mopomoso @ the vortex 10/16/2011

words + photos: gian paolo galasi

Simon Rose on baritone sax

Last Mopomoso monthly session at the Vortex opened with a trio of regular players of the LIO. Restart is composed by Benedict Taylor on viola, his brother Noel at clarinet and Noura Sanatian on violin. 

It's always interesting to see young improvisers looking for their own path and dimension, and so tonight the trio provided a set in which to show their ability in building their own music layer upon layer from different short assertions, increasing and varying. Still in need to develop awareness about the dynamics of the space, and dealing with different volumes of sound, the trio also reminded us how it is harder but even more adventurous to exploit the possibilities of such a combination as clarinet and strings, in comparison with the 'classic' improv sax/double bass/drums line-up.

The second set was Simon Rose's solos on both baritone and alto. Well known for his trio Badlands with Steve Noble and Simon Fell, and recently represented in a beautifully recorded solo album on baritone - 'Schmetterling', on Nottwo, exploits the resonances of the boat-shaped hall in which it was recorded - Rose gifted the audience with a beautiful performance, full of nuances, circular breathings and something like a theatrical or ritual attitude, but very near to the essence and far from rethoric.

Louis Moholo Moholo

The third, announced group of Steve Beresford, Shabaka Hutchings and Guillome Viltard was added with Louis Moholo Moholo, back from the previous night duo with Evan Parker and then  'groupcomposing' with John Tchicai and Tony Marsh also. A multi-instrumentalist since long time associated with the Company but also rounded enough to play with The Slits and The Flying Lyzards, Beresford plays the piano with an ironic touch and a resolute, but light, manner, with Shabaka Hutchings - Zed U, The Heliocentrics, Polar Bear, Courtney Pine's Jazz Warriors - perfectly functional with the group, and Guillome Viltard providing the right garment to Moholo's pulses. 

evan parker _ louis moholo moholo _ john tchicai _ tony marsh @ the vortex 10/15/2011

word + photos: gian paolo galasi

Left to right: Tony Marsh, Evan Parker, John Tchicai, Louis Moholo

Lair of Evan Parker when he's in London, on 14 and 15 october the Vortex Jazz Bar hosted a quartet composed of drummers Tony Marsh and Louis Moholo Moholo, Evan Parker on tenor and John Tchicai on drums. The program of residence offers a couple of duo performances - Parker/Moholo Moholo and Tchicai/Marsh - before a final tutti. 

Drastically late to report about the first duo performance - cabs are futile if you don't know the postcodes and I'm paying a fee for being in London only since one month and a half exacty - I can finally enjoy Tchicai and Marsh together. Tchicai style is recognizable since his first appearances on record, notably with the New York Art Quartet and their manifesto 'Black Dada Nihilismus', featuring Amiri Baraka on voice, that mislabeled him as a New York-based musician - in fact his most well-known collaborations of the '60s were related to NY artists like Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler - while he spent most of his playing in Northern Europe, being born in 1936 in Copenhagen. 

Tony Marsh

His duo with Tony Marsh was of high interest since his "way of floating over [...] a non-metric pulse", as Evan Parker himself told to Graham Lock during an old interview for The Wire, produced a particular alignement with Marsh's way of building rhythms around a variously produced pulse, now explicitly stressed, then elliptically beckoned with brushes or a cymbal, and sometimes suspended with the purpose of opening the space for more stratified and rapid interventions. Such ability is due to his heritage, since Marsh started playing in the Seventies with the jazz-rock band Major Surgery, and then with people like John Surman, Mike Osborne, Paul Rutherford, Barry Guy, Elton Dean and Harry Beckett.

After a short break, the announced trio performance of Parker, Tchicai and Moholo Moholo became a quartet with the two horns and the two drums. While Marsh was mostly floating around with a saving feeling, without loosing his ability to express nuances, Louis Moholo Moholo pulsed almost (ir)regularly at the core, while Evan Parker showed, being this the fourth time I see him since in London, a notable versatility. Tchicai built his assertions in a way that is melodically reminiscent of the most obliques Albert Ayler lines and sometimes nod to the lyrical approach of John Coltrane, but with an attitude that reminds of Archie Shepp even if in a controlled and never redundant way. 

If this description is a superficial and general statement, the result is a music that reaches climaxes avoiding dramatic constructions, and leads to an essential flow of music in which the peaks are never obtained with open references to the melodies but via the layering of different elements emerging with the interplay. Evan Parker in this context showed a great adaptability, sustaining and dialoguing with his partner. Probably tonight gig will be featured on a BBC Radio 3 future broadcasting or record.