A big anniversary is celebrated on this recording: Evan Parker and Paul Lytton got to know each other in 1969 and after months of rehearsals their first performance followed in 1970. It was the time of the jazz avant-garde, which renewed and expanded the traditional ways of playing and the Parker-Lytton Duo was an active part of this process.
“Over the past fifty years, they have each minutely sorted through aesthetics, methods, and protocols, maintaining an ongoing dialogue. The years have yielded a rich diversity of music, complemented by the current recording, the first to feature only tenor saxophone and a jazz kit,” writes the American jazz journalist Bill Shoemaker in the liner notes.
Shoemaker, who supervised the recordings in Chicago, goes on to say: “The dynamic of free improvisation and a long personal history documented on this Chicago studio session bears out what Parker told Bailey forty years ago: ‘In practice, the closest I would get to a laboratory situation is working with the people I know best … the people I’ve played with the longest actually offer me the freest situation to work in.’ On the basis of this unprecedented music, that assessment has stood the test of time.”
credits
released February 14, 2020
Evan Parker: Tenor Sax
Paul Lytton: Drums
Recorded March 29, 2019 at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago by Alex Inglizian. Mixed Summer 2019 by Evan Parker and Matthew Wright. Mastered by Matthew Wright. Cover photo: Caroline Forbes. Band photo: Lauren Deutsch. Graphic design: Paul Bieri. Liner notes: Bill Shoemaker.
supported by 30 fans who also own “collective calls (revisited) (jubilee)”
Total mastery of patience, time, and drama create a constantly engaging journey that never gets tiresome or same-y: in fact the harder you listen the better it gets! Somehow Sorey et al. find a way to combine the deep listening and spontaneous interaction of the best jazz with the sense of every tone and sound being worth a universe of listening, which could be equally from Cage and Feldman or the accompaniment to an ancient ritual.
The recording/engineering is absolutely perfect as well. Giles
Vibrant, playful jazz in the chordless tradition from this new Australian quartet, who embrace both freedom and swing. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 9, 2021