|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2LP
|
|
HJR 215LP
|
Wonderful, previously unreleased recordings by Derek Bailey and his guests at Company Week in 1983. What's remarkable throughout this album is the respect and affection the musicians show for each other, exemplifying the dictionary definition of "company" as "the fact or condition of being with another or others, especially in a way that provides friendship and enjoyment." It starts with "Landslide", a brilliant, spiky, spluttering, twanging reunion of Music Improvisation Company members Evan Parker (tenor sax), Hugh Davies (electronics), and Jamie Muir (percussion). Next up, "Seconde Choix", with Joëlle Léandre's close-miked prepared bass and Bailey's acoustic guitar seemingly heading in different directions before coming together miraculously in just four minutes. The opening of "First Choice", a duet between Bailey and Muir, is a revelation for those who moan that the guitarist plays too many notes. His patient and truly exquisite exploration of harmonics is beautifully counterpointed by Muir's metallic percussion. On "Pile Ou Face" (Heads Or Tails) Davies concentrates on his high register oscillators, carefully shadowed by Parker's soprano until Léandre's deft, springy pizzicato lures them into the playground. "JD In Paradise" is a surprisingly delicate wind quartet, with John Corbett's trumpet, fragile and Don Cherry-like, punctuating the sinuous interplay between Peter Brötzmann and J.D. Parran (on sopranos, flutes and clarinet), while trombonist Vinko Globokar growls approvingly in the background. Igor Stravinsky's magnificent definition of music as the jeu de notes comes to mind listening to Bailey's duet with cellist Ernst Reijseger (executing fiendish double-stopped harmonics with staggering ease). Technical virtuosity has never sounded so effortless -- it is, as its title "Een Plezierig Stukje" simply states, a fun piece. On the closing "La Horda", Bailey and Reijseger team up with the horns for what on paper looks like it could be rough and rowdy sextet but which turns out once more to be a thoughtful, spacious exchange of ideas, shapes, and colors.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
HJR 214LP
|
For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French bassist/vocalist Joëlle Léandre is equally at home playing free or performing works by Cage and Scelsi, while Vinko Globokar is an acclaimed composer as well as a trombonist of monstrous virtuosity. He and British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before a brief stint with Robert Fripp's King Crimson, percussionist Jamie Muir was, with Davies, on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970. Bailey once described playing solo as a "second-rate activity"; while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can, if they're not careful, descend into the musical equivalent of a rugby scrum: dangerous, but thrilling -- listen to what happens when Brötzmann comes barreling into the final track here. Sometimes one instrument takes center stage, as Parker's circular-breathing soprano does at the beginning of "Trio Five", but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere "Trio Three", is just as crucial to the success of the whole. Muir makes sure he doesn't get in the way of Globokar and Parran's leisurely exchanges on "Trio Four", but the trombonist is all over the place on "Trio One" -- transcribe what Globokar does here and it might be the most difficult trombone music ever written -- with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles, after which "Trio Two" is a lighter affair, Parran's flute and Léandre's vocals twittering together while Derek's acoustic twangs merrily along. With a touch of dry Bailey humor, two of the seven tracks aren't trios at all: "Trio Minus One" is his duo with Reijseger, running the gamut from crazed polyrhythmic strumming (imagine Reinhardt and Grappelli playing Schoenberg and Nancarrow simultaneously) to what must be the fastest cello pizzicati ever recorded. And on the closing ecstatic nonet, Brötzmann and trumpeter John Corbett prove that too many cooks don't necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell spice it up.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
HJR 212LP
|
Ever played that game where you imagine you can invite a few people from any period in human history to a dinner party guaranteed to produce rich, stimulating, and provocative conversation? Derek Bailey did it for real, musically, in his Company Weeks. In July 1982, his guests at London's I.C.A. were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and, from Japan, free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki. In addition to the stellar group improvisation Epiphany (HJR 211LP), they also recorded enough material for two more full-length albums, of which this is the first. That line above about conversation presupposes that music is some sort of language -- a thorny proposition indeed on which whole books have been written. Suffice it to say that if it is a language -- music certainly communicates, that's for sure -- it's not an Indo-European model: the only way music can express the notion of past tense is by repeating something, so that listeners can identify it as something they've heard before. Improvised music, however, is forever "in the moment", as improvisers like to put it, i.e. the present tense -- and the present tense has never been more wonderfully communicative than it is in these six epiphanic improvisations. Yoshizawa and Oppens (both on the keyboard and inside her piano) bounce ideas off each other like ping-pong balls ("First"); Tippetts, Wachsmann, and Bailey do extraterrestrial cubist flamenco ("Second"); Lewis and Frith rumble at everyone magnificently ("Third"); Tippett and Oppens kaleidoscope the entire history of the piano into just over 15 minutes ("Fourth" and "Fifth") with added seasoning from LeBaron and Wachsmann, and on the closing "Sixth", Akio Suzuki, despite describing himself elsewhere as "pursuing listening as a practice", makes one hell of a racket with his self-made instruments: a flute, a spring gong and his analapos (two single-lidded cylinders attached by a long steel coil, which he can manipulate and strike, as well as vocalize into the tube). Yoshizawa and Bailey give him a real run for his money though, and it all builds to an ecstatic swirling, grinding climax, with Suzuki whooping and hollering wildly. Is it language? You decide. Is it rich, stimulating and provocative? You bet. What a dinner party! Bon appetit!
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
3LP
|
|
HJR 213LP
|
More buried treasure from the 1982 Company Week at London's I.C.A., seven more epiphanies (previously unreleased!) to add to the six on Epiphanies I-VI (HJR 212LP) and the 48-minute ensemble Epiphany (HJR 211LP). Fred Frith's diverse activities as composer and educator in recent years shouldn't let us forget he's a stellar improviser -- 1974's Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv -- and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. "Eleventh" is an extended techniques tour de force, with George Lewis working slowly but surely through a variety of trombone mouthpieces while Frith's guitar, strummed, bowed or prepared, could be a Theremin, a koto, a mouse trapped inside a grandfather clock, or a lion cub inside a shoebox. Bookending the album, on "Seventh" he swaps Webernian shards with Lewis and harpist Anne LeBaron and on "Thirteenth", with pianist Keith Tippett, condenses a whole lifetime of musical exploration into a mere twelve minutes. Elsewhere, on "Eighth", violinist Philipp Wachsmann reveals his understated mastery of both his violin and the electronics he's devised to extend its range, and pianist Ursula Oppens proves she's as adept as conjuring forth magic from inside her instrument as she is caressing it out from the keyboard. Those that moan that improvised music is more about finding extraordinary new sounds and less concerned with exploring nuances of pitch, both horizontally (melody, yes) and vertically (harmony), should listen up. "Ninth" is a spikier affair, with Lewis giving a whole new meaning to the word embouchure, quacking, spitting and wheezing like a flock of geese let loose in a fairground, while Derek Bailey and Motoharu Yoshisawa patiently explore the outer limits of acoustic guitar and double bass. Bailey and Lewis team up again on "Twelfth" to take on Oppens -- and everybody wins. Voice is more to the fore on "Tenth", with Julie Tippetts's coloratura and flute and Akio Suzuki's analapos and spring gong flying high while LeBaron, Wachsmann, and Yoshizawa weave intricate webs of pizzicati, spiccati, and glissandi beneath. The word that comes to mind here most often is virtuosity, not just in terms of simple ability on one's chosen instrument(s) but also in knowing just how and just when to display it -- not surprisingly it was Fred Frith who coined the term "virtuoso listening". That's what these folks do, and ever so well: be a virtuoso listener yourself and check it out.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
HJR 210LP
|
Previously unreleased recordings by various line-ups drawn from Derek Bailey, Tristan Honsinger, Christine Jeffrey, Toshinori Kondo, Charlie Morrow, David Toop, Maarten Altena, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Steve Lacy, Radu Malfatti, and Jamie Muir. Journalists often make the brief history of free improvisation conform to the idea that the history of music is a nice straight line from past to present: Beethoven... Brahms... Boulez. Thus Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and John Stevens -- together with Brötzmann and co across the Channel -- were the trailblazing "first generation", forging a wholly new language alongside contemporary avant-garde and free jazz. Figures like Toshinori Kondo and David Toop, willing as they were to incorporate snippets of all kinds of music, were the pesky "second generation", happily cocking a snook at the "ideological purity" of Bailey's non-idiomatic improvisation. Company 1981 shows up the foolishness -- the wrongness -- of such storylines. Check the eclectic collection of guests Bailey invited to Company Weeks over the years. He had clear ideas about the music, but he was no ideological purist. One of the founders of Fluxus, Charlie Morrow, injects blasts of Cageian fun into half the recordings here, whether blurting military fanfares from his trumpet, or intoning far-flung scraps of speech. Cellist Tristan Honsinger and vocalist Christine Jeffrey join in the joyful glossolalia, while Bailey, Toop, and Kondo contribute delicious, delicate, hooligan Arabesques, by turns. The remainder are performed by a different ensemble: Bailey, bassist Maarten Altena, former Henry Cow members Georgie Born and Lindsay Cooper on cello and bassoon, the insanely inventive Jamie Muir on percussion, and trombonist Radu Malfatti, showing his mastery of extended technique. Were that not enough, there's the inimitable purity of Steve Lacy's soprano ringing high and clear above the melee. Glorious! There's always been this idea that free improvisation is somehow difficult listening, but when the doors of perception are thrown open and prejudice cast aside, you realize that it's not difficult at all. "Is it that easy?" chirps Morrow, at one point. Indeed it is. Enjoy yourself. Housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed innersleeves.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
HJR 211LP
|
Honest Jon's Records present a reissue of Company's Epiphany, originally released in 1982.
Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure.
All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London's ICA in July 1982. It's a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between moments of mounting intensity and tension. The passage about halfway through -- when Derek Bailey's harmonics ring out above a sheen of inside piano tremolos and shimmering electronics, topped off by Julie Tippetts's soaring vocalese -- is simply sublime. After which it's fun to try and tell the two pianists apart. Are those runs Ursula Oppens, with her formidable technique honed from years performing some of the twentieth century's most difficult notated new music, or are those Keith Tippett's crunchy jazz zigzags? Are those intriguing twangs from one of Akio Suzuki's invented instruments or could they be Fred Frith's or Phil Wachsmann's electronics? Bah, who cares? There's plenty of room for the more delicate instruments too, like Anne LeBaron's harp picking its way gingerly through a pin-cushion of pings and scratches from Bailey and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa. Of course, some performers are instantly recognizable: Tippetts, as lyrical and flighty on flute as when she sings, Phil Wachsmann, sinuous and sensitive on violin, and trombonist George Lewis, who, as John Zorn once put it, "swings his motherfucking ass off." So many magical moments abound, from the opening dawn chorus of Tippetts' voice and Frith's guitar swooping through a rainforest of exquisite piano cascades, to the Zen calm of the closing moments. Epiphany, indeed. Housed in a gatefold sleeve.
|
|
|
|