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Compositon No. 62
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| Composition No. 62 might be the best of the Compilation Series yet, and the ZFP Quartet disc is still another testament to the breadth of his improvisational vocabulary. Both discs hinge and thrive on the tenuous relationship between composition and performance that underpins all improvised music, but Fell's rigor and humor bite at each other's heels, rendering his style and language instantly identifiable and, ultimately, verbally inexplicable. It would be relatively easy to get overabsorbed in Fell's accompanying notes to Composition No. 62. He's dryly apologetic, fully cognizant of the fact that jazzers won't like the classical sections, and that devotees of contemporary composition will gawk at inherent imprecision. How could it be otherwise? The Compilation Series is predicated on the studio-manipulated juxtaposition of trans-temporal events, any overriding structural or soloistic concerns being subject to change over time, the way in which the liners justify the "quasi-concerto" appellation. Fell is careful to caution the reader that his explanations are only for those that care about such things, and his list of influences is exhaustive, but there's something just a bit whimsical about the whole thing. Each semi-autonomous moment involves layers of events which might cohere in something resembling linear fashion, even if the work's macrocosmic sections are designed to avoid it. The crescendo leading away from Prelude is a beautiful example of short-form cohesion; it arises out of registral and timbral interplay, extremely high sounds in tug-of-war with rumbles and bursts of electronics until a gradual heightening encroaches on listener consciousness. The sound builds, hangs poised, builds almost to intolerance and then comes crashing down. It's a stunning moment that catches me unaware, no matter how many times I consciously wait for it. I was struck by the muscular mayhem of Mick Beck's contributions to Contrabassoon Concertino Construct, but the album's a veritable stew of soloists, weaving their ways in and out of the loosely knit compositional fabric. Especially noteworthy is a soprano solo by Evan Parker who, as the notes have it, plays Dolphy to Fell's Mingus, and Alex Ward's presence and influence is palpable throughout, but the line between soloist and orchestra is happily blurred. Floating to the surface, at any given moment, might be a gob of pedal steel, a snippet of 1950s "light" jazz or, to quote an earlier Fell project's title, The Horrors of Darmstadt. These are not simply momentary allusions, as they constitute huge slices of time in the dense work's 80 minutes. Only in retrospect does the strange temporal flow of the music reveal its own terms. As with Braxton's diverse output, or like waterskiing over Joyce's wake, it's intense listening that offers up its many rewards only with many hours of practice on the listener's part. Marc Medwin |
ARTISTS
Jessica Ely, Nancy Ruffer (piccolos); Spela Knoll (cor anglais); Alex Ward (clarinet, piano); Mick Beck, Maurice Hodges (bassoons, contrabassoons); Evan Parker (soprano and tenor sax); Chris Gosling, Colin Radford (alto sax); Caroline Dixey (tenor sax); Guy Llewellyn, Sadaharu Muramatsu (french horn); Tom Yates (tenor trombone); Simon Roberts (tuba); Felix Hearn, Philip Hughes (violas); Gil Matthews (acoustic guitar); B.J. Cole (pedal steel guitar); Matthew Bourne, Winnie Chong (pianos); Guy Avern (piano, keyboards); Ed Sewell (double bass); Adrian Coggins, Stale Birkeland, Steve Noble, Jamie Brooks, Stuart Taylor, Orestis Karamanlis (percussion); Philip Joseph (theremin); Clive Bell (shakuhachi); James Smith (clarinet): Amelia Oldfield (bass clarinet); Alasdair Hayden-Wright (soprano sax); Damien Royannais (soprano and bass saxes); Christophe de Bezenac (alto and tenor sax); Jenni Brind, Julian Landymore (baritone sax); Paul Garner, Stephen Hancock, Byran Herman, Roland Ramanan, Su Rowell (trumpets); Naomi Blayney-Simpson, Jonathan Heeley (bass trombones); Shona Clark, Angharad Davies, Seth Richardson, teresa Vellacott, Philipp Wachsmann, Meiko Wakabayashi (violins); Viv Williams (cello): Justin Quinn (electric guitar); Rhodri Davies (harp); Paul Jackson (piano); Peter Shepherd (keyboards); Simon H. Fell (double bass, keyboards, electronics); Stephen Maclachlan (drum kit, piano) |
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