Review: Day One/Freedom of the City Festival at the Conway Hall, London, Sunday May 2nd, 2010

Back to the Conway Hall for another Freedom of the City Festival... I skated in just in time to grab a drink and a seat, caught the opener, Peter Evans. One might think that solo trumpet was a bit on the austere side to start the fandango – however, Evans was revelatory, playing to a packed hall on amplified trumpet and cornet (I think) with some minimal adjustments via a foot pedal. Fancifully, you could consider this as a history lesson, linking back to the early days of jazz when developing an individual sound was paramount. The shift from the standard classical/marching band tone to 'vocalised' instrumental individuality. Part of the fun of being a 'jazz' fan was/is in blindfold tests - identifying a player by his sound. This was inherent in the music from the start, it seems. So when Peter Evans fires off a flashing bravura melodic line bending back in and out of bebop, or earlier, his tonal alterations – squeezed half-valve, a variety of muted effects – simultaneously are part of the contemporary 'avant garde' preoccupations with sound experiments and also deeply embedded in the line that goes back through Rex Stewart to Bubber Miley and beyond. He showed a lot of variation and a shrewd sense of dynamics - the brassy fire of the trumpet was contrasted by the smaller instrument, lighter, clarion pure. And Evans' participation in a trio with Evan Parker (and cellist Okkyung Lee) later in the day was perhaps prefigured by some occasional relentless circular breathed passages that reminded of the elder saxophonist's technique. An impressive start, then – to a fairly full hall.

Okkyung Lee and Paul Lytton:
Cello and drums/percussion, Lytton going from delicate to fiery, leaving space when necessary, as when Lee stopped strings with the left hand way down the neck near the bridge and bowed to produce dry, sharp sounds. When she went deeper in the cello range, richer textures emerged. Highly intelligent music where mutual listening was essential. Lytton – sporting a two-hihat setup, interestingly could so easily have overpowered, but had in his armoury a full range of ironmongery to produce high sonorities, rubbed, lightly struck or played on the drums and cymbals to produce interesting clashing/additional sounds. Bit more mike on the cello, perhaps... a small criticism I could make of the festival overall, where delicate textural balances were often not audible enough in the mix.

Tania Chen/Lol Coxhill/Dominic Lash:
Lol, of course, will never be too far away from jazz, even when he ventures into saxophone sound manipulations a rich flowing seam of melody is never covered for long. He is the dominant player here tonight, ably supported by a restrained Dominic Lash on bass. Chen is fairly minimal in her interjections with occasional forays inside the piano. Towards the end of their set she suddenly unleashed some smashing clusters, elbows to the keyboard, that changed the overall direction, shaking it up nicely. Not sure that this trio really hit the spot although they played some interesting music, maybe Lol is too 'jazzy' this afternoon to go into some of the areas implied by his partners. I'd like to hear them again – in a club situation perhaps, where the piano may come through more.

I missed the last set of the afternoon - the London Improvisers Orchestra - but got back in time for the evening session...

QuaQua – is John Russell's yearly ever-changing lineup, tonight featuring Chris Burn at the Bosendorfer plus electronics, bookended with Matthew Hutchinson at a Roland keyboard and added effects. In between - Stefan Keune, saxophone, Satoko Fukuda, violin, Henry Lowther, trumpet the leader on guitar and Jean-Michel Van Schouwberg, voice. The latter's gurning facial distortions were very distracting – I'm not a great fan of vocal improv with a few exceptions (one of whom would be playing on the next day) so am probably easily pissed off. Although putatively a collective experience – the leader's guitar is never dominant, although I wonder if this is deliberate or just that under-miking again – Lowther's declaratory trumpet led the show. Not that he overplayed – he is far too good a musician for that. This group proceeds by small increments of sound, splashes and scrapes of colour that suddenly coalesce into unusual shapes, at points erupting then suddenly falling again.  A somewhat ascetic approach, perhaps, leavened by the trumpet and the Roland adding some nice rumbling electronic details.  The gurning aside, I enjoyed it a lot.



Louis Moholo-Moholo/Steve Noble/Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith:

The famed trumpeter had apparently requested a two drummer hit to back him. He's a cool looker, dreadlocks and dark glasses, a player of flashing and assured brilliance. I've been listening to a lot of his recorded work recently so was looking forward to hearing him live. Steve Noble set the pace with a thunderous barrage from the off, leaving Louis Moholo looking a little puzzled, perhaps. He seemed to have difficulty finding his way in and Noble was not going to step back, it seemed. They were playing in front of the stage and from where I was sitting at the back, I didn't get a clear view of the set. Smith took care of everything thrown at him, as one would expect from someone of his stature, riding the rhythms with power and invention. Further in, Moholo set up an occasional groove, at one point with just the insistent ticking beats of two sticks. There was some vocal interchange that I didn't quite grab: Mapsadaisical records it thus:
'He even tried to cut the set short; “No, baby” he said at a quiet moment when Noble was threatening to drive things back up to another powerful rhythmic peak. “Yes, baby” said a clearly not-yet-finished Wadada, and off they went again.' From here...

Again, great to hear good musicians, but a little hit and miss, pulled along by Smith's experience. Hey, they call it improvisation...

SUM was Seymour Wright, Eddie Prevost and Ross Lambert on alto, drums and guitar. An odd line-up, given my previous experience of Seymour whom I have grown to greatly appreciate. Eddie was hitting straight time in places (!), Lambert played a lot throughout – too much perhaps, I felt that he didn't seem to handle silences very well. Seymour – well, he's noted for minimal and precise interrogations of his instrument, materially and, perhaps, philosophically/conceptually. Tonight he played more than I have heard him before – although given that most sax players will fire off a string of sixteenth notes and he might play – one, two, three if you're lucky – this was still not a great deal. He will hang on a note and repeat it, turning it around and about, tip it sideways.  Tonight he would suddenly give a small flourish of something approaching melody. More flurries than one is used to – and some accurate high register stuff. I found it fascinating...

Evan Parker/Peter Evans/Okkyung Lee:

The guv'nor with two younger players, Evan on his usual tenor and soprano saxophones joined by Lee on cello and Peter Evans on his brass. No feints, stabs of jabs of sound to set things up – straight in with three superb players weaving and spinning complex interlocking/opposing lines in a glorious tapestry. They have played together before and it shows in their mutual understanding.  I mentioned above that during his solo set Evans's circular breathing gave hints of where Parker has gone before: tonight in this tight trio, the saxophonist being generous and reining back his formidable technique to blend with the others. Sonorities changed between tenor and soprano and back, similarly Evans switched between his trumpet and the smaller instrument. A delicate balance necessary for more granular playing as it would have been – and was on occasion – easy to step into the cello's sound space (the miking again!) – luckily most of it came through. At one point Evan did launch one of his circular passages and sucked everyone along with him – Evans replying in kind to hit another level of exhilaration. Stunning music. Given my fanciful thought about the opening set and its link to the tradition, you could imagine this three-way contrapuntal blowout as similarly linked to the early collective tradition of New Orleans – via European avant garde chamber music. Oh play that thing...

Review: Freedom of the City, Red Rose Club, London... Nine... Weston/Rutherford/Mattos... Edwards/Parker/Fernandez/Russell... Monday 7 May 2007

The Red Rose in Finsbury Park, London is a comedy club, tonight (and over the previous weekend) dedicated to the Freedom of the City Festival, organised by Evan Parker, Eddie Prévost and Martin Davidson. Through the bar area and into the performance space which is a large square-ish room with a broad stage – must require some interesting stage-craft from single stand-ups. With a cluster of musicians on it who would eventually coalesce into the first band of the night: Nine! Consisting of twelve musicians(?), they played a fascinating set. With all those bodies, one could imagine much sonic clutter arising, but this was avoided in a performance that built from (necessary?) small gestures and nuances into the larger whole. The instrumentation: guitars, harmonica, piano, saxophones, clarinet, flute, violin, various percussion and what appeared to be a banjo-uke or some similar instrument. Subverted by externalising in the main – the traditional internal perfomance properties of the instruments being ignored apart from a few isolated examples of almost straight playing (a strummed chord, a blown note held) – a foregrounding of scratches, scrapes, bangs and bowing of surfaces... Several examples: a small object being rattled inside the bell of a clarinet, a saxophone dismantled and various noises created by using the mouthpiece/reed. Or Prévost bowing a large gong (?), the pianist rummaging inside the piano, investigating the sound properties of its plucked and struck metal entrails. The piece started with electric guitar lightly amplified and playing a repeated figure – but this beginning in tonality soon dissipated ... the discrete sounds coming from across the ensemble formed a surprisingly clear and broad sonic field. An exercise in group playing and tight control – any excess or sudden lurch into conventional soling would have destroyed the delicate balance maintained throughout. A space wide enough to encompass a couple of incongruities – I felt that the acoustic guitar player didn't always fit into the ongoing sound stream – and this was a problem for both, acoustic and electric, that the sounds/sonorities of the other instruments blended more efficiently. Acoustic and conventional electric guitar have little sustain or sonority and fast decay, the electric having a slight edge but - for no doubt deliberate reasons – no attempt was made to produce the longer/louder sustain which an amplifier and pedal setup is capable of. The ear of the beholder– why should someone blowing into the end of a flute have more sonic validity? But overall, only a small criticism. The performance finished back on the electric guitar, which acted as a tonal reference point linking back to the beginning. Thoughtful... radical... beautiful...

Apparently the second group had never played collectively before – Veryan Weston on piano, Paul Rutherford on trombone and Marcia Mattos on cello. The spatial question taken into a different area – a full broad sound that contracted and expanded where necessary, busier than the more spartan Nine! Here, the technical similarities of the trombone and cello, relying on a different kind of sound production in that they have no set points as such - frets, keys - to produce notes apart from the (admittedly strong) weight of tonal convention which can easily be evaded/disrupted by small microtonal shifts and also have an immediacy of response – direct contact with the note production via the fingers - were lined up against the piano. Which has a precise keyboard in front of the performer, notes being produced by a slight time deferment – the key sets up a mechanical process that ends in a hammer striking the strings. Apart from varying one's keyboard velocities and/or using the pedals, to radically disrupt or change the note(s) – to approach the glissando possibilities of the other instruments named, for example – one has to go inside to attack the strings directly. Weston eschews this approach tonight. Theoretically, then, trombone and cello already have the timbral possibilities of blending more easily – for the pianist a way in has to be found. (And Rutherford and Mattos have recorded together in the past so would perhaps be more aware of each other's playing). It seemed to me that Weston was a bit tentative at first, whereas Rutherford and Mattos were straight there in the zone, producing a roaring, scrabbling continuum from the start. After the sonic abstractions of the first set, this was much more visceral music – melody more to the fore – albeit jolted, dragged in and out of shape, skewed by extended techniques and timbres. Rutherford is a veteran of the scene, one of the stone originals who broke out of jazz in the 60's to develop the new improvisational sound worlds. On the basis of his superb playing tonight, a force still to be reckoned with. Mattos, another veteran, was equally stunning... I gather that he studied guitar when he was younger and it comes through in his approach to the cello, strumming chords and violent pizzicato work, along with the usual battery of extended techniques and his forceful bowing. The long piece ebbed and flowed, splitting into varying instrumental combinations that kept the music fresh – especially, one saw the compatibility of cello and trombone when they came together. Fascinating among this wonderful display of imagination and musicianship to trace the trajectory of Weston's developing involvement with the performance as he mapped his path through. A vigorous, emotional performance that also had some of the intimacies of chamber music (in both the jazz and classical senses).

The final set of the night by John Edwards, Evan Parker, Agustí Fernandez and John Russell cranked it up further. Parker stayed on tenor throughout, sitting down as if to emphasize that this was supposed to be a group performance. In spite of the collective ethic, however, the piano player stole the show, run a close second by the imperiously brilliant bass-playing of Edmunds. Parker – embedded back in the mix, his as always superb tenor fluttering and chittering in and out of the more dominant maelstrom provided by the other two. Always the unhurriedness of the master... looking quite benign and bucolic with red-face(caught the sun?) and hairy/bearded appearance. Russell seemed unable to compete on the same dynamic level at times, his guitar again pointing out one of the problems the instrument has in this music – how to balance the essentially dry, astringent sounds of his archtop guitar that decay rapidly against essentially richer timbres. I would have thought that the only way to compete on an equal footing would be to amplify more – but it's a fine balance to strike, admittedly. He also broke a couple of strings which must have unsettled his train of musical thought. What I did hear was interesting, dropping some sharp and brittle colourations across the top of the sound and engaging in a brief skittering duet section with Parker. But the tall, physically imposing, red-shirted Fernandez held the attention, in perpetual motion, bouncing on his seat, hitting the piano with sledgehammer blows from his hands with a violence that at times looked as if it would shake the instrument off the stage – yet balancing that force with a fluttering, feather-like touch at one point that was just on the threshold of audibility. And some humour: smiling, looking as if he was enjoying himself immensely... Edwards, as mentioned above, delivered a master class in contemporary bass playing, fingers of iron ripping out chunks of sound from the strings in all positions, or rubbing and scraping the surface of his instrument – a seamless blending of conventional and 'extended' techniques. The second time I have seen him this year – powerful stuff. Verdict: despite the imbalances, a bravura performance.

Overall – a wonderful display of the variety extant in the musics by three very different line-ups, unified by questing minds, imaginations and the underpinning of dedication to improvised performance. I had arrived feeling out of sorts – I left feeling uplifted. Despite all the privations, sacrifices and financial problems alluded to by Evan Parker in his closing speech, which we are only too aware of in the U.K., a fitting end to what was apparently a great festival... Just wish I had been able to attend for a longer period. Ah well – next year...