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Live Reviews
Vision Festival XI, Angel Orensanz Foundation For The Arts, NYC - Day Three, 15 June 2006
John Sharpe
John first fell under the spell of free jazz in the 1970s when he wistfully regarded the loft jazz scene from across the AtlanticThe set progressed in a gently minimalist dialogue. If your expectations of these players were shaped solely by their biographies and playing associations you might be disappointed with the lack of fire breathing and overt virtuosity. The improvisation was more about the placement and decay of sound with only the merest of hints of even the most abstracted jazz or blues tinge. At times Dixon played away from the mic affecting a plaintive human cry against the electronic ether. Part way through, Lewis initiated the projection of Dixon's paintings and lithographs with videos of waves, gulls and so on. There was a fragile beauty in their interweaving sniffs, breaths, blurts, blatts, eruptions and murmurings. With electronic distortion it was sometimes impossible to tell who was playing what, itself a signifier of an undoubted meeting of minds. They gently subsided into inaudibility after some fifty minutes and shook hands in front of an enthusiastically appreciative audience.
