Reviews |
**** (4 stars)
Remarkably, after eight discs of solo soprano saxophone, this
is the first time Parker has committed himself to a full programme of
tenor playing. The results are, as one would expect by this juncture,
extraordinary, music of intense focus and a fearsome weight and
intensity of tone. Four of the tracks are dedications to musicians
Parker has worked with or been associated with over the years —
Chris McGregor, Lee Konitz, trombonist George Lewis and
“Mr” Braxton. No evident thematic connection to any of
them, though the tiny Braxton tribute includes elements that are
reminiscent of the American. Probably redundant at this point in time
to start taxonimizing the differences between Parker’s soprano
and tenor work. The range of overtones is perhaps more restricted,
the line more direct, the pace and delivery of ideas more measured.
No mistaking, though, the integrity of the performances or the
identity of the performer.
— Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, fifth edition
Since
1973 and the recording of Saxophone Solos, the solo soprano has
been one of Parker’s fundamental operating modes. With it, he has
produced some of the most remarkable improvised solo music of the
period. This is the first recorded example of Parker on unaccompanied
tenor.
In
some ways, he has returned to the approach of the first soprano
recordings. The pieces are short, with nothing of the scale of “The
Snake Decides” or “Monoceros” or the pieces of Conic Sections, but
there’s nothing of a sense of technical exercises about them. Each
is deliberate and complete, but they’re often sufficiently closely
related to suggest a cycle, even a cycle of cycles. Each piece is
usually built around a kernel phrase or pattern that is varied incrementally,
whether through rhythmic development, register shifts, gradual expansion,
or the use of multiphonics and circular breathing. The sometimes
gauzy harmonics of the piece for Konitz stand out, as does the
immediate form of the piece for Chris McGregor, though these may
be qualities we assign the unfamiliar because of the recognizable
signs attached to them. At times the rapid cycling through notes,
as in “5” and “9”, suggests a detemporalized state in which all
the notes are present in any interval of hearing, a sense of meditative
repose that is elsewhere achieved with the briefest and calmest
means, as in the opening “12”. “10” is a remarkable play with reed
pops that sounds like an ensemble of elastic bands, while “6” begins
with splitting tonal identities. Parker’s interest in the multiple
voice, whether it’s high reflection of a lower one, or another line
that seems to be tongued inside a repetition of a prior one, is
never merely effect. You come away with a sense that sometimes something
can only be said twice or thrice, and that Parker’s approach arises
out of a special necessity of musical discourse. This complexity
is accompanied by a sense of restraint, as if the the tenor has
been quieted to reveal its inner voices. The blues, too, is an ambivalent
discourse, and it’s fitting that Parker’s grainy, vocal tenor sound
and scalar approach should be recorded in Chicago. On several pieces,
like “13”, that blues connection is palpable, the CD’s title as
much a musical, or emotional, key as a geographic one.
Often
too subtle for words, this is recommended both to those long familiar
with Parker’s work and those just getting accquainted.
- Stuart
Broomer, Cadence, September 1997
Solo
saxophone improvisation is hardly the revolutionary statement that it
was back when Coleman Hawkins fired off his “Picasso” or when
Mr. Braxton unleashed For Alto. Today, solo saxophone improv
albums nearly constitute a subgenre in themselves, replete with their
own set of standards and customs. Despite the creep toward
conventionalism, the art of solitary sax improv remains alluring,
offering one of the truest test-grounds of real-time human creativity,
wherein brave souls, naked and alone, fill up vacuums with spontaneous
spirit-creation. Evan Parker has certainly done his part, both in
populating the ranks of the subgenre as well as depopulating vacuums.
He has recorded an astounding eight full length explorations of solo
soprano saxophone since 1975, including the classic Monoceros.
Chicago Solo is his ninth and most recent solo outing, and the
only way in which it really breaks rank is by virtue of the fact that
it is Parker’s first on the non-straight horn, the tenor saxophone.
Mr. Parker, of course, is one of the preeminent European/British free
improvisers, playing with Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley,
John Stevens, and everyone else you could imagine with a hankering for
meat pies and unfettered art production. So it’s little surprise,
then, that you can physically feel the weight of history floating
through the concentrated confessions that make up this CD. There are
traces of the fierce high energy blowing that made up Machine
Gun as well as moments of the airy, abstract lightness that was
the Spontaneous Music Ensemble’s cup of tea. But instead of
segregating these tendencies into solidly distinguishable chunks,
Parker plays through them all concurrently, wrapping history in, upon,
and around itself so tightly that a new timeline emerges. What this
timeline delivers is a series of distinctly modern vignettes wherein
high-register overblowing barely rises above a whisper, cascading
flurries of notes dance out simple melodies, and fragile cobwebs of
breath fall like anvils on concrete. It is a mixing of musical
metaphors that is not so much a testament to some post-modern
sensibility as it is a testament to a man who has fully assimilated
his own musical history. As such, the dedications to Braxton, Lee
Konitz, and George Lewis are merely red herrings; the real focus of
this music is Evan Parker, his history, and the continued
reconfiguration and extension of that history. The fact that this is
carried through an idiom of solo saxophone improvisation that Evan
Parker has almost singlehandedly defined over the course of the past
twenty-odd years simply makes it all the more devastating.
- Chris Crowson Tuba Frenzy #4 (1998)
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