Calling Signals 07

Live from Cafe Sting
Loose Toque LT 020

Satoko Fujii Min-Yoh Ensemble

Watershed

Libra Records 204-028

While the lowly accordion is probably the butt of more nasty jokes than any other instrument – Q: What’s the definition of a gentleman? A: Someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t – questing musicians are overcoming its square reputation to expose it in improvised music contexts. Plus not every one hears or plays it the same way.

On Live from Cafe Sting for instance, Norwegian Eivin One Pedersen uses his squeeze-box to take the chordal instrument’s role in a Jazz quartet otherwise consisting of veteran players: Stavanger’s Frode Gjerstad on clarinets and alto saxophone; London’s Nick Stephens on bass and Cape Town’s Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums. Watershed on the other hand features New York’s Andrea Parkins adding her accordion wizardry to traditional and original tunes reflecting Min-Yoh or traditional Japanese music. Considering that accordions are as prevalent in traditional Japanese music as djembes are Baroque compositions, Parkins’ keys and bellows add unique colors to the eight tracks here. One must also bear in mind that Watershed, made up of five Satoko Fujii compositions, is anything but authentic Japanese folk music. With the rest of the band consisting of Fujii’s piano, Natsuki Tamura’s trumpet and Curtis Hasselbring’s trombone, the sound also becomes close to try-anything American folk music.

For instance the quartet’s takes on “Takeda no Komoriuta” and “Soranbushi”, two folk melodies, pinpoints the approach. The latter appears to have a boogie-woogie piano intro, plunging gutbucket slurs from Hasselbring, accordion quivers and triplet-laden brassiness from Tamura. As Fujii’s pedal-pushed syncopation moves from one side of the keyboard to the other, the trumpeter flutter tongues and squeals as the trombonist’s tone remains moderato and legato. The ending harmonizes the brass and piano plus an accordion pulse that recaps the head.

As for “Takeda no Komoriuta” while plucks on the piano’s internal strings may sound as if they’re from a koto and narrowed horn breaths have sho-like qualities, the composition eventually opens up with lip-burbles from the brass players, swirling pulses from the accordionist and chromatic chording from Fujii. Theme variations are the trumpeter’s domain, accompanied by clipped piano keys, with the tune climaxing at a more decorous tempo as Fujii keeps clanking the keys.

With her gifts for sonic suppleness, Fujii, who also leads a couple of big bands and numerous other trios and quartets in Japan, the U.S. and Europe, manages to create lines that rest comfortably alongside authentic Min-Yoh tunes. Considering Hasselbring has multi-cultural playing experience with bands like the Jazz Passengers and the Slavic Soul Party, and Parkins gigs with everyone from saxophonist Ellery Eskelin to drummer Ches Smith, they also fit into the music admirably.

“Limestone Cave” for examples gets its nuances from Parkins ostinato pulses as Fujii stops and strums the piano strings as well as whacking them with a small mallet. Tamura adds pseudo-ethnic parlando which includes cries, yodels and swallowed syllables. Eventually his muted trumpet sighs harmonize with the trombonist’s pedal-point slurs and hammering piano chords. “Whitewater,” another Fujii original, implies that electronic-styled buzzing is emanating from the accordion, which otherwise advances near-onomatopoeic puttering and fluttering. Tamura contributes rubato brays, Hasselbring flutter tonguing and Fujii ringing note clusters. Before the carnival-like melody is recapped, the trumpeter squeezes out descriptive triplets and the accordionist, organ-like tremolos.

Tremolo pumps are a common strategy of Pedersen on the other CD as he makes a place for his instrument within Free Jazz. On the tracks at the end of the CD, the accordionist, who has also recorded with Gjerstad and vibist Kevin Norton, uses jittering allegro lines or doubled and tripled pulses to make his points. This kinetic approach is a necessity since the squeeze box sympathetically comps for Gjerstad’s irregular pressure and reed-biting multiphonics on “Rogaland”, as well as helping to contrapuntally shape “Trekkspill Blues”. The latter otherwise highlights the reedist’s slithering, squeaky, but somehow mellow clarinet trills, plus the bassist’s open-handed, staccato pacing and the drummer’s rubs and clavé shaking.

“Coming On The Bonkafjorden” is a four-part suite designed to in some ways approximate the severe weather conditions the drummer and bassist experienced during a boat trip on a Norwegian fjord. Putting aside any programmatic accuracy, the 34-minute group improvisation features enough liquid expended by the reedist and enough stressed sound waves from the rhythm instruments to approximate the journey. Throughout Pederson concentrates on sloshing and shuddering asides, usually expressed in quadruple counterpoint with the other players’ playing. Juddering squeezes from the accordion’s bellows and keys are highlighted alongside sluicing, altissimo clarinet vibrations, plunks and sul ponticello runs from the bassist and the drummer’s drags, rebounds and ruffs. Stephens’ sequence of strums, then staccato bow action re-orients the suite, with Pederson’s thrusts and sputters accompanying reed chirps to downshift the tempo to moderato; and an outpouring of cascading chords aids Moholo-Moholo in keeping the overall irregular vibrations glued to chromatic motions.

Two inventive ways of using the accordion in Free Music setting are demonstrated on these appealing CDs. It would be a shame though if the outstanding talents of these squeeze-box players and other bellow-shaking pioneers put an end to accordion jokes.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Live: 1. Coming On The Bonkafjorden Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 2. Rogaland 3. Trekkspill Blues

Personnel: Live: Frode Gjerstad (clarinets and alto saxophone); Eivin One Pedersen (accordion); Nick Stephens (bass) and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums)

Track Listing: Watershed: 1.The Thaw 2. Whitewater 3.Takeda no Komoriuta 4.Soranbushi 5. Cascade 6. Limestone Cave 7. Hanagasa Ondo 8. Estuary

Personnel: Watershed: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Curtis Hasselbring (trombone); Andrea Parkins (accordion) and Satoko Fujii (piano)

December 30, 2011

Ogun Records

Label Spotlight
By Ken Waxman

Nearly 40 years after it released its first disc – and after pressing about 40 LPs and 30 CDs – London-based Ogun Records is still chugging along, with managing director Hazel Miller maintaining it as a one-woman show. Strongly identified with the South African musicians who fled Apartheid for the United Kingdom during the 1960s as well as with the British innovators affiliated with them, Ogun puts out three to four CDs annually. The discs are a mixture of CD transfers of important LPs; newly recorded discs; plus never-before-released historical sessions.

Necessity was the mother of Ogun’s invention in 1974, initially by Miller and her then-husband, the late bassist Harry Miller (1941-1983). Born in Cape Town, Miller played with many bands in England, including Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) big band, whose Live at Willisau became the fledging label’s first release. “Global record companies started to show a disinterest in European contemporary jazz and improvised music in the mid-1970s,” recalls pianist Keith Tippett. “So Ogun stepped forward to document and record the South Africans exiled in London and English musicians who were working together in ensembles too numerous to mention.”

Involved in many facets of the music scene, British-born Miller was managing BOB at the time, and “that’s how the tapes were offered to kick-start the label,” she recalls. “Chris [McGregor (1936-1990)] was keen for the success of Ogun and totally supportive.” Survival played a part too, since musicians needed records to promote their work. Dick Hodge, a friend and professor of African history, helped cover the initial costs, and organized a share portfolio to finance Ogun. Hodge also came up with the label name which is that of the Yoruba God of work and iron, while another friend created its distinct anthropomorphic logo. Hodge departed soon afterwards and since that time, courtesy of record sales, plus what Miller terms “an understanding bank manager”, Ogun has flourished.

Harry Miller’s role had been artistic director, which as Hazel Miller recalls often involved carrying “1,000 LPs up three flights of stairs to our home,” while she organized all administrative aspects of the label, as well as booking gigs, setting up concerts and doing promotion work for many of the affiliated groups. Although she and Miller subsequently split up, and he later died in an auto accident, Ogun’s course had been set.

“I often set up gigs which we then recorded,” Miller recalls of the label’s beginnings, leading to memorable discs such as saxophonist Mike Osborne trio’s Border Crossing – now half of the CD Trio & Quintet – and Ovary Lodge featuring Tippett/Harry Miller, vocalist Julie Tippetts and percussionist Frank Perry. Most early records were engineered by Keith Beal. Today, Miller says “I use recordings made at the time of the concert by BBC, studios sessions or recordings by individuals.”

Although most of the players recorded were in the South African-British Free Music axis, a few continental Europeans are represented as well. “The non-South African-releases resulted from being approached by those musicians and if there wasn’t anything in the pipeline and it fitted into our catalogue we produced them,” explains Miller “We were also pleased to add different music to the catalogue, because in many cases it was from musicians we knew and liked.”

Ogun’s meticulous accounting system hasn’t changed from years past either, she continues. “Each project is costed and the budget discussed and agreed upon with those involved.” With file copies of all the Ogun LPs still on hand Miller reports that “transition to CD wasn’t a problem … and they take up less room which is a bonus”. Although Ogun was semi-dormant for a time during the 1980s to prepare for the format change, Elton Dean’s The Bologna Tape, McGregor, Dudu Pukwana and Moholo’s Blue Notes for Johnny – part of the five-CD box set The Ogun Collection – and Moholo-Moholo’s Viva-la-Black appeared during the time. A substantial order from Disk Union, Ogun’s Japanese distributor for CD copies of Tippett’s big band Ark session and Soft Head’s Rogue Element, featuring saxophonist Elton Dean and bass guitarist High Hopper, “funded us nicely forward” and helped ease the transition to CD, she adds. “Digitalization is obviously a path to wander down in the future,” Miller notes, “but only the released CDs of archive material have been done so far.”

Over the years, Rogue Element and Ark have remained some of Ogun’s best-selling discs along with Dean’s Ninesense Happy daze/Oh! for the edge on CD, plus different CDs by Moholo-Moholo. Steady sellers on both LP and CD formats are sessions by BOB and the original South African combo, the Blue Notes, plus the Blue Notes’ The Ogun Collection.

“All over the world people can hear our heart’s vibrations because of Ogun”, exults Moholo-Moholo, who was featured on Live at Willisau in 1974 and continues to record for the label today. “We are so rich musically because Ogun stepped in to record us when times were tough. It’s still spreading the music to places where other recording companies did not.”

As with most small labels, distribution remains a problem, with gaps as local companies go in-and-out of business. Right now, notes Miller: “Ogun is distributed through Harmonia Mundi in the UK, Orkestra in France, Distrijazz in Spain and Portugal, IRD in Italy, Music by Mail in Denmark, No Man’s Land in Berlin, and Wayside Music, Downtown Music Gallery, Dusty Groove and Squidco in the U.S.

“And” she adds proudly, “at last I have a distributor in South Africa: Pretoria’s Mabitsela Music & Events.”

“For 37 years Hazel Miller has tirelessly worked to make possible the documentation of this passionate music,” notes Julie Tippets. “So today it’s here for everyone to hear”.

Continuing to issue new CDs means that even with its long history Ogun remains much more than a reissue label, insists Miller. Plus, like the recent Spiritual Knowledge and Grace capturing a nightclub gig of Moholo-Moholo, Pukwana and Dyani with American saxophonist Frank Wright, some future scheduled CDs consist of material recorded in the past, but never released. There’s another disc from the Blue Note’s sojourn in Holland, without Wright, but with McGregor for instance, plus a multi-disc McGregor project, the size or scope of which has to be decided. Among the new issues will be Moholo-Moholo’s concert at the 2010 London Jazz Festival

“Whilst there are still fans out there we shall continue to release archive music and new recordings,” says Miller with finality.

--For New York City Jazz Record December 2011

December 5, 2011

Elton Dean’s Ninesense

Suite
Jazzwerkstatt JW 107

Louis Moholo-Moholo/Dudu Pukwana/Johnny Dyani/Rev. Frank Wright

Spiritual Knowledge And Grace

Ogun OGCD 035

Prime, hitherto-unreleased slices of Jazz’s past, these CDs not only bring into circulation historically important live performances, but also confirm the skills of featured percussionist Louis Moholo-Moholo. One of the last surviving members of the many South African improvisers who left the country in the early 1960s because of Apartheid, Moholo, 71, still plays in fine form, and has returned to live in South Africa.

In 1979, 1981 and 1982 when these sets were recorded, Moholo – who added the second “Moholo” to his name following his mother’s death – and other SA expats were involved in different situations. No longer part of the cohesive Blue Notes band with which he had arrived in England in early 1960s, some players such as Moholo and saxophonist Dudu Pukwana regularly joined with pioneering British free improvisers in groups such as Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, led by another ex-Blue Note, or other formations such as saxophonist Elton Dean’s Ninesense represented here. Meanwhile bassist Johnny Dyani, another former Blue Noter had moved to the continent.

Spiritual Knowledge And Grace is particularly noteworthy since Pukwana, Dyani and Moholo are captured on a rare one-off gig in a Netherlands club with tenor saxophonist Frank Wright. Known as “Rev” for his soulful playing, Wright was a first-generation New Thinger who had also moved to Europe for greater opportunities. The second CD is another matter entirely. Recorded at 1981’s Jazzwerkstatt Peitz, the closest thing to a Woodstock Festival that existed in what was then East Germany, the first track is an over-40 minute suite with Moholo’s drums powering a group of some of the era’s most accomplished British Freeboppers. Recorded at the same location the next year, “Natal” is different still. Here the drummer is part of bare-bones trio with two other United Kingdom-based expatriates: Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett (1935-2010) and Cape Town-native, bassist Harry Miller (1941-1983).

With Miller and Beckett taking centre stage with elongated grace notes from the trumpeter and cerebral string-set anglings and staccato extensions from the bassist, the drummer’s chief function is encouragement; both percussively and verbally. Slightly older than the others, Beckett’s roughened grace notes, peeps and squeals are never less than tonic. He splutters out intense improvisational tropes throughout, but without straying too far from the melody. Miller on the other hand varies his slaps, walking and jabs with quick-popping and sul tasto scrubs. While operating in double counterpoint with the trumpeter, his technique reflects four-string advances that had taken place during the proceeding decade. Contributing to coloration and rhythmic thrust are Moholo’s drums, a presence every step of the way.

The drummer’s rhythmic skill is stretched even more on the two half-hour plus selections which make up Spiritual Knowledge And Grace. That’s because his beat is the only constant as the others introduce new textures throughout by switching instruments. Wright as well as Dyani plays bass at points, while both Dyani and Pukwana contribute piano patterns when needed. This multi-instrumentalism become particularly problematic during the nearly 40-minute “Contemporary Fire”, when the South Africans begin encouraging one another – tongue clicking and chanting – in Xhosa, although it does mean that the Tranesque reed overblowing heard is from the American. Wright’s disconnected tenor saxophone punctuation plus high-frequency squeals and flutters also improvise in tandem with similar tone extensions from Pukwana’s alto saxophone with each man reaching for higher-pitched notes as Dyani pounds piano variations behind them. It’s also Wright who most likely adds a trebly, diaphragm vibrated blues-swing line to his playing, tossing in split-second quotes as he trades off with the altioist, each offering staccato variation on the initial theme.

On his own Dyani offers tough flamenco-styled plucks, multi-fingered runs and arco slides, as Pukwana creates pressurized key-clipping piano runs and Wright wraps up with characteristic Gospel-and-Bop vibrations. Earlier his renal sax ejaculations contrast markedly with the altoist’s chromatic squeals. While the interacting reed trills may call to mind other tenor-alto partnerships like John Tchicai and Archie Shepp, here, at least, Wright glossolalia and split tones confirm that this native of the Southern U.S. may have been more influenced by musical voodoo then the native of Southern Africa who had closer knowledge of witch doctors. When the horns decorate the initial theme with intense phrases at different lengths, Dyani’s thumps and sul ponticello strains plus Moholo’s press rolls and cymbal accents keep the ragged interface from splintering and vanishing into the stratosphere.

Fortissimo layered solos from the six horns, alone and in teams, presents a similar organizational challenge on the other CD. But at least the vibrated reed lines and exploding grace notes from the brass are kept down to earth by a full rhythm section. Solid in his pacing as he is inspired in his soloing, Miller thickens the beat as much as Walter Page with the Basie band or Bill Crow with the Concert Jazz band would have done in similar circumstances. As for pianist Keith Tippett, the former-and-future experimenter sounds appropriately grounded. Throughout, he sluices from metronomic pulsing and merry-go-round key splatters to motivated single-note comping that could have come from Count Basie’s keyboard. As for the horns, multiphonic hocketing, animalistic shrieking and discordant vibrations share space with more common swing motifs. The frequent stop-time sections also give ample space to reed splatters, trombone guffaws, one mellow trumpet aside – from Beckett? – split tone squeals from Dean’s saxello alongside linear reed blending and brass fluttering.

Eventually a climax is reached once Alan Skidmore’s intense tenor saxophone solo and key-clipping from Tippett gives way to verbalized cat calls and retches from the band members, pushing the cacophonous call-and-response section work to a satisfying conclusion.

When the inspirational playing from the dozen players represented on both CDs is matched with the novelty of hearing these previously unknown sessions, it makes both valuable additions to all-encompassing collections of European contemporary Jazz.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spiritual: 1. Ancient Spirit 2. Contemporary Fire

Personnel: Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone, piano, whistle and voice); Rev. Frank Wright (tenor saxophone, bass and voice); Johnny Dyani (bass, piano and voice) and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums and voice)

Track Listing: Suite: 1. Ninesense Suite 2. Natal

Personnel: Suite: 1. Harry Beckett and Mark Charig (trumpets); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti (trombones); Elton Dean (alto saxophone and saxello); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums) 2. Beckett, Miller and Moholo

October 30, 2011

Louis Moholo-Moholo/Dudu Pukwana/Johnny Dyani/Rev. Frank Wright

Spiritual Knowledge And Grace
Ogun OGCD 035

Elton Dean’s Ninesense

Suite

Jazzwerkstatt JW 107

Prime, hitherto-unreleased slices of Jazz’s past, these CDs not only bring into circulation historically important live performances, but also confirm the skills of featured percussionist Louis Moholo-Moholo. One of the last surviving members of the many South African improvisers who left the country in the early 1960s because of Apartheid, Moholo, 71, still plays in fine form, and has returned to live in South Africa.

In 1979, 1981 and 1982 when these sets were recorded, Moholo – who added the second “Moholo” to his name following his mother’s death – and other SA expats were involved in different situations. No longer part of the cohesive Blue Notes band with which he had arrived in England in early 1960s, some players such as Moholo and saxophonist Dudu Pukwana regularly joined with pioneering British free improvisers in groups such as Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, led by another ex-Blue Note, or other formations such as saxophonist Elton Dean’s Ninesense represented here. Meanwhile bassist Johnny Dyani, another former Blue Noter had moved to the continent.

Spiritual Knowledge And Grace is particularly noteworthy since Pukwana, Dyani and Moholo are captured on a rare one-off gig in a Netherlands club with tenor saxophonist Frank Wright. Known as “Rev” for his soulful playing, Wright was a first-generation New Thinger who had also moved to Europe for greater opportunities. The second CD is another matter entirely. Recorded at 1981’s Jazzwerkstatt Peitz, the closest thing to a Woodstock Festival that existed in what was then East Germany, the first track is an over-40 minute suite with Moholo’s drums powering a group of some of the era’s most accomplished British Freeboppers. Recorded at the same location the next year, “Natal” is different still. Here the drummer is part of bare-bones trio with two other United Kingdom-based expatriates: Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett (1935-2010) and Cape Town-native, bassist Harry Miller (1941-1983).

With Miller and Beckett taking centre stage with elongated grace notes from the trumpeter and cerebral string-set anglings and staccato extensions from the bassist, the drummer’s chief function is encouragement; both percussively and verbally. Slightly older than the others, Beckett’s roughened grace notes, peeps and squeals are never less than tonic. He splutters out intense improvisational tropes throughout, but without straying too far from the melody. Miller on the other hand varies his slaps, walking and jabs with quick-popping and sul tasto scrubs. While operating in double counterpoint with the trumpeter, his technique reflects four-string advances that had taken place during the proceeding decade. Contributing to coloration and rhythmic thrust are Moholo’s drums, a presence every step of the way.

The drummer’s rhythmic skill is stretched even more on the two half-hour plus selections which make up Spiritual Knowledge And Grace. That’s because his beat is the only constant as the others introduce new textures throughout by switching instruments. Wright as well as Dyani plays bass at points, while both Dyani and Pukwana contribute piano patterns when needed. This multi-instrumentalism become particularly problematic during the nearly 40-minute “Contemporary Fire”, when the South Africans begin encouraging one another – tongue clicking and chanting – in Xhosa, although it does mean that the Tranesque reed overblowing heard is from the American. Wright’s disconnected tenor saxophone punctuation plus high-frequency squeals and flutters also improvise in tandem with similar tone extensions from Pukwana’s alto saxophone with each man reaching for higher-pitched notes as Dyani pounds piano variations behind them. It’s also Wright who most likely adds a trebly, diaphragm vibrated blues-swing line to his playing, tossing in split-second quotes as he trades off with the altioist, each offering staccato variation on the initial theme.

On his own Dyani offers tough flamenco-styled plucks, multi-fingered runs and arco slides, as Pukwana creates pressurized key-clipping piano runs and Wright wraps up with characteristic Gospel-and-Bop vibrations. Earlier his renal sax ejaculations contrast markedly with the altoist’s chromatic squeals. While the interacting reed trills may call to mind other tenor-alto partnerships like John Tchicai and Archie Shepp, here, at least, Wright glossolalia and split tones confirm that this native of the Southern U.S. may have been more influenced by musical voodoo then the native of Southern Africa who had closer knowledge of witch doctors. When the horns decorate the initial theme with intense phrases at different lengths, Dyani’s thumps and sul ponticello strains plus Moholo’s press rolls and cymbal accents keep the ragged interface from splintering and vanishing into the stratosphere.

Fortissimo layered solos from the six horns, alone and in teams, presents a similar organizational challenge on the other CD. But at least the vibrated reed lines and exploding grace notes from the brass are kept down to earth by a full rhythm section. Solid in his pacing as he is inspired in his soloing, Miller thickens the beat as much as Walter Page with the Basie band or Bill Crow with the Concert Jazz band would have done in similar circumstances. As for pianist Keith Tippett, the former-and-future experimenter sounds appropriately grounded. Throughout, he sluices from metronomic pulsing and merry-go-round key splatters to motivated single-note comping that could have come from Count Basie’s keyboard. As for the horns, multiphonic hocketing, animalistic shrieking and discordant vibrations share space with more common swing motifs. The frequent stop-time sections also give ample space to reed splatters, trombone guffaws, one mellow trumpet aside – from Beckett? – split tone squeals from Dean’s saxello alongside linear reed blending and brass fluttering.

Eventually a climax is reached once Alan Skidmore’s intense tenor saxophone solo and key-clipping from Tippett gives way to verbalized cat calls and retches from the band members, pushing the cacophonous call-and-response section work to a satisfying conclusion.

When the inspirational playing from the dozen players represented on both CDs is matched with the novelty of hearing these previously unknown sessions, it makes both valuable additions to all-encompassing collections of European contemporary Jazz.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spiritual: 1. Ancient Spirit 2. Contemporary Fire

Personnel: Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone, piano, whistle and voice); Rev. Frank Wright (tenor saxophone, bass and voice); Johnny Dyani (bass, piano and voice) and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums and voice)

Track Listing: Suite: 1. Ninesense Suite 2. Natal

Personnel: Suite: 1. Harry Beckett and Mark Charig (trumpets); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti (trombones); Elton Dean (alto saxophone and saxello); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums) 2. Beckett, Miller and Moholo

October 30, 2011

Loose Torque

Label Spotlight
By Ken Waxman

London’s Loose Torque label is the audio equivalent of a small press publisher which concentrates on aesthetics. Just as those firms’ limited-edition books are printed on high-quality paper with covers produced by hand-operated letterpress, Loose Torque CDRs are computer-burned in batches of 100, using specialist Taiyo Yuden discs, with professionally designed packaging.

Loose Torque is the brainchild of veteran British bassist Nick Stephens, who describes himself as “artist-producer-runner. I play on and record the music, mix and edit it, think of titles, burn, print and pack the discs and take them to the post office.” Founded in 2005, Loose Torque has already released 21 CDRs, ranging from archival sessions with such major UK players as alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and drummer John Stevens, to contemporary dates that showcase Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, British trumpeter Jon Corbett and South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo among others. The label’s literal in-house art staff is Stephens’ wife Fay, an illustrator and New Media designer, who also maintains the Web site.

Loose Torque’s genesis resulted from combination of serendipity and frustration. “I had a lot of tapes in my cupboard mostly from my 17-or-so years with John Stevens,” Stephens explains. “Similarly Dudu recorded everything he did, and not long before he died he gave me a shoebox full of tapes.” Also on hand was a studio effort recorded in 1996 by Calling Signals – Stephens’ band with Gjerstad – which didn`t interest commercial labels. But “the clincher was my Septet. I was very proud of the group, had two years worth of recordings, but couldn’t get it on record.” Meanwhile Stephens had already built a home-studio. “I was coming-up 60 and beginning to feel unsure about my immortality. I wanted some way of documenting musicians and our place in the music of the time,” he remembers.

Soon he discovered the advantages of Taiyo Yudin, a company in business since 1950 and which patented the world's first CDR. “I wanted short runs. I’ve heard independent label owners say having 1,000 CDs leaves them with a garage full of unsold discs. But ours is genuinely a cottage industry. Up until recently I burned the disks one at a time to order. I’ve now bought a seven-CD tower, but I still thermal print each disc one at a time.” Another long-time improviser who often plays with Stephens, Corbett thought up the label name. “Loose torque suggests informal dialogue, and I thought that it quite aptly described improvised music where the participants interact with each other,” he recalls.

The label’s first batch of seven releases included Fast Colour Antwerp 1988 (LT 001), by a Stevens-led septet never documented on record. Besides the drummer and bassist, personnel included trumpeter Harry Beckett, Pukwana and Evan Parker on saxophones, trombonist Annie Whitehead and vocalist Pinise Saul. Over the years, “Fast Colour has been our best seller, but anything with The Vikings – Frode and Paal [Nilssen-Love] – or Louis [Moholo-Moholo] on it also causes some interest,” Stephens notes.

“Nick and I are friends so when we do something together he’ll record it and if he and I think it’s OK, he’ll release it,” reports Gjerstad. “A CDR reflects the fact that this is a small music. But it shows that it’s possible to release stuff without having a major label contract. Limited distribution doesn’t bother me. When I tour I bring CDs along and people buy them. Loose Torque may be a kitchen operation, but at the end of the day, the artist still makes a little money. Some companies want all rights in exchange for releasing a CD. And with downloads and streaming it’s easy to lose control. But Nick will give me as many discs as I want [to sell].”

Recording new material is part of Stephens’ desire to document under-recorded players. “Recording sessions are like a social club, guys who know each other meeting in a relaxed atmosphere with no temporal or financial restrictions, apart from pub opening hours,” confirms Corbett. “You don’t get that from more commercial labels. Nick is very open to suggestions and you can get involved in the editing and mixing if you so wish, or leave it to his excellent ears.”

As for archival discs, “the decisions over which old material to release are based on sustained quality of music and sound, potential interest and my time,” Stephens explains. Dangerous Musics In ‘91(LT 017) for instance, with himself, Corbett and drummer Roger Turner was “a group that was influential at the time, but unrecorded and hardly known outside of London.” The CDR is drawn from two cassette tapes; one from a session at Turner’s flat and one “from a tape that Jon found down the back of his sofa which must have been given to him by someone after a gig.”

Stephens concedes that “the problem with CDRs “is that most shops won’t stock them.” Still Loose Torque has distribution through Improjazz in France, No Mans’ Land in Germany and New York’s Downtown Music Gallery, “I quite enjoy selling discs personally through the Web site,” Stephens confesses. “We might not sell a record for weeks, then somebody e-mails and buys half the catalogue in one purchase. We also have customers who have been with us since Day One.” As for downloads, “I have thought about making downloads available, but I'm not sure how that would work out. Then again I think a small output, hand-made label has its own appeal.”

This hand-made label’s activities have recently expanded to include Americans. Its newest disc is Attic Antics (LT 023), with Stephens and Chicago cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm. “Given the opportunity, I would love to have more overseas musicians on the label,” Stephens concedes. “I nearly did with a quartet of me, Sabir Mateen, Kevin Norton and Louis Moholo-Moholo at the Molde Jazz Festival. But 10 minutes after the concert started my travel bass collapsed. By the time I reassembled it the gig was nearly over. There’s a recording of the show, but it’s interrupted by me saying ‘fuck’ a lot.”

As for the future, Stephens wants to “dust off some more tapes from the cupboard”, including sessions with violinist Nigel Coombes and more by Stevens’ Away group, since the group’s saxophonist recently gave Stephens more band material. Almost ready for released is a trio recording with Corbett and [drummer] Tony Marsh. Plus the bassist would like to record Norwegian tuba player Børre Mølstad.

Loose Torque exists because of the satisfaction he gets from it, notes Stephens. “I've been a musician all my life, I didn’t expect to make much money out of it, but I would like to leave something behind for my efforts. Making records seems to be the only way.”

--For New York City Jazz Record October 2011

October 10, 2011

FMP In Rückblick

In Retrospect 1969-2010
FMP CD 137 - FMP CD 148

Something in the Air: FMP`s 40th Anniversary

By Ken Waxman

Throughout jazz history, independent labels have typified sounds of the time. In the Swing era it was Commodore; Modern jazz was prominent on Blue Note and Prestige; and with Improvised Music, FMP is one of the longest lasting imprints. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Berlin-based label has given listeners a spectacular birthday present with FMP In Rückblick – In Retrospect 1969-2010,12 [!] CDs representing FMP’s past and future – the oldest from 1975, the newest, by American cellist Tristan Honsinger and German guitarist Olaf Rupp from 2010, half previously unissued – plus an LP-sized, 218-page book, lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, posters, album covers and a discography.

FMP’s musical scope was overwhelming. In this box, for instance, are discs by an early Pan-European ensemble, the Globe Unity Orchestra (GUO); solo sessions by Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove, German bassist Peter Kowald and others; outstanding combo dates including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer; and instances of minimalism from German string-player Hans Reichel and Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti. Ferocious German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who almost single-handedly formulated Free Music in Germany and helped create FMP, is represented on three CDs. No exercise in nostalgia, the book outlines in unsentimental details how the revolutionary climate of the late 1960s sustained the growth of tough, experimental, music modeled on American-influenced Free Jazz. FMP’s value was that by 1971 it was recording distinctively European Free Music, blending layers of contemporary notated and electro-acoustic music, Fluxus art ideas plus folk-based material onto the American base. Triumphs such as FMP’s documentation of American pianist Cecil Taylor and its wide dissemination of essential American, European and created-in-East-Germany discs are also noted.

Broadminded, FMP never asserted European musical superiority however. For example, Steve Lacy Solo 1975 & Quintett 1977 In Berlin CD 02 (FMP CD 138), is a reissue by Americans Lacy on soprano saxophone; alto saxophonist Steve Potts; bassist Kent Carter and drummer Oliver Johnson plus Swiss cellist Irène Aebi. The band’s super-fast harmonies plus the contrast between Potts staccato and linear style and Lacy’s bugle-like moderato blowing atop Carter and Johnson’s Freebop backbeat, demonstrate why the quintet was admired. Most of the CD consists of some of Lacy’s earliest solos, including The Duck. Characteristically that thrilling improvisation is built from a collection of kazoo-like reed bites, split-tone yelps, hissing and rasping growls and muffled mid-range retorts. Lacy defines free music.

Another way to mark the evolution of FMP and European Free Music is by following the thread from Schweizer/Carl/Moholo 1975/77 Messer und… CD 03 (FMP CD 139) to MANUELA+ Live In Berlin 1999 CD 10 (FMP CD 146). Almost 25 years later Rüdiger Carl’s mercurial and atonal saxophone squeals sprayed out in never-ending blasts alongside Louis Moholo’s paced drumming and Schweizer’s percussive pianism with a hint of Stride, has mutated into contradictory but equally aleatory inventions. Now Carl, in the company of Carlos Zingaro’s spiccato violin buzzes, Jin Hi Kim’s throbbing komungo strings, and Reichel’s thumping daxophone rhythms layer the interlude with distinctive colors from his new instruments of choice – light-toned clarinet and pumping accordion glissandi. Without lessening his commitment to improvised sounds the former leather-lunged saxman, now operates in a more placid area, as his quivering intonation toughens the other strings’ tremolo jetes while the daxophone’s strident whines provide comic relief.

Demarcation of a unique style – which suggested a different path than all-out Free Jazz characterized by discs such as Baden-Baden ’75 CD 01 (FMP CD 137), with five previously unissued performances by the 16-piece GUO providing plenty of space for genre-defining reed-splintering solos from Parker and Brötzmann; the soaring triplets of trumpeter Manfred Schoof; plus high-energy piano dynamics from GU leader Alexander von Schlippenbach – was germinated by another of this collection’s reissued CDs. In 1977, trombonist Malfatti’s and guitarist Stephan Wittwer’s UND? ... plus CD 06 (FMP CD 142) conclusively proved that interactive pointillism and polyphony as reductionist chamber improv was another option. Sometimes this strategy involves Wittwer’s kinetic rasgueado seemingly filling all the sonic space, before Malfatti’s puffs, mouthpiece osculation or leaking discordant tones move to the forefront. Despite this, connections are always linear with tracks like Cotpotok (still valid) exhibiting a broken octave coda of koto-like picks from the guitarist plus lower-case slurs and growls from the brass man.

Underlining the sparks he still generates and his importance to FMP, as player, designer and talent scout – the book’s first and final images are of Brötzmann in quartet formation and in frantic performance with Taylor. Similarly besides his GUO affiliation, two other CDs demonstrate the saxophonist’s prowess. Close Up/Die Like A Dog 1994 CD 08 (FMP CD 144), is a hitherto unreleased concert date with one of his most powerful formations: Japanese trumpeter and electronics manipulator Toshinori Kondo, Americans William Parker on bass and Hamid Drake on drums and tablas, plus Brötzmann playing saxophones, tarogato and clarinets; and Wolke in Hosen/Brötzmann Solo 1976 CD 05 (FMP CD 141), the reedist’s first solo disc. On it he shows the breath of his skills, from surprisingly mellow, yet atonally-tinged alto saxophone vibrations on Two Birds is a Feather to the elongated and contrasting contralto and altissimo obbligatos on Piece for Two Clarinets; to how he uses tuba-like blasts and slurs plus heavy flutter tonguing to turn Humpty Dumpty, a showcase for his bass sax, into a jaunty march. Characteristically Close Up demonstrates not only high-quality Free Music, but also other musical currents welcomed by FMP. On the 46-minute Close Up/Man, Kondo’s flutter tongued runs and plunger tones are further fragmented by electronic wave forms, while Drake’s rhythmic tabla pulses suggest World Music. Meantime Brötzmann progressively masticates and splinters dissident ostinatos from tenor saxophone or bass clarinet, using the nephritic friction for call-and-response with the trumpeter’s rubato strategies, and sometimes stopping for speedy spicatto friction from Parker, all backed by the percussionist’s ruffs and pops.

Brötzmann is still going strong 16 years later, as are many improvisers recorded by FMP from its beginning. Nonetheless, as Stretto CD 12 (FMP CD 148) demonstrates, new music still comes from the label. Spiced with aviary field recordings, the eight tracks blend the timbres from cellist Honsinger’s sardonic verbal humor, col legno smacks or enhanced legato quivers with Rupp’s chromatic frails plus spidery finger picking. With new generations to record, perhaps FMP can last for another 40 years.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #7

April 8, 2011

Dennis González/Yells at Eels

Cape of Storms
Ayler Records AYLCD-117

Over the past two decades Dallas-based trumpeter Dennis González has evolved two strategies in order to play advanced improvised music. Since he was the only so-called avant-grade musician in the city, he frequently invites out-of-town stylists to play with him. The other part of his plan has taken place literally on his home turf: he’s grown his own improvisers. The Yells at Eels’ band demonstrates this, since its rhythm section is made up of González’s sons, Aaron on double bass and Stefan on vibes and percussion.

Cape of Storms’ 10 sprightly, well-played tunes demonstrate the benefits of this policy, while confirming that the González siblings are on board for musical not nepotistic reasons. As an added bonus the González tribe is shored up by two distinguished visitors: Freebop saxophonist Tim Green from New Orleans and legendary drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo from Cape Town, South Africa. Thick muscular pacing from the bassist sets up many of the tracks, while Stefan González’s clattering vibraphone refraction, kalimba-like plucks or strokes from the djembe or other ancillary percussion, define many compositions’ rhythmic centres as effectively as Moholo-Moholo’s more traditional Jazz-based drumming.

For instance the undulating beat created by the three rhythm players on British saxophonist Jason Yarde’s “Tag” – the CD’s single tune not written by one of the Gonzálezes – matches Aaron González’s strums and steady walking with ruffs and flams from both drummers and finally brassy, triplet-leaden trumpet runs from Dennis González. Eventually the theme is resolved as trumpet yelps and double-tonguing rubato slurs from Green are matched with a low-pitched bull fiddle tone.

More use of the polyphonic skills available from all five players is made on the two variants of the Dennis González-composed title track. Green, who has recorded with pianist Mulgrew Miller in the past, makes his most affecting statement on “Cape of Storms I”. Following swaying octave runs from the bass and resonating lopes from the vibes, the saxophonist’s high-energy, Tranesque snorts deconstruct the exposition. The resulting miasma lasts until a flutter-tongued interjection from the trumpeter, subsequently echoed by the saxophonist, mutes the cacophony and finally buries it under a pseudo-martial beat from Moholo-Moholo.

Tackled a second time, this musical homage to the drummer’s Cape Town birthplace explodes with guiro-like rasps, the shaking of sleigh bells, the striking of a gong, concentrated drum ruffs and flams plus distanced cymbal reverberations, most courtesy of Stefan González. The tune only reveals it linear quality mid-way through when abrasive, adagio vibraphone rolls intersect with slurred plunger work from the trumpeter presaging a conclusive diminishing bass string thump.

Working together with multi harmonies and rhythms, the quintet confirms its flexibility with the concluding “Snakehandler”. Another Latinized composition by Dennis González, its arrangement demonstrates the similarities between beats from the southern United States and South Africa, especially when conga-like drum pops and pats complement patterns from Moholo-Moholo’s full kit. All of this serves as background to plunger work from the composer that could easily fit in among vamps from the brass section of a Salsa band. Contrast is provided by Aaron González’s straight-ahead string strums, carefully wedded to the contemporary Jazz tradition.

Someone who has accomplished the difficult task of becoming both musically unique and accommodating, on this disc – and most of his other CDs – Dennis González proves that his playing and composing can work in almost any context. And that takes place whether the other players come from thousands of miles away or from his own home.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Document for Walt Dickerson 2. Interlude: A Desert Hidden in the Waves 3. Tag 4. Interlude: Gecka 5. Cape of Storms I 6. Interlude: Internal Dialogue, Eternal Pulse 7. Tranquilidad Alborotadora I 8. Cape of Storms II 9. Tranquilidad Alborotadora II 10. Snakehandler

Personnel: Dennis González (Bb cornet, C trumpet, gongs, sleigh bells, shakers, pao do chuva and goat hooves); Tim Green (tenor saxophone and tambourine); Stefan González, vibraphone, drums, congas, balafon, djembe, roto-toms, temple bells, gongs, school bell and splash cymbals); Aaron González (bass) and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums and voice)

March 24, 2011

New York Art Quartet

Old Stuff: October 1965
Cuneiform Records RUNE 300

Archie Shepp

The New York Contemporary Five

Delmark DE 409

Back in the turbulent days of the early 1960s when the New Thing was really new, North American gigs for the pioneers of Free Jazz were at the same premium that they are for advanced players today. That’s when the wholesale exodus to work in Europe for longer or shorter stays began. These prime slices of birthing Energy Music capture two acclaimed, ostensible New York bands, performing to wider acclaim in Copenhagen.

Part of the reason for this location is that a member of both The New York Contemporary Five (NYC5) and the New York Art Quartet (NYAQ) was Danish-Congolese alto saxophonist John Tchicai, who spent his youth in the Danish capital and secured the club and concert engagements heard here. Both co-op bands, the NYC5 CD from 1963, features, along with Tchicai, four New Yorkers: cornetist Don Cherry, who had just left Ornette Coleman’s quartet; tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, basking in his first fame; bassist Don Moore, who would later join the NYAQ; and drummer J.C. Moses, who ended up moving to Copenhagen later in the decade. To pinpoint just how new the music was at this time, the set list is made up of originals by each of the horn men, two Coleman lines and one by Thelonious Monk.

Fast forward two years later and the only composition not written by the NYJQ’s horn men is another Monk tune. At the same time this was a new configuration of the quartet which in the interim had released one LP for ESP Disk. For a start, Tchicai, who in the time between this CD and the other had worked with Shepp and John Coltrane, had moved back to Denmark. Additionally, only NYAQ co-leader Rudd, who regularly played with saxophonists Steve Lacy and Shepp at the time made this European gig. That meant that the supposedly New York quartet was filled out by advanced Danish bassist Finn von Eyben, who is now a prominent bio-medical researcher, plus expatriate South African drummer Louis Moholo, at the beginning of a long career in Europe.

In truth with Rudd’s avant-tailgate smears and whinnies plus Tchicai’s tart flutter-tonguing and tone slithers extant, this NYAQ didn’t sound that different from the Manhattan-original. Considering that the repertoire included the distinctive themes and voicing which the two horn men had worked out for the combo, these 11 tracks are a welcome addendum to the NYAQ’s earlier work.

Tunes such as the altoist’s “Cool Eyes” and the trombonist’s “Karin’s Blues” also demonstrate the pick-up band evolving musically as it advanced the NYAQ style. Thick pedal point from von Eyben holds together the first tune, which is also notable for stutters and wide vibrations from Rudd plus shrill liquid tone expansions from Tchicai. Eventually the ostinato gives way to a dramatic finale, as the saxophonist’s quivering trills mix it up with the trombonist’s huffing and puffing grace notes. Moholo’s drum break as a coda is part-and-parcel of the sort of swinging feel of other numbers such as “Karin’s Blues”. Here walking bass and chiming cymbals serve as a backdrop to Rudd’s low-pitched grace notes and sliding slurs, followed by near-the-scroll twangs from the bassist, and finally lyrical horn counterpoint including some of the saxman’s favorite licks.

These licks get more exposure on other pieces including the title tune, Tchicai’s “Pà Tirsclag” and Rudd’s “Rosmosis”. The first two presenting opposite glimpses of the quartet. “Old Stuff” is built on expanded Dixieland harmonies expanded from contrapuntal horn work and a recapped head that includes slinky reed bites and honks plus double-and triple-stopping bass work. In contrast, “Pà Tirsclag” uses Moholo’s clip-clops and rim fidgeting to set up a series of horn vamps until the tine is deconstructed by the trombonist’s tailgate slurs and splayed parlando from the saxman. With stop-time and tempo changes “Rosmosis” is probably the NYAQ’s most characteristic piece. Tchicai accompanies Rudd’s plunger brays with a blistering obbligato while the bassist’s resonating stops and Moholo’s cymbal shakes keep the excitement mounting for more than 15 minutes.

Tchicai and the other members of the NYC5 were in an earlier state of development two years earlier, and so was recording equipment, which is boxier than it is in 1965. Moses is more in a Roach-Blakey bag than Moholo would be and Moore rarely steps forward. Shepp’s original, “The Funeral” is appropriately adagio with processional drum rolls and powerful bass slaps, but so-called avant-garde effects only appear with Cherry’s tightly stretched grace notes and the composer’s spluttered glottal punctuation and false register split tones. Similarly the performance of Tchicai’s “Mik”, is pretty straightforward. The bassist walks, the drummer pops and rebounds and the theme statement is harmonized by the horns. Tchicai’s astringent tongue flutters and peeps resemble Coleman’s work, and again it’s Cherry’s heraldic power which seems most assured.

With most of the program taken up by Coleman tunes and Cherry’s original, it’s evident that the Coleman influence can’t be escaped. At least “O.C.” is taken more staccato than Coleman would, although walking bass, over-recorded drum rolls and riffing R&B styled horn parts relate more to 1950s Hard Bop than Coleman’s harmolodics. Blustery stutters from Shepp add some taut diffidence to the performance, however. Cherry’s “Cisum” may suffer from over-enthusiastic drumming as well – complete with bomb-dropping – not to mention an expected recapped head, but the cornetist’s peeps and flutter-tongued respite plus the fortissimo serrated and glottal textures from both saxmen make it memorable.

Like early Bebop records, too few documents of Free Jazz’s foundation exist and these CDs add more glimpses into the music in its seminal stage. Both are interesting musically as well as historically and would probably be massively enjoyed by fans of the genre. Yet precisely because revolutions – sonic and otherwise – commonly move at wrap speed, the two additional years of cogitating and practicing give the NYAQ and edge on the NYC5.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Old: 1. Rosmosis 2. Sweet Smells 3. Old Stuff 4. Panonica 5. Kvintus T 6. Pà Tirsclag 7. Old Stuff 8. Cool Eyes 9. Sweet V 10. Karin’s Blues 11. Kirsten

Personnel: Old: Roswell Rudd (trombone); John Tchicai (alto saxophone); Finn von Eyben (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

Track Listing: New: 1. Cisum 2. Crepuscule with Nellie 3. O.C. 4. When Will The Blues Leave 5. The Funeral 6. Milk

Personnel: New: Don Cherry (cornet); John Tchicai (alto saxophone); Archie Shepp (tenor saxophone); Don Moore (bass) and J.C. Moses (drums)

December 19, 2010

Elton Dean’s Ninesense

Happy Daze + Oh! For The Edge
Ogun OGCD 032

Keith Tippett Septet

A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor

Ogun OGCD 030

Although the principal lure of these two reissues may be the availability of prime slices of 1970s and 1980s British Free Jazz, unexpected revelations appear while listening. The facility of the session leaders and most sidemen on these discs by pianist Keith Tippett’s septet plus the ensembles led by saxophonist Elton Dean is widely known. But one musician whose talents seem to have slipped below the radar since that time is Welsh jazz trombonist Nick Evans.

Evans, who during those years was a valuable addition to bands ranging from bassist Graham Collier’s sextet, the Soft Machine, the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) and alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana’s Diamond Express, is an ardent foil on both discs. Throughout the four-part suite which makes up most of Tippett’s CD, his smears and plunger techniques punctuate the development of horn different strategies. At another point, he expresses himself with gospelish ejaculations, blending with the double-tonguing and sibilant stops of tenor saxophonist Larry Stabbins, best-known for his stints with the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Similarly on the other CD, Evans often uses his chromatic smears or burnished tone elaboration to duet with Dean or Tippett.

Looser than the other session, and consisting of six tracks from a 1976 octet, and four from 1977 – which add Radu Malfatti as second trombonist – the entire Dean CD can be heard as a miniaturization of the work he and others were doing with BOB. Despite the presence of expatriate South Africans, drummer Louis Moholo and bassist Harry Miller, though, there are no overt influences from that country’s musics. Instead the emphasis is on jazz and blues, with Mongezi Feza’s “Friday Night Blues” the most obvious example.

A contrapuntal showcase it features Miller walking, concluding martial beats from Moholo and Dean stretching his alto tone into an approximation of Hank Crawford’s at his funkiest. Similarly the tempo on “Seven for Lee” quickens into unrelieved tension as low-pitched polyphony churns steadily, only parting long enough for a stuttering, musette-like solo from Dean as well as brassy stream-rolling blares from trumpeter Harry Beckett’s open horn.

Throughout, call-and-response strategies from the horns, Moholo’s blunt rolls and cymbal pops, plus connective piano vamps provide power to impel heavy-duty swinging, although the time is left elastic enough for the soloists’ full expression, alone or in formation. Tippett’s high-frequency key-fanning is matched with bowed bass lines for example; or braying brass blasts meet up with the pianist’s swirling and strummed chording.

“Forsoothe” is one interlude constructed out of strangled cries from the brass plus continuously moving squeaks and peeps from the reeds. These successfully combine into denser and thicker textures, relived only by brassy smears from Evans which churn underneath double-tongued trills from Dean’s saxello. Without copying any particular saxophonist featured in Charles Mingus’ Jazz Workshop, Dean’s tongue expansions here are still Mingusian in execution. This relationship to the American bassist is also expressed six years later by Dean and Tippett, not only most obviously in Tippett’s dedication to Mingus, but in allusions to the American’s compositions and arrangements during the course of “A loose kite in a gentle wind…” suite.

Despite modal styled percussive playing from the pianist that recalls McCoy Tyner; staccatissimo vibrations and trills from Dean that are equally Trane-like; multiphonic tonguing from Evans and quirky Kerry Dance-like terpsichorean pulses from the whole ensemble, the pieces don’t really lock into place until the two middle sections, even when performed full-blast, as it is during the suite’s nearly 28½ minute first section.

Oddly unlike Part 1, which has enough flattened keyboard patterns, soaring brass flourishes and speedy rhythmic tutti passages – plus enough false ending to suggest an unfinished symphony – Parts 2 and 3 are both more descriptive. More reflective in execution, Tippett uses Part 2 to create Duke Ellington-like mini-concertos for selected soloists, with Dean, cornetist Mark Charig and himself taking the Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart and Ellington roles. Tippett’s variants are the most atonal, with internal string twanging, choked arpeggio runs and chordal patterns skirting the progressively louder horn parts, while following and foreshadowing Charig’s and Dean’s more lyrical work. Sequentially developed, the brass man’s exposition is near bel canto and contrasts with the multi-hued tones that have been parceled out to other members of the band. As for Dean, playing alto saxophone, despite the occasional near altissimo squeak, he shades his solo in mid-register to most properly harmonize with the band.

Instructively as well, the contours of Stabbins’ tenor saxophone solo in Part 3 with its sibilant stops and sharp single note emphasis, plus the stop-time smears from the brass also bring Mingus to mind. However Tippett confirms his compositional originality later in the piece. Unlike any Mingus trope, the steady bass and drum patterning here move the tune from andante to allegro as the sax lines became less stable and more violent and are finally answered by heraldic high-pitched cornet work and cunning trombone blasts.

Leaders such as Tippett and the now deceased Dean, as well as others, including Collier and bassist Barry Guy, helped outline a distinctive path for modern British jazz starting in the late 1960s. But sessions like these recall that the transformative skills of their sidemen were as necessary for this step forward as the leader’s musical visions.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Loose: 1. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 1 2. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 2 3. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 3 4. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 5. Dedicated to Mingus*

Personnel: Loose: Mark Charig (cornet and tenor horn); Nick Evans (trombone): Elton Dean (saxello, alto saxophone*); Larry Stabbins (tenor and soprano saxophones); Keith Tippet (piano); Paul Rogers (bass) and Tony Levin (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Happy: 1. Nicrotto* 2. Seven for Lee* 3. Sweet F.A.* 4. Three for All* 5. Dance 6. Forsoothe 7. M.T. 8. Friday Night Blues 9. Prayer for Jesus

Personnel: Happy: Mark Charig (trumpet and tenor horn); Harry Beckett (trumpet and flugelhorn); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti* (trombone); Elton Dean (saxello, alto saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

June 11, 2010

Festival Report:

Freedom of the City 2010
By Ken Waxman

“To Thine Self Be True” is lettered horizontally in careful script above the stage at Conway Hall in London’s Bloomsbury district, where London’s annual Freedom of the City (FOTC) festival took place May 2 and 3. Although related to the philosophy of the Ethical Society which built the edifice in 1929, the slogan can easily also be applied to five dozen or so improvisers featured at FOTC.

Organized about decade ago by saxophonist Evan Parker and AMM percussionist Eddie Prévost to showcase the city’s vibrant improvising scene, FOTC today welcomes as many tyros as veterans – and from the Continent and North America as well as the United Kingdom. Participants ranged from eccentric soprano saxophonist Lol Coxhill, 77 and American trumpeter Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, 67, to young participants in Prévost’s weekly improv workshop and American brassman Peter Evans.

One first-class demonstration of FOTC’s mix’n’match philosophy was the set by London guitarist John Russell’s Quaqua, consisting of musicians he plays with elsewhere, but who never worked as a group. Besides Russell, pianist Chris Burns, synthesizer player Matthew Hutchinson violinist Satoko Fukuda and trumpeter Henry Lowther are British; alto saxophonist Stefan Keune is German and soundsinger Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg is from Brussels. Shifting among Russell’s licks that ranged from rhythm guitar strums to pinging twangs plus spiccato fiddle scrapes and buzzes and bell-like twitters from the synth, the ever-shifting interface made room for bursts of lyrical trumpet, unaccented air from the saxophonist – both sounds which are replicated by Hutchinson’s synthesizer – and slides, stops and strums from the piano’s internal strings created by fingers, mallets and an e-bow. Most expressive in reflecting the split-second decisions that go into group improvising was Van Schouwburg whose facial expressions contorted themselves differently whether he was soothingly lullabying, Apache yelling or duck quacking.

German vocalist Ute Wassermann was much less flamboyant but as expressive during her meeting with two British electronic manipulators – Adam Bohman and Paul Obermayer – plus percussionist Phillip Marks. Marks, a last-minute replacement for Obermayer’s FURT partner Richard Barrett, varied his output among rat-tat-tats, rim shots, snare pops and drum top rubs, leaving ample space for squeaks, crackles, hisses and reverberations from the electronics. Meanwhile Wassermann – whose vocal gymnastics ranged from mouth-widening cries and gurgles to bel-canto warbles – ensued that her improvisations were in synch with the others’ sonic shifts.

Percussion sounds were more upfront when South African Louis Moholo-Moholo and Briton Steve Noble combined behind trumpeter Smith. Although more jazz-oriented than most improvisations during FOTC’s 16 concerts, this was no Rich vs. Roach battle royal. Instead either could elaborate on any rhythm generated by the other, although Moholo-Moholo’s smacked ruffs and tympani-like resonations toughed the beat, which was nimbly redefined by Noble’s vibration of undersized cymbals on drum tops, swish through the air of what resembled palm fronds, or bongo-like pops with bare hands or wetted fingers. Blasting grace notes with a clear, bright tone or fluttering rubato through a Harmon mute, the trumpeter eventually settled on staccato and juicy bugle-like flutters after the drummers’ rhythms dislocated his sedate tongue flutters.

Smith’s musical adaptability was highlighted in two other situations: as featured soloist in a concerto backed by the 40-member London Improvisers Orchestra conducted by guitarist Dave Tucker; and as part of FOTC’s last set with clarinetist Alex Ward guitarist John Coxon, keyboardist Pat Thomas and drummer Paul Lytton.

Unlike the conductions and group improvisations that made up the remainder of the LIO’s set, which lurched from passages of controlled tutti cacophony to miniature set pieces for soloists such Charlotte Hug’s spirited, sawing violin runs or Coxhill’s understated off-centre lyricism, the Smith piece was as interconnected as Gil Evans’ arrangements for Miles Davis. Unruffled, Smith splintered timbres that floated as often as they popped, isolating his textures from the riffing reeds, lowing brass and the clamber let loose when three drummers, two electric guitars, two pianists, a vibraphonists and three electronics manipulators polyphonically sound simultaneously.

Before Smith and crew wrapped things up, other notable meetings included a set by the Stellari String Quartet of violinists Hug and Philipp Wachsmann, cellist Marcio Mattos and bassist John Edwards whose layered textures demonstrated that intersecting and combining well-designed arco and pizzicato run extends classic string ensemble strategies into atonality and multiphonics, while retaining moments of lyricism; and the duet between tenor and soprano saxophonist John Butcher and percussionist Mark Sanders. Switching from one horn to the other, and utilizing staccato pops, gravelly tones and a wide, round mouth vibrato, Butcher’s elongated flutters, reed bites, slaps and flutters enlivened the duet either mid-range, barely there or fortissimo. Meanwhile Sanders clattered, slapped and shook different parts of his kit, at one point stabilizing the interaction with military precision, anther not only whapping a small bell and wood block, but using them instead of sticks on drum tops.

Percussionist rather than drummer, Prévost played in two formations, most notably eschewing the standard kit for an enormous gong and ancillary cymbals in a set with baritone saxophonist David O’Connor, violinist Jennifer Allum and Grundik Kasyansky on electronics. With the saxman expelling high intensity, tongue slaps and fortissimo yelps; the fiddler striking her strings with the bow’s frog when not scrubbing them, and Kasyansky dislocating time with bursts of static, crackles and snatches of processed voices, Prévost maintained equilibrium, by sawing upon the gong or rubbing squeaking timbres from the tempered metal.

Parker played in a unique trio filled out by cellist Okkyung Lee and Evans – who used piccolo and regular trumpet in a solo set that opened FOTC; puffing, vocalizing, screaming and even melodiously sounding his horn(s) with effects and to spectacular effect. With Lee’s connective ostinato underneath, Evans’ phenomenal brass command was matched and reined in by Parker on tenor and soprano saxophone, demonstrating the ease in which tone splintering, circular breathing and flutter tonguing could be amplified with lyrical twitters and peeps. In double counterpoint the horn players both exercised super-fast tonguing or built gurgles, puffs and tongue clacks into a satisfying textural display.

Also satisfying was the concluding quintet set. Mixing metallic twang from Coxon’s guitar, a combination of breakneck piano runs plus jagged synthesizer pumps from Thomas and the steady clatter and cymbal scratches from Lytton, the developing stop-time improvisation finally reached a point of layered cacophony. But this wasn’t before Ward extended the sound palate from his purposely whiny lines and altissimo screams by blowing into his unattached mouthpiece. Meanwhile Smith used vibrato buzzes to propel soaring high-pitched triplets over the others’ sounds.

Told after the climatic finale that there was only time for a short tune, Smith theatrically unleashed a curt flourish of brassy insouciance and led the others off stage. Adding a particular brand of Yankee showmanship to the proceedings and confirming the slogan above the stage, the trumpeter summed up the proceedings and set the stage for future FOTCs.

-- For All About Jazz – New York June 2010

June 6, 2010

Blue Notes

The Ogun Collection
Ogun OGCD 024, 025, 026, 027 & 028

What regretfully could be subtitled Tale of the Incredible Shrinking Band, this box set collects five CDs by the Blue Notes, arguable the best jazz band to emerge fully formed from Apartheid-era South Africa.

Consisting of sessions recorded from 1964 to 1987, the set traces the band’s evolution from a six-man boppish combo to a smaller group, which energized European – especially British – jazz by intermixing African rhythms and melodies, Hard Bop styling plus emerging Free Music. Leaving aside the first disc, Legacy: live in South Afrika 1964, the other CDs are necessarily reductive. That’s because after pianist and Blue Note leader Chris McGregor organized the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) big band in 1970, other original Blue Notes left the enlarged group for their own projects for greater or lesser periods. Subsequently the remaining originals only regrouped for one/off gigs such as 1977’s Blue Notes in Concert, or sadly to honor deceased comrades. Blue Notes for Mongezi dates from 1975, and captures most of the 3½ hour improvised threnody the others played to honor trumpeter Mongezi Feza who died suddenly at 30. Finally Blue Notes for Johnny dates from 1987, following a similar post-funeral session by the remaining trio marking bassist Johnny Dyani’s death at 40.

During 1990 McGregor died at 53, as did alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana at 41. Now 69, drummer Louis Moholo returned to post-Apartheid South Africa in1995 and works from there in Europe and elsewhere.

While the seven tracks on Legacy chug along nicely with foot-tapping rhythms and expose a series of high class solos from the original five plus tenor saxophonist Nick Moyake, its paramount interest is historical. To put it bluntly, the band recorded in Durban in 1964 was then merely a high-quality Hard Bop combo. The entire set is firmly anchored in the school of players being recorded by the band’s namesake record company – Blue Note – and almost completely beholden to the genre’s defining ensemble: Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Although McGregor and Moholo were respectively a little smoother or more constrained in their playing then their American opposite numbers – Bobby Timmons and Blakey himself – the front line was fully in Messengers thrall. Feza, who was only 19 at the time, moved between Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard; Pukwana referenced Jackie McLean and Cannonball Adderley; while Beer’s playing – featured on “I Cover the Waterfront” – harkened back to Dexter Gordon and Illinois Jacquet – when he wasn’t being Hank Mobley.

There was nothing wrong with copying the best. But there were already numberless groups playing the same way in Paris, in Toronto, in Montreal, in Berlin, in London and in every city in the United States. Frankly, the most impressive part of the CD is that most of the material is original, composed either by McGregor or Pukwana. But even here, echoes of the original American themes and solos peek through the melodies. As a matter of fact, the altoist’s “Dorkay House” sounds more like one of those Lionel Hampton-styled pre-R&B numbers from the late 1940s than anything more recent.

Relocation in the United Kingdom and prolonged exposure to new music of the free improvisers was, paradoxically, one of the best things that could have happened to these exiled players. Not only did they mix with the very best British and Continental players, but the subsequent groups they were involved with – very definitely including McGregor’s BOB – intermingled Township and kwela pulses and measures in a way that gained wide acceptance on the jazz scene. However the Blue Note’s core band members also became involved in other projects, with the bassist especially moving away from the others.

Feza’s unexpected death in 1975 brought the original Blue Notes together for the two-CD Blue Notes for Mongezi session. Despite its initial rehearsal room sound, it’s instructive to note how the subsequent decade of playing has redefined every musician as his own man. Like Dave Burrell, McGregor evidently internalized the stabbing feints and contrasting dynamics of Cecil Taylor, while maintaining the long-lined comping, architectural cadenzas and high frequency runs of earlier stylists such as Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

Moholo is now more overtly rhythmic and aggressive, and has added blunt backbeat strokes, cymbal scrapes, bell-tree rattles plus abrasive friction and vibrations from miscellaneous percussion to his playing stance. Also energized is Dyani, who was more-or-less simply a timekeeper in Durban. He has developed a slippery, upfront style which moves in-and-out of tempo as he walks, slaps and vibrates his strings. Furthermore the mixture of English, Xhosa, Zulu and nonsense syllables he vocalizes during the four long selections occupies an uneasy position between call-and-response Baptist preaching, psychedelic scat singing and prototype Rap.

Pukwana occasionally joins in vocally as well, but his mature style is more notable for the slide-whistle shrills he uses to punctuate the numbers. Now completely divorced from his earlier influences, the alto man now combines, moderato flutter-tonguing and peeping altissimo cries as well as thematic quotes, melody integration and chalumeau reed bites and slurs. His alto saxophone precedent isn’t Ornette Coleman’s breakthroughs, but the tradition extension of someone like Eric Dolphy.

There are even points such as his wriggling obbligato response to Dyani’s preaching on “Blue Notes for Mongezi: third movement” that Pukwana’s horn takes the place of an entire testifying congregation. Additionally, because the session was organized as an ad hoc memorial to Feza, the four go through the equivalent of stream-of-consciousness playing, moving from theme to theme, melody to melody and phrase to phrase. Into the mix they toss everything from suggestions of Church of England hymns, kwela dance rhythms, refined, Ellington-reflecting tone poems – heavy on piano chording – and out-and-out primitivist R&B. McGregor’s hard chordal runs, Moholo’s bounces and flams, Dyani’s consistent pulse and Pukwana’s slide-slipping split tones and cries share the upfront space.

Less than two years later, Blue Notes in Concert – a quartet reunion at London’s 100 Club – finds the rhythm section fading into the background and Pukwana and McGregor more upfront. At certain junctures the back-and-forth teamwork suggests earlier simpatico pairing such as Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond or Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse, but the suspicion remains that the four are beginning to feel the pressure of trying to replicate with one horn arrangements created for two, three or more. There’s also certain listlessness to the rhythm, a perception fed by the fact that Dyani had moved to the Continent, and had been operating more-or-less separately from the others since 1971.

McGregor relies more on cyclical swirls and patterning than formerly. He’s also comping as much as possible with connective fills, intent to plug the many holes which are evident throughout and avoid the awkwardness of uncoordinated silences. Pukwana’s pitch too may have become more astringent and irregular, but he never abandons his Hard Bop underpinnings so that variations on the heads seem nearly endless.

The proceedings pick up considerably when the traditional “Kudala” is played. Given a foot tapping beat from Moholo’s cow bell strokes and Dyani’s thumps, tension is brought to a boil and pushed into bravado shape with ornamental vamps from the front line. Eventually the interpolation of Gary Windo’s “Funky Boots”, a BOB staple, rouses the playing enough so that the quartet draws audience applause.

Oddly – but more hopefully – a reunion of the remaining trio of Blue Notes a decade later signals a return to bravura form and commitment, which might result from McGregor, Pukwana and Moholo’s realization that with Dyani’s death, the band was more history than promise. Within the confines of the broken octave expositions, the harmonization and rhythmic thrust belie the combo’s size.

Playing soprano as well as alto saxophone – simultaneously at points, it seems – Pukwana works up a full head of steam, often getting distinct, overlapping timbres from each horn. McGregor contributes fast-paced glissandi and intermezzo patterns, while Moholo’s percussion implements extend to slide whistle, kazoo, ocarina – the better to interact with the saxophonist’s sandpaper rough tone.

Celebratory rather than dirge-like, the results seem to reference more than the Blue Notes’ past, especially when “Monks & Mbizo” and “Ithi GTqi/Nkosi Sikelee” – the penultimate and final track of the original session appear. Added to the expected African, gospel and Bop references are those from earlier jazz. At least McGregor’s arm-extended, pre-modern syncopation starts to resemble Pete Johnson and Meade Lox Lewis’ stylings and Pukwana’s nagging vibrato is almost as wide as Sidney Bechet’s.

Moholo may be channeling Baby Dodds at this point, and is soon mumbling invective or regret as well as well as whacking cymbals and small bells with a wire whisk, bouncing his snare and thumping the bass drum. Ostensibly wrapping up with a Dyani composition and a traditional song, the three bring the verisimilitude of wide intervals and crying cross tones they’ve been exploring earlier forward.

This old timey-modern exposition which mixes cries of pain with harsh intensity seems to bring Pukwana back to the Jackie McLean echoes he expressed on Legacy and similarly reintroduce the high frequency cadenzas related to Bobby Timmons McGregor exhibited at that time. Luckily Moholo’s powerful opposite sticking keeps the backbeat groove on track. The finale blends piano fills, reed brays and percussion kerplunk into an anthemic conclusion and proper celebration for a comrade.

Confirming the Blue Notes absolute and irrefutable dissolution, this boxed set still leaves us with many examples of the skill and excitement the band exhibited in its time.

-- Ken Waxman

OGCD 024: Blue Notes - Legacy: live in South Afrika 1964

Track Listing: Legacy: 1. Now 2. Coming home 3. I Cover the Waterfront 4. Two for Sandl 5. Vortex Special 6. B My Dear 7. Dorkay House

Personnel: Legacy: Mongezi Feza (trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Nick Moyake (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

OGCD 025/026: Blue Notes for Mongezi

Track Listing: Blue: 1. Blue Notes for Mongezi: first movement 2. Blue Notes for Mongezi: second movement 3. Blue Notes for Mongezi: third movement 4. Blue Notes for Mongezi: fourth movement

Personnel: Blue: Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone, whistle, percussion and voice); Chris McGregor (piano and percussion); Johnny Dyani (bass, bell and voice) and Louis Moholo (drums, percussion and voice)

OGCD 027: Blue Notes in Concert

Track Listing: Concert: 1. Iizwi/Msenge Mabelelo 2. Nqamakwe 3. Manje/Funky Boots 4.We Nduna 5. Kudala [Long ago]/Funky boots 6. Mama Ndoluse/Abalimanga

Personnel: Concert: Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

OGCD 028: Blue Notes for Johnny

Track Listing: Johnny: 1. Funk Dem Dudu/To Erico 2. Eyomzi 3. Ntyilo Ntyilo 4. Blues for Nick 5. Monks & Mbizo 6. Ithi GTqi/Nkosi Sikelee L'Afrika 7. Funk Dem Dudu 8. Eyomzi 9. Funk Dem Dudu/To Erico

Personnel: Johnny: Dudu Pukwana (alto and soprano saxophones); Chris McGregor (piano) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

July 8, 2009

Graham Collier

Deep Dark Blue Centre/ Portraits/The Alternate Mosaics
BGO CD 822

Mike Osborne Trio

All Night Long

Ogun OGCD 029

While most of the attention in Britain and overseas in the late 1960s, early 1970s was focused on progressive rock and pop music coming from England, far more notable sounds were being developed outside of the mainstream. Although the most far-reaching of these advances may turn out to be the non-idiomatic improv advanced by the likes of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, two other strains deserve attention.

One, represented here by Graham Collier’s session for septet and sextets, collected from three different LPs, expressed the depths of the composer-arranger’s art. Its variations on color, texture, space and voicing cemented Collier’s reputation in that tricky hyphenate’s top ranks. All Night Long on the other hand, is a free-for-all blowing session from three musicians who while fellow travellers, were not fundamental believers in Bailey-Parker-styled lower-case pure improv.

Although both discs are officially reissues, each set adds more material to the original LP – roughly 27 minutes to the session led by alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, plus an almost three-quarters-of-an-hour alternate version of one of Collier’s most realized works, Mosaics. Surrounding that program, recorded in 1970, are Deep Dark Blue Centre, a septet session that was Collier’s first LP in 1967, and Portraits a sextet date from 1972 with a completely different band. Although significant efforts, neither matches the grandeur of Mosaics.

Perhaps because two of the players – Collier himself and Rhodesian-born trombonist Mike Gibbs, later a prominent arranger – were graduates of Boston’s Berklee College, the 1967 dates seems to suffer from an overemphasis on textural organization rather than emotional soloing. At points the voicing appears to track backwards from the Berklee-sanctioned work of Evans and George Russell to the airiness associated with 1950s’ bands of similar size such as those led by John Graas, Teddy Charles and Gigi Gryce.

Featuring two future members of The Soft Machine – baritone saxophonist and oboist Karl Jenkins and drummer John Marshall – the writing and soloing too is sometimes too episodic. Jenkins’ oboe is emphasized far more – for novelty’s sake? – and more frequently than similarly so-called exotic instrumentals would be used in later Collier work, while Phil Lee’s sometimes finger-picking, sometimes strumming guitar lines exist in a dated time frame mid-way between Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo.

Most of the assured strength comes from front-line players, all of whom, ironically enough, were foreign-born. The date’s veterans on trumpet and flugelhorn, who each play on half the tracks, are Harry Beckett, originally from Barbados, and Canadian Kenny Wheeler. Dave Aaron, who more than acquits himself on alto saxophone and flute, was born in Singapore.

“Conversations” for instance, depends on antipodal vamping that contrasts Wheeler at his brassiest with Aaron’s slithering trills. Collier and Marshall provide backing that at times pulses like Native Indian rhythms, until the piece reaches a climax when Wheeler’s sweeter tones mix with Aaron’s skittering runs. An episodic minor blues, the title track mixes Gil Evans-like linear chords with down-stroking guitar licks à la Szabo at his most psychedelic, an R&B-like riff from Jenkins’ baritone saxophone, bluesy alto bites from Aaron and cymbal pops from Marshall. Hardening his tone from braying to polished, Wheeler completes the piece with triplet-laden excitement.

Despite its overall title, only flugelhornist Dick Pearce is the subject of a full-fledged salute with “Portraits One” on Portraits. Framed by obbligatos from Ed Speight’s guitar and Geoff Castle’s comping piano, Pearce who has more recently worked in the bigger bands of Ronnie Scott and Stan Tracey acquits himself with only a few dips into the saccharine. Shading his output in many layers, the trumpeter is effectively showcased when the gradually accelerating tempo provides a foundation for his contrapuntal asides, slurs and double-tonguing.

Furthermore, “And Now for Something Completely Different”, parts one and two, which take up another part of the session, relate more to the time in which it was composed and played than most of Collier’s previous and subsequent work. With Blue Note records-styled funk then in vogue, the repeated motif built on ratcheting percussion from John Webb, who also worked in a similar vein with guitarist Ray Russell; and nagging, extended guitar licks from Ed Speight, attempt to replicate this funk sound. Pianist Geoff Castle, who in recent years has worked with arranger Neil Ardley and in Ian Carr’s Nucleus, seems unsure whether he should be Wynton Kelly or Herbie Hancock. His passing chords and hearty tremolo pumping however don’t shout “early 1970s” as much as Webb’s heavy-handed drum solo. Meanwhile Pearce’s half-valve chorus is more NYJO than NYC. Luckily Collier’s arrangement saves the date with tempo shifts from andante to kinetic and direction from his thumping bass runs. Using intervallic layering to delineate parts, Collier often places bubbling flugelhorn lines on top, chirping alto saxophone from Peter Hurt – who has since played with George Russell and Carla Bley – in the middle and high-frequency piano chording at the bottom.

In contrast to the music surrounding it chronologically, 1970’s Mosaics is in many ways Collier’s Kind of Blue. More orchestral than that Miles Davis date, the alternate version of the four themes collected here benefit from a powerful front line, and one might conjecture less pressured Castle and Webb than they were two years later.

Beckett is back again, yet oddly both powerful saxophone soloists are now more involved in other musics than jazz. Bob Sydor, who plays alto and tenor saxophones, was in Maynard Ferguson’s big band as well as the orchestra for Miss Saigon, now teaches saxophone privately. Tenor and soprano saxophones Alan Wakeman, followed brief gigs with Mike Westbrook and the Soft Machine with membership in singer David Essex's band and now concentrates on commercial work, notably in musicals.

That’s a pity, since both men dig into the material here with gusto, double and triple tonguing, and intelligently using altissimo runs, passing tones and slurry glottal punctuation. Webb’s drum work pops and rolls and Castle’s piano lines are similarly high frequency and kinetic.

Except for a final drum solo, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 3, Theme 6”, serves as a perfect showcase for Beckett. Beginning a capella, he shades the brass tube and valves through squeaks, lip pops, wah-wahs, spits and puffs. When the downward rappelling bass line brings in the theme, strengthened by swaying, near-Arabic soprano saxophone lines, Beckett responds with fleet triplet-emphasized growls. As the rhythm section lays on pressured accompaniment he then turns from hand-muted weaving to harsh, staccato lines.

Another stand out, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 2, Theme 2” not only gives space to double-gaited cascading piano chords, but also for stop-and-start tenor saxophone cadences from both reed men. As Collier’s thick bass plucks and Webb’s press rolls push them forward, both Wakeman and Sydor overblow, tongue-stop, chomp phrases, semi-quote and generally vibrate pitches everywhere. The final shout chorus, adding Beckett, is excitement in itself.

One saxophonist who demanded go-for-broke excitement almost constantly, and never seemed to be seduced by commercial considerations, was Osborne (1941-2007). Although sidelined with mental illness for about two decades before his death, prior to that, Osborne showed, in his work with the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) and his own bands, that he was committed to the sort of improvisation that exhausted all possibilities. All Night Long, recorded with BOB cohorts, Harry Miller on bass and Louis Moholo on drums – both expatriate South Africans – confirms this. Although he favored the alto saxophone, Osborne was, in a way, the link between Tubby Hayes and Evan Parker.

As this 1975 CD demonstrates, those saxophonists are important touchstones. While Osborne was never really a bopper like Hayes, he still cleaved to the song form and studded his solo with fleeting quotes from other tunes, a long-time bop trope. Furthermore every tune on this CD has a real title, and the trio even briefly touches on “Round Midnight”. Conversely, while Osborne’s solos are rugged, seemingly never-ending and studded with rough asides, slip-sliding, roars and unexpected sound excursions, he never deconstructed timbres the way Parker, his sometime BOB section-made did. Whether he would have – like Bailey and a few others – have become more musically experimental as he aged, is of course, a moot question.

What is obvious is the strength of the performance here. Operating at 100 per cent from the first note, the trio mixes gritty, bass string plucks and pummeling arco lines on Miller’s part; cross-patterning drags, flams and rim shots, with add-on miscellaneous percussion excursions on Moholo’s; and resonating, repetitive bites, blows and blats on Osborne’s, to keep playing at top form.

Note how the three treat the almost 24-minute showcase that encompasses “Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio”. As Miller’s thick pulses spelunk down the bass strings and Moholo counters with a relentless exposure of rumbles, pops and cymbal echoes, Osborne inventively squeezes, trills and pushes new tones to the centre, only to discard them and start again. Forced and filled vibrating arpeggios and discursive patterns are advanced with flutter-tonguing, tongue-stopping and split tones, slip-sliding from one idea to the next, contrasting a bebop quote with a pseudo-Scottish burr and then moving on. Meantime Miller leaps from sul ponticello accompaniment to set up a groove congruent to the drummer’s cross pulsing and duple meters. As cadenzas of notes spew from his horn it appears as if Osborne will never stop playing no matter what.

Or consider the previously unreleased “Now and Then, Here and Now”. Beholden to the sound extensions brought to jazz by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Osborne’s solo still has a melodic base. With some lilting phrases played in the coloratura register and others roughened with a deeper tenor-sax-like pitch, he flies off into the stratosphere, but keeps recapping the original theme to maintain his moorings. Snatches of what could be “Slop” and “Mr. PC” appear fleetingly and then are subsumed into the molten idea flow, the bravura performance includes hocketing leaps from one idea and note cluster to the next. Especially illustrative is that the saxophonist is still soloing as the track fades. This is how Osborne should be remembered.

Born in 1937, Collier is thankfully still alive to be celebrated. And so he should be as with these CDs. Despite their related-to-the-period faults, both his and Osborne’s sets recall the creative ferment in United Kingdom jazz in the late 1960s, early 1970s and preserve hours of notable music that should be savored.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: 1. Blue Walls 2. El Miklos 3. Hirayoshi Suite 4. Conversations 5. Deep Dark Blue Centre Portraits: 7. And Now for Something Completely Different PT. 1 Disc 2 1. And Now for Something Completely Different PT 2. 2. Portraits 1 The Alternate Mosaics: 3. The Alternate Mosaics Part 1 Theme 1 4. The Alternate Mosaics Part 2 Theme 2 5. The Alternate Mosaics Part 3 Theme 6 6. The Alternate Mosaics Part 4 Theme 8

Personnel: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: Harry Beckett or Kenny Wheeler (trumpet and flugelhorn); Mike Gibbs (trombone); Dave Aaron (alto saxophone and flute); Karl Jenkins (baritone saxophone and oboe); Philip Lee (guitar); Graham Collier (bass) and John Marshall (drums) Portraits: Dick Pearce (flugelhorn); Pete Hurt (alto saxophone); Ed Speight (guitar); Geoff Castle (piano); Collier and John Webb (drums) The Alternate Mosaics: Beckett; Bob Sydor (alto and tenor saxophones); Alan Wakeman (tenor and soprano saxophones); Castle; Collier and Webb

Track Listing: Night: 1. All night long/Rivers 2. Round Midnight 3. Scotch Pearl 4. Waltz 5. Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio 6. Scotch Pearl 7. Now and Then, Here and Now

Personnel: Night: Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Harry Miller (bass) and

Louis Moholo (drums)

December 23, 2008

Mike Osborne Trio

All Night Long
Ogun OGCD 029

Graham Collier

Deep Dark Blue Centre/ Portraits/The Alternate Mosaics

BGO CD 822

While most of the attention in Britain and overseas in the late 1960s, early 1970s was focused on progressive rock and pop music coming from England, far more notable sounds were being developed outside of the mainstream. Although the most far-reaching of these advances may turn out to be the non-idiomatic improv advanced by the likes of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, two other strains deserve attention.

One, represented here by Graham Collier’s session for septet and sextets, collected from three different LPs, expressed the depths of the composer-arranger’s art. Its variations on color, texture, space and voicing cemented Collier’s reputation in that tricky hyphenate’s top ranks. All Night Long on the other hand, is a free-for-all blowing session from three musicians who while fellow travellers, were not fundamental believers in Bailey-Parker-styled lower-case pure improv.

Although both discs are officially reissues, each set adds more material to the original LP – roughly 27 minutes to the session led by alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, plus an almost three-quarters-of-an-hour alternate version of one of Collier’s most realized works, Mosaics. Surrounding that program, recorded in 1970, are Deep Dark Blue Centre, a septet session that was Collier’s first LP in 1967, and Portraits a sextet date from 1972 with a completely different band. Although significant efforts, neither matches the grandeur of Mosaics.

Perhaps because two of the players – Collier himself and Rhodesian-born trombonist Mike Gibbs, later a prominent arranger – were graduates of Boston’s Berklee College, the 1967 dates seems to suffer from an overemphasis on textural organization rather than emotional soloing. At points the voicing appears to track backwards from the Berklee-sanctioned work of Evans and George Russell to the airiness associated with 1950s’ bands of similar size such as those led by John Graas, Teddy Charles and Gigi Gryce.

Featuring two future members of The Soft Machine – baritone saxophonist and oboist Karl Jenkins and drummer John Marshall – the writing and soloing too is sometimes too episodic. Jenkins’ oboe is emphasized far more – for novelty’s sake? – and more frequently than similarly so-called exotic instrumentals would be used in later Collier work, while Phil Lee’s sometimes finger-picking, sometimes strumming guitar lines exist in a dated time frame mid-way between Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo.

Most of the assured strength comes from front-line players, all of whom, ironically enough, were foreign-born. The date’s veterans on trumpet and flugelhorn, who each play on half the tracks, are Harry Beckett, originally from Barbados, and Canadian Kenny Wheeler. Dave Aaron, who more than acquits himself on alto saxophone and flute, was born in Singapore.

“Conversations” for instance, depends on antipodal vamping that contrasts Wheeler at his brassiest with Aaron’s slithering trills. Collier and Marshall provide backing that at times pulses like Native Indian rhythms, until the piece reaches a climax when Wheeler’s sweeter tones mix with Aaron’s skittering runs. An episodic minor blues, the title track mixes Gil Evans-like linear chords with down-stroking guitar licks à la Szabo at his most psychedelic, an R&B-like riff from Jenkins’ baritone saxophone, bluesy alto bites from Aaron and cymbal pops from Marshall. Hardening his tone from braying to polished, Wheeler completes the piece with triplet-laden excitement.

Despite its overall title, only flugelhornist Dick Pearce is the subject of a full-fledged salute with “Portraits One” on Portraits. Framed by obbligatos from Ed Speight’s guitar and Geoff Castle’s comping piano, Pearce who has more recently worked in the bigger bands of Ronnie Scott and Stan Tracey acquits himself with only a few dips into the saccharine. Shading his output in many layers, the trumpeter is effectively showcased when the gradually accelerating tempo provides a foundation for his contrapuntal asides, slurs and double-tonguing.

Furthermore, “And Now for Something Completely Different”, parts one and two, which take up another part of the session, relate more to the time in which it was composed and played than most of Collier’s previous and subsequent work. With Blue Note records-styled funk then in vogue, the repeated motif built on ratcheting percussion from John Webb, who also worked in a similar vein with guitarist Ray Russell; and nagging, extended guitar licks from Ed Speight, attempt to replicate this funk sound. Pianist Geoff Castle, who in recent years has worked with arranger Neil Ardley and in Ian Carr’s Nucleus, seems unsure whether he should be Wynton Kelly or Herbie Hancock. His passing chords and hearty tremolo pumping however don’t shout “early 1970s” as much as Webb’s heavy-handed drum solo. Meanwhile Pearce’s half-valve chorus is more NYJO than NYC. Luckily Collier’s arrangement saves the date with tempo shifts from andante to kinetic and direction from his thumping bass runs. Using intervallic layering to delineate parts, Collier often places bubbling flugelhorn lines on top, chirping alto saxophone from Peter Hurt – who has since played with George Russell and Carla Bley – in the middle and high-frequency piano chording at the bottom.

In contrast to the music surrounding it chronologically, 1970’s Mosaics is in many ways Collier’s Kind of Blue. More orchestral than that Miles Davis date, the alternate version of the four themes collected here benefit from a powerful front line, and one might conjecture less pressured Castle and Webb than they were two years later.

Beckett is back again, yet oddly both powerful saxophone soloists are now more involved in other musics than jazz. Bob Sydor, who plays alto and tenor saxophones, was in Maynard Ferguson’s big band as well as the orchestra for Miss Saigon, now teaches saxophone privately. Tenor and soprano saxophones Alan Wakeman, followed brief gigs with Mike Westbrook and the Soft Machine with membership in singer David Essex's band and now concentrates on commercial work, notably in musicals.

That’s a pity, since both men dig into the material here with gusto, double and triple tonguing, and intelligently using altissimo runs, passing tones and slurry glottal punctuation. Webb’s drum work pops and rolls and Castle’s piano lines are similarly high frequency and kinetic.

Except for a final drum solo, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 3, Theme 6”, serves as a perfect showcase for Beckett. Beginning a capella, he shades the brass tube and valves through squeaks, lip pops, wah-wahs, spits and puffs. When the downward rappelling bass line brings in the theme, strengthened by swaying, near-Arabic soprano saxophone lines, Beckett responds with fleet triplet-emphasized growls. As the rhythm section lays on pressured accompaniment he then turns from hand-muted weaving to harsh, staccato lines.

Another stand out, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 2, Theme 2” not only gives space to double-gaited cascading piano chords, but also for stop-and-start tenor saxophone cadences from both reed men. As Collier’s thick bass plucks and Webb’s press rolls push them forward, both Wakeman and Sydor overblow, tongue-stop, chomp phrases, semi-quote and generally vibrate pitches everywhere. The final shout chorus, adding Beckett, is excitement in itself.

One saxophonist who demanded go-for-broke excitement almost constantly, and never seemed to be seduced by commercial considerations, was Osborne (1941-2007). Although sidelined with mental illness for about two decades before his death, prior to that, Osborne showed, in his work with the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) and his own bands, that he was committed to the sort of improvisation that exhausted all possibilities. All Night Long, recorded with BOB cohorts, Harry Miller on bass and Louis Moholo on drums – both expatriate South Africans – confirms this. Although he favored the alto saxophone, Osborne was, in a way, the link between Tubby Hayes and Evan Parker.

As this 1975 CD demonstrates, those saxophonists are important touchstones. While Osborne was never really a bopper like Hayes, he still cleaved to the song form and studded his solo with fleeting quotes from other tunes, a long-time bop trope. Furthermore every tune on this CD has a real title, and the trio even briefly touches on “Round Midnight”. Conversely, while Osborne’s solos are rugged, seemingly never-ending and studded with rough asides, slip-sliding, roars and unexpected sound excursions, he never deconstructed timbres the way Parker, his sometime BOB section-made did. Whether he would have – like Bailey and a few others – have become more musically experimental as he aged, is of course, a moot question.

What is obvious is the strength of the performance here. Operating at 100 per cent from the first note, the trio mixes gritty, bass string plucks and pummeling arco lines on Miller’s part; cross-patterning drags, flams and rim shots, with add-on miscellaneous percussion excursions on Moholo’s; and resonating, repetitive bites, blows and blats on Osborne’s, to keep playing at top form.

Note how the three treat the almost 24-minute showcase that encompasses “Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio”. As Miller’s thick pulses spelunk down the bass strings and Moholo counters with a relentless exposure of rumbles, pops and cymbal echoes, Osborne inventively squeezes, trills and pushes new tones to the centre, only to discard them and start again. Forced and filled vibrating arpeggios and discursive patterns are advanced with flutter-tonguing, tongue-stopping and split tones, slip-sliding from one idea to the next, contrasting a bebop quote with a pseudo-Scottish burr and then moving on. Meantime Miller leaps from sul ponticello accompaniment to set up a groove congruent to the drummer’s cross pulsing and duple meters. As cadenzas of notes spew from his horn it appears as if Osborne will never stop playing no matter what.

Or consider the previously unreleased “Now and Then, Here and Now”. Beholden to the sound extensions brought to jazz by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Osborne’s solo still has a melodic base. With some lilting phrases played in the coloratura register and others roughened with a deeper tenor-sax-like pitch, he flies off into the stratosphere, but keeps recapping the original theme to maintain his moorings. Snatches of what could be “Slop” and “Mr. PC” appear fleetingly and then are subsumed into the molten idea flow, the bravura performance includes hocketing leaps from one idea and note cluster to the next. Especially illustrative is that the saxophonist is still soloing as the track fades. This is how Osborne should be remembered.

Born in 1937, Collier is thankfully still alive to be celebrated. And so he should be as with these CDs. Despite their related-to-the-period faults, both his and Osborne’s sets recall the creative ferment in United Kingdom jazz in the late 1960s, early 1970s and preserve hours of notable music that should be savored.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: 1. Blue Walls 2. El Miklos 3. Hirayoshi Suite 4. Conversations 5. Deep Dark Blue Centre Portraits: 7. And Now for Something Completely Different PT. 1 Disc 2 1. And Now for Something Completely Different PT 2. 2. Portraits 1 The Alternate Mosaics: 3. The Alternate Mosaics Part 1 Theme 1 4. The Alternate Mosaics Part 2 Theme 2 5. The Alternate Mosaics Part 3 Theme 6 6. The Alternate Mosaics Part 4 Theme 8

Personnel: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: Harry Beckett or Kenny Wheeler (trumpet and flugelhorn); Mike Gibbs (trombone); Dave Aaron (alto saxophone and flute); Karl Jenkins (baritone saxophone and oboe); Philip Lee (guitar); Graham Collier (bass) and John Marshall (drums) Portraits: Dick Pearce (flugelhorn); Pete Hurt (alto saxophone); Ed Speight (guitar); Geoff Castle (piano); Collier and John Webb (drums) The Alternate Mosaics: Beckett; ); Bob Sydor (alto and tenor saxophones); Alan Wakeman (tenor and soprano saxophones); Castle; Collier and Webb

Track Listing: Night: 1. All night long/Rivers 2. Round Midnight 3. Scotch Pearl 4. Waltz 5. Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio 6. Scotch Pearl 7. Now and Then, Here and Now

Personnel: Night: Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Harry Miller (bass) and

Louis Moholo (drums)

December 23, 2008

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath
Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood

Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn

Cuneiform Rune 262

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent

Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn
Cuneiform Rune 262

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent

Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood

Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood
Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent

Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn

Cuneiform Rune 262

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent
Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood

Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn

Cuneiform Rune 262

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

Sven-Åke Johansson, Moderne Nordeuropäische Dorfmusik

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 - 72
Olof Bright Editions OBCD 14-15

Selwyn Lissack’s Friendship Next of Kin

Facets of the Univers

DMG ARC 702

Operating in the shade of rock music’s hegemony and somewhat overshadowed by American experiments, in the late 1960s-early 1970s European-based improvisers were creating their own answers to the question of how to forge modern music.

As these little-known period CDs led by drummer-conceptual artists demonstrate, these responses could take a multitude of forms. Better known of the leaders is Swede Sven Åke Johansson, a long-time Berlin resident, whose affiliation with the avant-garde ranges from his early participation in saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s bands –including the seminal Machine Gun session – to his position today when he still plays with youngish experimenters like trumpeter Axel Dörner. His art is a sideline.

Facets of the Univers on the other hand is led by Selwyn Lissack, a South African, who subsequently abandoned music to concentrate on his career as a hologram sculptor. Recorded in 1969, the CD, which has been beefed up with a second version of the title track, captures that point when expatriates of all sorts were shaking up the London jazz scene. Most of the rest of the band consists of other former South Africans like trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Harry Miller and Louis Moholo on incidental percussion. The group is filled out by Jamaican Kenneth Terroade on tenor saxophone and flute; Englishman Mike Osborne on alto saxophone; and American Earl Freeman on piano, bass and voice

Although Freeman, who also played with saxophonists Archie Shepp and Noah Howard, is the only Yank on the date, the session seems to take its cue from the extended polyphonic exoticism captured on similar New Thing outings of the time, encompassing ragged, climatic unison heads and expositions – plus a spoken word section.

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 is an altogether different affair. As well as Johansson’s blunt, unremitting percussion work, the 1968 band features bassist Werner Götz, who holds things together rhythmically, and Norbert Eisbrenner, who today is also a painter, but then split his improvising between unvarnished Energy music on alto saxophone and Ur-psychedelic guitar runs. One track from Stockholm in 1970 adds legendary tenor saxophonist Bengt “Frippe” Nordstöm (1936-2000), whose contribution ranges from Aylerian to distracted The three final tracks, recorded in Oslo with cellist Peter Dyck, Eisbrenner and Johansson meander due to the sonic contradictions between the cellist’s sometimes romantically legato style and the guitarist’s style mutation into what could be a prototypical heavy-metal string shredding.

A Cape Town native, Lissack arrived in Britain in the mid-1960s and hooked up with like-minded players from his Apartheid-era homeland and others. Yet on this CD, the undulating lines, contrapuntal reed squeals and pounding percussion on both versions of “Friendship Next of Kin” relate more to similar Shepp or Albert Ayler dates than anything the expatriate Africans or minimalist-oriented Brits were trying,

For a start, playing a Don Cherry-like pocket trumpet, Feza’s triple-tongue slurs and tremolo sluices seem to come from Donald Ayler not the Townships, while both saxophonists’ wiggling snorts and walloping honks fit into the Shepp-John Tchicai mold of the time. Meanwhile Freeman contributes ragged, high-frequency piano chording as an irregularly paced counter line to the main theme. As the two percussionists add redoubled flams and bounces, gospelish call-and-response and layering discord results when Osborne and Terroade add glossolalia. Finally the piece is brought to its head with a tincture of bright growls from the trumpeter and a conclusive piano chord and drum roll.

The second version of “Friendship Next of Kin” is more of the same, except additionally irregularly pitched and recaps the head, which mirrors Ayler’s “Ghosts”. Along the way, Freeman introduces a waterfall of dynamic pianism and Feza plays high-pitched triplets; while the split-tone saxophone solos are harsh and antiphonal. More so than the first cut, Lissack gets to showcase his cymbal reverberations, patterning and rolls on the snares and toms.

Derivative and shackled to its time-frame, Freeman’s poetry on the title track is more an artifact than an avowal. In contrast, the memorable asides are Lissack’s tympani-like resonations, finger-cymbal like slaps and concussions from Moholo, swaying sul tasto lines from Miller and some raspy triplets from Feza. Osborne’s shrill and irregular whine confirms his individual status in this context, while Terroade’s double-tonguing on flute adds more variety to the cut.

Variety wasn’t among the Johansson trio’s concerns on the first CD of his collection. It was 1968 in Berlin, and the drummer’s group was one of the many providing what they heard as a soundtrack to a student and workers revolt. As elsewhere throughout this set, Götz comes across as MVP; his brooding thumps holding the almost-48½-minute piece together as the other two appear to be forging a progenitor to punk-jazz.

Extending the range of his kit as if he was playing electric drums, Johansson’s percussion impulses include clicks, clanks, sprawls, pumps and rolls. Eisbrenner is beginning to utilize phasers and distortion in his guitar solos and if it wasn’t for the bassist’s thick chording, the guitarist could have dragooned performance into Yardbirds territory. Luckily on alto saxophone, his trills and breaths introduce wispy reed-biting and hisses that lock into the Free Jazz tradition and are propelled with some Sunny Murray-like door knocking from the drummer. Although Eisbrenner’s lines are sometimes as abstract and fluttery as Götz’s are solid and conceptual, this adds to the track’s appeal. More than a revolutionary war cry, the reference to “modern Northern European village music” in the title is reified by inference if not intent.

Eventually the musique brut opens up enough so that the bassist can relax his sul tasto beat for fiddle-like runs and to scour and pick additional tinctures from his four strings. His freedom appears to embolden Eisbrenner as a guitarist, and on that instrument his soloing encompasses hard, chromatic frailing plus harsh below the bridge, both mixed with unexpected amp feedback. Summing up, the piece lurches to a finale which features the drummer roused to military style paradiddles and flams and the bassist introducing dramatic Death Metal-like multiphonics while double stopping.

Norway – Death Metal’s birthplace – appears to adversely affect the group four years later on during three tracks taped at an Oslo club. At this point however, Eisbrenner and Johansson are partnered by cellist Dyck. Although some of the cellist’s strident, lower-pitched sawing is reminiscent of Joel Freedman’s work with Ayler, most of the time the instrument’s harmonic history adds an unneeded elegance to the tracks. Additionally – intentionally or not – the guitarist had by then planted himself firmly in the rock camp. He speedily flanges and rappels up and down his strings reveal licks that seem to have wandered in from a country-rock session. While a few passages show off the drummer’s skills weaving slide whistles shrills, press rolls and bell-ringing into Free Jazz rhythms, even banging bluntly on the bass drum can’t seem to reconcile the others’ conceptions.

Furthermore, despite Götz’s presence two years earlier in Stockholm, the 26-minute improvisation there also never quite solidifies. Part of the problem may be that Eisbrenner is beginning to concentrate most fully on a rockier style, with passages sounding as if he has a resonator attached to his f-hole. Additionally, Nordström’s cloning of Ayler – he was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Ayler’s Woody Guthrie – seems in this instance to have slowed down his idea flow. Certain phrases that resemble “Ghosts” or “Vibrations” appear over and over again; some licks are mere phrase extenders or hooting overblowing. At one point Nordström’s meandering cause someone – Eisbrenner perhaps? – to chime in with Swing-to-Bop piano comping behind some of his solos. Later on, someone intones a poem in Swedish, which detracts as completely from the cohesive creation as Freeman’s versifying does on the other CD. At the track’s conclusion, Dyck introduces Jack Benny-style, fiddle-string scratching as the drummer reverberates something that sounds very close to garbage can lids. Overall, it’s the near-elastic resonation from Johansson’s cymbals and scraps on his percussion innards and sides which enliven the piece.

Both Facets of the Univers and Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 are valuable historical documents, although neither quite makes it into the front rank. With a greater range of colors, the Lissack session may have a slight edge, blunted by the recitation and its then-contemporary stance. Johansson’s three sessions attempt more, but also suffer from a too-loose live presentation. Of the three, the 1968 disc has the most to offer musically and sociologically.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Facets: 1. Friendship Next of Kin 2. Facets of the Universe 3. Friendship Next of Kin

Personnel: Facets: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Kenneth Terroade (tenor saxophone and flute); Earl Freeman (piano, bass and voice); Harry Miller (bass); Selwyn Lissack (drums) and Louis Moholo (incidental percussion)

Track Listing: Berlin: CD I: 1. Berlin Symphonie+ CD II 1. New Nordic light I*+ 2. Fernes Donnern mit Donnerblech 3. Kleiner Marsch 4. Ended mit vibrato und wirbel

Personnel: Berlin: Bengt “Frippe” Nordström (tenor saxophone)*; Norbert Eisbrenner (guitar, alto saxophone and voice); Peter Dyck (cello [CD2 tracks 2-4]); Werner Götz bass) + and Sven-Åke Johansson (drums and voice)

May 18, 2008

Selwyn Lissack’s Friendship Next of Kin

Facets of the Univers
DMG ARC 702

Sven-Åke Johansson, Moderne Nordeuropäische Dorfmusik

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 - 72

Olof Bright Editions OBCD 14-15

Operating in the shade of rock music’s hegemony and somewhat overshadowed by American experiments, in the late 1960s-early 1970s European-based improvisers were creating their own answers to the question of how to forge modern music.

As these little-known period CDs led by drummer-conceptual artists demonstrate, these responses could take a multitude of forms. Better known of the leaders is Swede Sven Åke Johansson, a long-time Berlin resident, whose affiliation with the avant-garde ranges from his early participation in saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s bands –including the seminal Machine Gun session – to his position today when he still plays with youngish experimenters like trumpeter Axel Dörner. His art is a sideline.

Facets of the Univers on the other hand is led by Selwyn Lissack, a South African, who subsequently abandoned music to concentrate on his career as a hologram sculptor. Recorded in 1969, the CD, which has been beefed up with a second version of the title track, captures that point when expatriates of all sorts were shaking up the London jazz scene. Most of the rest of the band consists of other former South Africans like trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Harry Miller and Louis Moholo on incidental percussion. The group is filled out by Jamaican Kenneth Terroade on tenor saxophone and flute; Englishman Mike Osborne on alto saxophone; and American Earl Freeman on piano, bass and voice

Although Freeman, who also played with saxophonists Archie Shepp and Noah Howard, is the only Yank on the date, the session seems to take its cue from the extended polyphonic exoticism captured on similar New Thing outings of the time, encompassing ragged, climatic unison heads and expositions – plus a spoken word section.

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 is an altogether different affair. As well as Johansson’s blunt, unremitting percussion work, the 1968 band features bassist Werner Götz, who holds things together rhythmically, and Norbert Eisbrenner, who today is also a painter, but then split his improvising between unvarnished Energy music on alto saxophone and Ur-psychedelic guitar runs. One track from Stockholm in 1970 adds legendary tenor saxophonist Bengt “Frippe” Nordstöm (1936-2000), whose contribution ranges from Aylerian to distracted The three final tracks, recorded in Oslo with cellist Peter Dyck, Eisbrenner and Johansson meander due to the sonic contradictions between the cellist’s sometimes romantically legato style and the guitarist’s style mutation into what could be a prototypical heavy-metal string shredding.

A Cape Town native, Lissack arrived in Britain in the mid-1960s and hooked up with like-minded players from his Apartheid-era homeland and others. Yet on this CD, the undulating lines, contrapuntal reed squeals and pounding percussion on both versions of “Friendship Next of Kin” relate more to similar Shepp or Albert Ayler dates than anything the expatriate Africans or minimalist-oriented Brits were trying,

For a start, playing a Don Cherry-like pocket trumpet, Feza’s triple-tongue slurs and tremolo sluices seem to come from Donald Ayler not the Townships, while both saxophonists’ wiggling snorts and walloping honks fit into the Shepp-John Tchicai mold of the time. Meanwhile Freeman contributes ragged, high-frequency piano chording as an irregularly paced counter line to the main theme. As the two percussionists add redoubled flams and bounces, gospelish call-and-response and layering discord results when Osborne and Terroade add glossolalia. Finally the piece is brought to its head with a tincture of bright growls from the trumpeter and a conclusive piano chord and drum roll.

The second version of “Friendship Next of Kin” is more of the same, except additionally irregularly pitched and recaps the head, which mirrors Ayler’s “Ghosts”. Along the way, Freeman introduces a waterfall of dynamic pianism and Feza plays high-pitched triplets; while the split-tone saxophone solos are harsh and antiphonal. More so than the first cut, Lissack gets to showcase his cymbal reverberations, patterning and rolls on the snares and toms.

Derivative and shackled to its time-frame, Freeman’s poetry on the title track is more an artifact than an avowal. In contrast, the memorable asides are Lissack’s tympani-like resonations, finger-cymbal like slaps and concussions from Moholo, swaying sul tasto lines from Miller and some raspy triplets from Feza. Osborne’s shrill and irregular whine confirms his individual status in this context, while Terroade’s double-tonguing on flute adds more variety to the cut.

Variety wasn’t among the Johansson trio’s concerns on the first CD of his collection. It was 1968 in Berlin, and the drummer’s group was one of the many providing what they heard as a soundtrack to a student and workers revolt. As elsewhere throughout this set, Götz comes across as MVP; his brooding thumps holding the almost-48½-minute piece together as the other two appear to be forging a progenitor to punk-jazz.

Extending the range of his kit as if he was playing electric drums, Johansson’s percussion impulses include clicks, clanks, sprawls, pumps and rolls. Eisbrenner is beginning to utilize phasers and distortion in his guitar solos and if it wasn’t for the bassist’s thick chording, the guitarist could have dragooned performance into Yardbirds territory. Luckily on alto saxophone, his trills and breaths introduce wispy reed-biting and hisses that lock into the Free Jazz tradition and are propelled with some Sunny Murray-like door knocking from the drummer. Although Eisbrenner’s lines are sometimes as abstract and fluttery as Götz’s are solid and conceptual, this adds to the track’s appeal. More than a revolutionary war cry, the reference to “modern Northern European village music” in the title is reified by inference if not intent.

Eventually the musique brut opens up enough so that the bassist can relax his sul tasto beat for fiddle-like runs and to scour and pick additional tinctures from his four strings. His freedom appears to embolden Eisbrenner as a guitarist, and on that instrument his soloing encompasses hard, chromatic frailing plus harsh below the bridge, both mixed with unexpected amp feedback. Summing up, the piece lurches to a finale which features the drummer roused to military style paradiddles and flams and the bassist introducing dramatic Death Metal-like multiphonics while double stopping.

Norway – Death Metal’s birthplace – appears to adversely affect the group four years later on during three tracks taped at an Oslo club. At this point however, Eisbrenner and Johansson are partnered by cellist Dyck. Although some of the cellist’s strident, lower-pitched sawing is reminiscent of Joel Freedman’s work with Ayler, most of the time the instrument’s harmonic history adds an unneeded elegance to the tracks. Additionally – intentionally or not – the guitarist had by then planted himself firmly in the rock camp. He speedily flanges and rappels up and down his strings reveal licks that seem to have wandered in from a country-rock session. While a few passages show off the drummer’s skills weaving slide whistles shrills, press rolls and bell-ringing into Free Jazz rhythms, even banging bluntly on the bass drum can’t seem to reconcile the others’ conceptions.

Furthermore, despite Götz’s presence two years earlier in Stockholm, the 26-minute improvisation there also never quite solidifies. Part of the problem may be that Eisbrenner is beginning to concentrate most fully on a rockier style, with passages sounding as if he has a resonator attached to his f-hole. Additionally, Nordström’s cloning of Ayler – he was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Ayler’s Woody Guthrie – seems in this instance to have slowed down his idea flow. Certain phrases that resemble “Ghosts” or “Vibrations” appear over and over again; some licks are mere phrase extenders or hooting overblowing. At one point Nordström’s meandering cause someone – Eisbrenner perhaps? – to chime in with Swing-to-Bop piano comping behind some of his solos. Later on, someone intones a poem in Swedish, which detracts as completely from the cohesive creation as Freeman’s versifying does on the other CD. At the track’s conclusion, Dyck introduces Jack Benny-style, fiddle-string scratching as the drummer reverberates something that sounds very close to garbage can lids. Overall, it’s the near-elastic resonation from Johansson’s cymbals and scraps on his percussion innards and sides which enliven the piece.

Both Facets of the Univers and Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 are valuable historical documents, although neither quite makes it into the front rank. With a greater range of colors, the Lissack session may have a slight edge, blunted by the recitation and its then-contemporary stance. Johansson’s three sessions attempt more, but also suffer from a too-loose live presentation. Of the three, the 1968 disc has the most to offer musically and sociologically.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Facets: 1. Friendship Next of Kin 2. Facets of the Universe 3. Friendship Next of Kin

Personnel: Facets: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Kenneth Terroade (tenor saxophone and flute); Earl Freeman (piano, bass and voice); Harry Miller (bass); Selwyn Lissack (drums) and Louis Moholo (incidental percussion)

Track Listing: Berlin: CD I: 1. Berlin Symphonie+ CD II 1. New Nordic light I*+ 2. Fernes Donnern mit Donnerblech 3. Kleiner Marsch 4. Ended mit vibrato und wirbel

Personnel: Berlin: Bengt “Frippe” Nordstöm (tenor saxophone)*; Norbert Eisbrenner (guitar, alto saxophone and voice); Peter Dyck (cello [CD2 tracks 2-4]); Werner Götz bass) + and Sven-Åke Johansson (drums and voice)

May 18, 2008

Peter Brötzmann

Alarm
Atavistic ALP257CD

Brötzmann/Mangelsdorff/Sommer
Pica Pica
Atavistic ALP258CD

Two more valuable CD reissues of Wuppertal, Germany-based saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s work for FMP in the 1980s once again show his versatility. One disk offers proof positive that the hard-driving reedist can easily hold up his side in an all-star trio configuration, while the other shows how he helps spark aural fireworks in a nonet situation.

Ironically the aptly-named Alarm almost ended up being more than a fanciful “blast from the past”. This Hamburg radio gig with a multi-national cast of nine Free Jazzers had to be interrupted after the 40 odd minutes captured on the disc were recorded because a phoned-in bomb threat meant that the audience, technicians and musicians had to quickly evacuate the hall.

Lacking the extra-musical drama of the other date, Pica Pica is just as incendiary, with Brötzmann playing tenor, baritone and alto saxophones and tarogato as one part of a little-recorded trio. His front-line partner is veteran trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, then in the most experimental phase of his long career, but the real surprise is the presence of Günter “Baby” Sommer on traps set and horn. Like Han Bennink of the Netherlands –

Brotz’s usual percussion partner – Sommer is an all-around drum master. Unlike Bennink, he resides in East Berlin, on the other side of the then-existing wall, so he was just starting to interact with non-East Block players.

You couldn’t tell that from this session. Sommer’s tambourine shuddering cymbal raps, intense cross sticking and triplet flams and rattles add heaving tension to the tunes, which take on new dimensions when he releases the beat. As the trombonist and reedist bluster away on two long improvisations and the short title track, Sommer contributes blunt polyrhythms, using sticks, brushes, palms and fists to provide vivid brush strokes of aural color. The jokey and jittery “Pica, Pica” makes the greatest use of the drummer’s faux parade-drill timing. But his harsh ruffs and bulldozer-like press rolls are in evidence throughout.

Rotating among his horns like a mini-reed section Brötzmann spins from steady air raid siren glossolalia on alto to inchoate, near bagpipe-like timbres on tarogato and slurry and smeary reed undulations on baritone. His characteristic stratospheric glottal punctuation is often evident, as are his mouse-squeaking altissimo tones. Once, when he seems to be soloing on two different horns, it becomes apparent that the secondary timbres are from Sommer’s horn.

Articulating chromatic grace notes and whinnying plunger tones, Mangelsdorff’s triple-tongued slurs make common cause with the saxophonist’s staccato phrasing. Often accompanying as well as soloing, his pedal-point lilt sneaks in a common Bop riff at the end of “Wie Du Mir, So Ich Dir Noch Lange Nicht” to keep the proceedings on track as the piece downshifts to muted harmony.

Triple the brass, reed and rhythm on Pica Pica, and you approximate the cacophonous polyphony that arises during Alarm’s extended title track. Surprise at this explosion is a moot – but definitely not a mute – point when you consider the other players. The rhythm section is made up of German Free Jazz big band leader Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano plus two European-domiciled South African expatriates, bassist Harry Miller and drummer Louis Moholo. Brass was Japanese trumpeter Toshinori Kondo – who would reunite with Brötz for the Die Like A Dog band in the 1990s – and two trombonists: modern gutbucket stylist, East German Johannes Bauer, and British trombonist Alan Tomlinson, who was also a member of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Joining Brötzmann on reeds is Willem Breuker from the Netherlands, then (1981) closer to his Free Jazz roots than his later composerly stance; plus American tenor saxophonist Frank Wright, a first generation New Thinger then part of the burgeoning Yank jazzmen-in-Europe-Diaspora.

Driven by the dense and unyielding rhythm section – that in Miller’s case also encompasses shuffle-bowing tremolo and stretched sul ponticello jetes – the massed band exposes the robust theme, variations of which are utilized by the horn section as linking motifs that connect the solos. And what solos they are.

Von Schlippenbach is at his most manic, turning high-intensity pummeling into a metronomic fantasia of exaggerated note clusters and patterns. Kondo contributes half-valve squeezes and brassy slurs, while the stop-time dual trombone theatrics include guttural, spittle-encrusted blasts and metal-scraping concussive expansion.

Not that the reedists are outdone. Except for an off-kilter, a capella raggedy march – is it a mess call or a mail call? – the majority of the saxophone timbres undulate almost physically. Parlando and flutter tonguing, each of three saxmen at times gets involved in double counterpoint with an individual brass player until hyper-fast piano motifs push the tune forward. Slip-sliding, roller-coaster-like coils and twists are expressed by both horn families, as are snorting, basement-level expositions and shrill altissimo timbres. Eventually the high-level pan-tonality gives way to conclusive slurs.

While it’s difficult to isolate individual soloist, there’s no doubt that it’s Wright who sings the jivey lyrics to his own brief “Jerry Sacem”. A rhythmic blues, the undemanding melody and Moholo’s backbeat easily speed the audience outside the studio without anyone being panicked about the purported bomb threat.

Luckily this part of the concert was preserved. It, along with the other CD fills in some gaps in European Free Jazz history. But both are exhilarating listening as well.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alarm: 1. Alarm Part 1 2. Alarm Part 2 3. Jerry Sacem

Personnel: Alarm: Toshinori Kondo (trumpet); Johannes Bauer and Alan Tomlinson (trombones); Willem Breuker (alto and tenor saxophones); Peter Brötzmann (tenor and alto saxophone); Frank Wright (tenor saxophone); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

Track Listing: Pica: 1. Instant Tears 2. Wie Du Mir, So Ich Dir Noch Lange Nicht 3. Pica, Pica

Personnel: Pica: Albert Mangelsdorff (trombones); Peter Brötzmann (tenor, baritone and alto saxophones and tarogato) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums and horn)

November 14, 2006

HARRY MILLER’S ISIPINGO

Which Way Now
Cuneiform Records Rune 233

By Ken Waxman

Free Bop with a touch with kwela is probably the best way to describe this CD of never-before-released tracks from bassist Harry Miller’s 1975 Isipingo sextet. But this high quality session consisting of four of Miller’s compositions is more than that. It adds another document to the underrepresented story of South African/British improv.

Starting in the 1960s, usually fed up or fleeing apartheid, a variety of South African musicians abandoned their homeland and set up shop in the United Kingdom. Soon they interacted with some of the more advanced British players to develop a variant of Hard Bop mixed with transformed homeland melodies and touches of Free Jazz. Most – including trumpeter Mongezi Feza and drummer Louis Moholo featured here – were graduates of Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes combo.

Leader Harry Miller (1941-1983) however, arrived on his own in 1961 and quickly hooked up with British players. This band was named after a vacation spot in Miller homeland, and is the only recording featuring the band with Feza, who died shortly afterwards. Miller’s life too was cut short. He was killed in an auto accident in the Netherlands, having moved there in the late 1970s to maintain his playing situations with questing Continental improvisers like Dutch pianist Leo Cuypers and German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

Although the recording is a little rough – both the trumpeter and Osborne start solos off mic during one track, WHICH WAY NOW is valuable in capturing the band at the height of its power. In the intervening years since, Tippett has occupied himself with most experimental bands like Mujician; Moholo has returned to South Africa; Evans gigs occasionally, though is mostly employed as a math teacher; while personal problems caused Osborne to abandon music in the early 1980s.

There are few hints of an erratic course in his soloing here, which ranges from wispy, bucolic obliggatos to sharp tempered steel-like asides. At this point he seems to be modulating his attack from one initially informed by Jackie McLean Hard Bop toughness to a more dissonant approach with definite echoes of Eric Dolphy. On the title track, which sounds both Free and Basie-ish, he switches among standard R&B style riffs, reverberating Dolphyesque side-slipping and a series of quotes that reference operatic airs as much as jazz. Meanwhile Feza contributes blustery grace notes, Evans speedy boppish runs, and Tippett mainstream comping. Miller’s walking bass line decelerates to a hesitant, half-speed for the finale as the brass dissolve into a buzzing valve showpiece.

Before that, Moholo shows off ratcheting flams and bull’s eye cymbal vibrations and Miller modernized slap bass, as the altoist’s Dolphy-out-of-(Charlie) Parker irregularly vibrated lines and foghorn honks overblow in false registers. Faced with this, the pianist’s key sweeping seems almost like a series of etudes before it hardens into a steady flow of dynamic notes from one side of the piano to another.

Earlier still in the program, Osborne splits the melody into adjacent tones in his solo, following blowsy, double-tongued power shouts and chromatic near-tailgate bluster from Evans. The trombonist’s notes almost seem to be playing call-and-response with themselves. Feza is just as impressive, beginning with a heraldic flourish at the top of his range and concluding with deeply buried grace notes liberated from the recesses of his bell.

“Children at Play” is the defining track, a slinky groove fest that hurtles by so quickly that you hardly notice its more than 20½-minute length. What could be standard Bop changes and variations are reconstituted by the six. Osborne tempers his Jackie Mac-attack with a more sophisticated Free Bop flair; Evans blasts smeary cross tones northward almost into flute territory and Moholo underlines everything with hard, blunt slaps. Tippett’s backing mixes the solid pianism of Hard Boppers like Cedar Walton with the sliding modalism of a McCoy Tyner. Finally Miller’s double-stopping ringing timbres recaps the theme and concludes the piece.

Despite the sometimes informal – at times slapdash – mic placement and head arrangements, WHICH WAY NOW is musically as well as historically important. It also proves that at that junction Miller certainly knew the way.

Unfortunately for him, after 1983 there would be no longer be a “now”.

Track Listing: 1. Family Affair 2. Children at Play 3. Eli’s Song 4. Which Way Now

Personnel: Mongezi Feza (trumpet); Nick Evans (trombone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo (drums)

August 21, 2006

Louis Moholo-Moholo

Bra Louis-Bra Bra-Tebs/Spirits Rejoice
Ogun CD017/018

Sole survivor of the legendary Blue Notes band that left Apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1960s, drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo finally returned permanently to Cape Town in 2004. But during the three decades that he and his fellow exiled countrymen lived in Europe they added an undiluted tincture of African sensibility to the developing Free Music scene.

This CD assembles two important large group sessions. Spirits Rejoice, released on LP in 1978, is an octet date, which finds the drummer and two other expatriate South Africans – bassist Johnny Dyani, another former Blue Note, and bassist Harry Miller, who left the country on his own – working out with the ne plus ultra of BritImprov including trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, tenor saxophonist Evan Parker and pianist Keith Tippett. Elaborated are five longish pieces that mix Xhosa tribe rhythmic inflections, revivalist hymns and freeform Energy Music.

Recorded in 1995 after Moholo-Moholo finally toured a post-Apartheid South Africa with his own group, the previously unreleased Bra Louis-Bra Bra-Tebs, with its definite beat, leans more towards World music,. The most obvious difference between it and he other CD is the vocals of Martinique’s Francine Luce that are an odd admixture of jazz-pop, roots music and improv vocalese. The cast of instrumentalists is completely different as well. However the main soloists are those who made the South African trek in the drummer’s band: British-raised, Netherlands-based tenor saxophonist Toby Delius; younger Johannesburg-born, London-based pianist Pule Pheto, who has worked with bassist Barry Guy and works as a producer for soul singers; and Caribbean-born alto and soprano saxophonist Jason Yarde, who also played with South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

Stretched out over 12 tracks in contrast to Spirits Rejoice’s five, the Freebop pacing and unique South African lilt that ricochets between tribal chants and Methodist hymns usually takes second place to Luce’s vocalizing. What that means is the backing is often locked into a pop-R&B vamp, built on muted passing tones from trumpeter Claude Deppa, slurred fills from Yarde’s soprano, unison piano comping and repetitive beat undulations from bassist Roberto Bellatalla and the drummer.

Throughout, Luce puts on as many vocal guises as a verbal quick change artist. On the traditional “Utshaka”, she comes across as a balladic Abbey Lincoln, backed by muted trumpet and irregular tenor honks. Another traditional piece “Hayi Umntu Endinguye”, finds her wordless vocalization moving from near country and western cadences to become anthem-like stolid. It also features with contrasting dynamics from the piano, as Yarde adds contrapuntal peeps and ends his solo with what sounds like “Taps”.

Written by the bassist, “Maybe Of Cause” takes in both scat and improv jazz as the high-pitched trumpet and contrapuntal horn lines appear to embolden Luce to channel Annie Ross at the beginning and Maggie Nicols at the denouncement. Finally, “Motherless Child”, gets a treatment reminiscent of American Black Nationalist chants of the 1970s. Built on a rock-like vamp and staccato piano fills, Luce dramatizes the words before lapsing into Leon Thomas-like glossolalia.

Elsewhere, while Delius gets some space for abrasive multiphonics and sibilant intonation, and Deppa takes a high-pitched slurry grace note laden solo, overall the instrumental marrow seems secondary to the vocal perimeter. Although the session passes pleasingly with a relentless rhythmic impetus it doesn’t approach Spirits Rejoice.

Freed from a vocalist’s demands, the session appears more rhythmically and polyphonically sophisticated. Additionally the soloists – who admittedly are given more space than on Bra Louis-Bra Bra-Tebs – ratchet the output up a few notches. Especially notable is Parker, who is fully in a freebop mode with flutter-tongue guttural smears, and Tippett, who on “Wedding Hymn” manages to pump out lush, two-handed kinetic notes with the strength of a Herbie Nichols. Driven by cross beats and flams from the drummer, it makes you wonder if this riffing Freebop is really what a nuptial melody is like among the Xhosa.

Alive with contrapuntal call-and-response from the horns, the tunes let the four-piece rhythm section go its own way, keeping things rhythmically exciting with repeated dance-like motifs. “You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cos You Think You Know Me”, written by trumpeter Mongezi Feza, another former Blue Note, rocks with gospel-like choruses and lilting contrapuntal themes. Not only is there metronomic cross patterning from the pianist, but one of the trombonists – either Nick Evans or Radu Malfatti – lets loose with a sequence of buzzy plunger tones midway between Kid Ory and your local Salvation Army band.

Musical ingenuity also makes “Amaxesha Osizi (Times of Sorrow)” less of a plait than a multi-layered exposition that in its 11 minutes uses alternative dynamics to suggest both a liturgical and a martial work. As the unison horns move the tonal centre with legato harmonies, the alternating horn lines follow a warm, side-slipping solo from Wheeler that adds emotional resonance to the performance.

Although both discs are prime examples of Moholo-Moholo’s art, it would seem that in these cases the acidity of exile produced more profound sounds than the congeniality of homecoming.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Bra: 1. Sonke 2. Lakutshona Ilanga/Ntyilo-Ntyilo 3 Unisone 4. B My Dear 5. Maybe of Cause 6.Utshaka 7 Moegoe 8. Motherless Child 9. Yes Please 10. Hayi Umntu Endinguye 11. Yes Baby, No Baby 12 Ntyilo-Ntyilo

Personnel: Bra: (trumpet); Jason Yarde (alto and soprano saxophones); Toby Delius (tenor saxophone); Pule Pheto (piano); Roberto Bellatalla (bass); Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums); Francine Luce (voice)

Track Listing: Spirits: 1. Khany Apho Ukhona (Shine Wherever You Are 2. You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cos You Think You Know Me 3. Ithi Gqi (Appear) 4. Wedding Hymn 5. Amaxesha Osizi (Times of Sorrow)

Personnel: Spirits: Kenny Wheeler (trumpet); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti (trombones); Evan Parker (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Johnny Dyani and Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums)

August 4, 2006

Calling Signals

Dreams in Dreams
FMRCD177-i0805

Calling Signals
Calling Signals
Loose Torque LT 004

Band names are a convenience, usually created when players don’t want to call a group so-and-so’s quartet. Yet the designation can also be deceptive if the make-up of a group changes substantially without altering the name.

So it is with these CDs by two ensembles called Calling Signals. The quartet was initially put together following an all-day memorial concert for British drummer John Stevens by British bassist Nick Stephens and Norwegian reedist Frode Gjerstad, who had both played extensively with Stevens. The self-titled CD is a 1996 edition of the group with its founders joined by South African drummer Louis Moholo of Blue Notes fame and Dane Hasse Poulsen on guitars and effects, best-known for his association with French reedist Louis Sclavis.

Dreams in Dreams on the other hand, recorded almost 19 year later, adds two Norwegian musicians with different histories to the Stephens-Gjerstad duo. Accordionist Eivin One Pedersen, usually a pianist, was the original third member of Detail with Gjerstad and Stevens in 1981. Today he mostly composes for theatre and films and plays more mainstream jazz gigs. Paal Nilssen-Love, who began recording with Gjerstad in 1992, before he was 18 years old, has since gone on to be one of improv’s most in-demand percussionists, working with everyone from American multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee to the Scandinavian band Atomic.

Both CDs are notable, with the shorter Dreams in Dreams more so, perhaps due to the sonic familiarity expressed by the Stephens-Gjerstad-Nilssen Love coupling and the unusual textures from Pedersen’s squeeze box.

One of the most notable aspects of the first CD is how restrained – almost John Stevens-like – Moholo is in his accompaniment. The pitter-pattering cross shots and barely-there ruffs and flams relate only vaguely to the backbeat the drummer often used to power large ensembles like Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

Particular as well, if sometimes a bit inchoate, is Poulsen’s work. Fascinating when he uses rasgueado strums and flat picking to reach those areas beneath the bridge or, as on “Unanticipated Turns” outputs jangling timbres that sound as if he has loosened his strings, other strokes don’t offer the same allure. Distant reverb or scene-setting frails often fail to coalesce with the others’ sounds. In contrast, there’s a passage on “The Breeze and Us” where the polyrhythmic concordance suggests Moholo is playing a darbuka and Poulsen a kalimba.

Wedded more solidly towards Saturn than the savannah, Gjerstad’s skittering lines soar, slur and sideslip far from ethnic replication. “Dots and Dashes” may be the title which most accurately reflects his program. Using tongue stops and pitch vibrato, he coils and trills his way diagonally across flat-lined, single-string guitar licks and hand patting drumming. Meanwhile Stephens holds the beat with repeated plucks.

Sul tasto and sul ponticello coloring shares space with steady walking throughout, as the bassist alternates his role as a soloist of delicate dexterity with rhythm section mate for Moholo’s spare bounces and ride cymbal hacks. With the guitarist, there’s a dramatic passage on the almost 20-minute “Crossing the Bar” where Stephens’ spiccato pulse and double stops merge with Poulsen’s electonica-tinged reverb, as the saxophonist’s collection of lip trills and side-slipping obbligatos move to a climax.

Fewer emphasized climaxes and more moderato interchange is evident on Dreams in Dreams. Perhaps it’s the shifting sfmuto of color available from Pedersen’s accordion rather than a guitar, or the fact that the reedist concentrates on clarinets.

Interestingly enough, Nilssen-Love, who often works in bombastic punk-jazz contexts, here habitually moderates his expression to drum top pitter-patter and cross-handed cymbal expansion. There are points, in fact, where the layering becomes downright impressionistic.

Perhaps in response to the polyphonic curves vibrating from the accordion, the bassist’s contribution also becomes more horizontally ornamental– at least in contrast to his work on the earlier CD. That doesn’t mean however that regular walking bass lines and double stopping drones aren’t available from his four-strings. On “Dreams in Dreams”, for example, each note is patiently sounded until the result is a reverberating line that can stand up on its own – as the accordion tones shiver and cymbals quiver behind him.

On clarinet, Gjerstad doesn’t mute his timbre exploration either, sometimes playing faster and higher-pitched than the andante proceedings. Disconnected tongue-stopping slurs with jagged pitch oscillations are still on show, though frequently this meets a wash of solid, low frequency arpeggios from Pedersen that color the proceedings.

Recently the Norwegian keyboardist has started playing dates with his local group and you can hear him becoming more comfortable with rubato improv as the session proceeds. The penultimate track captures contrapuntal quivering timbres from Pedersen’s squeeze box engaging in call-and-response vamps with Stephens’ thumping bass lines. “Dreams in Dreams in Dreams”, the final – and longest track – appears to feature no clarinet, but Pedersen’s squeeze box as the lead voice, with bass and drum accompaniment. Using sliding octaves, studied repetition and high-intensity multi- voicing, he organically builds up to flourishes and cadences that suggest both jazz and European dance music.

Satisfying in exposing a Scandinavian stylist who should be more widely heard and with top-notch work from the other quartet members Dreams in Dreams is a keeper. Slightly less memorable is Calling Signals, although the CD adds a historical perspective to the featured musicians’ work.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Calling: 1. Fjord Deep, Mountain High 2. Threeways Meet 3. Crossing the Bar 4. Dots and Dashes 5. The Last Three Notes 6. Drum’n’Bass 7. Unanticipated Turns 8. The Breeze and Us

Personnel: Calling: Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone); Hasse Poulsen (guitars and effects); Nick Stephens (bass); Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Dreams: 1. Dreams 2. Dreams in 3. Dreams in Dreams 4. Dreams in Dreams in 5. Dreams in Dreams in Dreams

Personnel: Dreams: Frode Gjerstad (Eb and Bb clarinets); Eivin One Pedersen (accordion); Nick Stephens (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums and percussion)

July 7, 2006

LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA

Responses, Reproduction & Reality
EMANEM 4110

Outgrowth of a Butch Morris-led conduction that took place in London a few years ago, the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) has evolved into a once-a-month gig where some of the British capital’s best improvisers get together to try out new ideas.

Involving a revolving cast of 30-plus players as well as different conductors and composers, the LIO has taken on an identity far beyond that of a BritImprov kicks band. However as these seven tracks, recorded at 2003’s and 2004’s Freedom of the City festivals demonstrate, the outcome is still inconsistent.

Corralling three dozen top players into a somewhat regimented atmosphere to play exacting compositions as well as improvisations can be a struggle – ask pioneers like Alexander von Schlippenbach or Carla Bley who did so in the past. So while six conducted-compositions and a free improvisation are featured here, in truth the pieces that are most notable are those which revolve around a strong soloist or soloists rather than rigid, non-developmental leitmotifs. This concept may be anathema to the collectivist impulse that has traditionally characterized BritImprov, but larger groups call for different strategies.

“Ism”, for example, conducted by electronic manipulator Pat Thomas, could almost be Free Jazz. Here the creative shape revolves around tenor saxophonist John Butcher’s winnowing slurs and smears plus trombonist Alan Tomlinson’s pedal-point plunger blasts and snorts, rather than the agitato overtones from the massed instruments around them. Including hyper-kinetic piano cadences at the finale, polyphonic string crescendos as well as triple counterpoint from the drums, the orchestra’s most important function is as a framing device.

“Wit’s End,” conducted by Dave Tucker – which in many ways begins as a concerto for Paul Rutherford’s trombone – develops in a similar fashion. Moving among harsh vamps from the horns and percussion, the trombonist shuffles and smears his timbres, later vocalizing to match the oscillations from B. J. Cole’s pedal steel guitar. Other influences surface as the almost-12½-minute composition develops, most noticeably the avant spin Orphy Robinson gives the traditional steel pan and the wave forms bouncing from interference to accompaniment from Adam Bohman’s so-called amplified objects. More conventionally, the LIO here includes legato orchestral string parts that only touch on dissonance and some call-and-response riffs from soprano saxophonist Tom Chant and trumpeter Roland Ramanan.

By replicating writ large the gullet gymnastics of guest vocalist Jaap Blonk, from the Netherlands, “Hearing Reproduction 5 – conducted by Caroline Kraabel – impresses as well. Spiccato string stops, hocketing irregular horn lines, aviary squeaks from the flutes and blacksmith-like thumps from the percussionists match if not mirror the retching, growling, barking and throat gurgles that characterize Blonk’s sound.

Elsewhere, compositions designed to showcase the smallest fraction of a musical idea in one case or elongate a non-linear, so-called script of timbres rather than thematic development really only come alive when the strictures are ignored. Developing almost rococo detailing of various orchestral tones after the swaying, slapping and scraping of plunger trombone and shivering electronics helps one. Pizzicato violin strums, low-frequency tremolo patterns from both pianists and a crescendo of pitch-sliding semitones from the brass liven things up for the other. But until a fade, most LIOers appear to be patterning rather than playing.

These and other tunes capture some fine playing, but singularly, rather than as part of a larger grouping. Hunting horn–like harmonies from the trombones, reverb from two guitarists and portamento chording from dual pianos were no doubt exciting to play and convincingly exciting for the live audience. But minus visuals some of the sounds come across as a cross between polytonal advancement from dedicated free players and a parody of a symphony orchestra at rehearsal.

A valuable listen for those curious about how analytical musicians labor to solve the conundrum of multi-person improvisation RESPONSES, REPRODUCTION & REALITY offers practical evidence of what does and doesn’t work.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Wit’s End 2. Improvisation Panels (1) 3. Hearing Reproduction 5* 4. Proceeding 6 5. Responses 6. Ism 7. Fantasy and Reality

Personnel: [tracks 1 & 7]: Harry Becket and Roland Ramanan (trumpets);

Robert Jarvis and Paul Rutherford (trombones); Neil Metcalfe (flute); Catherine Pluygers (oboe); Terry Day (bamboo pipes); John Rangecroft (clarinet); Jacques Foschia and Harrison Smith (bass clarinets); Tom Chant, Lol Coxhill and Adrian Northover (soprano saxophones); Caroline Kraabel (alto saxophone); Evan Parker (tenor saxophone); Susanna Ferrar, Sylvia Hallett and Phil Wachsmann (violins); Charlotte Hug (viola); Marcio Mattos (cello); B. J. Cole (pedal steel guitar); Dave Tucker (guitar); David Leahy, John Edwards and Simon H. Fell (basses); Tony Marsh and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums); Orphy Robinson (steel pan); Adam Bohman (amplified objects) [tracks 2 - 6]: Harry Becket, Ian Smith and Roland Ramanan (trumpets); Robert Jarvis and Alan Tomlinson (trombones); John Rangecroft (clarinet); Jacques Foschia and Harrison Smith (bass clarinets); Tom Chant, Lol Coxhill and Adrian Northover (soprano saxophones); Caroline Kraabel (alto saxophone); John Butcher (tenor saxophone); Susanna Ferrar, Sylvia Hallett and Phil Wachsmann (violins); Charlotte Hug (viola); Marcio Mattos (cello); Dave Tucker and Keith Rowe (guitars); Steve Beresford and Veryan Weston (pianos); David Leahy, John Edwards and Simon H. Fell (basses); Tony Marsh, Mark Sanders and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums); Pat Thomas (electronics); Jaap Blonk (voice)*

September 26, 2005

Mike Osborne Trio & Quintet

Border crossing & Marcel’s Muse
Ogun

Joe Harriott Quintet
Swings High
Cadillac

By Ken Waxman
January 17, 2005

All during the 1960s and 1970s, a group of forward-thinking British improvisers was working on different strategies to move their music past what was then considered modern jazz. Some, like guitarist Derek Bailey and saxophonist Evan Parker, emphasized their distance from jazz to create irregularly pulsed so-called Free Improvisation.

Others, who didn’t want as radical a break from the tradition, evolved a free bop style that put the advances of American innovators like Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane into a rapidly paced framework. Years later, the advances of non-representational practitioners like Parker are better remembered than the experiments of the modifiers. Of course it helps that many of the free musicians -- and their Continental colleagues -- are still alive and playing impressively today.

Two of the modifiers aren’t as lucky, but as these two reissued CDs demonstrate, the others’ less radical solution was valid as well.

Jamaican-born, London-based alto saxophonists Joe Harriott (1928-1972) had in the mid-1960s created his own adaptation of freeform music analogous to Coleman’s advances. In reality a more conventional player than Coleman -- his Yank parallel would probably be Eric Dolphy -- 1967’s Swings High was his final quintet disc and is closer to Horace Silver’s style than Coleman’s. Among his sidemen is the clangorous Phil Seamen (1926-1972), who ProgRockers may know as the second drummer in Ginger Baker’s gigantic Airforce, but who was in reality one of the United Kingdom’s most accomplished boppers.

Border Crossing & Marcel’s Muse is another matter. A doubling up of two LPs by alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, most of the tracks feature the saxman playing in wildly inventive form, helped immeasurably by the supple bass work of South African-born Harry Miller (1941-1983), who died in an auto accident. Unfortunately Osborne, whose bone fides included membership in advanced big bands led by Chris McGregor, Mike Westbrook and Mike Gibbs as well as leadership of combos with other not-quite Free Music saxists like John Surman and Alan Skidmore, never reached his full potential. Mental illness forced him to retire from playing in the early 1980s.

That was in the future, when the first seven tunes of the reissue, which made up the original Border Crossing LP, were cut in 1974. With a knife-sharp tone and a speed that allowed him to dart from theme to theme and pile on the sounds without repeating himself or tiring, Osborne is in top form. Even when he tries on slightly slower tempos, it’s as if he’s a pacing jaguar, biding his time to pounce on the notes.

Throughout, he’s aided not only by the unfussy bass work of Miller, who was also comfortable backing other ferocious saxists like Peter Brötzmann and Dudu Pukwana, but also by the determined drumming of Louis Moholo. Moholo, another South African, has been at the forefront of advanced British jazz from his membership in the Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath around when the Osborne date was cut, all the way up to recent gigs with Parker and pianist Keith Tippett.

Back to Osborne. By the early 1970s, the saxist had soldered his initial Jackie McLean influence with an acceptance of Coleman’s offbeat polytonality. That meant that while his solos were still as fiery as McLean’s, his note placement and solo construction took elements from iconoclastic Coleman all the way up to the Dancing In Your Head LP. If you listen closely, in fact, you can hear an approximation of a quote from that tune at the end of “1st”.

That tune also shows Osborne trying to play something at ballad tempo, backed by Moholo’s subtle bell shaking and Miller’s spiccato bass lines, but the saxman reverts to racetrack tempo within 90 seconds. Using exposed bone-like split tones and extended squeaks in his solo, Osborne’s fervor is then abated by Miller’s double stopping and strummed patterns. Like Charlie Haden or David Izenzon with Coleman, the bassist is the perfect foil for the saxist.

Self-effacing, Miller demonstrates aplomb on his own “Awakening Spirit” which could be a show tune, but one played at double speed and featuring bull’s eye punctuation from Moholo’s snare shots. Osborne loved repeating notes and phrases at a furious pace, but at the same time on tunes like this one he never lost sight of the melody.

“Animation”, “Riff” and “Border Crossing” that initially made up the LP’s second side, make an almost continuous single tune. Initially the saxist plays licks that are immediately echoed by the bassist, then his flutter-tongued dissonance opens up into honks and altissimo overblowing. Blasting variations on variations and overtones upon overtones in dog-whistle mode, he creates a molten flow of nearly endless overblown grace notes and slurred split tones. In counterpoint, Miller slithers up and down his strings and Moholo hits precise single tones. Before the fade, it appears that Osborne is quoting Mingus’ “Boogie Stop Shuffle”. The result is exhilaration all around.

Unfortunately, Marcel’s Muse doesn’t reach this height. Recorded thee years later, when jazz was in one of its periodic troughs of unpopularity, Miller and Osborne are joined by a new cast of characters: Mark Charig on trumpet, Jeff Green on guitar and Peter Nykyruj on drums.

No Moholo, Nykyruj does his best, but his beat is rather stolid throughout. Charig, whose first name is usually spelled as ending with a “c”, was in the Brotherhood of Breath as well as the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. But here his half-valve playing seems to meander towards fusion and more conventional jazz. There’s even a point on Osborne’s “Where’s Freddy” where his lip-busting triplet playing makes him sound like a modern Roy Eldridge. Meanwhile, as Osborne hits overtones, Green crams run after run into the tune and appropriating almost all the backing space.

Prettiness plus glib textures predominate more here than on the earlier disc, with the guitarist in full Kenny Burrell mode and the drummer particularly enamored of rhythmic intrusions. Nykyruj does add exotic timbres behind a col legno solo of Miller’s at one point though.

Still, with Sonny Rollins-like descending lines added to his smacks, smears and slurs, Osborne soldiers on, letting loose with glottal-punctuation and irregularly vibrated tones every so often. A cappella, he brings the ballad “I Wished I Knew” -- and the CD -- to a close with a floating cadenza of passionate pulses, yet the trumpeter and guitarist have to step in afterwards to add the proverbial cherries on top of the perfectly baked cake that is his statement.

This isn’t second-rate music. It’s just not up to the high standard set by the Osborne trio on its half of the disc.

It also has good sound, which is something that sadly can’t be said about Swings High. With a boxy tone that suggests it was recorded in Doug Dobble’s famous London jazz shop rather than merely financed by the shopkeeper, the short (38 minute) CD finds Harriott and company revisiting a hard bop style perfected a dozen years before the 1967 date.

Harriott had been acclaimed for outside discs like Abstract and Free Form at the beginning of the decade, plus a series of Indo-Jazz fusion discs with violinist John Mayer a couple of years earlier. Yet here he functions like a Charlie Parker clone, except on the ballads when a Paul Despond [!] influence surfaces.

Veteran bassist Coleridge Goode, who was on the session, has said that throughout he was worried about Seamen’s deteriorating health and wondered if the drummer could get through the date. He did, but the collection of Art Balky-influenced press rolls and Buddy Rich-like bass drum swagger he plays resembles the floundering of neo-con imitators of the 1990s, not someone who had been a bopper from the beginning.

Like Charig on the second Osborne session, but recording a decade earlier, trumpeter Stu Hamer’s half-valve effects often dissolve into prettiness. Pianist Pat Smythe is fighting a substandard instrument. Comping like a facile Red Garland on most tracks, playing rollicking night-club blues on another and displaying repeating single notes like Count Basie on “Strollin’ South” doesn’t help matters either. One time as well, the recording sonics are so limited that it sounds as if he’s playing vibes. A solid walker, Goode himself is from an earlier tradition, a connection he proves on “Blues in C”, where he hums and bows a solo à la Slam Stewart in a Swing Era combo.

While traces of Harriott’ combative ferociousness occasionally come through on the quicker tempos, considering the majority of solos are confined to short breaks or trading fours and eights, even he can’t escape the bop straightjacket.

Harriot completists may be more enthused by the disc which has been out-of-print for many years. But other CDs give a better idea of his talent.

However, because of those first seven dynamite tracks, Border Crossing & Marcel’s Muse is a must for anyone introduced in the evolution of British music or just first-class jazz.

January 17, 2005

CHRIS MCGREGOR’S BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH

Bremen To Bridgwater
Cuneiform Records Rune 182/183

Count Basie of the Townships could have been the late South African pianist Chris McGregor’s nickname. That is, if his Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) big band, featured on this two-CD set of 1970s performances, didn’t add the colorations of Charles Mingus’ bigger groups and suggestions of Hank Crawford’s arrangements for Ray Charles to its unique mix of modern jazz and South African jive.

Earlier, apartheid era officials went out of their way to discourage the white pianist from mixing with black musicians. Which is why Capetown’s McGregor (1936-1990) and his black fellow players in the Blue Notes sextet ended up living permanently in Europe after 1964.

Mixing with British free improvisers such as saxophonists Elton Dean and Evan Parker, trumpeters Marc Charig and trombonist Radu Malfatti -- all of whom are represented on the over 2½ hours of previously unreleased music here -- the combo gradually expanded to big band size. That didn’t happen all at once, or stay permanent, as personnel shifts during the concerts captured on this set, one from 1971 in Germany and two from 1975 in England, reflect this.

At the same time BREMEN TO BRIDGWATER has to be recognized for what it is and what it isn’t. As a live record of a touring band it offers some exceptional swinging music enlivened by valuable solos from many musicians, including some who unfortunately are no longer around due to death or illness. But road conditions also mean that the performances aren’t as tight as they would be in a studio environment, and the recording is sometimes muffled and tubby. Many of the pieces rely on constantly repeated riffs and blaring dynamics. In fact, a few tunes and some of the solos could have been excised.

That said, BOB’s unique mixture of free jazz, kwela, swing blues and hard bop -- performed at jet plane-like speeds -- meant that roistering, hard bodied pieces that never seem to let up are its stock in trade. Especially interesting are the adaptations the Blue Notes’ star soloists made to this new environment.

Although McGregor’s approach was always pretty basic, tunes like “Now” on CD1, “Union Special” and “Sonia” features the kind of bluesy interchange you would expect to more readily find on Chicago’s Southside. Plus, notably on the first tune, the pianist’s comping and offbeat interjections feed the soloists in such a way that their thought process become more expansive -- sort of what Basie did for his band members as well. Many of McGregor’s compositions somehow have that American Southwest Territory band feel -- complete with call and response from the horn and brass sections.

Alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana (died-1990) is thoroughly his own man, and maintains his unique repertoire of sax squeaks and disco whistle tweets when he plays. There are times, such as on “Sonia”, where his full-blown multiphonics seem to be as much East St. Louis R&B as East London Township jive. Trombonist Nick Evans’ gutbucket blasts help maintain the mood, as does the polyrhythmic drumming of Louis Moholo, the only Blue Note still living in 2004.

In his solos, trumpeter Mongezi Feza (died-1975) shows that by this juncture he was listening to Don Cherry and other advanced brassman as well as high note specialists like Dizzy Gillespie. On Pukwana’s “The Birds”, for instance, he constantly slithers up the chromatic scale, constructing his solo out of high-pitched triplets smeared over the sonic surface. Besides bashing his snares, Moholo sounds as if he’s contributing Africanized whirl drum textures and tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who spent time in Carla Bley big band, snorts split tones before trading licks with Feza.

Another South African, bassist Harry Miller (died-1983), who didn’t join the others until all immigrated to Europe, fuses impressively with Moholo’s backbeat and McGregor’s fills to provide the powerful spine underneath all 16 tracks. The few times he introduces a number or takes a couple of bars solo he proves that he could hold his own with the best timekeepers as well.

It’s also interesting to see which future BritImprov types were doing in the band, since BOB’s compositions usually meanders through echoes of down-to-earth swing, focused hard bop with echoes of “Bags Groove” and Mingus-like blow outs.

Mike Osborne, whose career as a freebopper was unfortunately curtailed by metal illness, acquits himself well with some characteristic glossolalia intersecting with smoother lines on, for instance, his own untitled original. He does strain to be heard over over-recorded drums though. Similar miasmic sound hampers him on “Kwhalo”. Unexpectedly, some of his best work comes on the clarinet. His fluid, double-tongued lines are as unique as his choice of axes.

Altoist Dean, who still moves between free music and jazz rock, doesn’t really surprise in his straightahead solos, neither do the few asides by future London Jazz Composers Orchestra stalwarts trumpeter Charig and trombonist Malcolm Griffith. But unless there’s a discographical mistake, that’s BritImprov exemplar Parker slurring and honking his way through the finger snapping second version of “Now” in a way never heard before or since.

As an aside, when BOB expresses its most freeform piece, “Restless”, it’s the South Africans -- McGregor double-timing, Moholo vibrating all parts of his kit, Miller double stopping, Feza producing brass flurries and Pukwana squeaking in irregular vibratos -- who are most far out.

Should your tastes run to kwela, Southwestern swing riffs, ceremonial music, hard bop, free jazz and/or rhythmic abandon you’ll find much to like here. Putting aside the occasional slipshod sound, this is another two-platter helping of BOB in its prime for its fans and for those who deserve to discover this fine band.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Funky Boots March 2. Kongi’s Theme 3. Now 4. The Bride 5. Think of Something 6. Union Special 7. Andromeda 8. Do It 9. The Serpent’s Kindly Eye 10. Untitled Original CD2: 1. Sonia 2. Now 3. Yes, please 4. Restless 5. Kwhalo 6. Untitled Original

Personnel: Marc Charig, Harry Beckett, Mongezi Feza (trumpets); Nick Evans, Malcolm Griffin, Radu Malfatti (trombones); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Evan Parker (soprano saxophone and tenor saxophone); Dudu Pukwana, Elton Dean (alto saxophone); Gary Windo, Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Bruce Grant (baritone saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass); Keith Bailey or Louis Moholo (drums)

June 21, 2004

CHRIS MCGREGOR & THE BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH

Travelling Somewhere
Cuneiform Records Rune 152

Illustrating one of the appealing, yet little explored, tributaries of improvised music, this nearly 80 minute blast from the past presents British-South African pianist Chris McGregor's 12-piece Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) recorded live in a 1973 German gig.

Outgrowth of the racially mixed Blue Notes combo that, because of Apartheid, as forced to relocate from Africa to England in the early 1960s, BOB was an altogether more expansive project. With a nucleus of the original combo -- trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and drummer Louis Moholo as well as McGregor -- it welcomed other immigrants like South African bassist Harry Miller and Barbadian trumpeter Harry Beckett to the fold, and filled out the band with the cream of

BritImprov, here including saxophonists Evan Parker and Mike Osborne.

The result was a free-flowing melange of styles that echoed Township jive, Scottish missionary anthems, the freedom of Energy Music and the close attention to detail that characterized emerging British improvisers. Oh, and one shouldn't forget the ongoing big band tradition, which for these musicians meant what the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Jazz Composers Guild Orchestra were doing, as well as Count Basie's swing and Duke Ellington's early "jungle" band sound.

For an example, listen to Pukwana's "MRA", the lead track, which seems to be one part free jazz and the other African high life, courtesy of its composer and Feza, with the pianist playing ringmaster in the middle. As the rhythm section cleaves to the beat, one of the trombonists soars over the cacophony provided by the other horns, finally resolving his solo in a brisk bebop style. "Restless" is the proper title for the next tune since the band seems to roar into it without a break. As Miller holds the beat steady, McGregor introduces some Monkish interludes and Moholo indulges in some robust rhythmic drumming. Finally before a Pukwana-directed outside section, Beckett offers a muted Lee Morgan-style exploration of the tune.

Conversely, McGregor's "Wood Fire", the longest track, sounds as if it was being created by the Village Vanguard orchestra of the day, if that band ever exhibited freeform flourishes. First trombonist Nick Evans, then section mate Malcolm Giffiths -- who has more of a fondness for lip slurs -- worry the melody here, as the rest of the band builds up a full head of steam behind them. Alto lines jump from Osborne to Pukwana and back again with someone sounding like he's quoting "Sunshine of Your Love" and the trumpets weighing in with some Arkestra-like tuttis. Finally the piece ends on a massed low trombone note.

Other sounds that appear range from the African-gospelish "Ismite Is Might", which showcases Feza's high note trumpet, to the title tune, a light, swinging Ellington-via-Ra composition which shows how much McGregor, its composer, can extract from an out-of-tune piano. Surprisingly with players whose main commitment was to experimentation, the sax section riffs in unison like a four-piece Basie squad and the tune ends on a dime (or should that be a quid)?

Osborne's tone on his own "Think of Something" even suggests Latin saxophone stylings, not the British freebopper he was. Later, though, after Moholo beats out some carnival rhythms and McGregor some skittering piano, he changes course into a more orthodox bebop approach.

Perhaps the pleasant schizophrenia -- real in Osborne's case -- exhibited here sums up the reason for the band's relatively low profile. Never a fully free aggregation, ethnic enough to attract the Africanophiles, nor straight enough to give the swing crowd the warm fuzzies, it had to reach audiences through pure musical excellence.

That it had that quality is evident from this CD. It's just a shame that McGregor who died at 53 in 1990 isn't around to hear how well this historical document sounds.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. MRA 2. Restless 3. Ismite Is Might 4. Kongi's Theme 5. Wood Fire 6. The Bride 7. Travelling Somewhere 8. Think Of Something 9. Do It

Harry Beckett, Mongezi Feza, Marc Charig (trumpet); Nick Evans, Malcolm Griffiths (trombone); Mike Osborne, Dudu Pukwana (alto sax); Evan Parker, Gary Windo (tenor sax); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo (drums)

October 29, 2001