Artist Feature

Agustí Fernández
By Ken Waxman

A complete pianist in every sense of the word who blends exquisite technique with innovative inspiration, Agustí Fernández is arguably Spain’s most accomplished contemporary improviser. This month he’s playing four nights in different configurations at the Stone, a rare series of American dates. “I like all kind of combinations, from duo to big ensembles because each one presents different challenges for a player,” he explains. “Listening, language, instruments, techniques, sound, volume, interplay, etc. will be different in every setting.”

In fact Fernández, 58, who lives in a small town just outside of Barcelona, welcomes all sorts of musical situations. A regular member of The Barry Guy New Orchestra (BGNO), Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble (EAE) and numerous smaller European combos, in NYC he’ll work with guitarist Joe Morris, trumpeter Nate Wooley, multi-reedist Ken Vandermark, bassist Pascal Niggenkemper and other players, some for the first time, some renewing associations. “It's always very inspiring to meet or listen to your colleagues in non-usual combinations,” he adds. I’ve learned something from every musician I’ve ever played with.” The Stone connection came through Morris, who is curating a series at the venue and with whom Fernández, has recorded in the past, in duo, and in a trio with Wooley. “I feel very close to Joe as a musician,” says the pianist.

Born in Palma de Mallorca, Fernández began playing when he was four years old – “I have no memories of not playing the piano,” he muses – studied classical music at the local conservatory, and in 1987 won first prize at the Second Biennale of Young Creators Artists of the Mediterranean, in Thessaloniki, Greece. After that he could have pursued a career in so-called classical music, but had already fallen under the twin influences of pianist Cecil Taylor and composer Iannis Xenakis. Of Xenakis, with whom Fernández studied, he recalls: “I was impressed by the intensity of the music, the lack of romanticism. To me it was more like a natural phenomenon, like the weather let’s say, happening through sounds; a punch in the stomach.” As for Taylor, “I was impressed by his piano improvisations. I had never heard anything like him before. From both Xenakis and Taylor I learned about the decisions you have to make in order to play your own music and not someone else’s. This means mainly learning what not to play, what to leave out”.

Adding that “you don’t learn the most important things at the conservatory, you learn them on stage, or during a rehearsal,” in his formative years the pianist was already been involved with as many musical projects as possible. Starting with teenage rock bands – “I had one foot in classical and another one in rock; Bach and Soft Machine,” he recalls – at 18 he spent a year playing cocktail music in hotels and night clubs. Later he created music for local theatre and dance companies, composed electronic music, co-founded the IBA (Improvisadors de Barcelona) orchestra and taught at ESMUC, the Catalan college of music. “I’ve always been active in many different aspects of music, classical, commercial, avant-garde, rock, jazz, contemporary, film music, music for dance, etc. sometimes with different gigs or recording sessions in the same week. But for the past 10 to 12 years 99% of what I do is improv-related,” he reports.

Among those projects, besides the BGNO and EAE, are the Aurora Trio with drummer Ramon López and bassist Guy; EFG, a trio with trumpeter Peter Evans and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson; and Trio Local with saxophonist Liba Villavecchia and the late sampler player Joan Saura; plus many solo concerts. “I prefer to work in long-term groups because with them you can go deeper in your quest and refine your common artistic approach,” Fernández reveals. His interest in electro-acoustic environments remains as well, which will result in an upcoming CD with electronics manipulator Joel Ryan. Additionally Catalan composer Hèctor Parra is writing a one-hour solo piano piece to feature Fernández, to be premiered in November 2013.

While he concedes that his playing reflects his background he disagrees with those who insist on the demarcation between European and North-American improvisers. “As an improviser, my roots are in what is called the first generation of European improvisers: Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Peter Kowald, Alex von Schlipenbach, Fred van Hove, etc. These are the musicians who invented the music we play nowadays: my tradition. Of course, jazz has been and still is, a big influence, in the sense that I listen to a lot of jazz, old and new. But it’s not the only source, and not the main one. Besides improvisation, I listen to contemporary music, electronic music, ethnic music, popular music, anything. There is something in every music that may influence the way I play, even if unconsciously. The African pygmies or [alto saxophonist] Christine Sehnaoui, there’s no difference for me, it’s just great music.

“I also don’t think there is a significant difference between American and European improv,” he adds. “When I’m playing with Joe Morris or Peter Evans, let’s say, it’s not much different than when I'm playing with Mats Gustafsson or Barry Guy. The music may be completely different, but not because they’re Americans or Europeans, but because they’re different people from different backgrounds, generations, countries and lives.”

Similarly he dismisses the idea of his being a particular Spanish or Catalan style of improvisation. “Only nuances or hues and the way in which I approach the musical fact may relate to that. But I really don't think of my playing as Spanish, or European. It’s just something that I am.”

Recommended Listening:

Agustí Fernández – 1 is not 1 (Nova Era 1998)

Agustí Fernández & Derek Bailey – Barcelona (Hopscotch 2002)

Barry Guy New Orchestra – Oort /Entropy (Intakt 2005)

Agustí Fernández, Barry Guy & Ramón López – Aurora (Maya Recordings 2006)

Joe Morris & Agustí Fernández – Ambrosia (RITI 2011)

Evan Parker Electroacoustic Ensemble – Hasselt (psi 2012)

Agustí Fernández - Pianoactivity – One (Sirulita 2012)

--For The New York City Jazz Record January 2013

January 11, 2013

The Thing with Barry Guy

Metal!
No Business Records NBLP 47/48

With the Scandinavian trio The Thing having set itself up as improvised music’s version of the Rock power trio – albeit with a saxophone instead of a lead guitar – it’s instructive to note how well senior improvisers operate when entering into the band’s self-defined context.

Having established a mutually satisfying interchange with American saxophonist/trumpeter Joe McPhee, The Thing now uses this two-LP set to showcase the adaptations of British bassist Barry Guy to their sound. Guy, who founded the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra in the 1970s, and is known for his collaborations with most top-rank European improvisers including tenor saxophonist Evan Parker, was involved in Free playing from around the time the Thing members were born. Since the early 1990s however, Swedish saxophonist and Thing member Mats Gustafsson has been playing with Guy in larger or smaller ensembles. Meanwhile on their own the other Thingers – Norwegians, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love – have racked up a history of affiliations with a cross-section of committed improvisers ranging from saxophonist Peter Brötzmann to guitarist Raoul Björkenheim.

Recorded in Vilnius, Lithuania, the 11 tracks on this CD demonstrate how easily Guy holds his own with the other three players. For instance “Lanthanum” initially creates a synapse out of Gustafsson’s intense flattement and diaphragm-forced snorts, Håker Flaten’s thumb pops, Guy’s rhythmic stopping and Nilssen-Love’s resounding clatters. As the saxophonist balloons his tone from stentorian to altissimo, drum beats multiply and cymbals reverberate as Guy responds with angled, sul ponticello scratches and strums. Meantime Håker Flaten’s tune extensions include measured pacing and banjo-like plinks, leading to a contrapuntal melding of bass tones.

“Europium” on the other hand balances tongue slaps from Gustafsson’s baritone saxophone with echoing plucks from Håker Flaten. After both string players engaging in a two-step of whining guitar-like picking, the baritonist’s guttural, splintered segments coalesce into droning pedal-point. When further variations in this broken-chord intermezzo are heard they expose simple drum-led time-keeping. Ultimately through the use of multiphonics from each player combine for a moderated ending.

Throughout enough space is apportioned so that each man’s technical prowess is on display. Guy’s plucks, rebounds and string ruffling, extended and doubled with tremolo slaps from Håker Flaten; as well as the drummer’s measured clangs on small bells plus tougher thumps on drum tops are some of the high points.

If there’s one vulnerable point nonetheless, it’s Gustafsson’s tenor saxophone. Dyspeptic slurps and pressurized snarls are impressive enough when he plays baritone saxophone, but when he turns to tenor, the staccato peeps, vocalized screams and bugle-like exclamation are an little too close to Albert Ayler territory to be totally satisfying.

Still as an extended example of how to integrate Heavy Metal and Free Jazz sounds, you can’t do much better than Metal! Plus the project incorporates a guest soloist, whose improvisation skills are embedded in an original interaction.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Side A: 1. Lanthanum 2. Cerium Side B 1. Praseodymium 2. Neodymium Side C 1. Promethium 2. Samarium 3. Europium Side D 1. Gadolinium 2. Terbium 3. Dysprosium 4. Ride the Sky

Personnel: Mats Gustafsson (baritone, tenor and slide saxophones); Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Barry Guy (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

August 27, 2012

Katharina Weber/Barry Guy/Balts Nill

Games and Improvisations
Intakt CD 203

More than mere child’s play this significant CD expands some of Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s performance pieces to evocative chamber improvisations. Taking 11 miniatures for solo piano from his eight-volume Játékok series, which translates as “Games” in English, the trio’s intuitive skills create nine exciting tracks that refer both to Kurtág (born 1926) and the wider musical world.

The high quality shouldn’t come as a surprise. Besides a career as an improviser, Bern-based pianist Katharina Weber has won many awards for interpreting notated music by contemporary composers. Swiss percussionist Balts Nill moves easily among improvised, notated and even pop music, while British bassist Barry Guy has been exploring the relationship between instantly composed and composed music for years, most notably with his London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra.

Throughout this CD, Weber outlines the minute-or-so composed lines in appropriately intense, solemn or staccato fashion. Immediately following are group improvisations which, without losing the underlying sentiment, stretch the motifs with techniques encompassing hypnotic glissandi or methodical isolated key strokes from Weber, rim-shot pop and woody reverb from Nill and Guy’s rapid string rappelling or percussive stops.

A prime instance of this occurs with Kurtág’s Playing with Infinity that’s followed by Improvisation VI. The former is built around a descending line that radiates overtone coloration as it fades away. The latter evolves at a speedy clip as the pianist’ hunt-and-peck variations evolve into a bouncy line that almost spirals out of control until steadied by Guy’s thumps and Nill’s clanks and clatter. Finally the percussionist’s metallic rim shots and the bassist’s staccato rubs presage a finale of linked arpeggios from the keyboard. Elsewhere these contrapuntal musical salutes evolve in different ways, as flapping cymbals meet intense low-pitched piano reverb; or a tremolo build up of passing piano chords is balanced with squeaking bass lines or hard objects reverberating on drum tops.

All and all the three manage to honor an unappreciated composer’s music while simultaneously creating noteworthy sound statements on their own.

--Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 17 #10

July 11, 2012

Iskra 1903

Goldsmiths
Emanem 5013

Without the controversy implicit in discovering relics from biblical times, Goldsmiths offers up six fascinating performances by the first edition of Iskra 1903, whose influence dwarfed its hitherto miniscule discography. Consisting of trombonist Paul Rutherford (1940- 2007), guitarist Derek Bailey (1930- 2005) and bassist Barry Guy, and named for the newspaper Lenin edited before the Russian Revolution, Iskra proclaimed not only its political radicalism, but in choice of instrumentation, a change from the larger and percussion oriented bands with which all three had been affiliated.

More indicative of how well the British improvisers had distanced themselves from the often overbearing Free Jazz of their affiliated American and Continental confreres, the sessions resembles archeological artifacts in another way. The final two tracks are of performances recorded in an unknown place at an unverifiable date.

Relic-hunting aside, the musical value of the trio’s innovations is demonstrated clearly on the four tracks recorded at London’s Goldsmiths College in 1972, especially the two parts of “Cohesion 2”. Following more than four decades of exposure to reductionist sounds, it’s difficult to imagine how freaky and unconventional these performances must have been, particularly in a Jazz scene preoccupied with the rewards of Jazz-Rock fusion. Instead the band, made up of a barely amplified guitarist, multiphonic exploring trombonist and a bassist eschewing a steady beat. Exposed, individualized abrasive timbres miraculously seem to sunder together like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

On “Cohesion 2” Bailey’s metallic-sounding resonations and below-the-bridge plinks sidle up against Guy’s muscular plucks as Rutherford works his way in, out and around the string continuum with whistling plunger extensions and buzzing textural rephrasing. Making up duo counterpoint with each of his partners in turn, the trombonist is particularly effective in the last section of “Cohesion 2A” when throaty slide swallows plus a droning ostinato from the bassist are blended. The guitarist’s harsh and hard responsive string action is carried on into “Cohesion 2B”. As the percussive and oscillating guitar licks harden, they narrow in pitch to complement Guy’s spicccato string pops and wood thumps. Meanwhile Rutherford’s thickened tongue guffaws solidify, decisively contrasting with the bassist’s string slaps and Bailey’s amp distorted undulations and abrasive string scratches. At the conclusion, the guitarist’s strokes turn to sustained fills as the trombonist’s wide-bore gurgles move to vibrating tongue action and finally silence.

A notable variant of this continuum is also apparent on the nearly 30-minute “Cohesion 1A”. Before it too fades – or the tape reel had to be changed – the trio creates another instance of microtonal multiphonics. Guy is more upfront with slippery pumps and intervallic sprawls, as Bailey concentrates on foreshortened plinks, snapping flanges and recessed clanks. Meanwhile Rutherford’s burgeoning skills multiples his brass expansion, often sounding two distant tones at once. Barely there puffs are exposed alongside lowing guffaws, while extended mouthpiece mutters and cries are balanced by slippery pumping, rubato guffaws and spittle encrusted buzzing through the horn’s body tube. All the while Bailey strums forcefully if distantly. With so many fungible and undefined lines, the track appears to exist in its own space-time rather than beginning or ending.

With two out of three members of Iskra 1903 having moved on to another astral plane, the sounds they left behind are doubly valuable. Providentially, as this CD demonstrates, the artifacts are as notable musically as historically.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Cohesion 1A 2. Cohesion 1B 3. Cohesion 2A 4. Cohesion 2B 5. Unknown 1 6.

Unknown 2

Personnel: Paul Rutherford (trombone); Derek Bailey (guitar) and Barry Guy (bass)

May 26, 2012

Label Spotlight:

Maya Recordings
By Ken Waxman

As much as anything else, the birth of Maya Recordings, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, was born from impatience. Swiss violinist Maya Homburger, who operates the boutique label with her husband, British bassist/composer Barry Guy, recalls that since at that time another label was slow in putting out Arcus, a recording by Guy and bassist Barre Phillips, they decided to do so themselves. By 2012 29 Maya CDs have been released, improvised as well as baroque music.

The two were already veteran musician when Maya was created. Zürich-born Homburger, for instance, has worked with ensembles such as Trio Virtuoso and Camerata Kilkenny; while London-born Guy is part of many free jazz aggregations and is the founder/artistic director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LCJO). Maya was envisioned as a different sort of imprint, Homburger recalls. “We wanted to create a label where music, cover art and writing were all related and on the highest level. We wanted to have control over the look as well as the sound.”

As examples she points to Fizzles, Guy’s solo session, which not only benefitted from great care being taken with the sound recorded in a Swiss church, but was coupled with informative text f plus what she calls “an amazing cover painting by Fred Hellier”. More recently, The Musical Offering (J.S. Bach) by Camerata Kilkenny was the culmination of excellent recording and editing of the ensemble’s performance, a distinctive cover by Irish artist George Vaughan, text by David Ledbetter plus a specially commissioned poem by Fergal Gaynor. The label’s logo, based on a Maya Indian sculpture references both the Mayan people and Homburger.

Shortly after Arcus, Elsie Jo, a live concert by a sextet from the LJCO become the first CD specifically recorded for Maya. Since then at a rate of one to three a year, Maya has put out already recorded or newly created sessions by of baroque music plus combos featuring Guy. The bassist’s playing partners have ranged from Spanish pianist Agustí Fernández to saxophonists Parker and Swede Mats Gustafsson; while Homburger on baroque violin and in ensembles has recorded compositions by so-called classical composers and Guy. Dakryon is she, Guy and Swiss percussionist Pierre Favre interpreting work by17th Century composers H.I.F. Biber and Dario Castello. “My interpretation of Bach and Biber is very much influenced by the freedom I have experienced from and learned in the improvising scene,” Homburger explains.

Maya’s 20th anniversary celebration in September 2011 presented three days of concerts in the Swiss city of Winterthur. Among the perfumers were the Camerata; Homburger with Malcolm Proud on cembalo harpsichord; plus various trios, solos and duos featuring Guy, Parker, Gustafsson, Fernández, percussionists Lytton and Raymond Strid..

“I love the process of making a record, a real album; not just the iTunes adopted ‘one-track sensation’ bullshit,” affirms Gustafsson. “There’s recording the music properly, mixing, mastering, sequencing, cover art, design, liner notes etc., as well as dealing with the post-production issues such as selling the album and marketing it in a proper way. Maya Recordings has this level of quality all over the releases. The variety and flexibility of Maya Recording is also very unique, if you ask me, because it releases top-notch free jazz, contemporary music and out-of-control, fantastic baroque music. Biber’s Mystery Sonatas, in Maya Hombuger’s version, is one of the most amazing recorded music documents of the past 30 years ... I kid you not. And, of course, Barry Guy´s Fizzles is one of the most creative solo recordings in the history of improvised music. It’s totally DNA-changing. I’m very proud to be part of this, and that’s why I choose to work with them … as long as they want to work with me.”

Releasing CDs from two genres of music has never been a problem, Homburger affirms. “The mixture mirrors our touring and concerts. So everybody appreciates the label for exactly this. We know well in advance what we love, like Bach, Biber and the Parker/Guy/Lytton or the Tarfala trio, so there is never a shortage of projects for the label. We wanted to release the trios, quartets, duos and solos which were important at the time. And of course putting out discs of Bach, Bibber etc. has nothing to do with ‘vanity’.”

“Smaller labels are always nicer to work with, since you have a direct communication about all the details,” adds Gustafsson. “With larger labels too many people have opinions so it easily gets quite confused and non-creative.”

Unlike many boutique imprints Maya, based in Oberstammheim, Switzerland has a distribution agreement with Intakt, an established Swiss label. “I can’t remember when this started exactly,” Homburger admits. “Perhaps it was when we moved to Switzerland [in 2006] or partially in 2004. Now we have collaboration with Intakt on many levels, not just on distribution. One can see us as a sister company.”

Intakt and Maya are involved in many co-productions. For instance Harmos - Live at Schaffhausen, an Intakt DVD featuring the LJCO was co-produced and co-financed by Maya, as were the three CDs pianist Marilyn Crispell recorded for Intakt with Guy. “Hexentrio, the brand-new trio CD with Guy, Plimley and Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli is a co-production in every sense: organizing, editing, financing etc,” she adds.

Maya CDs are financed in different fashions. In the main, funds needed to pay for releasing live concerts of improvised music, comes from CD sales. “However studio recordings like Aurora, [with Guy, Fernández and percussionist Ramón López], and, of course, the baroque recordings are financed with the help of specific sponsors and also from our concert fees, our savings, and sometimes from sales of musical instruments,” Hombuger notes. As for the musicians themselves, the average form of compensation is mostly with CDs they can sell at gigs.

“The history of musician-owned labels is a proud one,” notes Parker who was involved with the launch of Incus in the 1970s and now runs his own psi imprint. “Barry and Maya have a specific musical agenda which relates baroque music to current music, especially improvised music. This gives their label a unique place in the overall scheme. Because they are practitioners, they’re sympathetic to the needs of their fellow musicians. Each [musician-owned] label allows the expression of an aesthetic that supports and perhaps illuminates aspects of the particular emphasis that each brings to the job.”

Switzerland, where Homburger and Guy moved to in 2006 after nine years in Ireland, has been beneficial both for the musicians and Maya Recordings. Besides giving the two more scope for concert and touring activities, the Swiss violinist states “as far as any business goes like designing, printing, distributing etc. this was a bit more complicated in Ireland. Basically loads of things in Ireland are not handled in the so-called Swiss efficient way.”

While pressing LPs for the collectors’ market remain one avenue left for Maya to explore, downloads of all the imprint’s CDs can be accessed through Proper Music, its United Kingdom distributor. Plus it isn’t standing still. Maya’s next release will be another major project: A live recording by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra of Guy’s composition “Schweben.”

When it comes to the administrative side, Homburger admits that sometimes the temptation to turn the whole company over to Intakt exists. “But when we receive personal reactions via e-mails from wonderful fans of the music or label in many countries or when we have very special encounters after concerts during the stage sales of our CDs, we know once again that it’s worth all the effort,” she avers.

--For New York City Jazz Record May 2012

May 6, 2012

Festival Report:

Météo Music Festival August 23 to August 27 2011
By Ken Waxman

Météo means weather in French, and one notable aspect of this year’s Météo Music Festival which takes place in Mulhouse, France, was the weather. It’s a testament to the high quality of the creative music there that audiences throughout the five days were without exception quiet and attentive despite temperatures in non air-conditioned concert spaces that hovered around the high 90sF. More dramatically, one afternoon a sudden freak thunderstorm created an unexpected crescendo to a hushed, spatial performance, by the Greek-Welsh Cranc trio of cellist Nikos Veliotis, harpist Rhodri Davies and violinist Angharad Davies, when winds violently blew ajar the immense wooden front door of Friche DMC, a former thread factory, causing glass to shatter and fall nosily.

Luckily other Météo highlights were strictly of the musical variety, some taking place in first-time festival venues. Two mammoth churches hosted improvised pipe organ concerts; a library presented brief children’s concerts; the city’s Belle Époque theatre showcased formal concerts by vocal-oriented trios; a soon-to-be demolished parking garage showcased a reunion of two British free music pioneers; and major documentaries about Germany’s tenor saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and France’s baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro were screened at the Cinéma Le Palace.

Lazro performed in person one noon hour in the 12th Century Chapelle Saint-Jean. Here his unique reed projections which move from juddering altissimo cries to percussive tongue slaps and dark, echoing renal growls met the shrilling reed quivers and vocal retches, pants and cackles of French clarinetist/vocalist Isabelle Duthoit for a magnificent display of in-the-moment conceptualism. Besides this chapel, the other regular Météo site was the Noumatrouff. This funky space is mostly for rock shows, a role it seemed to revert to one night when Dutch punk-jazzers The Ex unrolled an enthusiastic set, featuring a vamping horn section. With chairs removed that one time to create a dance floor, enthusiastic fans swayed or pogoed, with the vibe contrasting markedly with the cerebral solemnity of other pure improv shows.

That’s seriousness, not humourlessness though. French bassist Joëlle Léandre for instance, in a premier meeting with cellist Vincent Courtois at the Noumatrouff, added episodes of near-vaudeville to the duo’s profound and classically-tinged improvising. While his timbres often resulted from stentorian plucks, strumming the instrument horizontally strumming like a blues guitarist, or creating spiccato pulses by rubbing two bows on the strings, Léandre’s inimitable improvising encompassed more the string sleight-of-hands. Sometimes miming as she loudly popped the strings or vocalizing both basso and bel canto as she played, Léandre rubbed her bow all over the bass, kicked it the odd time, kissed it in supplication, eventually lowering the bass and herself downwards as she played, ending the set with both she and the instrument lying on the stage.

If Léandre’s performance was the most theatrical, she wasn’t the only bassist to make an impact. Rappelling and leaping jack-in-the-box-like over his strings to prod florid double stops or striking them resolutely with a stick, Briton Barry Guy consolidated the approaches a trio with Catalan pianist Agusti Fernandez and Spanish drummer Ramon Lopez evolved during its set at the Noumatrouff. Splattering rhythms from his cymbals, bongo and conga plus shaking wooden rattles, the drummer wasn’t overly assertive, but went his own way. So did the pianist, whose internal string plucks showed up as often as elbow and forearm keyboard rhythms or in a turnaround, romantic glissandi. The three were sequentially chamber music players performing a sonata, sound explorers or a hot jazz band trading fours

Muscularly buzzing rhythms, plucking above and below the bridge, British bassist John Edwards joined drummer Steve Noble and guitarist Alex Ward as N.E.W., an improv version of a rock power trio during Météo’s concluding concert. As Noble slapped mallets full force on his snares or broke-up the beat by vibrating Chinese cymbals and a gong on drum tops, Ward ripped out staccato slide-guitar flanges. What jazz-rock could have been if it hadn’t degenerated into 1970s formula, N.E.W. earned two tumultuous encores. Just as powerful in execution was French bassist David Chiesa’s methodical plucks in a chamber-music-like situation with violinist Mathieu Werchowski at Chapelle Saint-Jean. Chiesa not only plucked thickly to back the fliddler’s spacious spiccato angling, but displayed cunning pumps and stops himself.

Low-string double duty was the role of Sydney-resident-turned Berliner, Clayton Thomas, who elsewhere assayed a children’s concert. During different night at Noumatrouff, his pressured bow and object string-sawing and chunky plucks not only anchored the sound pictures invoked by the Berlin Sound Connective of alto saxophonist Thomas Ankersmit, turntablist Ignaz Schick and percussionist Burkhard Beins plus off-stage mixing by France’s Jérôme Noetinger; but also made tremolo pops as the solid centre of The Ames Room, an obdurate free-jazz ensemble with bass-drum pounding fellow Aussie, Will Guthrie and Parisian Jean-Luc Guionnet. Guionnet’s tension-laden alto saxophone multiphonics only vaguely related to the sputtering but distant timbre washes he showcased at an afternoon church pipe-organ performance.

Unlike Guionnet’s blaring reed expression, Ankersmit’s irregular vibratos were eclipsed by Beins’ Styrofoam rubs and cymbal thrusts and Schick platter scraping and radio-static mixes. Other saxophonists were more upfront. Like Lazro, except using a soprano, French saxophonist Michel Doneda distilled an ever-shifting collection of flat-line air, gruff vibratos, flattement and piercing multiphonics into a timbral foil to Japanese-American Tatsuya Nakatani’s peerless percussion moves that involved rattles, cymbal slams, gong reverberation, soft mallet smacks and using his lips and mouth on drum tops to produce ratcheting timbres.

Another rewarding sax exposition came from Paris altoist Christine Abdelnour in an afternoon duo with Berlin pianist Magda Mayas, following a sweaty climb of four sets of stairs leading to the top floor of the abandoned Garage Sax. As spatially oriented as Cranc’s concert, but warmer (musically) in execution, the two slapped and clattered a series of minimalist timbres into an undulating whole. As Abdelnour alternated between sounding juddering squeaks, trouser-leg-muted textures, horizontally blown, mouthpiece suckles and undulating split tones, Mayas industriously applied a mallet to the piano strings, snaked a fish line through them stopped keyboard vibrations manually and used friction for distinctive scrapped note clusters.

Mayas was proving her take on the sort of inventive prepared and standard piano lines John Tilbury pioneered. His performance with pioneering table-top guitarist Keith Rowe, following the Mayas-Abdelnour’s set was another instance of the prototypical sonic textures Rowe and Tilbury have weaved and together for more than four decades. With the pianist’s distinct leitmotif of knife-edge patterns, key stopping and tremolo chording melded with the guitarist’s measured, flat-key plucks, constant electronic drone and bursts of radio-tuned voices and static, Tilbury and Rowe made it appear that outside bird songs and church bell-tolling were an expected part of their mesmerizing, strategy. When the open-ended sounds faded away, everyone was convinced that the duo had rendered a matchless performance, although no one could detail just how it had been done.

Something similar could be said about the Météo Music Festival. Year after year artistic prescience and organizational smarts combine for a smooth-running and musically sophisticated sound feast with evolves seamlessly.

--For New York City Jazz Record October 2011

October 10, 2011

Augustí Fernández/Barry Guy/Ramón López

Morning Glory
Maya Records MCD 1001

Agustí Fernández & Joan Saura

Vents

psi 11.01

Evans/Fernández/Gustafsson

Kopros Lithos

Multikulti Project MP 1013

Joe Morris/Agustí Fernández

Ambrosia

Riti CD11

By Ken Waxman

Over the past 15 years Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández has become the most celebrated pianist – if not complete improviser – from his part of the world. In many ways he’s the successor to pianist Tete Montoliu (1933-1997). But while Montoliu was a bopper, Fernández doesn’t limit himself to one style, as this quatrtet of memorable discs makes evident.

A frequent associate of experimental improvisers from Parker (William) to Parker (Evan), the pianist also has a neo-traditional side, reflected by Morning Glory. Recorded in Spain and New York, this two-CD set is a spiky take on the jazz piano trio, with Fernández’s partners British bassist Barry Guy and Spanish percussionist Ramón López. More atonal is Kopros Lithos, whose experimental textures arrive courtesy of the pianist, American trumpeter Peter Evans and the baritone saxophone and alto fluteophone of Swede Mats Gustafsson. As founders of the Improvisadors de Barcelona Orchestra, Fernández has often worked with live electronics and sampler player Joan Saura. Vents is a rare duo session from the two.

Created in studio over an eight month period, Vents’ tracks are so much a part of the electro-acoustic world that it’s difficult to remember that Fernández is playing acoustic piano. Then again the keyboardist is a master of the timbres that can be bowed, plucked and strummed from internal strings, usually prepared with vibrating objects, and his expressions mate perfectly with the austere flanges and oscillations shrilled, reverberated or crunched by Saura’s electric implements. Throughout the performances onomatopoeically reflect both meaning of vent: an expression of pent-up emotion and an opening for the escape of gas to release pressure.

Although reductionist and disconnected, most of the tracks are remarkable in the way that Fernández’s tough keyboard pressure and popping internal strings add a needed humanity to Saura’s radiator-like hisses, motor-driven grinding and crackling sound patches. This is easily demonstrated on a track such as “Llevant”, with its shifting tonal centres.

On the other hand, Ambrosia is not your parents’ guitar-piano duo. It put a post-modern cast on the proceedings as Fernández matches wits with guitarist Joe Morris. Morris, who now often works as a bassist, at times manages to translate the low timbre of the four-string to his six-string. That means that echoes of double bass accompaniment is present while the guitarist showcases spiky, single-string action. On a tune such as “Ambrosia 1”, the two languidly complement one another even while distending the theme. Morris’ frails speed up to the point that they’re eventually bouncing from strings below the bridge and on the neck, while Fernández concentrated in swirling and contrasting dynamics à la Cecil Taylor.

Even though legato passages and harmonies are at a minimum, some of the tracks on this magisterial six-part suite don’t turn away from unintentional delicacy. “Ambrosia 3”, for instance, is built on gentle single-note clicking from the pianist, amplified by palm-pumps which create vibes-like tones from the guitarist. However, if some tracks come across as a discordant aural version of greyhound racing with Fernández chord-spraying as quickly as Morris string snaps, the two are able to intermingle such tactics as soundboard echoes from the pianist and slurred fingering from the guitarist to promote sophisticated parallel improvising.

Morning Glory is also wedded to acoustic expression. The CD’s 19 tracks, especially those recorded live at Jazz Standard, could be an updating of Bill Evans’ celebrated Village Vanguard sets. With his perfectly formed notes, Fernández makes his composition “David M” a piano showcase with deep ruminations in the instrument’s middle register. A swinging, near lullaby, it’s also notable for Guy’s slippery modulations that are unabashedly tonic. Barely there, with understated bounces on this track, López further exhibits his sensitive touch throughout. He confirms it on a tune such as “Don Miquel”, where his nervy tom-tom pulse and cymbal scrapes unite with the pianist’s methodical keyboard strumming to gorgeously frame Guy’s solo. Almost so-called classical in execution, the bassist manages to create two different sounds with his bow, before exciting with hand-pinched lines.

There’s a faint Latin tinge to “Don Miquel”, carried over from Fernández’s “Aurora” on the other CD. An Iberian take on Hispanic rhythms, the tremolo patterns reveal many notes in rapid succession, yet the line stretches enough to keep the impressionistic theme chromatic. Guy’s retort features scrapped and stropped strings, while the percussion undertow is mostly rim shots and what sounds like the hand-crushing of crisp paper.

Other pieces expose more abrasive back-and-forth group impov, often at lightning-quick speeds. At points Fernández’s choruses echo from the piano’s lower quadrant or he jabs at the keys while Guy bows. A perfect example of this strategy occurs on “Pepetuum Mobile” as the pianist’s chording evolves in double counterpoint with either Guy’s dobro-like twangs or bow taps against his instrument’s wood. As in most other instances, the drummer’s accompaniment is understated.

There’s no percussion on Kopros Lithos, but that doesn’t stop it from being the most stentorian of the three sets. Between Evans’ flighty squeals and wide-bore grace notes plus Gustafsson’s verbal shouts, tongue slaps and growls from his baritone sax, there’s enough discordance to go around. On a track such as “You displaced me by your singing”, Fernández adds to the general din by continuously rubbing and plucking his piano strings as well as clattering various objects placed upon them. At the same time it’s his methodical key-stopping which guides the trumpeter’s tongue fluttering and the saxophonist’s metal-scrapping honks to a more melodic interface.

Perhaps those connective timbres from the keyboard also define the message behind another track title: “My fingers were glue”. Certainly Fernández’s pressure firmly shapes the parallel improvising from the horns. Here Evans buzzes and whinnies as if a metal sheet is pressed against his horn’s bell, while Gustafsson contributes high velocity snorts and brays.

Fernández’s pianistic control while improvising in a non-conventional manner is a tribute to his skill. It’s also another indication why any and all of these discs are satisfying listens.

Tracks: Tramuntana; Gregal; Garbí; Migjorn; Xaloc; Mestral; Ponent; Llevant

Personnel: Agustí Fernández: piano; Joan Saura: sampling keyboard and live electronics

Tracks: You displaced me by your singing; My ears were ringing!; My fingers were glue; As each note rang true

Personnel: Peter Evans: trumpet; Mats Gustafsson: baritone saxophone and alto fluteophone; Agustí Fernández: piano

Tracks: CD1: Morning Glory: La niña de la calle Ibiza; Morning Glory; Unfinished Letter; Zahorí; An Anonymous Soul; Perpetuum Mobile; Benito (Jordi Benito in absentia); The Magical Chorus; Glade; Mourning; A Sudden Appearance; Belvedere; CD2: Live in New York: Don Miquel; Odyssey; Can Ram; David M; Aurora; No ni Nó; Rounds

Personnel: Agustí Fernández: piano; Barry Guy: bass; Ramón López: drums and percussion

Tracks: Ambrosia 1; Ambrosia 2; Ambrosia3; Ambrosia 4; Ambrosia 5; Ambrosia 6

Personnel: Augusti Fernandez: piano; Joe Morris: guitar

--For New York City Jazz Record July 2011

July 7, 2011

Lucas Niggli Big Zoom

Polisation
Intakt CD 174

Simon Nabatov

Roundup

Leo Records CD LR 586

Probably the most interesting younger trombonist in Europe, who is affiliated neither with out-and-out Free Music or the Mainstream, is German-born Nils Wogram. Like most contemporary players he leads his own ensembles while lending his inventiveness to a variety of other groups. Paradoxically though, while his own CDs lean towards the populist, the challenge of sidemen duties often brings out a more adventurous side, as these CDs demonstrate.

Wogram has a long history of collaboration with Russian-American pianist and Köln-resident Simon Nabatov, in duo and in other bands. Aptly titled, Roundup is particularly notable since the two’s playing partners are gathered from disparate places. They include Berlin-based tenor saxophonist Matthias Schubert, who often works with tubaist Carl-Ludwig Hübsch; Amsterdam-based cellist Ernst Reijseger, a former member of the ICP Orchestra; and New York drummer Tom Rainey, who works with seemingly every second Jazzer on both sides of the Atlantic.

More atonally sophisticated still is the newest generation of Uster, Switzerland-based percussionist Lucas Niggli’s Big Zoom band. Joining the holdovers, who include Wogram and Swiss guitarist Philipp Schaufelberger, who often plays with reedist Tommy Meier, are two veterans, American New Music flautist Anne La Berge and British bassist Barry Guy, who has been involved with advanced sound ensembles since the late 1960s. The invented word in the title refers to the overlapping polyrhythms, polymetrics and polytones used by the band, most definitely related to the multiphonic rhythms the percussionist brings to each piece.

Cameroon-born Niggli has a particular affinity for African percussion, and the four tracks are alive with rhythms and timbres that could come from the berimbau, batà or djembe drums. But this is no World Music session; the drummer leaves that concept for his other more percussion-dedicated projects. Instead his polyrhythmic expression is deployed as part of more substantial creations – and blends. While rotating among his regular kit and extra percussion, the drummer works with different musicians in turn. Shuffles and drags make room for Schaufelberger’s chiming, almost country & western approach, for instance, while Africanized percussion patterns back Wogram’s high-pitched triplets that are also matched with decorative flute flutters. Every participant has a similar role. Guy’s ringing bass lines for example, presage a moderate, andante trombone solo, which is also backed by the guitarist’s spidery fills.

Each of the musicians bring his or her particular skills to Niggli’s compositions which often seem to meld Sun Ra’s mysticism, Sun records’ beats and Sonny Rollins’ virtuosity in equal measures. The highlights include Le Berge’s shrilling multiphonics or breathy flutters; Guy’s solid, unshowy pacing; and Schaufelberger’s staccato strumming or Rock-styled distortion. Besides the drummer however, it’s the trombonist who makes the strongest impression. From shrill capillary blats to back-of-throat growls his trombone mastery is highlighted.

It’s a somewhat similar situation on Roundup, with Nabatov serving as Wogram’s second. In contrast to Big Zoom’s out-and-out timbre dabbling and deconstruction, the seven Nabatov compositions contain the sort of voicing that could come from a, 21st Century version of pianist George Shearing’s classic quintet. A fine example of this appears on the balladic “Stuck For Good”. Here a gentle waterfall of notes from the pianist is harmonized alongside low-pitched trombone breaths and sul tasto swells from the cellist. Redefined as a lyrical swinger, the tune concludes with carefully measured piano key clips, tongue flutters from Wogram, and martial ratamacues from Rainey.

While the tunes on Roundup are more tonal than the dissonant romps on Polisation, there are sections when Nabatov allows everyone to play more freely. For instance, space is made for Schubert’s reed puffs and thick-grained slurps, Reijseger’s kinetic syncopation and Nabatov’s geometrical keyboard thumps. The performance is also conventional enough to allow for solo showcases. “Low Budget”, for instance is a percussion intermezzo, while “Desfile” is given over to Wogram’s slide explorations.

On the former, Rainey uses subtly and taste to paint a percussion picture with colored with cymbal splashes plus bounces, ruffs, strokes and pats on bass drum, snares and toms. A later variation has him keeping time with rim shots as Nabatov doubles the tempo with fractured glissandi. Analogous keyboard dynamics which take on player-piano-like echoes are used effectively on “Desfile”. So are staccato cello runs and hand drumming plus cymbal clanks from Rainey. But it’s Wogram’s textural pinpointing which gets the best work-out here. Alternating between gutbucket blasts and crying trills he defines the theme in such a way that it almost resembles a cabaletta. Subsequent brass guffaws lead to a dancing near-African line, with the cellist’s string plucking taking on lead-guitar reverb, while Rainey’s and Nabatov’s responses match Reijseger’s in velocity and intensity. Overall though the piece resembles an exercise in exotica rather than one with the African echoes Niggli prefers.

That pronounced difference is key, since these examples of high-class Euroimprov show off Wogram’s burgeoning skills, but within different, yet simpatico contexts.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Roundup: 1. Sunrise, Twice 2. Carrier Ladder 3. Stuck For Good 4. Now What 5. Low Budget 6. Desfile 7. No Doubt

Personnel: Roundup: Nils Wogram (trombone); Matthias Schubert (tenor saxophone); Simon Nabatov (piano); Ernst Reijseger (cello) and Tom Rainey (drums)

Track Listing: Polisation: 1. Polisation I 2. Polisation III 3. Nirvana 4. Polisation I

Personnel: Polisation: Nils Wogram (trombone and melodic); Anne La Berge (flutes and electronics); Philipp Schaufelberger (guitar); Barry Guy (bass) and Lucas Niggli (drums and percussion)

June 15, 2011

Diatribes & Barry Guy

Multitude
Cave 12 Orchestra 1 c12 o 01

Baron/Chevillon/Sharp/Vigroux

Venice, Dal Vivo

D’autre Cords doc 5005

With advanced rock-influenced and so-called noise musicians increasingly adding free improvisation to their programs, a new hybrid is being showcased. At the same time the amount of sonic clamor added means that any resulting interpretation has to negotiate a fine line between incoherence and inventiveness. Although the volume of these sessions is somewhat stentorian, and their coherence sometimes spotty, the cleverness of the participants involved helps avoid major pitfalls.

Venice, Dal Vivo is a live session featuring two American and two French free improvisers. Drummer Joey Baron has been an integral part of projects by guitarist Bill Frissell and saxophonist John Zorn among others. Elliott Sharp, on both guitar and reeds here, is as apt to showcase own compositions with chamber ensembles, as be involved with free improv in smaller settings or present full-out blues-rock guitar solos with electric combos. French bassist Bruno Chevillon moves in many of those same circles, playing with clarinetist Louis Sclavis and guitarist Marc Ducret, for example. So does fretless guitarist and turntablist Franck Vigroux, another Frenchman, having worked with figures as disparate as the instrumental ensemble Ars Nova and harpist Hélène Breschand.

More unusual is Multitude, which features a collaboration between veteran British bassist Barry Guy and two young Swiss noise makers, known as Diatribes. Drummer Cyril Bondi is a member of different Jazz and so-called Post-Jazz combos, having played with bassist Christian Weber and pianist Jacques Demierre – another frequent Guy collaborator – among others. Member of Geneva’s Audioactivity Collective, laptop and objects manipulator d’incise (sic) has used his textural dislocation in situations featuring sonic explorers such as guitarist Keith Rowe or electronic instrument maker Norbert Moslang. Guy, of course, has, over a three-decade career, partnered other major Free Music players such as saxophonist Evan Parker,

Almost from Multitude’s beginning the overriding textures are abrasive, multiphonic and staccato. Bondi appears to be distractedly hitting anything he can – hard – spiraling pulses and harsh ricochets characterizing d’incise’s content; while Guy’s sprawling sul ponticello lines or steel guitar-like reverb help muddy the fray. Ironically, when altissimo reed bites from Benoît Moreau’s clarinet are added to the mix on “Corrosion du Possible”, the resulting textures sound neither more complete, complex, nor corrosive than those created by the other three on their own.

Guy, on the other hand, is more assertive on a track such as “Un Peu Plus Rouge”, where his resonating string picks and tough strums dominate. During his solo he grippingly works his way upwards to the bass’s scroll and downwards to its spike. However, with Bondi’s weighty beats resemble the thumps produced by clog-dancers, and the sequenced electronic impulses excessively droning, the bassist’s string strategy must also move with lute-like precision. Just as notably, his reverberating spiccato and sul tasto strokes also stand out among the electronics’ crackles, buzzes and grinds on the conclusive “Exil”. Suspicion remains though, that some of the contrasting string pulls may be the result of computer sampling playback.

If Multitude ends with timbres that are traditionally legato, then the concluding live track on the other CD is just the opposite. Entitled “Mitch Mitchell”, and named for the bass guitarist of the Jimi Hendrix Experience who died that day, the track is rife with heavy backbeats from Baron; repetitive thumps from bassist Chevillon; and ever-shifting patching and distorted flanges from the two guitarists. With LP-like scratches and sampled dialogue fed back into the mix, the knob-twisted, multi-string effects join with the drummer’s heavy drags and flams to create a solid sound block. After the piece climaxes with pseudo-blues licks, warped echoes and vocal shouts, Sharp name checks the dedicatee to the audience.

The preceding four numbers are a menacing admixture of ProgRock and advanced Fusion -- that is if either of those genres would have a place for Sharp’s oddly linear saxophone shrills. Throughout, the guitarists concentrate on supersonic jet-like swooshes and oscillated twangs, as the drummer exposes nerve and martial beats and Chevillon’s bass licks shudder on the bottom. As solid and impenetrable in performance is “Veronese”, another defining track. Before the final downturned textural slurps, the piece showcased tone arm and needle scratches, turntable-propelled voices from album tracks, signal processed oscillations, whistling tones and crunching contrapuntal friction.

While no one should look to these CDs for melodic subtly, they do prove that clever riffs and textures can still arise from concentrated noise creations such as these.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Venice: 1. Acqua Alta 2. Cannaregio 3. Fondamenta Nouve 4. Veronese 5. Mitch Mitchell

Personnel: Venice: Elliott Sharp (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and guitar); Franck Vigroux (turntables and guitar); Bruno Chevillon (bass and electronics) and Joey Baron (drums)

Track Listing: Multitude: 1. Le Grand Jeu Financier 2. Le Poids des Humeurs 3. Corrosion du Possible+ 4. Pour Les Hommes du Port 5. Ne Plus Avoir Peur des Monstres 6. Un Peu Plus Rouge 7. Exil

Personnel: Multitude: Benoît Moreau (clarinet)+; Barry Guy (bass); Cyril Bondi (drums and percussion) and d’incise (laptop and objects)

February 17, 2011

Augustí Fernández/Barry Guy/Ramón López

Morning Glory
Maya Records MCD 1001

Undivided

The Passion

Multikulti MPI 011

Ozone featuring Miklós Lukács

This is C'est la Vie

BMC Records BMCCD163

Nils Ostendorf/Philip Zoubek/Philippe Lauzier

Subsurface

Schraum Records 11

Something in the Air: Global Combos

By Ken Waxman

Globalization, mass communication and travel have actually created certain situations where the standardization of everything from hamburger patties to drum beats can be experienced no matter where in the world a person is situated. Increased mobility also, for instance, allows like-minded musicians in different locations to exchange thoughts and ideas. Because of this, the 21st Century has seen the instigation of literal global ensembles; musicians who work together regularly but live in different cities, countries or even continents.

This situation is particularly pronounced among improvised musicians, since many players already travel far to find like-minded associates. One top-flight instance of this captured on Morning Glory Maya Records MCD 1001 by the trio of Augustí Fernández Barry Guy Ramón López. Although listening to the sensitive cooperation exhibited on the two CDS which make up this outstanding essay in the trio form would suggest that the three are inseparable, it’s not so. Pianist Fernández lives in Barcelona, bassist Guy in Switzerland and drummer López in Paris. The trio functions among other commitments. Here material is divided among group compositions and those written by the pianist or the bassist. Prime example of López’s sensitive accompaniment occurs on Pepetuum Mobile where his press rolls back the pianist’s kinetic pitter-patter and tremolo chording which evolves in double counterpoint with Guy’s dobro-like twangs or bow taps against his instrument’s wood. Tracks such as A Sudden Appearance confirm the trio’s atonality, encompassing Fernández’s outlined single notes, the bassist’s screeching sul ponticello sprawls and López’s rat-tat-tats. Other pieces such as The Magical Chorus and most of the second CD, recorded live in a New York club reflect the standard piano trio, with splashes of pianistic color perfectly matched with vibrating cymbals, bowed strings or staccato plucks that presage cascading keyboard runs. A tune such as Fernández’s “Aurora”, suggests an Iberian take on Hispanic rhythms, with the tremolo patterns revealing many keyboard notes in rapid succession, yet with the line stretched enough to keep the impressionistic narrative chromatic. Guy’s contrapuntal retort features scrapped and stropped strings while the percussion undertow is mostly rim shots and the timbres involved with crushing crisp paper.

A similarly impressive global quartet is made up of Polish woodwind player Waclaw Zimpel, Ukrainian bassist Mark Tokar, German drummer Klaus Kugel and American expatriate in France, pianist Bobby Few. Undivided The Passion Multikulti MPI 011 is literally that, a modern reimaging of Christ’s suffering and death. Lacking vocals or religious motifs, the seven-part suite is not so much overtly spiritual as musically superlative. A veteran of playing in churches, nightclubs and with spiritual jazz avatar Albert Ayler, Few takes naturally to the theme and throughout lets his frenetic chording and dynamic voicing create fantasias of their own, as clustered notes cascade like waterfalls or singular timbres are starkly outlined. Kugel’s steady clanks and cogwheel ratcheting is added to regular cymbal splashes as well as drum drags and ruffs for versatile percussion backup. Tokar’s perfectly balanced string slaps are mostly in the background, except when used to mark theme variations and transitions. Each, whether it’s with two-fisted piano clusters, spiccato runs or door-knocking thumps cleanly intersects with Zimpel, who is equally expressive on clarinet, bass clarinet and tarogato. Appropriately intense, Way of the Cross/Crucifixion/Death finds the reedist involved with pressurized glossolalia, reed bites and emotional split tones as his solo varies from stopped silences to squeakily speaking in tongues. Around him in a broken-octave concord are buzzing bass lines, vibrating drum tops and gospel-inflected processional chords from the pianist.

One important ingredient in Zimpel’s woodwind cornocopia is the unique timbres of the tarogato, Hungarian-invented saxiophone cousin. Although French reedist Christophe Monniott doesn’t play it on This is C’est La Vie, the newest CD by his Paris-Budapest band Ozone BMCCD163, includes sounds from the equally indigenous cimbalom or multi-string hammered board zither, played by Miklós Lukács to those created by fellow Hungarians, keyboardist Emil Spányi and percussionist Joe Quitzke. Ozone’s CD is notable in its mixture of electronics and inclusion of jazz standards such as Poinciana and Sophisticated Lady. With Monniott on low-pitched baritone saxophone then latter is treatyed uniquely as his smeary split tones and squeals brush up against the reverberating arpeggios and string pops from Lukács. In contrast, Poinciana is backed into with keyboard splatters and signal-processed lines as the double-time treatment eventually encompasses Spányi’s multi-fingered syncopated runs and Monniott’s tongue vibrato on alto saxophone, ending with vocoder modulations from the saxman and portamento runs from the piano. More intriguingly, tracks such as the title tune welcome all influences. Here Monniott’s high-pitched, corkscrew-like vibrations operate alongside Lukács’ twanging harp-like arpeggios played andante and staccato, backed by cymbal splashes and superfast piano comping.

Canadians are also involved in trans-border cooperation as demonstrated by Subsurface Schraum Records 11, by the trio of Montreal-based bass clarinetist and alto saxophonist Philippe Lauzier, and two Germans, Berlin trumpeter Nils Ostendorf and Philip Zoubek from Köln on prepared piano. Here instrumentalist’s extended textures create a soundscape of buzzed and granular modulations as if electronics are involved. They aren’t. Instead multiphonics arise from the piano’s stopped and striated strings, the reedist’s flat-line or pressurized vibrato and grace note flourishes from the trumpeter. On a track such as Spectral Radiance, Zoubek’s clipped and clanking chords are mixed with string pops that add wooden tones from then piano’s action, building up to a rough, broken-chord concordance with bubbling and buzzing staccato lines from the horns. In comparison, an interlude like Calm City lives up to its name as the pianist’s barely audible key strummed accompanies Ostendorf’s carefully shaped grace notes, as Lauzier’s extended puffs gradually swell in volume.

Unlike economic or political globalization, musical globalization is more benign. These sessions demonstrate the outstanding results when free-thinking musicians based in different locations are able to regularly create together.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #5

February 7, 2011

Agustí Fernández/Barry Guy

Some Other Place
Maya MCD 0902

Borah Bergman & Giorgio Dini

One More Time

SILTA Records SR801

Dating from a time when intimate night clubs feared the potentially bombastic rhythms of a drum kit, piano-bass duos – often with the additional of a guitar – became the last work in sophisticated jazz. Employed memorably by piano stylists as different as Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans, a tendency towards fussiness and minimalist panache is avoided if the strength of the pianist and bassist are equally matched.

While both sessions here have much to offer, it’s obvious that Catalan pianist Agustí Fernández and veteran British bassist Barry Guy are more evenly matched than American pianist Borah Bergman and Italian bassist Giorgio Dini. The reason is simple. Fernandez, whose playing partners have encompassed American bassist William Parker and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, is a long-time associate of Guy, as part of the bassist’s New Jazz Orchestra, and a quartet with saxophonist Evan Parker. Ambidextrous Bergman, whose cascades of notes flow from either hand, matches Cecil Taylor in pianistic intensity and usually improvises alongside such equally other-directed players as saxophonists Peter Brötzmann and Parker plus drummers Andrew Cyrille and Hamid Drake. Meanwhile Varese-native Dini has worked in many improv contexts with partners ranging from pianist Gianni Lenoci to trumpeter Markus Stockhausen and saxophonist George Haslam. But he can be forgiven for being diffident in this first-time meeting with Bergman’s overbearing pianism.

Initially when confronted by the musical equivalent of a ferocious wildcat that operates by his own logic, the bassist hangs back and seems to be merely following along. Yet by the completion of the seventh track he’s asserted himself enough so that his position is analogous to that of a young fighter going against Muhammad Ali – not only is he still standing, barely bloodied, but he has managed to let loose with a few haymakers of his own.

“Hustle” marks this change is dynamics, as Dini’s woody shuffle bowing and percussive stopping matching Bergman’s kinetic metronomic runs and cascading chordal patterns. While the pianist is using foot pedal power to pressure splintering and hammering from one hand; he’s using the other to pace thematic circular patterns. As the bassist’s steadying bowing turns to col legno stops, Bergman pauses to wind-up wide player-piano like syncopation which is swiftly decorated with melodic, bowed invention from Dini.

As Bergman’s improvisations cascade through references to Stride, Swing, Ragtime, Klezmer, Bop and who-knows-what-else, it’s instructive to note how the bassist woks his chord-muting counterpoint to this string-key miasma. After the CD’s mid-point however, Dini’s pumping, stopping and plucking are able to amplify the keyboardist’s galloping cascades which sometimes appear equal parts melancholy and frenetic. If a part doesn’t appear to fit, like an unschooled early New Orleans player, Bergman merely piles more notes and textures upon it until it does.

“No More Cosmetic”, the CD’s final track illustrates Dini coming into his own. Operating with broken chords, his pulsating, contrapuntal movements provide interjections within Bergman’s lava flow of dynamic rumbles, runs and rebounds that are more hyperactive than the movements of a newly born puppy. With his ambidextrous motions in boldest relief, you can hear one hand advancing the thematic line while the other shreds a parallel texture with broken-octave clinks and clatters. The drawback of this is that some of the bassist’s more rhapsodic passages are nearly buried underneath Bergman’s roller-coaster-like keyboard motions, with the pianist streaking from allegro to staccatissimo and shoehorning references to other tunes into his solo. Climatically the two eventually intersect during a passage of double-pulsed lyricism. The result is a satisfying conclusion. However, with Dini having reached the status of a contender with this session, a rematch between the two would seem to be in order.

Some Other Place’s 10 tracks evolve at a much less frantic pace then One More Time’s. One reason might be that unlike the Bergman-Dini free improvisations, the tracks here are composed by one or both players. Especially interesting are that two of Guy’s three compositions recall his background in so-called early music in their melodiousness and romanticism.

“Blueshift (for M.H.)” – probably celebrating the fine baroque violinist Maya Homburger, Guy’s wife – is filled with European semi-classical allusions. Fernández’ full-flavored emphasis is on chords with measured temperament plus soundboard echoes, ending with a romantic fantasia of note sprinkles and reflections. Meanwhile the bassist’s guitar-like licks expand the theme moderato, then let deliberate strokes and rhythms vibrate underneath the piano chords.

Initially more bristly, with flashing sul ponticello bass lines and stops plus powerful internal piano string strums, the title tune soon dispenses with these strategies to introduce another near-largo line which mutates into a “Moonlight Sonata”-styled intermezzo. But since this is Free Music not Mood Music, the piece is transformed one more time before completion with many-fingered dynamic thrusts from Fernández and swift stopping from Guy.

As a rule, Fernández’ own compositions are more concerned with the staccato and contrapuntal properties of the instruments in broken octave interaction than Guy’s. “The Helix” for instance includes so many whistling timbres from strummed bass strings and vibrated piano strings that the resulting texture takes on near wave-form oscillations. Most others encompass a story telling aspect as well as technical pan-tonality.

On the other hand, the oddly titled “How to Go Into a Room You Are Already In” features resonating allegro plucks from Guy that isolate the reflective meditation from the pianist as he outlines the theme. While Fernández works his way southwards, the bassist first counters with measured pizzicato stops and then high-pitched sul ponticello slices that eventually deepen in tone and intensity. Bravura and mercurial “Barnard’s Loop” aligns slinking crab-like keyboard reaches from Fernández with strident plucks and striated spiccato rubs from Guy. Bouncing along the keyboard and among the internal strings, the pianist makes common cause with Guy’s rasgueado and shuffle bowing.

A satisfying meeting of equals, this CD is yet another notable addition to both men’s discographies.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Some: 1. Annalisa 2. Barnard’s Loop 3. How to Go Into a Room You Are Already In 4. Rosette 5. Blueshift (for M.H.) 6. Boomerang Nebula 7. Crab Nebula 8. Some Other Place 9. Dark Energy 10. The Helix

Personnel: Some: Agustí Fernández (piano) and Barry Guy (bass)

Track Listing: One: 1. One More 2. Autograph Two 3. Hustle 4. Enough for His Keep 5. Equitable 6. A Patter of Footsteps 7. No More Cosmetic

Personnel: One: Borah Bergman (piano) and Giorgio Dini (bass)

September 18, 2010

Irène Schweizer/Barry Guy, London Jazz Composers Orchestra

Radio Rondo
Intakt CD 158

Sometimes the best intention – plus a collection of exceptionally talented musicians – still doesn’t guarantee a perfectly balanced performance. Both piano soloist Irène Schweizer and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO) discovered this during this live concert at the 2008 Schaffhauser Jazz Festival in Switzerland. While the 30-minute “Radio Rondo” was composed by LJCO leader Barry Guy as a special feature for the Swiss pianist, the subsequent performance was patchy, with unexpected sonic peaks and valleys often held together by sheer will.

Actually this CD somehow manages to paper over some of the creative synapses exposed tom the audience on that day – perhaps some seemingly missing parts live were only captured by the recording equipment. Still Radio Rondo is more notable as a reunion, after a decade hiatus, of the full 18-piece London-based LJCO, then as a major statement.

Perhaps it was the unfamiliar surroundings or foreshortened rehearsal time –

“close enough for jazz” as the expression goes – that worked against the performance. Schweitzer, after all, has often worked with the band, Guy and soloists such as soprano and tenor saxophonist Evan Parker in the past. Additionally some of new LJCO members – Swiss percussionist Lucas Niggli, American trumpeter Herb Robertson, tubaist Per Åke Holmlander and tenor and baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson – are also Guy associates in other projects.

Essentially “Radio Rondo” meanders between Schweizer’s kinetic harmonies and the varied and contrapuntal asides or foreground textures the orchestra provides. Initially exploding with a miasma of screaming bass, lowing reeds and rough percussion thumps, the composition appears to stop and start plus speed up and slow down as it unrolls, so that nearly every band members has his or her say as a soloist or as part of a section. Dawdling tuba rumbles and sharp violin slices are exposed above rattles, ruff, snaps and drags from the dual percussionists, for example. Or structured and layered machine-gun fire-like beats from Niggli and Paul Lytton introduce a double-counterpoint contest between shrilling trumpet blats – likely from Robertson – and tremolo trombone slurs – probably from Conrad Bauer. With the massed horn section punctuating the piano solos with polytonal riffs, Schweizer’s output encompasses high-frequency syncopation, darting pressure and note jumps plus an occasional Bebop-like run. As the wavering horn colors finally bond into an approximation of romantic ripostes, the piece concludes with restrained tinkles from Schweizer interspaced with brassy wah-wahs and pulsating reed work.

“Schaffhausen Concert”, the 15½-minute Schweizer solo which opens the CD displays her expected discursive movements more clearly. Encompassing methodical walking bass lines, hard cascading chords that ring with bell-like clarity and sprawl onto the wound bass strings in the piano’s bowels, it’s a defining performance, perhaps strengthened by the fact that it takes place in the city of her birth.

Committed fans and completists, interested in all the work of the pianist, the LJCO or both, may rate the session more highly. Intrinsically there’s nothing that wrong with the CD. It’s just that in the past both Schweizer and the LJCO have established such high standards that the listener expects a lot more.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Schaffhausen Concert 2. Radio Rondo

Personnel: Henry Lowther, Herb Robertson and Rich Laughlin (trumpets); Conrad Bauer, Johannes Bauer and Alan Tomlinson (trombones); Per Åke Holmlander (tuba); Trevor Watts (soprano and alto saxophones); Pete McPhail (alto saxophone); Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); Simon Picard (tenor saxophone); Mats Gustafsson (tenor and baritone saxophones); Irène Schweizer (piano); Phil Wachsmann (violin); Barry Guy and Barre Philips (basses); Paul Lytton (drums and percussion) and Lucas Niggli (percussion)

March 3, 2010

Ken Vandermark/Barry Guy/Mark Sanders

Fox Fire
Maya MCD 0901

Testimony to the infinite adaptability of first-class improvisers is this two-CD live set. It captures the first-ever recorded meeting among veteran British Free Music bassist Barry Guy, peripatetic American multi-reedist Kern Vandermark and in-demand English drummer Mark Sanders, who mid-wifed the session.

Throughout the contours of 10 instant compositions from Birmingham and Leeds concerts in the United Kingdom, the three mate extended techniques, split-second timing, pitch and timbre augmentation plus subtle dips into the tradition. The result lodged firmly within the collegial spirit of Free Music, is also a wholly original variant.

Each improviser can call on musical history within the genre. Leader of large ensembles like his New Orchestra, Guy has for decades been one-third of saxophonist Evan Parker’s similarly constituted trio with drummer Paul Lytton. Adaptable in situations ranging from solo to big band work with Americans and Europeans, Vandermark – who here plays clarinet and tenor saxophone – has probably recorded more sessions in the past two decades as Guy has in his 40-year career. Meanwhile Sanders has partnered a clutch of saxophonists, including Parker, Tony Bevan and Paul Dunmall, plus bassists such as John Edwards and Simon H Fell.

The Leeds concert in particular features nods to the tradition in Vandermark’s fruity saxophone tone on “Fuggle” which he uses when he’s not exposing elongated burbles and reed bites. As his shrills spiral upwards into over-blowing and tongue mulching, Guy matches him with scrubbed or string-splintering textures. When the saxman blows across the reed exposing moist, staccato pecks, the bassist alternates between sul tasto slices and methodically picked chromatic patterns. Backing them both, Sanders confines himself to hand patterning and cymbal pings. Furthermore, when Vandermark switches to clarinet, he ensures that every partial and timbre is exposed staccatissimo and stop-time, with the vector reaching broken octave harmonies.

Thick sputtering waves of free-form multiphonics which Vandermark exposes on “Challenger” confirms Parker’s influence on him, and this resemblance is intensified by the drags, flams and ruffs of Sanders – who been part of some Parker formations – and Guy’s familiar thumps and strokes. Turning the piece into a bass-drum showcase for a time, the bassist’s knife-sharp movements encompass squeaks, slices and quivers on many strings simultaneously as the drummer reveals a constant hand-foot/smack-smash/roll-paradiddle percussion landscape. Although the tenorist’s return with grainy, textures then touches manages to suggest both “The William Tell Overture” and the bossa nova. Sanders’ rebounds manage to be both agitato and balladic, introducing a conclusive bass string snap.

Comparable in-the-moment communication takes place on the Birmingham-recorded tracks as well. The more-than 22½ -minute “Kwingyaw” for instance boasts stellar work from each. Beginning with a drum solo that includes cross pulses, rolls, backbeat strokes and bass drum whacks, the piece evolves intuitively as Guy’s beneath-the-bridge rasguedo takes on erhu-like echoes; and as Vandermark’s multi-directional note smears manage to be both fortissimo and staccato, oscillating between rasping abrasions and glottal punctuation. Speech-like inflections from all encompass inchoate reed squeals, pealing cymbal expression and spiccato triple-stopping. Expressing himself in a cornucopia of tongue slaps, fog-horn blats and extensive glossolalia, Vandermark’s sprint to low-pitched bites signal the piece’s conclusion as do speedy drum strokes and chromatic string strums. On other tracks, affiliated skitters, scatters and shakes from the drummer on skin, wood and metal, ensure that no matter how many floating altissimo squeals Vandermark packs into his circular breathing a foundation is maintained.

Fox Fire provides a classic example of a first-class, one-off trio formation. Plus the sounds captured on the disc guarantee that this combo will be fondly remembered even if the three never record together again.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Katsina 2. Up North 3. Kwingyaw (For T. D-E) 4. Revontulet 5. Northern Lights CD2: 1. Fuggle 2. Aquila 3. Challenger 4. Omega 5. Nugget

Personnel: Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Barry Guy (bass) and Mark Sanders (percussion)

February 11, 2010

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble

The Moment’s Energy
ECM 2066

John Butcher Group

Somethingtobesaid

Weight of Wax WOW 02

Now that a large portion of improvised music is deliberately moving further away from its swing-blues roots and into an accommodation with New music, a few far-sighted so-called classical festivals have made a place for improvisers. Tellingly, both these captivating CDs featuring ensembles performing large-scale compositions by significant British saxophonists, were commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. More importantly, neither work is a jazz-classical cameo, but expansive enough to allow the composers’ ideas to be figuratively painted on a larger canvas, using an extended sonic palate.

Although Evan Parker, who sticks to soprano saxophone on The Moment’s Energy, and John Butcher, who plays tenor and soprano saxophones plus samples on Somethingtobesaid, are probably the U.K.’s best-known Free Music saxophonists, the range and organization of the other instruments here highlights their differing approach to orchestral creativity. The Moment’s Energy, for instance, is an electro-acoustic exploration and to this end six electronics-manipulators are part of the group, in addition to percussionist Paul Lytton and violinist Philipp Wachsmann – two long-time Parker associates – utilizing live electronics. On the acoustic side, Barcelona’s Agustí Fernández plays both acoustic and prepared piano; New York’s Ned Rothenberg clarinet and bass clarinet; and Peter Evans, another American, trumpet and piccolo trumpet.

Along with Parker, bassist Barry Guy and shô player Ko Ishikawa produce singular acoustic tones. But during the course of the suite, sound processing, sampling remixing and layering predominates, emanating from Lawrence Casserley’s signal processing instrument, Joel Ryan’s sampler and signal processor, Walter Prati’s computer processor plus the live electronics of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer – who perform as Furt – and the sound projection of Marco Vecchi.

Somethingtobesaid on the other hand is nearly all acoustic, despite Butcher’s pre-recordings, Thomas Lehn’s analog synthesizer, Adam Linson’s bass and electronics and Dieb13’s turntables. Performed live at Huddersfield, sonic pleasure derives from trying to decipher which pulses are created electronically and which are the product of sophisticated extended techniques from Chris Burn’s piano, John Edward’s bass, Clare Cooper’s harp and guzheng and Gino Robair’s percussion and so-called energized surfaces.

Energized is a fine overall description for the CD, consisting of one long improvisation/composition, since gestures encompassing rubs, scraps, shuffles, plinks and strokes – usually fortissimo and staccatissimo – are layered into the piece. From the very beginning unvarying synthesized and oscillated peeps and pumps – not to mention captured voice replayed from the turntable or pre-recordings – reflectively pulse alongside clipped and sul ponticello swipes, slaps and wood-rending sounds from the bassists and guzheng player, plus piano glissandi and buzzing reed partials and tongue slaps. Often the sonic tautness is such that when Butcher plays a few measures in the common saxophone range, backed by Edwards’ slap bass, the effect is as upsetting as if a Renaissance harlequin had made a brief appearance in a Sci-Fi tale.

Although a collective work, space is also made for individual expression that never quite become solos or duos in the traditional sense. Around the seventh track indicator, for example, Burn compresses choruses of cascading keyboard runs and sweeping portamento notes in order to harmonically face off with electronic pulses and voltage vibrations from Lehn’s synthesizer. Afterwards he abruptly pumps out some quasi-stride-piano runs to accompany Butcher’s quacking reed timbres.

Earlier Robair’s crashes, bangs, cymbal slaps and bell-pealing plus freight-train shrills and resonating vibraharp strokes break through the blurry sound field to challenge the super-fast dial-twisting, in-and-out-stop-start flutters, clangs and flanges from the turntable and synthesizer. His energized surfaces as well as Lehn’s ring-modulator-like whooshes also serve as backdrop for curt, sparrow-like sibilant tweets and caws from Butcher. Subsequent reed-biting vibrations hook up with clattering from hard objects placed on and swept aside from the piano strings plus echoing cymbal crashes

Whether involved in pumping counterpoint in front of dense signal-processed crackling or circular-breathing alongside tremolo piano runs, Butcher’s unshaken aplomb while playing directs than concentrates the layers chromatically. Finally the various pitches and tones complete the sound circle.

Mixing live and processed tracks, The Moment’s Energy – recorded one year earlier in Huddersfield as well – is no less notable. Neither is Parkers playing any less self-possessed and energizing. But the other acoustic instruments are prominent as well, slashing holes in the quivering electronic pulses for their instruments’ textures, without upsetting the electro-acoustic balance.

Moving through the sixth and seventh variations on “The Moment’s Energy”, for instance, Guy’s spiccato rubs and pops evolve in double counterpoint with Wachsmann’s sul ponticello scratches and squeaks. As the fiddler’s cumulative timbres roll from the strings, processing exposes parallel violin lines which double and intersect with Wachsmann’s live sweeps. Meanwhile as the vector changes, Guy’s plucks and wood shaking are mixed with equivalent electronic melodic pulses. Later, after triggering signal processing – that is so sophisticated that together with the piano and horns it creates a wide-screen-like cinemascope-like coloration – Evans slurs low-key grace notes and accelerating pitch-slides as fungible organ-like electronic tones pulse beneath him.

Shortly before that Fernández’s extended interlude mixes low-frequency keyboard pitter-patter with stopped and strummed internal string vibrations as clouds of humming electronics splutter beside him. Sailing along harmonically, the pianist also riffs and rustles the keys, the resulting sounds of which are accompanied by rubbed drum tops and cymbals from Lytton.

Fernández’s sparkling glissandi meld with growling and snorting electronic blurs plus variable pitches loop at the top of “The Moment’s Energy II”. But the other timbres soon recede as Rothenberg’s a capella vibrations on bass clarinet accede to flying tongue slaps and affiliated renal resonance. As the undercurrent of buzzing reverb and processed oscillations simmer, the clarinetist is briefly joined by diaphragm vibrato from Parker, and then Rothenberg moves forward with growls and smears alongside hissing, blurry electro pulses, a cascade of plucked stops from Wachsmann and Guy, as well as fleet glissandi from the pianist.

Already celebrated for his playing, the strength of Parker’s composition and presentation is confirmed on “Incandescent Clouds”, one of two tracks recorded live. Here, the staccato, polytonal interaction between bubbling electronics, piano patterning and clipped bass lines is no more or less vivid than what is played on the tracks that mix live improv and electronics.

One can only hope that Huddersfield will continue to commission magnificent larger-group creations such as these from committed improvisers. The first-class creations Butcher and Parker produce on these CDs confirm the wisdom of earlier initiatives.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Moment: 1. The Moment’s Energy I 2. The Moment’s Energy II 3. The Moment’s Energy III 4. The Moment’s Energy IV 5. The Moment’s Energy V 6. The Moment’s Energy VI 7. The Moment’s Energy VII 8. Incandescent Clouds

Personnel: Moment: Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet); Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, bass clarinet and shakuhachi); Evan Parker (soprano saxophone); Ko Ishikawa (shô); Philipp Wachsmann (violin and live electronics); Agustí Fernández (piano and prepared piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion and live electronics): Lawrence Casserley (signal processing instrument); Joel Ryan (sample and signal processing); Walter Prati (computer processing); Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer (live electronics) and Marco Vecchi (sound)

Track Listing: Somethingtobesaid: 1. (08.14) 2. (07.47) 3. (05.26) 4. (09.48) 5. (06.36) 6. (06.01) 7. (02.14) 8. (09.07) 9. (04.12)

Personnel: Some: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones and pre-recordings); Chris Burn (piano); Thomas Lehn (synthesizer); John Edwards (bass); Adam Linson (bass and electronics); Clare Cooper (harp and guzheng); Gino Robair (percussion) and Dieb 13 (turntables)

February 1, 2010

John Butcher Group

Somethingtobesaid
Weight of Wax WOW 02

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble

The Moment’s Energy

ECM 2066

Now that a large portion of improvised music is deliberately moving further away from its swing-blues roots and into an accommodation with New music, a few far-sighted so-called classical festivals have made a place for improvisers. Tellingly, both these captivating CDs featuring ensembles performing large-scale compositions by significant British saxophonists, were commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. More importantly, neither work is a jazz-classical cameo, but expansive enough to allow the composers’ ideas to be figuratively painted on a larger canvas, using an extended sonic palate.

Although Evan Parker, who sticks to soprano saxophone on The Moment’s Energy, and John Butcher, who plays tenor and soprano saxophones plus samples on Somethingtobesaid, are probably the U.K.’s best-known Free Music saxophonists, the range and organization of the other instruments here highlights their differing approach to orchestral creativity. The Moment’s Energy, for instance, is an electro-acoustic exploration and to this end six electronics-manipulators are part of the group, in addition to percussionist Paul Lytton and violinist Philipp Wachsmann – two long-time Parker associates – utilizing live electronics. On the acoustic side, Barcelona’s Agustí Fernández plays both acoustic and prepared piano; New York’s Ned Rothenberg clarinet and bass clarinet; and Peter Evans, another American, trumpet and piccolo trumpet.

Along with Parker, bassist Barry Guy and shô player Ko Ishikawa produce singular acoustic tones. But during the course of the suite, sound processing, sampling remixing and layering predominates, emanating from Lawrence Casserley’s signal processing instrument, Joel Ryan’s sampler and signal processor, Walter Prati’s computer processor plus the live electronics of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer – who perform as Furt – and the sound projection of Marco Vecchi.

Somethingtobesaid on the other hand is nearly all acoustic, despite Butcher’s pre-recordings, Thomas Lehn’s analog synthesizer, Adam Linson’s bass and electronics and Dieb13’s turntables. Performed live at Huddersfield, sonic pleasure derives from trying to decipher which pulses are created electronically and which are the product of sophisticated extended techniques from Chris Burn’s piano, John Edward’s bass, Clare Cooper’s harp and guzheng and Gino Robair’s percussion and so-called energized surfaces.

Energized is a fine overall description for the CD, consisting of one long improvisation/composition, since gestures encompassing rubs, scraps, shuffles, plinks and strokes – usually fortissimo and staccatissimo – are layered into the piece. From the very beginning unvarying synthesized and oscillated peeps and pumps – not to mention captured voice replayed from the turntable or pre-recordings – reflectively pulse alongside clipped and sul ponticello swipes, slaps and wood-rending sounds from the bassists and guzheng player, plus piano glissandi and buzzing reed partials and tongue slaps. Often the sonic tautness is such that when Butcher plays a few measures in the common saxophone range, backed by Edwards’ slap bass, the effect is as upsetting as if a Renaissance harlequin had made a brief appearance in a Sci-Fi tale.

Although a collective work, space is also made for individual expression that never quite become solos or duos in the traditional sense. Around the seventh track indicator, for example, Burn compresses choruses of cascading keyboard runs and sweeping portamento notes in order to harmonically face off with electronic pulses and voltage vibrations from Lehn’s synthesizer. Afterwards he abruptly pumps out some quasi-stride-piano runs to accompany Butcher’s quacking reed timbres.

Earlier Robair’s crashes, bangs, cymbal slaps and bell-pealing plus freight-train shrills and resonating vibraharp strokes break through the blurry sound field to challenge the super-fast dial-twisting, in-and-out-stop-start flutters, clangs and flanges from the turntable and synthesizer. His energized surfaces as well as Lehn’s ring-modulator-like whooshes also serve as backdrop for curt, sparrow-like sibilant tweets and caws from Butcher. Subsequent reed-biting vibrations hook up with clattering from hard objects placed on and swept aside from the piano strings plus echoing cymbal crashes

Whether involved in pumping counterpoint in front of dense signal-processed crackling or circular-breathing alongside tremolo piano runs, Butcher’s unshaken aplomb while playing directs than concentrates the layers chromatically. Finally the various pitches and tones complete the sound circle.

Mixing live and processed tracks, The Moment’s Energy – recorded one year earlier in Huddersfield as well – is no less notable. Neither is Parkers playing any less self-possessed and energizing. But the other acoustic instruments are prominent as well, slashing holes in the quivering electronic pulses for their instruments’ textures, without upsetting the electro-acoustic balance.

Moving through the sixth and seventh variations on “The Moment’s Energy”, for instance, Guy’s spiccato rubs and pops evolve in double counterpoint with Wachsmann’s sul ponticello scratches and squeaks. As the fiddler’s cumulative timbres roll from the strings, processing exposes parallel violin lines which double and intersect with Wachsmann’s live sweeps. Meanwhile as the vector changes, Guy’s plucks and wood shaking are mixed with equivalent electronic melodic pulses. Later, after triggering signal processing – that is so sophisticated that together with the piano and horns it creates a wide-screen-like cinemascope-like coloration – Evans slurs low-key grace notes and accelerating pitch-slides as fungible organ-like electronic tones pulse beneath him.

Shortly before that Fernández’s extended interlude mixes low-frequency keyboard pitter-patter with stopped and strummed internal string vibrations as clouds of humming electronics splutter beside him. Sailing along harmonically, the pianist also riffs and rustles the keys, the resulting sounds of which are accompanied by rubbed drum tops and cymbals from Lytton.

Fernández’s sparkling glissandi meld with growling and snorting electronic blurs plus variable pitches loop at the top of “The Moment’s Energy II”. But the other timbres soon recede as Rothenberg’s a capella vibrations on bass clarinet accede to flying tongue slaps and affiliated renal resonance. As the undercurrent of buzzing reverb and processed oscillations simmer, the clarinetist is briefly joined by diaphragm vibrato from Parker, and then Rothenberg moves forward with growls and smears alongside hissing, blurry electro pulses, a cascade of plucked stops from Wachsmann and Guy, as well as fleet glissandi from the pianist.

Already celebrated for his playing, the strength of Parker’s composition and presentation is confirmed on “Incandescent Clouds”, one of two tracks recorded live. Here, the staccato, polytonal interaction between bubbling electronics, piano patterning and clipped bass lines is no more or less vivid than what is played on the tracks that mix live improv and electronics.

One can only hope that Huddersfield will continue to commission magnificent larger-group creations such as these from committed improvisers. The first-class creations Butcher and Parker produce on these CDs confirm the wisdom of earlier initiatives.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Moment: 1. The Moment’s Energy I 2. The Moment’s Energy II 3. The Moment’s Energy III 4. The Moment’s Energy IV 5. The Moment’s Energy V 6. The Moment’s Energy VI 7. The Moment’s Energy VII 8. Incandescent Clouds

Personnel: Moment: Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet); Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, bass clarinet and shakuhachi); Evan Parker (soprano saxophone); Ko Ishikawa (shô); Philipp Wachsmann (violin and live electronics); Agustí Fernández (piano and prepared piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion and live electronics): Lawrence Casserley (signal processing instrument); Joel Ryan (sample and signal processing); Walter Prati (computer processing); Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer (live electronics) and Marco Vecchi (sound)

Track Listing: Somethingtobesaid: 1. (08.14) 2. (07.47) 3. (05.26) 4. (09.48) 5. (06.36) 6. (06.01) 7. (02.14) 8. (09.07) 9. (04.12)

Personnel: Some: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones and pre-recordings); Chris Burn (piano); Thomas Lehn (synthesizer); John Edwards (bass); Adam Linson (bass and electronics); Clare Cooper (harp and guzheng); Gino Robair (percussion) and Dieb 13 (turntables)

February 1, 2010

Jazz Brugge

Brugge, Belgium
October 2-October 5, 2008

Pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s German quartet rolled through a set of Thelonious Monk compositions; Sardinians, saxophonist Sandro Satta and keyboardist Antonello Salis liberally quoted Charles Mingus lines during their incendiary set; Berlin-based pianist Aki Takase and saxophonist Silke Eberhard recast Ornette Coleman’s tunes; and the French Trio de Clarinettes ended its set with harmonies reminiscent of Duke Ellington’s writing for his reed section.

All these sounds and many more were highlighted during the fourth edition of Jazz Brugge, which takes place every second year in this tourist-favored Belgium city, about 88 kilometres from Brussels. But sonic homage and musical interpolations were only notable when part of a broader interpretation of improvised music. Other players in this four-day festival came from Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland and Belgium. With strains of rock, New music and folklore informing the jazz presented at the festival’s three sonically impressive venues, music at the most notable concerts was completely unique or added to the tradition. The less-than-memorable sets were mired in past achievements or unworkable formulae

Aided by its intimate surroundings, noon-time concerts in the Groening Museum were a model of realized inspiration. Satta and Salis’ duo was particularly remarkable, especially when Salis attacked the piano keys and strings, partially answering the question: What would Cecil Taylor sound like if he was Sardinian?

Salis was no more Taylor, then Satta was Taylor’s saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, but this longstanding partnership created an individual sound. Conveyed on waves of pedal-pressure and low-slung glissandi from the pianist and the saxophonist’s open tone, which melded the delicacy of Paul Desmond and Earl Bostic’s wide vibrato with the split tones, altissimo squeaks and key slaps associated with Free Jazz, selections were as dense as they were lyrical. Salis’ piano produced minuet-reminiscent arpeggios as well as staccato honky-tonk striding. With Satta often cunningly manipulating blues nuances, both abstracted further timbres from their island heritage. Stretching the accordion bellows or hammering at its keypad, Salis foot-stamped and vocalized pseudo-Mediterranean shanties to emphasize further individuality.

Sicilian percussionist Francesco Branciamore showcased his version of tradition- extension a two days later with trombonist and tubaist Giancarlo Schiaffini and France’s Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet and flugelhorn. Cappozzo, whose capabilities range from producing Gabriel-like triplets to breathing hand-muted mellow lines, worked in unison or contrapuntally with Schiaffini. Meantime the low-brass playing Roman moved beyond pedal-point accompaniment to unleash with the same facility, tailgate trombone braying gurgling, vocalized tuba lowing and shrill mouthpiece-only tootles. Branciamore advanced rhythm with wet finger tips slid across drum tops, hand-stopped cymbals, and wrapped up the performance with a Second Line-like backbeat. But that was after the percussionist shifted to the vibraharp for a four-mallet display of repetitive boppish beats, cushioned by Schiaffini’s feather-light tuba blares.

The reeds missing from this performance were present in earlier museum concerts from France’s Le Trio de Clarinettes and the duo of France’s Louis Sclavis on clarinets and soprano saxophone and Italian Francesco Bearzatti on tenor saxophone and clarinet.

Between them, Sylvain Kassap, Armand Angster and Jean-Marc Foltz played clarinets, bass clarinets and contrabass clarinets, frequently in triple counterpoint, other times with one producing a slurping ostinato as the others decorated his lines in lower-case accompaniment. Using circular breathing Foltz, for instance, created dual counter tones with himself. Meanwhile Kassap turned coughing and wheezing into his bass clarinet into shimmering echoes separated by chromatic honks. By the finale, the three moved from key-tapping and microtonal inferences to a replication – lead by Angster’s bass clarinet – of the sort of trio harmonies Ellington favored.

Similarly expressive, Bearzatti and Sclavis maintained a rhythmic cohesiveness as they introduced any number of ornamentations, running from jerky spittle-encrusted vibrations to blaring flutter-tonguing. On soprano saxophone Sclavis favored a flashy Sidney Bechet-style lyricism, while Bearzatti’s clarinet solos included jazzy, mid-range glissandi. Most impressive was a duet which joined shaky mouthpiece quacks as if from a chanter and basso pedal-point drones as if from bellows, to suggest insistent bagpipe-like undulations.

The duo’s performance was better realized than that of Sclavis’ Big Slam Napoli in the Concertgebouw, which matched the two reedists with a rhythm section and rapper Dgiz, who, despite hip-hopping from one side of the stage to the other, easily confirmed that rap-jazz admixtures are best left to performers from North America.

Similarly, French bassist Henri Texier’s sextet, while pumped full of Jazz Messengers-like energy resulting from a front line of trombone, baritone and alto saxophone, mired itself in crunching funk. Relatively faceless in execution, except for the profoundly resonating solos of the leader, the presentation lost its mooring when the band’s drummer was given free rein to unleash the sort of showy pounding firmly moored in Hard Rock.

Branciamore’s percussion facility was more germane to improvised music as were the work of three drummers associated with both bands involving British bassist Barry Guy. Swede Raymond Strid and Briton Paul Lytton guided the 10-piece Barry Guy New Orchestra (BGNO) without beat bluster, while earlier in the evening in the Concertgebouw’s Kamermuziekzaal, Spaniard Ramón López unveiled a similar low-key strategy playing with Agusti Fernández, BGNO’s Barcelona-based pianist, and Guy. Turning the classic jazz piano trio on its head, López’s Iberian rhythms, often expressed with vibrated bells, a sound tree, a triangle and ratchets, defined the tunes. Meanwhile Guy used a short stick plus his bow to hew unexpected stressed chords from his strings as well as plucking animated arpeggios. With Catalan-styled voicing periodically demanding he stretch crab-like across the keys, Fernández outlined clipped and insistent chording to steer the pieces astride the jazz tradition.

Filled out with a EU impov whose’s who – baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and tubaist Per Åke Holmlander from Sweden, German trombonist Johannes Bauer, British saxophonist Evan Parker, Swiss clarinetist Hans Koch and one American – trumpeter Herb Robertson – the BGNO was an object lesson in showcasing individual improvisations within a notated score. Conducting as he played, Guy sometimes directed the reed and horn sections to cross pollinate each other’s cumulative vamps in canon fashion. Then it was his own forceful string twangs, Fernández’s targeted slides and pumps plus vibrating cymbal color and unexpected tutti crescendos that provided the performance’s bonding musical glue.

Interjecting individual theme variations were, among others, Parker’s flutter tonguing and chirping tenor saxophone, Koch’s wispy scene-setting bass clarinet puffs and blistering triplets from Robertson. Throbbing on top of a configuration of bass clarinet, tuba and baritone saxophone, the piece reached its climax following diminishing drum beats and hunting-horn-like yodels from the trombone. Heraldic trumpet tattoos and low-pitched piano lines signaled tension release and conclusion.

One reason the BGNO performance was satisfying was because players created variations on a previously recorded Guy orchestration. Mutating familiarized themes in another fashion was less notably expressed by Von Schlippenbach’s Monk’s Casino band and Takase and Eberhard’s Ornette Coleman Anthology set. Although bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall fused exuberant altissimo and split tone playing with the ability to duck walk across the stage; and trumpeter Axel Dörner fused triplest and a blues tonality in his solos impresssiverly, overall the Von Schlippenbach four crammed too many 78-rpm-length Monk themes into the set that would have lost focus if not for the powerful walking bass of Jan Roder. Similarly the Takase/Eberhard duo substituted Coleman’s innate quirkiness for readings that straightjacketed the alto man’s tunes into standard head-variation-solo-recap formula. It felt as if the two bands presented the Classic Comics or Reader’s Digest version of advanced jazz.

All and all though, Jazz Brugge’s pluses overwhelmed its minuses, setting up high expectations for 2010’s fest.

-- Ken Waxman

-- MusicWorks Issue #103

March 28, 2009

Schaffhauser Jazzfestival

Schaffhausen, Switzerland
May 21 to 24 2008

Forty-seven years after she left her home town of Shauffchausen, Switzerland for nearby Zürich, pianist Irène Schweizer was back headlining the Schaffhauser Jazz Festival’s most ambitious program ever: performing “Radio Rondo”, a composition by bassist Barry Guy, which featured her and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).

In its 19th year of showcasing Swiss jazz and improvised music, Schaffhauser expanded its horizons in 2008 with the Schweizer/LJCO summit, which took place in front of a sell-out crowd in the city’s modernist Stadtheater. The evening, which included a solo piano showcase for Schweizer, also emphasized two of the fest’s overall themes: the majority of the most interesting sets included piano; and non-Swiss musicians and motifs adding needed variety to the performances

Solo, Schweizer followed a familiar – for her –discursive path, She was both meditative and Monkish, adjoining short key taps and echoing phases with thick chording, sometimes advanced with elbow prods.

Guy’s new composition, “Radio Rondo” appeared more problematic, with the pianist sometimes inaudible and the 19 musicians seemingly one rehearsal short of smoothing out the piece’s roughest edges. Episodic, the pianist’s ceremonial plinking and plucking often sent notes scurrying every which way, as the reeds shook and shrieked, the brass puffed triplets, percussionists Paul Lytton and Lucas Niggli scattered cross rhythms and bassist Barre Philips thickly double-stopped.

Sometimes Schweizer played with just reed backing; other times just with the brass. Simultaneously the sections traded riffs among themselves, at points recalling the frenzy of Energy music. Measured and functional, Schweizer’s efficient coloration brought a needed simplicity to a piece otherwise characterized by tutti crescendos.

Eventually Schweizer’s spare subtractions were echoed by others, with Niggli miming his accompaniment as he smacked an oversized gong or struck a mammoth bass drum. Veering from spiccato to legato, violinist Phil Wachsmann singly confirmed her approach. By the finale the concentrated power of varied instrumental textures was stretched into multi-hues, engulfing everyone in polyphonic exultation.

If the band seemed hesitant on “Radio Rondo”, then “Harmos”, which the LJCO first recorded in 1989, was a triumph. A longer composition that encompassed unforced swing, it featured Howard Riley – not Schweizer— on piano. Although its theme now sounds as carefully orchestrated as theatre music, upfront improvising wasn’t neglected. Among the stand-outs were frenetic brays from trombonist Johannes Bauer matched with pizzicato styling from Wachsmann; verbal shouts and double-tonguing from baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and watery bubbles and lip smacks from tubaist Per Åke Holmlander.

Cunningly utilizing the antiphonal characteristics of reeds, brass and strings, muted trumpets brushed up against Gustafsson’s spetrofluctuation; while elsewhere, the measured melancholy of Trevor Watts’ alto saxophone enlarged the theme. Eventually, following some characteristic slurping and spitting from trombonist Conrad Bauer and a blues modulation from trumpeter Rich Laughlin, tenor saxophonist Evan Parker’s quicksilver line and the violinist’s sul ponticello expansion preceded another variation on the theme which proceeded contrapuntal recapping of the head.

Smaller ensembles gave greater scope to extended pianism, as distinctive keyboardists demonstrated on subsequent evenings, where concerts took place in the more relaxed setting of the Kulturzentrum Kammgarn performance space. On the final night for example, pianist Colin Vallon, bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Samuel Rohrer created a 21st Century take on the classic jazz piano trio. The Lausanne-born pianist used multiple strategies to subtly swing, yet manually choked his instruments internal strings, or advanced rolling low-pitched chords to skirt the expected.

Often he varied his output between overdriven note clusters and minimal chording, exposing hard-handed vamps as effectively as basement-directed runs. His invention was mirrored expertly by the others. The bassist produced thumping reverberations by jamming sticks horizontally among his strings and the drummer dangled a key chain on his drum tops or swiped at them with a cloth to control volume. Ironically Rohrer had been a flashy beat-monger when he worked with a song-oriented funk-fusion band the evening before.

Some improvisations referenced bucolic Ornette Coleman compositions, though Vallon wasn’t above repeating a note cluster for more excitement, or emphasizing the foot-stomping qualities of a tune. Exposing his romantic nature, the pianist made his recasting of Jacques Brel’s “Je Ne Sais Pas” a standout. With Moret plucking thick chords and the drummer lightly bopping his snares and shaking bells, Vallon sweetly and almost too slowly emphasizes the melody, only to quicken the funereal tempo so that variations were audible, helped by sustained soundboard resonations that echoed on top of Rohrer’s hand-drumming.

A similar partnership was exhibited by the In Transit quartet, but its adoption of total improvisation had wider tonal colors, with veteran Jürg Solothurnmann’s alto and soprano saxophones added to piano, bass and drums. Restrained mid-European Jazz, In Transit’s appeal was built on the interplay between Solothurnmann, who has explored folkloric and standard jazz linkages during his career as a musician and broadcaster in Switzerland, and the meditative positioning of American pianist Michael Jefry Stevens

With his performance related as much to sleight-of-hands as locked hands, Stevens picked up the tempo from adagio to andante almost before anyone noticed. By the time Stevens began plucking his instrument’s internal strings, bassist Daniel Studer was rolling a stick along his strings for maximum abrasion and drummer Dieter Ulrich was booting different parts of his kit – including a cowbell – to mark the tempo.

Overcoming Stevens’ pile-driving arpeggios which threaten to tip the set into a modal piano trio showcase, Solothurnmann’s body sways and noisy tongue slaps on soprano, encouraged the pianist to lay out long enough for the saxman to set up an alternative trio modal. Eventually as the bass lines scraped and tick-tock drum rhythms stabilized, saxophonist and pianist worked in double counterpoint to complete the musical circle. Solothurnmann held one long reed note and Stevens chorded consistently to reflect the set’s spacious introduction.

Even more radical restructuring of the piano role had been evident the previous evening on the same stage as Swiss-turned-New York-downtowner, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier showcased her working quintet. Taking centre stage were the strings of American violinist Mark Feldman and French cellist Vincent Courtois, on their periphery were the intelligently-utilized trap set of American Gerald Cleaver and the electronics of Japanese-American Ikue Mori.

Mori’s triggered pulsations were the only electro-acoustic interface displayed at the festival. Even here, her oscillated whooshes, pinball machine-like sizzles plus offside crackles and chirps were really landscaping then major performance components. More germane were the drummer’s contributions. Rumbling, rolling and bouncing, while using brushes more than sticks, Cleaver also produced percussion shakes by manipulating sheets of paper on top of his snares and toms.

With such unobtrusive backing, anticipation resulted while waiting to see how Courvoisier’s karate-chop-like comping or flapping note clusters could distort the violin’s and cello’s round legato tones. Answer for the first tune was a crescendo of flying agitato and staccato string-stops; for the second wailing spiccato. At the same time there was partnership among Feldman, Courtois and the pianist with several motifs reiterated from low-pitched, sul tasto cello line and piano keying or sprightly fiddle sweeps and multiple, high-frequency rolls from Courvoisier.

Much more conventional, pianist Thomas Silvestri’s quintet’s performance the next night – featuring trumpeter Michael Gassmann tenor and soprano saxophonist Ewald Hügle bassist Heiner Merk and exuberant drummer Tony Renold – unexpectedly gained a standing ovation from the crowd, plus garlands of flowers rained down upon the stage. But as liberating as the band’s note-perfect Hard Bop seemed at the time – complete with Latin percussion rhythms, biting saxophone riffs, sharp piano chording and well-modulated trumpet lines – it moved a little too cleanly – like a well-crafted Swiss watch.

Perhaps much of the audience’s enthusiasm stemmed from the placement of the Silvestri five following another of the festival’s missteps, one of a series of lachrymose female singers paired with pop-jazz accompaniment, whose night club-style stances appeared out of place.

Far more affecting vocally was Albanian-Swiss singer Elina Duni, who performed two midnight shows at the subterranean Haberhuas Kulterklub. Backed by experienced improvisers – Vallon, bassist Bänz Oester and percussionist Norbert Pfammatter, she interpreted songs in her native tongue in performances that resembled lively Middle Eastern dance music – encompassing her variation of belly dancing-Bollywood undulations – or as elongated, chanted folk tales. Although clearly in charge – stopping-and-starting the band with stomping of her bare feet – Duni was adaptable enough to give the trio its instrumental freedom. At one juncture within a complicated formulation that encompassed low-frequency piano chords, a waking bass line and the drummer whacking his hi-hat and popping his snares, she added a talking-and-shouting interpolation that resembled an alto saxophone solo.

--Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #102

November 20, 2008

Variations on a Theme

Guelph Jazz Festival Musicians On Their Own
Extended Play

Barry Guy/Mats Gustafsson/Raymond Strid

Tarfala

Maya MCD0801

Junk Box

Cloudy Then Sunny

Libra Records 203-019

John Zorn

News For Lulu

hatOLOGY 650

Matana Roberts

The Chicago Project

Central Control CC1006PR

Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet

Tabligh

Cuneiform Rune 270

AMMÜ Quartet

AMMÜ Quartet

PAO 50030

Healthy in its adolescence, the Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF) has become Ontario’s pre-eminent festival for improvised music. Now in its 15th year, the GJF presents improvisers in concerts, workshop and symposia. An appealing factor for listeners is that GJF concerts highlight only one of the versatile musicians’ many activities. Recent CDs capture other aspects.

Take British bassist Barry Guy, at Guelph with violinist Maya Homburger and bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly. Except for Guy’s string prestidigitation, that chamber-improv is nearly the opposite of the go-for-broke Energy Music on Barry Guy/Mats Gustafsson/Raymond Strid, Tarfala Maya MCD0801. Two high-octane Swedish players, saxophonist Gustafsson and percussionist Raymond Strid complete the band.

Spewing accentuated timbres, Gustafsson’s cries and snorts demand muscular retorts from the bassist. On the title track Guy uses guitar-like arpeggios to match the saxophonist’s echoing split tones, wrapping the friction of individual string pressure into a contrapuntal response. Strid’s rim shots and rattling snares provide the rhythmic glue. Eventually Guy’s harsh twanging plus abrasive sawing at strings near the scroll move the saxophonist’s smears, flattement and flutter-tonguing into contrapuntal counterpoint.

Chromatic bass thumps and conga-like pops from the percussionist push Gustaffson’s extended glossolalia from discursive to convergent on “Icefall”. Guy’s ostinato underpinning and Strid’s pats and pumps neutralize Gustafsson’s honks and tongue slaps into a diminuendo conclusion.

Resolving the clash between rough and gentle voicing, staccato and legato pitches also characterize Junk Box’s Cloudy Then Sunny Libra Records 203-019. Two members of the trio, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura play the GJF. A composer-arranger, Fujii explores new territory on this CD, using graphic notation to spur the improvisations. Junk Box’s third member is American drummer John Hollenbeck, capable of rhythmic interaction ranging from rattles and pumps from tam-tams and marimba to full military press rolls and bass drum thwacks.

On “One Equation”, Tamura uses split tones and triplets to create a call-and-response section all by himself, as Fujii plays the tremolo melody in tandem. “Opera by Rats” emphasizes piano pedal action as the theme shifts from Bop to Stride, while the trumpet brays and Hollenbeck snaps cymbals and pops snares. This popping serves as a coda to “Back and Forth”, which also describes the trio’s tonal connection. Tamura’s timbre is French horn-like as he echoes Fujii’s phrases, and the track concludes with cascading piano chords draping themselves over the others’ note clusters.

There a similar interchange among alto saxophonist John Zorn, trombonist George Lewis and guitarist Bill Frisell on News For Lulu hatOLOGY 650. This 1987 reissue is different, yet somewhat similar to the three sets of Radical Jewish Culture Zorn is presenting at GJF this year. Rather then re-interpreting and re-conceptualizing Jewish melodies, Lulu does the same for Hard-Bop classics. Yet as devotional or freylach-like ditties are transformed with percussion, electronics and electric guitars by Zorn at GJF, this CD performs a similar conversion as raucous blowing vehicles become recital-ready.

Both the guitarist and trombonist – who have performed at Guelph – are responsive enough to keep things moving, despite the lack of a rhythm section. Surprisingly, it’s often Lewis’ gutbucket braying which holds the pieces together from the bottom. “Venita’s Dance”, has the trombonist comping as the guitarist loops licks that turn to single-note filigree. Later Zorn steadily peeps and Lewis chromatically exposes the head. “Funk in Deep Freeze” isn’t funky, but instead finds Frisell distorting country-styled licks, Lewis roughening his tone and Zorn’s alto texture slinky and airy.

“Sonny’s Crib” plays up gospel inflections with the two horns passing on the theme like relay runners. Zorn double times, Lewis plays rubato variations and Frisell picks out blues tonality until the introduction is recapped by the altoist. “Melody for C” with conclusive organ-like reverb from Frisell, provides an opportunity for three-part harmony, with the trio’s improvisations divided into fuzzy multiphonics.

Matana Roberts also twists the jazz tradition, but less radically. The alto saxophonist, who brings her Coin Coin Continuum to the GJF, celebrates her own home town on The Chicago Project Central Control CC1006PR. Other Chicagoans contribute: drummer Frank Rosaly, bassist Josh Abrams, guitarist Jeff Parker – whose band Tortoise is at Guelph this year – and veteran tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. In 2002 Anderson, played an incendiary GJF set with Kidd Jordan. Saxophonist Jordan (see Whole Note Vol. 13 #9) plays Guelph again this year.

In the same league as the Jordan-Anderson meeting, Roberts a capella duet with Anderson features swirling staccato lines intersecting contrapuntally – finally reaching rapprochement. On “Nomra”, she and Parker prove that free improvising can be low-key and supple, highlighting resonating guitar licks and tasteful saxophone arpeggios. Tunes are tougher elsewhere. “Exchange”, built on a walking bass line and the drummer’s repeated flams showcases Parker’s distorted flanges and bottleneck-sharp runs that contrast with Roberts’ fruity tone and slide-slipping vibrato. “Thrills” is a POMO blues with the saxophonist rooster-crowing and double-tonguing, Parker snapping delayed echo and Rosaly smacking the backbeat.

Pianist Vijay Iyer produced The Chicago Project and he’s at GJF 2008 with DJ Spooky. But it’s electric piano and synthesizer he brings to trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet CD Tabligh Cuneiform Rune 270. Drummer Shannon Jackson and bassist John Lindberg are equally “Golden”.

Atmospherically referencing Fusion, but with simplistic beats leeched out, the disc’s color comes from Iyer’s Fender Rhodes pulsations. Strumming cadenzas backed with swaggering synthesizer drones, Iyer lets Jackson’s solid ruffs and Lindberg’s four-square rhythm anchor the compositions. On top of this ever-shifting bottom, Smith arches long-lined slurs and unhurried grace notes. Replicating a bugler’s tattoo, on “Rosa Parks”, or a bellicose call-to-arms on “DeJohnette”, the trumpet’s lines encompass high-pitched brassy trills and sputtering Bronx cheers. Extended essays in improvisations, Tabligh’s tunes bond fragmented brass slurs, cross-handed rim shots, kinetic piano cadences and string scratches into throbbing instant compositions.

Instant composition describes the music of Holland’s Instant Composers Pool (ICP), in residence at the GJF this year. But the creative ferment generated by the band is equally expressed when ICP band members work in smaller groupings. One is AMMÜ Quartet’s AMMÜ Quartet PAO 50030. Raucous drummer Han Bennink – with the band for 35 years – and unflappable violinist Mary Oliver – a 10-year ICP veteran – join forces with Munich-based cellist Johanna Varner and trombonist Christopher Varner. The Varners produce the sort of timbres Oliver and Bennink hear in the ICP from trombonist Wolter Wierbos and cellist Tristan Honsinger.

Never one to play presto when he can play staccatissimo, or pianissimo when fortissimo can be sounded, Bennink continually clinks, clanks, bangs, whacks and thwacks. So it’s instructive to hear his duets with the trombonist. Varner ejaculates speedy, emphasized brays, moving from vocalized syllables to tongue stops and alp-horn-like flutters. Amazingly this results in textures that fit hand-in-glove – or mute-in-bell –with the drummer’s bomb-dropping bangs and cymbal crashes. On their duet Oliver squeaks and spatters sul ponticello as the cellist responds with strums and shuffle bowing.

This comfortable creativity amplifies when the four play together. On “Improvisation II”, the trombone’s contrapuntal buzzes and the violin’s spiccato runs chase one another as the cellist double-stops and Bennink jabs and rebounds. As the strings distort into double counterpoint, the trombonist puts aside distended subterranean timbres for dog-whistle shrilling. Other times the drummer’s kettle-drum-like resonation faces legato coloration from the cello; alternately, wide, chromatic notes from the trombonist complement string-stropping from Oliver. Stop-time and polytonality characterize “Ammü”, although pitch clusters from the strings and horn can’t overcome Bennink’s frenetic time-keeping.

GJF audiences, exhilarated by what they hear live can be equally impressed by these CDs.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #2

October 8, 2008

Fernández/Parker/Guy/Lytton

Topos
Maya Records MCD 0701

Finding a role within an already existing musical partnership can be problematic. When the relationship has lasted most of three decades it’s that much riskier. Yet as the nine instant compositions on this CD demonstrate, Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández creates no fissure when he performs with the long-standing British trio of saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton.

It helps that the pianist, along with Lytton, is a member of extended Guy and Parker ensembles. Yet he’s such an accomplished stylist, whose collaborators range from Free Jazz bassist William Parker to New music flautist Jane Rigler, that his input enhances the tracks so that each part of the paradigm seems indivisible.

Parker’s serpentine trilling on the aptly-titled “Open Systems”, for instance, is backed Guy’s by blunt strumming and Fernández’s solitary key pressure, as if both are utilizing the same string set. As the pointillist mixture accelerates, impelled by Lytton’s chain-rattling and pitter-pattering skins, the pianist’s metronomic lilt allows for a quicker pace, but without losing any of the tune’s subtleties. Similarly, Lytton could be whacking steel pans as Parker vibrates constricted timbres around his tongue on the polyphonic “This One is for Kowald”, but until identifiable piano cadences kick in, the spiccato shrills heard could be bass string strokes, mouthpiece whistles or internal piano strings stopping.

Probably the clearest indication of Fernández’s simpatico internalizing of the trio’s improvisational ethic is that on the four tracks where he works in duo or trio combinations, it’s as if the quartet textures can still be heard. Especially burrowing within the piano’s bowls, astoundingly the resulting stuck and stopped overtones nearly compensate for Lytton or Guy’s absence.

-- Ken Waxman

For CODA

August 15, 2008

Jazz à Mulhouse gives a loving French kiss to Improvised music

By Ken Waxman
For CODA Issue 337

Impressive saxophone and reed displays were the focus of the 24th Edition of Jazz à Mulhouse in France in late August. Overall however, most of the 19 performances maintained a constant high quality. This may have something to do with the fact that unlike larger, flashier and more commercial festivals, Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) is an almost folksy showcase for improvisation.

Located less than 20 minutes away by train from Basel, Switzerland, Mulhouse is a mid-sized city of 150,000 in eastern France long known as an industrial textile centre. Low-key, JAM is rather like the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), with better restaurants.

Except for an opening concert by French guitarist Noël Akchoté, which this year was in a crowded downtown club that looks as if its standard fare is pop chansonniers, all other shows take place in two wildly dissimilar venues. The mid-day solo piano series is showcased in the acoustically austere Chapelle St. Jean. Located in mid-town, it’s a 12th Century stone church with vaulted ceilings, bas-reliefs at eye level and two gigantic sun dials, high up on opposite walls facing the stage.

In late afternoon, a JAM-organized free shuttle bus takes the audience out to the suburbs near the streetcar terminus for evening shows at the Noumatrouff, an expansive, hanger-like space that is usually a rock club, complete with grungy washrooms and a beer tent. With a two-hour gap between early-and-late performances, audience members mix, mingle, chat, chow down on their own food or what’s available from a couple of vendors, and sample the local beer.

What follows is a selection of most of the festivals highlights, with mention of a few less-than-stellar performances.

Disappointedly in fact, Akchoté opened the festivities with a nearly listless solo set that skirted shoe-gazing pop jazz. The Swiss Lucien Dubois trio which preceded him, featured a break-dancing drummer, a bass guitarist warbling lachrymose ballads and was only notable for the leader’s reed prowess..

In the piano series, Belgium’s Fred Van Hove and Switzerland’s Irène Schweizer represent the first generation of Euro improvisers and France’s Frédéric Blondy and Sophie Agnel the contemporary ones. With his waves of long white hair Van Hover, 70, resembles a caricature of a 19th Century classical virtuoso and his playing seemed to reflect this. Concentrating on easy-flowing glissandi and heavy-handed echoing timbres he created a waterfall of upwards pitched timbres with dense centres that were then smoothed down into sharp individual notes. Without using the pedals he exposed low frequency percussive rhythms that literally made audience members jump, then concluded with a calmer theme variation.

Harder and faster in execution, Schweizer’s recital exposed a cyclone of sharp note-twisting vamps that slithered between very low and very high pitches with references to classical music appearing and vanishing in seconds, plus slapped keys and subterranean pitches reminiscent of Herbie Nichols. Schweizer’s heightened rhythmic sense came through even when she used mallets to poke at the piano’s innards. With a continuous ostinato, her solo was more jazz-like than Van Hove’s, quoting “Blue Monk” and what sounded like “Prelude to a Kiss”. Despite her 10-finger flourishes, she telescoped variations so that the piece’s head was recapped before the end.

After a vigorous late-night concert the day before with fellow Gallic improvisers cellist Martine Altenburger and saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, Blondy spent the first part of his recital exploring the nooks and crannies of his piano. With a mallet, a small cymbal and other implements he yanked buzzes, squeaks, pings and whistles from the strings. On the keys, he sometimes sounded like a combination of David Tudor and Knuckles O’Toole; on one hand creating high-frequency glissandi and suspended tones, and on the other alluding to “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Mumbling to himself and pulling faces while he played, Blondy’s frenzied key slashes, flying fingers and full forearm smacks led to an encore where his body language seemed to suggest that by nearly smothering the keyboard he could impale himself onto the sharp notes created.

A day earlier Angel, who along with Akchoté and British saxophonist Evan Parker, spent the week guiding and rehearsing separate student ensembles, was calmer than Blondy. More stately and sombre in her presentation than the other three pianists, much of her improvising focused on bottoming ostinatos and ricocheting timbres, as well as voicings that involved the piano’s wood as well as its keys. Paper clips, hard rubber balls and other objects were adhered to the piano strings before she began. During the course of her performance she would pluck a key then immediately stop it with a tool; create a series of lyrical patterns on top of vibrating drones, or wet her fingers with her tongue and apply those fingers to the piano strings. Climatic passages used the pressure of both hands to create throbbing, buzzing notes which worked their way into additional furtive arpeggios.

Masterful saxophone stylists were as well represented as keyboardists. Notable sets included one from British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant – with two unheralded but masterful French Free Jazz practitioners: bassist Benjamin Duboc and sensitive percussionist Didier Lasserre – who could be termed the discovery of the festival for a North American; Swiss soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, whose sparse adaptive unity with French pianist Jacques Demierre and long-time American expatriate in France bassist Barre Philips set a high standard for chamber improv; alto and soprano saxophonist Gauguet; and an utterly time-suspending set from Parker’s long-time British trio of drummer Paul Lytton and bassist Barry Guy augmented by Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández.

With Blondy in full Jerry Lee Lewis-like pounding form and Gauguet, a breath-machine using every variety of extended reed techniques plus altering his sound by pressing his bell against a pant leg or swaddling it in tin foil, it was Altenburger who provided lyrical, yet perfectly in-synch connective passages. More admirable than congenial, the overall impression the trio’s set left was that some levity would improve this impressive chops showcase.

Chant’s pant leg was also put to good use during a few of his bubbling, note-stretching solos as well. But his output of small gestures and concise tones plus the powerful thwacks and plucks of Duboc’s tuning-peg-to-spike and sensitive double-bow exhibitions were subtly overshadowed by Lasserre’s bravura percussion skills. Missing no necessary sonic despite using a miniature kit of one bass drum, one snare and one cymbal, Lasserre unveiled squeaks, pats and silences with his bare hands and a variety of mallets and sticks for a cross section of discordant yet complementary tones. Other praiseworthy percussionists were the expected – Lytton with Parker and long-time Free Jazzer German Paul Lovens in his two appearances – and the unexpected: Japan’s Makoto Sato, with his soft mallets and Butoh dancer cool. Unfortunately Sato was part of the Marteau Rouge trio, whose guitarist and synthesizer player’s droning jams and amp sludge were more appropriate for ProgRock freak-outs circa 1967 then a 2007 jazz festival.

Polyphonically connective, the Leimgruber/Demierre/Phillips set was probably the festival’s most unpremeditatedly visual. It featured the saxophonist slowly disassembling his tenor saxophone and methodically twisting and blowing through different parts; Phillips sawing on his bass’ shoulder with his bow and playing so passionately that the bow’s horsehair streamed; and Demierre’s jack-in-the-box leaps and elbow-on-the keys emphasis. Additionally, the pianist pumped out stubby contrapuntal lines and buzzy soundboard textures, perfect accompaniment for the saxophonist’s pseudo duck calls and animated circular breathing.

Climax of the festival was literally its finale, an intense, nearly 90-minute set by Parker, Guy, Lytton and Fernández. An exercise in controlled brutality, the surges of sound unified during three extended improvisations, which despite the breadth of technique on display found the four operating like a well-coordinated assembly line, with motifs and themes passed from one to another.

This was in sharp contrast to the Charles Gayle trio set that preceded it. Now exclusively playing alto saxophone, Gayle still overblows his characteristic squalls, squeaks and screams, alternately altissimo and with fog-horn-like echoes. But despite excursions to the piano where he seemed to delight in producing dissonant Monkish runs, and donning the slouch hat and clown’s red nose of his “Streets” character as he tried out Stride riffs, something was lacking. Perhaps it was because British drummer Mark Sanders was in the rhythm section along with Gayle’s regular bassist Gerald Benson. The disparity between the bassist’s low-key swipes and the drummer’s harder and thicker tones was obvious. Obviously uncomfortable Gayle’s attempted to solder this disconnect by animatedly barking out command and counting out “Giant Steps” with foot stomps before trading fours with the drummer.

Back to the Parker crew: whether it was the unseasonable heat in the auditorium, the late hour, or the privilege of watching master stylists at work, but most audience members stayed hushed – nearly mesmerized – during the proceeding. Aloof, Lytton busied himself displaying and manipulating various parts of his stripped-down kit; banging small hard objects on top of his cymbals when the mood struck; resonating woody tones other times, and massaging rhythmic surfaces with his palms and a variety of implements. Athletic and limber, Guy appears to have the ability to produce sounds from both the front and back of his bass, no matter where the strings are located. Not only did he slip, strike and slide along his strings, but he also shook the instrument itself, gathered its strings together for massive plucks and multiplied the available textures with two bows vibrating among the strings, plus thwacking on the string set with what appeared to be a drum stick.

Although Spanish, Fernández often applied body English to his arpeggios and chords and moved his arms crab-like across the keyboard. At one point he bounded from the piano bench to trap high-frequency tinkles at the top of the soundboard, then manually manipulated the string’ speaking length. At times he seems to be karate-chopping the keys into submission. This physicality was usually complemented by Guy smacking and tapping his strings at his bass’s southern portion beneath the bridge and Lytton creating a cluster of cymbal reverb.

Initially tongue-slapping and twittering long sweeping lines so that his soprano saxophone sounded like a piccolo, Parker filled his solos with circular breathing, verbalized honks and shouts. Always in control, his nearly endless streams of intense vibrated notes didn’t vary as he remained rooted on one spot while playing.

Other groups that made impressions earlier on, ranged from the gargantuan to the diminutive. In the first category was the 22-piece Lille (France)-based La Pieuvre band, the members of which were lead in a conduction by Oliver Benoit. The many-armed group, (“Octopus” in English) smeared and rappelled through accelerating crescendos, dark, dramatic pauses and a fog of buzzing and blowing. With blustering brass solos and a collective improvisation for its saxophone section, at time the Octopus seemed to suck all oxygen from the room.

Also notable were two duos: Kiff Kiff from Lyon, France and Germans Lehn/Lovens. Trombonist Alain Gibert and his son, bass clarinetist Clément, who are Kiff Kiff, played for the most part airy, “folkloric” tunes – sometimes with words – that brought to mind the original Jimmy Giuffre3. Nevertheless there was nothing effete about the improvisations, since when he wanted to, the older Gibert produced a roistering gutbucket tone, and the younger paid homage to Eric Dolphy in many of his solos. Still among five days of more-or-less “out” music, Kiff Kiff’s lightly rhythmic melodies probably sounded more Mainstream then they are.

No one could confuse the agitated improvising of drummer Paul Lovens and analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn with the Mainstream. A former pianist, Lehn uses his electronic instrument like a keyboard and lunges, swivels and sways as he plays. Divorced from too-clean electronic signals, his old-fashioned synth quacked like Donald Duck, expelled trumpet-like spetrofluctuation, buzzed, clinked and clanked.

Meantime Lovens – who the day before had a busier interaction with French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Anerican-born, German-resident vocalist Lauren Newton in a set that didn’t seem to gel – appeared more relaxed with Lehn and his playing more commanding. A photo of Lehn with his white shirt and narrow black tie, was prominently featured on the JAM program and posters and he wore this nearly traded-marked outfit each time he was on stage. With Lehn, whose input-output interface and triggered pulses were warm and humanistic, Lovens used a combination of single strokes and connective rhythms to cement moods..

The percussionist rubbed his snare top as Lehn plucked chords from his sythn, and hit his attached cymbals vertically and horizontally while sometimes spinning smaller, unattached others. A common trope was scraping a vertical drum stick on the ride cymbal creating a tone as constant as, but less irritating than, chalk on a blackboard. Textures from Lovens’ wood block were often exposed as were thumps from his bass drum. Overall, this unshowy exhibition of sensitive percussion styling was a festival trait he shared with Lytton, Lasserre and Sato.

A focus on music-making, not crowd pandering is what sets apart Jazz à Mulhouse from more commercial festivals Still, there was enough high quality audience-pleasing music to explain the respect it engenders.

January 9, 2008

The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra with Barry Guy

Falkirk
FMR CD 168-i0706

La Pieuvre

Ellipse

Helix LX 002

Ever since American Butch Morris introduced the concept of using “conduction” to help improvising ensembles express musical ideas without formalistic structures, the model has been tested over the past two decades by a variety of ensembles in different parts of the world.

Although there are those who might question just how different “conduction” is from a Count Basie band head arrangement or a one of Charles Mingus’ scores that was transmitted orally to his sidemen, the theory appears to be helpful in allowing bands of 20 or so musicians to create notable semi-improvised/semi-composed structures. Falkirk and Ellipse provide two of the more impressive, recent examples of this trend, and also illustrate by their differences how nothing involved with Free Music is accepted dogma.

For a start, the 19-piece The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) is directed by a guest, British bassist Barry Guy – who also solos on the nearly 65½ minute CD – along with his wife, baroque violinist Maya Homburger. Founder of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO) in the early 1970s, Guy has years of experience in motivating large groups of improvisers.

Unlike the long-established LJCO, made up of many of Britain and the Continent’s most accomplished Free Jazzers however, the GIO is a more amorphous proposition. Only formally constituted in 2002, members of the orchestra come from jazz, contemporary classical, avant-pop and sound art backgrounds. It’s a tribute to Guy’s skills as an orchestrator – and the adaptive talents of GIO members – that the group is able to create a notable version of Guy’s “Witch Gang Game” – plus a shorter improvisation – after only a week of workshops and rehearsals with the composer. Consisting of an interpretation of panels from Scottish artist Alan Davis’ graphics, “Witch Gang Game” is no traditional score.

Similarly, La Pieuvre’s nearly 68-minute “Ellipse” has a comparable thematic genesis. Inspired by bandleader/guitarist Olivier Benoit and choreographer David Flahaut, the idea is for each musician to use the beats of his or her own heart as individual metronomes to establish a polyrhythmic response to the evolving six-note theme “conductated” by Benoit. Based in Lille, France, the 23 members of La Pieuvre (“octopus” in English) came from as diverse backgrounds as the GIO members – rock, Free Jazz, contemporary classical music and electronics. Together since 1999, and again akin to the GIO, the group has evolved different programs and played with a variety of guest soloists. On his own Benoit has also recorded with the likes of alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet and pianist Sophie Angel.

Back in Scotland, “special guests” Homburger and Guy receive no special consideration from the other musicians and are well-integrated within the performing unit. From the beginning of this polyphonic treatment of “Witch Gang Game” as a matter of fact, the ricocheting cymbals and constant rumbles from the drums of Mike Travis plus the dissonant honks, squeals, squeaks and split tones from the five reed players are more prominent than the guests’ contributions.

From the margins to the centre, the piece evolves with hocketing textures and murky glossolalia from the horns snaking among screeching triplets from the brass as well as the hissing, striated fripples of flutists Emma Roche and Matthew Studdert-Kennedy and Nick Fells’ shakachi. Only occasionally is the dense, intertwined output interrupted for a wooly, extended bass clarinet solo from John Burgess or wordless vocal obbligatos from Nicola MacDonald.

A wider and more spacious secondary theme borne by spiccato strings makes its appearance mid-way through the piece, although it’s almost overwhelmed by a near-symphonic vamp from the slurping and snorting horns. Adumbrating a distinctive crescendo that slides from andante to adagio, a resonating phrasing from trombonist George Murray introduces a stop-time, Swing-like section complete with bomb-dropping drumming and walking basses.

Resembling the strategies of Scottish-born vocalist Maggie Nicols, MacDonald’s verbal asides are a compendium of cackles, giggles, cries and caws in a mixture of English and Gaelic. Throughout, her verbal elaboration evolves above undulating connective choruses, vibrating multiphonics and blaring brass.

Eventually reaching a climax of suddenly piqued and undulating passages, the cacophony gradually subsides as first the parlando vocalizing then the shaking continuously breathed horn section’s tones slowly fades. A further variation, characterized by isolated chromatic slurs, brays, mumbles and swipes, leads to a finale of sliding reeds and brass plus the drummer expanding his backbeat rhythms to foreground rebounds, pressured slaps and reverberations, leaving a coda of a single cymbal smack remain hanging in the air.

Meanwhile, as the verisimilitude of braying, snorting, growling and rumbling instruments produce a high frequency electrical storm of instrumental textures, the texture of “Ellipse” is initially so opaque that it suggests a cardiac artery blockage rather than a pulse.

However like displaying the results of a chest X-Ray, the unfolding licks and sibilant sprints from three guitarists bring the next variation into aural focus – louder and more united. Piano plinks, brass slurs and saxophone smears languidly introduce the theme in broken octaves and soon the associated pulses are evident, ascending to thick, tension-filled phrases without release or respite.

Before the main motif is developed in the defining third variation, pitches and themes are distributed among several non-connective instruments. As the reeds and brass move in parallel broken octaves, high-pitched shrilling from vocalist Marie Richard is isolated as the entire performance is supported by blacksmith-like thwacks from drummers Nicholas Chachignot and Peter Orins.

Like Guy’s understated work with the GIO, Benoit’s impressionistic arranging skill is brought in into boldest relief in the third variation. With the repetitive percussion strokes nearly overpowering, it takes a few seconds to realize that almost simultaneously a contrapuntal response of slippery, slurry horn breaths can be heard, repeatedly playing a single, metronomic phrase. Polyphonic and polytonal, the shifting timbres move from one section to the others, not as call-and-response, but splayed and hocketing. While the percussion pedal point almost never varies, the response from the other instruments becomes livelier and more rhythmically rubato. Soon, as one drummer maintains his steady strokes, the other varies his ostinato with rebounds and ripples, at the same time as chromatic pressure from the strings pick up the basic six-note motif. When the massed horn sections intersect with the other groups, the resulting relentless pulse soon begins to resemble that of a TGV train hitting top speed. Heart beats and train pulses become interchangeable with the percussionists and bassists thumping like an aorta, and the lowing, pumping and trilling of the horns replicating the train’s bells and whistles. Eventually it takes a final trumpet flourish and a trombone bray to loosen the agitated sonic tension created by the crescendo.

This release into single notes introduces the concluding section, which with the groaning of the low-pitched brass, and shimmering cymbals, exposes the layered polyharmonies among the instrument to such an extent that the defining motif seems to have to surreptitiously snuck back into the foreground. Shriveling into near inaudibility, the now largo theme is stretched, and then vanishes beneath a single guitar string snap into ear-straining silence as the piece concludes.

Intelligent use of space, silence and cerebral improvisation characterizes each of these CDs. Both add something notable while extending the idea of large ensemble-conduction.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ellipse: 1. Ellipse

Personnel: Ellipse: Richard Cuvillier (cornet); Christian Pruvost (trumpet); Bruno Cheynier (trombone); Claude Colpaert (trombone and gamelan); Martin Hackett (melodica); Michael Potier (saxhorn); Yanik Miossec (clarinet); Guillaume Tarche (soprano saxophone); Laurent Rigaut (alto saxophone); Michel Stawicki (tenor saxophone); Vincent Debaets (baritone saxophone); Martin Granger and Franck Lambert (synthesizers); David Bausseron, Ivann Cruz and Philippe Lenglet (guitars); Antoine Rousseau and Stéphane Levêque (bass guitars); and Pierre Cretel (bass); Peter Orins and Nicolas Chachignot,(drums); Patrick Guionnet and Marie Richard (voices) plus Olivier Benoït (direction)

Track Listing: Falkirk: 1. Improvisation 2. Witch Gong Game 11/10

Personnel: Falkirk: Robert Henderson and Matt Cairns (trumpets); George Murray (trombone); Emma Roche (flute and baroque flute); Matthew Studdert-Kennedy (flute); Nick Fells (shakachi); Daniel Padden (clarinet, percussion and voice); Pete Dowling (alto saxophone); Raymond MacDonald (alto and soprano saxophone); John Burgess (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Graeme Wilson (tenor and baritone saxophone); Bill Wells (keyboard); George Burt and Neil Davidson (guitars); Peter Nicholson (cello); Una MacGlone and George Lyle (bass); Mike Travis (drums) and Nicola MacDonald (voice) plus Maya Homburger (baroque violin) and Barry Guy (bass)

December 28, 2007

La Pieuvre

Ellipse
Helix LX 002

The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra with Barry Guy

Falkirk

FMR CD 168-i0706

Ever since American Butch Morris introduced the concept of using “conduction” to help improvising ensembles express musical ideas without formalistic structures, the model has been tested over the past two decades by a variety of ensembles in different parts of the world.

Although there are those who might question just how different “conduction” is from a Count Basie band head arrangement or a one of Charles Mingus’ scores that was transmitted orally to his sidemen, the theory appears to be helpful in allowing bands of 20 or so musicians to create notable semi-improvised/semi-composed structures. Falkirk and Ellipse provide two of the more impressive, recent examples of this trend, and also illustrate by their differences how nothing involved with Free Music is accepted dogma.

For a start, the 19-piece The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) is directed by a guest, British bassist Barry Guy – who also solos on the nearly 65½ minute CD – along with his wife, baroque violinist Maya Homburger. Founder of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO) in the early 1970s, Guy has years of experience in motivating large groups of improvisers.

Unlike the long-established LJCO, made up of many of Britain and the Continent’s most accomplished Free Jazzers however, the GIO is a more amorphous proposition. Only formally constituted in 2002, members of the orchestra come from jazz, contemporary classical, avant-pop and sound art backgrounds. It’s a tribute to Guy’s skills as an orchestrator – and the adaptive talents of GIO members – that the group is able to create a notable version of Guy’s “Witch Gang Game” – plus a shorter improvisation – after only a week of workshops and rehearsals with the composer. Consisting of an interpretation of panels from Scottish artist Alan Davis’ graphics, “Witch Gang Game” is no traditional score.

Similarly, La Pieuvre’s nearly 68-minute “Ellipse” has a comparable thematic genesis. Inspired by bandleader/guitarist Olivier Benoit and choreographer David Flahaut, the idea is for each musician to use the beats of his or her own heart as individual metronomes to establish a polyrhythmic response to the evolving six-note theme “conductated” by Benoit. Based in Lille, France, the 23 members of La Pieuvre (“octopus” in English) came from as diverse backgrounds as the GIO members – rock, Free Jazz, contemporary classical music and electronics. Together since 1999, and again akin to the GIO, the group has evolved different programs and played with a variety of guest soloists. On his own Benoit has also recorded with the likes of alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet and pianist Sophie Angel.

Back in Scotland, “special guests” Homburger and Guy receive no special consideration from the other musicians and are well-integrated within the performing unit. From the beginning of this polyphonic treatment of “Witch Gang Game” as a matter of fact, the ricocheting cymbals and constant rumbles from the drums of Mike Travis plus the dissonant honks, squeals, squeaks and split tones from the five reed players are more prominent than the guests’ contributions.

From the margins to the centre, the piece evolves with hocketing textures and murky glossolalia from the horns snaking among screeching triplets from the brass as well as the hissing, striated fripples of flutists Emma Roche and Matthew Studdert-Kennedy and Nick Fells’ shakachi. Only occasionally is the dense, intertwined output interrupted for a wooly, extended bass clarinet solo from John Burgess or wordless vocal obbligatos from Nicola MacDonald.

A wider and more spacious secondary theme borne by spiccato strings makes its appearance mid-way through the piece, although it’s almost overwhelmed by a near-symphonic vamp from the slurping and snorting horns. Adumbrating a distinctive crescendo that slides from andante to adagio, a resonating phrasing from trombonist George Murray introduces a stop-time, Swing-like section complete with bomb-dropping drumming and walking basses.

Resembling the strategies of Scottish-born vocalist Maggie Nicols, MacDonald’s verbal asides are a compendium of cackles, giggles, cries and caws in a mixture of English and Gaelic. Throughout, her verbal elaboration evolves above undulating connective choruses, vibrating multiphonics and blaring brass.

Eventually reaching a climax of suddenly piqued and undulating passages, the cacophony gradually subsides as first the parlando vocalizing then the shaking continuously breathed horn section’s tones slowly fades. A further variation, characterized by isolated chromatic slurs, brays, mumbles and swipes, leads to a finale of sliding reeds and brass plus the drummer expanding his backbeat rhythms to foreground rebounds, pressured slaps and reverberations, leaving a coda of a single cymbal smack remain hanging in the air.

Meanwhile, as the verisimilitude of braying, snorting, growling and rumbling instruments produce a high frequency electrical storm of instrumental textures, the texture of “Ellipse” is initially so opaque that it suggests a cardiac artery blockage rather than a pulse.

However like displaying the results of a chest X-Ray, the unfolding licks and sibilant sprints from three guitarists bring the next variation into aural focus – louder and more united. Piano plinks, brass slurs and saxophone smears languidly introduce the theme in broken octaves and soon the associated pulses are evident, ascending to thick, tension-filled phrases without release or respite.

Before the main motif is developed in the defining third variation, pitches and themes are distributed among several non-connective instruments. As the reeds and brass move in parallel broken octaves, high-pitched shrilling from vocalist Marie Richard is isolated as the entire performance is supported by blacksmith-like thwacks from drummers Nicholas Chachignot and Peter Orins.

Like Guy’s understated work with the GIO, Benoit’s impressionistic arranging skill is brought in into boldest relief in the third variation. With the repetitive percussion strokes nearly overpowering, it takes a few seconds to realize that almost simultaneously a contrapuntal response of slippery, slurry horn breaths can be heard, repeatedly playing a single, metronomic phrase. Polyphonic and polytonal, the shifting timbres move from one section to the others, not as call-and-response, but splayed and hocketing. While the percussion pedal point almost never varies, the response from the other instruments becomes livelier and more rhythmically rubato. Soon, as one drummer maintains his steady strokes, the other varies his ostinato with rebounds and ripples, at the same time as chromatic pressure from the strings pick up the basic six-note motif. When the massed horn sections intersect with the other groups, the resulting relentless pulse soon begins to resemble that of a TGV train hitting top speed. Heart beats and train pulses become interchangeable with the percussionists and bassists thumping like an aorta, and the lowing, pumping and trilling of the horns replicating the train’s bells and whistles. Eventually it takes a final trumpet flourish and a trombone bray to loosen the agitated sonic tension created by the crescendo.

This release into single notes introduces the concluding section, which with the groaning of the low-pitched brass, and shimmering cymbals, exposes the layered polyharmonies among the instrument to such an extent that the defining motif seems to have to surreptitiously snuck back into the foreground. Shriveling into near inaudibility, the now largo theme is stretched, and then vanishes beneath a single guitar string snap into ear-straining silence as the piece concludes.

Intelligent use of space, silence and cerebral improvisation characterizes each of these CDs. Both add something notable while extending the idea of large ensemble-conduction.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ellipse: 1. Ellipse

Personnel: Ellipse: Richard Cuvillier (cornet); Christian Pruvost (trumpet); Bruno Cheynier (trombone); Claude Colpaert (trombone and gamelan); Martin Hackett (melodica); Michael Potier (saxhorn); Yanik Miossec (clarinet); Guillaume Tarche (soprano saxophone); Laurent Rigaut (alto saxophone); Michel Stawicki (tenor saxophone); Vincent Debaets (baritone saxophone); Martin Granger and Franck Lambert (synthesizers); David Bausseron, Ivann Cruz and Philippe Lenglet (guitars); Antoine Rousseau and Stéphane Levêque (bass guitars); and Pierre Cretel (bass); Peter Orins and Nicolas Chachignot,(drums); Patrick Guionnet and Marie Richard (voices) plus Olivier Benoït (direction)

Track Listing: Falkirk: 1. Improvisation 2. Witch Gong Game 11/10

Personnel: Falkirk: Robert Henderson and Matt Cairns (trumpets); George Murray (trombone); Emma Roche (flute and baroque flute); Matthew Studdert-Kennedy (flute); Nick Fells (shakachi); Daniel Padden (clarinet, percussion and voice); Pete Dowling (alto saxophone); Raymond MacDonald (alto and soprano saxophone); John Burgess (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Graeme Wilson (tenor and baritone saxophone); Bill Wells (keyboard); George Burt and Neil Davidson (guitars); Peter Nicholson (cello); Una MacGlone and George Lyle (bass); Mike Travis (drums) and Nicola MacDonald (voice) plus Maya Homburger (baroque violin) and Barry Guy (bass)

December 28, 2007

Carlos Bechegas/Barry Guy

Open Textures
forward.rec 06

By Ken Waxman

Adapting the triggered oscillations available from sound processing to his airy instrument, Portuguese flutist Carlos Bechegas suitably arms his miniature cross-blown woodwind for completely improvised jousts with the hulking double bass and immense musical strategies of Britain’s Barry Guy.

Adding verbal squeals, circular breathing and emphasized glissandi to alternately create vibrating cistern-deep or falsetto tones, Bechegas comes across like an amalgam of flautist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, soprano saxophonist Evan Parker and barnyard full of uncontrollable peeping fowl. Yet Guy, whose instrumental command ranges across sweeping rasgueado pulses and guitar-like arpeggios to include widely splayed shuffle bowing and rhythmic stopping, is as unruffled here as he would be playing with long-time associate Parker or pushing a large ensemble. The emphasis is on mutual transcendence not divergence.

As each partner clones himself into multiples, it sometimes sounds as if both are playing more than one instrument at a time. At points, Guy’s woody thumping complement Bechegas’ tongue-stopping octave runs while the bassist’s frantic sawing spiccato leads the flutist’s simultaneous humming and tongue stopping on a fox’n’hounds-like chase elsewhere.

Concluding with a fourth variation on the CD’s title theme, Guy’s solid bow pressure creates a solid block of highly rhythmic stops which evolve to sul tasto rubs, in order to help solidify Bechegas’ lightly resonated breaths into almost pastoral obbligatos. The bassist – who in the past has memorably collaborated with other veteran improv masters like German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach and German bassist Peter Kowald – proves that limited electronic input can augment fragile acoustic textures to create notable interaction no matter the size of the other partner’s instrument – or talent.

In MusicWorks Issue #99

December 4, 2007

DEREK BAILEY/EVAN PARKER

The London Concert
psi 05.01

STEVENS/WATTS/GUY
Mining the seam - the rest of the Spotlite sessions
Hi 4 Head Records HFH CD003

Combining and splitting apart numerous times in various bands – ad hoc and not –during a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s now seen as the genesis of British Free Music, guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer John Stevens (1940–1994) are almost universally acknowledged as dual catalysts who nurtured the nascent scene.

Although over the years both improvised with just about anyone and mentored a large number of younger musicians, Stevens had, and Bailey still has, a fairly prickly personality. That meant that at the same time newer players were being initiated into freer sounds, one or both was usually carrying on a feud with older associates and sometimes with one other. Bailey has maintained from that time that every performance should be completely improvised with each creation a tabla rasa. Less rigid, Stevens didn’t disdain composition and wasn’t above playing jazz, Free Jazz and a touch of jazz-rock.

MINING THE SEAM and THE LONDON CONCERT, both recorded in the mid-1970s, are historical documents, which preserve mature manifestations of Bailey’s and Stevens’ sounds that continue to shape British improv. Each distinctively reflects the protagonist, yet the scene was then so small that the other musicians featured negotiated a path between the two.

Initially, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME), Stevens’ original cooperative band, featured his army buddy, alto saxophonist Trevor Watts, and the reedman is on this CD. Bailey briefly joined the SME, but soprano and tenor saxophonist Evan Parker, who partners the guitarist on THE LONDON CONCERT, evolved his distinctive reed style though a more extended tenure with the SME, sometimes alongside Watts. Bassist Barry Guy who provides much of the rhythmic impetus on MINING THE SEAM, was associated with Bailey in the Iskra 1903 trio with trombonist Paul Rutherford. Yet more notably for the past 30 years, he and Parker have worked together in situations ranging from a duo to big bands.

Considering the trio assembled, it may be surprising to note that MINING THE SEAM is out-and-out, circa 1977 Free Jazz. Made up of alternate and unedited versions of three of the five tunes session issued as NO FEAR (Hi 4 Head Records HFHCD001), it offers another look at what long been viewed as a masterful BritJazz session. Most surprising is the soloing of Watts. At that point, before he began his ongoing flirtation with so-called world music, Watts was firmly in the Ornette Coleman school, with his jagged phrasing and interjections harsh and relentless.

Not only does he trot out pet licks that seem to enliven each track, but all three players are also committed to the song form, with nearly every tune ending with a recapitulation of the head after variations have been sounded. Matching the saxophonist’s squeaks and staccato flutter-tongued excursions, Stevens rattles each part of his kit with ruffs and flams and pays more attention to the bass drum than is the wont in BritImprov.

Ruffling passing tones, Guy too is removed from the cerebral interface he often exhibits with Parker. At different points, his shuffle bowing highlights the jagged edges of the strings, the better to sabotage the drummer’s steady beat. Alternately contrapuntal, his chiming bass lines are the perfect antidote to the speedier and staccato dog-like barks from the saxophonist. Walking, thumping or stopping, he moderates a space between the other two.

As the multiphonic reed tones, bull fiddle sweeps and percussion rebounds and strokes coalesce, taken together the five tracks provide a substitute, but equally valid version of the already released proceedings.

Equally valid too are the 30-odd minutes added to the previously released

LP version of 1975’s THE LONDON CONCERT (Incus 16), which now boosts its length to more than 69 minutes. Still in their honeymoon period, Bailey and Parker offered both solo and duo material, with the reedman playing soprano and tenor saxophones and Bailey a stereo guitar with volume pedals and a modified 19-string guitar.

Despite the hardware, there are no signs of ProgRock, electronica or – as Bailey would probably insist dogmatically – jazz. That’s open to debate, but what is noticeable in this context is how each of the eight tracks seems to be moderate and unhurried compared to the urgent staccato of the Stevens’ trio work.

There’s no mistaking Bailey, plinking, slightly flattish tone and attack, whether he’s using the so-called stereo guitar or the 19-string mutant. “Part 1”, for example, is almost 15 minutes of constant plectrum plink and plucks intersected by masticated curt note patterns and duck squawks from Parker’s soprano.

As the piece develops so do the saxophonist’s jagged snaps, slurs and smears while the guitarist’s steady rhythmic guitar fills include additional vibrations. With the pedals allowing him to output an unusual vibrating pulsation, Bailey’s contrapuntal display is matched by trills within the body tube, shrill penny whistle tones and undulating columns of colored air from Parker’s axe. Seemingly mumbling to himself and evidentially concentrating on what rhythm can be constructed by stroking strings on the guitar neck, the guitarist leaves space for Parker to buzz his reed and bubble lip forms. For the finale the reedist contorts his snarls to a legato tone, then showcases his characteristic circular breathing as Bailey plucks away.

Previously unreleased, Bailey’s strategy on “Second Half Solos” find him demarcating sharp, single-note friction on the 19 strings as the crinkling vibrations add rattling hum and tone resonation. For his part, Parker reveals a nephritic shout as repeated tongue slaps, pops and diaphragm vibrations expand to multiphonics and usher in “Part 3” from the original LP.

Spectacularly, shredded split tones and irregularly pitched vibrations then explode all over the aural space, causing Bailey to turn to harder plectrum interface, as node response swells into unique counter patterns. Soon you start to feel like a spectator at a particularly frenetic tennis game, with the ball constantly in motion, jumping, soaring and bouncing from one to another. Each man is concentrating on an individual strategy, but as polyphony emerges, so does the shape of the cooperative contest. Climatically, Bailey announces a variation change as his flat-picking suddenly clangs like an egg timer. Parker vibrates ghostly slurs beneath him, as if he was playing a chanter, with a renal squeak for a coda. Elsewhere the two intertwine harmonies that include glottal punctuation and staccatissimo overblowing from Parker and distorted finger-tapping and harsh, scraped fret actions from Bailey.

Although 30 years later what they did then may sound standardized, the duo performance is invested with the novelty and excitement of musical discovery. So too is the trio set. Both prime slabs of interactive improv, these CDs should attract anyone desirous of a deeper insight into the musical currents of those times.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: London: 1. First half solo 2. Part 1 3. Part 1A 4. Part 2 5. Part 2A 6. Second half solos 7. Part 3 8. Part 4

Personnel: London: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones) and Derek Bailey (stereo guitar and modified 19-string guitar)

Track Listing: Mining 1. No Fear (alternate take) 2. Ah! (unedited version) 3. Ah! (alternate take) 4. Speed from the light (alternate take) 5. Speed from the light (alternate take)

Personnel: Mining: Trevor Watts (alto saxophone); Barry Guy (bass) and John Stevens (drums)

October 31, 2005

Barry Guy New Orchestra

Oort – Entropy
Intakt

Maya Homburger & Barry Guy with Pierre Favre
Dakryon
Maya

By Ken Waxman
September 11, 2005

Established as one of FreeImprov’s most accomplished composer/bandleaders as well as a major improvising double bassist, Barry Guy continues to extend his musical range.

Having slimmed down his main compositional tool, the 17-piece London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO) to the more compact 10 piece, all-star Barry Guy New Orchestra (BGO), Oort – Entropy shows how the group reconstitutes specific sounds. The idea is to expand musical elements initially conceived for Guy’s trio with American pianist Marilyn Crispell and British drummer Paul Lytton.

Dakryon, on the other hand, explores an even more diminutive facet of his art. A member of an Early Music ensemble early in his career, Guy extends those concepts on several tracks of this CD. Using themes written by composers H.I.F. Biber and Dario Castello in the 17th century, these performances are in part baroque showcases for Guy’s wife, Swiss violinist May Homburger. Filling out the nearly 75-minute CD are contemporary Guy compositions eliciting the skills of the husband-and-wife duo plus Swiss drummer Pierre Favre.

Favre, another first generation Free player, recorded as guest with the LJCO in 1995 – as did Crispell. On Dakryon, he contributes a concluding less-than-two minute percussion solo and on one track with just Guy. However, the most noteworthy trio outing is the almost 19½-minute title track which appends pre-recorded sounds to improvisations.

Beginning with sonorous bass plucks, spiccato swells and lower-case drum rumbles, “Dakryon” expands into swirling interface from Homburger, harder and stronger pizzicato pulls from Guy and rattling and extruded accents from Favre. With pre-recorded chiming accents ornamented with percussion and a near Middle-Eastern interlude of bowed and vibrated double bass notes, the fiddler then contemplatively sounds the melody as ring modulator gong-like signals multiply. Eventually faint drum thumps help bring the ethereal extensions to a logical conclusion.

Favre’s multi-timbral drum kit augmentation allow him to rattle bells, shake cymbals and bounce snares behind Guy’s measured, almost lute-like rasgueado bass work on “Peace Piece”. Impressionistic, Favre’s sympathetic mallet work frames the bassist’s chromatic plucks so that each note echo is like a thrust with a finely honed dagger – incisive, but with no jagged edges.

Much of the CD’s remaining time is taken up by Homburger or Homburger and Guy performing works by two 17th century composers, Bohemian H. I. F. Biber (1644-1704) and Venetian Dario Castello (? - 1658). Biber, whose work was also recorded by the two on Ceremony (ECM), is best-known for his so-called Mystery Sonatas from about 1676, five of which are handled here.

Those compositions, plus other baroque inventions by Castello, take advantage of the violinist’s exquisite tone and phrasing. Legato mostly, staccato and spiccato sometimes, Homburger does more than replicate the proper harmonies. Taking advantage of the composers’ demand for scordatura or re-tuning, she brings a semi-mystical emotionalism to the pieces. True to 17th century basso continuo, Guy interweaves distinctive harmonies, both arco and pizzicato, which reflect his contemporary mindset as well as appropriate baroque techniques.

Moving from the 17th to the 21st century, Oort – Entropy shows how the bassist gives all his soloists and ensemble scope to spontaneously expand past customary boundaries. This is where a cross-section of experiences and cultures comes into play, since nearly every improviser is a veteran from a different country.

Parker and Lytton’s long-time trio-mate, Londoner Evan Parker is featured on tenor and soprano saxophones. The other reeds are Swiss bass clarinetist Hans Koch, who collaborates with numerous other free improvisers, and Swedish tenor and baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, who is part of the GUSH trio with percussionist Raymond Strid, also featured here. Gustafsson and Swedish tubaist Per Åke Holmlander are part of Peter Brötzmann’s Tentet. German trombonist Johannes Bauer has played with everyone from Brötzmann to Australian violinist Jon Rose, while American trumpeter/flugelhornist Herb Robertson is now a member of drummer Gerry Hemingway’s quartet. Taking over BGO’s all-important piano chair from Crispell is Catalan Augustí Fernánderz, who has recorded with players as different in concept as reedist Parker and American bassist William Parker.

All stars are all right for a jam session, but it’s Guy’s framework which gives the 10 a structure within to operate. Especially when the pianist is most energetic, the performance relates to some of Cecil Taylor’s efforts with big bands. Other large groups brought to mind are Count Basie’s New Testament band – for the riffing saxes – Stan Kenton’s most jazz-like ensembles – for the flaunted brass passages – and most definitely Charles Mingus’ The Black and the Sinner Lady band, in the way the bass-lead ensemble leaps from dissonance to relaxation.

Nonetheless there are also plenty of surprises on tap as the three-part suite uncoils. True, Parker shows off his near-patented circular breathing, but there’s a point in “Part II”, where his introduction is positively Lesterian – as in Lester Young. Fernánderz may strum arpeggios and chord edgy tremolos, but he’s also capable of an andante fantasia, constant cadenzas and clinking single-notes.

Besides braying triplets, Robertson adds half-valve, hunting horn sonics that meld with penetrating tuba pedal tones. Plus the penultimate minutes of “Part III” feature Lytton and Strid eschewing their previous roles as colorists for a wholesale double drum volley, alive with paradiddles, rebounds and ruffs, as the horns blast vamps around them. Do you think they individually owned the famous Rich vs. Roach LP?

Koch’s individualistic slurs and snorts give the exposition many of its colors, suspended on top of buzzing notes and stop time emphasis from the brass. Meanwhile altissimo blusters or contrapuntal bass tones from the tuba depict the tincture of the final section.

All and all though, among the polyphonic interludes, Bauer emerges as the most consistently invigorating soloist. Like many post-Roswell Rudd stylists, he has one foot in the early gutbucket tradition and the other in post-modern New music. Balanced solidly by Guy’s architecturally-solid tonal centres that allow each instrument to be heard, he ascends with a series of buzzing and barking textures to a legato chromatic solo, then just as briskly drips burred notes one at a time as he descends the scale.

Depending on whether you want your Guy in a miniature setting or piloting a large, integrated ensemble, either CD – or both – can satisfy.

September 12, 2005

Surd

Live at Glenn Miller Café
Ayler Records

Sandell/Stackenäs/Parker/Guy/Lytton
Gubbröra
psi By Ken Waxman
May 2, 2005

Swedish guitarist David Stackenäs has been someone to watch every since he released his remarkable solo session, The Guitar, on Häpna five years ago. Since that time he’s extended his early promise, playing with a variety of improvisers ranging from Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson to American multi-reedist Ken Vandermark.

Recorded one month apart last summer in Stockholm and London, the most recent CDs on which he’s featured, suggest that he may be at a crossroads. Live at Glenn Miller Café, featuring local band Surd – Fredrik Nordström on alto and tenor saxophones, bassist Filip Augustsonon and drummer Thomas Strønen as well as the guitarist – in a speedy freebop romp that at points veers awfully close to fusion-like excess. Far superior is the more than 71½-minute Gubbröra, which matches Stackenäs with four veteran improvisers. Duos with fellow Swede Sten Sandell on piano, voice and electronics, make up the first two tracks; the third adds Sandell and Stackenäs to the transcendent British trio of Evan Parker on soprano and tenor saxophones, Barry Guy on bass and Paul Lytton on drums.

High energy, Surd establishes its parameters with the first tune, a speedy punk-rock version of Steve Lacy’s “38”. It encompasses Nordström’s screeching reed bites, complicated-parade ground drum rolls from Strønen, plus rapid note clusters and bell-like reverb from the guitarist.

The oddity about it and the subsequent tracks is the curiously pugnacious soloing of Nordström. Usually an inside-outside player, who has recorded excellent CDs under his own name – featuring bassist Augustson – and with Italian reedist Alberto Pinton, he seems to have put aside his finesse for pure raunch here, Could it be in response to the club crowd?

Most disappointing is “Head P”, which he wrote in honor of the rock band Portishead. More than six minutes of grungy nonchalance, the ballad includes snatches of what could be some of the rock band’s original tunes, but mostly showcases freak notes and false registers from the saxman and tick-tock ringing guitar plucks from Stackenäs.

Other pieces are better, at points giving the guitarist space in which to explore skewed blues vamps and country and western licks as well as moderato picks and plucks. What’s more, Nordström often double and triple tongues after split second forays into higher, buzzier registers. Elsewhere, guitar techniques of the moment include distorted timbres that compress into a steady drone, lots of ringing filigree in double counterpoint to the sax line, and power chording. The reedist also tries out glottal punctuation of single, emphasized notes, plus growls and phrases that seem unattached to anything else. Strønen gets involved as well, ending up smashing every resonating part of his kit on “Bye. Bye Teddy”, which begins with his low-key exploration of struck rims, plus abstracted triangle, bell and cymbal manipulation.

Combing the best and the worst of the situation, the bassist’s “Magnum Bonum” is the track that features steady bass work as well as concussion and friction from the drum kit, giving the front line room to blow. Stackenäs’ slurred fingering broadens to such an extent that it almost sounds as if he’s producing organ chords. This process later gives way to whimpering folksy lines and distorted reverb of flanged excess. Additionally, Nordström seesaws from powerful straightahead blowing to a sort of psychedelic freebop that ends with him squeaking and honking in primitive frenzy, as Strønen attacks the drums as if he was Keith Moon in the days of “My Generation”. Still, this overindulgence seems to excite the Swedish audience.

One month earlier at London’s Freedom of the City festival Stackenäs’ inner Jeff Beck was nowhere in evidence. Instead his cerebral string musings could be related to any one of many low-key BritImprov guitarists. Moreover, the electronics heard on the fist two pieces comes not from amp distortion, but Sandell’s shadowy, arrhythmic manipulations.

“Jansson’s Temptation (part 1)”, for instance, often shifts tonal centres, with the ghostly line of oscillating electronics converging with sideband shakes. Then there’s the pianist’s off-key counter tenor vocalizing that accompany lone key plunks. Pawing single notes, Sandell manipulates fluttering tone hisses at the same instant, with Stackenäs advancing single strums or concussive runs alongside the keys’ trebly plinks.

Using broken octaves, the blunt qualities of both piano and guitar are brought to the forefront midway through, as the pianist’s contrasting dynamics move from low frequency to high frequency and broken chords are massaged into harmonic statements. Keeping very much in the background with chromatic plucks, Stackenäs soon yields to Sandell. From then on the piano man settles himself for as time in the lowest quadrant of the soundboard, unleashing a full open chordal attack of passing chords and pressured pedal sustain so that he seem to be flying across the clavier. With fluttering electronic hisses underscoring his actions, vibrations and overtones race in tandem from left and right hands coalesces into vibrating melodies that are given additional resonance and color, eventually blanching back to single rapped keys.

“Jansson’s Temptation (part 2)” is more of the same, although here among the pulsating slidewhistle tones from electronics, and the abstracted collected chords that define Sandell’s near non-Westernized rubato patterns, the guitarist gets in a few more licks. Flat-picking, he manages to parlay ringing chords and sustained vibrato-like echoes to suggest both the melodic and rhythmic shape of the piece, only gradually succumbing to pick guard and wood slaps that meet piano wood raps and unvarying keyboard patterns.

Upping the ante, the title track welcomes the members of the self-contained British trio, who have been playing together in different combinations for decades. Beginning with a slurred swoop from Parker’s sax and carefully positioned cymbal whap and bell resonation from Lytton, the hosts announce their presence. Soon, with Sandell’s piano patterning, Stackenäs’ plucks and arco actions from Guy, the five are operating in quintuple counterpoint.

Reductionist, the smacks, rattles, shuffles and picks are such that individual identification is masked. Low-level ring modulator loops, buzzes and reverberations amplifying Guy’s ponticello sweeps add to this.

When Parker switches to soprano, teasing out legato swirls that reconstitute themselves into lighter toned actions, the piece opens up still further. Lytton’s guillotine- sharp cymbal slap cut off the reedist’s attempt at circular breathing, as the fretman introduces banjo-like chromatic picking and Sandell key plucks and unleashes low-level electronics.

Two-thirds of the way through, Stackenäs’ strums a series of single notes as the saxophonist circles and powers different distinctive phrases, Guy bows stentoriously and, after scene setting with hollow resonation from a wood block, Lytton scrapes unattached wood and vibrates his cymbals. A brief reconstruction as a piano-bass-drum rhythm section behind judicious finger plucks from the guitarist melts into distracted chording from the piano, off-to-the-side tongue slaps from the reedist, intermittent picking from the guitarist and plucking from the bassist plus rambling drum stomps. In contrast to Surd’s aural flag waving climax, the music of these five logically and delightfully vanishes into thin air.

Stackenäs’ skill making an impression in this exalted company speaks to his development as does his actions trying out new riffs with Surd. Nonetheless, how soon the definitive David Stackenäs guitar statement will emerge is still an open question.

May 2, 2005

BARRY GUY/MARILYN CRISPELL/PAUL LYTTON

Ithaca
Intakt CD 096

More of a rethinking of the spatial and dominant arrangements of a piano trio by bassist Barry Guy than a follow up to this threesome’s first CD, ITHACA gives him ample scope to outline new strategies with which to subvert the most traditional of improv groupings.

It’s no overtly radical response, but it’s done differently than how pianist Marilyn Crispell, percussionist Paul Lytton and Guy approached ODYSSEY (Intakt CD 070). Unlike that session, this disc contains no miniaturization of London Jazz Composers Orchestra themes, and almost no references to any genre outside of Free Music. Additionally, Crispell, who has a tendency towards classical delicacy – an inclination expressed on ODYSSEY and other CDs – becomes a vigorous note chopper this time out. Nine out of the 11 compositions – including three miniature shards – are Guy’s. The other two are instant compositions to which all three contribute.

Almost from the first time her fingers make contact with the keyboard on “Fire and Ice”, the inaugural tune, Crispell is digging deep within the bowls of the piano, exercising the copper-wrapped lowest 32 notes, then sweeping arpeggios across the middle and top registers. In response Lytton strokes offbeat clusters of concussive notes, while Guy contributes adagio patterning with ponticello squeaks. A hitherto unexpected link from the pianist to Lennie Tristanto is unveiled here. As she pounds her key clusters with an extra resonation, the bassist’s string swipes become denser and more complex, as the drummer’s pressured bounces add to the claustrophobic feeling. Rappelling guitar-like strums from Guy that echo within the bass’s wood grain serve as a coda.

Leaving aside “Klaglied”, a piece that features the three exploring the bassist’s variations on the theme by the 17th century Danish composer Diderik Buxtehude, as a normative restful coda, the vigor and invention remain in force from the first all the way to “Zig Zag”, the penultimate Guy composition.

Fervid dynamics delivered with high frequency vibrations by the pianist cause determined syncopation to reverberate within the soundboard, key frame and balanced tension. With Guy shuffle bowing and Lytton rattling and bouncing cross-handed, Crispell peals up the keys to treble notes, scattering patterns as she goes.

Unselected cymbal sounds give the accompaniment a fricative and concussive timbre, as does sul ponticello arco work from the bass. Faster and looser, the pianist’s angular patterns amplify every note to its vibrations and nodes, helped by adroit pedal movement. Adjusting the development for a nocturne of single-note romanticism helped by buzzing acro tones and plucks just below the tuning pegs from Guy, Crispell revs up again to speedy, dissonant action in the final three minutes. Using high-frequency, key-clipped notes with plenty of stamina, she draws out sawed bull fiddle notes and rattling cymbal, snare and tom responses from the other two.

Throughout the other tracks each of the trio members gets to strut her or his stuff. It could be resounding string yanks or rubbing harmonic pattering with the bow that exposes both the root notes and their overtones from Guy. Or it could be Lytton exposing textures that alternately resemble bicycle bell pings, shaken and scattered chains, bond paper being crumpled or finger cymbal resonation that simulate ceremonial tones at a Tibetan monastery. Or it could be Crispell strumming arpeggios in the piano’s bottom quadrant, ramming out cross-toned dynamics with a touch of atonalism, and exposing an overload of notes that spill across bar lines.

Continuity is on tap as well as friction though, as on “Broken Silence”. Here flat handed note attacks from Crispell and refuse strewing drum top patterns from Lytton make room for circular piano movements that turn to tractable counterpoint. Bisected by silences, the tempered melody is augmented with adagio arco string oscillations from Guy.

As a composer and soloist, Guy has redefined double bass playing and writing for larger improvising groups. Assembling the knowledge he has of the formation going back to his early days in pianist Howard Riley trio, here the bassist capitalizes on the skills of Crispell and Lytton to redefine the piano trio his own way as well.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Fire and Ice 2. Void (for Doris) 3. First Shard 4. Broken Silence 5. Second Shard 6. Ithaca 7. Zinc 8. Third Shard 9. Unfolding 10. Zig Zag 11. Klaglied

Personnel: Marilyn Crispell (piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion)

April 18, 2005

EVAN PARKER’S ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE

Memory/Vision
ECM 1852

Accelerating involvement in electro-acoustic creations has characterized one of British saxophonist Evan Parker’s many activities since the mid-1990s.

Parker, whose more than 35 year career has involved membership in groups ranging from massive big bands to two matchless improv trios, and who helped create the solo saxophone recital, has mastered a different genre with this CD.

In its parameters and evocation, this 70-minute plus continuous performance, commissioned by a British contemporary music festival, amplifies the reedist’s partnerships and conceptions. Performed by a nonet, two of the players -- bassist Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton -- are Parker collaborators of decades standing and combine in one of his long constituted trios. Two others -- British/Ugandan violinist Philipp Wachsmann and Spanish pianist Augustí Fernández have worked with Parker in duo and larger group situations, both electronic an acoustic. Parker and Guy alone have recorded with Lawrence Casserley who mans the signal processing equipment here; while computer sound processor Joel Ryan has worked with Parker and French bassist Joëlle Léandre, another Parker associate. Italians Walter Prati on electronics and sound processing and Marco Vecchi on electronics have participated in the saxist’s other electro-acoustic sessions.

On this CD, both the drummer and violinist sport electronic enhancements to their instruments; Fernández plays prepared as well as regular piano, and the saxophonist himself adds tapes and samples to his emblematic circular breathing and freak effects.

With five acoustic instrumentalists and four machine manipulators, it’s to Parker’s credit that the performance doesn’t take on the sort of mechanical sheen of some Continental electro-acoustic sessions. Then again, with the players masters of extended techniques, unexpected sounds are par for the course on Parker-led dates.

Contrapuntal and polyphonic, the sound streams reach a climax starting at mid point. Counter to the busy movements within the piano and from spiccato strings, the reedist comes up with a whistling, almost flute-like timbre that accelerates from single puffs. Meantime the strings produce dissonant tones that rotate and separate into partials. Around those, ejaculating sine waves curve so that the entity takes on the character of a large, stable church organ.

Repetitive reed cadences flutter across the scene, augmented to saxophone section volume by looped samples. Soon the multiplying saxes subdivide still further into duos, trios and quartets, as one -- the live Parker -- brushes aside exploding echoes for a distinctive ostinato. As all this downshifts to silence, plucked and scraped bass and violin lines -- extended with processing -- join with the soprano to float on top of dynamically vibrated note clusters from the prepared piano. Spinning every which way among reed and string textures, Fernández pummels cascading harmonies into a powerful solo of staggered chords and ghostly string runs.

Pushing and thrusting deeper into its innards, creating unfathomable broken timbres, the pianist is accompanied by a hollow pop from Lytton’s snare and plucked and scraped strings that circle him like vultures. Now electronically produced fuzz from the cymbals melds with the massed pizzicato strings that too are extended with processing -- producing a multiplicity of scraped and abrasive tones. Suddenly, backed only by Lytton, Parker re-enters the fray with a polyphonic counterline that moves up the scale in mini bleats, neighs and slurs. Eventually focused pings and percussive ruffs from Lytton are joined by rumbled crashes from the piano innards, which sound as if an aluminum pie plate has been heaved on top of the strings.

Building up to a crescendo with more aviary sounds than Alfred Hitchcock imagined for “The Birds”, Parker’s irregular vibrations appear never-ending as they’re joined by high frequency piano overtones than processed side bands of what in other circumstances could be brass. Now the electronica, which has been threateningly understated before this, takes centre stage -- sound-wise -- as the miasmic colors burst into reverberating, sine wave crashes, tubular bell-like textures and scours processed from anything strung. For the finale, Fernández introduces double counterpoint, breaking up his contrasting dynamics as the meshed arco violin and double bass output turns muted. Parker breathes a final distinctive circular tone to silence.

Digressions on all these strategies occupy the beginning of “Memory/Vision” as well, with preparations, piano rumble, ponticello strings and slurred reed trills following one another or inflating to curt controlling textures. Grainy, grating timbres predominate over smooth themes however.

Memorable in its cohesiveness and melding of both electronic and acoustic elements, MEMORY/VISION proves that Parker and company can twist any sort of output to fit their requirement. Still for longtime Parkerites, there’s the feeling that fewer associates and less electricity would give him more scope for improvisation.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Part 1 2. Part 2 3. Part 3 4. Part 4 5. Part 5 6. Part 6 7. Part 7

Personnel: Evan Parker (soprano saxophone, tapes and samples); Philipp Wachsmann (violin and electronics); Augustí Fernández (piano and prepared piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion and electronics); Joel Ryan (computer and sound processing); Lawrence Casserley (signal processing equipment); Walter Prati (electronics and sound processing); Marco Vecchi (electronics)

December 20, 2004

MAYA HOMBURGER/WALTER PRATI/BARRY GUY

Celebration
Auditorium AUD 01203

Bracing as a cold shower --and just as refreshing -- this singular CD is a brusque, unforgiving take on the vaulted European string tradition, which casts aside the hackneyed prettiness blended violin, cello and double bass are usually associated with for a more profound agenda.

Not that anyone but the most hidebound traditionalists should be frightened away from this disc. The group, after all, consists of three of Europe’s paramount musicians joined for group instant compositions.

Swiss-born Maya Homburger, who plays a 1740 Italian baroque violin, is a respected chamber music interpreter of the scores of J. S. Bach and G. Ph. Telemann. Best-known as a composer, improvising bassist and leader of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Briton Barry Guy also has a background in early music with Christopher Hogwood’s Academy of Ancient Music. Surprisingly, though, the third participant is Walter Prati. A Milan-born collaborator with Guy, saxophonist Evan Parker and trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini among others, his specialty is using computers for real-time synthesis and sound transformation. Here, however, as an improvising cellist, he adds another layer of string ingenuity to the pieces.

As a matter of fact, it’s Prati whose work seems to be most anchored to the string group tradition on the nine selections here. As he spins out legato lines and harmonic continuum, Homburger and Guy, who often perform as a duo, surround him with abrasive, brawny but note-perfect string coloration.

With each taking their expected place on the scale, the two pitchslide while bouncing against one another, often creating the sort of trills and chirrups that only the flexibility of reeds is supposed to allow from a piece of music. Not unlike some of his improv work with Parker and drummer Paul Lytton, Guy often ripples distinctive tones up from pedal point ostinato to rhythmic attacks on the strings with the wood of his bow, tracing themes from the maneuver as a sort of frottage. Angular aviary screeches, usually absent from the baroque violin are pressed into use by Homburger when she races over the strings, and these sometimes vie for aural space with pizzicato plucks.

Add extended polytones from Prati’s four strings to the mix from the other eight, and rousing crescendos of splayed strings are on show. Just as noticeably, the fusion of so many polytonal and polymetrical themes into a busy sprawl results in a phantasmagoria where you literally can’t tell where one’s splayed line ends and the others begin.

This liveliness contributes more to the different themes then atmospheric, Weberean atonality, though. Assorted harsh, airy and rhythmic timbres are bent into new shapes and forms beyond common string trio performance. It’s not unlike the sonic witchcraft Prati brings with his computers and electronics to tweak and shape a performance by Parker, Guy and others in an electro-acoustic environment.

Harmony, although in an unconventional form, also isn’t absent from the miasma of bee-buzzing overtones and stuttering string lines on these tracks that usually clock in at the four-to-five-minute mark. So immersion won’t be difficult for anyone interested in experiencing complex modern instant compositions with a non-traditional string trio.

Truth be told, most listeners will probably enjoy the ride.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Celebration 2. Incontro 3. Con tre 4. Inquieto 5. Alta 6. Con variazioni 7. Con agevolezza 8. Sciolto 9. Celebration (ancora)

Personnel: Maya Homburger (baroque violin,); Walter Prati (cello); Barry Guy (bass)

March 8, 2004

EVAN PARKER/JOE MCPHEE

Chicago Tenor Duets
OkkaDisk OD 12033

BARRY GUY-EVAN PARKER
Birds and Blades
Intakt Double CD 080

Two more aural essays on the subtle art of the duo, these CDs feature three improvisers who long ago proved that they can hold their own in musical situations involving any size of band.

Connection between the two discs comes from the presence of British saxophonist Evan Parker, who with his philosophical theories and technical mastery has been producing intelligent commentary on reed advancement since the mid-1960s. On BIRDS AND BLADES, A two-CD set recorded in Zürich in 2001, he’s partnered with longtime confrere bassist Barry Guy. Another cerebral experimenter, the bassist and the sax man have worked in contexts from big bands to duos for years, with their first duo meeting taking place in 1981.

On hand for CHICAGO TENOR DUETS, which (no surprise) was recorded in the Illinois city in 1998, with Parker featured exclusively on tenor sax -- he also plays soprano on the double disc -- is American Joe McPhee. Intellectual in a similar fashion to his Brit counterparts, the reedist recorded a trio -- all soprano saxophones -- session with Parker and French player Daunik Lazro in 1995. Over the years he has also had separate dual sax meetings with American Joe Giardullo, Lazro and another French highbrow, woodwind stylist André Jaume.

More than a rematch, CHICAGO TENOR is set up as an experiment to see what unique dialogue(s) can arise from using the lower-pitched woodwind, now that the two have investigated its higher-pitched sibling. The results will only upset those with an outmoded view of the so-called avant garde. There may be squeaks, squeals, multiphonics and a variety of extended techniques on show, but overall, the axe’s entrenched definition is amplified and only slightly redefined.

In this series of 11 duets, motifs including rolling tones, circular chases and unison smears are more prominent than endless circular breathing -- a Parker specialty. At times the two sound like one man -- Rahsaan Roland Kirk, perhaps -- playing two saxes simultaneously, at other times they elaborate the same line, creating octaves apart from one another.

Otherwise, Parker and McPhee are two reedmen soloing in the same place at the same time, but not playing together. There are points where what they do can be visually compared to an amoeba, with their sounds glancing off on another, then splitting apart within milliseconds. Harmonically, the reedists can twin one another, or singly create cavernous fog horn sounds, buzzing lines, hisses of pure air or harsh key-popping mouthpiece percussion.

All in all they seem to gain strength and confidence as the session proceeds almost chronologically, with “Duet 8” and “Duet 11” -- each just a little less than 11 minutes -- their most concentrated showcases. The former finds them spewing out double honks that blend into one whole tone, but played enough apart so you know two horns are involved. One then offers up twittering and trilling buoyant reed slides, while the other ripostes with squealing split reed tones and rolling tongue slaps. Staccato pinpoint notes soon meet key pops until the duo joins again for unison air hisses.

“Duet 11” finds both venturing into buoyant, so-called BritImprov territory with near inaudible sighs. These are succeeded by growling undertones and adagio buzzing acoustic drones, as accented notes cycle back and forth. The climax comes when Parker introduces circular breathing, with a basso countermotif from McPhee existing until they join together for a coda.

McPhee and Parker’s meeting also isn’t a sparring match, neither is the duo with Guy and Parker. Although the results on the one live and one studio session that make up BIRDS AND BLADES, usually whirl by at an speedier and more strident pace than what was created by the tenor tandem, this two-CD set is another heartfelt dialogue.

Peculiarly, the seven studio-recorded instant compositions are listed as being by Guy-Parker; in contrast the four live tracks that appear to have been created by Parker-Guy. Whether this is a musical version of political correctness or an indication of which player contributes the most to each group of tunes is uncertain. Surely the idea of a duo is that neither partner is paramount.

Moving from nomenclature to sounds, the live tracks run a minimum of slightly more than 14 minutes to more than 19 minutes. As Parker notes, the great length results from a fear of finding out the audience isn’t enjoying itself. Fat chance. Take “Circling” -- an appropriate description of just about everything played on all three CDs -- for instance.

A mixture of notated and improvised sections, like everything else the duo plays, it begins with Parker’s nearly patented circular breathing reconstructing itself as the sound of a flock of chirping feathered creatures, filling the sky with different melodies and tones. Squeals and strums then arise from Guy’s bass as he rubs, picks and forcefully pulls at the four strings. His constant arco motion melds with cheeping, flute-like reed wiggles from Parker, occasionally interrupted for quick dives into the bass clef.

Eventually, as the saxophonist continues to slipslide out of time, producing great gouts of notes, and as the bassman alternately plucks and bows a corresponding number of tones, you feel your head and solar plexus spinning as the two seem to be sucking all the oxygen out of the air. Just as it seems that you can’t accept any more soprano saxophone trills and near-the-pegs string bowing, the tempo abates to adagio, with the piece concluding with serene concert bass bowed lines.

Even on the seven studio compositions, the duo’s command of their respective instruments, and the resulting extended techniques are such that the absence of drums isn’t noted. Parker can produce quick, clean squeaks as readily as rolling purrs from his horns and Guy is as apt to create fingerpicking clawhammer banjo notes as abrasive, many-stringed bowed sounds.

As a matter of fact, on the title tune and longest track, the bass seems to morph into a chamber-filling mythical string quartet, though Guy’s delivery is speedier and more metallic than that mixture of violins, viola and cello would create. Meanwhile, the mid-range trilling sounds from Parker’s soprano sax describe a perfect Catherine Wheel of sound. Falling in and out of congruence, as the reedist’s conveyer belt of sounds appears, Guy breaks up the aural pattern with a series of tiny changes -- bowing deep into the bass clef, at one point, sneaking in quick, classical cello-like associations at others, and turning to mandolin-like flat picking elsewhere.

In this partnership of more than 20 years, each instrumentalist can improvise on his own, sometimes together, but often apart as the tune unravels. This relationship and the one with Parker and McPhee are probably the only non-exploitative examples of separate but equal that has existed since the time of Booker T. Washington.

Jointly and singularly, the improvisers featured on these three discs reconfirm that musical elasticity can be built into even as simple a structure as a duo.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Chicago: 1. Duet 2 2. Duet 3 3. Duet 4 4. Duet 5 5. Duet 6 6. Duet 7 7. Duet 9 8. Duet 8 9. Duet 11 10. Duet 12 11. Duet 13

Personnel: Chicago: Evan Parker and Joe McPhee (tenor saxophones)

Track Listing: Birds: CD 1: Studio 1. Alar 2. Swordplay 3. Cut and thrust 4. Froissement 5. Coulé 6. Barrage 7. Birds and blades CD 2: Live 1. Angulation 2. Circling 3. Point in line 4. Lunge

Personnel: Birds: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); Barry Guy (bass)

June 23, 2003

TONY OXLEY/ALAN DAVIE

The Tony Oxley-Alan Davie Duo
a|l|l 005

JOHN STEVENS
Application Interaction And...
High4Head HFHCD002

Pioneering Scottish Abstract Expressionist Alan Davie had his first one-man exhibition in London in 1950, at height of the Cool Jazz era, when he was also making his name as a painter, poet and multi-instrumentalist. Keeping up with musical changes, Davie, born in 1920, eventually developed a longstanding playing partnership with percussionist Tony Oxley, born in 1938, who is one of the founders of restrained BritImprov and a painter in his own right. The improv duo sessions here were recorded in 1974 and 1975, and are reissued with two additional tracks for the first time since their appearance on LP in 1975.

Oxley’s chief rival as pioneering BritImprov percussionist, the late John Stevens (1940-1994), didn’t move in the same artistic circles. Although he studied to be a commercial artist, he was a musician first, last and always. APPLICATION, INTERACTION AND… is a reissue of a 1978 disc with longtime associate, saxophonist Trevor Watts, and a startlingly longhaired Barry Guy on bass, who had already begun his playing partnership with saxist Evan Parker and organized the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, which also featured Watts.

Davie, who become a professional jazz musician after the Second World War, has always insisted that his mature style arrived when “I really began to paint in the way I had learned to write and to play jazz and in the way I had learned to make love”. His associates in New York included Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, and his more recent work shows a preoccupation with Zen and Oriental mysticism.

There’s not too much mysticism here, though eclecticism may be a better adjective. At least David plays trombone sopranino saxophone, bass clarinet, vibraphone, xylophone, piano, cello and ring modulator on different tracks, while Oxley plays percussion, violin, ring modulator, compressor and octave splitter.

What’s most noteworthy about the two newly issued tracks is that Davie plays piano on both of them with exerted finger pressure and high frequency tremolos. This rapid-fire, arpeggio-rich attack is somewhat like Cecil Taylor’s, the American pianist who would become a frequent Oxley playing partner a few years later. Were these tracks preliminary bouts for latter piano-percussion championship meetings perhaps?

Other tracks show the different personalities Davie adopted for each of his axes. As notable, in hindsight, is how many conceptions including World music echoes, folk root allusions, musqiue concrète and pure improv, were touched upon on these tracks. Even more conspicuous is how the two were mixing and matching the genres at that early date, more so than Oxley does now.

For instance “Song for the little dog” and “Fruit flambé”, recorded live in concert in Zürich, find Davie advancing his ideas with reed attack of repetitive, elongated high pitched squeals that makes it appears that he’s playing a Middle Eastern mussette. Primitive, hard-edged, heavy snare and cymbal bangs accompany part of this, but so do buzzing tones probably arriving from the ring modulator, with electronic impulses altering the percussion oscillation.

These same fluctuating whistles and chugs appear via the miracle of electricity in some of Davie’s cello and keyboard discharges as well. Wood-based drones and snorts enliven the proceedings as do lustrous, almost-prepared-piano-like xylophone plinks that meet with phase-shifting, shattering and clattering percussion.

It was Davie, who gave Oxley a violin, and on “‘Bird trap’ for violin and cello” the two create a non-folkloric, non-chamber suite for their strings. Electrified, but not amplified fiddle tones scratch and whistle as they meet low undertones from the cello.

More codified, the three selections from Stevens, Watts and Guy show pioneering free improvisers in a more jazz-like mode, especially on the almost 25 minute “Application” that begins the CD. Although Stevens’ name is above the title, he’s characteristically muted, letting Watts take the lead role. No hierarchical arrangement, this is a meeting of equals. After all, the drummer and saxist had played together starting in the early 1960s and almost every day in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble during the later part of that decade. Guy had been a member of bands with first one, then another and with both from about that same time.

Oldest of the three, it’s Watts with his whistling chirps and astringent, elongated reed squeals who is most attuned to the Free Jazz ethos. Beginning with smears almost reminiscent of a violin’s tone, midway through the alto player switches to blues-based Ornette Coleman-Julius Hemphill emphasized lower register lines and higher-pitched elastic tones that swell without breaking. His sax tone, mixed with Guy resonating finger-picking pulse and Stevens’ rumble and bass drum involved chromatic pressure, suggest that everyone was listening to Coleman’s Prime Time band of the time. Earlier, though, when his reed multiphonics produce Eurasian tones and overtones, there are hints of the pan-Africanism that Watts would later bring to fruition in his Moiré Music groups.

Exoticism closer to home appears at the end when the saxman -- now probably on soprano -- creates a repeated bagpipe-like pulse. His sax is the chanter, with the droning overtones portrayed by Guy’s focused bow work.

Taken andante, “Interaction” is a more experimental piece, featuring reed drones, bottle-cap percussion ejaculations and press rolls, as well as straightforward low-key plucking and bowing from Guy. Watts’ Free Jazz connection again differentiates him from younger improv saxophonists such as John Butcher and Parker. And as he heads into bird-whistle territory for a time, lower-case pitches and squeals arrive from the bass. When the percussionist drags out more rhythm, the bass line gets denser and faster, Watts then propels himself to twisting, flutter tongued lines and Texas reed cries, if those can arise from a Yorkshireman.

That’s the value of reissues; they allow you hear fine music that were ignored or overlooked in its day. Both these releases are at that level. Comparing lively arts though, it would be superb if even a small number of the art collectors throughout the world who appreciate Davie’s painting knew the names of musical fine artists like Oxley, Guy, Stevens and Watts as well as they do those of visual fine artists

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Duo: 1. Song for the little dog 2. Cavern of the snail for cello and cymbals 3. Adventures with magic ring 4. Fruit flambé 5. Song for the serpent 6. On the seashore 7. Fragment from a suite ‘Country music’ 8. Fish fascinator 10. ‘Bird trap’ for violin and cello 11. High Tide Mark

Personnel: Duo: Alan Davie (trombone sopranino saxophone, bass clarinet, vibraphone, xylophone, piano, cello, ring modulator); Tony Oxley (percussion, violin, ring modulator, compressor, octave splitter)

Track Listing: Application: 1. Application 2. Interaction 3. And...

Personnel: Application: Trevor Watts (soprano and alto saxophones); Barry Guy (bass); John Stevens (drums)

May 19, 2003

PARKER/GUY/LYTTON

At Les Instants Chavirés
psi 02.06

TRI-DIM
2 of 2
SOFA 510

Two expressions from the language of romance and relationships may be appropriate when discussing the music on these two CDs which feature British bassist Barry Guy.

It’s said that after they live together for some time, a married couple starts to resemble one another. Expanding that thesis, you may note on the exemplary live disc recorded in Paris, that after more than two decades of working together Guy, saxophonist Evan Parker and percussionist Paul Lytton sometimes use strategies in their own improvisations that were initially developed by another member of the trio.

Another romantic maxim is that once soul mates meet for the first time, they find that they’re acting as if they have always been together. Stripping the sexual innuendo from that statement, it accurately describes Guy’s first time meeting with the Norwegian improvising trio Tri-Dim. Featured on two tracks on 2 OF 2, he fits the band’s groove to such an extent that it sounds as if he has always been part of it.

Recorded at the Paris club Les Instants Chavirés direct to DAT in late 1997 when the technique was still risky, the first CD includes one truncated track when the equipment capsized. Despite this, the session is probably as good as anything the three have recorded in the past.

Matrimonial-style resemblance is most apparent on the final track. Among the notes sprayed from Parker’s saxophone and the press rolls and cymbal slides Lytton produces, the bassist produces some stop-time strummed pizzicato work akin to the speedy squeals of circular breathing that Parker creates a few minutes before on “Three-legged chicken (for Vernon)”, the disc’s more than 38½-minute tour de force.

Additionally, that tune demonstrates the triptych-like interaction and connection of the trio. As attuned to one another’s strengths and techniques as members of the Modern Jazz Quartet or Budapest String Quartet were after their long tenure together, each one can make a movement that will call up the appropriate response from the other(s). That doesn’t mean, however, that there is usually one soloist and two accompanists, but rather three men following singular paths that happen to intersect at crucial junctures. Concentrate on pursuing the sound from any one of the three and you’ll hear something musically worthwhile on its own.

Enlivened with piglet-like squeals, phrases roll from Parker’s tenor saxophone, alternately allegro and andante, sometimes leading to his almost patented style of circular breathing, elsewhere vibrating with simple chirps. Mewling, he produces an augmented echo at spots, and creates enough tongue slaps and key pops to appear to be duetting with himself. Abstraction for its own sake isn’t any part of this, though. At times he puts aside triple tonguing and split tones to refract a series of tiny whole notes that are almost mainstream, in the non-neo-con sense of course. On other tracks, some of his sharper notes could replicate Sonny Rollins’ 1950s style.

Occupied as a squirrel in autumn, the percussionist’s version of circular breathing involves working, sounding, testing and manipulating many parts of his extended kit. Parker’s harsh overblowing is mated with bass drum pedal rattles, while Guy’s ascending and descending string squeaks are commented upon with a mallet-driven ping from the ride cymbal. Lytton may use flams and rolls, but he’s as apt to produce a bell-like sound from his so-called little instruments if that’s more generic to the sound field.

Guy not only expresses himself pizzicato -- sometimes sounding like a guitar -- and arco, but it sounds as if he’s vibrating one or several sticks placed horizontally and strategically between the strings. To mix metaphors -- or suggest perhaps incompatible vocations -- he’s both sculptor and a laborer in concrete, fabricating the mixture that solidifies the bottom of the piece, while leaping up into mid register and higher to sculpt figurines that complement Parker and Lytton’s creations.

Brimming with the instantly identifiable Parker/Guy/Lytton sound -- as are the other tracks -- “Three-legged chicken …” suspends time to such an extent that nearly 39 minutes appears to pass like five.

Another fleet, but lengthy piece, at more than 27½-minutes, is one of two tracks on the other CD on which Guy joins Tri-Dim; the other follows immediately afterwards. Untitled like all the other numbers on 2 OF 2, it finds Guy subsumed within the band to such an extent that he’s almost invisible. Recorded at the Molde Jazz Festival in 2001, there’s certainly no feeling about the performance that a so-called improv star is sitting in with a local combo.

Then again the Scandinavians have the potential to eventually be compared to Parker/Guy/Lytton sometime in the future. Actually Swedish, guitar David Stackenäs has also worked in some of Swedish reedist Mats Gustafsson’s larger projects and recorded with American woodwind player Ken Vandermark. As for the Norwegians, both saxophonist Håkon Kornstad and percussionist Ingar Zach are part of No Spaghetti Edition, a shifting group of improvisers. Kornstad has recorded mainstream and experimental discs under his own name, while Zach has also recorded with British guitarist Derek Bailey.

As a matter of fact, it’s the percussionist’s on the mark, gong-like cymbal tones here and elsewhere that give many of the instant compositions their shape(s). As effortlessly industrious as Lytton is on the other CD, Zach always seems to be hitting some part of his kit, producing a shuffle rhythm with his toms, vibrating varied tones from his drum tops or somehow making sounds that could come from an alarm clock.

Guy is most prominent at the beginning of the tune, where his high-string arco work -- perhaps due to his long association with Maya Homburger -- sounds as if it was coming from a violin. Other times he seems to be pulling notes from the very top of the string set about where the strings meet the tuning pegs. Stackenäs makes his point with flat picking, while Kornstad comes out with some growling split reed work and key pops plus producing a rhythmic percussive tone.

Soon the four break into double duos -- the two string players make up one; the saxophonist and drummer the other. Considering the unconventional technique both exhibit, the listener can be excused for not being able to ascribe certain tones to either the guitar or bass -- six or four steel strings vibrate in close proximity. Squeaking up his strings, Guy squeezes out some distinctive tones with his fingers, while Stackenäs --alternately tormenting and caressing his axe -- scratches out disjointed melodies on his frets and bridge as well the strings. The other duo involves the saxman flutter tonguing or spewing out line after line of high frequency tones. When Kornstad slipslides into another key, turning his arpeggios into cadenzas, Zach firmly, but almost tenderly pops shimmers from his small cymbals and jounces quivers from his drum heads.

An extension of all this, the final selection is quieter, featuring flailing guitar chords meeting an unvarying bass line. Meanwhile, a Nordic style flute sound gradually gets loud enough to mix with Zach’s reverberating drum skin motions or vibes-like tones.

On their own, on the first track, recorded a year later at Oslo’s Blå, the trio of Scandinavians show they’re perfectly capable of creating nearly 19 minutes of impressive excitement on their own. Kornstad moves to the front, squalling out Parker-derived ghostly tongue slaps, spits and rolling trills with an irregular vibrato. Stackenäs weighs in with asymmetric, single note flat picking, while Zach introduces what seems to be sepulchral tones from unselected cymbals, on their own or placed on top of the ride variety; triangle pings and rhythm produced by drum sticks alone plus odd, unconnected drum patterns. Finally buzzing reed cadenzas dissolve into white noise.

2 OF 2’s one misstep involves the remaining track, remixed by Jim O’Rourke of avant-rock band Sonic Youth. A few seconds of crashing guitar chords soon vanish into many minutes of extended Cagean silence. Eventually droning guitar and sax sound are audible, meshed with an otherworldly melisma of reverberating electronics and what appears to be the rumble of a backwards running tape. Purportedly O’Rourke remixed using some of Tri-Dim’s unreleased material, but the result appears to be more about his skills than the band’s. Maybe it would sound better on another CD with similar data.

Reprogram your CD player to miss this track if you wish, the rest will give you an unmatched glimpse into modern Scandinavian improvisations played by musicians who will likely be the pacesetters of this century.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Chavirés: 1. Montreuil motion 2. Asp irate 3. Three-legged chicken (for Vernon) 4. In which the moment capsizes 5. Jean-Marc rights the boat

Personnel: Chavirés: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion)

Track Listing: Tri- Dim: 1. 18.42 2. 12.39+ 3. 27.34* 4. 8.27*

Personnel: Tri-Dim: Håkon Kornstad (soprano and tenor saxophones, flute): David Stackenäs (guitar); Barry Guy (bass)*; Ingar Zach (percussion); Jim O’Rourke (remix)+

March 3, 2003

CARLOS ZINGARO

cage of sand
sirr 2007

BARRY GUY
Symmetries
Maya MCD 0201

Of all the instrumentalists who have been impelled to record solo improv performances, violinists have always seemed to be the ones who should take to it most generically. After all, there’s a long history of solo recitals in so-called serious music, with our collective memory filled with images of animated recitalists sweeping their lank tresses into the air along with their bows.

Double bass players are more circumspect. Although solo bass literature exists in the traditional classical sphere, practitioners usually stood aside to let their higher-stringed siblings take the limelight.

Free improvisation did more than offer musicians a new way to play. It redressed this balance, probably because of the preponderance of bassists and paucity of violinists in free jazz, improv’s immediate precursor. Since then, the number of impressive solo bass performances has far exceeded solo violin outings. But these memorable sessions show that there’s still a lot to say with either instrument.

Portuguese fiddler Carlos Zingaro and British bassist Barry Guy have recorded solo discs in the past, along with their myriad other activities. These have included directing large ensembles and collaboration with the likes of saxophonist Evan Parker for Guy, and moving among theatre, dance and improv musics for Zingaro, partnering musicians as different as Canadian cellist Peggy Lee and Swiss electronic duo Voice Crack.

On these discs, each man, as a true improviser, tries something different. CAGES OF SAND is a solo recording for violin, electronics and real-time processing, while SYMMETRIES finds Guy not only playing his own compositions but interpreting two by jazz’s acknowledged bass master, Charles Mingus.

Those two “Weird Nightmare” and “Eclipse”, are also the only times on this almost 70-minute CD that Guy goes the Zingaro route, overlaying harmonics onto the pre-recorded tracks. What results are meditative readings of both tunes with the phantom second bass adding spangling extraterrestrial tones to the melodies played on magisterial low register. “Quiescence”, inspired by a composition by Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) adds a C pedal as well, which may account for the occasional odd string twangs. Essentially, though, the earthy, traditional-sounding tune sounds as if it could have been recorded on a baroque lute at 78 rpm, then slowed down and played at 16 rpm.

Relating to FIZZLES, Guy’s previous solo disc from 1991, the mid-section of this disc is made up of seven identically named miniatures. Ranging in length from slightly more than one minute to a touch less than 2½ minutes, the pieces are surprisingly solid and forcible. Throughout, while some higher-pitched tones make it into the mix, Guy’s preference seems to be for loud and heavier sounds that at points resemble the crash of surf against the shore. Many times he seems to have both hands working up and down the strings simultaneous, plucking and bowing in near-unison, keeping treble and bass in perfect sync. Other times, as on “Odyssey”, Guy, who is known for having extended the range of the instrument, hits the strings with such force that he seems to possess the strength Lennox Lewis used to KO Mike Tyson.

Similarly, you can almost feel the instrument’s wood shaking as he works his way up its neck on “Bichrome terrors”, the longest track with its near sci-fi title. With a lot of his time spent sawing away at the top of the bull fiddle’s range, his repeated note patterns make you wonder if his attack is such, that the taut bass strings appear to have merely the consistency of binding twine for his purposes. Digits and implements easily make them buzz, pluck, bound and spring back, with some parts even moving into the percussion range.

Not that the whole session is an exercise in pugilism. On “Soft Fire”, for instance, Guy incorporates the overtones resulting from his strumming patterns to expose different quadrants of the instrument at different times. There are no electronic effects used here, but still in one beneath-the-bridge exploration, he manages to suggest church bells pealing. Then there’s the final tune, whose title conjures up memories of mythological Charon rowing mortals across the river Styx to their rendezvous with death. Sounding almost traditionally European classical, should the low-pitched sounds be that of oars dipping in the Styx? Luckily the mood lightens -- or the destination is reached -- by the end, as Guy powerfully bounces his bow off the strings and stretchers out a tight but lively melody.

If there is a criticism to be leveled at this achievement, it’s that, perhaps because of the instrument’s usual tone, too many of the pieces seem excessively sombre.

Guy’s last solo session was in 1991, while Zingaro’s was two years before that. Since that time, the violinist, who has received several prizes for his cartoons, comics and illustrations, has also immersed himself in such visual forms as opera and dance. Using electronics here seems to have allowed him to construct sounds that are descriptive of some of his titles.

“Representations of Beasts” and “Radio Insects” most closely reflect this. What emerges from the chorus of filmy drones and crinkles in the former is the aural picture of many tiny beasts -- perhaps chipmunks -- racing hither and yon. Soon, as the shrill cycle of ear-splitting tones jockeys for space with the sound of a real violin, you start to wonder if Zingaro is facing off against a Suzuki class consisting of miniature squirrels.

As for the radio insects, the electronic wiggles and static whooshes that surround the violin seem to suggest that these are bugs from outer space. Tiny when synthesized squeaks characterize them, there’s also a massed stream engine effect midway through the piece that could suggest that these insects have banded together -- or are very, very large.

Of course “Creative Carving” may serve to frighten off these and other nightmarish creatures. On this track when monster from the deep noises are revealed to be what sounds like tapes running backwards -- does one still do this in the age of DAT? -- the animal cries are soon soothed with a lullaby played by a ghostly, almost translucent, violin.

Afterlife makes it appearance on this disc too, but the violinist dispenses with it on the first track “The Cities and the Dead”. More urban than deceased, the results seem pretty lively on this, the CD’s longest track, with short whistles and what could be harmonica tones eventually getting faster and finally resolving themselves as note overtones and undertones. The sound could suggest the appearance of a swarm of insects, but it’s probably an electronic string section, created from processed versions of the violin and violinist. Other times, Zingaro’s pizzicato command is such that you wonder if the plucking is being produced with the fiddle on his shoulder on in his hands like a guitar.

Elsewhere on the CD, the new relationship between the violin and its electronic counterpart(s) produces stop-and-start clamor that could be jets taking off, tweety birds complaining, a saxophone’s key pops, processed voices, a child’s video game, temple bells tinkling and clock ticking, faster and faster. Obviously Zingaro has discovered the true nature of electronics -- that you can bend them to reflect new avenues of expression with your own instrument as a sound source.

That too is the splendor of free music in the hands -- and thought processes -- of veterans like Zingaro and Guy. Acoustic or electronic, as these discs show, they have the commanding skills to make their instruments do whatever they want them too.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Symmetries: 1. Whether or not why not 2. Soft fire 3.Weird nightmare 4. Bichrome terrors 5. Quiescence 6. Fizzle 1 7. Fizzle 2 8. Fizzle 3 9. Fizzle 4 10 Fizzle 5 11. Fizzle 6 12. Fizzle 7 13. Odyssey 14. Slow slam 15. Eclipse 16. Dark of light 17. I have crossed by the grace of the boatman

Personnel: Barry Guy (double bass, added harmonics, C pedal)

Track Listing: cage: 1. The Cities and the Dead 2. White Fire 3. Structural Functions 4. Creative Carving 5. Representations of Beasts 6. Logic and Ordered Space 7. Radio Insects 8. Sedimentary Deposit of Suffering 9. Nothing Is Remote

Personnel: cage: Carlos Zingaro (violin and electronics with “real-time” processing)

August 26, 2002

BARRY GUY-MARILYN CRISPELL-PAUL LYTTON

Odyssey
Intakt CD 070

Piano trios featuring bass and drums have, since at least the late 1940s, been the proving ground and identity test for jazz keyboardists. With the overhanging monuments of Oscar Peterson’s and Bill Evans’s trios at either extreme of the landscape, it seems that every mainstream pianist worth his Steinway has to stake his or her claim in that terrain.

Yet the challenge of subverting this accepted formation is such, that even iconoclastic figures like Misha Mengelberg, Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols have also recorded this way. Marilyn Crispell too, along with other formations, has made a variety of piano trio discs with such partners as bassists Barry Guy, Mark Dresser and Reggie Workman, most often with drummer Gerry Hemingway. Right now, in fact, her two recent anemic outings on ECM with famed bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motion have come closer to giving her mainstream fame than anything she’s ever done before.

So why is ODYSSEY different than other trio discs? Well, for a start it’s better.

British bassist Guy and drummer Paul Lytton are without doubt two of the most accomplished practitioners on their instruments. The other reason actually turns the whole trio equation on its head. Look closely at the musicians’ billing and who wrote most of the compositions and you’ll realize that this is actually an unconventional date under the leadership of Guy. But like Charles Mingus’s 1957 trio session with pianist Hampton Hawes and drummer Dannie Richmond, the bassist who usually leads large orchestras or works in smaller groups sans piano has decided to try this formation on for size.

Of the five Guy compositions, two, “Double Trouble Too” and “Harmos” are miniaturizations of longer pieces recorded by the bassist-led London Jazz Composers Orchestra in 1995 and 1989 respectively, the first of which also featured Crispell and Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer improvising from the piano benches.

On this version the pianist appears to be playing a straight line of repetitive classical arpeggios, while the bassist decorates the unhurried theme with dark, reverberating arco lines, with the drummer chiming in occasionally and mostly literally shaking the metallic portions of his kit. More obtuse, “Harmos” begins with Lytton abstractly testing the limits of his percussion, as Guy uses his bass skills to produce multi-string, guitar-like strumming. When Crispell enters about half way through, liming the theme with both hands, you get the feeling that there’s a traditional folk ballad lurking somewhere within the tune, just waiting to be discovered.

Judging from the shared compositional credits, three other tunes appear to be studio-created instant compositions. Considering all, especially the jocularly-titled

“Heavy Metal” depends to some extent on Lytton exposing the more jagged and sharper parts of his drum kit he’s in the spotlight. One technique he has developed involves scratching some object across his cymbals with such aim that the resulting, prolonged buzz starts to resemble real-time electronics.

However the real essence of the session comes in Guy’s three other compositions. Intriguingly-titled, on the surface “Rags”, written expressly for the disc, has about as much relation to Scott Joplin’s work as it does to cleaning cloths. Although Crispell plays with a sort of rough delicacy, she often appears to be barely touching the keys, sliding across them like a figure skater on ice. Except that is for a point near the beginning where she introduces glissandos that actually sound as if she’s playing a real harp rather than the piano innards. Except for the odd thump, Lytton appends fuzzy reverberations rather than straightforward drumming here, as Guy intricately builds his accompaniment by flexing the four bass strings away from the body and neck.

With “Celestial” on the other hand, the pianist appears to be in the middle of a 19th century Impressionism recital, playing in slow motion, while producing protracted flourishes of ominous-sounding chords. Again Lytton and Guy construct circles of creative counter melodies around her solo. Shards of drum clatter pierce the melody, while the bassist somehow manages to force the strings of his bull fiddle into a higher register so that it sounds at times like a dobro or a Hawaiian guitar.

More sombre, the title tune seems to wrap up all the extended techniques used by the three in the other compositions, with Lytton subtly accenting the proceedings and, Guy ranging all over his bass strings. Throughout, Crispell languidly spins out well-measured, but not precious piano tones that sound both traditional, yet quietly dissonant.

With writing that’s all sharp corners and sinuous movement, Guy manages to keep the tunes vigorous and alive with momentum. This way he not only forestalls the lackadaisical somnolence that infected the pianist on those sessions with Motion and Peacock, but he shows how he can adapt and refine his music for the type of traditional piano trio that he hasn’t been involved with since the 1970s.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Double Trouble Too 2. Odyssey 3. Heavy Metal 4. Spike 5. Rags 6. Luna 7.elestial 8. Blade 9. Harmos

Personnel: Marilyn Crispell (piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion)

January 8, 2002

EVAN PARKER/BARRY GUY/LAWRENCE CASSERLEY

Dividuality
Maya MCD 0101

Having explored nearly every sort of improvised music from solo to big band in their more than three decade journey, bassist Barry Guy and saxophonist Evan Parker have become the Lewis and Clarke of BritImprov.

The past five years, however, have seen them, like Sir Edmund Hillary, finding another peak to investigate simply because it's there: electronics. Luckily their Sherpa on this trip is Lawrence Casserley, one of the grand old men of the field, who is a composer and performer as well as a signal processor.

Casserley who took early retirement from the Royal College of Music a few years ago to pursue his other activities already had a history with the two when this disc was recorded. He had provided live processing for Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra and, after developing with Parker a signal processing instrument specifically for improvised music, recorded in duo with the saxophonist shortly before this session. Since then he has joined the two musicians and others to bring his skills to Parker's Electro Acoustic Ensemble.

Not someone who revels in pure electronic circuitry like some younger performers, Casserley knows how to use his mazes of wires as instruments, so much so that this absorbing CD could be a record of another Parker-Guy trio or perhaps quartet or quintet,

"Shifting" for instance can be seen as presenting a history of Western music's evolution in fewer than 13 minutes. For a start Guy, an early music specialist in another life, pays homage to the baroque in some of his movements. In fact, the speedy plucked runs he creates at times makes it seem as if he's playing a sort of archlute with its long neck and extra bass strings. Parker, meantime, could be working out his improvisations on a personalized recorder, which seems fitting considering that the woodwind was initially named the "English flute". Casserley's processing turns that "flute" into an entire recorder orchestra, echoing and re-echoing notes that soon dominate the track. Just as this collection of bird sounds threatens to blot out the bassist's subtle bridge exploration, though, the electronics creates mechanized wind guts, which connect more easily to some of the more arid compositions of modernists like Edgard Varèse than any baroque air. What has been presented is a modulation from the 16th to the 20th century by three players.

Conversely, "Transmute" more closely resembles the trio work the saxophonist and bassist have done in the past with the likes of drummer Paul Lytton as the sound processor's mechanized electronic wiggles take the percussion part. With electronics serving as a cushion to improvise upon rather than a blanket that muffles, you can easily hear Parker's false fingering and conveyer belt of piercing tones plus Guy leaping from bow to fingers and back again as he plays. Soon after the saxist's accelerated circular breathing seems to go beyond human endurance, the thought arises that it's probably extended by processing. Then unique, otherworldly organ tones -- also courtesy of Casserley -- enter the soundscape as Parker's sonics are matched by violin-pitched scratches from Guy. Finally the mechanized storm reaches hurricane force and subsumes all other improvisations.

Duets between the electronics whiz and either Parker or Guy assume strange properties as well. In the face off between the saxophonist and the sound artist you often wonder whether the multitude of darting notes and fluttering tonguing you hear is actually coming from Parker. Or are they some earlier sounds that have been captured and fed back into the mix by Casserley at the same time as the soprano creates new ones.

Somehow, too, the treatment of the bassist's solos raises questions as well. You can easily recognize the characteristic Guy arco arch or his sprint up and down the strings, but there are times his expected double bass sounds are transformed into what could be emanating from a marimba or a wooden bass flute. All the while the tones seeping around him appear to come from robotic machines or ghostly bells.

It's puzzling as to why Maya sat on this 1997 session until now. It certainly gives you additional insight into Parker and Guy's accommodations with electronics, while confirming Casserley's ability to provide a human element from this mass of circuitry.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Frondescence 2. Dividuality 3. Aulos 4. Shifting 5. Scion 6. Zool 7. Spinney 8. Transmute 9. Calyx

Personnel: Evan Parker (soprano saxophone); Barry Guy (bass); Lawrence Casserley (live electronics, sound processing)

1. Frondescence 2. Dividuality 3. Aulos 4. Shifting 5. Scion 6. Zool 7. Spinney 8. Transmute 9. Calyx

October 22, 2001

BARRY GUY NEW ORCHESTRA

Inscape - Tableaux
Intakt CD 066

Just as the European Union (EU) and the Euro have begun to win over Continental rivalries and local currencies, so composer, orchestra director and bass master Barry Guy has decided to put together a new international aggregation that's showcased on this exceptional disc. After 28 years leading the mostly British, usually 18-piece, London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LCJO), the now Ireland-based Guy has organized an all-star tentet to perform this multi-faceted composition which took two years to perfect. As multinational as the EU, the Barry Guy New Orchestra (BGNO) features only two other Englishmen, as well three Swedes, two Americans, a German and a Swiss national.

Most have worked with the bassist before -- some extensively like Evan Parker and Paul Lytton. All are at the top of their form. It would be stupid to say that the colors brought forward by the LJCO's additional eight to 10 players can be equaled by BGNO's fewer musicians. But together these improvisers are so proficient on so many instruments and so cognizant of so many techniques that what they produce easily has the resonance of a larger band. Though scored, Guy's "Inscape - Tableaux" leaves plenty of space to take advantage of each individual's talents.

Especially noteworthy is pianist Marilyn Crispell, who as well as being integrated into the ensemble, is featured in three keyboard-centered interludes between the larger orchestral sections. Sometimes pastoral, as in the beginning of "IV"-- practically a duet for her and Guy's flying fingers -- sometimes powerful, Crispell seems to bring her classical chops to the fore here. Distinctively unique, her playing no more resembles that of Cecil Taylor --as some lazy commentators have suggested -- than Jesse Helms' politics resemble those of Jesse Jackson's.

Trombonist Johannes Bauer's showcase comes on "V", an exploding comet of cacophony, which harkens back to the earliest days of large ensemble free jazz. Here and elsewhere his vocalized, guttural cries simultaneously suggest New Orleans tailgate and outer space. "V" also features some of Herb Robertson's best Maynard-Ferguson-meets-Cootie-Williams explosions. With only three valves, the American trumpeter is able to produce the sort of multiphonics saxophonists need many keys to generate.

Speaking of saxophonists, how can a band go wrong with a section made up of Parker's circular breathing, Mats Gustafsson's lung bursting blowouts, and on "VI", Hans Koch's top-to-bottom bass clarinet forays?

Still, this Ellington band-like aggregation of stylists shouldn't obscure that the BGNO is very much a composer's vehicle, with echoes of European New music and on "II" Charles Mingus' scores for mid-sized ensembles. Listen again to an interlude in "V" and observe the perfect clarity of Per Åke Holmlander's tuba making its way like a hippo across the Veldt as the untamed wild birds that are the horns vocally leap and frolic overhead. Like Ellington and Mingus, Guy writes with the idiosyncrasies of his players firmly in mind and the score sounds that much the better for it.

One could go on and on appending extended examples of sophisticated and eventful writing and outstanding solos, but how many more superlatives can be heaped on this groundbreaking disc of modern music? Suffice it to say that INSCAPE - TABLEAUX deserves to be heard by anyone at all interested in modern composition and the state of 21st century orchestral sound. We can also hope, that sometime in the future, this Valhalla of improvising giants will tour in this formation

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Inscape - Tableaux Part 1; Part II; Part III; Part IV; Part V; Part VI; Part VII

Personnel: Herb Robertson (trumpet); Johannes Bauer (trombone); Per Åke Holmlander (tuba); Evan Parker (tenor and soprano saxophones); Mats Gustafsson (tenor and baritone saxophones); Hans Koch (tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet); Marilyn Crispell (piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton, Raymond Strid (percussion)

March 19, 2001

MAYA HOMBURGER/BARRY GUY

Ceremony
ECM 1643 453 847-2

Probably something that could never have been imagined during the 1960s heyday of the Third Stream, this masterful CD doesn't try to meld classical music and jazz, as much as celebrate the congruence of both traditions.

Maya Homburger, who plays an Italian violin built by dalla Costa in 1740, is a specialist in the interpretation of Baroque music and the first track here was written by Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704). The other compositions and the bass half of this duo are the products of the mind of Barry Guy -- born more than 300 years after Biber -- and best known for his membership in the Evan Parker Trio and leadership of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Fruits of this partnership can be heard on most clearly on Guy's "Immeasurable Sky", which leaves ample space for improvisation. As concerned with the beauty of small dissonances as any of the more formal works here, the track allows both players ample space for innovation. Nowhere do you get the idea that it's merely the classically trained violinist who is playing the lyric melody, while the jazz bassist slaps out strident rhythmic decorations. Guy, who performed for years with the Academy of Ancient Music, is cognizant of the particular demands of pre-modern music, while Homburger is a Baroque specialist not a purist.

CEREMONY's fascination resides in the fact that Guy's string treatments seem perfectly aligned with those of Biber, who, after all, was one of the first composers to use scordatura, the unusual tuning of strings.

Biber-influenced scordatura plays a large part in Guy's meditative "Ceremony", which features Homburger live in the studio improvising against seven pre-taped tracks of herself playing four other specially-tuned violins. Casual listening to these sweet string clusters may make it appear to be merely another period chamber piece. Actually, with the various sections layered so the soloist can use as much or as little of them as she wishes, it has all the elements of a contemporary creation.

Similarly, Guy's solo track, "Still", fits perfectly in with the pensive mood of the rest of the disc. Yet, at the same time, with its brisk pizzicato attack and sonorous resonance it also wouldn't be out of place on a freewheeling improv disc featuring the likes of Parker.

Neither Third Stream nor a crossover mix of different styles, CEREMONY is instead a fine example of how structures can be opened up to expose music's emotional core. As someone who prides himself on writing for individual personalities, Guy has shown once again that style is just a word and memorable sounds can appear in any medium.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Annunciation 2. Celebration 3. Immeasurable Sky 4. Ceremony 5. Still 6. Breathing Earth

Personnel: Maya Homburger (baroque violin); Barry Guy (bass)

March 5, 2001

MATS GUSTAFSSON/BARRY GUY

Frogging
Maya MCD 9702

As the economics of real jazz and improvised music continue to sag, a legion of trios and duos have become the preferred form for those who would have played in larger groups a few years ago. The trouble is that few of these mini-combos work as well as the one here because their conception is essentially reductive rather than augmentative. Conversely, experienced improvisers like Gustafsson and Guy don't see this grouping as playing without a drummer or pianist, but as adding together two separate sets of sounds to create a unified whole. There's so much going on here at all times from strings, tongues, throats, bows, fingers, wood, hands, mouthpieces, reeds, mouths and yards of tubing that the sophisticated listener certainly won't miss the phantom members of the combo. The two can also play this way, because they had worked together in similar situations for at least five years prior to this recording. Veteran Briton Guy has performed in every sort of gathering from the London Jazz Composers Orchestra -- which he leads -- to duos with the likes of Evan Parker. Gustafsson, a Swede, may be a few years younger, but that hasn't stopped him from joining up with manifold European and North America sonic explorers in bands of every size and shape. With an arsenal of five horns he also has enough ammunition to take on Guy, who often creates enough string sounds for another five people.

Each track has been given Latinate frog names, and moving as quickly as those creatures, Guy and Gustafsson are able to leap from one rhythm to the next and from one mood to another. Along the way the saxophonist trots out a variety of tones from barely there flute breaths to furious slap tonguing on the baritone saxophone, one minute resembling gull squalls and the next the restive sea brushing against the shore. Meantime Guy dances around this, making his bass sound like a cello one minute and a string quartet the next.

Listeners who know the earlier CDs of these musicians will probably know of what they're capable. Those who don't are well advised to check out these sounds.

-Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Bufo punctatus 2. Hyla pickeringii 3. Scaphiopus couchii 4. Lythodytes ricordii 5. Discoglossidae 6. Hyla versicolor 7. Rana clamitans 8. Hyla gratiosa 9. Chrorophilus ocularis

Personnel: Mats Gustafsson (tenor and baritone saxophones, flute, fluteophone, French flageolet); Barry Guy (bass)

August 4, 2000

PAUL PLIMLEY/BARRY GUY

Sensology Maya CD 9701

The old cliché about music having no geographical boundaries is only partially true when it comes to pure improv. Getting two or more players who routinely work without the safety nets of charts or bar lines to tag team is more complicated than allaying some mainstreamers, counting off "I Got Rhythm" or "Night In Tunisia" and letting 'er rip. (Parenthetically, though, those jam sessions too are chancier than naïve record producers or promoters would have you believe).

What you need is musicians willing to listen attentively to one another and subsume their virtuosity within the greater whole. Case in point, this CD, recorded in Vancouver by a Canadian pianist, a British bassist and released by an Irish-based label.

The end product works out well, however, because both men are experienced free improvisers. Best-known for his work with such musicians as multi-reedist Joe McPhee, endlessly-inventive pianist Plimley has never had to relocate from his home town of Vancouver to find playing opportunities in North America and Europe. Bassist Guy, who was involved with the creation of EuroImprov from its beginnings 30 years ago, not only leads the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and is an integral part of the Evan Parker trio, but his playing talents have been praised by no less a seminal figure than Cecil Taylor.

Here the two circle around one another in duets that clock in at slightly more than one minute to the 12 minute plus title track. On it, for example, Guy is able to jump from high-pitched arco runs to atmospheric backdrops while Plimley explores the upper reaches of the piano. "Jazz for now and never more", on the other hand, could be the sound of a slightly skewed nightclub duo, with the odd bit of stride piano peeking through Tayloresque runs. Meanwhile "Murmurs and darts" features Guy surgically extracting tones that result when objects are placed between the strings of his bass.

Most notably "Joyous absence of disco", built around "prepared" bass and steady-rolling tension-and-release pianistics. Although there's no "good beat to dance to", as teens used to mumble on dance party telecasts, it still gets rated as a "10".

Don't expect to see these two musicians on any dance TV shows anytime in the future. But if it's memorable improvisations you're after, SENSOLOGY is as good a place as any to start.

--Ken Waxman

Track listing: 1. This is not much less than flat 2. Short steps until it finally dawned 3. Rolling agreement 4. Gnat notes in lyrical amber 5. Lyrical amber, hand held 6. Hand held hot coals 7. Sensology 8. What to do 9. Jazz for now and never more 10. Murmers and darts 11. Sticks and bones 12. Joyous absence of disco 13. Slowly getting to know the audience

Personnel: Paul Plimley (piano); Barry Guy (double bass)

June 2, 2000

EVAN PARKER

Drawn Inward
ECM 1693 547 209-2

It's actually quite appropriate to employ the over-used expression "quantum leap" when talking about the music of Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. For there's an actual transformation of energy here as the explorative British saxophonist and his group tailor live electronics and sound processing to their own ends.

Parker, who has spent the years since the mid-1960s, perfecting a unique improv language for his horns, has never been one to turn away from challenging musical situations. During that time he has not only performed with the cream of jazz/improv musicians, but also with others as varied as a Tuvan throat singer, an Italian brass band and even a shoe-gazing rocker. His concept seems to be to make it different with every outing. And that's how he and his associates approach this memorable CD. But paradoxically, it works so well because of a combination of the familiar and the unusual.

Dealing with the familiar first, three-sixths of the accompanying musicians are longtime Parker associates. Bassist Guy and drummer Lytton plus Parker have been together on-and-off for about 25 years and make up the most influential improv group since Ornette Coleman's "Golden Circle" trio. Violinist Wachsmann is another old friend from Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra and other projects. Prati and Vecchi were around for Parker's first electro-acoustic project, and he has worked as a duo with Casserley in the past.

The unusual arrives with the acceptance of electronics. Earlier live shows and this aggregations first ECM CD, TOWARD THE MARGINS, were fine music, but no one seemed to have worked out exactly how the "electro" could meld with the "acoustic". Thus some tracks on the first CD sound like that of an acoustic group; others seemed all electronic.

DRAWN INWARD makes that "quantum leap", integrating the two musical strands into one, probably because everyone but Parker and Guy is involved in sound manipulation. Plus new "hire" Casserley is a composer as well as an electronic manipulator, who brings that skill along with his technical prowess.

Lytton is an old hand at this type of music, having experimented with "electric drums" since the early 1970s and easily shows what he can do on "Travel in the Homeland". Wachsmann's features are the same with electronics allowing his tart violin runs to be both conventionally tonal and alive with otherworldy echoes.

But it's Guy who makes the most memorable breakthrough. On "Reanscreena", he highlights his considerable string dexterity playing naked acoustic bass surrounded by a thick buffer of waves from all four processors.

Another tour de force arrives on "Collect Calls", where the entire ensemble creates one tune, than improvises against a recorded fragment of an earlier concert. To imagine it, think about one of those pictures of pictures of pictures of pictures, with the subject in each one getting smaller, but with all the details still intact.

Seemingly endless circular breath control and thick, scurrying micro notes that make up Parker's solo style aren't absent on DRAWN INWARD either. Any thinking saxophonist will probably be agape at what he can do with his horn on tracks like "Serpent In The Sky," with or without the backing electronics.

To sum up: Rather than being drawn inward, this session should be drawn outward and into your collection.

-Ken Waxman

Track listing: 1. The Crooner (for Johnny Hartman) 2. Serpent in Sky 3. Travel in the Homeland 4. Spouting Bowl 5. Collect Calls (Milano - Kingston) [Bugged] 6. aka Lotan 7. Renascreena 8. At Home in the Universe (for Stuart Kauffman) 9. Writing On Ice 10. Phloy in the Frame 11. Drawninward

Personnel: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones, khène);Phil Wachsmann(violin, viola, live electronics, sound processing) Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (drums, live electronics); Lawrence Casserley (live electronics, sound processing); Walter Prati (live electronics, sound processing); Marco Vecchi (live electronics, sound processing)

April 22, 2000