By Stuart Broomer

In August 2012, Evan Parker carried out a week-long improvisation workshop at
Casa da Cultura da Sertã within the schist village area of Portugal. Becoming a member of
Parker had been 17 musicians, some already firmly established in Portuguese and
European free jazz and improvised music circles, others rising and a few
neophytes. Every day they had been immersed within the ideas and apply of
large-scale collective improvisation. Every night time numerous assemblies from
the collective would carry out in neighbouring villages. On the finish of the
week, the musicians performed as an ensemble, Parker taking part in saxophone and
signalling. One imagines from listening to the outcomes that there would possibly
have been intense interplay throughout the periods amongst musicians of like
devices, as sturdy and empathetic contingents of string and reed and
percussion groupings emerge from throughout the band.

Evan Parker has a particular place in improvised music, together with amongst giant
ensembles. He participated in early expansions of the Spontaneous Music
Ensemble. He was a constitution member of Barry Man’s London Jazz Composer’s
Orchestra; he had lengthy been an explorer of mixing acoustic improvisation
with numerous types of sign processing, bringing a really giant model of
his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble to Lisbon in 2010. Parker has been a central
determine in myriad types of improvised music, from his mid ’60s work with
John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble to the latest Trans-Atlantic Trance Map that linked improvisers in Faversham, UK
(Parker, Matt Wright, Pat Thomas, Alex Ward, Robert Jarvis, Hannah
Marshall, and Peter Evans) and Brooklyn, New York (Ned Rothenberg, Craig
Taborn, Ikue Mori, Sylvie Courvoisier, Mat Maneri and Sam Pluta).

Parker just isn’t merely a big practitioner of improvised music, he’s
additionally a key spokesperson for its important underlying values. In his liner
word to A Schist Story, Rui Eduardo Paes writes:

Following the British saxophonist’s libertarian ideas, it was additionally an
experiment regarding social interactions dominated exclusevily by the values
of equality and freedom. These are the coordinates of a a lot desired future
different society and had been lived by this group of people as an inside
change, even a micro-revolution, when it comes to a method of being with others and
of personnal, non-egotistic, behaviour.

Parker repeated his suggestions on daily basis: don’t put your self in entrance
of your companions, play solely when you will have one thing essential so as to add, give
house to the opposite contributed sounds, don’t pressure something, let it stream.
Change instructions solely when issues are getting undefined – this isn’t about
you, however concerning the collective. In fact, the temptation was to do
in any other case. A lot of improvised music, in its evolution, turned a present of
technical or expressive capacities, and people contradictions usually emerged.
When it occurred, Parker stopped every thing, to start once more, and once more. Be
delicate, give non-invasive strains that everyone can relate to intuitevily.
Don’t suppose to a lot, be attentive, pay attention. Listening is a precedence. If
you’re a horn participant, or a percussionist, put your self on the stage of the
much less vibrant devices, strings for example. Be careful the volumes and
the dynamics. Use solely the required notes, no more and never much less – you’re
a bit of a part of a worldwide building, act in correspondance, however do it
with the conscience that you just’re a elementary piece of the all.

It’s a kind of giant ensemble performances that alway leaves this author
wishing it had been a video for accuracy of identification. I’ll confess that I
hate to be fallacious, however there’s barely a false step wherever on this music.

The 45-minute work realized on the ultimate night stands as tribute to the
work of Parker and the ensemble. Organized episodically, the opening
moments belong to the strings, with violist João Camões initially main
with cellist Miguel Mira taking part in pizzicato and harpist Angelica Salvi
plucking shiny flurries with Marcelo dos Reis contributing delicate acoustic
guitar. Mira’s assumption of the lead finally brings in trumpeter Luís
Vicente, the soul of empathy, utilizing a Harmon mute and progressively increasing
his brief melodic phrases right into a lead.

A brief pauses introduces an prolonged passage that can carry the remainder of
the orchestra into the continum. There’s an summary dialogue of
electronics (Miguel Carvalhais and Travassos) with some percussion, with an
entry of electrical guitar (Luís Lopes or Gonçalo Falcão), luminously gentle
till the saxophones enter: Rodrigo Amado, João Martins and Pedro Sousa.
The passage ends with a quick concentrate on a strongly patterned tenor saxophone
lead with frivolously accompanying bass (Hugo Antunes and/or José Miguel),
drums and cello. It’d effectively be a quick interlude by Rodrigo Amado Movement
Trio with Mira and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini (then it won’t be,
drummers João Lobo and João Pais Filipe had been additionally current).

On the 30-minute mark, after one other transient lull, a soprano saxophone enters with a just-gently-contorted pitch bend in his line, transferring on to longer
and extra liberated phrases, a quick, dramatic second which may function a
point of interest for the music to return (I strongly suspect it’s Evan Parker on a
notably oracular shafir-sort-of-day).

Whereas Lisbon has an extended historical past of serious large-scale collective
improvisation centred round Ernesto Rodrigues and the Artistic Supply
label, together with serveral of those musicians, that is clearly a particular
second for Portuguese free jazz and for the musicians concerned. The CD is
accompanied by a facsimile of a comic-book historical past of the occasion that
appeared on the time. It’s an apt commemoration of a singular gathering.