The trumpeter [Axel Dörner] sports the same headgear on BeingFive, a 2022 session from the German capital, convened by Canadian bass clarinetist Lori Freedman, which also features Yorgos Dimitriadis (percussion), Andrea Parkins (accordion) and Christopher Williams (bass). Together the five musicians generate constantly morphing sound worlds, comprising selfless individual contributions. That approach attains its apogee on Miniatures, a sequence of ultra-concise vignettes linked by silent pauses, as much part of the kaleidoscopic fabric as the sounds. The extended techniques wielded by all involved are rendered yet more indeterminate by the electronics utilized by Dimitriadis, Dörner and parkins, such that the question of who does what becomes irrelevant. Not that the trumpet is inaudible — its strident skitter and breathy smears can be readily discerned at times on Amusic, a cut like its near namesake Amusic Bis, which almost has a rhythmic dimension thanks to Williams’ pizzicato and Dimitriadis’ regular pulsation.

Lori Freedman has the dual distinction of being Canada’s most distinguished clarinetist of both the “classical” avant-garde and the worlds of free jazz and free improvisation. Her 2019 solo CD Excess is a riveting program that includes daunting works by Richard Barrett and Brian Ferneyhough, while her improvising skills are evident in numerous associations, including the Queen Mab Trio, with violist Ig Henneman and pianist Marilyn Lerner (Réunion, Mikroclimat, 2017) and Amber (Clean Feed Records, 2022), her duo with trombonist Scott Thomson who contributes the liner note to BeingFive.

The music heard on BeingFive came together during a 2022 residency in Berlin and consists of works devised by Freedman for an improvising quintet. The international group that she assembled includes Greek percussionist Yorgis Dimitriadis, German trumpeter Axel Dörner and Americans Andrea Parkins, heard here playing accordion, amplified objects and electronics, and bassist Christopher Williams.

Discussing the pieces, annotator Scott Thomson suggests that the music “reflects, not a desire to execute a conceiver-composer’s will, but a pursuit of collective discovery.” In a sense suspended between composition and improvisation, the formed and the forming, the music is both largely calm in a way that can include rare explosive bursts, meanwhile refusing to stand still in either a textural or formal sense. The opening Eclipse begins in the subtlest weave of instrumental voices at chamber music dynamics, then the acoustic instruments are suddenly interrupted by clouds of muffled electronic sound, this description seemingly conditioned by value judgements not to be heard in the sounds themselves or their apparent relations. An expressionist burst of clarinet brings on a sustained tremolo of arco bass, a flutter of accordion, a thin stream of trumpet, then randomized drum strokes. An occasion for introductions, perhaps the true songs of freedom and consciousness are always tuneless. A microtonal wander of clarinet and accordion is interrupted by mildly abrasive electronic noise. At the conclusion of the piece, a very quiet female voice says “… I can’t see anything”. Is this the source of that title, Eclipse, or an ironic comment on it? I reverse the CD. I can’t find it. Then the voice seems to appear, but it’s different, different words, further away. I go to the window. The speaker is a neighbor, nearby. BeingFive invites (and strangely rewards) a listening so concentrated it may go beyond merely including the incidental, environmental event, somehow actually to thematize it.

The longest piece, the 15-minute and central Miniatures, ironically, is constructed of very short, time-determined pieces, the shortest between 10 and 30 seconds then followed by longer units of between one and three minutes, a strict structural pattern that is improvised in all of its “details” and which results in some of the group’s most intense “moments”.

The final piece, Freeze has minimal movement, a near-drone that is compounded of continuous acoustic and electronic elements, individually, gradually, evenly, rising in volume, at one point a complex sound in which the sustained metallic shimmer of cymbals and a constant electronic whistle will become a single sound within a continuum, in part maintained by a continuous low-pitched hum, that seems to maintain a constant collective volume level, that voices rise to sustain, including intermittent hard-to-identify high pitches and an oscillating bass clarinet.

Among the creative ironies to which BeingFive (five pieces by five people) gives rise, its collective spontaneous elaborations on minimal designs invite, whether verbalized or not, the active, even intense, compositional participation of the listener.

This quintet of international improvisers was organized by Montréal-based clarinetist Lori Freedman and goes under the name of BeingFive. No doubt you know about trumpeter Axel Dorner (who has worked with Alex Von Schlippenbloch in Monk’s Casino, from lower case to the Globe Unity Orchestra) and accordionist Andrea Parkins (who played in a longtime trio with Ellery Eskelin & Jim Black and another trio with Nels Cline & Tom Rainey). I know very little about bassist Christopher Williams (aside from a duo disc with Derek Bailey) and not much more about percussionist Yorgos Dimitriadas, who has worked with Paul Dunmall & Frank Paul Schubert. This disc was recorded in a studio in Berlin in June of 2022. A more varied set of backgrounds would be difficult to find. The music/sounds here move quiet sound to more abrasive free wheeling intensity. What I like about this is that everything sounds focused and directed somehow. For a long piece called “Miniatures”, the quintet plays a number of short pieces, all are either less than 30 seconds or from 1 to 3 minutes. The brevity forces the group to play together without giving things a chance to evolve very much. The electronics, used by three of the members, are also used selectively like punctuation. Both Lori Freedman and Axel Dorner are diverse improvisers who have worked in a wide variety of situations, hence it is often concentrated on subtle textures or gestures. Due to some extended technique playing, it is often hard to tell who is doing which sound. On the final and longest piece, “Freeze”, the group stretch their sounds into long, humming drones and eerie textures. The production, the music and the way things evolve are top notch here, a new high for the ever-challenging Relative Pitch label.