If the flautist Juli Deák boasts an impressive tone in the opening moments of the title song to her new album Brisk what becomes truly startling is that her sounds never cease. Already on the hugely propulsive ‘Brisk’ we get a steady patter of whittling gestures, short breathy pulses and the percussive toing and froing of her fingerings as the tone holes of her instrument are pressed shut and released. There are gushing wind sounds and instances of overblowing which produce harmonics and sudden leaps in pitch, with Deák moreover singing into her flute in a way that might sound lilting and whimsical or positively beatific.
The second track ‘Depict’ proves if anything even more representative as it expounds her use of circular breathing. Deák uses multiphonics to split the airstream which is rushing into her instrument, the effect allowing her to produce two or more notes or lines at once. Brisk was recorded between the spring of 2025 and January of 2026 at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Budapest and was captured as a series of single takes, with no overdubbing. Yet on a piece such as ‘Depict’ what we end up with are at least three musical lines or layers with those percussive pulses and tone hole pads or clicks presenting a kind of rhythm section which lies beneath the nymphic whorls of her breathing, as her singing voice – at times almost ululating – hums and sighs in spectral accompaniment.
Brisk therefore is itself multiphonic or multivalent, both very pretty and decidedly impish yet at the same time bearing this kind of relentless, pummelling quality which might call to mind beefier timbres and the work of Colin Stetson or other saxophonists. The vocal accompaniment – the way that Deák sings into her flute – adds to the sense of atmospheric ritual, not in a way that feels ghostly or tribal but as though Brisk itself was the multihued voice of verdant spring.
That impetuous or pummelling aspect means that moments of relative quiet prove a nice and notable contrast. ‘Steam’ might suggest puffs of smoke, horns and bells and the steady chug of railroad tracks but in fact the start of the composition makes use of space and silence, as Deák seems to initiate a melody, fall silent and start again with a certain wispiness which evokes those little bird chirps which will soon air in the background of the piece.
The atmosphere or the nature of the setting never really feels domesticated though and soon enough Deák does build up a head of steam, allowing the composition to settle for a moment – with those small birds chirping and fluttering in a woodland clearing – before ‘Steam’ becomes impossibly shrill, moving through a thrilling array of splintering tones and pitches. At times the stunning dynamic shifts and some of the more plaintive melodies call to mind a romance or even a waltz like ‘The Blue Danube’ of Johan Strauss II with its fits and starts and woodwind trills.
The tenor saxophonist and flautist Rahsaan Roland Kirk pioneered several extended woodwind techniques at least in a jazz context, including the use of circular breathing and singing into his flute. Almost thumbing the nose of anyone who might deign to criticise the propriety of such practices, Kirk would also sometimes play the standard Western transverse flute while blowing through one nostril on the nose flute. While an improviser in his own right to a greater extent Robert Dick codified those techniques and made them available to a wider audience.
The first few months of the year have brought some captivating and idiosyncratic flute albums like SYRENA:RE by the duo of Ania Karpowicz and Dominik Strycharski, who set their extended techniques on flutes and blockflutes against old samples – drawn from the twenties and thirties catalogue of the Polish label Syrena – of popular songs, synagogue cantors and the blended sounds of the Shmuel Weinberg orchestra. In a very different vein Flöjter – the free duo of Delphine Joussein and Mats Gustafsson – ran amok on their debut album Paris Blow, a high voltage transmission which capitalised on every kind of extended flute technique including jet whistles at every angle of ascent or descent, tongue rams and some deft flutter tonguing, a constant barrage of wind sounds plus key clicks and slaps over four lengthy improvisations which were captured at La Dynamo de Banlieues Bleues in Paris.
Juli Deák on Brisk goes stirringly solo and manages to balance a sense of spontaneity or exorbitance with measured control. With a background in classical music, she says that the album began taking shape in 2021 as her journey of personal discovery and steep experimentation on the flute was honed through a series of live concerts, which allowed her to forge a new kind of relationship with her audiences. Brisk therefore sits at the giddy intersection or at the dizzying altitude where classical precision, technical virtuosity and the free impulses of experimental jazz gladly meet.
Close microphone placement and the amplification of Deák’s nasal breathing allow the listener to share the space and feel the artist’s presence. For the most part – and despite the cloistered confines of a typical church – Brisk feels bucolic. Yet at the midpoint of the record ‘Trace’ really does call to mind Colin Stetson and particularly the swashbuckling swirls and eddies of When we were that what wept for the sea. The song has the same kind of island temperature, a curious admixture of idealism and strandedness as the artist seems to conjure their own exalted reality amid the high rolling waves.
Otherwise the way that Deák manages to layer her compositions through the use of circular breathing and multiphonics plus singing – with percussive fingerings, pulses and trills occupying the lower register and wispier phrases coiling and spiralling on top – might evoke the image of a scythe cutting crescents into tall grass. The scythe or in this case the flute never completes a full circle but makes swathes by means of its ceaseless action and the forward momentum of the mower or musician.
At the tail end of ‘Trace’ the flute dries out and its reedy percussive taps sound a bit like the treble of a tabla drum. That echo of the tabla continues into ‘Contact’ which now conjures desert landscapes, as though a carpeted drummer was meting out a rhythm while wind and sand whipped and rustled through the air. The melodic line here as Deák gets going seems to jump in big steps, leaping whole octaves as the flute once again delivers some piercing highs. It is so impish or waifish and yet so confrontationally fierce, never wanting to fight or amounting to a throng or swarm yet single-minded, elemental and in the end untrammelled.
‘Float’ is slinkier, almost in the nature of a Middle Eastern melody or arabesque, more in the vein of the kawala with its breathy wail than the ney but conjuring more the scent or atmosphere than the timbre of those Middle Eastern and North African instruments. Deák again overblows her flute as ‘Float’ proves one of her record’s most limpid pieces despite the arid surrounds, flowing in the manner of a rivulet or wadi.
And the album closer ‘Tamed’ seems to emanate from deeper in the lungs or diaphragm, a song which possesses a certain aching or tremulous character. If the title of the piece raises a question – namely whether it represents the artist being tamed or the musician finally taming her instrument – its lilting high pitches and the cinematic sighs of Deák’s vocals seem to regale some essence or elven deity or trace the shape or bow back in wonder at the face of the sun. The music keeps coming through with such incessant force that we are compelled for a moment to share in its rapture, an exhilarating stay until Deák cuts the recording or sets down her flute with a slight clunk at the end of the piece.
