ARCHIVE WAX SALES EMAIL
|
"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’.
Unblown Feedback-Tenor  © osamu enomoto - plan B, tokyo, japan 2004. Whilst this is still close to my feelings about giving solo concerts - the other side of solo work has been to develop compositional ideas for CD: from the 1992 multitracks on Thirteen Friendly Numbers to the 2002 microphone-based work on Invisible Ear.
These ideas then become re-introduced into concerts in the form of feedback-saxophone, close-miking and compositional stratergies. One aspect was explored in July 2010 when I worked with Stephen Moore, who produced a Max/MSP patch to attempt live multitracking work via 15 speakers, at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn.
Site-Specific Solos 
Oya Stone Museum, Japan ©osamu enomoto
Since 2002 I have also had the opportunity to create solos specifically for large and unusual or especially characteristic acoustic spaces.
Two concerts/recordings have been released from 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. In 2010 these ideas were continued at artist James McGee's The Hill in the West Texas Desert near El Paso. The latest site-specific work (WIRE review here) was in the medieval vaults of Southampton, UK - organised by Bang the Bore, on an evening paired with Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a Room.
Winter Gardens Vinyl LPRecorded in concert - London and Milwaukee 2011. saxophones (acoustic and feedback) all about jazz | still single Bell Trove Spools Released on Northern SpyTenor solos: Dan Flavin Gallery, Houston - 2010 Soprano solos: Issue Project Room, Brooklyn - 2011 Cover: Philip Marshall tiny mix tapes | burning ambulance | all about jazz (1) | London Jazz | all about jazz (2) freq Resonant Spaces Everything about this release is beautiful and intriguing: The Geometry of Sentiment Horn_Bill Invisible Ear 13 Friendly Numbers Trace |
