The Squid's Ear Magazine


Schlippenbach Trio (Schlippenbach / Evan Parker / Lovens): Warsaw Concert (Intakt)

After 44 years, the UK/European free improvising trio of pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach with saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens, present this, their 20th album, an incredible extended performance plus a brief coda recorded during the Ad Libitum Festival at the Polish broadcasting, a testament to masterful skill and the endurance of free jazz.
 

Price: $18.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 4.00 units

Sample The Album:




product information:

Personnel:



Alexander von Schlippenbach-piano

Evan Parker-saxophone

Paul Lovens-drums


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




UPC: 7640120192754

Label: Intakt
Catalog ID: ITK275.2
Squidco Product Code: 24122

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2016
Country: Switzerland
Packaging: Jewel Case
Recorded at the Ad Libitum Festival in Warsaw, Poland, on October 16th, 2015, by Jaroslaw Regulski and Zbigniew Kusiak.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"There can't be too many outfits still going strong after 44 years, especially with an unchanged roster. But that's exactly the situation German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach faces with his trio of countryman Paul Lovens on the drum stool and the legendary Evan Parker on tenor saxophone, give or take an occasional bassist. As a consequence they travel in uncharted territory, tasked with finding their own solutions to the challenge of keeping the music fresh and meaningful. While there are no startling new discoveries to be found on their twentieth album Warsaw Concert, a live recording from October 2015, it proves a wonderful document of what the group does best: vital, untrammelled, extended spontaneous composition.

Of course one benefit of longevity is the attendant maturity and wisdom. Here it translates into mastery of not only the instruments, but how to stitch them together through the 51-minute performance and subsequent short encore. Initially perceived as a rejection of American jazz forms, over the years, the threesome's connections to that tradition become more clear, to the degree that the liners disclose references to two Eric Dolphy tunes "Miss Ann" and "Out There," although you might be pushed to pick them out from the unfolding discourse. No-one could mistake this for the classical avant-garde.

Schlippenbach creates instant structure, with composerly reiterated motifs, but doesn't shy away from the jazz canon, evidenced by distant and not so distant echoes of blues, Monk and Cecil Taylor. Parker's lines unfurl to superhuman lengths through circular breathing. His questioning phrases blend well with the nominal leader, pursuing a similar modular cell-like approach, where the practice is: repeat, mutate, evolve, move on. Lovens maybe the doyen of European drummers. His light airy cymbals and tappy drums enable transparency to let the interplay shine through in even the most high octane episodes. Yet he still imparts dash and verve through breathtaking attention to timbre and sound placement.

It's music to immerse and lose yourself in, constantly shifting and recalibrating, its progress made possible through accomplished transitions. After a perky barrelhouse inflected sequence with cantering percussive accompaniment, Parker joins touching on the outskirts of lyricism, shaded by now angular drums. Another splendid moment comes when after another passage of yelping gruff circular breathing, as Parker sustains a long tone, piano and drums crash in simultaneously to catapult the music into another direction. They do what they do without gimmicks and the end product remains all the better for it."-John Sharpe, All About Jazz


Get additional information at All About Jazz

Artist Biographies

"One of Europe's premier free jazz bandleaders, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach's music mixes free and contemporary classical elements, with his slashing solos often the link between the two in his compositions. Schlippenbach formed The Globe Unity Orchestra in 1966 to perform the piece"Globe Unity, which had been commissioned by the Berliner Jazztage.

He remained involved with the orchestra into the '80s. Schlippenbach began taking lessons at eight, and studied at the Staatliche Hochschule for Musik in Cologne with composers Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Rudolf Petzold. He played with Gunther Hampel in 1963, and was in Manfred Schoof's quintet from 1964 to 1967.Schlippenbach began heading various bands after 1967, among them 1970 trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens and a duo with Sven-Ake Johansson which they co-formed in 1976. Schlippenbach has also given many solos performances. In the late '80s, he formed the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra,which has featured a number ofesteemed European avant-garde jazz musicians including Evan Parker, Paul Lovens, KennyWheeler, Misha Mengelberg and Aki Takase. During the 90`s Duo work with Tony Oxley, Sam Rivers and Aki Takase. 1999 started performance and radiorecording of Thelonius Monks complete works, (all the compositions) with Rudi Mahall and his group "Die Enttäuschung"."

-Alexander von Schlippenbach Website (http://www.avschlippenbach.com/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Evan Parker was born in Bristol in 1944 and began to play the saxophone at the age of 14. Initially he played alto and was an admirer of Paul Desmond; by 1960 he had switched to tenor and soprano, following the example of John Coltrane, a major influence who, he would later say, determined "my choice of everything". In 1962 he went to Birmingham University to study botany but a trip to New York, where he heard the Cecil Taylor trio (with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray), prompted a change of mind. What he heard was "music of a strength and intensity to mark me for life ... l came back with my academic ambitions in tatters and a desperate dream of a life playing that kind of music - 'free jazz' they called it then."

Parker stayed in Birmingham for a time, often playing with pianist Howard Riley. In 1966 he moved to London, became a frequent visitor to the Little Theatre Club, centre of the city's emerging free jazz scene, and was soon invited by drummer John Stevens to join the innovative Spontaneous Music Ensemble which was experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation. Parker's first issued recording was SME's 1968 Karyobin, with a line-up of Parker, Stevens, Derek Bailey, Dave Holland and Kenny Wheeler. Parker remained in SME through various fluctuating line-ups - at one point it comprised a duo of Stevens and himself - but the late 1960s also saw him involved in a number of other fruitful associations.

He began a long-standing partnership with guitarist Bailey, with whom he formed the Music Improvisation Company and, in 1970, co-founded Incus Records. (Tony Oxley, in whose sextet Parker was then playing, was a third co-founder; Parker left Incus in the mid-1980s.) Another important connection was with the bassist Peter Kowald who introduced Parker to the German free jazz scene. This led to him playing on Peter Brötzmann's 1968 Machine Gun, Manfred Schoof's 1969 European Echoes and, in 1970, joining pianist Alex von Schlippenbach and percussionist Paul Lovens in the former's trio, of which he is still a member: their recordings include Pakistani Pomade, Three Nails Left, Detto Fra Di Noi, Elf Bagatellen and Physics.

Parker pursued other European links, too, playing in the Pierre Favre Quartet (with Kowald and Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer) and in the Dutch Instant Composers Pool of Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink. The different approaches to free jazz he encountered proved both a challenging and a rewarding experience. He later recalled that the German musicians favoured a "robust, energy-based thing, not to do with delicacy or detailed listening but to do with a kind of spirit-raising, a shamanistic intensity. And l had to find a way of surviving in the heat of that atmosphere ... But after a while those contexts became more interchangeable and more people were involved in the interactions, so all kinds of hybrid musics came out, all kinds of combinations of styles."

A vital catalyst for these interactions were the large ensembles in which Parker participated in the 1970s: Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO) and occasional big bands led by Kenny Wheeler. In the late 70s Parker also worked for a time in Wheeler's small group, recording Around Six and, in 1980, he formed his own trio with Guy and LJCO percussionist Paul Lytton (with whom he had already been working in a duo for nearly a decade). This group, together with the Schlippenbach trio, remains one of Parker's top musical priorities: their recordings include Tracks, Atlanta, Imaginary Values, Breaths and Heartbeats, The Redwood Sessions and At the Vortex. In 1980, Parker directed an Improvisers Symposium in Pisa and, in 1981, he organised a special project at London's Actual Festival. By the end of the 1980s he had played in most European countries and had made various tours to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. ln 1990, following the death of Chris McGregor, he was instrumental in organising various tributes to the pianist and his fellow Blue Notes; these included two discs by the Dedication Orchestra, Spirits Rejoice and lxesa.

Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time. Parker's first solo recordings, made in 1974, were reissued on the Saxophone Solos CD in 1995; more recent examples are Conic Sections and Process and Reality, on the latter of which he does, for the first time, experiment with multi-tracking. Heard alone on stage, few would disagree with writer Steve Lake that "There is, still, nothing else in music - jazz or otherwise - that remotely resembles an Evan Parker solo concert."

While free improvisation has been Parker's main area of activity over the last three decades, he has also found time for other musical pursuits: he has played in 'popular' contexts with Annette Peacock, Scott Walker and the Charlie Watts big band; he has performed notated pieces by Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman and Frederic Rzewski; he has written knowledgeably about various ethnic musics in Resonance magazine. A relatively new field of interest for Parker is improvising with live electronics, a dialogue he first documented on the 1990 Hall of Mirrors CD with Walter Prati. Later experiments with electronics in the context of larger ensembles have included the Synergetics - Phonomanie III project at Ullrichsberg in 1993 and concerts by the new EP2 (Evan Parker Electronic Project) in Berlin, Nancy and at the 1995 Stockholm Electronic Music Festival where Parker's regular trio improvised with real-time electronics processed by Prati, Marco Vecchi and Phillip Wachsmann. "Each of the acoustic instrumentalists has an electronic 'shadow' who tracks him and feeds a modified version of his output back to the real-time flow of the music."

The late 80s and 90s brought Parker the chance to play with some of his early heroes. He worked with Cecil Taylor in small and large groups, played with Coltrane percussionist Rashied Ali, recorded with Paul Bley: he also played a solo set as support to Ornette Coleman when Skies of America received its UK premiere in 1988. The same period found Parker renewing his acquaintance with American colleagues such as Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and George Lewis, with all of whom he had played in the 1970s (often in the context of London's Company festivals). His 1993 duo concert with Braxton moved John Fordham in The Guardian to raptures over "saxophone improvisation of an intensity, virtuosity, drama and balance to tax the memory for comparison".

Parker's 50th birthday in 1994 brought celebratory concerts in several cities, including London, New York and Chicago. The London performance, featuring the Parker and Schlippenbach trios, was issued on a highly-acclaimed two-CD set, while participants at the American concerts included various old friends as well as more recent collaborators in Borah Bergman and Joe Lovano. The NYC radio station WKCR marked the occasion by playing five days of Parker recordings. 1994 also saw the publication of the Evan Parker Discography, compiled by ltalian writer Francesco Martinelli, plus chapters on Parker in books on contemporary musics by John Corbett and Graham Lock.

Parker's future plans involve exploring further possibilities in electronics and the development of his solo music. They also depend to a large degree on continuity of the trios, of the large ensembles, of his more occasional yet still long-standing associations with that pool of musicians to whose work he remains attracted. This attraction, he explained to Coda's Laurence Svirchev, is attributable to "the personal quality of an individual voice". The players to whom he is drawn "have a language which is coherent, that is, you know who the participants are. At the same time, their language is flexible enough that they can make sense of playing with each other ... l like people who can do that, who have an intensity of purpose." "

-Evan Parker Website (http://evanparker.com/biography.php)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Born in Aachen, Germany, 6 June 1949; Drums, percussion, musical saw, etc.

Paul Lovens played the drums as a child. Self-taught, from the age of 14 he played in groups of various jazz styles and popular musics and from 1969 has worked almost exclusively as an improvisor on individually selected instruments. He has worked internationally with most of the leading musicians in free jazz and free improvisation, among whom have included the Globe Unity Orchestra, the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Schlippenbach trio, Quintet Moderne, Company, and a duo with Paul Lytton. He has undertaken concert tours in more than 40 countries, is a founder member of a musician's cooperative and has produced recordings for his own label, Po Torch Records since 1976. He has worked with painter Herbert Bardenheuer. Despite very rare solo performances, and although giving occasional concerts with ad-hoc groups and an involvement in projects with film, dance and actors, Paul Lovens' main interest and work is musical improvisation in fixed small groups. In the mid-1990s these small groups numbered around 16, of which a few were part of a special selection, called 'vermögen'.

Paul Lovens somehow epitomises the free drummer/percussionist who is not there to lay down the beat and kick everyone else into action but to listen, colour, contribute, guide, and occasionally direct, the overall cooperative sound. In concert one cannot fail to be moved by his intensity and concentration and there is an overiding feeling that even the most random events are somehow planned in time. In this respect, there is a nice irony that on the Nothing to read CD with Mats Gustafsson, Lovens describes his kit as consisting of 'selected and unselected drums and cymbals'. Miking seems to be a problem at times with some recordings giving him undue prominence and others insufficient. Good recordings are Elf bagatellen, Nothing to read, Pakistani pomade, and ,stranger than love."

-European Free Improv (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mlovens.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Warsaw Concert 51:46

2. Where Is Kinga? 4:50

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation and Experimental Forms
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Trio Recordings
Schlippenbach
Parker, Evan
Intakt
Staff Picks & Recommended Items

Search for other titles on the label:
Intakt.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Johansson, Sven-Ake / Alexander Von Schlippenbach
Schraubenlieder [VINYL]
(Trost Records)
Drummer Sven-Ake Johansson is also a poet, writer and visual artist; here he joined forced with Alexander von Schlippenbach in 1988 to record these songs, never previously released, sung in German and English, for a set of 9 fascinating narrations that engage the listener independent of language, as von Schlippenbach improvises with prodigious technique.
Parker, Evan / John Russel / Ian Brighton / Phillip Wachsmann / Marcio Mattos / Trevor Taylor
Reunion: Live From Cafe Oto
(FMR)
London's Cafe Oto organized a reunion of String Thing, guitarist Ian Brighton's project with violinist Phillip Wachsmann, bassist Marcio Mattos, & Trevor Taylor on percussion and electronics, adding guitarist John Russell and saxophonist Evan Parker, here capturing an impressive night of improv, and Brighton's first public appearance in nearly 40 years.
Parker, Evan / Seymour Wright
Tie the Stone to the Wheel
(Fataka)
A meeting between two accomplished saxophonists recorded live at Kernel Brewery, in London in 2014, and at The Studio in Derby, with Seymour Wright on alto saxophone and Evan Parker on both alto and soprano, criss-crossing and combining in exuberant and astonishing ways.
Parker, Evan & Sylvie Courvoisier
Either Or And
(Relative Pitch)
A powerful duo recorded in the studio after their 2013 performance at The Stone in NYC from NY pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and UK saxophonist Evan Parker, with extraordinary playing over eight pieces presenting an inspired range of technical and impressionistic styles.
Schlippenbach, Alexander Von
Friulian Sketches
(psi)
A classic European free-improvising trio lineup of Von Schlippenbach, Daniel D'agaro and Tristan Honsinger, 2008 studio recordings of amazing interaction.
Parker, Evan / John Edwards / Chris Corsano
A Glancing Blow
(Clean Feed)



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Brotzmann / Schlippenbach / Bennink
Fifty Years After... Live at the Lila Eule 2018
(Trost Records)
50 years after saxophonist Peter Brotzmann's Octet recorded the legendary "Machine Gun" album, the trio of Berlin pianist, composer Alexander von Schlippenbach and Dutch percussionist Han Bennink commemorated the album at Lila Eule in Bremen, the concert heard here so successful that the trio decided to release the album and continue on as a working trio.
Parker / Trzaska / Edwards / Sanders
City Fall [2 CDs]
(Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!))
Part of Evan Parker's 70th birthday in 2014, this album captures the super-charged quartet of Evan Parker on tenor saxophone, Mikolaj Trzaska on alto sax, bass clarinet, John Edwards on double bass, and Mark Sanders on drums, in two sets for two extended improvisations of both power playing and powerful communication, along with one shorter final statement.
Parker, Evan / Eddie Prevost
Tools Of Imagination
(Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!))
An awe-inspiring concert between two of London's free improvisation legends, recording at Pardon To Tu [Teatr Nowy Clubroom] in Poland--percussionist Eddie Prevost and saxophonist Evan Parker on tenor sax--in an hour-long performance that starts with Prevost's reverberant bowed metal, as the two build and recede with profound concentration and masterful skill.
Mahobin (Fujii / Anker / Tamura / Mori)
Live at Big Apple in Kobe
(Libra)
Continuing the celebration of pianist Satoko Fujii's 60th birtday by releasing one CD each month, this quartet brings an excellent set of electroacoustic improvisation to the collection in a quartet with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, New York saxophonist Lotte Anker, and New York electronic artist and former DNA drummer Ikue Mori, performing live at Tokyo's Big Apple in 2018.
Fujii, Satoko
Ninety-Nine Years
(Libra)
Composer-pianist Satoko Fujii's new Orchestra Berlin, a ten-piece ensemble, presents a powerful work written specifically for this group in thought-provoking compositions of and uninhibited energy, with performers including saxophonists Gebhard Ullmann, Paulina Owczarek & Matthias Schubert, trombonist Matthias Muller, bassist Jan Roder, and drummers Peter Orins and Michael Griener.
Tomlinson, Alan Trio ( w/ Dave Tucker / Phillip Marks)
Out And Out
(FMR)
London Jazz Composers Orchestra trombonist Alan Tomlinson, performing on tenor and alto trombone, with his trio of Dave Tucker on guitar and Phillip Marks on percussion, are caught live in Birmingham, Lancaster, London, and during the Harwich Festival, from 2009-16, demonstrating the strong rapport and exciting dialog these players have developed over years performing together.
Van Hove, Fred / Roger Turner
The Corner
(Relative Pitch)
Pioneering improvising pianist Fred Van Hove at UK's Cafe OTO for the first time, captured in a duo with UK drummer/percussionist Roger Turner, their first recording together, for a night of exceptional improvised interplay, sophisticated and complex playing that is constantly buoyant and charming, an enthralling conversation between two veteran players.
Mats Gustafsson / Craig Taborn
Ljubljana [VINYL]
(Clean Feed)
Celebrating the 400th release of Clean Feed Records, Swedish free jazz phenomenon, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson meets with NY jazz pianist Craig Taborn for an unlikely yet highly satisfying encounter that pushes each improviser into unfamiliar, edge-of-their seats, territory.
Parker, Evan / Daunik Lazro / Joe McPhee
Seven Pieces. Live At Willisau 1995
(Clean Feed)
1995 recordings of the superb saxophone trio of Evan Paker on tenor & soprano, Daunik Lazro on alto & baritone, and Joe McPhee on alto & soprano, plus alto clarinet and pocket trumpet, a group that went undocumented until this live concert tape at Willisau was discovered.
Anker, Lotte / Fred Frith
Edge Of The Light
(Intakt)
An intimate dialog between frequent collaborators, UK guitarist Fred Frith and Copenhagen saxophonist Lotte Anker, both players listening carefully as they interact in a fragile dialog of profound technique and inventive approach, using texture and nuance to create unusual and captivating interchanges that demonstrate how compatible these two very different instruments can be.
Remote Viewers, The
Crimeways
(Remote Viewers)
The 12th release from the London-based Remote Viewers led by saxophonist David Petts, with four saxophones plus electronics, acoustic bass, keys and tuned percussion, crossing improvisation and rock forms in unique and sinister ways.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC