EVAN PARKER | CECIL TAYLOR | BARRY GUY | TONY OXLEY - Nailed (CT: The Quartet) (1990-2000) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

A super-session in theory, this one-off gig was recorded in Berlin in 1990 during another of Cecil Taylor's extended stays. According to the liner notes, this gig was tense from the start because of some ill will between some of the band's members, hence the title of the album. Whatever. The two tracks that comprise this set are full of the explosive, full-bore playing each of this quartet's members is well-known for. It's easy to believe there is tension here, the playing from the outset starts at furious and gets wilder. But what's more interesting is that given Taylor's gigantic stature among musicians, even the three he's playing with, he doesn't dominate the proceedings. This is group improvisation the way it's supposed to be, with ideas being tossed into the fire from every angle. Some are picked up and extrapolated upon; others are left smoldering in the ashes. When it is time for Taylor to solo, none of the others stay out of the mix completely, not even Parker. Guy's bowed bass accompanies Taylor through each theme and phrase, each color and mode change until Taylor cedes the floor. Yes, it is all about muscle: all competition, all struggle, all music. As in the bebop days of old, this is a cutting contest in the purest sense of that word. Everybody bleeds here. At times, the playing is so intense the listener just wants to hate everyone on the bandstand, at others, so forceful (s)he is beaten into submission, and still at others, nothing but a resounding YEAH! Throughout the house or car will do. Sizing up the individual contributions to this mass of aural mayhem is fruitless. This is a group who insists on being individuals in a collective setting and, therefore, the listening level is so high -- so as not to miss any gauntlet laid down -- the attention to execution and imagination can't help but be top-notch. So, in essence, this is a super-session, but not one in the usual sense. It is among the finest of all the recordings released under Taylor's name from either of his Berlin periods, and, for the others, it charts with their best playing anywhere. This is group improvisation at its angriest, freest, and truest.
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Tracklist :
1    First    52:20
2    Last    25:48
Bass – Barry Guy
Drums – Tony Oxley
Piano, Composed By – Cecil Taylor
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Evan Parker

EVAN PARKER - Process and Reality (1991) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

 The first trap is to write that this is another phenomenal Evan Parker recording. It would be accurate because it is, and it would also be accurate to claim that this is a further step not only in Parker's development as an improviser, but in the development of improvised music as well. Another trap. But the entire picture is somewhat murkier while being even more monumental: This is Evan Parker's first album using multi-tracking technology and using the studio itself as a concert platform to capture, in the flux of the moment, the permanent sound, and, as Alfred North Whitehead (whose legendary philosophical tome this album is named for) pointed out, the flux that is always inherent in the permanent. Process and Reality is comprised of short pieces, 16 of them in fact. All but one are improvisations on the notions of the sonic, harmonic, and timbral thematics Parker was exploring at the time of this recording (who knows where he's off to now), and one is an improvisation based on Steve Lacy's "The Cryptosphere." The first half-hour features Parker "warming up," playing straight, live, moving through angular scales and tonal variations on whichever theme he states. From track six, "Amanita," on, the multi-tracking begins and the tonal balances fall off the roof; here, shocking reams of sound run against skittering skeins of atonal noise and shimmering notes, cascading in ribbons through the tape machines and creating a weave of "absolute sound," no more temporal or permanent than a flash of light that touches everything around it. This is a fascinating, and even maddeningly awakening, ride through Parker's tonal and psychological soundscape. It is an essential recording for anyone interested in improvised music.
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Process And Reality    
1    Mothon    4:40
2    Borlung    8:30
3    Broken Wing    7:50
4    Fast Falls (For Mongezi Feza)    8:29
5    Paros Gemutato    4:08
6    Amanita    4:47
7    Aka    2:38
8    G.I.K.H    3:10
9    Bubble Chamber (For Conlon Nancarrow)    3:58
10    Muzzle    4:13
11    Diary Of A Mnemonist (For Liz Fritsch)    3:07
12    Banda (O.D.J.B)    2:16
13    Pfingstsonntag    2:18
14    Blindflight    2:21
15    And I Will Sing Of This Second Kingdom    2:54
Lapidary    
16    Improvisation On 'The Cryptosphere' By Steve Lacy    3:26
Soprano Saxophone, Music By – Evan Parker

CECIL TAYLOR WITH TRISTAN HONSINGER & EVAN PARKER - The Hearth (1989) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Recorded in 1988 as part of Cecil Taylor month in Berlin, this trio, which consists of Taylor, saxophonist Evan Parker, and cellist Tristan Honsinger, is an improviser's dream. Here are two personalities actually strong enough to rein Taylor in and bring the music up out of him instead of the force. Parker chose tenor for this gig, and he and Honsinger play to each other for the first couple of minutes, establishing a mutated kind of blues groove as Taylor sings in his tinny voice and claps in the background. Honsinger's bowed chord voicings offer Parker plenty to work off of tonally, and he does, turning the blues riff into a vamp on thirds, and then elongated harmonic structures that bring Taylor in on the piano after about ten minutes. Taylor enters with arpeggios blazing, but he is reined in by the architecture created by Honsinger in his phrasing. When Taylor is forced to play inside it, his creativity rages; he is full of colors, glissandi, dynamics, and a palette of textures that is dizzying -- so much so that Parker stops playing for a while. When he reenters, it is to slow things down and build upon some of the tonal structures Taylor has been tossing off within Honsinger's phraseology. Parker becomes a mode setter, creating a new layer of intervallic order from each set of overtones, where any player is allowed to push against its walls but not to break them. And from here, a language is established within the trio, making the musicians move into one another more closely, taking bits and pieces and growing ideas out into entire musical universes made by three -- not one plus one plus one. This is a devastatingly fine gig, and one of the best Taylor played the entire month he was in Berlin.
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Tracklist :
1     Hearth 1:01:31
Tristan Honsinger / Evan Parker / Cecil Taylor
Cello – Tristan Honsinger
Piano – Cecil Taylor
Tenor Saxophone – Evan Parker 

STEVE LACY & EVAN PARKER - Chirps (1991) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This must have been a hell of a concert to see. In 1985, Steve Lacy went to Berlin to play four different concerts, all of them duets with a different partner. Two of them were with pianists, one was with a dancer, and the last was with fellow soprano saxophonist Evan Parker. Given Lacy's gargantuan stature as the foremost jazz soprano saxophonist in the world, and Parker's as the most important member of the British free jazz and new music scene with the exception of Derek Bailey, this had the potential to be one hell of a show. If this recording is any indication of what that evening was like, then it was all that and more. Apparently, each player had the opportunity to play a solo set before this encounter took place. When the two men joined, magic happened. Both players, rather than come out steaming or with deference to the other, entered the musical sphere lyrically with subtlety and elegance. First Lacy, then Parker, went weaving and winding around each other, slipping through an instantaneous modal syntax that gave the other room to move inside and work out from. It would appear the two rehearsed this set because it was so perfectly timed and executed. The three "movements" or "sections" or "selections" all contained their moments of intensity, but none broke the seam of the sound world created by the pair. "Full Scale" was a work out for scales from Lacy's recorded practice books as interpreted by Parker. Next, "Relations" featured each man quoting from his inspirations before creating a new improvisation from the quotes. So different were the quotes, one would have to know the entire history of jazz and classical music to sort through them. But when combined, a tapestry of new jazz was sketched and then emerged fully formed. Finally, "Twittering" offered Lacy's worship of Thelonious Monk and Parker's reading of Lacy reading Monk. It is fascinating to hear how these soloists come just behind one another, as if the entire thought appeared in the moment of the other's first note! This improvisation swings the hardest as each man takes part in creating "rhythm" from the spaces in between themes. They actually end up in the same place at the same time more often than not.
Added to the disc are three selections recorded after the concert. Titled "Nocturnal Chirps," they too are of interest, but are too brief in and of themselves for the players to really sink their teeth in. No matter, they are still brilliant if tiny glimpses into the partnership that was forged on this truly magical night. This is essential listening for Lacy and/or Parker fans. Many kudos to FMP for this one.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
The Concert    
1    Full Scale    20:51
2    Relations    16:35
3    Twittering    4:14
After Hours    
4    Nocturnal Chirps 1    6:03
5    Nocturnal Chirps 2    5:39
6    Nocturnal Chirps 3    5:45
Credits :
Soprano Saxophone, Composed By – Evan Parker, Steve Lacy

SAM RIVERS - Portrait (1997) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Germany's FMP Records invited reed player Sam Rivers to perform in Berlin in 1995, and the results were released just over a year later on this CD. Rivers performs completely solo, with soprano and tenor saxophone plus flute and piano, and finds a distinctive voice on each instrument. His tenor style is hard-driving, while the soprano moments, and his remarkably clean flute playing, are atmospheric and free-flying. One foible may be Rivers' constant punctuation of his playing with vocal shouts, which might turn off listeners. John Bush
Tracklist :
1    Image    8:36
2    Silhouette    8:48
3    Reflection    6:32
4    Mirror    8:25
5    Vignette    8:19
6    Shadow    8:53
7    Visage    5:45
8    Profile    9:00
9    Cameo    12:14
Credits :
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Flute, Piano, Voice, Music By, Liner Notes – Sam Rivers

SAM RIVERS & ALEXANDER von SCHLIPPENBACH - Tangens (1998) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Recorded during the Total Music Meeting in 1997, this seemingly historic meeting between the legendary American avant jazzman Sam Rivers and Euro improv giant Alexander von Schlippenbach was anticipated to be a free jazz blowout. One hopes that expectations, though completely thwarted, were not dampened by the remarkable music that occurred between these two men. Rivers long ago ceased to be a "blower"; his music has increasingly been concerned with an idiosyncratic narrative quality that takes nothing away from an immediate encounter with musical language, but orders it is such a way that a system is developed revealing a kind of story that walks a line between musical impressionism and expressionism. With the possible exception of Irène Schweizer, von Schlippenbach is perhaps the most adaptable of the European improvisers. Playing the music of Bill Evans or his own spontaneously combustible compositions, von Schlippenbach's pianism changes color and shape at a moment's notice. The turbulences here are not gigantic; they flow into eruption and dissipate just as gradually. There are complex melodies at work in the chromatic suggestions Rivers makes. Von Schlippenbach, for his part in all this, takes Rivers' well-erected lyrical structures and gently breaks them down into elemental units in order for Rivers to build some other slightly towering yet wonderfully ornate creations. This is music that requires the patience of the players as well as listeners. Rivers has never been one to hurry through anything -- which is what frustrated Miles Davis so when Rivers toured with him -- but this is also what made his own recordings such as Fuchsia Swing Song and Streams so satisfying. Gradual discoveries are usually deep discoveries, and these two men must now know each other deeply on a musical level. This set transcends so much of what is currently on the scene and passes for improvisation: It expresses emotion, transfers it to listeners, and offers them places in the text -- of music -- to find themselves and consider their own, very necessary places in this communication. Tangens is tender, beautiful, and edifying music by two empathic giants.
|> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <|
Tracklist :
1    Tangens Alpha    6:26
2    Tangens Beta    31:47
3    Tangens Gamma    14:58
4    Tangens Delta    7:08
5    Tangens Epsilon    9:48
Credits :
Piano, Composed By – Alexander von Schlippenbach
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Flute, Composed By – Sam Rivers

THE FEEL TRIO — Looking (Berlin Version) The Feel Trio (1989) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This three-part group improvisation by Cecil Taylor's Feel Trio was recorded in the summer of 1989, exactly a year after his series of concerts in the same city, and about a week before the Berlin Wall fell. After its members had played together sporadically over the previous couple of years, the Feel Trio was a working group, and the empathy and instinct provided by that luxury is certainly in evidence here. As usual, it's Taylor who starts things off, but with very few notes as opposed to his trademark solo beginnings, in order to find a language all the musicians in his group can speak from. Oxley and Parker chime right in, flowing into the heart of Taylor's idea, a loosely structured series of themes -- all linked by sixths and ninths and most extended beyond recognition -- by Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and even Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. But Penderecki, Lutoslawski, and Stravinsky also emerge in this wildly crisscrossing match of musical wit and dexterity. The pieces all "swing," and while it's true that there are flourishes and lines taken from Taylor's formative years with his first trio and with the late Jimmy Lyons, the proceedings are very much rooted in the now, and in the dynamic of this particular band. They play together flawlessly with Parker and Oxley trading eights, 16ths, and even 32nds with Taylor and each other! It's more than just listening for a rhythm section to get this far inside the pianist's voice, it's more than empathy or affinity, it's downright musical telepathy. There are no extra notes played here, no lazy harmonic structures or modal clichés. This is new music in the purest sense of the phrase. The listener is treated to, and hopefully moved by, the sound of something being born, coming from silence, and an hour later returning there somehow -- making it even bigger, more cavernous, and colorful as a result of this trio's awesome creation.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
1     First Part: Looking the Feel Trio 36:22
Tony Oxley / William Parker / Cecil Taylor
2     Second Part: Looking the Feel Trio 5:05
Tony Oxley / William Parker / Cecil Taylor
3     Third Part: Looking the Feel Trio 30:49
Tony Oxley / William Parker / Cecil Taylor
Credits :
Double Bass – William Parker
Drums – Tony Oxley
Piano, Composed By [All Music] – Cecil Taylor

CECIL TAYLOR — The Tree of Life (1991) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This "thank you" concert to the city of Berlin at the end of Cecil Taylor's six-month stay there in 1990 is a lovely, vibrant affair. In trademark fashion, "The Tree of Life" is one work, broken up into five "periods" or movements. The invocation in period one doesn't even feature a piano, just empty space and Taylor's voice creating a kind of spirit ground for him to play from. "Period 2" is where things actually begin. Taylor begins in ballad form; long eighths and ninths are extended into minor-key formations and distillations of mode and harmonic interval. There is a kind of distended harmony at work, with left and right hands playing opposite each other in perfect formation and rhythm: One idea, or theme, cancels out the previous one and sets up a new paradigm for consideration over the course of a 12 or 13 measures. One of the more interesting aspects of this nearly 45-minute selection is the influence of European classical music on Taylor, particularly Stockhausen, Berg, and Webern. There is an unwillingness to bend in favor of easier harmonic solutions while there are still sonorous possibilities in the music's present incarnation. In other words, the concern of expression becomes more about moving it toward itself as a system of improvisation rather than worrying about getting it "right." "Period 3" begins with the full integration of all Taylor's aesthetic elements as arsenal. Here, the long-held influences of Monk and Ellington come full on into the ghostly vocal expressions and "new music" theorem that have come to dominate Taylor's work. It's a beautiful battlefield, arrayed with color, nuance, and texture, but it is a war. Each element played to the hilt in an effort to speak what has never been conceived of let alone uttered or spoken. The final six minutes show Taylor's humor and warmth to the Europeans. Fats Waller and Don Pullen meet Mary Lou Williams and Sidney Bechet in concert with Taylor's own wide-open concert pianist grooving. The final pair of movements here, as brief as they are, show how finely Taylor sculpts his improvisations, letting edges hang perhaps, but at purposeful angles. In all, The Tree of Life is a fine showcase of the musician Cecil Taylor was in 1990. He was an artist at the crossroads of his own inspirations, looking to open new vistas both creatively and intellectually to audiences who had forgotten him or were encountering him for the first time.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
1     Period 1 1:08
Cecil Taylor
2     Period 2 44:28
Cecil Taylor
3     Period 3 21:19
Cecil Taylor
4     Period 4 2:41
Cecil Taylor
5     Tree of Life: Period 5 3:41
Cecil Taylor
Credits :
Piano, Composed By – Cecil Taylor

CHARLES GAYLE | WILLIAM PARKER | RASHIED ALI — Touchin' on Trane (1991) APE (image+.cue), lossless

This is Charles Gayle's most accessible work. Gayle's mastery of free jazz is blended with a more traditional compositional style of jazz on this disc. Touchin' on Trane is composed of five original songs, and even includes ex-Coltrane drummer Rashied Ali. As the title insists, Coltrane is the influence for the music on this disc. The influence ranges from the upbeat tempo of "Giant Steps" in "Part A," while "Part D" is reminiscent of Coltrane's "Live in Japan" performances. Gayle, bassist William Parker, and Ali don't copy Coltrane, but rather expand on his accomplishments. Without covering any songs, Touchin' on Trane is the greatest John Coltrane tribute album. Brian Flota
Tracklist :
1    Part A    14:41
2    Part B    7:05
3    Part C    12:28
4    Part D    27:42
5    Part E    4:48
Credits:
Double Bass – William Parker
Drums – Rashied Ali
Music By – Gayle, Ali, Parker
Tenor Saxophone – Charles Gayle