Julien Desprez - The body, electricity, and politics

 

Photos by Gonçalo Falcão

By Gonçalo Falcão

I’m heading to meet Julien Desprez for this interview in the atrium of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, during the 41^st edition of the Jazz em Agosto festival. It’s a privilege to get to know better a musician I admire so deeply.

Desprez traces his path from an initiation in jazz to a redefinition of his identity as a musician. He explains a technique that integrates the body—notably through Brazilian sapateado (step dancing)—and the unconventional use of electricity as a musical instrument. Along the way he reflects on culture in Europe, the institutionalization of jazz, cultural policy, and his view of art’s role.

Much more than a musician, Julien Desprez reveals himself as an artist.

Interview

Gonçalo Falcão : This interview is particularly hard for me: I admire your work. I love the electric guitar, and your playing is truly original. But I don’t want to start with the guitar or the pedals. Since we’re at a jazz festival, inside a beautiful art institution - with this garden - could we begin with the state of the art?

How do you see jazz and improvised music becoming — this is my opinion, feel free to disagree — part of the art-world, elitist, instead of remaining a popular music, rooted in the people and widely heard?

Julien Desprez: For me it’s a bit of both. In fact, there are more dimensions than just that popular/art opposition; partly because some jazz has become classical music today. I’d include European improvised music here too. Look: we often see a younger generation repeating the gestures of the older one — which is normal; we’re influenced by what we hear. But there comes a point where a lot of the improvisation I hear—good as it may be—feels like classical. It become institutional. The word “improvisation” is always complicated for me, because we see people improvising, yet the form is often the same.

GF: The old “calm–intensity–calm” arc.

JD: Exactly. I call it the “kebab form”. [laughs]

GF: [laughs]

JD: And for the record, I love kebab!

GF: Me too — the taste and the shape.

JD: This isn’t a new issue; it’s there from the start of free improvisation in Europe, with the British — Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, etc. The best example is Bailey himself, who called that practice “non-idiomatic.”

GF: Which ended up becoming an idiom…

JD: Exactly! The non-idiomatic became an idiom; it’s a natural contradiction of total improvisation. I played a lot of total improv myself, but five or ten years ago I thought: This is almost always the same; the same things keep happening.

When you say you’ll improvise, you don’t rehearse — which is fine — but what happens is a meeting of languages: each musician’s language and the collective language. That’s already a form of composition. Often it even feels more like composition than improvisation. So I’ve tried to find other paths so I wouldn’t get bored.

If you don’t work, even when you improvise, you end up repeating the same gestures. I don’t agree with statements like Joëlle Léandre’s — for example, when she says, “Every time I play it’s new for me.” I don’t think that’s true: each time we hear her we immediately recognise Joëlle Léandre — the gestures, the sound, the form. That doesn’t mean it’s bad music, but it’s not what I want for myself.

GF: For you as an artist—or also for you as someone who wants to communicate with am audience?

JD: Both. It’s conceptual, but it’s also about communication. For instance, it’s hard to bring younger generations to concerts if they hear claims like “every time is new” and then recognize repeated forms across shows. There’s a gap between the narrative and the action, what is perceived. I try not to fall into that space. Today I don’t define myself as an improvising musician. I use improvisation, but as a process, not an aim.

GF: I hear you. Many musicians who entered free improvisation felt — after a while — unsatisfied with the conceptual and political problem of that practice.

JD: Yes. And that’s the big difference from jazz, which now has over a hundred years of history.

In the 1980s, in Europe — mainly France (not the U.S., where the social context is different) — began a cultural policy to fund art. That’s good, and I fully approve. But that system also bourgeoisified the music; it placed it in a conformist space.

GF: We’re back to my opening question about the state of the art. Did this allow musicians to live without thinking much about the audience?

JD: In some ways, yes. Art changed because of that economic context. I’m not saying funding should end—on the contrary, it’s fundamental for artists and society. Without it, educational levels would fall dramatically. But this system also changed how music works — for better in some respects, not so much in others. So I sought to step outside that context, to return to a space of greater freedom. Today I don’t define myself as a jazz musician nor as an improviser, but as an experimental musician.

GF: Across Europe, and also here, in Portugal, with the rise of the far right, artistic creation has been inserted into a subversive action package…

JD: Exactly. Doing what I do is no longer just a musical process; it’s now also a radical one. Twenty years ago, when left ideas dominated the culture wars, it was normal. Today, with the far right everywhere, just for doing what I do I get seen as an extremist—not only artistically, but politically. But in essence, I haven’t changed. The context has. Strange ideas have surfaced; fake news too. That’s why I think art will become more political.

GF: That sounds like good news — an encouraging prospect. I often feel the opposite: jazz is becoming less questioning, more tamed and comfortable. American musicians who come to Europe rarely talk about politics. They don’t speak about war—or they say vague things like “we’re for love” or “we’re against war.” It’s hard to hear that silence from people from a country that sponsors wars, supports a genocide. As a European, it’s difficult to accept that muteness. And France? For us, in the ’60s and ’70s it was culturally central. Then it lost relevance. We almost forgot there was interventionist, innovative jazz in France. Suddenly you and many others surface and we realise there’s plenty interesting things happening.

JD: For me it’s not so different. In the ’60s and ’70s, French music and art were important. But with cultural policy tied to socialism, a very protecting system was created. I love playing in France and abroad, but many musicians prefer to stay only in France. The system provides monthly funding, which is great — but it can be too comfortable. So I think the European system should be criticised. I support it, but we also need to share what we do with that support — show the rest of Europe that this system can produce great things. You’re required to play 43 concerts a year to receive the subsidy; then you can stop for a couple of months and work on new ideas. That gave me the time and opportunity to go deeper into the guitar and create my approach.

GF: Americans don’t have that.

JD: Exactly — it’s very hard for them. There’s no support; they have to play constantly, do weddings and baptisms, or hold a day job. In France it’s not like that; it gives us freedom. Everything I developed I owe to that possibility of stopping to reflect and practice.

GF: Since you’ve opened that door—and even though I said I wouldn’t dive into guitar technique — let’s talk about your playing, because it’s unique. I don’t hear direct links between standard electric-guitar technique and your approach. Of course there’s Fred Frith with Massacre and other downtown NY players (Elliott Sharp, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Sonny Sharrock) from the ’90s… but you brought something genuinely new with your rapid stutter and a very physical, percussive, bodily approach to the instrument. It often reads as performatic thing — or even a choreography — where instrument and instrumentalist, together, produce sound. Am I off?

JD: No, I completely agree. I love using the body because that’s how I feel this thing. It’s also a good limitation because, for instance, everything I do I could do on a computer. But with a computer you have to define your limits before you start. I listen to a lot of electronic music, and for me the best electronic musician is the one who makes good choices — because with machines you can do everything. So the first technology an artist must master is choice. In my case, the body works as that decision device: it allows many things, but it also imposes limits. There are things I simply cannot do — and I really like that.

GF: How did this way of playing develop?

JD: I come from a working-class family and started guitar at 16. No one in my family had any link to the art world. It was pure luck; I could have never played. One day, in my neighborhood, a friend brought an acoustic guitar. When it reached my hands I thought, ‘Wow, this is incredible, I love this.’ It was the first time I made music. Then I taught myself — rock, singing with the guitar. Later I met jazz musicians — I didn’t even know what jazz was. My father was a plumber; my mother worked in social security. I was completely outside that world. I later realized that distance can be an advantage, because it gives you more freedom in the art world.

GF: And then?

JD: Those musicians told me I should go to music school; so I did — In Yerres, a district outside Paris. I didn’t know what jazz was; I couldn’t read music; I showed up with a guitar and what I’d learned alone. I stayed in that school four years. I learned a lot, but I also saw a problem: others had played their instrument since they were five years old and were at a very high level. I could work like crazy to reach their level — but once I arrived at their level, they’d be even further ahead. So I decided the best solution was to take a different path.

I kept studying jazz because it’s a great school for the instrument and for music, but I began to feel bored with the guitar — the same licks, the same sounds. I moved to a Stratocaster, because I was listening to Hendrix, who is still a big influence.

GF: And Bo Diddley and James Brown; am I right?

JD: James Brown, for sure—I love him! Bo Diddley, not so much.

GF: I’ve asked because his way of playing the guitar feels like a drum.

JD: True. If I had to choose another instrument today, it would be percussion or drums. The guitar was accidental, as I said—almost as if it chose me. But I was bored — not with the instrument itself, but with how it was played.

That’s when I started reading Tristan Garcia, a philosopher of my generation. In Forme et objet. Un traité des choses, he proposes a new ontology: instead of “I think, therefore I am,” his logic is “I exist because I am a thing.” He puts humans on the same level as a sofa, a car, or a tree. I loved that way of thinking; it helped me create relations between objects.

I applied it to the guitar: I divided it into strings, neck, pickups, body. I worked in pairs — strings and pickups, neck and body — and then I thought of pedals not as effects but as instruments themselves. I even started using them without the guitar, as sound generators. That’s when I began using my feet much more, seeking independence between feet and hands, like a drummer or organist.

My first solo album, Acapulco, came from that process. I recorded it without big plans and suddenly started playing live a lot. That led me into the world of dance. A dancer once said, “How can you make those complex movements and make them look easy?” I’d never thought about it; I was only thinking about sound. So I created Acapulco Redux, with lights controlled from the stage. I presented it here at Jazz em Agosto, in 2017.

That project came precisely from the encounter with dance. I realised that, when we learn an instrument, nobody talks about the whole body — but it’s the beginning of everything. Even in electronic music, when you move a fader, it’s the body acting. So I knew I had to work that dimension more, particularly playing with my feet. I started doing it seated, then I adapted to play standing.

At the time, I was travelling to Brazil a lot. I met Arto Lindsay and others and returned many times between 2010 and 2019. There I discovered Coco Raízes de Arcoverde, in Pernambuco. They play a simplified samba, only percussion and voices, wearing wooden shoes. They do “sapateado” (step-dance). When I saw it I thought: ‘This is what I need to learn.’ I spent three weeks with them, lived in the community, and every morning we trained step dancing. It was forty degrees… very intense — but I perfected it; and then I brought that physicality into my work.

That experience definitively linked body and sound. Today I can’t separate them. And, oddly enough, even my use of pedals relates to that samba rhythm. Of course the material is different and sounds different, but that’s the origin. I’m still in touch with them, we exchange ideas on recording processes and more.

GF: What a story —the creative process finds its form in very intricate ways.

JD: Then I decided to create the piece Coco, with three dancers and three musicians. The idea was to erase the boundary: at the start we all step-danced in a line, and you couldn’t tell who was a dancer or who was a musician. I taught my way of playing to a dancer, guiding her through body movements, not through scores — and she managed to play by thinking only of the body. That was incredible.

That led me to deepen the “tap” element, which became part of my language. That’s when I started to move away from the idea of being a “guitarist.” Today I don’t consider myself a guitarist but a user of the guitar. It’s just a tool. In new projects I started singing again — because that’s how I began in music. Two years ago I decided to return to that origin: singing, step dancing, noise, all at once. I want to create a musical form where everything fits, while maintaining the relation to the idea of “things”.

There’s a French expression I love: when you enter the world, you get lost forever and never leave it — you have to deal with everything. That’s what I want: a thermodynamic organization of things where everything can enter.

GF: Perhaps that’s why I like Abacaxi so much: it feels like a world that processes many musics.

JD: Exactly. That’s what I do in Abacaxi: I put everything there, from funk to noise. I bring different musical spaces together and let them live. Often I don’t control the encounter of those musical objects—I let them react and just surf them.

GF: That’s the most fascinating part of speaking with musicians: hearing how they explain their music and then it becomes clearer. I know I like it, I’m deeply interested, I’ve got a fair idea of what’s going on musically — but while hearing you, it all becomes richer. I first saw Abacaxi in Portalegre and was struck by your technique and by the music of the group. So when you say you’re not a guitarist, I think I get it—but for someone who plays guitar, it’s astonishing, because you developed a new approach, a new pedal technique. Back to the point: do you feel part of the electric-guitar legacy?

JD: In some way, yes—maybe not so much in jazz, but in the history of the electric guitar. I’m a fan of Bill Frisell, and I think there are aspects of him in my music, particularly how he uses sound, especially on the ’80s records.

GF: In Line, Rambler, Theoretically…?

JD: All of them! When he plays, I love it—so full of dynamics, and I love dynamics. So yes, I’m still connected to the guitar’s history, even if, in my case, the connection was to find a way to exit it. But by leaving, you also open space, and enlarge the field.

GF: Exactly—new doors open. But I confess:… “Bill Frisell” really surprises me. If you’d said Fred Frith or Derek Bailey, it would fit. Frisell is unexpected because he’s so melodic, the master of attack...

JD: I get it. I like Frith and Bailey too. But what I like in Frisell is that he has many technical capacities that he uses in a musical way — always in service of the music. I listen to everything: from reggaeton to noise, contemporary, reggae, pop. I like to explore. But the artists I love the most are those who keep evolving, transforming. Frisell is like that: the ’80s albums have nothing to do with the later ones, and then he changes again. He keeps pushing.

GF: I love him too, but I don’t know if I can understand your point. I saw him last year in Hamburg, in a retrospective, and he seemed stuck in the ’50s, in The Beach Boys/Space Age mood — almost denying contemporary America, wanting to return to a happy childhood. But now that you say this, I’ll listen again with new ears. Let me ask a nerdy question: do you use the Hexe Revolver pedal for your stutter? Your stutter is so fast I thought it couldn’t be purely human.

JD: No. As I said, I like using the body because it imposes limits—it forces me to choose. I have different ways to stutter: for example, a multi-tap delay set to repeat once, then I change the speed. But I still need to play the guitar, hit the pedal, switch on/off. I’ve tried many pedals—some respond to attack—but basically I prefer to use my feet.

GF: I get it. When processors appeared, every guitarist I knew started using them, but I don’t like too many knobs and hundreds of options you never use. I prefer a single on/off switch and two knobs.

JD: Exactly! I also like direct things. With very complex devices you lose time in options. In Acapulco Redux — that light piece I presented at Jazz em Agosto — I used Max/MSP with patches controlling everything. I’d turn on the computer, press a button and — shhboom — light everywhere. It’s fun; but because it’s so complex, it doesn’t leave many space for other things. My relation to technology is this: I use it because we live in the modern world, but minimally, to leave space for other things to happen. That matters to me in music, politics, and human relations.

GF: So it’s not just a traditional artistic stance. It’s a global attitude — leaving room for the unforeseen.

JD: Exactly. Never discard, never ignore. If I see something, I grab it. For me the world is thermodynamic: organization creates chaos; chaos creates organization. That’s what I work with.

GF: How do you see changes in how people use music? Before, we went somewhere to listen; we played an album start to finish; we waited for a radio programme. Now music is everywhere — backgrounding for a meal in a restaurant, to a conversation in a café, to run in the gym. But music is rarely truly heard.

JD: Yes — music like tap water. You open it and it’s there. No questions asked. That makes me think about what I do in that context: what’s the difference between art and entertainment? I like entertainment — I like Hollywood action films, pop music. But art isn’t made to like or not like; it’s made to create sensitivity, imagination, to move people, help them to understand themselves. That’s why I enjoy shaking the audience a bit. When someone says “I loved it”, I’m happy — but that’s not what I’m after. I want them to leave thinking, ‘Wow, something happened.’ My goal is to increase human sensitivity. If that happened on a big scale, maybe fewer people would say so much nonsense. Because sensitivity and connection to the world are fundamental to be free.

GF: Not to change?

JD: Art is made to change. That’s why it’s good when people love it, and also when they hate it. The worst is the “whatever…” If I get that feedback, I think: “It was a bad concert.” Music and art are always political.

GF: Change — hopefully for the better, which is not guaranteed…

JD: Yes. Let’s hope. This year, for example, it’s not going great...

GF: Indeed — art doesn’t seem to be working, this year…

JD: Not right now. I don’t know how we got here.

GF: Even in Portugal… the far right is now a important political force. In France you’ve become used to Le Pen, but in Portugal this transformation was a shock. And the recipe is the same across Europe. I wonder if it’s also related to this erasure of music — by turning artworks into odorant, which anaesthetizes society. You say you like many kinds of music — Beethoven, Schoenberg, jazz, rock, James Brown. Me too. But I dislike random music in restaurants or on the beach.

JD: I understand.

GF: It bothers me. On the beach we should hear the waves, not boorish beats. This omnipresence of sound anaesthetizes. Everything is an “experience” now, nothing is trash or wrong.

JD: I agree. The problem is people lose the capacity to think for themselves and to disagree. For me, that’s the start of politics: disagreement. I don’t expect a society where everyone agrees with me; I expect relations and art that make us think. When we stop thinking — even if we believe we are thinking because we’re fed easy answers—nothing good can come. That’s manipulation. Art can help to explain this. My partner works with neuroscientists. A friend in Geneva told me after a concert: ‘You know, Julien, you do exactly what’s needed to redefine neural connections. First you present clear rules, then you distort them and force the brain to reorganize.’ I was happy — that’s exactly it. I show an image, then I warp it. That’s also why I don’t consider myself a guitarist. I use the guitar as an initial image: people think, “OK, an electric guitar — I’m safe.” Then I start playing and they ask, “What the hell is this?” That distortion is essential. I want the audience to listen actively, not as background. I want to put them in an active position, to return to them the possibility of action.

GF: Absolutely. An active stance towards creation — and towards the social and political situation — seems to be where you provoke something, whether in design, music, theater, or any other form. Like sand in the brain causing an itch — some productive confusion. Julien, I don’t know if there’s anything left to say, but I’ll add that, for me, this conversation was very positive and stimulating. I’ve always thought of you as a guitarist; I like this idea that you’re a musician who uses the guitar.

JD: Perhaps just this, by way of conclusion: although I use the electric guitar, what I really play is electricity. When I touch a pedal, I’m managing the tension of an electrical circuit. The guitar is an electrical controller. Pedals react to impedance and to the impulse they receive. When I change the guitar’s tone or volume, I change the circuit’s impedance. So when I use my feet or turn knobs, I’m managing electricity.

To go further: two years ago I created a performance called Arc, where I play guitar, sing, step-dance and use a new musical device I developed with Nicolas Canot, made of 12 small electrical arcs. An electrical arc is basically electricity managed in the air: two electrified pieces of metal; current always seeks the quickest path from A to B. We amplified those arcs with jacks and cables, into a DI and then the PA. You hear the magnetic fields vibrating. The most beautiful part was realizing, at the same time, that this is a comparable process: my partner — also an artist, connected to science — showed me images of neurons firing when we feel emotions. It’s the same process: neurons generating electricity. I realized that, at bottom, everything I do is electric — the human body generates it; the guitar depends on it; so do the pedals.

GF: So it’s not sound — it’s electricity?

JD: Exactly.

GF: We’ve known electricity for a long time. Since Antiquity we knew it existed, but didn’t know what to do with it. Only in the 20th century did we fully controlled and used it. Today we’re totally dependent on it.

JD: One of Tristan Garcia’s best books, La Vie Intense, is precisely about this—not technological electricity, but what it brought to the human brain and emotions. He shows how the lexical field we use to describe feelings comes from electrical intensity. It wasn’t only light that changed us; it also changed the language with which we speak of love, passion, pain. We say “it was intense” “a shock” “a storm in the sky.” All electrical metaphors. That’s the link. That’s how I see the world: electricity in flow, intensity.

The interview ends as it began: between body and philosophy, musical practice and politics, physicality and electricity. Julien Desprez confirms himself not merely as a guitarist but as an artist who conceives music as an expanded field—where sound, gesture, body, and energy meet and reorganize.

This interview was initially published in Portuguese on the Jazz.pt website on August 24, 2025: https://jazz.pt/entrevistas/o-corpo--a-eletricidade-e-a-politica

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Gonçalo Falcão is the co-editor of Portugal's Jazz.pt magazine. Studied music with Vítor Rua. Composition workshops with Louis Andriessen and Salvatore Sciarrino. Played with Telectu, Evan Parker, Eddie Prévost, among others. Recorded Load “ “ and Volkswagner guitar solos. Teacher at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon.

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By David Cristol 

Days 4 → 7  (see previous)

Próspero’s books

Luís Vicente Trio. Photo by Petra Cvelbar/Gulbenkian Musica

The Luís Vicente Trio is a fully Portuguese band for the trumpeter (who adds bells, whistle, kalimba, bottles and other toy-like instruments to his arsenal), after some time touring and recording with William Parker, Luke Stewart, Hamid Drake, John Dikeman, Mark Sanders, Onno Govaert and the Ceccaldi brothers. The trio with Gonçalo Almeida (b) and Pedro Melo Alves (dm, perc, objects) has two albums out on Clean Feed and was previously heard at the first edition of the neighboring Causa Efeito festival with Tony Malaby as their guest. The spirit and ideas of fire and open music innovators such as Don Cherry are an obvious influence. Several tunes promote hymn-like themes, followed by heated playing. Vicente alternates between elusive flurries and assertive, longer lines. He however doesn't try to be a virtuoso in either the Peter Evans or Wynton Marsalis molds. It’s about the music, not the trumpet. It’s about the people he plays with. It’s about interacting and sharing. Alves has a great sound (and his own albums come recommended). Almeida is on top form, propelling the jams, fully committed whether he holds a rhythm, soloes with a big strong tone or engages in wordless chanting. An elegiac melody soars over unruly and busy playing.

João Próspero Quartet. Photo by Petra Cvelbar/Gulbenkian Musica

Inspiration can come from anywhere, and some musicians find it in the works of painters, authors, activists as much as among their peers and mentors. Think of Myra Melford and her frequent references to artists unrelated to the music world, from writer Eduardo Galeano to painter, photographer and sculptor Cy Twombly. For the work titled Sopros, Porto’s composer and bassist João Próspero finds its muse in the writings of contemporary Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The quartet, made up of Joaquim Festas (elg), Miguel Meirinhos (p) and Gonçalo Ribeiro (dm) can be credited with original compositional ideas. The approach is definitely on the quiet side, the quartet unlikely to break a string or wake up the neighborhood. Prettily floating in the air, the light-as-a-feather music from the romantic four sounds unconcerned by the world’s commotion. On the encore, the combined influences of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Michael Nyman are felt.

MOPCUT with Moor Mother. Photo by Petra Cvelbar/Gulbenkian Musica

The international MOPCUT trio comes to Lisbon with the two guests from their latest effort, RYOK. Ace vocalist Audrey Chen's whimpers introduce the set in tune with the garden’s pond frogs, to which Moor Mother adds ruminations of her own. Drummer Lukas König initially opts for extremely peaceful playing, while Mother chugs into a harmonica with single notes bursts. This results in a kind of dark ambient, which transforms into another beast when Julien Desprez tumbles onstage spraying venomous drops from his Gatling gun guitar. Mother intones her first verses while shaking a rattle and dancing. Desprez kicks off a steady rhythm, MC Dälek throws irate rapping to the menacing bass notes from his synth, with König fleshing out the beat. The noise-meets-improv-meets-hip-hop fusion feels like a jam session, pleasant enough but rather stagnant and directionless between intermittent flashes of brilliance. A fine moment has Moor Mother delivering paranoid verses in her portentous voice, making more sense than Lee Scratch Perry.

Edward George. Photo by Petra Cvelbar/Gulbenkian Musica

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Aleuchatistas 3. Photo by Petra Cvelbar/Gulbenkian Musica

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Mysteries of Materiality and Transformation

By Stuart Broomer

I know of no musician who more strongly invokes the given material world – “nature” -- than the percussionist Toma Gouband and have appreciated his work since Courant des Vents (“Wind Current”) his first solo recording (released on psi in 2012 and reissued in April 2025 on Bandcamp. In a sense, he might be considered the master drummer of the natural world, sometimes using a horizontal bass drum as a resonator for lithophones (that is, rocks used as percussion instruments), sometimes striking stones together, or, alternatively, playing a conventional drum kit with tree branches (that begin with their leaves intact) as sticks. Watching Gouband play a solo in the latter manner on the stage of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s outdoor amphitheatre with Evan Parker and Matt Wright’s Trance Maps at the 2023 edition of Jazz em Agosto, surrounded by trees and coloured lights, the leaves and twigs disintegrating into their own ascendant, multi-colored dust clouds, was among the most profound visual representations of music that I have ever witnessed.

As with Courant des Vents, Un Peu Plus Loin is a re-issue, first issued on CD in 2020, it coincided with the height of the Covid-19 outbreak and shutdown and received little attention. It was issued on Bandcamp in December 2024. The mystery of the natural world is at the root of Un Peu Plus Loin (“A Little Further”), which began as the middle segment of a three-part installation, Desert, by conceptual artist/sculptor Stéphane Thidet, set in the ancient Cistertian Maubuisson Abbey, founded in 1236 by Blanche of Castile, at thetime Queen of France. “The segment invokes the mysterious moving rocks of “Racetrack Playa, a dried-up lake in California’s Death Valley. While the stones move (perhaps the result of the slow processes of freezing and thawing), leaving tracks (an image recreated in the rocks and trails in clay of Thidet’s sculpture), they have never been seen to move.”

After the performance, struck by the experience and the Abbey’s special resonance, Gouband writes “I returned alone to improvise in the suspended and mysterious presence of the rocks and their traces. Eleven minutes were extracted and then sent to four inventive electroacoustic musicians, each of whom created a variation from this base. What emerges is an intimate connection with the spirit of the work, an interstellar conversation, a setting in motion.” (The preceding two paragraphs contain material translated and/or paraphrased from Gouband’s notes on the Bandcamp page). The resultant pieces are named by fragments of that phrase Un Peu Plus Loin .

Un is Gouband’s original 11-minute improvisation. Its combination of spaces and echoes and brief rolls and elisions around a drum surface and metal percussion create an extraordinary atmosphere in keeping with the underlying phenomenon being represented here—that is the rolling rocks. As it develops that sense of rolling spheres, like ball bearings on the head of a drum, the work becomes increasing mobile, increasingly evocative. If there are drum solos like this inspired by mysterious spheres, then rolling rocks become a privileged phenomenon, never to be observed, yet known, occurring in an interval of human absence. It is a percussion improvisation of unimaginable subtlety, a percussion solo of the imagination, a kind of natural phenomenon in which an artist approaches a profound mystery.

Gouband’s solo is then followed by four electronic compositions exploring the materials of “Un”, each is transformative, a dream of a reverie, a reverie on a dream.

In “Peu’ by Roman Bestion, Gouband’s rolls are apt to move backwards, Reversed sounds grow in volume, metallic percussion multipies, somehow the desert grows aqueous, the burbling of scuba tanks grows louder, appear amid whispers of electronics and is then sustained, a bass underlay. An organ emerges, a deep bass drum, all the live sounds of Gouband’s kit embrace their phantom others.

In Plus, by Christophe Havard, drum strokes will retreat into the distance. The environment seems more electronic, also more distant, with imitations of glitches, skips and sudden interpolations of unaltered sounds. Extended tones suggest winds, ultimately the sound of subterranean echo chambers (reminiscent of the sounds of John Butcher’s tour of abandoned Scottish architecture ( Resonant Spaces [Confront 17]); the strangely gothic organ solo constructed under complex drumming, suggest the rolling stones occupy an epic, underground cavern/cathedral, sometimes growing louder among the stones’ special resonance…then drifting away, the stones growing quieter as if they are moving out of the frame of our hearing…

In Loin by Matthew Wright, there is further submersion, the echoing stones a background to sounds foregrounded yet ironically muffled, gradually expanded to feedback trilling, an increasingly complex chart of artificial distances and multiple competing clicks and whispers, with Hammond organ dribbles against elastic and metallic percussion instruments. All the sounds are shifting then: sudden upward glissandi, patchwork scratches and rubbery stretches.

The concluding piece, Juan Parra’s Desert, is the longest of these works (11:57) and the most strongly connected to the sounds of the original. At the beginning, preserved drum strokes background metallic scraping, some sounds echoing acoustically with the same degree of resonance as Gouband’s own, but here there are other sounds as well as those tangible forms of the original. It is as if a lost explorer has found a dusty sea and a soggy desert, all materiality open to sudden and substantial self-opposition, the wind growing stronger, the drone interchangeable, the metal strokes of the originating drums turned into a sustained unearthly force. The subterranean winds that move the stones, the undercurrents of earthly tides and tilts, are as subtle and forceful as a poet’s unsought dreams.

Perhaps there is another magnetism lost and found in the moving stones, here recovered in Gouband’s instruments, those materials lost and found in nature herein heard initially acoustically, are then reformed and reborn in the imaginative applications of technology. Embracing, expanding, extrapolating on a mystery, bridging spirit and materiality, this recording feels like what more music should be doing. 

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Louis Moholo-Moholo (1940 - 2025)

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

By Martin Schray

It’s difficult to imagine the situation for black musicians in South Africa in the 1960s today. Apartheid, the racist system of legal separation between blacks and whites, determined people’s lives, including art and music. Black and white musicians were not allowed to perform, rehearse, or travel together. Concerts in mixed ensembles were illegal. Politically charged music - such as African rhythms and free jazz - was considered “subversive” and many musicians were monitored by the state, their music banned or restricted. Black musicians needed special passes to move around their own country. International tours were hardly possible, and when they did happen, they were mainly for privileged white artists. Many black musicians therefore lived in poverty and had no professional platform for their art. Louis Moholo-Moholo had to deal with this reality at the beginning of his musical career, which is why he and his band, the Blue Notes, decided to leave the country in order to be able to perform freely. It was not until a little over 40 years later that he returned to his homeland, where he has now passed away at the age of 85.

Tebogo Louis Moholo-Moholo grew up in a township in Cape Town. In the vibrant jazz scene of this neighborhood, music became a place of expression, resistance, but also joy and hope. There, Moholo-Moholo met Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim), among others, and was a co-founder of The Blue Notes, a band that soon became the artistic spearhead of South African modern jazz. The Blue Notes consisted of black and white musicians, which was forbidden. Public performances were therefore dangerous, their music, which opposed restriction and racial segregation, was increasingly seen as provocative. In 1964, the band fled into exile in Europe, officially under the pretext of participating in the Antibes Jazz Festival in France. In reality, it was an escape from censorship, police surveillance, and oppression by the apartheid state. From South Africa, they traveled via France to London, where they sought and ultimately found asylum. “We played because we wanted to live - and we lived because we could play,” the drummer said in retrospect about this time.

Soon, Moholo-Moholo became part of the British free jazz scene, playing with Chris McGregor and his Brotherhood of Breath, with Dudu Pukwana, Evan Parker, Keith Tippett, and many others. He formed a particularly close musical friendship with Irène Schweizer, the Swiss pianist. In Europe, he played with all the important free jazz musicians, and several of his recordings with the West German FMP label are considered classics. His playing was explosive yet melodic, rhythmically rooted in African tradition but open to anything experimental. He combined township grooves with European avant-garde jazz - a musical act of decolonization. Logically, however, he was never “just a musician.” He understood his art as a political act, which was almost inevitable given his background. Apartheid, exile, the loss of his homeland – all of this resonated in his music. He refused to provide “entertainment”. His concerts were acoustic manifestos - loud, raw, demanding. In 2004, he received the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, one of South Africa’s highest cultural honors, and in 2005, after more than 40 years in exile, he returned to Cape Town on a permanent basis. There, he taught, played with young musicians, and continued to fight for cultural and social justice.

Louis Moholo-Moholo was at home in all kinds of formations, and his characteristic drumming always enriched any group he played with. This makes it difficult to single out any particular albums from his extensive oeuvre. However, the first two Blue Notes albums, Blue Notes for Mongezi (Ogun, 1976) and Blue Notes in Concert Vol.1 (Ogun, 1978) are definite must haves. Almost everything he published on FMP is outstanding: The Nearer The Bone, The Sweater the Meat (FMP, 1979) and Opened, But Hardly Touched (FMP, 1981) with Peter Brötzmann on saxophones and clarinet and fellow expat Harry Miller on bass, are spectacular albums and only due to Miller’s untimely death there are just these two recordings by this trio. In general, Moholo-Moholo was great in duos with pianists - with his friend Irène Schweizer on their self titled album (Intakt, 1987), which includes “Free Mandela!“ and “Angel“, signature compositions of the two. In this context one must also mention No Gossip (FMP, 1982), a piano duo recording with Keith Tippett, and Remembrance (FMP, 1989) with the great Cecil Taylor. Messer (FMP, 1976) and Tuned Boots (FMP 1978), his trios with Irène Schweizer and Rüdiger Carl on saxophone, must not be forgotten either. A personal favorite of mine is Tern (FMP, 1983), his trio with Keith Tippett and Larry Stabbins on saxophone. But what is more, he was a great bandleader as well. Among his many recordings, Spirits Rejoice! (Ogun, 1978) certainly stands out. It’s his octet album with Harry Miller and John Dyani on bass, Keith Tippett on piano, Evan Parker on saxophone, Kenny Wheeler on trumpet, and Radu Malfatti and Nick Evans on trombone - a killer lineup that delivers everything it promises. A perfect example of his interest in teaming up with younger musicians is his quintet Five Blokes with Alexander Hawkins on piano, John Edwards on bass, and Jason Yarde and Shabaka Hutchings on saxes. Uplift the People (Ogun, 2018) is just a great album.

On June, 13th, the exceptional man died after a long illness. With this extraordinary drummer the last surviving member of the legendary Blue Notes has died. So, this also marks the end of a musical era. “Louis was more than a pioneering musician - he was a mentor and a friend. As a drummer, composer, and fearless voice for artistic freedom, Louis inspired generations through his groundbreaking contributions to South African and global jazz,“ the Moholo-Moholo family said in a statement.

“Spirits Rejoice!” the family concluded - a reference to the legendary octet album and a tribute to a life that has linked music and political resistance like few others. May he rest in peace.

Watch Louis Moholo-Moholo live with Irène Schweizer at the 29th outfit of the Unlimited Festival in Wels/Austria in 2015:

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Stefan Keune / Steve Noble / Dominic Lash - Black Box (scatterArchive, 2025)

By Martin Schray

In recent years, Stefan Keune has mainly been involved with the reformed King Übü Örchestrü and the orchestra’s nucleus, XPACT (at least that’s how it seems to me). Keune, who has replaced the late Wolfgang Fuchs in the new outfit, is the perfect substitute, as he is a master of subtle, abstract and elegant playing. However, he can also play differently when his fellow musicians demand it. His trio with Dominic Lash on bass and Steve Noble on drums, with whom he has been playing for more than ten years now, brings out a more powerful Keune without pushing the nuance and the intricacy into the background.

In 2017, the trio played a few gigs in Germany, the last of which was at the Black Box in Münster, a renowned venue for free music in West Germany, before they played at the Moers Festival a few days later. Two days before the Münster gig, I saw them in Schorndorf and was impressed by how well they worked together and how organic the musical interaction was. In the liner notes to this new recording, Keune mentions that he plays too rarely with the two "but whenever the opportunity arises. There is a great familiarity and security, even in the freest of contexts, that I really enjoy." Black Box is the perfect example for these words.

The music simply kicks in and you’re thrown straight into the action. Keune’s lines smear around, while Lash and Noble rumble darkly. However, the music immediately becomes more precise, exploring its possibilities, bouncing against the limits of the registers. The musicians stretch out time, but then condense it in the next moment; the whole thing happens at a rapid pace and with the greatest possible elegance. In the trio’s music, the loud-quiet-passages, which structure the sets, are decisive. The improvisation then seems to implode out of nowhere, e.g. when saxophone and bass simply stop playing in the first piece and briefly leave the field to Steve Noble’s drums. But then they immediately feel their way back into the piece. And as is so often the case with excellent saxophone trios (and we are dealing with one here), it’s the quiet passages that are the most convincing ones. Keune, Lash and Noble create an enormous tension here, an urgency, a presence that we only know from the best of their genre, e.g. Evan Parker’s trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton. Keune’s rough melodies are turbulently taken by surprise by Noble and Lash, drum beats patter, rimshots hail, the bowed bass jerks and twitches and churns, the strings purr, bolt, creak and boom. It’s pure joy to listen to.

Anyone hoping for new magic and adventurous kicks from new chamber music, magic ignited by sparklers and a captivating interplay between cacophony and subtlety, melancholy and expressiveness - here is what you are looking for.

Black Box is available as a download.

You can listen to it and by the music here:

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Zoe Pia & Mats Gustafsson - Rite (Parco Della Musica, 2025)

By Sammy Stein

Zoe Pia is a clarinettist and composer from Sardinia. She graduated from the Music Conservatory of Cagliari, where she specialised in clarinet. Later, she studied at the Conservatory of Rovigo in classical contemporary music, live electronics, and jazz.

Pia has played with Franco Donatoni’s Hot, together with Marco Tamburini, Mauro Negri, Nico Gori, and Fabio Petretti. She gained experience at the Accademia del Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, international seminars, and has been influenced by Spanish culture and the diverse music she has listened to and played. She has performed with ensembles, as a soloist, and as part of several musical projects. Sardinian music is close to Pia’s heart, and she explores the mixture of styles and soundscapes her homeland provides. The Shardana project, which Pia heads, is part of this exploration of the heritage and culture of Sardinia.

As well as projects, Pia has performed and collaborated with New Art Symphonic, Filarmonica Italiana, Filarmonia Veneta, Sinfonica di Pescara, Alvin Curran, Steven Bernstein, Bruno Biriaco, Reuben Rogers, Paolo Fresu, Mauro Ottolini, Nico Gori, Marco Tamburini, Bebo Ferra, Stefano Senni and Massimo Morganti to name a few. The list of venues Pia has played at is extensive. On Rite, she plays launeddas (a traditional three-piped clarinet-like instrument), Bb clarinet, Sardinian percussion, light synth, and lumanoise.

Mats Gustafsson is a Swedish saxophone player, specialising in the explorative side of free jazz and a stalwart of the improvised music scene. He has played with many of jazz’s luminaries, including Joe McPhee, Peter Brotzmann, Pat Thomas, Evan Parker, Misha Mellenberg, Hamid Drake, Ken Vandermark, and many more. Projects and groups he has been involved with include Gush, and Fire! He collaborates with dancers, artists, and orchestras and has written pieces for full orchestra and ensembles and curated festivals, He remains a self-diagnosed discaholic, enraptured by rare and hard-to-find recordings. On Rite, Gustafsson plays flute, slide flute, baritone sax, Ab clarinet, flutophone, and harmonica.

Pia and Gustafsson met thanks to a collaboration with Fire! Orchestra and Fire! In 2022, they decided to explore the possibilities offered as a duo, and in May 2023, they toured Italy and recorded in the studio, at concerts, and festivals. Initially, it is difficult to conceive how the combination of free blowing, improvising saxophone, and elements of Sardinian folk music, Sami Joik (Sami singing music), and electronic music is going to sound, but Rite does something sublime thanks to the understanding between the musicians. They manage to maintain the purity of their sound yet incorporate elements from each other’s soundscape too. They listen, engage, imbibe from each other, and give their interpretation in ways that create another direction, forging a different pathway into improvisation.

Rite comprises three tracks. Two are just shy of ten minutes long, and the final track lasts almost twenty-two minutes. ‘I shut My Eyes Like A Rock’ is a heady, explorative piece with different effects and rhythms. At times, there is a sense of the two musicians feeling their way, finding connection, and at others, there is a glorious carefree exchange of patterns and ideas as first Zia, then Gustafsson set an idea in motion, and the other responds. Pia’s playing of the clarinet has, at times, beautifully worked phrasing, while Gustafsson interjects with contrasting sounds. The rock upon which this track hinges is the freely played clarinet, against which Gustafsson huffs and blows his improvising mind. ‘A Thousand Bird Calls’ is beautiful in places, guttural, and jerky in others, with strong folk lines, soft against third, fast against slow melodic phrasing – it works because of the timing of the players. No phrase is too long, no interval too short, but the blend and merging of the different rhythmic patterns and stylistic weaving that happens is pure intuition. ‘Minima.Memory.Mirage.’ is a long, deep dive into improvisation and explorative soundscapes. Both players seek out the furthest range of their instruments, with peaceful interludes fractured by fierce disharmonious episodes and blasts of electronics. Around the ten-minute mark, there begins an irksome electronic noise, which is effective because when it stops, it feels like utter silence and relief as the delicate melodies that were present behind it are suddenly left uncovered and can be heard clearly, their sweetness contrasting with the grating, growly noise of before.

Rite presents improvised music in new forms, structures, and directions. Two different paths unite to forge a new way through the noise that surrounds improvised music at times. Moving in soundscapes never explored before, the sound combines the richness of traditional culture and free playing into new creative languages of experimental music. The depth and intensity of some of the guttural phrasing contrasts with the delicacy of the flute and solo phrases, creating a sense of freedoms powered against complete containment. Gustafsson is continuing to stretch music and what it means; he combines it with influences from many sources, while Pia brings a freshness and sublime tonality at times, in contrast with the atonal, free driving of Gustafsson.

This is a sonic encounter. An experience the two musicians shared that is now recorded, and while for both it might feel a different direction, it is one they may continue to develop and explore. So many elements are here, in just under fifty minutes of music. From deep, sensuous, flowing lines, pattering, light, crazy phrases, to forceful blasts of sound and occasional annoying interjections that seem like they have no place – until they reach a point of silence, where the purpose is revealed – they peel away to leave the melodies playing and now they are heard even clearer in the absence of the electronica.

The lines of folk, classical, free improvisation, and exploratory music are blurred, but the elements are all here, and the intertwined, contrasting, parallel sounds create a celebratory feeling – that there is more to music than simply playing the notes – it is about expressing the culture and persona of the players. In this, Rite succeeds.

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Juno 3 - Proxemics (Buster and Friends, 2025)

By Sammy Stein

Han Earl Park, Pat Thomas, and Lara Jones need little introduction to fans of alluring, free music but for those not familiar with them, Park is an improvising musician who specializes in guitar and percussive music. He is a shapeshifter of a musician, a chameleon who transfers easily from beautiful passages to discordant ruminations. His music is joyful, energetic, and packed with rhythm patterns as changeable as they are engaging. He has performed with Lol Coxhill, Wadado Leao Smith, Mark Sanders, Evan Parker, and more.

Lara Jones is an experimental producer, DJ, saxophonist, keyboardist, and lyricist, who creates high-energy music and has worked with fellow artists in various ensembles and formats. Her music transcends genres, and Jones refuses to be boxed in by genres or gender definitions.

Pat Thomas began playing classical piano as a child but switched to jazz in his teenage years. Renowned for his intense, amorphic music, Thomas is an inspiration for improvising musicians. He was integral to the Black Top Project with Orphy Robinson and has performed with Hamid Drake, William Parker, John Butcher, and many others.

Park, Jones, and Thomas are Juno 3, and on Proxemics they demonstrate the achievements of a trio in live performance with intrinsic skills in listening, playing, and collaborating. The album was recorded live during the trio’s performance at London’s Cafe OTO for the EFG London Jazz Festival in November 2023.

The music is in two parts, ‘Derealization’ and ‘Proxemis’ respectively representing two sets performed at Oto. Each track, let alone six-track set, feels like an exploration into different ways guitar, sax, piano, and electronics can be melded in an improvised performance.

From the screeching eeriness created in ‘Derealization I’ where vaguely connected electronic harmonic runs give way on occasion to melodic, then non-so melodic interjections from the sax, there are themes, counter-themes and an exchange of ideas, often thrown down by Thomas for the others to reflect – albeit changed. This pattern is further explored in ‘Derealization II’, III, IV, with added melodic lines from the guitar in V and VI. Spot the opening of a melody from an old sixties track (Popcorn) in Realization II that sits alongside current, visceral electronic sounds for the briefest moment and then relish the simple melodies that interact with complex, guttural squawks, whistles, engine noises and vaguely harmonically linked lines from sax and guitar.

The ’Proxemics’ set is more intense and power-driven than the ‘Derealization’ set. ‘Proxemics I’ sees the energy building as quartets of chords chase across the background, while gentle guitar notes weave their way into and out of the sound. There is a set rhythm pattern for most of the track, under and over which the improvisers weave different, yet connected sounds. Proxemics II develops the exploration further, and Proxemics III introduces another dimension – rivulets of sound that fall from the keys, keynotes held by the sax, and the guitar deftly filling the gaps, like splashes from the pool. The quietude of the second third is dispelled as the instruments crash in to take the sounds up and loud.

The music is challenging in places–visceral with confronting rhythms and keys that merge – almost–before veering off in different directions, creating a sense of clashing ideas, yet a willingness also to (eventually) end up on the same musical path.

It is music for the open-minded and at times, the tonality is so jarring that it takes the listener somewhere else, only to be brought back to the present by a snippet of melody or harmonic progressions before another clash of sounds impacts the brain and the mist descends again.

These three musicians know what they are doing – the sound is integrated, yet audacious, swashbuckling yet provocative. This is improved music as it should be live and played well.

Park says of the recording, “During the mix, I came to realize this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite.”

I think Park missed something, for hidden amongst the power, energy, and intensity, there is a delicate beauty that exists in all truly improvised music.

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Joëlle Léandre remembers Barre Phillips

At the end of this past December, bassist Barre Phillips passed away. Today, fellow bassist Joëlle Léandre pays tribute to her mentor, collaborator and friend.

Barre Phillips, Kongsberg 2019
Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Barre, dear Barre,

I met and heard you when I was so young, 15 years old, in Aix-en-Provence, my hometown, you gave a solo bass concert there, in 1963 or 65!

Pierre Delescluse, a great, passionate and stern double bass teacher took the whole class to listen to you, to see you. It was extraordinary, a solo on a forgotten, low register instrument... there in front of us! 

A U.F.O., something else... A light.

You played a movement of a Bach suite for cello, transcribed of course, and music you had written spread across 6 or 7 music stands on the stage! Like an accordion you moved from stand to stand, it was magical.

One sound, then one phrase… You played as much pizz as arco , as we say in our string family vernacular. Music bursting everywhere. It was yours. You were a protagonist and a pioneer.

Later, we played a lot together, as a duo of course, in a bass quartet in tribute to Peter Kowald, but also did a show called "The grammar of grandmothers" [grandmother = surname for the double bass]: three bassists on stage at the American Center, Boulevard Raspail in Paris, where everything creative was happening – this was also the place where I went to listen to the free jazz greats and thank them all! We shared the stage with Robert Black, another explorer of the double bass.

On the stage, there were only basses laid flat, sideways… small, huge, broken, hung here and there, like a workshop, pieces of wood, bass strings in a bucket, music stands everywhere, a bass suspended like a swing... magnificent! All three of us had written a lot of music.

It came from you, Barre, the spirit of adventure, permissiveness, all these meetings and projects.

The living music, the ringing of this big cabinet that scares dogs and the taxis that reject us!

Your smile, your joy, your wisdom and mischievous eyes, many memories I keep…

With a childlike and curious mind, you were always enthusiastic and eager to share information with me about new microphones, amps, and slipcovers! We bass players are paranoid about sound, since it’s so hard to hear us. Bass players always talk shop, and you were overjoyed to show me your new carbon bass, taking it out of the hotel room into the corridor to kick it and jump on it and show me it was unbreakable, I was in tears from laughter – you always had a passion for new means of projecting a better sound. You were a complete musician, regardless of genre.

We often spoke on the phone, on the road, at hotels and during festivals. You were always the one I looked to, Barre, an example to follow. Your sound, the sound of your bass is recognizable among thousands. The sound is our identity as musicians, it's the energy we put in, the choices we make, we keep selecting, deciding, taking risks, we have to!

With an implacably accurate left hand, you made the bass a solo instrument in its own right… Others have taken over, haven’t they? We are not many...

Classical, free, jazz, who cares, I can hear your thing clearly! You remained a unique musician, ever creative and funny, talking to the audience or hiding behind the bass sometimes!

And always your kindness, reaching out to others, listening, sharing... While everything in society is based on hierarchies and domination – black and white, man and woman, serious and oral music, this style over this one – you were basically becoming the other, without hierarchy.

Making music together is loving.

Thank you Barre for everything you gave us.

We will miss you!!
JL
(translation by David Cristol)

Joëlle Léandre
Photo by Christian Pouget

 

Joëlle Léandre and Barre Phillips can be heard together on the following recordings:

• Joëlle Léandre – Les douze sons (Nato, 1984)
• Phillips, Léandre, Parker, Saitoh – After You Gone (Victo, 2004)
• Barre Phillips & Joëlle Léandre – A l'improviste(Kadima, 2008)
• 13 Miniatures for Albert Ayler (Rogue Art, 2012)
• Sebastian Gramss – Thinking of... Stefano Scodanibbio (Wergo, 2014)

Video, live in France, 2013 (excerpt):

Upcoming Joëlle Léandre releases:

• Duo with Andrejz Karalow – Flint on Fundacja Ensemblage (March 2025)
• Duo with Evan Parker on Rogue Art
• Duo with Rémy Bélanger de Beauport on Tour de Bras (LP)

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Howard Riley (1943 - 2025)

 

(Photo by Dmitrij Matvejev, NoBusiness Records)

By Martin Schray

I fell in love with the music of Howard Riley rather late, actually it was with Solo in Vilnius (NoBusiness, 2010). But then I really did. In the following years, I discovered his whole body of work, his early trio and most of all his solo albums, especially Constant Change 1976 - 2016 (NoBusiness, 2016), a 5-CD box set, which is one of my favourites of the decade. Howard Riley has become my favourite pianist (except Cecil Taylor, who is a league of his own), and because I had listened to his music intensively, I was really shocked when it became known that he was seriously ill. However, Riley managed to defy the illness for a long time and even managed to adapt his playing technique. But in the end, the great British pianist lost the fight and died yesterday, February 8th, shortly before his 82nd birthday.

Howard Riley studied at the University of Wales (1961–66), where he gained a BA and MA. He then he went to Indiana University (1966–67), before he enrolled at York University (1967–70) for his PhD. Alongside his studies and teaching he always played jazz professionally, with Evan Parker in 1966 and then with his aforementioned trio (1967–76), with Barry Guy on bass and Alan Jackson, Jon Hiseman and Tony Oxley alternating on drums. They released three albums for three different labels, each showing a remarkable stylistic evolution, opening up standardized structures into the worlds of an unknown, free improvisational language, while still clearly rooted in jazz. Riley played with a number of the key musicians of the British improv scene, but his idea of freedom was different. He needed a melody or rhythmic fragment to provide a center of gravity.

Apart from that, the feature which characterizes Riley’s music best is a tendency to reduction. His first solo album, Singleness, “demonstrated his mastery of historical techniques, attuned, through Monk, to the language of bebop as well as to the contemporary forms of Xenakis and Penderecki“, as Trevor Barre puts it in Beyond Jazz - Plink, Plonk & Scratch; The Golden Age of Free Music in London 1966 -1972. Especially Xenakis has been a constant influence to his music which Riley has always seen as an evolutionary process. In the liner notes to Facets (Impetus, 1981) he mentioned that he had always tried to bring both sides together: the useful ideas and intellectual aspects of the European musical environment and the intensity and spontaneity which is displayed by the American jazz tradition. Riley’s work ricocheted between drama, space, rumbling trills, rhythmic surprises and a sparing lyricism. Hardly anyone was able to develop a theme through constant modulations, harmony shifts and subtle dynamics like him, his idiosyncrasies always remaining accessible.

During a recording session, he realized that he couldn't play anymore and went to see a doctor, who diagnosed Parkinson’s disease. Riley had to stop playing for some time, and luckily he recovered with the help of medication. However, he had to revise his technique. At that age this was a tremendous and hard effort and it was surprising how well it worked, for example on the late recordings for Constant Change 1976 - 2016. As another result Riley approached his later solo performances “with or without repertoire“, playing the great standards, mainly Monk and Ellington. He was back where he started from.

Howard Riley has always been something like an unsung hero in the improvised music scene, but he released very recommendable albums. Flight (Turtle Records, 1971) and Synopsis (Incus, 1974), both with the above-mentioned trio, are landmarks of British free jazz. Duality (View Records, 1982) and For Four On Two Two (Affinity, 1984) are early masterpieces of his solo excursions. His piano duo with Keith Tippett must also be mentioned here, for example The Bern Concert (FMR, 1994). A personal favourite of mine is Improvisation Is Forever Now (Emanem, 1978/2002) with Barry Guy and Phil Wachsmann. From his late period all albums on the NoBusiness label are great, Solo in Vilnius and Constant Change 1976 - 2016 are essential. By releasing Riley’s late works regularly, the Lithuanians have helped this wonderful music to see the light of day.

It was also NoBusiness’s Danas Mikailionis who informed us that Howard Riley passed away at his care home in Beckenham, South London. Unfortunately, Parkinson’s Disease had really taken its toll severely with him over the last few years. The musical universe has lost a bright star, a kind man and a great personality. It is not only me who will miss Howard Riley a lot.

Watch Howard Riley play solo here:

 

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John Butcher / Florian Stoffner / Chris Corsano-The Glass Changes Shape (Relative Pitch, 2024)

By Martin Schray

Within the last year, this is already the second release by this trio, which at first glance appears to be rather contradictory. John Butcher, the eternally young, great stylist of British improvised music (he recently turned 70 ) , once again creates unwieldy little melodies and licks in which he knows how to make generous use of the entire spectrum of his instrument. Here he is more reminiscent than ever of the other great British free improv saxophonist, Evan Parker. Chris Corsano, the drummer, knows how to push a band forward loud and hard, and guitarist Flo Stoffner, a sound explorer of the strings par excellence, on the other hand, are responsible for the atonal elements of the pieces in very different ways.

On the occasion of the first album Braids, I wrote that this was “rather music for concentrated listening and not for tapping your feet or even head banging“ and that it was “much more about precise musicality, crystal-clear interjections and a certain gentle thoughtfulness, but of course also about sound exploration and creation.“ The same still applies here. “Quiet is the new loud“ can still be regarded as the trio’s motto, because the music differs from the boisterous, powerful free jazz in a way that they refrain from playing their instruments in a rather brutal manner. “Terminal Buzz“, the third track on the album, serves as an example. It begins with a whistling and hissing, then the guitar gurgles from the background. The trio slowly comes to life, even if Corsano is still largely holding back. Stoffner, however, is already firing small salvos into the room, while Butcher chirps calmly to himself. With Stoffner’s feedback and Corsano’s trills on the cymbals, the piece unfolds more and more, like a bird stretching after waking up, yawning, then pumping, breathing and taking a run-up before taking off and gliding away in the final minute of the piece.

The Glass Changes Shape is actually a musical personification of life, a microcosm of what makes up our everyday existence. We try to make the best of it, but surprises and challenges lurk everywhere. They come unexpectedly out of the blue, they frighten and delight us, some we jump at immediately, others we have to deal with for longer. But that is precisely what makes them so exciting. The album is a lesson in philosophy, communication and poetry.

Highly recommended.

The Glass Changes Shape is available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it here:

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