The Squid's Ear Magazine


Spontaneous Music Ensemble: Low Profile (Emanem)

The 1977 Derby concert performance by the SME quartet with John Stevens (percussion, cornet, voice), Nigel Coombes (violin), Colin Wood (cello) & Roger Smith (guitar), with a tribute to Anton Webern, plus concert recordings as a trio.
 

Price: $16.95



Quantity:

In Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

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

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



John Stevens-percussion, cornet, voice

Nigel Coombes-violin

Colin Wood-cello

Roger Smith-guitar, amplified guitar


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




UPC: 5030243403127

Label: Emanem
Catalog ID: 4031
Squidco Product Code: 18410

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 1999
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded on November 17th, 1977 at Derby. Recorded by Steve Moore on February 22nd, 1984 in London. Recorded by Michael Gerzon on October 9th, 1988 in London.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"The 1977 Derby concert performance by the SME quartet with John Stevens (percussion, cornet, voice), Nigel Coombes (violin), Colin Wood (cello) & Roger Smith (guitar) features an extended (!) tribute to Anton Webern. The CD also contains also 1984 and 1988 London concert recordings by the trio without Wood."-Emanem


Artist Biographies

"John William Stevens (10 June 1940 in Brentford, Middlesex - 13 September 1994 in Ealing, west London) was an English drummer. He was one of the most significant figures in early free improvisation, and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME).

Stevens was born in Brentford, the son of a tap dancer. He used to listen to jazz as a child, but was initially more interested in drawing and painting (media through which he also expressed himself throughout his life). He studied at the Ealing Art College and then started work in a design studio, but left at 19 to join the Royal Air Force. He studied the drums at the Royal Air Force School of Music in Uxbridge, and while there met Trevor Watts and Paul Rutherford, two musicians who became close collaborators.

In the mid-1960s Stevens began to play in London jazz groups alongside musicians like Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott, and in 1965 he fronted a septet. Influenced by the free jazz he was hearing coming out of the United States by players like Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, his style began to move away from fairly traditional be-bop to something more experimental.

In 1966 SME was formed with Watts and Rutherford and the group moved into the Little Theatre Club at Garrick Yard, St. Martin's Lane, London to develop their new music. In 1967 their first album, Challenge, was released. Stevens then became interested in the music of Anton Webern, and the SME began to play generally very quiet music. Stevens also became interested in non-Western musics.

The SME went on to make a large number of records with an ever changing line-up and an ever changing number of members, but Stevens was always there, at the centre of the group's activity. He also played in a number of other groups, drumming in Watts' group Amalgam and later forming bands like Freebop and Fast Colour, for example, but the SME remained at the centre of his activities.

In the latter part of 1967 Evan Parker joined the SME and worked closely with Stevens in the group, eventually becoming one of the longest standing members. He later summed up Stevens' approach to improvising in two basic maxims: if you can't hear another musician, then you're too loud; and there is no point in group improvisation if what you are playing doesn't relate to what other members of the group are playing.

Stevens also devised a number of basic starting points for improvisation. These were not "compositions" as such, but rather a means of getting improvisational activity started, which could then go off in any direction. One of these was the so-called "Click Piece" which essentially asked for each player to repeatedly play a note as short as possible.

Stevens played alongside a large number of prominent free improvisors in the SME, including Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Julie Tippetts and Robert Calvert, but from the mid-1970s, the make-up of the SME began to settle down to a regular group of Stevens, Nigel Coombes playing violin, and Roger Smith playing guitar. During the mid-1970s Stevens played regularly with guitarist and songwriter John Martyn as part of a trio that included bassist Danny Thompson. This line up can be heard on Martyn's 1976 recording Live at Leeds.

From 1983 Stevens was involved with Community Music (CM), an organisation through which he took his form of music making to youth clubs, mental health institutions and other unusual places. Notes taken during these sessions were later turned into a book for the Open University called Search and Reflect (1985). In the late 70s and early 80s John was a regular performer at the Bracknell Jazz Festival.

Aside from SME, Stevens also ran or helped to organise groups that were more jazz or jazz-rock based, such as Splinters, the John Stevens Dance Orchestra, Away, Freebop, Folkus, Fast Colour, PRS, and the John Stevens Quintet and Quartet. He also contributed significantly to Trevor Watts' group Amalgam and Frode Gjerstad's Detail, as well as collaborating with Bobby Bradford on several occasions.

The SME continued to play, the last time being in 1994 with a group including John Butcher. Stevens died later that year."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stevens_(drummer))
3/27/2024

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

Roger Smith is a British guitarist known for his work with London Musicians' Collective, his duo with Neil Metcalfe, plus duos with Adam Bohman, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Pascal Marzan, etc.

-Squidco 3/27/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Immediate Past Fragment 2:37

2. The Only Geezer An American Soldier Shot Was Anton Webern 31:50

3. Low Profile 23:52

4. Kitless With Elbow 11:26

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
EMANEM & psi
Quartet Recordings
Instant Rewards

Search for other titles on the label:
Emanem.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Juice Machine
Broken And Dilapidated
(Love Earth Music)
An apt description for the layers of sonic decay and deteriorated sounds, loops and errata that underpin each of the five tracks on this elusively restrained noise album, Juice Machine, aka Roger H. Smith (Chefkirk) and Heather Chessman, use mangled field recordings and concrete elements of blurred looping structures and aberrant interjection, each unique work a fascinating curiosity.
Gjerstad, Frode / Kent Carter / John Stevens
Detail-90 [VINYL]
(NoBusiness)
The second incarnation of the Detail trio of saxophonist Frode Gjerstad and drummer John Stevens with Kent Cart taking the role of double bass, is heard in this studio recording from 1990 at NRK-studio in Stavanger, Norway, a superb example of the nearly telepathic freedom four years of playing together afforded them, as heard in two extended, energetic improvisations.
London Jazz Composers Orchestra
That Time
(Not Two)
Released for their 50th anniversary, The LJCO, in configurations of up to 21 musicians including Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, &c., perform works by Kenny Wheeler, Barry Guy, Paul Rutherford and Howard Riley, captured live at the Berliner Jazztage in 1972; at Donaueschingen Musiktage in 1972; in the studio in 1980; and London's Round House in 1980.
Stevens, John
Search and Reflect [BOOK]
(Rockschool)
A reprinting of drummer/percussionist John Steven's music workshop manual used in his London-based organisation Community Music with practical application for running music workshops based on improvisation, originally published in 1985, this edition was re-published by Rockschool in 2007, with additional forewords by Steve Beresford and Maggie Nicols.
Bradford, Bobby / Frode Gjerstad / Kent Carter / John Stevens
Blue Cat [VINYL]
(NoBusiness)
The 2nd in NoBusiness' archive series of the Norwegian Detail collective, here with Frode Gjerstad on alto sax, Bobby Bradford on cornet, Kent Carter on bass, and John Stevens on drums, captured live in London in 1991 during a UK record, in a 3-part work of informed free-jazz and free playing, exciting music with complex, swinging subtlety.
Brighton, Ian
Marsh Gas [REISSUE]
(FMR)
Reissuing the 1977 album from UK guitarist Ian Brighton, written as an instrumental story for children, apparently very sophisticated children, in a mix of composed and freely improvised passages, using non-idiomatic approaches with unusual and extended techniques, open atmospheric passages and strange transitions, a peculiar and wonderful album of imaginative playing.
Spontaneous Music Orchestra
For You To Share
(Emanem)
Concert and studio recordings of peace music organised by John Stevens for himself and Trevor Watts with numerous workshop musicians and audience people on saxophones, percussion and voices mostly contributing a flexible drone.
Smith, Roger
Green wood: Solo Guitar Improvisations 2002
(Emanem)
An excellent collection of solo acoustic guitar improvisations by Roger Smith that were digitally recorded at home in London during January, 2002.
Bradford, Bobby
Love's Dream
(EMANEM)



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Butcher / Prevost
High Laver Levitations Vol 1: Unearthed
(Matchless)
Long-time collaborators and iconoclastic improvisers, drummer Eddie Prévost and saxophonist John Butcher, met at All Hallows Church, in High Laver, Essex in 2023, using the natural ambience of the space to capture these three improvisations, Prévost playing primarily on a drum kit and both in a more jazz-oriented sax and drum duo, extended by both players' exceptional technique.
Rothenberg, Ned / Hamid Drake
Full Circle - Live in Lodz
(Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!))
Two legendary improvisers, Downtown New York multi-reedist and shakuhachi player Ned Rothenberg met Chicago drummer Hamid Drake at Ciagoty I Tesknoty, in Lodz, Poland in 2016 to record this effusive, extraordinary live concert of improvised music, demonstrating both enormous instrumental skill while imparting wonderfully upbeat energy; outstanding!
Halvorson, Mary Quintet
Saturn Sings
(Firehouse 12 Records)
Halvorson's quintet in a new book of music exploring close knit and dissonant harmonies for her ensemble of trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, saxophonist Jon Irabagon, bassist John Hebert & drummer Ches Smith.
Butcher, John
13 Friendly Numbers
(Unsounds)
International Insurance or Registered Mail
Insurance for any order
(Squidco)



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC