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TRIO Guy/Crispell/Lytton
BARRY GUY Bass/Composer
MARILYN CRISPELL Piano
PAUL LYTTON Percussion
On the CD Odyssey, Barry Guy, Marilyn Crispell and Paul Lytton play several of Barry Guy's most beautiful compositions: Harmos, Double Trouble and Odyssey. Barry Guy is a first class composer, even when we lose sight of this in face of his diverse work as an improvising bassist. In addition to works for contemporary orchestras and different chamber music ensembles (for example Kronos), he has written influential compositions for the London Jazz Composers Orchestra or the Barry Guy New Orchestra. In the trio, Barry Guy's compositional talents and his special tone colors are fully evident. At the same time, the trio leaves space for the improvisational highlights of the three soloists.
Auf der CD Odyssey spielen Barry Guy, Marilyn Crispell und Paul Lytton einige der schönesten Kompositionen von Barry Guy: Harmos, Double Trouble, Odyssey. Barry Guy ist ein Komponist von Rang, auch wenn wir dies angesichts seiner vielfältigen Arbeit als improvisierender Bassist manchmal aus den Augen verlieren mögen. Guy hat neben Werken für zeitgenössische Orchester und verschiedene Kammermusik-Ensembles (zum Beispiel für Kronos) stilprägende Kompositionen für das London Jazz Composers Orchestra oder das Barry Guy New Orchestra geschrieben. In der Triobesetzung kommen Barry Guys kompositorische Grösse und seine speziellen Klangfarben voll zur Geltung. Gleichzeitig bietet das Trio Raum für improvisatorische Highlights der drei SolistInnen.
Reviews for Odyssey [INTAKT CD 070]
Thoroughly absorbing trio music
"Much has been made of pianist Marilyn Crispell's turn towards deep lyricism in recent years. Intriguingly, the compositions of bassist Barry Guy make greater demands on this aspect of her work than even Annette Peacock's. Odyssey confirms that Guy is a harder composer to peg, as he can effortlessly shift from the earnest folkish feel of the title piece to the tumult of Rags without Peacock's arch longing and lamenting. Crispell is also called on to extrapolate Guy's charts of such London Jazz Composers Orchestra chestnuts as Harmos. Her performances are, in turn, magisterial and poignant, galvanising Guy's often staggering output and percussionist Paul Lytton's offsetting textures into a thoroughly absorbing trio music."
Bill Shoemaker, The Wire, London, February 2002
* * * * * Magnificent musical event
"Odyssey, Barry Guy, Marilyn Crispell and Paul Lytton's first recording as a trio, is a magnificent musical event. While it may not exist in a vacuum – After Appleby (1999) and Native And Aliens (1996), where Crispell joined Guy and Lytton's longstanding group with saxophonist Evan Parker, are near relations – Odyssey redefines motion and mood, reaching a level of interaction so high that it must surely be a signal moment in the history of modern trio music. Here, collective improvisation (four exquisitly gauged trio variations) and predetermined materials (five Guy compositions, including arrangements from the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and his New Orchestra books) are plotted with delicious ambiguity, an expertly conceived union of freedom and form. Pieces rarely pick up steam by conventional means; the overarching colors are grays and browns, shades that suggest something more than mere contemplation.
Individually, the musicians are transcendant. Percussionist Paul Lytton, an often underrated voice, provides a subtle network of layers, scrambling through appliances, including, what must be, a stray piece of sheet metal. Pianist Crispell, still a thundering force on occasion, returns to the neat, compact lyricism we have recently seen in her own trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motion. Finally, there is bassist Guy, whose reach extends from astonishing arco effexts to rich, cascading pizzicato figures. Odyssey is his date; he deserves credit for the trio's absolute clarity of purpose.
Indeed, this is chamber music so finely nuanced that by the finale we're perfectly absorbed in the drama. After Harmos opens in a acrobatic bass-percussion exchange, Crispell enters halfway through, slowly unfolding a dirge (Ornetee Coleman's Lonely Woman comes to mind) in a crescendo of sweeping majesty, a concentrated orchestral gesture rising to the end."
Greg Buium, Downbeat, USA, 6/2002
TRIO Guy/Gustaffson/Strid
BARRY GUY bass
MATS GUSTAFSSON fluteophone, soprano, tenor & baritone sax
RAYMOND STRID percussion
You Forget to Answer (liner notes)
Age four to twelve, my greatest pleasure was to catch frogs. These years of earnest experience tell me that there is a special skill involved in frog catching, one might even say an art. You see, it's not just a matter of speed or power – if you do nothing but lunge quick and hard, the frog will simply spring from its perch and out of your grasp. The art of frogging is more a matter of finding just the right moment to strike, of selecting precisely the time to move your hand at precisely the speed and in precisely the same arc traced out by the leap of the frog. It's precise work to snare the web-foot.
The way to find that moment and that vector entails something more than guesswork or luck. You have to empathize with the amphibian. For a split second you've got to imagine yourself the frog. This is essential, for the frog already knows the art of frog-catching. He's honed his craft on flies, mosquitoes, and water-bugs, sure, but at heart he's a frogger just like you. So, if possible you must identify with the frog, visualize the insect it's about to devour, choose the same moment to jump that he would, that he inevitably, irrevocably will choose. You have to pick the frog's brain, because there's one right time to act, and only the frog knows when that is. The frog is the master.
Ultra-slow motion study: the frog and your hand begin to move at the same instant, his rear legs reach full extension as he leaves the ground, your fingers curl around them, cradling them in motion and gliding together like an ice-skating team or Astaire and Rogers; bulbous eyes closed flat against his head, front arms tucked in, he's a cannonball mid-air when all of a sudden >FLASH< your hand jerks closed and the show's over. The frog is yours.
Guy, Gustafsson and Strid make their music difficult to capture with tools as blunt and lethargic as words. One is tempted to lunge at it, but it just wriggles away. The trio's sound is an accumulation of precisely timed movements: elements of steady determination, strategy, even calculation, but also, once the move is started, a force of lightning quickness and tensile strength. Nothing hesitant, nothing unsure. This is frogging music, no doubt in my mind. A form of improvising that requires the same kind of deep emphatic relations. To communicate at a level not just reactive – the brutality of scaring frogs into nets, or of simple question-answer improvising – but truly emphatic. To visualise the fly through the frog's eyes.
You Forget To Answer: perhaps there's no response because once that deep empathy occurs it pre-empts conventional communication routes. If we both ask the same question at the same time, who's supposed to reply? In its temporal seizures, Barry's bass at times seems to anticipate what the Swedes will do, like those rare outings in which you see the frog about to jump and get there first; you know before he does, and he literally hops into your hand. The emphatic circulation runs through many other networks: Mats's uncanny ability to grasp and redirect energies, Raymond's radiant projection of a center of gravity.
Make the grab at the wrong time, the croaker plunks away, rings on the pond. But become the batrachian and you've already snared him.
John Corbett, Chicago, June 1996
You Forget to Answer
"... This trio's recording displays the sort of clairvoyance that distinguishes the most exciting improv, but it works according to an innate architectural sense that reflects the interest of all three musicians in composed music ..."
Peter Margasak
TRIO Parker/Guy/Lytton
EVAN PARKER soprano/tenor saxophones
BARRY GUY double bass/chamber bass
PAUL LYTTON drums, cymbals and percussion
IMAGINARY VALUES
nine improvisations
Evan Parker's trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton has been a working group for ten years now, but began to function in its present form comparatively late, taking about the same time since the first documented contacts between the three musicians: they recorded together in the first edition of the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra in 1972, on Ode (for Jazz Orchestra) Incus 6/7, but their paths had already crossed in that ebullient scene of musical experimentation taking place in London at the end of the Sixties around spots like The Little Theatre Club and The Old Place.
Parker and Lytton first established their duo as a workable situation to improvise and released three albums: Collective Calls (Urban) (Two Microphones), Incus 5, At the Unity Theatre, Incus 14, and then RA 1+2 on Ring/Moers Music 01016. While collaborations with Barry Guy were rather sparse during the Seventies, Parker always considered the bass player first choice, and invited him for his Improviser's Symposium held during the 1980 Pisa Festival, where a quintet was recorded consisting of the current trio plus Paul Lovens and Phil Wachsmann (Incus 37). With typical caution, another duo situation was tried, this time with Parker and Guy, recorded in Berlin the following year (Incision, FM SAJ-35) and the compatibility was confirmed.
Tracks, Incus 42, the very first album of the trio recorded in 1983, seems in retrospective more than aptly named. Since then the group has been steadily or at least regularly working together, but the recorded documentation is apparently scarce: a second album where the three are joined by George Lewis on trombone (Hook, Drift and Shuffle, Incus 45) and another one recorded live in 1986 during a tour in the USA but released much later (Atlanta, Impetus 18617). One could think that the musicians have purposely kept the trio activity within limits. It could become all-absorbing totally dominating their musical lives, so closely knit is their musical collective entity. The clear, dry acoustic of the Red Rose Club in Seven Sisters Road, London where these improvisations were recorded – in the same sequence in which we hear them on the record – makes it easier to appreciate the tremendous excitement that the trio can generate, based on the uncannily instantaneous ability of the players to react to one another's gestures and all together to the situation they are playing in, creating a musical fabric which is at the same time steel solid yet pliable. Luckily they work in other contexts where they can expand their musical horizon: so the fertile musical mind of Barry Guy, the composer and orchestra leader, devised within his scores for the London Jazz Composers Orchestra all manners of interaction between the trio in different situations, placing the ensemble like a concertino in front of the tutti, rotating soloists against it, changing the background, or just using it for a change of atmosphere and timbral balance; and even Elsie Jo (Maya MCD9201) could be perceived as the trio mirrored in a sextet. The Parker section in Portraits, the latest composition by Barry Guy for the LJCO (due for release on the Intakt label) is not titled Triple by chance.
What the three have in common is an attitude toward music making that can best be described in Evan Parker's words as integrity of purpose: a determination to face openly the challenge of free improvisation, that inescapable tension between the establishing of a musical identity and the unhampered development of the music along its internal logic. Every improviser must try to find his or her way – willing or not – around this obstacle; mimicking historical styles, using written music as a framing/orientating structure for improvisation, trying to keep the group of players in a permanent state of flux. This trio keeps the music poised in a difficult balance where nothing is barred but everything must make sense.The players bring into the music all the experience, wisdom and technique gained in more than twenty years of struggle and play with free improvisation; the way they play – for want of a better word, their style – has been refined, and they say more with less, giving weight to every gesture.
Comparing this recording with previous documents of the trio or of the single musicians, it appears that a total, 360 degrees, experimentation slowly gave way, through a process not dissimilar from natural evolution, to a situation where selected elements are retained as part of the common language. This selection is still in progress, as chance, mistakes and loss of total control often introduce unexpected and interesting elements; but in some way they have identified what for them is essential, the areas where they are most interested in working.
The most evident of these is the personal, instantly recognizable, mature instrumental voice of the players. The crisp, tense drumming of Lytton, full of sparkling, atmospheric metal sounds, the rich sound of Guy's bass, its palette ranging from tuned percussion to classical roundness, the many tongues of the saxophones, Parker growling or chirping as the situation demands. In the intervening years they have grown increasingly wary of employing external, mechanic, electric, electronic devices to extract a wider range of sounds from their instruments. Experiments on that side have not ceased however. Parker has a permanent workshop with electronic instruments and computer, recorded with sampling and processing of sounds – Hall Of Mirrors with Walter Prati on MM&T CD01 – and with overdubbing Process and Reality, FMP CD37; Barry Guy explores several unorthodox techniques on his solo recording Fizzles, Maya 9301. The boundaries and aims of this research however are more definite, and they do not enter at present in the music of the trio, where the perception of the physical source of the sounds is always present. In Lytton's own terse words, 'the sources have remained the same: wood , plastic, metal, wire, rubber, skin, liquid, gas'.
On a second level, ferocious concentration and instantaneous interplay seem to be the basic components of their approach; no soloist with accompaniment here, no division between rhythm and melody players; it is sometimes difficult to say who is playing what, with the drummer bowing, the bassist hitting and swishing or slapping sound coming from the saxophone. Explosive sounds in the deepest range of the horn and percussion on the bass make you think of the drummer – and Lytton is maybe playing a small tinkling dance on the top of it; as in Value, a melodic fragment from the saxophone is instantly echoed on the bass, and the rhythmic profile of the idea ricochets at the same time on the drums. Duo and solo passages give air and space to the music, redirecting the energy, charging players and listener for the next reconstruction of the complete triangle.
At the level of material it could be said that every piece is about mood – the material can be a chopped rhythm, a delicate melody, or a timbric shade. Compare the contrasting openings of Invariance and Variance. In the former, the music starts from a deep, breathing, continuous sound, with all instruments (Parker on tenor) slowly changing the texture and building up rhythmic structures; in the latter a spacious ceremonial dance of clear gongs and singing bass establishes the atmosphere. When the music finds its direction, the basic idea is metabolized in a multidimensional space, where it is reshaped, reversed, remoulded, and then comes back in new form. The energy involved is enormous, but this is not mere energy playing, as the development of ideas never takes second place to the sound pressure generated, and there are always dramatic changes in the atmosphere, from the high density of thick, continuous layers of sound simultaneously generated to sparse, airy formations. An example is Identity , where at the beginning high, buzzing long sounds generated by the bowed bass are interspersed and contradicted, first by the cymbals and woodblocks, then by tongue slaps; skins resounding and swishing increase the dramatic content, while slashing figures appear on the soprano saxophone: the bass returns to a pensive mood, alternating between bowing and pizzicato to underline the intricate exchanges of drums and wind through several phases of variation in density and rhythm.
In this context Parker's solos cannot develop the level of intricacy they are capable of (try Conic Sections, ah uhm CD015, for beautiful examples), as the solo style is – in his own words – 'offered to the trio in sacrifice' to be played along with or to be broken into: listen in Distinction to the soothing big guitar sounds of the bass, and the dazzling rotating cymbal figures, commenting on the vortex created by the soprano, being attracted into it and then developing together the piece until the finale, when the soprano is pitched against the grainy dark background of bowed bass and long cymbal sounds, the piece resolving itself in sparse, classical, carefully placed sounds and accents.
This relationship with the solo music is rather the same for Guy; his solo recording already mentioned shows the maturity of his language, an array of timbres and notes disposed in space and time that require a solo situation to be displayed and appreciated in full, and that here are quickly absorbed by the great current of music emanating from the group: the percussive bass/duet Variance is a quick glimpse into this different sonic world, and must be carefully savoured to appreciate the resonant mbira or thumb piano sound coming from the bass.
All through this record, and more strikingly so in the shorter conclusive pieces, the music takes that ultimate sense of inevitability which signals the perfect combination of sensibility, timing and personal creative use of the instruments into a collective statement formulated right in front of the listener. And in the end this is what music is all about.
Francesco Martinelli
Imaginary Values - MCD9401
"Imaginary Values by the trio – nominally Parker's but in practice collective – that gave us 1990's fiery Atlanta set on Impulse. The nine improvisations here are more compact but no less high-voltage: bright sonic canvasses on which texture, tone-colour and dynamic flow are major parts of the interactive mix. The players' scrupulous respect for nuance plus their incredible speed of response bespeak a group sensibility that has matured over time and is celebrated here in a space alive with joyful interplay. Free jazz at its highly-evolved best."
Graham Lock
"... This is a group that in many ways, represents the epitome of European collective free improvisation. The three players are each masters of their instruments and, more importantly, astute listeners. Lytton's crackling, multi-hued percussion; Guy's currents of resonant wood and scraped, plucked, bowed and beaten strings; and Parker's micro tonal, snaking reed reverberations meld into a unified whole. These three have refined the sax, bass, drums trio into an organic unit where all three are truly equals, their collective lines intricately enmeshed and coiled around each other in a skein of thrilling complexity ..."
Michael Rosenstein
Evan Parker - Barry Guy - Paul Lytton
Improvisierte Musik, wie sie seit mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten in Europa entwickelt wurde, lässt sich nicht mehr regionalistisch ein - oer abgrenzen. Dennoch kann unschwer so etwas wie eine “englische” Komponente dieser Entwicklung ausfindig gemacht werden. Die Ernsthaftigkeit, mit der englische Musiker zur Wiederbelebung und zugleich zur Neudefinition musikalischer Improvisation beigetragen haben, ist an Konsequenz kaum überboten worden. Evan Parker, Barry Guy und Paul Lytton zählen zu den entschlossenen Protagonisten einer dem Kompromiss ohnehin ablehnend gegenüberstehender Szene. Die Radikalität ihrer Musik hat mit der länst abgenutzten, doch immer virulenten Vorstellung von Kunst als Bürgerschreck nicht das mindeste gemein. Parker, Guy und Lytton sind beharrlich Arbeitende, denen es um nichts Geringeres geht als um die Ausbildung einer neuen Klangsprache, einer neuen Art improvisatorischen Zusammenwirkens und neue Spielweisen, mithin um eine “Neue Musik”. Was - je nach Hörerfahrung - schon vertraut oder noch immer ungewohnt wirkt, hat bereits seine eigene Geschichte entfaltet, eine neue Kultur der Improvisation begründet. Zwei Jahrzehnte erscheinen, musikhistorisch betrachtet, als ein kurzer Zeitraum; gemessen an Lebenszeit und persönlichem Engagement kann solch langfristig angelegtes “work in progress” nicht mehr als vorübergehender Zeitstil oder Episode abgetan werden. Kontinuität und Veränderung, wie sie von Evan Parker, Barry Guy und Paul Lytton verfolgt werden, spotten dem schnellen Wechsel musikalischer Moden, der theatralischen Selbstinszenierung, den etablierten Kriterien der sogenannten ernsten ebenso wie den kommerziellen Hochrechnungen sogenannter populärer Musik.
Die Musik dieses Trios schöpft ihre Kraft aus dem Traditionsbezug wie auch aus dem Traditionsbruch. Am Anfang stand die Erfahrung des Jazz als eine lebendige Form musikalischer Improvisation. Nur ging es, wie Evan Parker einmal sagte, darum, Coltrane nachzustreben, ohne seine Musik nachzuspielen. Die Abkehr von der Imitation und die Suche nach eigenen Ausdruckpotenzen veränderten nach und nach alles, führten zur Aufhebung konventionell-thematischen Materials, zu einer nicht mehr in Solisten und Begleitende aufzuspaltende Interaktion, zum Verzicht auf Akkordschemata und swingende Jazzrhythmik. Erinnert das Klanggeschehen gelegentlich an die europäische Moderne, so folgt es dieser allenfalls assoziativ und unter Verzicht auf das der Neuen Musik zugrunde liegende kompositorische Kalkül. Was aussereuropäisch anmuten mag, ist nicht von fern ausgeborgt, verweist vielmehr auf musikalische Komplexität, die sich von konventionellen Formen europäischer Musiktradition weitgehend entfernt hat. Erhalten blieb hingegen eine musikalische Bewegungsenergie, ein physisch erlebbares Element musikalischer Spannung, das trotz Verfeinerung bzw. Abstraktion mit den Energien des Jazz noch immer ein einem - freilich sehr weit gespannten - Zusammenhang steht. So bewegt sich diese Musik zwischen feinstruktureller bzw. klanglicher Differenzierung einerseits und einer fast kultischen Intensitätssteigerung andererseits, gelingt in besten Momenten eine Symbiose aus Spontaneität und Konzentration, Purismus und Sinnlichkeit.
Improvisierte Musik wie die von Evan Parker, Barry Guy und Paul Lytton setzt individuelle Profilierung voraus und baut andererseits auf die Potenzierung von Einzelerfahrungen im gemeinsamen Spielprozess. Bereits lange vor Konstituierung des Trios haben die drei Musiker in wechselnden Gruppierungen zusammengearbeitet. In der zweiten Hälfte der sechziger Jahre trafen sie sich im Spontaneous Music Ensemble um John Stevens; mit der Gründung der Musician’s Co-op gaben sie ihrem Streben nach Kollektivität auch organisatorischen Ausdruck. Ende der sechziger Jahre schlossen sich Evan Parker und Paul Lytton zu einem über einen langen Zeitraum sporadisch arbeitenden Duo zusammen, das später durch Barry Guy zum Trio, gelegentlich auch durch den Posaunisten George Lewis zum Quartett erweitert wurde. Sind die Erfahrungen auf dem Gebiet der freien Improvisation über Jahre gereift, so blieb das Grundanliegen, die Spielsituation offen zu halten, bis zum heutigen Tag unangetastet.
Evan Parker zählt zu jenen Musikern, die das Vokabular dessen, was auf dem Saxophon gesagt werden kann, entscheidend erweitert haben. Doch Parkers Beitrag besteht eher in einer Vertiefung als in einer spaktakulären Vorführung der angeeigneten Möglichkeiten. Überblastechniken, Obertonmanipulationen, polyphones Spiel, Perkussivität, Zirkularatmung mögen als Stichworte genügen. Im Mittelpunkt steht für Evan Parker zweifellos die musikalische Mitteilung,. Kaum ein bedeutender Musiker der englischen Szene, mit dem Parker nicht zusammengearbeitet hätte - sei es Howard Riley, Trevor Watts, Kenny Wheeler, Paul Rutherford, John Stevens, Chris McGregor, Dave Holland, Tony Oxley oder Derek Bailey. Internationale Querverbindungen aufzuzählen, würde Seiten füllen. Erwähnt sei hier wenigstens Evan Parkers Zusammenarbeit mit Alexander von Schlippenbach - in dessen “Globe Unity Orchestra” wie auch im Trio oder Quartett. Was das Trio mit Barry Guy und Paul Lytton anbelangt, so ergibt sich ein weiterer Bezugspunkt im orchestralen Zusammenwirken: sowohl Evan Parker wie auch Paul Lytton zählen zum Stamm des “London Jazz Composers Orchestra” um Barry Guy.
Barry Guy, gleichermassen “klassischer” Kontrabassist und Komponist wie improvisierender Musiker, geht es darum, Erfahrungen aus beiden Bereichen produktiv zu machen, ohne sie auf eine gegenseitig abtötende Weise zu fusionieren. Bei der Arbeit mit dem “London Jazz Composers Orchestra” nutzt Barry Guy kompositorische Strukturen als “sozialen Rahmen” für improvisierende Musiker - Spielprozesse in Gang setzend, mitnichten von aussen gängelnd. Als Improvisator hat Barry Guy seit Ende der sechziger Jahre intensiv mit Musikern wie John Stevens, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts, Howard Riley wie auch seit 1970, mit dem Trio “Iskra 1903” (Paul Rutherford, Barry Guy, Derek Bailey bzw. Phil Wachsmann) zusammengearbeitet. Andererseits hat sich Barry Guy als Kontrabassist herausragender Orchester und Kammermusikvereinigungen einen Namen gemacht - als Interpret von Barockmusik, klassischem Repertoire, Neuer Musik und elektronischer Musik. “Für mich” , bekennt Barry Guy “ist improvisierte Musik die wichtigste Äusserung der letzten beiden Jahrzehnte, Hand in Hand mit der Entwicklung einer in hohem Masse ausgereiften Sprache, die in der Welt der Bücher und Partituren keinen Platz hat. Einer solchen Sprache zolle ich den ihr gebührenden Respekt.”
Paul Lytton spielte seit Mitte der sechziger Jahre mit den führenden englischen Improvisationsmusikern wie Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Paul Rutherford, Barry Guy, Howard Riley, Jamie Muir, John Stevens, Trevor Watts usw. zusammen. Bereits Ende der sechziger Jahre begann er, eigene Perkussionsinstrumente zu bauen und natürlich erzeugte Klänge live-elektronisch zu modifizieren. Paul Lytton hat zur Realisierung seiner Klangvorstellungen eine neue Spielweise und zugleich ein neues Instrumentarium entwickelt. Er lebt seit Mitte der siebziger Jahre in Belgien und arbeitet langfristig mit dem Perkussionisten Paul Lovens zusammen. Trotz deutlich unterschiedlicher musikalischer Mentalitäten sind sich beide im Spielprozess musikalisch mitunter dermassen nahegekommen, dass die beim Hören der Aufnahmen beiderseits gestellte Frage “was it me?” sogar den Titel für ein Duo-Album des gemeinsam betriebenen Plattenlabels “Po Torch Records” abgab. “Die Betonung des perkussionistischen Aspektes in der improvisierten Musik”, sagt Paul Lytton “brachte es mit sich, dass alle konventionell bestimmten musikalischen Elemente neu definiert werden mussten. Es ging nicht mehr darum, wer wen begleitet, sondern darum, im Prozess dichter Interaktion eine neue Art von Dynamik zu entwickeln”.
Im Trio dann: äusserste Konzentration, Komplexität, Verzicht auf historisch strapaziertes Klangmaterial. Punktualisiertes Geschehen und kollektive Verdichtung. Eine neue, andere “Neue Musik” - signifikant und aktuell, mit Beharrlichkeit entwickelt und der Verfestigung trotzend. Die wichtigste Kraftquelle, so Evan Parker, liege in der Entwicklung selbst: “Je stärker und purer die Musik, desto mehr Energie entsteht aus dem Spielprozess.” Es bedarf keines grossen theoretischen Überbaus, um zu erkennen, dass Ethik und Praxis der Improvisation für Musiker wie Evan Parker, Barry Guy und Paul Lytton untrennbar miteinander verbunden sind. “Nicht jede improvisatorische Äusserung ist zugleich musikalisch von Belang, aber die lebendige Entwicklung der Musik ist ohne die Praxis der Improvisation kaum vorstellbar.” Der Satz stammt von Paul Lytton und erinnert an Sentenzen von Derek Bailey, könnte aber auch von Barry Guy oder Evan Parker formuliert worden sein. Das Trio Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton gibt Sätzen wie diesem, die leicht abstrakt wirken können, einen konkreten Sinn, einen musikalischen.
Bert Noglik