Trevor Watts & Veryan Weston

Dialogues in Two Places
Hi4Head Records HFH 010D

Confirmation of the Guelph Jazz Festival’s increasing importance on the international scene is this significant two-CD set by British saxophonist Trevor Watts and pianist Veryan Weston. Both men have helped define improvised music since the 1970s, and during a rare North American foray in 2011, recorded one CD in Guelph and the other in Toledo.

Nationalism aside, the two appear more assured north of the border, with the climax, Cardigan, a nearly 32½ intermezzo. Three months earlier in Ohio they distributed their aleatoric and dextrous efforts among six much shorter improvisations. Playing both soprano and alto saxophones, Watts’ tone is sequentially taut, peeping, staccato and agitated in Toledo, while Weston’s lines encompass both formal pianism and near-splintered tremolo dynamics to extend and pivot the performances. Toledo’s high point appears on Glenwood. Here a contrapuntal intersection displays the saxophonist’s mercurial skills at speedy and slow tempos while compressing tones for nuance and color. Also featured is the pianist initially accelerating, then halving the accompaniment, while moving from high-intensity chording and pounding to edgy soundboard and string plinking patterns.

Practically an invention on its own, Cardigan dramatically conveys the veterans’ familiarity which each other’s sound strategies and their ability to parry-and-thrust in split-second intervals. The initial variations find Weston’s kinetic pumps, clips and unexpected octave jumps prodding Watts to move from reed bites and snorts into broken-octave, aviary-like tremolos as the two explore the tune in tandem. By the exposition’s mid-point, metronomic keyboard cascades embolden the saxman to unleash a variant of circular breathing which culminates in juddering bagpipe-resembling tremolos. Soon afterwards Weston’s playful variations in the piano’s bass clef sustain the rhythm as he splays sharp harmonies. Leading to the finale, further developments find Watts echoing and shaking grace notes to affiliate with the pianist’s now low-frequency slow-paced chording. By the end pinched oboe-like reed bites replace an ocean-wide vibrato as Weston’s meticulous keyboard framing leads to parallel diminuendo.

Before a short encore, the applause from the Guelph audience is almost as protracted as the length of some of the Toledo tracks.

--Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 18 #3

November 11, 2012

Interview:

Veryan Weston
By Ken Waxman

London-based pianist Veryan Weston is a well-travelled musician who regularly turns up in a variety of free music situations in the United Kingdom and aboard. Best-known for his long associations with iconoclastic saxophonist Lol Coxhill and distinctive vocalist Phil Minton, Weston has also spent time in various ensembles with, among others, drummer Eddie Prévost, saxophonist John Butcher and is sometimes a member of the London Improvisers Orchestra. Weston and British alto saxophonist Trevor Watts are playing at the Stone this month as part of a duo tour of the US.

The New York City Jazz Record: Your New York performance is a duo with Trevor Watts. How long has it been that you two have been collaborating?

Veryan Weston: I first met Trevor at the Little Theatre Club in the late ‘70s. I used to go and listen to the Spontaneous Music Ensemble which sometimes was just Trevor and drummer John Stevens doing stuff like Face to Face [a 1973 Emanem CD with Stevens playing percussion and cornet and Watts, soprano saxophone]. And then I would also hear him at the Plough pub in Stockwell where John was part of a house rhythm section consisting of Lindsay Cooper, the bass player not the bassoonist, and pianist Stan Tracy. I started to get to know Trevor and talk about music with him just before he left London to go and live in Hastings in the early ‘80s. He started Moiré Music soon after that and so I was in right at the beginning of this project that initially included four saxophonists, two violinists, piano, bass guitar, drums and percussion. Working with Trevor is now a very important strand in my activity as a musician. His very open interests in a lot of different kinds of music enables our musical relationship to have a lot of dynamic, i.e. the music can go anywhere, and so there is still an enormous amount of potential music to explore on gigs.

TNYCJR: Once you moved to London from Cornwall in 1972, you became a regular at the legendary Little Theatre Club which your older sister Armorel helped start in the ‘60s. Who did you play with at first? And had you already been interested in so-called free music in your youth?

VW: There were other younger players at the Club who wanted to play together so I played with some of them. Before this though, I was only a teenager in Cornwall so was mainly just trying to listen to as much music as possible more generally. This consisted of not only jazz recordings on Impulse, Atlantic and Blue Note, but also the sounds from [world music labels] Ocora and Nonesuch. I remember hearing John Cage on BBC Radio3 in 1967 and being knocked out by the way he responded to questions with more questions. His questions often had lovely humor in them but could not be answered. I also had favorite pianists earlier in my mid- teens; they were Otis Spann and Mose Allison. I discovered Thelonious Monk a bit later.

TNYCJR: What kind of music had you played before going to London? Did you have classical training?

VW: I played a smattering of jazz, blues, pop and show tunes. I played these in hotels and the occasional Armed Forces base in the West Country. My first music teacher when I was 10 years old was Alfred Deller’s son Mark, who was also a counter-tenor, and who took over from his dad in the Deller Consort. I didn’t like the process of classical training. By then I used my eyes to connect the patterns of the black and white notes of the keyboard by memory. So when you are then told to look up at a piece of paper with squiggles on it and somehow translate those symbols to sound, this seemed much less fun to just discovering sounds using rhythm, harmony and melody with my own two eyes and ears.

TNYCJR: In the late ‘70s you were involved with a jazz-rock band called the Stinky Winkles, which also won awards in the UK, France, Spain and Poland. The name makes it sound like a pretty pop-oriented outfit. Was that the idea? If so what happened? When did the band break up?

VW: I was then living in the Digswell House in Welwyn Garden City Hertfordshire, a residential community for artists with an ethos instigated by Cambridge educationalist Henry Morris. The objective was to enable artists to live in, work in and be part of the local community. So part of my remit was to get out there and play music with people rather than live in an ivory tower and disappear up my own poop-shoot. The members of Stinky Winkles were lads living in the area who played their instruments well. One of the only ways we could get work at first was to take part in shitty competitions. Capitalism likes to have winners. The judges made their decisions for whatever reason, and we got to play outside the UK which was great. We gradually broke up after guitarist Gary Peters left the band. Now he’s a professor at York St John University and he’s just written an interesting book called The Philosophy of Improvisation (University of Chicago Press). The Stinky Winkles, name was as a result of Lol Coxhill eating some seafood that had been around for some time. Lol would occasionally just come up and be an invited guest with the band.

TNYCJR: That brings up your longest lasting musical lasting relationship, which has been with Coxhill. How did you and he get together?

VW: I first met Lol at the Little Theatre Club. He came in with a hat full of coins and managed to change this at the bar for some more easily carry-able notes. Much later on Lol took part in a Digswell event which also included drummer Roger Turner. At the end of the night we ended up playing standards, and Lol joined in and also played with the Johnny Rondo trio which was a lovely band with the pianist, not the bassist, Dave Holland and cellist Colin Wood. Shortly after this Lol applied to come to Digswell and had no problem getting in. One of my first gigs with Lol was in Brighton at the Polytechnic, as it was then called, and the band also had bassist Harry Miller, Marc Charig on French horn, and Alan Jackson on drums. It was good to learn to play jazz standards, show tunes and be-bop tunes in order to then work on the occasional standards gig with Lol. He has a vast repertoire of tunes he can just pull out of his memory. But my first public recordings were straight improvisations with him – The Joy of Paranoia [1977] and Digswell Duets [1978].

TNYCJR: At the same time you seemed to have begun working with visual artists plus composing and performing music for films. How did you reconcile Stinky Winkles, jazz and free music work with all this, especially when you had to deal with major projects like Derek Jarman's Carravaggio which involved that eccentric film director and actors such as Tilda Swinton?

VW: Yes, Lol and I were involved in a part of the music for Carravagio. It wasn’t a major project; it lasted one afternoon. I don’t know what I offered Lol, but he gave me an enormous amount by being just him, a friend and musician. We did a lot of improvisation plus occasional gigs playing standards and stuff like the Carravagio film. Stinky Winkles were local to Digswell House area and resident artists were all requested to be artists in the community so I got involved with those guys. It was reconciliation by default. I like doing different things which are often a challenge. I also worked with a potter called Elizabeth Fritsch, who is a great artist, and her work exudes music.

TNYCJR: Looking at your educational background which includes a fellowship with the Digswell Arts Trust in Hertfordshire, a degree course in Performance Art at Middlesex Polytechnic and a Masters degree in Music Composition from Goldsmith's College were you also planning to become an academic?

VW: No. Basically I didn’t have enough work as a performing musician, and the dole people were getting bored with seeing me every week. I enrolled for a course because I could get a mature student grant which also considered the fact that I have two children. Those were the days. The M Mus was just an extension of this. I thought that at least I would then be paid to study music which I liked doing anyway and still do. Also it introduced me to a whole load of other people including students and teachers, so it enlarged my horizons, I suppose. But I don’t really like these kinds of institutions to be honest. I was invited back to teach for a while and found it quite painful.

TNYCJR: You were also revising your book on piano improvisation in the ‘70s. What was the reason for your writing it? Did it reach a final form? If so is it now used as an instruction book by musicians?

VW: No, it was a way of developing methods and correlating observations and research in a daily journal. It was never published. The book contained various aspects of theory, fingerings, hand-independence exercises, and structures that facilitates a more even and two-handed approach to contemporary piano improvisation. At Digswell I got some financial support to revise the material by re-structuring it using musical syntax rather than it being just chronological. This enabled me to not only reassess the material in the original book, but also helped me to edit and revise all the day-to-day jottings.

TNYCJR: Shortly after that you began as association with Eddie Prévost. How did that happen and compared to AMM were those projects more “jazz” oriented?

VW: Yes Eddie likes playing in more of a “free-jazz” way sometimes when the occasion seems right – like with certain instrumental combinations and with certain instrumentalists who have specific experience.

TNYCJR: In the mid-‘90s you started working with vocalist Phil Minton. How and why did this arrangement begin and is it still on-going? It included bands like the one with saxophonist John Butcher and drummer Roger Turner and another with bass guitarist Luc Ex and drummer Michael Vatcher. Was the first more “free music” and the other more “political” for instance?

VW: I met Phil in a real substantial way when we were both playing in Trevor’s Moiré Music large band project for the [Austrian] Saalfelden Festival in 1985. We hung out together and got on and decided to work on the Ways project [recorded on ITM in 1987], singing and playing different kinds of songs that we liked a lot and really wanted to record. The quartet with John and Roger used text by James Joyce and was constructed to accomodate the experiences of Roger and John as well as us. The band called 4 Walls was as a result of poor [cellist] Tom Cora dying so tragically young. He was part of a band with Luc and Michael called Roof. Luc and Michael wanted to carry on with Phil and so Phil suggested I get involved. You see 4 Walls were part of a house of musicians that had no Roof anymore. As for politics: that’s in everything we do.

TNYCJR: Did Phil’s contribution change your musical outlook? You have also been known to sing on occasion as well. Is this an outgrowth of the work with Phil?

VW: I started singing when I was about 11 in the choir at Salisbury Cathedral School which has a choral tradition that goes back 900 years. Being stuck away in this boarding school with all its nasty creepy class values and religious beliefs filled me for most of these early years with a real feeling of melancholia, but the singing was a release. I used to love listening to the choir in that enormous thick stone space. It was like my kind of blues. I certainly got more from Phil than Mark Deller that’s for sure. Occasionally in London I get to be involved in one of Phil’s Feral Choir projects and it’s beautiful. Also in Sol6 I get to sing a couple of Satie songs, and I have a little solo project which includes singing a few other songs as well.

In fact, the last time I played New York was in 1999 was with Phil at Merkin Hall. It was the quartet with Roger Turner and John Butcher as part of a small US tour of A Mouthful of Ecstasy.

TNYCJR: There are also a couple of CDs on which you play pipe or chamber organ, and one using harpsichord. Were these just spur-of-the-moment decisions with one/off bands or related to other long-term concepts?

VW: [Australia-based violinist/composer] Jon Rose also shares the Cathedral School experience – as did [the late radical British composer] Cornelius Cardew. Jon and I like to explore different tunings related to a time that predates equal temperament. Also we like to use keyboards that have more unusual colors than the modern evolved grand piano. So these are harpsichords, fortepianos, spinets, clavichords, harmoniums and tracker-action organs. That is anything that is essentially still acoustic.

TNYCJR: Recently you’ve recorded CDs dealing with “Tessellations”. Can you define this?

VW: Tessellations is completely different from other stuff I do, which may be why I do it. This is a personal project based on research done on specific kinds of pentatonic scales that are all related to one another. Tessellations are kinds of visual structures and so I have borrowed a term to somehow try and describe some of the almost geometric ideas in the Tessellations pieces that I have written. Trevor gave me a lot of inspiration back in the past when I was working in Moiré Music, since Moiré is another visually-related word. Elizabeth Fritsch is also hot on geometry and rhythm too, while dance is a good medium point from which both aspects are connected.

TNYCJR: Your other recent CD on Emanem is Haste with soprano and tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and cellist Hannah Marshall. Is this another on-going group? Is the association with Marshall, who is in Sol6 and other bands with you another long-time commitment as well?

TNYCJR: Yes, it is an ongoing group – I feel we have only just started. Hannah and I also play in the Trio of Uncertainty which includes a wonderful classically trained violinist called Satoko Fukuda and yes, Hannah is in Sol6 where we sing songs by Satie, Ives, Bacharach and Eisler as well as include instrumental compositions by George Russell and Steve Lacy. There are other regular affiliations for me as well, a trio with [bassist] John Edwards and [drummer] Mark Sanders, which is in the process of being expanded out to a quartet which will include Trevor. Also I play in a duo which I like a lot with [saxophonist] Caroline Kraabel, and perform at the very occasional Skip Film event with [guitarist/violinist] Hugh Metcalfe where he and I improvise along with his Super8 films. But in essence I’m a freelance musician open to any gig – providing it interests me.

--For New York City Jazz Record July 2012

July 6, 2012

Music Outside, Contemporary Jazz in Britain

By Ian Carr
Northway Publications

Hindsight may be 20/20, but this reprint of Ian Carr’s 1973 classic Music Outside, reveals that he beats the law of averages. However, anything written 36 years ago resonates with the attitudes of the time. Some musicians who seemed significant then are more the province of nostalgia than admiration; others mentioned briefly are major figures.

Parenthetically that sense of being of one’s time makes Roger Cotterell’s contemporary postscript frustrating. While he does tie up loose ends and outlines the subsequent career of some musicians, a few are still ignored. His updates are also mostly personal anecdotes.

One can’t fault Cotterell for following the author’s lead. Opinions trump research throughout Music Outside. Flugelhornist Carr, a Miles Davis biographer, describes jazz as “… a music outside, a perpetual Cinderella of the arts in Britain”. This volume aimed to prove improvised music’s “cultural worth” by creating portraits of “those heroic few who … continue to be totally committed to the music”.

Versatility and virtuosity are cited along with commitment as considerations for making a difference. Today Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor are still acknowledged as band leaders who redefined comfortable British jazz into something edgier. Saxophonists Evan Parker and Trevor Watts plus drummer John Stevens and guitarist Derek Bailey created distinctive free music, which continues to gain adherents. Thus Cottrell revealing that Carr once stated that “Derek and Evan – I like both of them very much but I’m not interested in their music at all,” proves Carr’s good intentions.

Carr’s treatment of Watts’ and Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) provides insight on the methodology that birthed British improvised music. He notes that the “development of the SME has been a gradual movement away from predetermined structures” and then describes how group improvisation works. Carr’s chapter on Parker deals with Incus Records, precursor of many experimental labels. “I don’t see the point of making a record for … CBS or RCA because when music like ours gets recorded only a minority audience is ready for it,” noted Parker. “But maybe when it’s been around for a year, a few more people are ready for it…but by that time a big company would have it deleted.” More than 35 years later, Parker’s actions seem foresighted and practical.

Carr’s prescient outline of experimenters’ triumphs and failings is balanced by chapters devoted to himself and drummer Jon Hiseman, who led commercially oriented fusion bands. Carr’s reminiscences about organizing the personnel of his group Nucleus, securing management and record deals plus working out crowd-drawing strategies, reads like a manual for launching a pop band. As he writes: “apart from prestige and the approval of posterity, there is also money to be made if one can establish that one is a true original.” Linkage of originality and monetary rewards clashes with his mention of pianist Stan Tracey, who because of his uncompromising talent was then “on the dole”, a situation Carr decries. Yet he doesn’t seem to notice that his game plan was the antithesis of what Tracey and others do.

Hiseman trotted out the argument that those who play “more accessible forms of the music would subsidize the more way-out forms and a natural balance would be found.” The abandonment of experimental music by mainstream outlets negates this theory. The drummer started his band Colosseum after touring with a Rock outfit because “I’d got used to …a big time way of life… where you play to large audiences. I couldn’t really face going back to playing in dreadful pubs to 40 people”. That Hiseman isn’t mentioned in the postscript, may say something about the fickleness of mass popularity.

Contrast this with Carr’s observation that “[Evan] Parker’s music is difficult but he is at pains to make people aware of it”. Then decide which interviewees’ musings and actions resonate almost four decades later.

-- Ken Waxman

-- MusicWorks Issue #104

August 8, 2009

Mike Khoury and Piotr Michalowski

Reason Sound - Sound Reason
Abzu Recordings 005

Trevor Watts & Peter Knight

Reunion: Live in London

Hi4Head Records HFH CD 007

Nine years and the Atlantic Ocean separate these reeds and violin duos from one another, but both are equally concerned with exploring the limits of collaboration, unfettered by genre expectations.

Piotr Michalowski on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet and Mike Khoury on violin, both from the Detroit area, prefer shorter forms, dividing their textural improvisations among 10 tracks which together add up to about 40 minutes of music. Offering the equivalent of a novel compared to Reason Sound - Sound Reason’s collection of sonic short stories, London-area soprano and alto saxophonist Trevor Watts and violinist Peter Knight take nearly 56½ minutes on Reunion: Live in London to explore virtually every variation, oscillation and texture that can be wrung from their respective instruments. Both duos display their work to similarly miniscule audiences in the live portions

Simpatico here, Watts and Knight have disparate musical backgrounds which feed the inspiration for Reunion. Classically-trained Knight is best-known for his tenure with Steeleye Span, which mixed traditional English folks songs and rock music. Watts led bands such as Moiré Music and Amalgam which blended so-called World music and jazz. For years in the 1960s and 1970s he was also part of the vastly influential Spontaneous Music Ensemble, whose completely improvised programs of microtonal tunings and intervals melded with dislocated rhythms influenced subsequent generations of improvisers such as Michalowski and Khoury.

Such reliance on chance and usual tunings doesn’t negate the possibilities for close concordance however, and throughout Reason Sound - Sound Reason each player creates his version of discordant lines before meeting for unison harmonies. Khoury concentrates on woody spiccato and sul ponticello scraping, while Michalowski’s strategy depends on his instrument. On bass clarinet lunging chalumeau breaths predominate, while the soprano saxophone is oriented towards liquid stops and percussive tongue slaps.

There are even points at which the fiddler begins a piece with near-conventional romantic bowing, while the reedist stops, starts and spurts glottal punctuation. Then, almost transforming themselves into actors in a Sci-Fi flick about trans-mutating identities, Khoury’s strokes get spikier and harsher as Michalowski’s output solidifies into bagpipe-like exhalation. On other tracks an intermezzo finds the violinist splitting his own musical personality with tremolo strokes and unforced harmonies arriving at the same time as pizzicato string pops and snaps. Beside him, diaphragm-vibrated rumbles from the bass clarinet dig deeper into subterranean timbres until they intersect in mid-range with Khoury’s output.

Among the distinct and distant cries and echoes is the stand-out work on “Swish”. Contrapuntally the two mate hunting horn sonority and fierce stropping strings until Michalowski dislocates the nodes into partials with reed bites and key percussion. Plucking his violin with mandolin-like licks, Khoury follows suit with abstracting harmonies. Final unity depends on circular breathing from the reedist and double-stopping filigree from the fiddler.

Less abstract than the Michalowski-Khoury duets, Watts and Knight create an interface more closely related to the expected sonic properties of the saxophone and the violin. Still, this 1999 recording inserts additional timbres as well. Extended techniques such as Watts’ flutter-tonguing and Knight’s long-lined adagios not only adumbrate the duo in the direction of rondo effects, but introduce further non-European musical echoes. For instance within the overlapping harmonies, there are points at which Watts’ soprano takes on vaguely musette-like tones and elsewhere Knight’s delicate strumming makes it appear as if he’s playing an Elizabethan lute. In those cases the gentling timbres work the desired effect on Watts and soon the saxophonist’s tonality takes on bel canto purity.

Other spots enhance and diffuse the timbres further eastward. As well as Old-Timey claw-hammer banjo licks, Knight’s pizzicato twangs and measured silences at various times resemble sounds emanating from an erhu, a kora or a guimbri. For his part, Watts’ staccato peeps, basso honks and Aylerian trills ran the gamut of tone references including the fluting tones of a dizi, the nasal qualities of a suona and the zig-zag trills of a raita. Unexpected polyphonic combinations arise spontaneously as well, such as when Watt’s reversion to neo-Bop chirps on the alto saxophone has Knight, arco, modulating up the scale to outline a contrapuntal Renaissance-directed pastoral melody. Elsewhere, sharp reed variants are almost minimized to silence and tongue slaps by continuous sul tasto bowing, while on the other hand supple glissandi and spacious obbligatos help shape Knight’s swelling bowing into near-Impressionism. Playing double counterpoint, the two improvisers conjure up intimations of minaret cries, ceremonial parades and courtly ballads.

This mixture of quasi-sacred and quasi-secular harmonies also feature in individual codas as Knight’s close-set glissandi finally remind the listener he’s playing a modern violin and Watts’ bluesy, exaggerated Pete Brown-like vibrato cements his experiments with earlier jazz. Knight played in a couple of Watts’ bands in the 1980s, but the CD is called Reunion since this gig followed a long hiatus. Recently the two have reunited once again and with additional familiarity may be encompassing even more abstraction. Perhaps in 2009 they may head for territory staked out by Khoury and Michalowski.

In terms of these duo CDs, however, while related, neither could be mistaken for the other. Still each offers equally inventive sounds to investigate.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Reason: 1. Noise 2. Resonance 3. Reverberation 4. Cause 5. Rationale 6. Raison d’etre 7. Swish 8. Clatter 9. Reason l0. Sound

Personnel: Reason: Piotr Michalowski (soprano saxophone and bass clarinet) and Mike Khoury (violin)

Track Listing: Reunion: 1. Reunion

Personnel: Reunion: Trevor Watts (soprano and alto saxophones) and Peter Knight (violin)

January 17, 2009

Trevor Watts & Peter Knight

Reunion: Live in London
Hi4Head Records HFH CD 007

Mike Khoury and Piotr Michalowski

Reason Sound - Sound Reason

Abzu Recordings 005

Nine years and the Atlantic Ocean separate these reeds and violin duos from one another, but both are equally concerned with exploring the limits of collaboration, unfettered by genre expectations.

Piotr Michalowski on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet and Mike Khoury on violin, both from the Detroit area, prefer shorter forms, dividing their textural improvisations among 10 tracks which together add up to about 40 minutes of music. Offering the equivalent of a novel compared to Reason Sound - Sound Reason’s collection of sonic short stories, London-area soprano and alto saxophonist Trevor Watts and violinist Peter Knight take nearly 56½ minutes on Reunion: Live in London to explore virtually every variation, oscillation and texture that can be wrung from their respective instruments. Both duos display their work to similarly miniscule audiences in the live portions

Simpatico here, Watts and Knight have disparate musical backgrounds which feed the inspiration for Reunion. Classically-trained Knight is best-known for his tenure with Steeleye Span, which mixed traditional English folks songs and rock music. Watts led bands such as Moiré Music and Amalgam which blended so-called World music and jazz. For years in the 1960s and 1970s he was also part of the vastly influential Spontaneous Music Ensemble, whose completely improvised programs of microtonal tunings and intervals melded with dislocated rhythms influenced subsequent generations of improvisers such as Michalowski and Khoury.

Such reliance on chance and usual tunings doesn’t negate the possibilities for close concordance however, and throughout Reason Sound - Sound Reason each player creates his version of discordant lines before meeting for unison harmonies. Khoury concentrates on woody spiccato and sul ponticello scraping, while Michalowski’s strategy depends on his instrument. On bass clarinet lunging chalumeau breaths predominate, while the soprano saxophone is oriented towards liquid stops and percussive tongue slaps.

There are even points at which the fiddler begins a piece with near-conventional romantic bowing, while the reedist stops, starts and spurts glottal punctuation. Then, almost transforming themselves into actors in a Sci-Fi flick about trans-mutating identities, Khoury’s strokes get spikier and harsher as Michalowski’s output solidifies into bagpipe-like exhalation. On other tracks an intermezzo finds the violinist splitting his own musical personality with tremolo strokes and unforced harmonies arriving at the same time as pizzicato string pops and snaps. Beside him, diaphragm-vibrated rumbles from the bass clarinet dig deeper into subterranean timbres until they intersect in mid-range with Khoury’s output.

Among the distinct and distant cries and echoes is the stand-out work on “Swish”. Contrapuntally the two mate hunting horn sonority and fierce stropping strings until Michalowski dislocates the nodes into partials with reed bites and key percussion. Plucking his violin with mandolin-like licks, Khoury follows suit with abstracting harmonies. Final unity depends on circular breathing from the reedist and double-stopping filigree from the fiddler.

Less abstract than the Michalowski-Khoury duets, Watts and Knight create an interface more closely related to the expected sonic properties of the saxophone and the violin. Still, this 1999 recording inserts additional timbres as well. Extended techniques such as Watts’ flutter-tonguing and Knight’s long-lined adagios not only adumbrate the duo in the direction of rondo effects, but introduce further non-European musical echoes. For instance within the overlapping harmonies, there are points at which Watts’ soprano takes on vaguely musette-like tones and elsewhere Knight’s delicate strumming makes it appear as if he’s playing an Elizabethan lute. In those cases the gentling timbres work the desired effect on Watts and soon the saxophonist’s tonality takes on bel canto purity.

Other spots enhance and diffuse the timbres further eastward. As well as Old-Timey claw-hammer banjo licks, Knight’s pizzicato twangs and measured silences at various times resemble sounds emanating from an erhu, a kora or a guimbri. For his part, Watts’ staccato peeps, basso honks and Aylerian trills ran the gamut of tone references including the fluting tones of a dizi, the nasal qualities of a suona and the zig-zag trills of a raita. Unexpected polyphonic combinations arise spontaneously as well, such as when Watt’s reversion to neo-Bop chirps on the alto saxophone has Knight, arco, modulating up the scale to outline a contrapuntal Renaissance-directed pastoral melody. Elsewhere, sharp reed variants are almost minimized to silence and tongue slaps by continuous sul tasto bowing, while on the other hand supple glissandi and spacious obbligatos help shape Knight’s swelling bowing into near-Impressionism. Playing double counterpoint, the two improvisers conjure up intimations of minaret cries, ceremonial parades and courtly ballads.

This mixture of quasi-sacred and quasi-secular harmonies also feature in individual codas as Knight’s close-set glissandi finally remind the listener he’s playing a modern violin and Watts’ bluesy, exaggerated Pete Brown-like vibrato cements his experiments with earlier jazz. Knight played in a couple of Watts’ bands in the 1980s, but the CD is called Reunion since this gig followed a long hiatus. Recently the two have reunited once again and with additional familiarity may be encompassing even more abstraction. Perhaps in 2009 they may head for territory staked out by Khoury and Michalowski.

In terms of these duo CDs, however, while related, neither could be mistaken for the other. Still each offers equally inventive sounds to investigate.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Reason: 1. Noise 2. Resonance 3. Reverberation 4. Cause 5. Rationale 6. Raison d’etre 7. Swish 8. Clatter 9. Reason l0. Sound

Personnel: Reason: Piotr Michalowski (soprano saxophone and bass clarinet) and Mike Khoury (violin)

Track Listing: Reunion: 1. Reunion

Personnel: Reunion: Trevor Watts (soprano and alto saxophones) and Peter Knight (violin)

January 17, 2009

Schaffhauser Jazzfestival

Schaffhausen, Switzerland
May 21 to 24 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #102

November 20, 2008

Spontaneous Music Ensemble

Bare Essentials (1972-3)
Emanem 4218

Definitely dedicated to playing reductionist music, the sound of the Britain’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) was even more mininalist in the early 1970s, since the SME at the time was a duo: Trevor Watts on soprano saxophone and John Stevens on percussion.

Resuscitated from tracks recorded by Watts on a portable cassette player, Bare Essentials presents complete and edited performances by the duo from nine concerts in 1972 and 1973 that took place in Wolverhampton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and London’s now legendary Little Theatre Club. With the 16 tracks running in length from slightly more than a minute to slightly less than 32½, none of the music – with possibly one exception – is absolutely indispensable. However the overall two-CD set is engrossing, letting you trace the two applying different strategies and approaches to the material.

Completely improvised, the tunes skirt the permission to fail that has always been part of the EuroImprov ethos – although the most egregious missteps have supposedly been excised. In many cases the pieces also pinpoint the difference between Free Music and Free Jazz. On several tracks for instance, Watts and Stevens manage to creatively outline singular broken octave improvisations that skirt each other’s output without ever reaching harmonic unison. Because of what one supposes was some previous discussion – or the almost decade of playing together the two had put in by that time – there are no gaping musical holes or sonic confusion anywhere.

Stripped to its essence, Watts’ expositions encompass a collection of single tongue stops and slaps, extended trills, reed bites and chirps plus guttural cries. Evidentially fastening on various parts of his kit at assorted junctures, Stevens creates singular and frequently wholly original timbres. There’s the clatter and bang of disassociated snares, the bolo-bat-like thump replicating a whirl drum, curt cymbal resonation, wood-block knocks, pitter-patter rebounds and hand-and-elbow drum top excursions. Defiantly primitivist when it comes to his cornet playing, the drummer uses it and his voice as additional sound generators usually subservient to his drumming – even if the kit isn’t in use.

Aurally “Newcastle 72B” for example resembles a metaphoric sound recreation of two miniature, nervous puppies chasing one another. The harmonic discord created by the saxophone and brass evolves from tongue-stopping and wet reed snaps to a contest among shrill peeps and squeaks. In contrast, “Open Flower 7” finds Watts clutching a single note for an extended series of permutations as Stevens pops and rattles his toms and snares. Adagio, by the conclusion, these reed chirps become flinty and muffled (perhaps against a pants leg).

“Lowering the Case” features a variation on traditional call-and-response from the two horns whose sounds almost dissolve into inaudibility after showcasing shrill continuous pitches. Braying, the single straight line they both agree upon subsequently begins to meld sfumato-like into slurs and overblowing as they conclude.

Bare Essential’s one most vital track is also the longest and one of the earliest. Its more-than-half-hour duration was the length of some jazz LPs of the time.

Entitled “For Phil” and honoring jazz drummer Phil Seamen who died earlier that day in 1972, it’s a heartfelt raging wail against the inevitable rather than a threnody. Germinated from Watts’ shrill split tones plus popping drum rebounds and skitters from Stevens, it accelerates into an echoing gritty vibrato from the saxophonist and answering cornet warbles and gurgles from the drummer. Mercurial, melancholy and guttural, the affiliated split tones soon become strident and banshee-like, followed by significant silences, as if the two are rethinking their game plan. Stevens’ blunt rim shots, cymbal shakes and wood block slaps become ceremonial and are then superseded by his own yodeling lamentations. With Watts’ broken-octave reed bites now roughed up with growls and flattement, before the rubato denouncement, Stevens squeezes in an approximation of a military bugle playing “Taps”.

A rare glimpse into the raw creative process, this set will be welcomed those who want more SME. Scholars also have another document with which to compare and contrast with the contemporary playing of BitImprov’s other sax-percussion duo of the time: Evan Parker and Paul Lytton. Academe aside, fans of Watts, Stevens or both won’t be disappointed.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD A: 1. In the Midlands 2. In the Middle 3. Three Extracts 4.For Phil CD B: 1. Newcastle 72A 2. Newcastle 72B 3. Open Flower 1 4. Open Flower 2 5. Open flower 3 6. Open Flower 4 7. Open Flower 5 8. Open Flower 6 9. Open Flower 7 10. Opening the Set 11. Beyond Limitation 12. Lowering the Case

Personnel: Trevor Watts (soprano saxophone, voice) and John Stevens (percussion, cornet, voice)

September 1, 2008

TREVOR WATTS

World Sonic
Hi 4 Head Records HFHCD004

JOE GIARDULLO
No Work Today (Nine for Steve Lacy)
Drimala DR 05-347-02

Definitely the sign that a concept has passed from novelty to commonplace is when practiced veterans try out their version of it. So it is with solo saxophone recitals. Initially the exclusive preserve of alto saxophonist Anthony Braxton, then made customary by soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, and Evan Parker on tenor and soprano, today it appears that every young reedist has a solo sax CD.

Following the lead of another visionary – Britain’s John Butcher – many of the solo CDs put out by these European and North American tyros move beyond melody and tonality to try to reach pure vibrational textures.

Britain’s Trevor Watts and Joe Giardullo from New York state aren’t that radical – at least as far as these two solo sessions are concerned. Both are also considerably older than those solo sax trainees. Soprano saxophonist Giardullo, who also plays flute, alto saxophone and bass clarinet, has been at it since the 1970s. He has partnered with fellow experimenters such as multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, composer/accordionist Pauline Oliveros, and Lacy to whom this session is dedicated.

One of the founding fathers of BritImprov, along with drummer John Stevens in the mid-1960s, alto saxophonist Watts has been involved in fusion, World-jazz and Free Music since then with groups like Amalgam, and the Moire Music Drum Orchestra. Incredibly, WORLD SONIC is his first solo recording, and he only waited until he was 65 to do it.

Radical in context for Watts, and an impressive display of his command of the saxophone language, this CD, unlike the advances of Butcher and other improvisers, is resolutely wedded to jazz, and ensures that the saxophone still sounds like a saxophone. Similarly, although he showcases multiphonics and circular breathing, NO WORK TODAY is also resolutely tonal, precisely because Giardullo is honoring Lacy (1934-2004) and by extension Lacy’s major influences, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

Cramming 18 tunes into less than 57 minutes, Watts unfortunately doesn’t give many of them enough time to organically evolve. Often a track is concerned with a single idea – say modal coloring with a descending slur, or curving continuous staccato lines with circular breathing – which once stated ends the improv.

More impressive are those tracks where the concept is given enough room in which to develop – as well as those in which he comes up with a completely unique output. For example, there’s “Passionato’, which despite its Italianesque name sounds as if Watts is double tonguing a crying Middle-Eastern reed, as well as introducing some secondary buzzing to his output.

“The Chase”, on the other hand, is made up of speedy split tones that suggest a bagpipe’s chanter, though the chase may refer to the fact that the lines are overblown faster and faster before the extended climax. “Honing” is built on higher-pitched and air-raid siren-like repetition, with secondary vibrations complementing the primary ones and with horn modulations as much a part of the creation as the individual notes. Then there’s “Solone”, which appears to have been recorded with a handkerchief shoved into Watts’ saxophone bell to muffle the arpeggios. Still, every tone has an equivalent sideband echo, reflecting the fluttering wave form sensed but not heard.

Longest and most illustrative of the pieces is the nearly six-minute “Rounder”. Essentially a blues with emphasized timbres and a bit of altissimo, it’s what would happen if a saxophonist enamored of “Harlem Nocturne” and the funky Gene Ammons version of “Angel Eyes” recorded solo. Glottal punctuation, triple-tonguing and the constant movement of forced air figure into this, but don’t disguise its mainstream origins.

Unlike much of his other work, Giardullo is far from abstract on his CD as well. Not only does he regenerate compositions Lacy performed, but during other improvisations quotes Monk’s “Mysterioso” and others of the pianist’s oeuvre. Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood”, plus more of Ducal repertoire, also gets an airing when the saxophonist plays tunes that relate to these Lacy forbearers. The bouncy title composition itself, with its sprays of vibrated legato tones plus circular chirping and squealing in altissimo registers is a contrafact of Monk’s “Work” – a Lacy favorite.

“Not Good” – which is categorically not a description of this CD – balances jackknife split tones on top of a melodic centre, reharmonizing Ellington’s “I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart” to comment on the linkage between Lacy and the Ellington band’s Johnny Hodges, one of the few pre-Lacy soprano saxophonists.

While the saxman spews out multiphonics and circular breathing on a couple of tracks, as with WORLD SONIC the hub of this homage is tonality. On Lacy’s own “Prospectus”, built on every note in the C major scale, for instance, Giardullo invents new melodies and textures as he plays. Including whorls of exquisitely shaped trills and rhythmic bites, its nocturne-like qualities are enlivened with nose-pinched timbres and sliding tones.

A fitting memorial to a departed hero and proof that older reedists can still surprise, both CDs warrant investigation by those fascinated by solo saxophone playing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sonic: 1. Solarsonic 2. Weejah Song 3. The Chase 4. Soft Call 5. How It Goes 6 Rounder 7 Slip Jive 8. Passionato 9 Honing 10 Shadows 11 Sliding Reel 12 This Morning! 13. Duplette 14. Head Tones 15. Stretching 16. Jakarata 17. Solone 18. Descension

Personnel: Sonic: Trevor Watts (alto saxophone)

Track Listing: Work: 1. No Work Today 2. Prospectus 3. Which Way 4. Not Good 5. Mr. Ioso’s Walk 6. Sentiments 7. The Touch 8. Hurtles 9. Dotty

Personnel: Work: Joe Giardullo (soprano saxophone)

July 10, 2006

DEREK BAILEY/EVAN PARKER

The London Concert
psi 05.01

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Ken Waxman

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

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

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

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

October 31, 2005

TONY OXLEY/ALAN DAVIE

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

JOHN STEVENS
Application Interaction And...
High4Head HFHCD002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Ken Waxman

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

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

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

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

May 19, 2003