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January 22, 2012 - London-based soprano and tenor saxophonist John Butcher is probably the most accomplished and influential reed player of the past 15 years. In a question and answer session for the Tokafi site, Butcher discuses instrumental techniques, theories of improvisation and his own background with fellow sound explorer Brooklyn-based trumpeter Nate Wooley. Along way, Butcher notes how after evolving his own theories on music in his teens with pianist and fellow theorizer Chris Burns, later experiences playing with older free musicians such as guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer John Stevens altered his concepts. His style has been further refined by more experimentation, playing solo gigs in different spaces, as well as by trying out the use of multi-tracking, feedback, motors and even turntable manipulation by the likes of Vienna’s dieb13. READ
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Turntable Improvising Has a Fine Arts Pedigree
January 15, 2012 - With many ensembles from the most generic Hip Hop revue to so-called serious musicians experimenting with the sounds that can be collaged or sampled from vinyl LPs, people sometimes forget the first out-and-out experiments with vinyl and record players were in 1979 by Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay. As The Village Voice’s Tad Hendrickson notes, at that time, rather than rhythmically scratching records like Pop musicians did with their dual-record set ups, Marclay used multiple turntables, ran the needle across disks in different directions and cut and reassembled discs. He did all this while working with other emerging avant-garde musicians such as guitarist Elliott Sharp and saxophonist John Zorn. Now his influence has come full circle, and a recent New York concert presented him and Japanese guitarist/turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, who was influenced by Marclay, and who ignores vinyl to scratch the turntable itself to create abrasive sounds. READ
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Understanding George Lewis' Classical Side
January 8, 2012 - Although most followers of improvised music equate George Lewis
with the exceptional sounds he creates when he unleashes his trombone skills in the company of saxophonist Anthony Braxton and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, he has created an extensive body of notated compositions as well. In this article for the New York Times, Steve Smith discusses Lewis’ often computer-generated scores in the context of a Composer Portraits evening at Columbia University. Many of these compositions conflate the broader Black experience says Smith, as when the skills of musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis are evoked in a composition honoring basketball heroes like Michael Jordan.
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Expanding Israel’s Burgeoning Free Music Scene
January 1, 2012 - Although other events in the Middle East may preoccupy the world, like others elsewhere, Israeli Jazz musicians are exploring Free Music, playing it abroad with foreigners, plus with visiting stylists and on their own in performance spaces in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. At the same time, as the Jerusalem Post’s Barry Davis reports, OutNow, a new label has been founded to release CDs by these exploratory musicians. The brainchild of local guitarist Ido Bukelman, 30, and saxophonist Yonatan Kretzmer, 28, who now resides in New York, Out Now’s initial and future releases will be of all-original music and feature besides the label founders, such respected veterans as saxophonist Albert Berger and clarinetist Harold Rubin and many other younger improvisers. READ
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A Canny European Reclaims American Jazz’s Recorded Past
December 24, 2011 - Should more evidence be needed that American record labels treat their Jazz sessions as product rather than art, look at CD reissue programs which endlessly repackage big names and ignore 90 per cent of the other players. Due to discrepancies in copyright laws, many of these 50-year-old sessions are in the public domain in Europe, so that Spain’s Fresh Sound label has created an extensive CD reissue program from this material, its owner Jordi Pujol tells Jazz Wax’s Marc Myers. Rather than bootleg releases, Fresh Sound makes financial arrangements with the musicians involved and pays mechanical royalties as well. Using modern studio technology it also improves the discs’ technical quality. Plus it confirms its commitment to the evolution of Jazz by recording new CDs by many younger players including saxophonists Jon Irabagon and Mark Turner, pianist Kris Davis and drummer Gerald Cleaver. READ
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KEN WAXMAN'S
REVIEW OF THE MOMENT
Read reviews of over 2,800 musicians
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Evan Parker Transatlantic Art Ensemble
Boustrophedon
ECM 1873
A rare – and exceptional – foray into partially scored and conducted music for British saxophonist Evan Parker, this eight-part work for a 14-piece ensemble realizes its lofty goals because the composed sections are cleverly counterbalanced by the improvisations.
Boustrophedon – an ancient word describing a method of writing one line from left to right, the subsequent one from right to left and so on – reflects the CD’s parallel methodology as well. While Parker directs a seven-piece group of experienced European improvisers, American saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell does the same with seven, equally proficient, Americans. Much of the boustrophedon movement involves comparable exposure from matched instrumentalists such as the two bassists, two percussionists and two fiddlers. Meanwhile singular soloists like pianist Craig Taborn, cellist Marcio Mattos or flutist Neil Metcalfe cleanly negotiate the fissure between Eurocentric and American-inflected Free Music. Taborn, for instance, adds styled glissandi, tinkling portamento story-telling and formalistic note clusters to “Furrow 2”, but metronomic rhythmic chording to “Furrow 4”.
That same track exposes parallel counterpoint involving liquid contralto trilling from John Rangecroft’s clarinet and the sibilant rasping of Corey Wilkes’ trumpet pitched high enough to resemble a piccolo trumpet. Reposing on cymbal clashes from Tani Tabbal and Paul Lytton, this calming interlude contrasts with the previous “Furrow 3”, which reached a rushed crescendo of piano clinks, tongue-stopped vamps from the reeds and blunt drags and rebounds from the percussionists. A similar episode of intersected tones from members of the ensemble characterizes the suite’s climax. Its defining cacophony shatters into sound shards that include dual piano syncopation, opposite sticking percussion ratamacues and splayed cello interjections.
Again emphasizing parallelism, the concluding track is more of a postlude than a finale, as solos, encompassing among other techniques, double-tongued, pastoral flute, kinetic keyboard arpeggios and thematic alto saxophone variations, alternate with tutti orchestral passages.
Overall this CD is a unique but a memorably rousing addition to Parker’s discography.
-- Ken Waxman
-- MusicWorks Issue #104
August 8, 2009
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