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Evan Parker: Deciphering the Noise
by Henry Cooke
Imagine for a moment that the average jazz enthusiast is similar to a competent swimmer: safe within the confines of their local pool they're comfortable, perhaps a little brash.Individual lanes silently determine your path whilst lifeguards monitor your tempo with their special brand of overprotective nonchalance. Even the reassuring sting of chlorine serves as ...
Will The Real Joe Harriott Please Stand Up?
by Duncan Heining
The Jamaican saxophhonist Joe Harriott was, without doubt, one of the most important and innovative jazz musicians to emerge in Britain in the fifties and early sixties. He arrived in Britain in 1951 with Ozzie Da Costa's band, which was en route for an engagement in Germany playing US army bases. Much to his erstwhile boss's ...
Free Space / Otherways: Life Amid The Artefacts
by John Eyles
Free Space / OtherwaysLife Amid The ArtefactsEmanem2011 (1973, 1984) 2010-11 has been a fruitful period for releases highlighting London improvisation in the mid-1970s, with Teatime, previously only issued on vinyl on Incus, getting its first CD issue, as well as More 74 (Incus, 2010) featuring recently discovered ...
Otherways and Free Space: Life Amid the Artefacts
by Raul d'Gama Rose
The music of Otherways and Free Space unfurls throughout Life Among the Artefacts at a consistently high crest of improvisation during unselfconscious, unguarded moments when the musicians were, quite simply, being extensions of their instruments. They were forces of nature and allowed the music to tumble freely, incorporating songs which had internal combustion mechanisms that were ...
1970s Incus: Old and New
by John Eyles
Coincidentally, two recent releases, one a reissue on Emanem, the second an album of previously unissued material on Incus, put the spotlight on the Incus label in the mid 1970s. This was a time when the so-called “second generation of free improvisers" was emerging. At the time, the first generation--including Incus proprietors guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonist ...
Sylvia Hallett / Mike Adcock: Reduced
by Nic Jones
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble lineup of drummer/cornetist John Stevens and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts can, for countless reasons, serve as the template against which many another freely improvising duo can be gauged. That's an especially pertinent point with Reduced, as multi-instrumentalists Sylvia Hallett and Mike Adcock have fashioned a dialog every bit as rarefied as the ...
In Praise of John Russell
by John Eyles
English guitarist John Russell is from the wave of free improvisers who came after the so-called first generation typified by such “founding fathers" as guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonist Evan Parker, trombonist Paul Rutherford and drummer John Stevens. In his teens, Russell played at the Little Theatre Club, the cradle of free improv in London, and took ...
Howard Riley: Five Decades in Music
by Maxim Micheliov
Howard Riley gave his performance in Vilnius, Lithuania in September, 2009. It was his first visit to the country in a five-decade career, and one of just a few eastern Europe destinations made at the time, by the British free jazz pianist. The concert was recorded and released in 2010 as the double-disc set, Solo in ...
Frode Gjerstad: A Feral Storm from Norway
by Clifford Allen
In February 2010, Norwegian alto saxophonist and clarinetist Frode Gjerstad took the collective Circulasione Totale Orchestra to the United States for a few select performances, the first time the multinational group had been convened on American soil and a massive undertaking and feat of organization for the 62-year-old improviser. The orchestra consists of musicians from Norway, ...
Dave Liebman / Evan Parker / Tony Bianco: Relevance
by Nic Jones
This release documents the first time that saxophonists Dave Liebman and Evan Parker have worked together and given their respective lengths of service to the music, this is remarkable. What is less so, is the fact that they so readily found a common language given their respective takes on the aesthetic of John Coltrane. Of the ...
