Volume 27 Issue 8 | July 1 - September 20, 2022

Music from Two Continents: Live at Jazz Jamboree ’84
Cecil Taylor
Fundacja Słuchaj 16/2021 (sluchaj.bandcamp.com)
! The cataclysmic pianist and composer
Cecil Taylor frequently worked with large
bands, his activities with student ensembles
and workshop groups shaping generations of
improvising musicians. His 1968 recording
with the Jazz Composers Orchestra was a
key event in large-scale free jazz, while his
1988 Berlin orchestra fed his own development
as well as European free improvisation;
however, there may have never been a band quite as apt as the
compact, shifting Orchestra from Two Continents with which he
performed in Europe in 1984. This performance from Warsaw presents
an 11-member version, assembling many of the most distinguished
members of the international free jazz community of the era.
Like many of Taylor’s works, this hour-long piece had a ritualistic
character, incorporating chanting and shouting. Here, movements with
cries, hollers and snippets of song, hinting at mysteries and suggesting
primordial rites, alternate with longer instrumental passages of motivically
organized improvisation. These segments touch on Taylor’s deep
roots. With the reeds loosely assembling around a blues-drenched riff,
a passage gradually matches the loose, swarming intensity of a Charles
Mingus band; a keening balladic segment spontaneously expands to the
harmonic richness of Duke Ellington’s orchestra.
As with Mingus and Ellington bands, this orchestra thrives on
singular instrumental voices, including the improbably sweet tone of
alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons; the brooding, blues-drenched roar of
tenor saxophonist Frank Wright; the dense, forceful sound of bassist
William Parker; and the brassy splendour of trumpeters Tomasz
Stańko and Enrico Rava.
Stuart Broomer
Unreleased 1974-2016
Tony Oxley
DISCUS MUSIC 129 CD (discus-music.co.uk)
! These previously unreleased tracks
by veteran British drummer Tony Oxley
contain sounds that not only expand improvised
music history, but also reveal early
adaptations of today’s electroacoustic interactions.
Newly edited and mastered, the
tracks from 1974 and 1981 find Oxley using
percussion crashes and sweeps to cinch the
rhythm at the same time as his processed
pings, cackles and buzzes add a contrasting dimension to the other
instrumentalists’ work. Considering that those challenged extensions
include the output of other master improvisers such as trombonist
Paul Rutherford’s lowing snarls, trumpeter Dave Holdsworth’s
portamento flutters and pianist Howard Riley’s rambles and sweeps,
is it surprising that a two-part ensemble piece ends with a literal
waving fanfare?
More dazzling though is Frame from a few years later with a
different band. Here the electronics’ irregular jiggling timbres and
equivalent live drum processing easily make common cause with the
spectacular spiccato jumps and sprawling glissandi from violinist
Phil Wachsmann. Dominant, while accompanied by Larry Stabbins’
rugged sax smears and Riley’s pounding piano rumbles, the fiddledrums
intersection projects commanding irregular textures at supersonic
speeds, but not without revealing an ever-widening spectrum of
sonic colours.
Remastered with full-spectrum, 21st-century sound, these heirlooms
of an earlier era easily justify their unearthing and prominent
display.
Ken Waxman
Featuring music
by Villa-Lobos,
Jobim, Nascimento,
Bandolim, Parra,
Lobo and Cartola
New Album • July 8
thewholenote.com July 1 - September 20, 2022 | 63