Those who condemn freely improvised music – for what they see as its variations on themes of self-indulgence, wilful obfuscation, lack of narrative, contempt for entertainment and so on – would have had to reconsider their stance on an evening such as this.
The saxophone innovator Evan Parker and the former Miles Davis bassist and influential bandleader Dave Holland were at the Vortex jazz club in north London, to perform as part of a fundraiser for the precariously financed venue. The first of the two concerts could hardly have been better endowed with such universal musical virtues as narrative shape, lyricism, drama, empathic pacing and sonic richness.
Holland opened with a brisk address on the importance of experimental establishments such as the Vortex to his own musical development, citing Ronnie Scott’s legendary 1960s Old Place as a personal equivalent. Then he began a softly unfolding pizzicato double bass meditation, which Parker discreetly joined with quivering long tones on tenor saxophone. Rich bowed-bass harmonies underpinned the saxophonist’s unpredictable shifts from lyrically tune-like figures to tersely exclamatory growls and warmly sighing exhalations.
Holland would sometimes drop anchor with hooks (Parker wrapping warm mid-range figures or delicately inquisitive upper sounds around them), or spur fluttering, birdlike sax rejoinders by using the bow like a drumstick on his strings. A driving avant-swing bass-walk on the second piece roused Parker’s signature take on orthodox jazz time, a mix of imperiously charging, tone-changing long sounds and playful pirouettes.
Holland’s grooving instincts constantly drove his elegant unaccompanied feature, and the bushy-bearded Parker introduced his own hard-blown and hurtling multiphonic solo spot by announcing: “I had a passport photograph taken today. It was rejected by a computer that said I didn’t have a mouth.” Ghostly bowed-bass sounds, brittle upper-tenor ruminations and breathy low-register whispers weaved toward a final descending four-note phrase like the romantic coda to a song.
It was a magical set, but it was also the stock-in-trade of two masters of an adventurous and essential art.
