I received some more details about the unfortunate death of Paul Rutherford in the comments section - also regarding the funeral arrangements. There was apparently a mix-up about the times - but Bruce Rutherford, Paul's nephew, sent the correct details:
... However you have made a mistake on the funeral arrangements. The time is actually 2.30pm and not 10.30am Thursday August 16 at 10:30 am at Lewisham Crematorium in Hither Green Cemetery on Verdant Lane, London SE6 1JX. [The nearest station is Grove Park (trains from Charing Cross, Waterloo East & London Bridge). From there, it is about a 20 minute walk, or buses 124 or 284 can be boarded from the bus stop in Downham Way.]
Also in the comments are a couple of tributes:
Sent from Jean-Michel:
From MD
As you may already know, Paul Rutherford was found dead in his flat in S.E. London on August 5. The cause of death was sclerosis of the liver and a ruptured aorta.
Paul was one of the pioneers of free improvisation, and many consider him to have been the finest trombonist and one of the finest improvisers in the area. He was certainly a very distinctive musician – many players had been influenced by him to some degree (not only trombonists), but no one sounded anything like him. Among his most important performances were his unaccompanied solos, and those in his trio Iskra 1903 that contained Barry Guy and either Derek Bailey or Philipp Wachsmann. He was a gentle, kind man with an outrageous sense of humour, and will be sorely missed. However, he also suffered from bouts of depression, and was frustrated that he was not recognised more widely.
And from anonymous:
I had the pleasure of presenting Paul with drummer Harris Eisenstadt and bassist Torsten Muller at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico in January of 2006. The performance was stellar and Paul was one of the kindest men I have ever met. I will never forget the performances, the evening spent with him, talking about the great musicians he played with and the music he made over the years and the scene we are trying to foster out here in the high desert that he was so supportive of. I know he was not recognized as widely as he should have been but every person who was in the audience that night walked out at the end of the show a true believer in the amazing talent of this man. He will be dearly missed.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was at the Freedom of the City gig in May when Paul played with Marcio Mattos and Veryan Weston. He was tremendous... Here is a section from their set which displays all the qualities that for me - and many others - made him the pre-eminent free improvising trombone player...
Paul Rutherford (trombone) Marcio Mattos (cello) Veryan Weston (piano)
A 5.01 minute section from their set at the Freedom of the City Festival, Monday May 7th 2007.
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Showing posts with label paul rutherford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paul rutherford. Show all posts
Friday, August 10, 2007
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Paul Rutherford 1940-2007... tailgating for the avant-garde...
There were posts on the BBC Radio 3 Jazz board about the death of Paul Rutherford. And elsewhere... another great musician gone (Art Davis dying last week - and the folk singer Tommy Makem).I saw Paul Rutherford a few weeks ago at the Freedom of the City festival (review here) and he blew up a storm in company with Marcio Mattos and Veryan Weston. Complete with clenched fist salute at the end of the set - Rutherford was a man with a deep attachment to Communism. It struck me as quaint at the time... thinking back on it now, more a sadness for lost utopias. Here was someone who held to his road, no matter what. And apparently never received much financial reward for his revelatory, inspiring experimental work on his instrument. What came across at that gig was how deeply rooted he was in the tradition, oddly enough... I'm trying to sort out a proper tribute later, as I have a recording of the gig as part of a larger file. For now, here he is with the cream of the crop on the Tony Oxley session 'Four Compositions for Sextet' playing 'Amass.' Opening on Evan Parker's tally-hooing call to action soon joined by Bailey and Rutherford et al. Rutherford comes through strongly about 4 minutes in but makes a strong contribution throughout to one of the definitive albums of the Brit avant-garde. Bliss was it in that dawn etc...
Here's Rutherford offering his own philosophy on music:
'If I didn’t like the music, I wouldn’t play it—simple as that. All the music I was involved with I enjoyed. Music was basically the goal.'
The interview with Clifford Allen in 'All that Jazz' that this extract is taken from is both a fascinating insight into the birth of the free improvising scene in the U.K. in the sixties and Rutherford's contribution to it - and a terribly sad description of what it cost him to follow his art for very little reward. One of the world's premier visionary musicians - stuck on a pension in the U.K. and rarely getting gigs...
Tony Oxley
Tony Oxley (d) Kenny Wheeler (t) Evan Parker (ts) Paul Rutherford (tr) Derek Bailey (g) Jeff Clyne (b)
Amass
Download
Buy
Here's Rutherford offering his own philosophy on music:
'If I didn’t like the music, I wouldn’t play it—simple as that. All the music I was involved with I enjoyed. Music was basically the goal.'
The interview with Clifford Allen in 'All that Jazz' that this extract is taken from is both a fascinating insight into the birth of the free improvising scene in the U.K. in the sixties and Rutherford's contribution to it - and a terribly sad description of what it cost him to follow his art for very little reward. One of the world's premier visionary musicians - stuck on a pension in the U.K. and rarely getting gigs...
Tony Oxley
Tony Oxley (d) Kenny Wheeler (t) Evan Parker (ts) Paul Rutherford (tr) Derek Bailey (g) Jeff Clyne (b)
Amass
Download
Buy
Paul Rutherford...
I received a mail from a group I belong to saying that the renowned British pioneer of improvising trombone Paul Rutherford had died on Monday 6th August. Just checked around and his Wikipedia entry confirms this in its last sentence. Nothing else yet so... more news as and when...
Thursday, May 10, 2007
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...
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...
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