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Historical | BY TED PAnKEn
Autodidact Bill Dixon
Wove Singular
orchestrations
In June 1980, Giovanni Bonandrini, the
proprietor of Black Saint/Soul Note, drove from
Milan to Verona to hear trumpeter Bill Dixon—
who had contracted with Bonandrini to do one
recording—play a concert opposite Andrew
Hill. After the show, Bonandrini asked Dixon to
record two LPs worth of material, countering
Dixon’s protestation of unpreparedness with a
sizable advance.
The ensuing recordings, In Italy Volume
1 and Volume 2 the fourth and fifth in Dixon’s
discography, launched an 18-year Dixon-Bonandrini
relationship that generated
six sessions and nine albums. Documented
on Bill Dixon: The Complete Remastered
Recordings On Black Saint & Soul Note
(camJazz 1009 41:38/41:31/79:15/64:12/
39:21/77:40/69:59/68:45/72:41 ★★★★), it’s a
fascinating corpus, tracing Dixon’s conceptual
evolution from formal notation and precise
interpretation to a process-based approach.
Going forward, he would endeavor
to transcend the trumpet’s theoretical limitations
in order to project upon it, as Taylor
Ho Bynum wrote, “the full timbral, dynamic
and register range of an orchestra.” Dixon
had played for dancers from the early ’50s,
and knew how to bob and weave impeccably
within long-form non-metered and rubato
time feels. He also abstracted the flow
with multiphonics, sound-silence contrasts
and liberal use of delay and reverb—always
landing on the one, wherever it was.
Dixon admired the “floating cloud” sound
of Claude Thornhill’s four-French horn band of
the ’40s and Gil Evans’ subsequent iterations
of those possibilities in Miles Davis’ Birth Of
The Cool nonet. He strove for Davis’ architectural
precision, authoritative intention and
fluidity of line. His voice referenced Duke Ellington’s
frameworks for Rex Stewart’s quarter-valvings,
George Russell’s showcases for
Dizzy Gillespie’s intervallic audacity, the somber
formalism of Arnold Schoenberg and Karlheinz
Stockhausen’s sonic extravagance. The
resulting brew toggled between stark lyricism
conveying transcendentalist aesthetics associated
with New England, where Dixon lived
for the last 37 years of his life, and ferociously
sardonic explosions denoting imperatives that
animated New York’s black intelligentsia.
Dixon began to develop his mature
voice in the ’60s. His 1964 recording, “Winter
Song,” is a stiff, conventional septet performance,
but the 1966–’67 RCA session
Intents And Purposes (international Phonograph;
32:24 ★★★★), recently reissued by
International Phonograph in facsimile mini-
LP format with fabulous sound, contains
Bill Dixon
the seeds of everything that Dixon would
subsequently do.
Several duets with bassist Alan Silva on the
In Italy dates illustrate how exhaustively Dixon
had worked during the years following Intents
And Purposes—spent in the isolation of academe—on
refining a solo trumpet language. He
plays piano on the ensemble tracks, ceding
solo duties to a well-trained front line of trumpeters
Stephen Haynes and Arthur Brooks and
tenor saxophonist Stephen Horenstein.
A second Italian tour with bassists Alan Silva
and Mario Pavone and drummer Laurence
Cook resulted in November 1981, on which
Dixon synthesizes technical particulars into an
authoritatively executed argot. Less satisfying
is Thoughts, a sloppy 1985 concert at Bennington
(where Dixon taught) on which tubist
John Buckingham and bassists William Parker
and Peter Kowald join the quartet. On the
ensemble-oriented Song Of Sisyphus, a 1988
Milan studio encounter with Buckingham,
Cook and Pavone, the improvisations proceed
along statelier, more tectonic lines. Recorded
in 1993, Vade Mecum and Vade Mecum II,
document Dixon’s work with bassists Barry
Guy and Parker along with drummer Tony Oxley.
Rather than orchestrate the bass parts, as
on November 1981, Dixon expresses his intentions
on the horn and has the collaborators fuel
high-level spontaneous composition.
The Dixon-Soul Note relationship ends in
1998, with Papyrus Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, on which
Dixon, playing piano and both acoustic and
electronically processed trumpet, and Oxley,
playing drums, percussion and electronics, engage
in 22 beyond-category sound paintings,
masterfully executed. DB
ordering info: camjazz.com;
internationalphotographinc.com
michael JacKson
JULY 2011 DOWNBEAT 63