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Jazz Articles about Rachel Musson
Alexander Hawkins Feat. Evan Parker + Riot Ensemble: Togetherness Music (For Sixteen Musicians)
by Mark Corroto
It is obvious from the outset that this is a significant recording. Evan Parker launches into his trademark soprano saxophone circular breathing, setting the stage for things to come. An exemplar of all things free improvisation, his virtuosity never fails to amaze. Although Parker is the marquee soloist here, the composer and organizer of this session, Alexander Hawkins, created the six movements of this suite to pioneer an intersection between free improvisation and contemporary chamber music. Certainly not an easy ...
Continue ReadingRachel Musson: I Went This Way
by Mike Jurkovic
Let's agree that, by a consensus of one, Debbie Sanders recital of saxophonist Rachel Musson's thought-through and through-read play-by- metaphoric-play/lecture on improvisation gets annoying as all hell so quickly that one may find oneself searching madly for a bonus instrumental version. But the music on saxophonist Musson's I Went This Way is an ambitious, teasingly ambiguous album, all shift, riddle, and hijinks. And that's a really good thing because it takes a lot for anyone to be so sure of ...
Continue ReadingShifa: Live in Oslo
by Mike Jurkovic
A spectrum of subversive, seemingly sinister ambitions erupt upon entering the very vigorous other-world proposed on Live In Oslo, a true mind-meld of London's free-jazz highest order, led by saxophonist Rachel Musson, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Mark Sanders known collectively as Shifa. Recorded at Oslo's Blow Out Festival in August 2019, the trio finds no trouble breaking space to its atomic bits and telling time to take a holiday, setting apace a restless, anxious investigation into the ...
Continue ReadingMusson - Noble - Sanders: Tatterdemalion
by Glenn Astarita
Tatterdemalion: the album title refers to someone who wears tattered clothing, a simile that may parallel the unadorned and rather raucous proceedings enacted by this trio's thoroughly “free" approach to jazz improvisation. You won't find pieces that intimate a sea of tranquility. It's more about an in-your-face type workout featuring saxophonist Rachel Musson's hardcore expressionism. However, veteran improvisers, keyboardist Liam Noble and drummer Mark Sanders, oblige Musson's rambunctious and serrated lines with contrapuntal responses and guileful treatments on this wildly ...
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