piece floating in cyberspace but Dunér and Powell make a creditable case for theirs to be canonical.”
“Sophie Dunér IS avant garde!”
“Dunér beguiles and draws everyone in.”
"When it comes to Sophie’s achievements they are marvellous. Her texts are fascinating, head-on, humorous, venomous, intelligent, funny and with that dark, serious strike that raises them out of the present,to a common ground without genres or brands, where the songs live their own life and stand their ground. Her melodies are almost all of the time plain hit material, and her singing, not least, is wonderful, brilliant, sexy and melancholy – and her phrasing is out of this world!"
“Sophie Dunér comes up with something personal and persuasive to say. I hear some of Joan Armatrading in her warm, folksy way of phrasing a lyric and lacing it with falsetto trills. There’s a little Anita O’Day in there too, with a sassy insouciance sharpening some of her turns of verse. Dunér’s songsmithing is suitably idiosyncratic with imagery that leaves much to the imagination. “Jack the Ripper” finds her dealing in Yma Sumac-evocative octave leaps. The follow-up “Lonely Woman” copped from the Horace Silver songbook not Coleman, reminds me of the mellower side of Patty Waters mixed with Nina Simone.”
Other reviews & comments:
“Listening to this Gummeson Gallery recording and working with the music and texts, it dawns upon me with brute force what an excellent, yes, brilliant, composer Sophie Dunér is, in a complete, genuine sterling way. Her texts – intelligent, biting, sardonic, parodic, humorous but also serious and gentle – are at one with her tunes, her arrangements, and such is the vibrant atmosphere around her creativity that I don’t fear to say that she is among the top ten writers of contemporary jazz tunes in the world. Furthermore, her interpretations of her own songs – her intonation, her phrasing, her absolute stage presence – set her apart from most of her comparable contemporaries; allows her a very special place in the limelight – and I can only wish that she will sweep the world into breathless surrender – because she’s worth it!”
"I am very impressed. Never stop writing and singing your own music - you are already apart of a very creative group called musicians."
“ An outstanding voice. Her marvellous way of singing and her incredible voice reminds us of how much crap music we listen to every day through the radio.”
“ On stage, a nocturne and majestic voice such as the one of Karin Krogh or Sidsel Endressen, we have the young promising singer Sophie Dunér.”
“I cant forget Sophie Dunér, the Swedish singer. She has an incredibly expressive voice and she was also convincing as a composer.”
“....with an intense vocal Spanish performance by Sophie Dunér.”
"The strong and expressive force in the voice of Sophie Dunér are a few things that characterize the Art Trio...."
“Sophie Dunér came from Boston and was a success at the Stockholm Jazz Festival.”
"You are too good for the big record labels."
(English translation by T.L Mazumdar www.tlwrites.com)
Sonic Adventures
The Fine Art of Scatting
Sophie Dunér plays with sound and the voice.
In spite of Sweden’s unconventional approach to the pandemic in comparison to the rest of central Europe, the limitations that artists around the world have been subject to were not something Sophie Dunér had been spared.
She chose to utilize this time to conceptualize a brand new project inviting guitarist Gene Pritsker, composer Mark Kostabi and lyricist Erik T. Johnson to collaborate on her new download-only album, ”Songs Eclectic”.
The result is a virtuosic sonic journey riding on vocals and guitar which reaffirms Sophie Dunér’s extraordinary artistic qualities.
”Robot in Love” opens with machinesque poetry and acoustic climaxes hinting at Kraftwerk leanings. Followed by ”Slippery Slope”, where expansive vocal-overdub tapestries reveal an overall aural approach that sets the mood for the album. All the while with Gene Pritsker’s guitar strains assuming the role of an acoustic twin-flame of sorts to this unique voice. ”Sophisticated Love” being another example that stands testimony to this.
To quote my earlier review of (her last album) ”The City of Dizzy”:
”..this is virtuosic through and through – and a little bizarre; beautifully bizarre to be precise”.
Sophie Dunér keeps singing her futuristic lines consistently, presents her gorgeous scats and close-to-unbelievable octave jumps. She whispers, squeaks, roars, growls, hums, and swings.
After a somewhat restrained ”Funeral Blues”, ”Beating Pulse” drives the energy right back up to the top. While ”Wake Up World” makes a sophisticated appearance, ”Mardi Gras” is a more cheerful March where Gene Pritsker unpacks his multi-instrumentalist skills and Sophie conjures up images of the eternal Carnival on the streets of Katrina-stricken New Orleans.
One of my favorite pieces on the album is the versatile, virtuosity-ridden ”Dizcharmed” (featuring Sophie’s whistling).
The album ends with a very zeitgeist-relevant reference to US ongoings through the piece ”What Matters”. (The only catch with this particular piece being that I don’t understand a word of the poetry and would have liked to have access to the script). But that does not undermine the exceptional vocal artistry of this Swedish singer in any manner.
A very unusual and very impressive album. Highly recommended by Musenblättern.
© Sophie Productions 2011
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