Bill Dixon

Envoi
Victo cd 120

Taylor Ho Bynum/Joe Morris/Sara Schoenbeck

Next

Porter Records PRCD-4058

Pink Saliva

Pink Saliva

& Records &11

Starlicker

Double Demon

Delmark DE 2011

Something In The Air: Trumpeter Bill Dixon’s Lingering Influence

By Ken Waxman

Praised and reviled in equal measure during his 40-year career, Vermont-based trumpeter Bill Dixon was finally recognized as one of improvised music’s most original stylists and theorists before his death at 84 in June 2010. Fittingly his final concert took place a mere three weeks previously at Quebec’s Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, where a hand-picked octet played this composition under his direction. Luckily the performance has been released as Envoi Victo Records Victo cd 120. Not only do the two sections illuminate Dixon’s particular mixture of formalism and freedom, but with a horn section of four playing cornet, bugle and flugelhorn, Envoi also demonstrates Dixon’s influence on a younger generation of brass players.

Famously prickly and opinionated, Dixon organized The Jazz Composers Guild, one of jazz musicians’ first self-help organizations in the mid-1960s. A long-time professor at Bennington College in Vermont, Dixon recorded sparingly over the years, which makes this session doubly valuable. Impressionistic and dramatic, “Envoi” is organized with classical precision in varied sequences. Most involve muted, shaded bent notes from the brass players in counterpoint to the spiccato string swipes of cellist Glynis Loman and bassist Ken Filiano, or, in the first section, tart slurs from Michel Côté’s bass clarinet. Additional unifying motifs come from Warren Smith’s resounding kettle drumming, and, in the second section, his ringing vibes, which soften the interface as it moves forward. In that same section the unison strings maintain a menacing undertow, breached only occasionally by heraldic brassiness or dissonant grace notes, plus at one point echoing stillness from Graham Hayes’ bugle. True to Dixon’s style, most of the brass tones are segmented sound shards which waft pure air through the horns. Following nearly 40 minutes of quivery tremolo theme variations, a spectacular example of the trumpeter’s measured art arrives near the end. After one cornetist sounds heraldic tones at a higher pitch among the others’ capillary whispers, all harmonize for a protracted section of legato impressionism, only scattering at the end as one puffs quietly while another exposes plunger tones. Finally, call-and-response vamping from all marks the climax.

New York’s Taylor Ho Bynum and Chicago’s Rob Mazurek, both featured on “Envoi”, have been marked by Dixon’s compositional and improvisational skill, as has Montreal’s Ellwood Epps. On his own, Bynum is probably closest to Dixon when it comes to voicing. Atmospheric textures on the six instant compositions that make up Next Porter Records PRCD-4058 are built up from his cornet, flugelhorn or trumpet, Sara Schoenbeck’s bassoon and Joe Morris’ guitar. With no instrument in the so-called front-line, and each player capable of extended techniques, it’s often difficult to separate timbres. Schoenbeck may use her burbling pedal-point as the tunes’ foundation, but on a piece like Next, she splinters her tone into tiny reed bites, and later harmonizes intense growls with Bynum’s triplet patterns. On Next the guitar texture is all bottleneck licks. Yet on tracks such as Consensus Struggle Morris’ percussive strumming emphasizes the beat, allowing the bassoonist to solo with hoarse multiphonics, and giving the cornetist room for peeping squeals and trippy tongue flutters. The trio’s interface is most appealing on Fireside. Morris’ below-the-bridge plinks are further colored by Schoenbeck’s burbling bluster as Bynum’s staccato, off-centre trills soar upward to lip-twisting brassiness.

Someone who took lessons with Dixon and – at least in choice of band name – has inherited the older man’s impudence, is Epps, whose Pink Saliva trio & Records &11, is filled out by Alexandre St-Onge on electric bass and laptop and Michel F Coté on drums, microphones and lap steel guitar. Although Dixon only dabbled in electronics, Epps, a Toronto native, and his Québécois confreres, embrace it wholeheartedly, adding oscillated wave forms and crackling drones to everything they play. Negotiating the line between indie-rock and jazz-improvisation, the CD is studded with irregular ruffs and drags on Coté’s part, rumbles and pops from St-Onge’s string set and dial-twisting buzzes. At points overdubbed, Epps’ trumpet soars over these wiggling sequences, repeatedly shifting from low-pitched inner-horn gurgles to piercing trills, adding additional touches of soaring lyricism.

A similar brass lyricism is evident on Starlicker’s Double Demon Delmark DE 2011 featuring Mazurek. Instructively it’s also the cornetist who impels the tunes towards jazz improvisation, while John Herndon, of the Tortoise rock band, concentrates on gutsy backbeats. Meanwhile the six Mazurek compositions are given distinctive shape by mallet-driven staccato juddering from Jason Adasiewicz’s vibraphone. With the vibist’s ringing gamelan-like tones a constant leitmotif, whether playing in ballad time or much speedier, Starlicker’s appeal lies in continuous contrast among three intense instrumental textures. The title track finds the vibist’s blurred tremolo lines matching the cornet’s strident brays; whereas the brass man uses finesse and moderated splutters to create a chromatic line alongside Herndon’s ratcheting and discordant pops on Triple Hex. However on Skull Cave , the cornetist’s Dixon-like melodic release which recaps the initial theme, moderates sequences of metal bar smacks and a thick drum backbeat.

Regularly operating outside of jazz’s mainstream, Bill Dixon’s brass sound and ideas actually influenced more musicians than is generally acknowledged. It’s both ironic and appropriate then, that it was an experimental Canadian festival which gave him a platform for his final performance.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 17 #2

October 5, 2011

Bill Dixon

17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur
AUM Fidelity AUM 046

Bill Dixon

With Exploding Star Orchestra

Thrill Jockey Thrill 192

More than an elderly lion in winter, 83-year-old trumpeter Bill Dixon seems to have reasserted his place in the jazz firmament during the dozen years since he retired from academe after nearly three decades of teaching at Vermont’s Bennington College.

Both of these big band CDs resulted from a purple patch of creativity in the summer of 2007, when Dixon was able to lead different orchestras in New York and Chicago through some of his extended compositions. Both the 56½-minute “Darfur” suite in New York and the two 18-minute versions of “Entrances” in the mid-West are shaped around a combination of composed work and spontaneously cued solos. The tonal colors emphasized on both are orchestral rather than standard big band arrangements, with woodwinds, strings and miscellaneous percussion prominent.

Recorded live at the Vision Festival, the 16-piece New York ensemble – Dixon is the 17th “searcher” – is sprinkled with younger players, although the majority of the band members are experimental music veterans. A studio date, recorded just after a different 13-piece group performed the material at the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Windy City crew leans towards young veterans and tyros. Despite – or perhaps because – of this, each program is individually satisfying and each band equally praiseworthy. The Exploding Star Orchestra also handles cornetist Rob Mazurek’s more-than-24-minute “Constellations For Innerlight Projections (For Bill Dixon)”.

In New York, the 13-part Dafur is performed mostly adagio, suffused with an undercurrent of sorrow for the beleaguered people of the African nation – but, as usual for Dixon’s work, the emotion is acutely understated rather than overt. Overall the composition builds up to and retreats from “Sinopia”, its nearly 24-minute centerpiece. Defined as a reddish brown pigment used in frescos, the suggestion is that Dixon, who is also a visual artist, appropriated the word to define this section’s Klangfarbenmelodie. Following “Contour Three”, a mellow, moderato trumpet intermezzo, the performance canvas is widened and the pitches pushed higher than those intermediate tincture dabs including brass grace notes and reed growls which characterized and colored the preceding theme variations.

Here guttural reed snorts operate as pedal-point contrast to fortissimo brass spirals which seems to sub-divide into alpine echoes from one cornetist (perhaps Stephen Hayes) and irregularly vibrated blasts from another (perhaps Taylor Ho Bynum). As the brass continues with angled and mercurial capillary trills plus tongue stops, swelling reeds adumbrate further variations on the theme. Rondo-like, the direction of the composition then changes as melded, split-tone reed obbligatos and muted trumpet triplets give way to bass saxophonist JD Parran’s rhythmically varied tone colors and multiple pitches distributed among different instruments, most prominently Karen Borca’s slithering bassoon lines, sul ponticello strings, plus friction and thumping concussion from percussionists Warren Smith and Jackson Krall. Balancing delicacy and strength, the low-pitched brass slurs and high-pitched bugle-like brays swell outwards as all players work to a climatic multi-tones crescendo.

Postlude variations include four “Pentimento” tracks, which use elongated lines and contrapuntal matches to alleviate the remaining guttural and altissimo timbres and bring the suite to a polyphonic finale. The earlier exposition and variations work through long undulations encompassing vibrating brass, hissing cymbal tones and reed growls stretched over broken-octave jumps. Most notably “Scattering of the Following” makes its point through pointillism and pitch-sliding, as subterranean slurps from the bassoonist and tubaist Joseph Daley roll out concurrent notes, while above them a series of brass soloists slice apart the main theme with patterns ranging from single-note, off-centre bites to chromatic spit-resonations.

Appropriate brass expression is also on show in Chicago, although New York’s seven-person trumpet-trombone-tuba section shrinks to Jeb Bishop’s trombone, Dixon’s trumpet and the cornets of Mazurek and Josh Berman. However the rhythmic and chordal exposition is intensified with three percussionists, Jeff Parker’s guitar, Jim Baker’s piano, Matthew Lux’s bass guitar and Jason Ajemian’s bass.

In fact both versions of “Entrances” depend more than any part of the Dafur suite on repetitive bass guitar thumps and heavy beats from Mike Reed’s tympani and John Herndon’s drums. Mazurek, who has experimented with electronics in the past isn’t listed as adding wave form distortions anywhere here, but an oscillating sheen can be sensed if not definitely heard. Hocketing and cumulative harmonics accelerate on the climatic “Entrances/One”, with definite roles for soloists Mazurek and Dixon. With contrasting guitar licks ricocheting behind, one brass man produces quicksilver smears and note flurries, while the other speedily tongues grace note and internal resonations. Following a dramatic pause, the theme downshifts to diminuendo in a penultimate variation, before reappearing for the finale.

Dixon’s presence is more obvious on “Entrances/Two” with his solo characteristically hushed and uniquely angled with chromatic lines. More concentric in execution than the first version of “Entrances”, which showcased Parker and Jason Adasiewicz’s vibraphone contrapuntally trading off choruses with pulses from trilling saxophone coloration and tuba snorts; this version differs in other ways as well. Here the protracted silence in the composition precedes a condensed piano nocturne and before the cacophonic finale, layers of walloping tympani and snorting brass are heard.

Adasiewicz’s tubular bells get a work out on Mazurek’s “Constellations For Innerlight Projections”, as do Nicole Mitchell’s chromatic flute buzzes and staccato clarinet trills from Matt Bauer. However the composition, initially envisioned to be performed with video screens, seems musically to be more of a throwback. The arrangements list towards standard big-band-era riffing and the recitation from Damon Locke involves beatnik-like intonation and Sci-Fi imagery. More memorable instrumentally, with distant brass glowering and tongue-splattering, plus engorged Bronx cheer-like textures from the horns in general and pinpoint fills from Parker, the resolution seems to be caught between the ecclesiastical and minimalism.

While Dixon may have been surprised at the form his homage took, minus the recitation “Constellations For Innerlight Projections,” while a lesser work, is certainly palatable. Overall though, both “Entrances” and “Dafur” are superior large-canvas expressions of Dixon’s sometimes constricted tonal language.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Darfur: 1. Prelude 2. Intrados 3. In Search of a Sound 4. Contour One 5. Contour Two 6. Scattering of the Following 7. Darfur 8. Contour Three 9. Sinopia 10. Pentimento I 11. Pentimento II 12. Pentimento III 13. Pentimento IV

Personnel: Darfur: Bill Dixon (trumpet); Graham Haynes, Stephen Haynes and Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet and flugelhorn); Dick Griffin and Steve Swell (tenor trombone); Joseph Daley (tuba); Will Connell Jr. (bass clarinet); Michel Côté (Bb contrabass clarinet); Karen Borca (bassoon); Andrew Raffo Dewar (soprano saxophone); John Hagen (tenor and baritone saxophones); JD Parran (bass saxophone and bamboo flute); Glynis Loman (cello); Andrew Lafkas (bass); Jackson Krall (drums and percussion) and Warren Smith (vibraphone, tympani and drums)

Track Listing: Exploding: 1. Entrances/One 2. Constellations For Innerlight Projections (For Bill Dixon) 3. Entrances/Two

Personnel: Exploding: Bill Dixon (trumpet); Rob Mazurek and Josh Berman (cornet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Matt Bauer (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Nicole Mitchell (flute and voice); Jim Baker (piano); Jeff Parker (guitar); Matthew Lux (bass guitar); Jason Ajemian (bass); John Herndon (drums); Mike Reed (drums and tympani); Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone and tubular bells) and Damon Locke (voice)

December 8, 2008

Bill Dixon

With Exploding Star Orchestra
Thrill Jockey Thrill 192

Bill Dixon

17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur

AUM Fidelity AUM 046

More than an elderly lion in winter, 83-year-old trumpeter Bill Dixon seems to have reasserted his place in the jazz firmament during the dozen years since he retired from academe after nearly three decades of teaching at Vermont’s Bennington College.

Both of these big band CDs resulted from a purple patch of creativity in the summer of 2007, when Dixon was able to lead different orchestras in New York and Chicago through some of his extended compositions. Both the 56½-minute “Darfur” suite in New York and the two 18-minute versions of “Entrances” in the mid-West are shaped around a combination of composed work and spontaneously cued solos. The tonal colors emphasized on both are orchestral rather than standard big band arrangements, with woodwinds, strings and miscellaneous percussion prominent.

Recorded live at the Vision Festival, the 16-piece New York ensemble – Dixon is the 17th “searcher” – is sprinkled with younger players, although the majority of the band members are experimental music veterans. A studio date, recorded just after a different 13-piece group performed the material at the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Windy City crew leans towards young veterans and tyros. Despite – or perhaps because – of this, each program is individually satisfying and each band equally praiseworthy. The Exploding Star Orchestra also handles cornetist Rob Mazurek’s more-than-24-minute “Constellations For Innerlight Projections (For Bill Dixon)”.

In New York, the 13-part Dafur is performed mostly adagio, suffused with an undercurrent of sorrow for the beleaguered people of the African nation – but, as usual for Dixon’s work, the emotion is acutely understated rather than overt. Overall the composition builds up to and retreats from “Sinopia”, its nearly 24-minute centerpiece. Defined as a reddish brown pigment used in frescos, the suggestion is that Dixon, who is also a visual artist, appropriated the word to define this section’s Klangfarbenmelodie. Following “Contour Three”, a mellow, moderato trumpet intermezzo, the performance canvas is widened and the pitches pushed higher than those intermediate tincture dabs including brass grace notes and reed growls which characterized and colored the preceding theme variations.

Here guttural reed snorts operate as pedal-point contrast to fortissimo brass spirals which seems to sub-divide into alpine echoes from one cornetist (perhaps Stephen Hayes) and irregularly vibrated blasts from another (perhaps Taylor Ho Bynum). As the brass continues with angled and mercurial capillary trills plus tongue stops, swelling reeds adumbrate further variations on the theme. Rondo-like, the direction of the composition then changes as melded, split-tone reed obbligatos and muted trumpet triplets give way to bass saxophonist JD Parran’s rhythmically varied tone colors and multiple pitches distributed among different instruments, most prominently Karen Borca’s slithering bassoon lines, sul ponticello strings, plus friction and thumping concussion from percussionists Warren Smith and Jackson Krall. Balancing delicacy and strength, the low-pitched brass slurs and high-pitched bugle-like brays swell outwards as all players work to a climatic multi-tones crescendo.

Postlude variations include four “Pentimento” tracks, which use elongated lines and contrapuntal matches to alleviate the remaining guttural and altissimo timbres and bring the suite to a polyphonic finale. The earlier exposition and variations work through long undulations encompassing vibrating brass, hissing cymbal tones and reed growls stretched over broken-octave jumps. Most notably “Scattering of the Following” makes its point through pointillism and pitch-sliding, as subterranean slurps from the bassoonist and tubaist Joseph Daley roll out concurrent notes, while above them a series of brass soloists slice apart the main theme with patterns ranging from single-note, off-centre bites to chromatic spit-resonations.

Appropriate brass expression is also on show in Chicago, although New York’s seven-person trumpet-trombone-tuba section shrinks to Jeb Bishop’s trombone, Dixon’s trumpet and the cornets of Mazurek and Josh Berman. However the rhythmic and chordal exposition is intensified with three percussionists, Jeff Parker’s guitar, Jim Baker’s piano, Matthew Lux’s bass guitar and Jason Ajemian’s bass.

In fact both versions of “Entrances” depend more than any part of the Dafur suite on repetitive bass guitar thumps and heavy beats from Mike Reed’s tympani and John Herndon’s drums. Mazurek, who has experimented with electronics in the past isn’t listed as adding wave form distortions anywhere here, but an oscillating sheen can be sensed if not definitely heard. Hocketing and cumulative harmonics accelerate on the climatic “Entrances/One”, with definite roles for soloists Mazurek and Dixon. With contrasting guitar licks ricocheting behind, one brass man produces quicksilver smears and note flurries, while the other speedily tongues grace note and internal resonations. Following a dramatic pause, the theme downshifts to diminuendo in a penultimate variation, before reappearing for the finale.

Dixon’s presence is more obvious on “Entrances/Two” with his solo characteristically hushed and uniquely angled with chromatic lines. More concentric in execution than the first version of “Entrances”, which showcased Parker and Jason Adasiewicz’s vibraphone contrapuntally trading off choruses with pulses from trilling saxophone coloration and tuba snorts; this version differs in other ways as well. Here the protracted silence in the composition precedes a condensed piano nocturne and before the cacophonic finale, layers of walloping tympani and snorting brass are heard.

Adasiewicz’s tubular bells get a work out on Mazurek’s “Constellations For Innerlight Projections”, as do Nicole Mitchell’s chromatic flute buzzes and staccato clarinet trills from Matt Bauer. However the composition, initially envisioned to be performed with video screens, seems musically to be more of a throwback. The arrangements list towards standard big-band-era riffing and the recitation from Damon Locke involves beatnik-like intonation and Sci-Fi imagery. More memorable instrumentally, with distant brass glowering and tongue-splattering, plus engorged Bronx cheer-like textures from the horns in general and pinpoint fills from Parker, the resolution seems to be caught between the ecclesiastical and minimalism.

While Dixon may have been surprised at the form his homage took, minus the recitation “Constellations For Innerlight Projections,” while a lesser work, is certainly palatable. Overall though, both “Entrances” and “Dafur” are superior large-canvas expressions of Dixon’s sometimes constricted tonal language.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Darfur: 1. Prelude 2. Intrados 3. In Search of a Sound 4. Contour One 5. Contour Two 6. Scattering of the Following 7. Darfur 8. Contour Three 9. Sinopia 10. Pentimento I 11. Pentimento II 12. Pentimento III 13. Pentimento IV

Personnel: Darfur: Bill Dixon (trumpet); Graham Haynes, Stephen Haynes and Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet and flugelhorn); Dick Griffin and Steve Swell (tenor trombone); Joseph Daley (tuba); Will Connell Jr. (bass clarinet); Michel Côté (Bb contrabass clarinet); Karen Borca (bassoon); Andrew Raffo Dewar (soprano saxophone); John Hagen (tenor and baritone saxophones); JD Parran (bass saxophone and bamboo flute); Glynis Loman (cello); Andrew Lafkas (bass); Jackson Krall (drums and percussion) and Warren Smith (vibraphone, tympani and drums)

Track Listing: Exploding: 1. Entrances/One 2. Constellations For Innerlight Projections (For Bill Dixon) 3. Entrances/Two

Personnel: Exploding: Bill Dixon (trumpet); Rob Mazurek and Josh Berman (cornet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Matt Bauer (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Nicole Mitchell (flute and voice); Jim Baker (piano); Jeff Parker (guitar); Matthew Lux (bass guitar); Jason Ajemian (bass); John Herndon (drums); Mike Reed (drums and tympani); Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone and tubular bells) and Damon Locke (voice)

December 8, 2008

BILL DIXON/ARCHIE SHEPP

Savoy/Atlantic 93008-2

Historical documents sometimes give the contemporary listener a new perspective of the past. It's the same with reissues. This thought-provoking disc, divided between a Bill Dixon 7-Tette and Archie Sheep's New York Contemporary 5 (NYC5), show that in many cases the seemingly monolithic New Thing of the mid-1960s was as diverse as its participants.

Recorded after the music had announced its broad presence following the Dixon-organized October Revolution concert series and before Shepp became a known quantity with his Impulse Records discs, the session pinpoints the divergent paths of the erstwhile partners.

To deal with the sparingly-recorded figure first, trumpeter Dixon -- who would soon devote most of his time to his university teaching post at Bennington College -- seems more wedded to a certain compositional traditional than he would when he began recording again in earnest in the 1980s. His septet of four horns, two basses and a drummer uses a framework of pulsative time, with all the themes related back to a central leitmotif.

In size and conception seemingly related to mid-1950s modernism practiced by arranger/composers Teddy Charles, George Russell and Gil Evans, the emphasis here is on the group rather than the soloists. Furthermore, while he hadn't yet perfected the note-chary minimalism that characterized his 1990s work, Dixon still appears to be the most liberated player here. His this-side-of-off-key forays mark him as someone unafraid of the trumpet's limitations. Ornette Coleman veteran bassist David Izenzon and the little-known Hal Dodson seems to be some of the few other here musicians able to take advantage of the new freedom. Their alternately bowing and plucking teamwork, especially apparent on "Alternate Study of Section III Letter F", would be taken farther and into more abstract forms by others later in the decade and beyond.

Other standout soloists include tenor saxophonist George Barrow, best known for his work with Charles Mingus a few years before, and baritone saxist Howard Johnson, who only brought out the tuba he's now famous for playing in the ensembles. The oboe of Ken McIntyre, who too soon would also become an academic, was mostly used for sonic color.

From a 2001 standpoint, the NYC5, seemingly heavily influenced by the original Ornette Coleman Quartet, sounds like a modern swinging group, not the revolutionary cell it appeared to be at the time. Sun Ra stalwart bassist Ronnie Boykins and McRae, Dixon's drummer of the day before, are responsible for the rhythm, and there are times in Shepp's "Where Poppies Bloom (Where Poppies Blow)" that references " seem to sneak in from "Night In Tunisia" of all things.

Tenorist Shepp had already developed his distinctive sweet'n'sour approach to the horn and it's his solos, which are broken up into miniscule note shards, that sound most experimental. Luckily he gets the most of the solo space. Altoist John Tchicai, more tentative than he would be on future dates, sticks very much to a modified Coleman style, with short, to-the-point work.

Meanwhile, brassmen Ted Curson or Don Cherry takes the secondary role, extending Shepp's ideas, blending their higher tones with his. Incidentally, despite what the liner notes state, Cherry is only present on his composition "Consequences", not "Like A Blessed Baby Lamb." That tune, however, ends with the sort of quasi-Dixieland coda Shepp's subsequent bands with trombonist Rosewell Rudd would develop as a trademark.

Paradoxically in the years following this bifurcated date, Dixon became more committed to pure improv, playing regularly with such European proponents as drummer Tony Oxley and bassist Barry Guy. On the other hand, Shepp -- who also became a university academic in Massachusetts -- gained a reputation for his reinterpretation of ballads and tenor sax standards, referring more to Ben Webster's lineage than John Coltrane's.

In the years since, some of the participants here have died and many have turned to more conventional sounds. Thus this session offers a fascinating glimpse at the new music 1964 and a foreshadowing of how the leaders' music would soon evolve.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Winter Song 1964 1.Section I Letters A,B,C,D 2. Section II Letter E 3. Section III Letter F 4. Section IV Letter G 5. Section V Letter H played three times 7. The 12th December 8. Alternate Take Section III Letter F 9. Alternate Study of Section III Letter F 10. Where Poppies Bloom (Where Poppies Blow)* 11. Like A Blessed Baby Lamb* 12. Consequences^

Personnel: [tracks 1 - 9]: Bill Dixon (trumpet); Ken McIntyre (alto saxophone and oboe); George Barrow (tenor saxophone); Howard Johnson (tuba and baritone saxophone); David Izenzon, Hal Dodson (basses); Howard McRae (drums) [tracks 10, 11, 12]: Don Cherry^ (pocket cornet); Ted Curson* (trumpet, piccolo trumpet); John Tchicai (alto saxophone); Archie Shepp (tenor saxophone); Ronnie Boykins (bass); McRae (drums)

April 29, 2001

BILL DIXON/FRANZ KOGLMANN/STEVE LACY

Opium
between the lines btl 011/EFA 10181-2

Recorded in 1973, 1975 and 1976, these early glimpses into the mind of Austrian brassman Franz Koglmann surprisingly show him still wedded to an American free jazz conception, though his own ideas are starting to come through as well.

Or perhaps it shouldn't be that astonishing, considering that American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy is present on most tracks. Additionally, the more than 17 minute "For Franz", initially released in a limited edition of 500 with hand painted covers, features Koglmann's early influence, trumpeter Bill Dixon and two other Americans.

One of them, bassist Alan Silva is able to function like an entire string section by himself, soloing powerfully both arco and pizzicato, and easily able to make himself heard over the three horn line-up. The third, tenor saxophonist Steve Horenstein -- who has since moved to Israel -- offers up nervous reed asides to maintain his place between what is frequently unison work from both brassmen. Written by Dixon, the intense composition seems to function more as a summation the historical accomplishments of the Manhattan-based New Thing than a Eurocentric groundbreaker.

The earlier tunes featuring Lacy that surround "For Franz", find Koglmann in even more of an apprenticeship role. Pieces written by the flugelhornist like "Carmilla" and "Bowery 2", with their staccato walking bass lines, solo drum breaks, legato phrasing, theme and variation structure are unabashed modern swingers. If anything the front line strongly resembles the quartet with Don Cherry that Lacy recorded with in 1961.

Even those tunes featuring Gerd Geier's electronics seem to refer more to the 1950s Space Age modernistic sounds pioneered by the likes of George Russell and several West Coast composers. Not yet integrated into the structure of the compositions as they would in later European outings, the treatments call so much attention to themselves that you wonder if they escaped from Sun Ra and migrated over to this session.

Also on show is sound for sound sake, especially on Lacy's "Flaps" which contains some saxophone reed squeals, a few brass mouthpiece kisses, what sounds like a bicycle horn and a steady drum -- or is it electronics -- tapping at the end.

If you're looking for a new look at Koglmann -- and unjustly "lost" excellent work from two American masters -- head out to find OPIUM. It will only be addictive in that it will encourage you to find other sessions by these artists.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Der Vogel/Opium 2. Carmilla 3. For Franz 4. Flops 5. Bowery 1 6. Bowery 2. 7. Flaps

Personnel: Franz Koglmann (trumpet, flugelhorn); with [track 3] Bill Dixon (trumpet); Steve Horenstein (tenor saxophone); Alan Silva (bass); Walter Malli (percussion); [tracks 1,2] Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Josef Traindl (trombone); Cesarius Alvim Botelho (bass); Aldo Romano (drums); [tracks 4-7] Lacy; Toni Michlmayr (bass); Malli; Gerd Geier (electronics)

April 29, 2001