Eight hours of “improvised and experimental music” would not be on everyone’s list of Bank Holiday essentials, and the marathon programme that constitutes the first half of the two-day Freedom of The City festival could have proved daunting for even the free jazz faithful. That the experience turns out to be very far from gruelling is, then, in no small part thanks to the curators, among them such luminaries as Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost.
One of the accusations frequently levelled at this type of music is that it all sounds the same, yet the eight acts offer an impressively diverse range of approaches to more or less free improvisation.
The septet Quaqua comes closest to the “squeaky-bonky” improv stereotype, restricting themselves to explorations of tone and timbre and offering only fleeting hints of melodic or rhythmic interest. At the other end of the scale, The London Improvisers Orchestra alternate free playing with passages directed by a series of conductors plucked from within the group, including the excellent pianist Steve Beresford. The results are genuinely thrilling, particularly given that the sheer number of players on stage – well over 30 – leave the odds of disaster terrifyingly high.
Veteran saxophonist Lol Coxhill offers the other major highlight of the afternoon, taking to the stage in near-darkness (at his own request, apparently) with a pair of younger musicians: Tania Chen, on piano, and double bassist Dominic Lash. It’s not often that free improvisation can be described, without qualification, as beautiful, but their tender, empathetic playing is just that.
Perhaps inevitably, however, the day’s main climax is delayed until the evening session. The penultimate act, known as SUM, are strong, particularly Prévost on drums, but it’s not entirely clear why they are billed above another trio, setting trumpeter Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith atop a double whammy of percussion from the superbly hyperactive Steve Noble and South African legend Louis Moholo-Moholo. With his dreadlocks and sunglasses, Mississippi-born Smith is a charismatic visual presence, yet his playing is equally distinctive: imbued with spirituality, even wisdom, yet at times as lean and mean as early electric Miles.
It is not until the evening’s third trio, comprising co-curator Evan Parker along with cellist Okkyung Lee and trumpeter Peter Evans, that such a high is again reached. Combining explorations of pure sonics with enough pitched (and exquisitely selected) notes to give a real sense of narrative, it’s a staggeringly intense and genuinely emotive set.
Each of the three is a virtuoso musician, no doubt, but more importantly each uses that technique to say something both deeply personal and of near-universal resonance. That it might land its author in Pseuds Corner doesn’t detract from the assertion that their performance embodies, perhaps more than any of the day, the Shakespeare quote inscribed above the stage: “To thine own self be true”.
The septet Quaqua comes closest to the “squeaky-bonky” improv stereotype, restricting themselves to explorations of tone and timbre and offering only fleeting hints of melodic or rhythmic interest. At the other end of the scale, The London Improvisers Orchestra alternate free playing with passages directed by a series of conductors plucked from within the group, including the excellent pianist Steve Beresford. The results are genuinely thrilling, particularly given that the sheer number of players on stage – well over 30 – leave the odds of disaster terrifyingly high.
Veteran saxophonist Lol Coxhill offers the other major highlight of the afternoon, taking to the stage in near-darkness (at his own request, apparently) with a pair of younger musicians: Tania Chen, on piano, and double bassist Dominic Lash. It’s not often that free improvisation can be described, without qualification, as beautiful, but their tender, empathetic playing is just that.
Perhaps inevitably, however, the day’s main climax is delayed until the evening session. The penultimate act, known as SUM, are strong, particularly Prévost on drums, but it’s not entirely clear why they are billed above another trio, setting trumpeter Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith atop a double whammy of percussion from the superbly hyperactive Steve Noble and South African legend Louis Moholo-Moholo. With his dreadlocks and sunglasses, Mississippi-born Smith is a charismatic visual presence, yet his playing is equally distinctive: imbued with spirituality, even wisdom, yet at times as lean and mean as early electric Miles.
It is not until the evening’s third trio, comprising co-curator Evan Parker along with cellist Okkyung Lee and trumpeter Peter Evans, that such a high is again reached. Combining explorations of pure sonics with enough pitched (and exquisitely selected) notes to give a real sense of narrative, it’s a staggeringly intense and genuinely emotive set.
Each of the three is a virtuoso musician, no doubt, but more importantly each uses that technique to say something both deeply personal and of near-universal resonance. That it might land its author in Pseuds Corner doesn’t detract from the assertion that their performance embodies, perhaps more than any of the day, the Shakespeare quote inscribed above the stage: “To thine own self be true”.
