Simon Rose - Vienna Solo (Small Forms, 2024)

By Stef Gijssels

Recorded in the Château Rouge venue in Vienna in June 2024, British baritone saxophonist Simon Rose gives his best.  

It is an incredibly strong and powerful feat. Even if the fourteen pieces are short - between one and four minutes - the playing is astonishing: energetic, deeply felt, and still offering the capacity to each to have their own unique character and story. Rose's circular breathing on the instrument is one of the main characteristics of his playing, not only because he clearly eschews moments of silence, but mostly as a technical skill to create mesmerising multiphonics. The result is staggering, the fullness of the sound, its density and intensity. 

"Dorseth Heath" is a little slower and calmer, as are "Purple Loosestrife", "Bee Rose", and "Dog Rose" also has a quieter moment. On "Lungwort", he explores timbral techniques through different embouchures and power stops. By the way, all titles refer to plants, and I am not a botanist, but I think they are all growing in the wild. 

On this album, he really goes all out. Young musicians are often taught not to just play the music, but to be the music, to give themselves completely, without inhibitions, without fear of going too far. I recommend they listen to Simon Rose. He is his music: expressive, bold, unrestrained, profound, and with a story that immediately appeals, without frills, without attempts to please the audience, but which succeeds in making that emotional connection that characterises good art. 

Rose is not a screamer; his sound is always controlled despite his exuberant expressiveness: he cries, he weeps, he cheers, he sings, he howls, he wails, he groans, he roars. But above all: he keeps surprising and captivating us with every note. You can only be blown away by his music. 

Brilliant! 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Anaïs Tuerlinckx & Simon Rose - Parle (scatterarchives, 2025) 

Now that we're reviewing Simon Rose, I would like to add this album, a duo with my fellow compatriot Anaïs Tuerlinckx, who performs on string-box and synthesizer. Tuerlinckx, a pianist by training, moved from Brussels to Berlin in 2008, where she is a member of the avant-garde musical scene. I add a picture of Tuerlinckx performing on her string box, which she manipulates with a few dozen sticks and metal objects. As on the previous album, Rose plays exclusively on baritone.

This albums give three fully improvised pieces, recorded during two performances a little less than a year apart, but that does not diminish the coherence of the album.

Tuerlinckx is a little more 'out there' than Rose, sometimes quite unexpected in the use of her instrument, at times even disrupting her own compositional build-up. Rose is very agile in moving along and together they weave a wonderful sonic narrative with different story-lines and subplots, shifting between moments of quiet contemplation to ominous darkness. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.