| 2-CD. Modern chamber music full of harrowing and twisting harmonies and sadly comforting songs. Strings Only is a strings septet formed around vocalist Ineke van Doorn and guitarist Marc van Vugt whose latest CD presented all of this. Their performance at the Utrecht SJU Jazz Festival resulted in nearly an infinite number of both original and catchy melodies; the duo must have a warehouse of songs hidden somewhere, containing enough material for the ages to come. Without displaying an artificial urge to experiment, the ensemble explored a variety of possibilities for this line up. In between the fairy-like sounds, for example, there was this funky arrangement in which the strings sounded like the horn section behind Stevie Wonder and the string players gratefully benefited from the ample space provided for improvisation.- Jeroen de Valk |