Ogun Records

Label Spotlight
By Ken Waxman

Nearly 40 years after it released its first disc – and after pressing about 40 LPs and 30 CDs – London-based Ogun Records is still chugging along, with managing director Hazel Miller maintaining it as a one-woman show. Strongly identified with the South African musicians who fled Apartheid for the United Kingdom during the 1960s as well as with the British innovators affiliated with them, Ogun puts out three to four CDs annually. The discs are a mixture of CD transfers of important LPs; newly recorded discs; plus never-before-released historical sessions.

Necessity was the mother of Ogun’s invention in 1974, initially by Miller and her then-husband, the late bassist Harry Miller (1941-1983). Born in Cape Town, Miller played with many bands in England, including Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) big band, whose Live at Willisau became the fledging label’s first release. “Global record companies started to show a disinterest in European contemporary jazz and improvised music in the mid-1970s,” recalls pianist Keith Tippett. “So Ogun stepped forward to document and record the South Africans exiled in London and English musicians who were working together in ensembles too numerous to mention.”

Involved in many facets of the music scene, British-born Miller was managing BOB at the time, and “that’s how the tapes were offered to kick-start the label,” she recalls. “Chris [McGregor (1936-1990)] was keen for the success of Ogun and totally supportive.” Survival played a part too, since musicians needed records to promote their work. Dick Hodge, a friend and professor of African history, helped cover the initial costs, and organized a share portfolio to finance Ogun. Hodge also came up with the label name which is that of the Yoruba God of work and iron, while another friend created its distinct anthropomorphic logo. Hodge departed soon afterwards and since that time, courtesy of record sales, plus what Miller terms “an understanding bank manager”, Ogun has flourished.

Harry Miller’s role had been artistic director, which as Hazel Miller recalls often involved carrying “1,000 LPs up three flights of stairs to our home,” while she organized all administrative aspects of the label, as well as booking gigs, setting up concerts and doing promotion work for many of the affiliated groups. Although she and Miller subsequently split up, and he later died in an auto accident, Ogun’s course had been set.

“I often set up gigs which we then recorded,” Miller recalls of the label’s beginnings, leading to memorable discs such as saxophonist Mike Osborne trio’s Border Crossing – now half of the CD Trio & Quintet – and Ovary Lodge featuring Tippett/Harry Miller, vocalist Julie Tippetts and percussionist Frank Perry. Most early records were engineered by Keith Beal. Today, Miller says “I use recordings made at the time of the concert by BBC, studios sessions or recordings by individuals.”

Although most of the players recorded were in the South African-British Free Music axis, a few continental Europeans are represented as well. “The non-South African-releases resulted from being approached by those musicians and if there wasn’t anything in the pipeline and it fitted into our catalogue we produced them,” explains Miller “We were also pleased to add different music to the catalogue, because in many cases it was from musicians we knew and liked.”

Ogun’s meticulous accounting system hasn’t changed from years past either, she continues. “Each project is costed and the budget discussed and agreed upon with those involved.” With file copies of all the Ogun LPs still on hand Miller reports that “transition to CD wasn’t a problem … and they take up less room which is a bonus”. Although Ogun was semi-dormant for a time during the 1980s to prepare for the format change, Elton Dean’s The Bologna Tape, McGregor, Dudu Pukwana and Moholo’s Blue Notes for Johnny – part of the five-CD box set The Ogun Collection – and Moholo-Moholo’s Viva-la-Black appeared during the time. A substantial order from Disk Union, Ogun’s Japanese distributor for CD copies of Tippett’s big band Ark session and Soft Head’s Rogue Element, featuring saxophonist Elton Dean and bass guitarist High Hopper, “funded us nicely forward” and helped ease the transition to CD, she adds. “Digitalization is obviously a path to wander down in the future,” Miller notes, “but only the released CDs of archive material have been done so far.”

Over the years, Rogue Element and Ark have remained some of Ogun’s best-selling discs along with Dean’s Ninesense Happy daze/Oh! for the edge on CD, plus different CDs by Moholo-Moholo. Steady sellers on both LP and CD formats are sessions by BOB and the original South African combo, the Blue Notes, plus the Blue Notes’ The Ogun Collection.

“All over the world people can hear our heart’s vibrations because of Ogun”, exults Moholo-Moholo, who was featured on Live at Willisau in 1974 and continues to record for the label today. “We are so rich musically because Ogun stepped in to record us when times were tough. It’s still spreading the music to places where other recording companies did not.”

As with most small labels, distribution remains a problem, with gaps as local companies go in-and-out of business. Right now, notes Miller: “Ogun is distributed through Harmonia Mundi in the UK, Orkestra in France, Distrijazz in Spain and Portugal, IRD in Italy, Music by Mail in Denmark, No Man’s Land in Berlin, and Wayside Music, Downtown Music Gallery, Dusty Groove and Squidco in the U.S.

“And” she adds proudly, “at last I have a distributor in South Africa: Pretoria’s Mabitsela Music & Events.”

“For 37 years Hazel Miller has tirelessly worked to make possible the documentation of this passionate music,” notes Julie Tippets. “So today it’s here for everyone to hear”.

Continuing to issue new CDs means that even with its long history Ogun remains much more than a reissue label, insists Miller. Plus, like the recent Spiritual Knowledge and Grace capturing a nightclub gig of Moholo-Moholo, Pukwana and Dyani with American saxophonist Frank Wright, some future scheduled CDs consist of material recorded in the past, but never released. There’s another disc from the Blue Note’s sojourn in Holland, without Wright, but with McGregor for instance, plus a multi-disc McGregor project, the size or scope of which has to be decided. Among the new issues will be Moholo-Moholo’s concert at the 2010 London Jazz Festival

“Whilst there are still fans out there we shall continue to release archive music and new recordings,” says Miller with finality.

--For New York City Jazz Record December 2011

December 5, 2011

Elton Dean’s Ninesense

Suite
Jazzwerkstatt JW 107

Louis Moholo-Moholo/Dudu Pukwana/Johnny Dyani/Rev. Frank Wright

Spiritual Knowledge And Grace

Ogun OGCD 035

Prime, hitherto-unreleased slices of Jazz’s past, these CDs not only bring into circulation historically important live performances, but also confirm the skills of featured percussionist Louis Moholo-Moholo. One of the last surviving members of the many South African improvisers who left the country in the early 1960s because of Apartheid, Moholo, 71, still plays in fine form, and has returned to live in South Africa.

In 1979, 1981 and 1982 when these sets were recorded, Moholo – who added the second “Moholo” to his name following his mother’s death – and other SA expats were involved in different situations. No longer part of the cohesive Blue Notes band with which he had arrived in England in early 1960s, some players such as Moholo and saxophonist Dudu Pukwana regularly joined with pioneering British free improvisers in groups such as Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, led by another ex-Blue Note, or other formations such as saxophonist Elton Dean’s Ninesense represented here. Meanwhile bassist Johnny Dyani, another former Blue Noter had moved to the continent.

Spiritual Knowledge And Grace is particularly noteworthy since Pukwana, Dyani and Moholo are captured on a rare one-off gig in a Netherlands club with tenor saxophonist Frank Wright. Known as “Rev” for his soulful playing, Wright was a first-generation New Thinger who had also moved to Europe for greater opportunities. The second CD is another matter entirely. Recorded at 1981’s Jazzwerkstatt Peitz, the closest thing to a Woodstock Festival that existed in what was then East Germany, the first track is an over-40 minute suite with Moholo’s drums powering a group of some of the era’s most accomplished British Freeboppers. Recorded at the same location the next year, “Natal” is different still. Here the drummer is part of bare-bones trio with two other United Kingdom-based expatriates: Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett (1935-2010) and Cape Town-native, bassist Harry Miller (1941-1983).

With Miller and Beckett taking centre stage with elongated grace notes from the trumpeter and cerebral string-set anglings and staccato extensions from the bassist, the drummer’s chief function is encouragement; both percussively and verbally. Slightly older than the others, Beckett’s roughened grace notes, peeps and squeals are never less than tonic. He splutters out intense improvisational tropes throughout, but without straying too far from the melody. Miller on the other hand varies his slaps, walking and jabs with quick-popping and sul tasto scrubs. While operating in double counterpoint with the trumpeter, his technique reflects four-string advances that had taken place during the proceeding decade. Contributing to coloration and rhythmic thrust are Moholo’s drums, a presence every step of the way.

The drummer’s rhythmic skill is stretched even more on the two half-hour plus selections which make up Spiritual Knowledge And Grace. That’s because his beat is the only constant as the others introduce new textures throughout by switching instruments. Wright as well as Dyani plays bass at points, while both Dyani and Pukwana contribute piano patterns when needed. This multi-instrumentalism become particularly problematic during the nearly 40-minute “Contemporary Fire”, when the South Africans begin encouraging one another – tongue clicking and chanting – in Xhosa, although it does mean that the Tranesque reed overblowing heard is from the American. Wright’s disconnected tenor saxophone punctuation plus high-frequency squeals and flutters also improvise in tandem with similar tone extensions from Pukwana’s alto saxophone with each man reaching for higher-pitched notes as Dyani pounds piano variations behind them. It’s also Wright who most likely adds a trebly, diaphragm vibrated blues-swing line to his playing, tossing in split-second quotes as he trades off with the altioist, each offering staccato variation on the initial theme.

On his own Dyani offers tough flamenco-styled plucks, multi-fingered runs and arco slides, as Pukwana creates pressurized key-clipping piano runs and Wright wraps up with characteristic Gospel-and-Bop vibrations. Earlier his renal sax ejaculations contrast markedly with the altoist’s chromatic squeals. While the interacting reed trills may call to mind other tenor-alto partnerships like John Tchicai and Archie Shepp, here, at least, Wright glossolalia and split tones confirm that this native of the Southern U.S. may have been more influenced by musical voodoo then the native of Southern Africa who had closer knowledge of witch doctors. When the horns decorate the initial theme with intense phrases at different lengths, Dyani’s thumps and sul ponticello strains plus Moholo’s press rolls and cymbal accents keep the ragged interface from splintering and vanishing into the stratosphere.

Fortissimo layered solos from the six horns, alone and in teams, presents a similar organizational challenge on the other CD. But at least the vibrated reed lines and exploding grace notes from the brass are kept down to earth by a full rhythm section. Solid in his pacing as he is inspired in his soloing, Miller thickens the beat as much as Walter Page with the Basie band or Bill Crow with the Concert Jazz band would have done in similar circumstances. As for pianist Keith Tippett, the former-and-future experimenter sounds appropriately grounded. Throughout, he sluices from metronomic pulsing and merry-go-round key splatters to motivated single-note comping that could have come from Count Basie’s keyboard. As for the horns, multiphonic hocketing, animalistic shrieking and discordant vibrations share space with more common swing motifs. The frequent stop-time sections also give ample space to reed splatters, trombone guffaws, one mellow trumpet aside – from Beckett? – split tone squeals from Dean’s saxello alongside linear reed blending and brass fluttering.

Eventually a climax is reached once Alan Skidmore’s intense tenor saxophone solo and key-clipping from Tippett gives way to verbalized cat calls and retches from the band members, pushing the cacophonous call-and-response section work to a satisfying conclusion.

When the inspirational playing from the dozen players represented on both CDs is matched with the novelty of hearing these previously unknown sessions, it makes both valuable additions to all-encompassing collections of European contemporary Jazz.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spiritual: 1. Ancient Spirit 2. Contemporary Fire

Personnel: Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone, piano, whistle and voice); Rev. Frank Wright (tenor saxophone, bass and voice); Johnny Dyani (bass, piano and voice) and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums and voice)

Track Listing: Suite: 1. Ninesense Suite 2. Natal

Personnel: Suite: 1. Harry Beckett and Mark Charig (trumpets); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti (trombones); Elton Dean (alto saxophone and saxello); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums) 2. Beckett, Miller and Moholo

October 30, 2011

Elton Dean’s Ninesense

Happy Daze + Oh! For The Edge
Ogun OGCD 032

Keith Tippett Septet

A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor

Ogun OGCD 030

Although the principal lure of these two reissues may be the availability of prime slices of 1970s and 1980s British Free Jazz, unexpected revelations appear while listening. The facility of the session leaders and most sidemen on these discs by pianist Keith Tippett’s septet plus the ensembles led by saxophonist Elton Dean is widely known. But one musician whose talents seem to have slipped below the radar since that time is Welsh jazz trombonist Nick Evans.

Evans, who during those years was a valuable addition to bands ranging from bassist Graham Collier’s sextet, the Soft Machine, the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) and alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana’s Diamond Express, is an ardent foil on both discs. Throughout the four-part suite which makes up most of Tippett’s CD, his smears and plunger techniques punctuate the development of horn different strategies. At another point, he expresses himself with gospelish ejaculations, blending with the double-tonguing and sibilant stops of tenor saxophonist Larry Stabbins, best-known for his stints with the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Similarly on the other CD, Evans often uses his chromatic smears or burnished tone elaboration to duet with Dean or Tippett.

Looser than the other session, and consisting of six tracks from a 1976 octet, and four from 1977 – which add Radu Malfatti as second trombonist – the entire Dean CD can be heard as a miniaturization of the work he and others were doing with BOB. Despite the presence of expatriate South Africans, drummer Louis Moholo and bassist Harry Miller, though, there are no overt influences from that country’s musics. Instead the emphasis is on jazz and blues, with Mongezi Feza’s “Friday Night Blues” the most obvious example.

A contrapuntal showcase it features Miller walking, concluding martial beats from Moholo and Dean stretching his alto tone into an approximation of Hank Crawford’s at his funkiest. Similarly the tempo on “Seven for Lee” quickens into unrelieved tension as low-pitched polyphony churns steadily, only parting long enough for a stuttering, musette-like solo from Dean as well as brassy stream-rolling blares from trumpeter Harry Beckett’s open horn.

Throughout, call-and-response strategies from the horns, Moholo’s blunt rolls and cymbal pops, plus connective piano vamps provide power to impel heavy-duty swinging, although the time is left elastic enough for the soloists’ full expression, alone or in formation. Tippett’s high-frequency key-fanning is matched with bowed bass lines for example; or braying brass blasts meet up with the pianist’s swirling and strummed chording.

“Forsoothe” is one interlude constructed out of strangled cries from the brass plus continuously moving squeaks and peeps from the reeds. These successfully combine into denser and thicker textures, relived only by brassy smears from Evans which churn underneath double-tongued trills from Dean’s saxello. Without copying any particular saxophonist featured in Charles Mingus’ Jazz Workshop, Dean’s tongue expansions here are still Mingusian in execution. This relationship to the American bassist is also expressed six years later by Dean and Tippett, not only most obviously in Tippett’s dedication to Mingus, but in allusions to the American’s compositions and arrangements during the course of “A loose kite in a gentle wind…” suite.

Despite modal styled percussive playing from the pianist that recalls McCoy Tyner; staccatissimo vibrations and trills from Dean that are equally Trane-like; multiphonic tonguing from Evans and quirky Kerry Dance-like terpsichorean pulses from the whole ensemble, the pieces don’t really lock into place until the two middle sections, even when performed full-blast, as it is during the suite’s nearly 28½ minute first section.

Oddly unlike Part 1, which has enough flattened keyboard patterns, soaring brass flourishes and speedy rhythmic tutti passages – plus enough false ending to suggest an unfinished symphony – Parts 2 and 3 are both more descriptive. More reflective in execution, Tippett uses Part 2 to create Duke Ellington-like mini-concertos for selected soloists, with Dean, cornetist Mark Charig and himself taking the Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart and Ellington roles. Tippett’s variants are the most atonal, with internal string twanging, choked arpeggio runs and chordal patterns skirting the progressively louder horn parts, while following and foreshadowing Charig’s and Dean’s more lyrical work. Sequentially developed, the brass man’s exposition is near bel canto and contrasts with the multi-hued tones that have been parceled out to other members of the band. As for Dean, playing alto saxophone, despite the occasional near altissimo squeak, he shades his solo in mid-register to most properly harmonize with the band.

Instructively as well, the contours of Stabbins’ tenor saxophone solo in Part 3 with its sibilant stops and sharp single note emphasis, plus the stop-time smears from the brass also bring Mingus to mind. However Tippett confirms his compositional originality later in the piece. Unlike any Mingus trope, the steady bass and drum patterning here move the tune from andante to allegro as the sax lines became less stable and more violent and are finally answered by heraldic high-pitched cornet work and cunning trombone blasts.

Leaders such as Tippett and the now deceased Dean, as well as others, including Collier and bassist Barry Guy, helped outline a distinctive path for modern British jazz starting in the late 1960s. But sessions like these recall that the transformative skills of their sidemen were as necessary for this step forward as the leader’s musical visions.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Loose: 1. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 1 2. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 2 3. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 3 4. A loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor 5. Dedicated to Mingus*

Personnel: Loose: Mark Charig (cornet and tenor horn); Nick Evans (trombone): Elton Dean (saxello, alto saxophone*); Larry Stabbins (tenor and soprano saxophones); Keith Tippet (piano); Paul Rogers (bass) and Tony Levin (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Happy: 1. Nicrotto* 2. Seven for Lee* 3. Sweet F.A.* 4. Three for All* 5. Dance 6. Forsoothe 7. M.T. 8. Friday Night Blues 9. Prayer for Jesus

Personnel: Happy: Mark Charig (trumpet and tenor horn); Harry Beckett (trumpet and flugelhorn); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti* (trombone); Elton Dean (saxello, alto saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

June 11, 2010

Graham Collier

Deep Dark Blue Centre/ Portraits/The Alternate Mosaics
BGO CD 822

Mike Osborne Trio

All Night Long

Ogun OGCD 029

While most of the attention in Britain and overseas in the late 1960s, early 1970s was focused on progressive rock and pop music coming from England, far more notable sounds were being developed outside of the mainstream. Although the most far-reaching of these advances may turn out to be the non-idiomatic improv advanced by the likes of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, two other strains deserve attention.

One, represented here by Graham Collier’s session for septet and sextets, collected from three different LPs, expressed the depths of the composer-arranger’s art. Its variations on color, texture, space and voicing cemented Collier’s reputation in that tricky hyphenate’s top ranks. All Night Long on the other hand, is a free-for-all blowing session from three musicians who while fellow travellers, were not fundamental believers in Bailey-Parker-styled lower-case pure improv.

Although both discs are officially reissues, each set adds more material to the original LP – roughly 27 minutes to the session led by alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, plus an almost three-quarters-of-an-hour alternate version of one of Collier’s most realized works, Mosaics. Surrounding that program, recorded in 1970, are Deep Dark Blue Centre, a septet session that was Collier’s first LP in 1967, and Portraits a sextet date from 1972 with a completely different band. Although significant efforts, neither matches the grandeur of Mosaics.

Perhaps because two of the players – Collier himself and Rhodesian-born trombonist Mike Gibbs, later a prominent arranger – were graduates of Boston’s Berklee College, the 1967 dates seems to suffer from an overemphasis on textural organization rather than emotional soloing. At points the voicing appears to track backwards from the Berklee-sanctioned work of Evans and George Russell to the airiness associated with 1950s’ bands of similar size such as those led by John Graas, Teddy Charles and Gigi Gryce.

Featuring two future members of The Soft Machine – baritone saxophonist and oboist Karl Jenkins and drummer John Marshall – the writing and soloing too is sometimes too episodic. Jenkins’ oboe is emphasized far more – for novelty’s sake? – and more frequently than similarly so-called exotic instrumentals would be used in later Collier work, while Phil Lee’s sometimes finger-picking, sometimes strumming guitar lines exist in a dated time frame mid-way between Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo.

Most of the assured strength comes from front-line players, all of whom, ironically enough, were foreign-born. The date’s veterans on trumpet and flugelhorn, who each play on half the tracks, are Harry Beckett, originally from Barbados, and Canadian Kenny Wheeler. Dave Aaron, who more than acquits himself on alto saxophone and flute, was born in Singapore.

“Conversations” for instance, depends on antipodal vamping that contrasts Wheeler at his brassiest with Aaron’s slithering trills. Collier and Marshall provide backing that at times pulses like Native Indian rhythms, until the piece reaches a climax when Wheeler’s sweeter tones mix with Aaron’s skittering runs. An episodic minor blues, the title track mixes Gil Evans-like linear chords with down-stroking guitar licks à la Szabo at his most psychedelic, an R&B-like riff from Jenkins’ baritone saxophone, bluesy alto bites from Aaron and cymbal pops from Marshall. Hardening his tone from braying to polished, Wheeler completes the piece with triplet-laden excitement.

Despite its overall title, only flugelhornist Dick Pearce is the subject of a full-fledged salute with “Portraits One” on Portraits. Framed by obbligatos from Ed Speight’s guitar and Geoff Castle’s comping piano, Pearce who has more recently worked in the bigger bands of Ronnie Scott and Stan Tracey acquits himself with only a few dips into the saccharine. Shading his output in many layers, the trumpeter is effectively showcased when the gradually accelerating tempo provides a foundation for his contrapuntal asides, slurs and double-tonguing.

Furthermore, “And Now for Something Completely Different”, parts one and two, which take up another part of the session, relate more to the time in which it was composed and played than most of Collier’s previous and subsequent work. With Blue Note records-styled funk then in vogue, the repeated motif built on ratcheting percussion from John Webb, who also worked in a similar vein with guitarist Ray Russell; and nagging, extended guitar licks from Ed Speight, attempt to replicate this funk sound. Pianist Geoff Castle, who in recent years has worked with arranger Neil Ardley and in Ian Carr’s Nucleus, seems unsure whether he should be Wynton Kelly or Herbie Hancock. His passing chords and hearty tremolo pumping however don’t shout “early 1970s” as much as Webb’s heavy-handed drum solo. Meanwhile Pearce’s half-valve chorus is more NYJO than NYC. Luckily Collier’s arrangement saves the date with tempo shifts from andante to kinetic and direction from his thumping bass runs. Using intervallic layering to delineate parts, Collier often places bubbling flugelhorn lines on top, chirping alto saxophone from Peter Hurt – who has since played with George Russell and Carla Bley – in the middle and high-frequency piano chording at the bottom.

In contrast to the music surrounding it chronologically, 1970’s Mosaics is in many ways Collier’s Kind of Blue. More orchestral than that Miles Davis date, the alternate version of the four themes collected here benefit from a powerful front line, and one might conjecture less pressured Castle and Webb than they were two years later.

Beckett is back again, yet oddly both powerful saxophone soloists are now more involved in other musics than jazz. Bob Sydor, who plays alto and tenor saxophones, was in Maynard Ferguson’s big band as well as the orchestra for Miss Saigon, now teaches saxophone privately. Tenor and soprano saxophones Alan Wakeman, followed brief gigs with Mike Westbrook and the Soft Machine with membership in singer David Essex's band and now concentrates on commercial work, notably in musicals.

That’s a pity, since both men dig into the material here with gusto, double and triple tonguing, and intelligently using altissimo runs, passing tones and slurry glottal punctuation. Webb’s drum work pops and rolls and Castle’s piano lines are similarly high frequency and kinetic.

Except for a final drum solo, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 3, Theme 6”, serves as a perfect showcase for Beckett. Beginning a capella, he shades the brass tube and valves through squeaks, lip pops, wah-wahs, spits and puffs. When the downward rappelling bass line brings in the theme, strengthened by swaying, near-Arabic soprano saxophone lines, Beckett responds with fleet triplet-emphasized growls. As the rhythm section lays on pressured accompaniment he then turns from hand-muted weaving to harsh, staccato lines.

Another stand out, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 2, Theme 2” not only gives space to double-gaited cascading piano chords, but also for stop-and-start tenor saxophone cadences from both reed men. As Collier’s thick bass plucks and Webb’s press rolls push them forward, both Wakeman and Sydor overblow, tongue-stop, chomp phrases, semi-quote and generally vibrate pitches everywhere. The final shout chorus, adding Beckett, is excitement in itself.

One saxophonist who demanded go-for-broke excitement almost constantly, and never seemed to be seduced by commercial considerations, was Osborne (1941-2007). Although sidelined with mental illness for about two decades before his death, prior to that, Osborne showed, in his work with the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) and his own bands, that he was committed to the sort of improvisation that exhausted all possibilities. All Night Long, recorded with BOB cohorts, Harry Miller on bass and Louis Moholo on drums – both expatriate South Africans – confirms this. Although he favored the alto saxophone, Osborne was, in a way, the link between Tubby Hayes and Evan Parker.

As this 1975 CD demonstrates, those saxophonists are important touchstones. While Osborne was never really a bopper like Hayes, he still cleaved to the song form and studded his solo with fleeting quotes from other tunes, a long-time bop trope. Furthermore every tune on this CD has a real title, and the trio even briefly touches on “Round Midnight”. Conversely, while Osborne’s solos are rugged, seemingly never-ending and studded with rough asides, slip-sliding, roars and unexpected sound excursions, he never deconstructed timbres the way Parker, his sometime BOB section-made did. Whether he would have – like Bailey and a few others – have become more musically experimental as he aged, is of course, a moot question.

What is obvious is the strength of the performance here. Operating at 100 per cent from the first note, the trio mixes gritty, bass string plucks and pummeling arco lines on Miller’s part; cross-patterning drags, flams and rim shots, with add-on miscellaneous percussion excursions on Moholo’s; and resonating, repetitive bites, blows and blats on Osborne’s, to keep playing at top form.

Note how the three treat the almost 24-minute showcase that encompasses “Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio”. As Miller’s thick pulses spelunk down the bass strings and Moholo counters with a relentless exposure of rumbles, pops and cymbal echoes, Osborne inventively squeezes, trills and pushes new tones to the centre, only to discard them and start again. Forced and filled vibrating arpeggios and discursive patterns are advanced with flutter-tonguing, tongue-stopping and split tones, slip-sliding from one idea to the next, contrasting a bebop quote with a pseudo-Scottish burr and then moving on. Meantime Miller leaps from sul ponticello accompaniment to set up a groove congruent to the drummer’s cross pulsing and duple meters. As cadenzas of notes spew from his horn it appears as if Osborne will never stop playing no matter what.

Or consider the previously unreleased “Now and Then, Here and Now”. Beholden to the sound extensions brought to jazz by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Osborne’s solo still has a melodic base. With some lilting phrases played in the coloratura register and others roughened with a deeper tenor-sax-like pitch, he flies off into the stratosphere, but keeps recapping the original theme to maintain his moorings. Snatches of what could be “Slop” and “Mr. PC” appear fleetingly and then are subsumed into the molten idea flow, the bravura performance includes hocketing leaps from one idea and note cluster to the next. Especially illustrative is that the saxophonist is still soloing as the track fades. This is how Osborne should be remembered.

Born in 1937, Collier is thankfully still alive to be celebrated. And so he should be as with these CDs. Despite their related-to-the-period faults, both his and Osborne’s sets recall the creative ferment in United Kingdom jazz in the late 1960s, early 1970s and preserve hours of notable music that should be savored.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: 1. Blue Walls 2. El Miklos 3. Hirayoshi Suite 4. Conversations 5. Deep Dark Blue Centre Portraits: 7. And Now for Something Completely Different PT. 1 Disc 2 1. And Now for Something Completely Different PT 2. 2. Portraits 1 The Alternate Mosaics: 3. The Alternate Mosaics Part 1 Theme 1 4. The Alternate Mosaics Part 2 Theme 2 5. The Alternate Mosaics Part 3 Theme 6 6. The Alternate Mosaics Part 4 Theme 8

Personnel: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: Harry Beckett or Kenny Wheeler (trumpet and flugelhorn); Mike Gibbs (trombone); Dave Aaron (alto saxophone and flute); Karl Jenkins (baritone saxophone and oboe); Philip Lee (guitar); Graham Collier (bass) and John Marshall (drums) Portraits: Dick Pearce (flugelhorn); Pete Hurt (alto saxophone); Ed Speight (guitar); Geoff Castle (piano); Collier and John Webb (drums) The Alternate Mosaics: Beckett; Bob Sydor (alto and tenor saxophones); Alan Wakeman (tenor and soprano saxophones); Castle; Collier and Webb

Track Listing: Night: 1. All night long/Rivers 2. Round Midnight 3. Scotch Pearl 4. Waltz 5. Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio 6. Scotch Pearl 7. Now and Then, Here and Now

Personnel: Night: Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Harry Miller (bass) and

Louis Moholo (drums)

December 23, 2008

Mike Osborne Trio

All Night Long
Ogun OGCD 029

Graham Collier

Deep Dark Blue Centre/ Portraits/The Alternate Mosaics

BGO CD 822

While most of the attention in Britain and overseas in the late 1960s, early 1970s was focused on progressive rock and pop music coming from England, far more notable sounds were being developed outside of the mainstream. Although the most far-reaching of these advances may turn out to be the non-idiomatic improv advanced by the likes of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, two other strains deserve attention.

One, represented here by Graham Collier’s session for septet and sextets, collected from three different LPs, expressed the depths of the composer-arranger’s art. Its variations on color, texture, space and voicing cemented Collier’s reputation in that tricky hyphenate’s top ranks. All Night Long on the other hand, is a free-for-all blowing session from three musicians who while fellow travellers, were not fundamental believers in Bailey-Parker-styled lower-case pure improv.

Although both discs are officially reissues, each set adds more material to the original LP – roughly 27 minutes to the session led by alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, plus an almost three-quarters-of-an-hour alternate version of one of Collier’s most realized works, Mosaics. Surrounding that program, recorded in 1970, are Deep Dark Blue Centre, a septet session that was Collier’s first LP in 1967, and Portraits a sextet date from 1972 with a completely different band. Although significant efforts, neither matches the grandeur of Mosaics.

Perhaps because two of the players – Collier himself and Rhodesian-born trombonist Mike Gibbs, later a prominent arranger – were graduates of Boston’s Berklee College, the 1967 dates seems to suffer from an overemphasis on textural organization rather than emotional soloing. At points the voicing appears to track backwards from the Berklee-sanctioned work of Evans and George Russell to the airiness associated with 1950s’ bands of similar size such as those led by John Graas, Teddy Charles and Gigi Gryce.

Featuring two future members of The Soft Machine – baritone saxophonist and oboist Karl Jenkins and drummer John Marshall – the writing and soloing too is sometimes too episodic. Jenkins’ oboe is emphasized far more – for novelty’s sake? – and more frequently than similarly so-called exotic instrumentals would be used in later Collier work, while Phil Lee’s sometimes finger-picking, sometimes strumming guitar lines exist in a dated time frame mid-way between Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo.

Most of the assured strength comes from front-line players, all of whom, ironically enough, were foreign-born. The date’s veterans on trumpet and flugelhorn, who each play on half the tracks, are Harry Beckett, originally from Barbados, and Canadian Kenny Wheeler. Dave Aaron, who more than acquits himself on alto saxophone and flute, was born in Singapore.

“Conversations” for instance, depends on antipodal vamping that contrasts Wheeler at his brassiest with Aaron’s slithering trills. Collier and Marshall provide backing that at times pulses like Native Indian rhythms, until the piece reaches a climax when Wheeler’s sweeter tones mix with Aaron’s skittering runs. An episodic minor blues, the title track mixes Gil Evans-like linear chords with down-stroking guitar licks à la Szabo at his most psychedelic, an R&B-like riff from Jenkins’ baritone saxophone, bluesy alto bites from Aaron and cymbal pops from Marshall. Hardening his tone from braying to polished, Wheeler completes the piece with triplet-laden excitement.

Despite its overall title, only flugelhornist Dick Pearce is the subject of a full-fledged salute with “Portraits One” on Portraits. Framed by obbligatos from Ed Speight’s guitar and Geoff Castle’s comping piano, Pearce who has more recently worked in the bigger bands of Ronnie Scott and Stan Tracey acquits himself with only a few dips into the saccharine. Shading his output in many layers, the trumpeter is effectively showcased when the gradually accelerating tempo provides a foundation for his contrapuntal asides, slurs and double-tonguing.

Furthermore, “And Now for Something Completely Different”, parts one and two, which take up another part of the session, relate more to the time in which it was composed and played than most of Collier’s previous and subsequent work. With Blue Note records-styled funk then in vogue, the repeated motif built on ratcheting percussion from John Webb, who also worked in a similar vein with guitarist Ray Russell; and nagging, extended guitar licks from Ed Speight, attempt to replicate this funk sound. Pianist Geoff Castle, who in recent years has worked with arranger Neil Ardley and in Ian Carr’s Nucleus, seems unsure whether he should be Wynton Kelly or Herbie Hancock. His passing chords and hearty tremolo pumping however don’t shout “early 1970s” as much as Webb’s heavy-handed drum solo. Meanwhile Pearce’s half-valve chorus is more NYJO than NYC. Luckily Collier’s arrangement saves the date with tempo shifts from andante to kinetic and direction from his thumping bass runs. Using intervallic layering to delineate parts, Collier often places bubbling flugelhorn lines on top, chirping alto saxophone from Peter Hurt – who has since played with George Russell and Carla Bley – in the middle and high-frequency piano chording at the bottom.

In contrast to the music surrounding it chronologically, 1970’s Mosaics is in many ways Collier’s Kind of Blue. More orchestral than that Miles Davis date, the alternate version of the four themes collected here benefit from a powerful front line, and one might conjecture less pressured Castle and Webb than they were two years later.

Beckett is back again, yet oddly both powerful saxophone soloists are now more involved in other musics than jazz. Bob Sydor, who plays alto and tenor saxophones, was in Maynard Ferguson’s big band as well as the orchestra for Miss Saigon, now teaches saxophone privately. Tenor and soprano saxophones Alan Wakeman, followed brief gigs with Mike Westbrook and the Soft Machine with membership in singer David Essex's band and now concentrates on commercial work, notably in musicals.

That’s a pity, since both men dig into the material here with gusto, double and triple tonguing, and intelligently using altissimo runs, passing tones and slurry glottal punctuation. Webb’s drum work pops and rolls and Castle’s piano lines are similarly high frequency and kinetic.

Except for a final drum solo, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 3, Theme 6”, serves as a perfect showcase for Beckett. Beginning a capella, he shades the brass tube and valves through squeaks, lip pops, wah-wahs, spits and puffs. When the downward rappelling bass line brings in the theme, strengthened by swaying, near-Arabic soprano saxophone lines, Beckett responds with fleet triplet-emphasized growls. As the rhythm section lays on pressured accompaniment he then turns from hand-muted weaving to harsh, staccato lines.

Another stand out, “The Alternate Mosaics Part 2, Theme 2” not only gives space to double-gaited cascading piano chords, but also for stop-and-start tenor saxophone cadences from both reed men. As Collier’s thick bass plucks and Webb’s press rolls push them forward, both Wakeman and Sydor overblow, tongue-stop, chomp phrases, semi-quote and generally vibrate pitches everywhere. The final shout chorus, adding Beckett, is excitement in itself.

One saxophonist who demanded go-for-broke excitement almost constantly, and never seemed to be seduced by commercial considerations, was Osborne (1941-2007). Although sidelined with mental illness for about two decades before his death, prior to that, Osborne showed, in his work with the Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) and his own bands, that he was committed to the sort of improvisation that exhausted all possibilities. All Night Long, recorded with BOB cohorts, Harry Miller on bass and Louis Moholo on drums – both expatriate South Africans – confirms this. Although he favored the alto saxophone, Osborne was, in a way, the link between Tubby Hayes and Evan Parker.

As this 1975 CD demonstrates, those saxophonists are important touchstones. While Osborne was never really a bopper like Hayes, he still cleaved to the song form and studded his solo with fleeting quotes from other tunes, a long-time bop trope. Furthermore every tune on this CD has a real title, and the trio even briefly touches on “Round Midnight”. Conversely, while Osborne’s solos are rugged, seemingly never-ending and studded with rough asides, slip-sliding, roars and unexpected sound excursions, he never deconstructed timbres the way Parker, his sometime BOB section-made did. Whether he would have – like Bailey and a few others – have become more musically experimental as he aged, is of course, a moot question.

What is obvious is the strength of the performance here. Operating at 100 per cent from the first note, the trio mixes gritty, bass string plucks and pummeling arco lines on Miller’s part; cross-patterning drags, flams and rim shots, with add-on miscellaneous percussion excursions on Moholo’s; and resonating, repetitive bites, blows and blats on Osborne’s, to keep playing at top form.

Note how the three treat the almost 24-minute showcase that encompasses “Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio”. As Miller’s thick pulses spelunk down the bass strings and Moholo counters with a relentless exposure of rumbles, pops and cymbal echoes, Osborne inventively squeezes, trills and pushes new tones to the centre, only to discard them and start again. Forced and filled vibrating arpeggios and discursive patterns are advanced with flutter-tonguing, tongue-stopping and split tones, slip-sliding from one idea to the next, contrasting a bebop quote with a pseudo-Scottish burr and then moving on. Meantime Miller leaps from sul ponticello accompaniment to set up a groove congruent to the drummer’s cross pulsing and duple meters. As cadenzas of notes spew from his horn it appears as if Osborne will never stop playing no matter what.

Or consider the previously unreleased “Now and Then, Here and Now”. Beholden to the sound extensions brought to jazz by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Osborne’s solo still has a melodic base. With some lilting phrases played in the coloratura register and others roughened with a deeper tenor-sax-like pitch, he flies off into the stratosphere, but keeps recapping the original theme to maintain his moorings. Snatches of what could be “Slop” and “Mr. PC” appear fleetingly and then are subsumed into the molten idea flow, the bravura performance includes hocketing leaps from one idea and note cluster to the next. Especially illustrative is that the saxophonist is still soloing as the track fades. This is how Osborne should be remembered.

Born in 1937, Collier is thankfully still alive to be celebrated. And so he should be as with these CDs. Despite their related-to-the-period faults, both his and Osborne’s sets recall the creative ferment in United Kingdom jazz in the late 1960s, early 1970s and preserve hours of notable music that should be savored.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: 1. Blue Walls 2. El Miklos 3. Hirayoshi Suite 4. Conversations 5. Deep Dark Blue Centre Portraits: 7. And Now for Something Completely Different PT. 1 Disc 2 1. And Now for Something Completely Different PT 2. 2. Portraits 1 The Alternate Mosaics: 3. The Alternate Mosaics Part 1 Theme 1 4. The Alternate Mosaics Part 2 Theme 2 5. The Alternate Mosaics Part 3 Theme 6 6. The Alternate Mosaics Part 4 Theme 8

Personnel: Deep: Deep Dark Blue Centre: Harry Beckett or Kenny Wheeler (trumpet and flugelhorn); Mike Gibbs (trombone); Dave Aaron (alto saxophone and flute); Karl Jenkins (baritone saxophone and oboe); Philip Lee (guitar); Graham Collier (bass) and John Marshall (drums) Portraits: Dick Pearce (flugelhorn); Pete Hurt (alto saxophone); Ed Speight (guitar); Geoff Castle (piano); Collier and John Webb (drums) The Alternate Mosaics: Beckett; ); Bob Sydor (alto and tenor saxophones); Alan Wakeman (tenor and soprano saxophones); Castle; Collier and Webb

Track Listing: Night: 1. All night long/Rivers 2. Round Midnight 3. Scotch Pearl 4. Waltz 5. Ken’s Tune/Country Bounce/ All Night Long/Trio Trio 6. Scotch Pearl 7. Now and Then, Here and Now

Personnel: Night: Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Harry Miller (bass) and

Louis Moholo (drums)

December 23, 2008

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent
Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood

Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn

Cuneiform Rune 262

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn
Cuneiform Rune 262

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent

Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood

Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath
Fledg'ling Records FD-3062

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood

Fledg'ling Records FD-3063

Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath

Eclipse At Dawn

Cuneiform Rune 262

The Chris McGregor Group

Very Urgent

Fledg'ling Records FD-3059

Nearly 20 years after his death the musical importance of South African-born, pianist Chris McGregor and his pioneering multi-cultural big band Brotherhood of Breath (BOB) that operated both in the United Kingdom and the Continent is being repeatedly reconfirmed.

As these four recent CDs demonstrate, McGregor and his constantly shifting cast of musical characters were, especially during the early 1970s, involved in creating a third synthesis of sound. Newly arrived from South Africa, the sextet featured on Very Urgent – actually the inter-racial Blue Notes band that was forced to leave its Apartheid-ridden homeland a couple of years earlier – began by mixing a variant of Freebop with its native Kwela Township rhythms. A further sonic variant is more prominent on the other three CDs however – including the somewhat lo-fi, newly discovered live session, Eclipse at Dawn.

Expanding the Blue Notes to big band status – the pianist recruited most of the section men from the more raucous ranks of Britain’s burgeoning Free Jazz movement – BOB’s soloists’ frame of reference became Energy Music and Free Improv. This modulation was then was grafted onto the big band styling and Africanized beats that the band already projected. Finally with BOB introducing African instruments as well as themes to its program, a unique improv variant of so-called World Music was slouching towards birth with the group’s CDs.

There is impressive work throughout this series of discs, which can be divided chronologically and almost geographically. The 1968 combo work is separate from the big band(s) on the other CDs, while Eclipse at Dawn, recorded live in Berlin, allows the listener to compare extended live versions of some of the tunes recorded in the studio sessions that make up Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and Brotherhood.

By 1968, another South African exile, tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer had joined the original Blue Notes – trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo, plus McGregor. But the added horn only intensified the band’s resemblance to such Hard Bop combs of the day as The Jazz Messengers. As a matter of fact, with McGregor’s key splintering in a Monkish fashion throughout, Very Urgent could be a Mod-Era British younger cousin to Atlantic’s Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

On these tunes, Dyani is still walking, McGregor outputs off-side fills, when he isn’t pounding on the keys, while on “Marie My Dear” – note the Monk homage in the title– Moholo’s regulation pops and scuffs derive from Blakey’s style, while Feza’s brassy asides and rasping triplets relate to the work of Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.

Unlike the Messengers, the combo does play around with more abrupt tempo changes, not to mention polyphonic harmonies on “Don’t Stir the Beehive”. Plus the compositions curiously wavering, almost off-key heads often reflect McGregor’s background in Methodist hymns and Africa chants more than Afro-American Baptist church music. But when the soloists open up, as Feza does with bugle calls and rooster crows on “Heart’s Vibrations” and Pukwana does throughout with Tranesque, contrapuntal trilling, the parallel are still bop – admittedly Free Bop not Hard Bop – but at the same place in history as their American cousins. While the strength of the sounds isn’t compromised, the compositions of McGregor and others get a more notable showcase on the BOB CDs.

Minus Feza, the band on Eclipse numbers 11, but with Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett added, and another South African-in-exile, Harry Miller in the bass chair. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, with Beer still on board, adds John Surman on soprano and baritone saxophone, Mike Osborne on alto saxophone and Beckett among others. Brotherhood is by a 12-piece group, including tenor saxophonist Gary Windo, who with trombonist Nick Evans contributed the “Funky Boots March”, which closes both that session and the live date from Berlin.

Slightly shorter than one minute with a parade-ground beat from Moholo, slide- whistle shrills from the reeds and a brassy fortissimo lead from that sounds like a piccolo trumpet, both performances are pretty much the same. Elsewhere however, the live situation allows BOB to stretch out on a couple of Pukwana lines “Nick Tete” and “Do It” which are also on Brotherhood; as well as on “The Bride”, which is poked and prodded for more than twice the length of time than the version on Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

In Berlin, the sound is also slightly distant – especially when it comes to Miller’s bass part – although there’s plenty of room for Pukwana’s improvisations. Moving from spetrofluctuation and glossolalia with emphasized squeaks, spikes and multiphonics on “The Bride”, the altoist demonstrates that his time-sense was sufficiently “free” to break apart a theme that was brand-new at the time. Expanding and inflating the melody, Pukwana soon has trombonist Malcolm Griffin double-tonguing and fluttering, with fellow bone man Nick Evans adding pointed fills behind both. Soon enough the tempo turns staccato and more intense without losing traditional big band-styled call-and-response from the individual sections, only to be nearly blown apart to fragments by Windo’s Aylerian screeching and hocketing lines.

The brassy postlude, encompassing contrapuntal vamps from the horns plus Moholo’s smashes and rough ruffs are present in the studio version as well. But this “Bride” is betrothed to Surman and McGregor. Both more African-sounding as well as more closely wedded to jazz, this variation includes the pianist’s fantasia of circular contrasting lines, as well as Surman’s piercing and breathy soprano saxophone augmentations. The British saxophonist, who would eventually drift away from such forceful soloing, reed-bites, tongue-stops and centres himself with straining altissimo as he plays. Yet as opposed to more original ideas from Windo and Pukwana on the live version, he appears very much in thrall to John Coltrane’s and Eric Dolphy’s influences.

On the different, earlier CD, the studio version of “Nick Tete” also seems to relate more closely to expected big-band sounds – as well as adding Calypso and Kwela echoes – than it does in Berlin. McGregor fans the keys; Pukwana adds honks and slides to his solo, but despite double-tonguing, Feza’s lead theme variation is only slightly left of centre.

Live however, “Nick Tete” climaxes with mass cacophony that bleeds right into the following track – McGregor’s appropriately title “Restless”. This postlude is carried along on a series of glissandi, then staccato pops from the composer, coupled with spectacular triple-stopping pulses from Miller. That tune ends with contrapuntal and antiphonal screams, peeps and sighs from the horns, although the scene had been set by “Nick Tete”. Its finale involves alternating ascending and descending harsh cross cries from the band as Moholo ruffs and bounces, and Beckett and Pukwana gradually shred the theme with vamping counterpoint. This follows section work that manages to keep the theme danceable while expressing it in adjacent keys and pitches, begins with Pukwana again showing his command of the material which he dissolves into split tones.

As for “Do It”, BOB does it live with a nearly symphonic overture of cross timbres from the brass and reeds. However the tune becomes even freer and more agitated during Alan Skidmore’s tenor saxophone solo that encompasses double, triple and flutter-tonguing and finger vibrato. Downside is the muddy recording which makes it sound as if McGregor is playing a tinny electric piano.

High frequency piano chording on the studio version of “Do It” – which is actually longer than the live version – confirms that McGregor’s piano is acoustic. Here the composition is layered with portamento high brass, mid-range trombone spurts, higher-pitched reeds and basso reeds lines. Together these sound tiers provide the tonal coloration upon which Feza’s improvisation depends as he uses lip flutters and percussive spits to limn the melody. When the theme shifts to piano comping, additional tinctures appear as Miller takes a contrapuntal bass solo.

Eclipse at Dawn’s other surprise is its title track, composed by Abdullah Ibrahim, anther South African exile who followed a parallel, but completely separate musical route to McGregor’s. On this nocturne, the Ellingtonian echoes which are mostly masked in McGregor’s own writing for the band come to the fore. Atmospheric in execution, Evans’ Lawrence Brown-like theme statement is in this context almost excessively formalist, with only sul ponticello asides from Miller keeping it from sounding overtly legato. Osborne’s split-tone response to Evans’ theme elaboration is abrasive, yet definitely Free Bop rather than Free Jazz. Still in context it sounds wildly “outside”, even though his cries ornament and color rather than reconstitute the melody.

Overall, the most memorable track on these BOB CDs is Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath’s “Night Poem”. A rare excursion into program music by McGregor, the nearly 21½-minute track is a definite funky precursor to World Music exoticism, since the composer plays African xylophone – which at points sounds like a kalimba – as much as piano, with Beer and Feza both featured on Indian flutes. Moholo adds some bell shaking, but happily the African echoes are soon subsumed by a steady andante pulse, curvaceously toughened by Miller four-square plucks. Pushing the fragile flute sound aside, plunger trombone lines and sandpaper-rough tenor saxophone spews – probably from Skidmore – move the theme to the horns and penultimately to a brass choir. With trumpets and trombones adding contrapuntal ornamentation and Moholo a discontinuous beat, the theme becomes tough enough to end with drum top smacks that aurally overshadow a final flute peep.

Introducing a tough Africanized sensibility to big band music and mixing it with the solo strengths of emerging Free Jazz is McGregor and the BOB’s lasting legacy. The value of these CDs is that on any of them you can experience these qualities expressed in high-class music and sound.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Urgent: 1. Marie My Dear/Travelling Somewhere 2. Heart’s Vibration 3. The Sound's Begin Again/White Lies 4. Don't Stir the Beehive

Personnel: Urgent: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Johnny Dyani (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Brotherhood: 1. Nick Tete 2. Joyful Noise 3. Think of Something 4. Do It 5. Funky Boots March

Personnel: Brotherhood: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Breath: 1. MRA 2. Davashe's Dream 3. Bride 4. Andromeda 5. Night Poem 6. Union Special

Personnel: Breath: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet and Indian flute); Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone and clarinet); John Surman (soprano and baritone saxophones); Ronnie Beer (tenor saxophone and Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano and African xylophone); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eclipse: 1. Introduction by Ronnie Scott 2. Nick Tete 3. Restless 4. Do It 5. Eclipse at Dawn 6. The Bride 7. Now 8. Funky Boots March 9. Ronnie Scott and Chris McGregor Sendoff and Applause

Personnel: Eclipse: Mark Charig (cornet); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Malcolm Griffiths and Nick Evans (trombones); Dudu Pukwana and Mike Osborne (alto saxophones); Gary Windo (tenor saxophone); Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); Chris McGregor (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

September 18, 2008

Selwyn Lissack’s Friendship Next of Kin

Facets of the Univers
DMG ARC 702

Sven-Åke Johansson, Moderne Nordeuropäische Dorfmusik

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 - 72

Olof Bright Editions OBCD 14-15

Operating in the shade of rock music’s hegemony and somewhat overshadowed by American experiments, in the late 1960s-early 1970s European-based improvisers were creating their own answers to the question of how to forge modern music.

As these little-known period CDs led by drummer-conceptual artists demonstrate, these responses could take a multitude of forms. Better known of the leaders is Swede Sven Åke Johansson, a long-time Berlin resident, whose affiliation with the avant-garde ranges from his early participation in saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s bands –including the seminal Machine Gun session – to his position today when he still plays with youngish experimenters like trumpeter Axel Dörner. His art is a sideline.

Facets of the Univers on the other hand is led by Selwyn Lissack, a South African, who subsequently abandoned music to concentrate on his career as a hologram sculptor. Recorded in 1969, the CD, which has been beefed up with a second version of the title track, captures that point when expatriates of all sorts were shaking up the London jazz scene. Most of the rest of the band consists of other former South Africans like trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Harry Miller and Louis Moholo on incidental percussion. The group is filled out by Jamaican Kenneth Terroade on tenor saxophone and flute; Englishman Mike Osborne on alto saxophone; and American Earl Freeman on piano, bass and voice

Although Freeman, who also played with saxophonists Archie Shepp and Noah Howard, is the only Yank on the date, the session seems to take its cue from the extended polyphonic exoticism captured on similar New Thing outings of the time, encompassing ragged, climatic unison heads and expositions – plus a spoken word section.

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 is an altogether different affair. As well as Johansson’s blunt, unremitting percussion work, the 1968 band features bassist Werner Götz, who holds things together rhythmically, and Norbert Eisbrenner, who today is also a painter, but then split his improvising between unvarnished Energy music on alto saxophone and Ur-psychedelic guitar runs. One track from Stockholm in 1970 adds legendary tenor saxophonist Bengt “Frippe” Nordstöm (1936-2000), whose contribution ranges from Aylerian to distracted The three final tracks, recorded in Oslo with cellist Peter Dyck, Eisbrenner and Johansson meander due to the sonic contradictions between the cellist’s sometimes romantically legato style and the guitarist’s style mutation into what could be a prototypical heavy-metal string shredding.

A Cape Town native, Lissack arrived in Britain in the mid-1960s and hooked up with like-minded players from his Apartheid-era homeland and others. Yet on this CD, the undulating lines, contrapuntal reed squeals and pounding percussion on both versions of “Friendship Next of Kin” relate more to similar Shepp or Albert Ayler dates than anything the expatriate Africans or minimalist-oriented Brits were trying,

For a start, playing a Don Cherry-like pocket trumpet, Feza’s triple-tongue slurs and tremolo sluices seem to come from Donald Ayler not the Townships, while both saxophonists’ wiggling snorts and walloping honks fit into the Shepp-John Tchicai mold of the time. Meanwhile Freeman contributes ragged, high-frequency piano chording as an irregularly paced counter line to the main theme. As the two percussionists add redoubled flams and bounces, gospelish call-and-response and layering discord results when Osborne and Terroade add glossolalia. Finally the piece is brought to its head with a tincture of bright growls from the trumpeter and a conclusive piano chord and drum roll.

The second version of “Friendship Next of Kin” is more of the same, except additionally irregularly pitched and recaps the head, which mirrors Ayler’s “Ghosts”. Along the way, Freeman introduces a waterfall of dynamic pianism and Feza plays high-pitched triplets; while the split-tone saxophone solos are harsh and antiphonal. More so than the first cut, Lissack gets to showcase his cymbal reverberations, patterning and rolls on the snares and toms.

Derivative and shackled to its time-frame, Freeman’s poetry on the title track is more an artifact than an avowal. In contrast, the memorable asides are Lissack’s tympani-like resonations, finger-cymbal like slaps and concussions from Moholo, swaying sul tasto lines from Miller and some raspy triplets from Feza. Osborne’s shrill and irregular whine confirms his individual status in this context, while Terroade’s double-tonguing on flute adds more variety to the cut.

Variety wasn’t among the Johansson trio’s concerns on the first CD of his collection. It was 1968 in Berlin, and the drummer’s group was one of the many providing what they heard as a soundtrack to a student and workers revolt. As elsewhere throughout this set, Götz comes across as MVP; his brooding thumps holding the almost-48½-minute piece together as the other two appear to be forging a progenitor to punk-jazz.

Extending the range of his kit as if he was playing electric drums, Johansson’s percussion impulses include clicks, clanks, sprawls, pumps and rolls. Eisbrenner is beginning to utilize phasers and distortion in his guitar solos and if it wasn’t for the bassist’s thick chording, the guitarist could have dragooned performance into Yardbirds territory. Luckily on alto saxophone, his trills and breaths introduce wispy reed-biting and hisses that lock into the Free Jazz tradition and are propelled with some Sunny Murray-like door knocking from the drummer. Although Eisbrenner’s lines are sometimes as abstract and fluttery as Götz’s are solid and conceptual, this adds to the track’s appeal. More than a revolutionary war cry, the reference to “modern Northern European village music” in the title is reified by inference if not intent.

Eventually the musique brut opens up enough so that the bassist can relax his sul tasto beat for fiddle-like runs and to scour and pick additional tinctures from his four strings. His freedom appears to embolden Eisbrenner as a guitarist, and on that instrument his soloing encompasses hard, chromatic frailing plus harsh below the bridge, both mixed with unexpected amp feedback. Summing up, the piece lurches to a finale which features the drummer roused to military style paradiddles and flams and the bassist introducing dramatic Death Metal-like multiphonics while double stopping.

Norway – Death Metal’s birthplace – appears to adversely affect the group four years later on during three tracks taped at an Oslo club. At this point however, Eisbrenner and Johansson are partnered by cellist Dyck. Although some of the cellist’s strident, lower-pitched sawing is reminiscent of Joel Freedman’s work with Ayler, most of the time the instrument’s harmonic history adds an unneeded elegance to the tracks. Additionally – intentionally or not – the guitarist had by then planted himself firmly in the rock camp. He speedily flanges and rappels up and down his strings reveal licks that seem to have wandered in from a country-rock session. While a few passages show off the drummer’s skills weaving slide whistles shrills, press rolls and bell-ringing into Free Jazz rhythms, even banging bluntly on the bass drum can’t seem to reconcile the others’ conceptions.

Furthermore, despite Götz’s presence two years earlier in Stockholm, the 26-minute improvisation there also never quite solidifies. Part of the problem may be that Eisbrenner is beginning to concentrate most fully on a rockier style, with passages sounding as if he has a resonator attached to his f-hole. Additionally, Nordström’s cloning of Ayler – he was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Ayler’s Woody Guthrie – seems in this instance to have slowed down his idea flow. Certain phrases that resemble “Ghosts” or “Vibrations” appear over and over again; some licks are mere phrase extenders or hooting overblowing. At one point Nordström’s meandering cause someone – Eisbrenner perhaps? – to chime in with Swing-to-Bop piano comping behind some of his solos. Later on, someone intones a poem in Swedish, which detracts as completely from the cohesive creation as Freeman’s versifying does on the other CD. At the track’s conclusion, Dyck introduces Jack Benny-style, fiddle-string scratching as the drummer reverberates something that sounds very close to garbage can lids. Overall, it’s the near-elastic resonation from Johansson’s cymbals and scraps on his percussion innards and sides which enliven the piece.

Both Facets of the Univers and Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 are valuable historical documents, although neither quite makes it into the front rank. With a greater range of colors, the Lissack session may have a slight edge, blunted by the recitation and its then-contemporary stance. Johansson’s three sessions attempt more, but also suffer from a too-loose live presentation. Of the three, the 1968 disc has the most to offer musically and sociologically.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Facets: 1. Friendship Next of Kin 2. Facets of the Universe 3. Friendship Next of Kin

Personnel: Facets: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Kenneth Terroade (tenor saxophone and flute); Earl Freeman (piano, bass and voice); Harry Miller (bass); Selwyn Lissack (drums) and Louis Moholo (incidental percussion)

Track Listing: Berlin: CD I: 1. Berlin Symphonie+ CD II 1. New Nordic light I*+ 2. Fernes Donnern mit Donnerblech 3. Kleiner Marsch 4. Ended mit vibrato und wirbel

Personnel: Berlin: Bengt “Frippe” Nordstöm (tenor saxophone)*; Norbert Eisbrenner (guitar, alto saxophone and voice); Peter Dyck (cello [CD2 tracks 2-4]); Werner Götz bass) + and Sven-Åke Johansson (drums and voice)

May 18, 2008

Sven-Åke Johansson, Moderne Nordeuropäische Dorfmusik

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 - 72
Olof Bright Editions OBCD 14-15

Selwyn Lissack’s Friendship Next of Kin

Facets of the Univers

DMG ARC 702

Operating in the shade of rock music’s hegemony and somewhat overshadowed by American experiments, in the late 1960s-early 1970s European-based improvisers were creating their own answers to the question of how to forge modern music.

As these little-known period CDs led by drummer-conceptual artists demonstrate, these responses could take a multitude of forms. Better known of the leaders is Swede Sven Åke Johansson, a long-time Berlin resident, whose affiliation with the avant-garde ranges from his early participation in saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s bands –including the seminal Machine Gun session – to his position today when he still plays with youngish experimenters like trumpeter Axel Dörner. His art is a sideline.

Facets of the Univers on the other hand is led by Selwyn Lissack, a South African, who subsequently abandoned music to concentrate on his career as a hologram sculptor. Recorded in 1969, the CD, which has been beefed up with a second version of the title track, captures that point when expatriates of all sorts were shaking up the London jazz scene. Most of the rest of the band consists of other former South Africans like trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Harry Miller and Louis Moholo on incidental percussion. The group is filled out by Jamaican Kenneth Terroade on tenor saxophone and flute; Englishman Mike Osborne on alto saxophone; and American Earl Freeman on piano, bass and voice

Although Freeman, who also played with saxophonists Archie Shepp and Noah Howard, is the only Yank on the date, the session seems to take its cue from the extended polyphonic exoticism captured on similar New Thing outings of the time, encompassing ragged, climatic unison heads and expositions – plus a spoken word section.

Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 is an altogether different affair. As well as Johansson’s blunt, unremitting percussion work, the 1968 band features bassist Werner Götz, who holds things together rhythmically, and Norbert Eisbrenner, who today is also a painter, but then split his improvising between unvarnished Energy music on alto saxophone and Ur-psychedelic guitar runs. One track from Stockholm in 1970 adds legendary tenor saxophonist Bengt “Frippe” Nordstöm (1936-2000), whose contribution ranges from Aylerian to distracted The three final tracks, recorded in Oslo with cellist Peter Dyck, Eisbrenner and Johansson meander due to the sonic contradictions between the cellist’s sometimes romantically legato style and the guitarist’s style mutation into what could be a prototypical heavy-metal string shredding.

A Cape Town native, Lissack arrived in Britain in the mid-1960s and hooked up with like-minded players from his Apartheid-era homeland and others. Yet on this CD, the undulating lines, contrapuntal reed squeals and pounding percussion on both versions of “Friendship Next of Kin” relate more to similar Shepp or Albert Ayler dates than anything the expatriate Africans or minimalist-oriented Brits were trying,

For a start, playing a Don Cherry-like pocket trumpet, Feza’s triple-tongue slurs and tremolo sluices seem to come from Donald Ayler not the Townships, while both saxophonists’ wiggling snorts and walloping honks fit into the Shepp-John Tchicai mold of the time. Meanwhile Freeman contributes ragged, high-frequency piano chording as an irregularly paced counter line to the main theme. As the two percussionists add redoubled flams and bounces, gospelish call-and-response and layering discord results when Osborne and Terroade add glossolalia. Finally the piece is brought to its head with a tincture of bright growls from the trumpeter and a conclusive piano chord and drum roll.

The second version of “Friendship Next of Kin” is more of the same, except additionally irregularly pitched and recaps the head, which mirrors Ayler’s “Ghosts”. Along the way, Freeman introduces a waterfall of dynamic pianism and Feza plays high-pitched triplets; while the split-tone saxophone solos are harsh and antiphonal. More so than the first cut, Lissack gets to showcase his cymbal reverberations, patterning and rolls on the snares and toms.

Derivative and shackled to its time-frame, Freeman’s poetry on the title track is more an artifact than an avowal. In contrast, the memorable asides are Lissack’s tympani-like resonations, finger-cymbal like slaps and concussions from Moholo, swaying sul tasto lines from Miller and some raspy triplets from Feza. Osborne’s shrill and irregular whine confirms his individual status in this context, while Terroade’s double-tonguing on flute adds more variety to the cut.

Variety wasn’t among the Johansson trio’s concerns on the first CD of his collection. It was 1968 in Berlin, and the drummer’s group was one of the many providing what they heard as a soundtrack to a student and workers revolt. As elsewhere throughout this set, Götz comes across as MVP; his brooding thumps holding the almost-48½-minute piece together as the other two appear to be forging a progenitor to punk-jazz.

Extending the range of his kit as if he was playing electric drums, Johansson’s percussion impulses include clicks, clanks, sprawls, pumps and rolls. Eisbrenner is beginning to utilize phasers and distortion in his guitar solos and if it wasn’t for the bassist’s thick chording, the guitarist could have dragooned performance into Yardbirds territory. Luckily on alto saxophone, his trills and breaths introduce wispy reed-biting and hisses that lock into the Free Jazz tradition and are propelled with some Sunny Murray-like door knocking from the drummer. Although Eisbrenner’s lines are sometimes as abstract and fluttery as Götz’s are solid and conceptual, this adds to the track’s appeal. More than a revolutionary war cry, the reference to “modern Northern European village music” in the title is reified by inference if not intent.

Eventually the musique brut opens up enough so that the bassist can relax his sul tasto beat for fiddle-like runs and to scour and pick additional tinctures from his four strings. His freedom appears to embolden Eisbrenner as a guitarist, and on that instrument his soloing encompasses hard, chromatic frailing plus harsh below the bridge, both mixed with unexpected amp feedback. Summing up, the piece lurches to a finale which features the drummer roused to military style paradiddles and flams and the bassist introducing dramatic Death Metal-like multiphonics while double stopping.

Norway – Death Metal’s birthplace – appears to adversely affect the group four years later on during three tracks taped at an Oslo club. At this point however, Eisbrenner and Johansson are partnered by cellist Dyck. Although some of the cellist’s strident, lower-pitched sawing is reminiscent of Joel Freedman’s work with Ayler, most of the time the instrument’s harmonic history adds an unneeded elegance to the tracks. Additionally – intentionally or not – the guitarist had by then planted himself firmly in the rock camp. He speedily flanges and rappels up and down his strings reveal licks that seem to have wandered in from a country-rock session. While a few passages show off the drummer’s skills weaving slide whistles shrills, press rolls and bell-ringing into Free Jazz rhythms, even banging bluntly on the bass drum can’t seem to reconcile the others’ conceptions.

Furthermore, despite Götz’s presence two years earlier in Stockholm, the 26-minute improvisation there also never quite solidifies. Part of the problem may be that Eisbrenner is beginning to concentrate most fully on a rockier style, with passages sounding as if he has a resonator attached to his f-hole. Additionally, Nordström’s cloning of Ayler – he was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Ayler’s Woody Guthrie – seems in this instance to have slowed down his idea flow. Certain phrases that resemble “Ghosts” or “Vibrations” appear over and over again; some licks are mere phrase extenders or hooting overblowing. At one point Nordström’s meandering cause someone – Eisbrenner perhaps? – to chime in with Swing-to-Bop piano comping behind some of his solos. Later on, someone intones a poem in Swedish, which detracts as completely from the cohesive creation as Freeman’s versifying does on the other CD. At the track’s conclusion, Dyck introduces Jack Benny-style, fiddle-string scratching as the drummer reverberates something that sounds very close to garbage can lids. Overall, it’s the near-elastic resonation from Johansson’s cymbals and scraps on his percussion innards and sides which enliven the piece.

Both Facets of the Univers and Berlin Symfonie MIND1968 – 72 are valuable historical documents, although neither quite makes it into the front rank. With a greater range of colors, the Lissack session may have a slight edge, blunted by the recitation and its then-contemporary stance. Johansson’s three sessions attempt more, but also suffer from a too-loose live presentation. Of the three, the 1968 disc has the most to offer musically and sociologically.

-- Ken Waxman

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Track Listing: Facets: 1. Friendship Next of Kin 2. Facets of the Universe 3. Friendship Next of Kin

Personnel: Facets: Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Kenneth Terroade (tenor saxophone and flute); Earl Freeman (piano, bass and voice); Harry Miller (bass); Selwyn Lissack (drums) and Louis Moholo (incidental percussion)

Track Listing: Berlin: CD I: 1. Berlin Symphonie+ CD II 1. New Nordic light I*+ 2. Fernes Donnern mit Donnerblech 3. Kleiner Marsch 4. Ended mit vibrato und wirbel

Personnel: Berlin: Bengt “Frippe” Nordström (tenor saxophone)*; Norbert Eisbrenner (guitar, alto saxophone and voice); Peter Dyck (cello [CD2 tracks 2-4]); Werner Götz bass) + and Sven-Åke Johansson (drums and voice)

May 18, 2008

Peter Brötzmann

Alarm
Atavistic ALP257CD

Brötzmann/Mangelsdorff/Sommer
Pica Pica
Atavistic ALP258CD

Two more valuable CD reissues of Wuppertal, Germany-based saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s work for FMP in the 1980s once again show his versatility. One disk offers proof positive that the hard-driving reedist can easily hold up his side in an all-star trio configuration, while the other shows how he helps spark aural fireworks in a nonet situation.

Ironically the aptly-named Alarm almost ended up being more than a fanciful “blast from the past”. This Hamburg radio gig with a multi-national cast of nine Free Jazzers had to be interrupted after the 40 odd minutes captured on the disc were recorded because a phoned-in bomb threat meant that the audience, technicians and musicians had to quickly evacuate the hall.

Lacking the extra-musical drama of the other date, Pica Pica is just as incendiary, with Brötzmann playing tenor, baritone and alto saxophones and tarogato as one part of a little-recorded trio. His front-line partner is veteran trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, then in the most experimental phase of his long career, but the real surprise is the presence of Günter “Baby” Sommer on traps set and horn. Like Han Bennink of the Netherlands –

Brotz’s usual percussion partner – Sommer is an all-around drum master. Unlike Bennink, he resides in East Berlin, on the other side of the then-existing wall, so he was just starting to interact with non-East Block players.

You couldn’t tell that from this session. Sommer’s tambourine shuddering cymbal raps, intense cross sticking and triplet flams and rattles add heaving tension to the tunes, which take on new dimensions when he releases the beat. As the trombonist and reedist bluster away on two long improvisations and the short title track, Sommer contributes blunt polyrhythms, using sticks, brushes, palms and fists to provide vivid brush strokes of aural color. The jokey and jittery “Pica, Pica” makes the greatest use of the drummer’s faux parade-drill timing. But his harsh ruffs and bulldozer-like press rolls are in evidence throughout.

Rotating among his horns like a mini-reed section Brötzmann spins from steady air raid siren glossolalia on alto to inchoate, near bagpipe-like timbres on tarogato and slurry and smeary reed undulations on baritone. His characteristic stratospheric glottal punctuation is often evident, as are his mouse-squeaking altissimo tones. Once, when he seems to be soloing on two different horns, it becomes apparent that the secondary timbres are from Sommer’s horn.

Articulating chromatic grace notes and whinnying plunger tones, Mangelsdorff’s triple-tongued slurs make common cause with the saxophonist’s staccato phrasing. Often accompanying as well as soloing, his pedal-point lilt sneaks in a common Bop riff at the end of “Wie Du Mir, So Ich Dir Noch Lange Nicht” to keep the proceedings on track as the piece downshifts to muted harmony.

Triple the brass, reed and rhythm on Pica Pica, and you approximate the cacophonous polyphony that arises during Alarm’s extended title track. Surprise at this explosion is a moot – but definitely not a mute – point when you consider the other players. The rhythm section is made up of German Free Jazz big band leader Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano plus two European-domiciled South African expatriates, bassist Harry Miller and drummer Louis Moholo. Brass was Japanese trumpeter Toshinori Kondo – who would reunite with Brötz for the Die Like A Dog band in the 1990s – and two trombonists: modern gutbucket stylist, East German Johannes Bauer, and British trombonist Alan Tomlinson, who was also a member of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Joining Brötzmann on reeds is Willem Breuker from the Netherlands, then (1981) closer to his Free Jazz roots than his later composerly stance; plus American tenor saxophonist Frank Wright, a first generation New Thinger then part of the burgeoning Yank jazzmen-in-Europe-Diaspora.

Driven by the dense and unyielding rhythm section – that in Miller’s case also encompasses shuffle-bowing tremolo and stretched sul ponticello jetes – the massed band exposes the robust theme, variations of which are utilized by the horn section as linking motifs that connect the solos. And what solos they are.

Von Schlippenbach is at his most manic, turning high-intensity pummeling into a metronomic fantasia of exaggerated note clusters and patterns. Kondo contributes half-valve squeezes and brassy slurs, while the stop-time dual trombone theatrics include guttural, spittle-encrusted blasts and metal-scraping concussive expansion.

Not that the reedists are outdone. Except for an off-kilter, a capella raggedy march – is it a mess call or a mail call? – the majority of the saxophone timbres undulate almost physically. Parlando and flutter tonguing, each of three saxmen at times gets involved in double counterpoint with an individual brass player until hyper-fast piano motifs push the tune forward. Slip-sliding, roller-coaster-like coils and twists are expressed by both horn families, as are snorting, basement-level expositions and shrill altissimo timbres. Eventually the high-level pan-tonality gives way to conclusive slurs.

While it’s difficult to isolate individual soloist, there’s no doubt that it’s Wright who sings the jivey lyrics to his own brief “Jerry Sacem”. A rhythmic blues, the undemanding melody and Moholo’s backbeat easily speed the audience outside the studio without anyone being panicked about the purported bomb threat.

Luckily this part of the concert was preserved. It, along with the other CD fills in some gaps in European Free Jazz history. But both are exhilarating listening as well.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alarm: 1. Alarm Part 1 2. Alarm Part 2 3. Jerry Sacem

Personnel: Alarm: Toshinori Kondo (trumpet); Johannes Bauer and Alan Tomlinson (trombones); Willem Breuker (alto and tenor saxophones); Peter Brötzmann (tenor and alto saxophone); Frank Wright (tenor saxophone); Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano); Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Moholo (drums)

Track Listing: Pica: 1. Instant Tears 2. Wie Du Mir, So Ich Dir Noch Lange Nicht 3. Pica, Pica

Personnel: Pica: Albert Mangelsdorff (trombones); Peter Brötzmann (tenor, baritone and alto saxophones and tarogato) and Günter “Baby” Sommer (drums and horn)

November 14, 2006

HARRY MILLER’S ISIPINGO

Which Way Now
Cuneiform Records Rune 233

By Ken Waxman

Free Bop with a touch with kwela is probably the best way to describe this CD of never-before-released tracks from bassist Harry Miller’s 1975 Isipingo sextet. But this high quality session consisting of four of Miller’s compositions is more than that. It adds another document to the underrepresented story of South African/British improv.

Starting in the 1960s, usually fed up or fleeing apartheid, a variety of South African musicians abandoned their homeland and set up shop in the United Kingdom. Soon they interacted with some of the more advanced British players to develop a variant of Hard Bop mixed with transformed homeland melodies and touches of Free Jazz. Most – including trumpeter Mongezi Feza and drummer Louis Moholo featured here – were graduates of Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes combo.

Leader Harry Miller (1941-1983) however, arrived on his own in 1961 and quickly hooked up with British players. This band was named after a vacation spot in Miller homeland, and is the only recording featuring the band with Feza, who died shortly afterwards. Miller’s life too was cut short. He was killed in an auto accident in the Netherlands, having moved there in the late 1970s to maintain his playing situations with questing Continental improvisers like Dutch pianist Leo Cuypers and German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

Although the recording is a little rough – both the trumpeter and Osborne start solos off mic during one track, WHICH WAY NOW is valuable in capturing the band at the height of its power. In the intervening years since, Tippett has occupied himself with most experimental bands like Mujician; Moholo has returned to South Africa; Evans gigs occasionally, though is mostly employed as a math teacher; while personal problems caused Osborne to abandon music in the early 1980s.

There are few hints of an erratic course in his soloing here, which ranges from wispy, bucolic obliggatos to sharp tempered steel-like asides. At this point he seems to be modulating his attack from one initially informed by Jackie McLean Hard Bop toughness to a more dissonant approach with definite echoes of Eric Dolphy. On the title track, which sounds both Free and Basie-ish, he switches among standard R&B style riffs, reverberating Dolphyesque side-slipping and a series of quotes that reference operatic airs as much as jazz. Meanwhile Feza contributes blustery grace notes, Evans speedy boppish runs, and Tippett mainstream comping. Miller’s walking bass line decelerates to a hesitant, half-speed for the finale as the brass dissolve into a buzzing valve showpiece.

Before that, Moholo shows off ratcheting flams and bull’s eye cymbal vibrations and Miller modernized slap bass, as the altoist’s Dolphy-out-of-(Charlie) Parker irregularly vibrated lines and foghorn honks overblow in false registers. Faced with this, the pianist’s key sweeping seems almost like a series of etudes before it hardens into a steady flow of dynamic notes from one side of the piano to another.

Earlier still in the program, Osborne splits the melody into adjacent tones in his solo, following blowsy, double-tongued power shouts and chromatic near-tailgate bluster from Evans. The trombonist’s notes almost seem to be playing call-and-response with themselves. Feza is just as impressive, beginning with a heraldic flourish at the top of his range and concluding with deeply buried grace notes liberated from the recesses of his bell.

“Children at Play” is the defining track, a slinky groove fest that hurtles by so quickly that you hardly notice its more than 20½-minute length. What could be standard Bop changes and variations are reconstituted by the six. Osborne tempers his Jackie Mac-attack with a more sophisticated Free Bop flair; Evans blasts smeary cross tones northward almost into flute territory and Moholo underlines everything with hard, blunt slaps. Tippett’s backing mixes the solid pianism of Hard Boppers like Cedar Walton with the sliding modalism of a McCoy Tyner. Finally Miller’s double-stopping ringing timbres recaps the theme and concludes the piece.

Despite the sometimes informal – at times slapdash – mic placement and head arrangements, WHICH WAY NOW is musically as well as historically important. It also proves that at that junction Miller certainly knew the way.

Unfortunately for him, after 1983 there would be no longer be a “now”.

Track Listing: 1. Family Affair 2. Children at Play 3. Eli’s Song 4. Which Way Now

Personnel: Mongezi Feza (trumpet); Nick Evans (trombone); Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo (drums)

August 21, 2006

Louis Moholo-Moholo

Bra Louis-Bra Bra-Tebs/Spirits Rejoice
Ogun CD017/018

Sole survivor of the legendary Blue Notes band that left Apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1960s, drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo finally returned permanently to Cape Town in 2004. But during the three decades that he and his fellow exiled countrymen lived in Europe they added an undiluted tincture of African sensibility to the developing Free Music scene.

This CD assembles two important large group sessions. Spirits Rejoice, released on LP in 1978, is an octet date, which finds the drummer and two other expatriate South Africans – bassist Johnny Dyani, another former Blue Note, and bassist Harry Miller, who left the country on his own – working out with the ne plus ultra of BritImprov including trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, tenor saxophonist Evan Parker and pianist Keith Tippett. Elaborated are five longish pieces that mix Xhosa tribe rhythmic inflections, revivalist hymns and freeform Energy Music.

Recorded in 1995 after Moholo-Moholo finally toured a post-Apartheid South Africa with his own group, the previously unreleased Bra Louis-Bra Bra-Tebs, with its definite beat, leans more towards World music,. The most obvious difference between it and he other CD is the vocals of Martinique’s Francine Luce that are an odd admixture of jazz-pop, roots music and improv vocalese. The cast of instrumentalists is completely different as well. However the main soloists are those who made the South African trek in the drummer’s band: British-raised, Netherlands-based tenor saxophonist Toby Delius; younger Johannesburg-born, London-based pianist Pule Pheto, who has worked with bassist Barry Guy and works as a producer for soul singers; and Caribbean-born alto and soprano saxophonist Jason Yarde, who also played with South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

Stretched out over 12 tracks in contrast to Spirits Rejoice’s five, the Freebop pacing and unique South African lilt that ricochets between tribal chants and Methodist hymns usually takes second place to Luce’s vocalizing. What that means is the backing is often locked into a pop-R&B vamp, built on muted passing tones from trumpeter Claude Deppa, slurred fills from Yarde’s soprano, unison piano comping and repetitive beat undulations from bassist Roberto Bellatalla and the drummer.

Throughout, Luce puts on as many vocal guises as a verbal quick change artist. On the traditional “Utshaka”, she comes across as a balladic Abbey Lincoln, backed by muted trumpet and irregular tenor honks. Another traditional piece “Hayi Umntu Endinguye”, finds her wordless vocalization moving from near country and western cadences to become anthem-like stolid. It also features with contrasting dynamics from the piano, as Yarde adds contrapuntal peeps and ends his solo with what sounds like “Taps”.

Written by the bassist, “Maybe Of Cause” takes in both scat and improv jazz as the high-pitched trumpet and contrapuntal horn lines appear to embolden Luce to channel Annie Ross at the beginning and Maggie Nicols at the denouncement. Finally, “Motherless Child”, gets a treatment reminiscent of American Black Nationalist chants of the 1970s. Built on a rock-like vamp and staccato piano fills, Luce dramatizes the words before lapsing into Leon Thomas-like glossolalia.

Elsewhere, while Delius gets some space for abrasive multiphonics and sibilant intonation, and Deppa takes a high-pitched slurry grace note laden solo, overall the instrumental marrow seems secondary to the vocal perimeter. Although the session passes pleasingly with a relentless rhythmic impetus it doesn’t approach Spirits Rejoice.

Freed from a vocalist’s demands, the session appears more rhythmically and polyphonically sophisticated. Additionally the soloists – who admittedly are given more space than on Bra Louis-Bra Bra-Tebs – ratchet the output up a few notches. Especially notable is Parker, who is fully in a freebop mode with flutter-tongue guttural smears, and Tippett, who on “Wedding Hymn” manages to pump out lush, two-handed kinetic notes with the strength of a Herbie Nichols. Driven by cross beats and flams from the drummer, it makes you wonder if this riffing Freebop is really what a nuptial melody is like among the Xhosa.

Alive with contrapuntal call-and-response from the horns, the tunes let the four-piece rhythm section go its own way, keeping things rhythmically exciting with repeated dance-like motifs. “You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cos You Think You Know Me”, written by trumpeter Mongezi Feza, another former Blue Note, rocks with gospel-like choruses and lilting contrapuntal themes. Not only is there metronomic cross patterning from the pianist, but one of the trombonists – either Nick Evans or Radu Malfatti – lets loose with a sequence of buzzy plunger tones midway between Kid Ory and your local Salvation Army band.

Musical ingenuity also makes “Amaxesha Osizi (Times of Sorrow)” less of a plait than a multi-layered exposition that in its 11 minutes uses alternative dynamics to suggest both a liturgical and a martial work. As the unison horns move the tonal centre with legato harmonies, the alternating horn lines follow a warm, side-slipping solo from Wheeler that adds emotional resonance to the performance.

Although both discs are prime examples of Moholo-Moholo’s art, it would seem that in these cases the acidity of exile produced more profound sounds than the congeniality of homecoming.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Bra: 1. Sonke 2. Lakutshona Ilanga/Ntyilo-Ntyilo 3 Unisone 4. B My Dear 5. Maybe of Cause 6.Utshaka 7 Moegoe 8. Motherless Child 9. Yes Please 10. Hayi Umntu Endinguye 11. Yes Baby, No Baby 12 Ntyilo-Ntyilo

Personnel: Bra: (trumpet); Jason Yarde (alto and soprano saxophones); Toby Delius (tenor saxophone); Pule Pheto (piano); Roberto Bellatalla (bass); Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums); Francine Luce (voice)

Track Listing: Spirits: 1. Khany Apho Ukhona (Shine Wherever You Are 2. You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cos You Think You Know Me 3. Ithi Gqi (Appear) 4. Wedding Hymn 5. Amaxesha Osizi (Times of Sorrow)

Personnel: Spirits: Kenny Wheeler (trumpet); Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti (trombones); Evan Parker (tenor saxophone); Keith Tippett (piano); Johnny Dyani and Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums)

August 4, 2006

Guus Janssen and his Orchestra

Dancing Series
Geestgronen

Leo Cupyers
Zeeland Suite & Johnny Rep Suite
Bvhaast

By Ken Waxman
May 30, 2005

Mythmaking abounds in improvised music – as much in European free sounds as in American jazz – after all, this genre has been the romantic music for more than 100 years.

Sadly, empirical research can reinterpret many of those fables as efficiently as it demythologizes other subjects. This brings up the tales of anarchistic Dutch jazz/free music. Since the majority of jazz fans – i.e. North Americans – didn’t start to pay attention to the Netherlands until late 1980s, it appeared as if the mixture of zany humor and serious musicianship that characterized high-profile aggregations like the ICP Orchestra and Willem Breuker’s Kollektief (WBK) was a universal concept. Later bands lead by composers like pianists Guus Janssen and Michel Braam seemed to confirm this.

In truth New Dutch Swing, as some call it, was the result of a painstaking musical process that matched the natural Calvinism of the Netherlands with provocations from American Free Jazz and the 1960s’ New Left. Simultaneously, Europeans had to evolve past their American musical models and sound pastiches to spin political instigation, Energy Music and 20th Century, so-called classical music into something original.

This involved a lot more than a single “Eureka!” moment, and you can trace this hit-and-miss evolution on the two CDs reissued here. Pianist Leo Cupyers, one of Breuker’s closest initial associates and co-founder of the Bvhaast label, reflects the growth pains of this maturing style in two landmark suites, recorded in 1974 and 1977 by similarly constituted septets. A generation younger, Janssen’s Dancing Series, recorded with an 11-piece ensemble in 1988, shows how this bravura procedure evolved and eventually intersected with assorted other sounds.

Just as the orchestral voicings of Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk hung over early New Thing advances, so, in a way, both these sessions pay homage to the ideas of both the WBK and the ICP’s chief conceptualizer Misha Mengelberg. Until he had a spat with Breuker, Cupyers was part of the WBK from its conception until 1979. Thus it’s no surprise to find Breuker, performing sideman duties featured on all tracks but two on the CD. Janssen, who has developed a parallel career as a so-called serious composer in the Netherlands, first had his talent confirmed by Mengelberg, with whom he studied in the 1970s. In fact, with its mixture of styles and jump cuts from one genre to another Dancing Series sound a bit like Mengelberg’s and Breuker’s earlier, more anarchistic compositions, not to mention John Zorn’s POMO pastiches, recorded around the same time.

From 1974, Johnny Rep Suite, the earliest tracks here, finds Cupyers leading a mostly WBK crew with the one ringer tenor saxophonist Hans Dulfer – Candy’s father – who doesn’t solo at all. The four tunes include a soccer anthem, driven by drummer Rob Verdurmen, plus other pieces that have more in common with American Free Jazz than the composer probably realized at the time. Most instructive are “Floris & Rosa”, “Kirk” and “Rank Jump” which join irregularly vibrated energy explosions with call-and-response reed lines and vocal screams. Mixing a faint flamenco beat and what sounds like “The Volga Boatman” into his solo on the second number, the pianist has to put up with a heavy drum backbeat and Breuker trying to emulate Rahsaan Roland Kirk playing two saxes at once. Sadly, unlike Kirk, he merely plays the theme on one sax and honks with the other.

Two humans playing one sax each – Breuker and altoist Piet Noordijk – fire trilling vamps and buzzing tongue flutters in broken octaves at one another on “Rank Jump”. Together they sound like what would have resulted if Ornette Coleman and one of his primary duplicators, say Byron Allen, had recorded together. Meanwhile Dufler and trombonist Willem van Manen expel the Netherlands’ version of circus sounds.

Only Cuypers is clearly his own man, with a Monkish piano exploration that includes pedal pumping and speed skating over the keys. A concluding duo with the drummer confirms this individualism, as he matches Verdurmen’s crashing cymbals with prepared piano-like action, soundboard string scratches and drumming on his instrument’s sides.

More audacious is the nine-part Zeeland Suite recorded three years later with mostly the same cast. The only changes are Martin van Duynhoven in for Verdurmen; Noordijk and Dulfer replaced by Bob Driessen on soprano, alto and baritone saxophones; and South African Harry Miller adding his bass to that of longtime WBK bull fiddler Arjen Gorter.

Both bassists are showcased on “Two bass shit” (sic), though the constantly hardening walking bass lines border on the Swing Era as much as the bebop tune parodied in the title. Cuypers’ piano voicing, set against the horn vamps brings up memories of Count Basie, not Bud Powell.

Enjoyable on the whole, Zeeland Suite’s one shortcoming is its constant musical shifts. A piece like “Memories” for instance, ratchets from mid-tempo Swing with Breuker’s bass clarinet in the lead, to a Phil Whitemanesque sweet ballad, to a finale that finds the reedist mocking the excesses of Energy Music, fragmenting his solo with body tube trilling and scratchy growls.

Intentional or not “Something else” cross breeds slick movie studio jazz with a feature for the ‘bone man where he mixes bebop’s speed with pre-modern coloration. Despite its title as well, “Joplin” is more Boogie than Ragtime with the pianist twisting out two handed bass lines and one of the saxmen – likely Breuker – using a dike-wide vibrato in a frenzied Illinois Jacquet homage. “No plooi at all Blues” is a cocktail lounge blues with the pianist’s licks more Floyd Cramer than Big Maceo Merriweather. Supplemental, almost-corny plunger tones from van Manen and a soprano sax solo that conjures up a vision of Sidney Bechet in a Nudie cowboy suit are added on top.

Then there’s the take on the classics – a long-standing WBK jape – entitled “Bach II and Bach I”. This gives the pianist scope to burlesque Baroque inventions and, before the sped-up tune ends with a contrapuntal dissolve, both soprano saxists build fruity glissandi to a double-tongued line mid-way between “Rhapsody in Blue” and a whine.

Even so, Cuypers’ own compositions – like Mengelberg’s and Breuker’s congruent attempts – sometimes end up more like Frankenstein’s monster than breakthrough experiments. But you can certainly praise him for musical audacity. By the time Dancing Series was recorded a decade later, POMO pastiche was expected as a matter of course from advanced bands from the Netherlands. In his case then, it’s a tribute to Janssen that some of his pieces sound as original as they do.

Using an expanded palate, the pianist has four orchestral sections at his disposal. Trumpeter Herb Robertson, trombonist Wolter Wierbos and hornist Vincent Chancey made up the brass section. Ab Baars on soprano and tenor saxophones and clarinet plus alto saxophonist Paul Termos are the reeds. Violist Maurice Horsthuis, cellist Ernst Reijseger and bassist Raoul van der Weide are the string contingent. Added are former ProgRocker Jacques Palinckx on guitar and Janssen’s brother Wim on percussion.

Janssen’s compositions also apportion more solo space than WBK or ICP numbers do, and the trombonist and alto saxist make the most of it. Best-know for his work with the ICP, Wierbos brings a distinctive primitivist-modern style to his outings. While Termos (1952-2003), who died of pancreatic cancer, was a longtime associate of Janssen, he’s mainly known as a notated chamber composer. Here, nonetheless, he plays whatever part is necessary to elevate the tune.

Consider and contrast “JoJo Jive” and “Mambo” for instance. On the former, the 11-pieces get a polyphonic sound not unlike Duke Ellington’s early Jungle band, most obviously borne on Wierbos’ tailgating trombone and in Baars’ spiky solos. Even though there’s a similarity between this tune and “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”, Janssen himself –like his mentor Mengelberg – solos with more modernist Monk-Nichols inflections, themselves extensions of Ellingtonia. Complementing these piles of ringing reed cadences and two-handed, flashing arpeggios are Termos’ alto – sounding like a florid and smooth Johnny Hodges – until he too initiates reed squirts and duck quacks.

Before the horse whinnying trombone coda, the entire horn section vamps, van der Weide slaps his bass like Pops Foster, the drummer produces heavy bass drum accents and snare tap dances, while the pianist breaks up the time.

If this piece sounds like Paul Whiteman at his loosest – an admitted influence on Cupyers and Breuker as well – then “Mambo” could be right out of Perez Prado’s book. With Termos coming on like the lead player with Machito and Wim Janssen hitting his cowbell and applying friction to other Latin percussion, the rest of band vocalizes Indian war whoops – and ersatz Spanish interjections.

On top of a shifting rhythm, Termos extends his solo in double-time. Of course the rub and rattle of the percussion and the vamping call-and-response in double or triple counterpoint from the sections don’t mask the tune’s POMO characteristics. Janssen for one, melds allegro rhythmic vibrations and a right-handed, Latinesque melody that’s as Monkish as it is montuno. Leaping gnome-like over the keys, he pumps the beat more rapidly, racing along the keys from the very highest level to the lowest.

Although at almost 12½ minutes, the performance is overlong, Janssen maintains excitement in its penultimate minutes by banging conga-like on the wood of the piano’s back and bottom frame, soundboard and trusses, an – emulated? – technique favored by Cuypers as well. Finale is a thematic reprise by the pianist followed by rest of band, climaxed with a high-pitched flourish from all concerned.

Elsewhere the orchestrations are organized to produce versions of everything from a weaving fox trot to two versions of punk rockers’ leaping pogo dance, with most tunes the musical equivalents of cinematic film cuts, replete with many false climaxes. Janssen also isn’t afraid to expose other band members’ talents, often playing off different sections and pressing contrapuntal lines against one another. Palinckx’s distorted flanging has as much prominence at one point as the Horsthuis-lead collated strings – sounding out a legato melody – do at another. Former Arkestra-member Chancey has scope for his burnished tone, but most of the other oral oscillations include reed and brass mouthpiece kisses, braying trombone timbres, trumpet triplets and quaking reed lines.

To boot, the pianist, whose own output includes knuckle-dusting high frequency action, isn’t averse to compositionally exploiting the false fingering and ghosts tones of the horns as well as the sul tasto, sul ponticello and just plain instrument rib and belly scratching actions of his string players.

In hindsight, though, Dancing Series’ weakness is that by 1988 these pastiches were usually predictable in most Netherlands’ improv sessions, with Cuypers’ hit-and-miss creations replaced by POMO professionalism. Perhaps that why younger Dutch players are now exploring pure swing, electronica and formal composition.

Still both these discs are valuable souvenirs of – and contain memorable sounds from – two specifically historical musical times and places.

May 30, 2005

Mike Osborne Trio & Quintet

Border crossing & Marcel’s Muse
Ogun

Joe Harriott Quintet
Swings High
Cadillac

By Ken Waxman
January 17, 2005

All during the 1960s and 1970s, a group of forward-thinking British improvisers was working on different strategies to move their music past what was then considered modern jazz. Some, like guitarist Derek Bailey and saxophonist Evan Parker, emphasized their distance from jazz to create irregularly pulsed so-called Free Improvisation.

Others, who didn’t want as radical a break from the tradition, evolved a free bop style that put the advances of American innovators like Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane into a rapidly paced framework. Years later, the advances of non-representational practitioners like Parker are better remembered than the experiments of the modifiers. Of course it helps that many of the free musicians -- and their Continental colleagues -- are still alive and playing impressively today.

Two of the modifiers aren’t as lucky, but as these two reissued CDs demonstrate, the others’ less radical solution was valid as well.

Jamaican-born, London-based alto saxophonists Joe Harriott (1928-1972) had in the mid-1960s created his own adaptation of freeform music analogous to Coleman’s advances. In reality a more conventional player than Coleman -- his Yank parallel would probably be Eric Dolphy -- 1967’s Swings High was his final quintet disc and is closer to Horace Silver’s style than Coleman’s. Among his sidemen is the clangorous Phil Seamen (1926-1972), who ProgRockers may know as the second drummer in Ginger Baker’s gigantic Airforce, but who was in reality one of the United Kingdom’s most accomplished boppers.

Border Crossing & Marcel’s Muse is another matter. A doubling up of two LPs by alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, most of the tracks feature the saxman playing in wildly inventive form, helped immeasurably by the supple bass work of South African-born Harry Miller (1941-1983), who died in an auto accident. Unfortunately Osborne, whose bone fides included membership in advanced big bands led by Chris McGregor, Mike Westbrook and Mike Gibbs as well as leadership of combos with other not-quite Free Music saxists like John Surman and Alan Skidmore, never reached his full potential. Mental illness forced him to retire from playing in the early 1980s.

That was in the future, when the first seven tunes of the reissue, which made up the original Border Crossing LP, were cut in 1974. With a knife-sharp tone and a speed that allowed him to dart from theme to theme and pile on the sounds without repeating himself or tiring, Osborne is in top form. Even when he tries on slightly slower tempos, it’s as if he’s a pacing jaguar, biding his time to pounce on the notes.

Throughout, he’s aided not only by the unfussy bass work of Miller, who was also comfortable backing other ferocious saxists like Peter Brötzmann and Dudu Pukwana, but also by the determined drumming of Louis Moholo. Moholo, another South African, has been at the forefront of advanced British jazz from his membership in the Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath around when the Osborne date was cut, all the way up to recent gigs with Parker and pianist Keith Tippett.

Back to Osborne. By the early 1970s, the saxist had soldered his initial Jackie McLean influence with an acceptance of Coleman’s offbeat polytonality. That meant that while his solos were still as fiery as McLean’s, his note placement and solo construction took elements from iconoclastic Coleman all the way up to the Dancing In Your Head LP. If you listen closely, in fact, you can hear an approximation of a quote from that tune at the end of “1st”.

That tune also shows Osborne trying to play something at ballad tempo, backed by Moholo’s subtle bell shaking and Miller’s spiccato bass lines, but the saxman reverts to racetrack tempo within 90 seconds. Using exposed bone-like split tones and extended squeaks in his solo, Osborne’s fervor is then abated by Miller’s double stopping and strummed patterns. Like Charlie Haden or David Izenzon with Coleman, the bassist is the perfect foil for the saxist.

Self-effacing, Miller demonstrates aplomb on his own “Awakening Spirit” which could be a show tune, but one played at double speed and featuring bull’s eye punctuation from Moholo’s snare shots. Osborne loved repeating notes and phrases at a furious pace, but at the same time on tunes like this one he never lost sight of the melody.

“Animation”, “Riff” and “Border Crossing” that initially made up the LP’s second side, make an almost continuous single tune. Initially the saxist plays licks that are immediately echoed by the bassist, then his flutter-tongued dissonance opens up into honks and altissimo overblowing. Blasting variations on variations and overtones upon overtones in dog-whistle mode, he creates a molten flow of nearly endless overblown grace notes and slurred split tones. In counterpoint, Miller slithers up and down his strings and Moholo hits precise single tones. Before the fade, it appears that Osborne is quoting Mingus’ “Boogie Stop Shuffle”. The result is exhilaration all around.

Unfortunately, Marcel’s Muse doesn’t reach this height. Recorded thee years later, when jazz was in one of its periodic troughs of unpopularity, Miller and Osborne are joined by a new cast of characters: Mark Charig on trumpet, Jeff Green on guitar and Peter Nykyruj on drums.

No Moholo, Nykyruj does his best, but his beat is rather stolid throughout. Charig, whose first name is usually spelled as ending with a “c”, was in the Brotherhood of Breath as well as the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. But here his half-valve playing seems to meander towards fusion and more conventional jazz. There’s even a point on Osborne’s “Where’s Freddy” where his lip-busting triplet playing makes him sound like a modern Roy Eldridge. Meanwhile, as Osborne hits overtones, Green crams run after run into the tune and appropriating almost all the backing space.

Prettiness plus glib textures predominate more here than on the earlier disc, with the guitarist in full Kenny Burrell mode and the drummer particularly enamored of rhythmic intrusions. Nykyruj does add exotic timbres behind a col legno solo of Miller’s at one point though.

Still, with Sonny Rollins-like descending lines added to his smacks, smears and slurs, Osborne soldiers on, letting loose with glottal-punctuation and irregularly vibrated tones every so often. A cappella, he brings the ballad “I Wished I Knew” -- and the CD -- to a close with a floating cadenza of passionate pulses, yet the trumpeter and guitarist have to step in afterwards to add the proverbial cherries on top of the perfectly baked cake that is his statement.

This isn’t second-rate music. It’s just not up to the high standard set by the Osborne trio on its half of the disc.

It also has good sound, which is something that sadly can’t be said about Swings High. With a boxy tone that suggests it was recorded in Doug Dobble’s famous London jazz shop rather than merely financed by the shopkeeper, the short (38 minute) CD finds Harriott and company revisiting a hard bop style perfected a dozen years before the 1967 date.

Harriott had been acclaimed for outside discs like Abstract and Free Form at the beginning of the decade, plus a series of Indo-Jazz fusion discs with violinist John Mayer a couple of years earlier. Yet here he functions like a Charlie Parker clone, except on the ballads when a Paul Despond [!] influence surfaces.

Veteran bassist Coleridge Goode, who was on the session, has said that throughout he was worried about Seamen’s deteriorating health and wondered if the drummer could get through the date. He did, but the collection of Art Balky-influenced press rolls and Buddy Rich-like bass drum swagger he plays resembles the floundering of neo-con imitators of the 1990s, not someone who had been a bopper from the beginning.

Like Charig on the second Osborne session, but recording a decade earlier, trumpeter Stu Hamer’s half-valve effects often dissolve into prettiness. Pianist Pat Smythe is fighting a substandard instrument. Comping like a facile Red Garland on most tracks, playing rollicking night-club blues on another and displaying repeating single notes like Count Basie on “Strollin’ South” doesn’t help matters either. One time as well, the recording sonics are so limited that it sounds as if he’s playing vibes. A solid walker, Goode himself is from an earlier tradition, a connection he proves on “Blues in C”, where he hums and bows a solo à la Slam Stewart in a Swing Era combo.

While traces of Harriott’ combative ferociousness occasionally come through on the quicker tempos, considering the majority of solos are confined to short breaks or trading fours and eights, even he can’t escape the bop straightjacket.

Harriot completists may be more enthused by the disc which has been out-of-print for many years. But other CDs give a better idea of his talent.

However, because of those first seven dynamite tracks, Border Crossing & Marcel’s Muse is a must for anyone introduced in the evolution of British music or just first-class jazz.

January 17, 2005