Jazz Articles
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Caroline Kraabel: Last 1 and Last 2 (2016/7)
by John Eyles
Caroline Kraabel gets sole credit for this album, justifiably, as she composed the music, conducted one performance of it, acted as musical director and played alto sax in another performance of it. However, after listening several times, the album leaves a sneaking feeling that Robert Wyatt probably deserved equal billing rather than just being mentioned in the small print. (Yes, the Robert Wyatt who played drums and sang in Soft Machine and Matching Mole before moving onto a successful solo ...
read moreStellari String Quartet: Vulcan
by John Eyles
Despite the years that have elapsed since Stellari String Quartet's first album, Gocce Stellari (Emanem, 2009), right from the opening notes of this follow-up, Vulcan, there is not a shadow of a doubt that it is by the same group, with the same members and ethos. The combination of Philipp Wachsmann's violin, Charlotte Hug's viola, Marcio Mattos' cello and John Edwards' double bass is uniquely different to any other string quartet, as is its use of free improvisation. As Emanem ...
read moreSpontaneous Music Ensemble: Karyobin
by John Eyles
Karyōbin is a crucially important album in the history and development of freely improvised music. Originally studio-recorded in February 1968 and issued as an Island Records LP later that year, it was remastered and re-released on CD by Chronoscope in 1993. Fine as the music was, both of those issues suffered from less than ideal sound balance, particularly of the bass and drums. Now, just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the album's recording, Evan Parker's favourite sound engineer, ...
read moreVeryan Weston: Discoveries on Tracker Action Organs
by John Eyles
This new solo album from keyboardist Veryan Weston was recorded in May 2014 on tracker action organs in seven churches located around England. The recordings here document some of the preparatory research that Weston did ahead of a tour of churches with tracker action organs. That tour involved Weston plus violinist Jon Rose and cellist Hannah Marshall, so this album should be considered a companion piece to Tuning Out (Emanem, 2015), the album recorded on the tour. As ...
read moreKent Carter Rivière Ensemble: Oratorios and Songs
by John Eyles
Over years, the Emanem label has built a reputation for fine releases by interesting and adventurous string ensembles such as Stellari String Quartet and Barrel. Preceding such groupings, the label released The Juillaguet Collection (Emanem, 1999) by the duo of Kent Carter and Albrecht Maurer on double bass and violin, respectively, and Intersections (Emanem, 2006) by the Kent Carter String Trio, in which the duo was joined by Katrin Mickiewicz on viola. Following that trend, it is no surprise to ...
read moreChefa Alonso & Tony Marsh: Goodbye Red Rose (2008/9)
by John Eyles
An air of nostalgia and remembrance pervades this album, starting with its title and cover photograph which portrays the duo of Spanish-born soprano saxophonist Chefa Alonso and Lancaster-born drummer Tony Marsh on stage at The Red Rose in Finsbury Park, north London, on 20th January 2008, during John Russell's long-running monthly improv concert series Mopomoso. In the photograph, the wall behind Alonso and Marsh features the album title in large letters, as the day in question was the last time ...
read moreVeryan Weston / Jon Rose / Hannah Marshall: Tuning Out
by John Eyles
There is a very interesting project awaiting some lucky (and patient) individual, researching the role that churches played in the spread of improvised music in Britain. To clear up any ambiguity, that “churches" refers to the buildings themselves rather than their human members. Any devotee of improvised music in Britain will probably have spent far more time in church than many (so-called) devout Christians, as churches are frequently used to host gigs and also as recording spaces. That has nothing ...
read moreSteve Lacy Quintet: Last Tour
by John Eyles
As its title says, this album dates from Steve Lacy's last tour, which ran from the summer of 2003 in NYC through to March 2004 in Boston, (where Lacy was living at the time, as he was teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music). The eight tracks on this album were recorded in Boston's ICA on March 12. Lacy was joined on the tour by musicians he knew well, his wife Irène Aebi on vocals, Jean-Jacques Avenel on bass, ...
read moreJohn Russell: With...
by John Eyles
This album is a faithful record of John Russell's sixtieth birthday concert which took place at Cafe Oto, London, on Friday 19th December 2014. Everything is included here except for announcements, applause and less than half a minute of music which were all edited out to fit it onto one CD; at a few seconds short of seventy-eight minutes, it just manages that. Thanks to the sterling efforts of Helen Petts, the entire concert was filmed and can be viewed ...
read moreSpontaneous Music Ensemble: Oliv & Familie
by John Eyles
Issued twenty years after his death, aged just fifty-four, Oliv & Familie serves as a fitting reminder of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble's charismatic and controversial drummer and leader, John Stevens. Not only does this release return to circulation the two “Oliv" tracks that constituted the SME's eponymous third album, originally issued on vinyl by Giorgio Gomelsky's Marmalade label in 1969, it also adds the two previously unissued “Familie" tracks which shed much light on the ensemble's evolution and development. Most ...
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