I think I first played solo - a short piece, not a concert - in 1982 at the Workers' Music Association in Notting Hill Gate.
To quote from a 1998 essay the magazine Rubberneck requested:
"After a few concerts I'd learnt a lot about making connections - but had also noticed recognisable pieces beginning to develop. I quite liked this, but worried about what it meant for long-term solo work. For a while, I almost envied composers; able to wrap up a piece, send it out into the world, and move on to the next. But a lot of the pleasure in giving solo concerts is connected to the hope of finding, spontaneously, some music you didn’t really know about beforehand. Playing ‘pieces’ is too close to playing ‘routines’ and a concert is an opportunity for much more. As a live performer, improvising usually just feels better - less acting, less theatre, and more chance for a little magic. By way of a bonus, this means engaging with what Derek Bailey has described as a ‘search for whatever is endlessly variable’.
However, a considerable attraction of solo playing is that you have full control. You can work with material that may be too inflexible for the push and pull of group improvising; you can plan ahead, you can attempt pieces that have a definite, sustained, flavour - that adhere to some concept.”
Whilst this is still close to my feelings about giving solo concerts - the other side of solo work has been to develop semi-compositional ideas for CD: from the 1992 multitracks on Thirteen Friendly Numbers to the 2002 microphone-based work on Invisible Ear.
This, in turn, has been re-introduced into concerts in the form of feedback-saxophone and close-miking.
In the last few years I have also had the opportunity to create solos specifically for large and unusual or especially characteristic acoustic spaces. Two concerts/recordings have been made inside the giant Oya Stone Mountain in Utsunomiya, Japan.
Resonant Spaces was a 2006 tour in Scotland and the Orkneys organised by Arika. Butcher and Akio Suzuki visited sites specially chosen for their extraordinary acoustics.
Later that year I played, for Resonance FM, in Oberhausen's famous 200m gazometer.
One track (18:44) on this double CD on Matchless. Contains of all of the solos played on 9th January 2005 at the 291 Gallery, Hackney. The all reed concert was organised by ONGAKU:enjoy_sound.
John Butcher Nathaniel Catchpole Kai Fagaschinski Lou Gare Evan Parker Seymour Wright
Two concerts, recorded in Japan in 2002. On Weight of Wax.
1st half: Solo inside the Oya Stone mountain.
2nd half: Duo with Toshimaru Nakimura (no-input mixing desk).
7HINGS is a web site delivering exclusive recordings by download only.
In 2006 they commisoned a day of concerts at the Huddersfield New Music Festival.
Huddersfield Prospects consists of 4 solo (acoustic and feedback) pieces, plus a multi-track composition - Deposition 1 - created afterwards from the live material.
