“The Australian Andrea Keeble is a highly trained classic violinist. She was part of several different orchestras, composed distinguished film scores and is a member of different internationally renowned ensembles of both Classical and New Music. But what distinguishes her even more impressively is the breadth of her horizon. She is a founding member and leader of the Ad Hoc Music Collective, supporting musician in The Black Arm Band – a gathering of Australia’s finest Indigenous musicians making music to defend their rights – and is regularly touring with the folk-inspired Quintet Cosmo Cosmolino.
Congratulations” is the second CD released under her own name. While its predecessor “Teeter” (see our magazine 2012/1), with its entrancingly teetering compositions, always swaying close to the abyss, was still committed to a chamber-musical style, Keeble’s new compositional work explodes in a multitude of directions. Just listen to “Fly!”, in which the different layers pile up over one another, where over a bass ostinato and a jazzy beat the balladesque introduction slowly dissolves into a well-sorted cacophony giving goosebumps – a truly engaging materialization of the urge for freedom and the reassuring qualities that music thereby can contribute. In the following “Raoul” Keeble plays on the registers of free noise as was established in the 1960’s and 70’s especially in European Free Music. Some pieces of “Congratulations” are seamlessly joined which makes it possible to listen to the CD as kind of a suite, and through which the single pieces shine in additional colourations. And last but not least Keeble’s music – undoubtedly due to her classical background – touches with a precision, a stance and a dignity which is only rarely heard in other musical style.“.

Christof Thurnerr
http://www.jazznmore.ch/