The Squid's Ear Magazine


Burn / Coxhill / Edwards / Minton / Russell: Mopomoso Solos 2002 (Emanem)

A concert featuring exceptional unaccompanied solo improvisations by John Russell (guitar), Phil Minton (voice), John Edwards (double bass), Lol Coxhill (saxophone) and Chris Burn (piano, percussion) followed by an impromptu performance as a quintet.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



John Russell-guitar

Phil Minton-voice

John Edwards-doublebass

Lol Coxhill-soprano saxophone

Chris Burn-piano, percussion


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UPC: 5030243410026

Label: Emanem
Catalog ID: 4100
Squidco Product Code: 18292

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2004
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Jewel tray, not sealed.
Recorded by Tim Fletcher in London on November 17th, 2002.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"A concert featuring superb unaccompanied solo improvisations by John Russell (guitar), Phil Minton (voice), John Edwards (double bass), Lol Coxhill (soprano saxophone), and Chris Burn (piano and percussion). Then they finished the evening as an impromptu quintet."-Emanem


Artist Biographies

"John Russell got his first guitar in 1965 while living in Kent and began to play in and around London from 1971 onwards. An early involvement with the emerging free improvisation scene (from 1972) followed, seeing him play in such places as The Little Theatre Club, Ronnie Scott's, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Musicians' Co-Op and the London Musicians' Collective. From 1974 his work extended into teaching, broadcasts (radio and television) and touring in the United Kingdom and, ever extensively, in other countries around the world . He has played with many of the world's leading improvisers and his work can be heard on over 50 CDs and albums. In 1981, he founded QUAQUA, a large bank of improvisers put together in different combinations for specific projects and, in 1991, he started MOPOMOSO which has become the UK's longest running concert series featuring mainly improvised music."

-John Russell Website (http://www.john-russell.co.uk/biography/)
3/13/2024

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"Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s- Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980's.

For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as a improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations, all over the place. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians.

Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries."

-Phil Minton Website (https://www.philminton.co.uk/8-2/)
3/13/2024

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"After taking up the bass, around 1987, John Edwards co-formed The Pointy Birds who went on to win awards for their music for The Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs dance troupes. The group appeared at festivals in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moers, Leverkusen, Copenhagen. Around 1990, Edwards played his first gigs with London improvisers such as Roger Turner, Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton.

Between 1990 and 1995 Edwards was a member of three touring groups simultaneously: B-Shops For The Poor, The Honkies and GOD. During this period he also became an increasingly regular player on the London improvised music scene and performed his first solo gigs; he composed and performed music theatre with the bass and cello duo The Great Explorers, street-busked a lot and appeared at many more festivals in Germany, Estonia, France, Italy, Czech, etc.

Since 1995 John Edwards has become a "mainstay" of the London scene, playing with just about everybody, an activity that has seen him clocking up between 150 and 200 gigs a year. He has become regular player with Evan Parker, in many groupings, and with Tony Bevan, Veryan Weston, and Elton Dean, often in collaboration with Mark Sanders on percussion. He has become a more frequent player on the European (and festival) scene, appearing at Taktlos, Ulrichsburg, Nickelsdorf, Budapest, New Zealand and in the USA. He continues to work on solo performances."

-EFI (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/medwards.html)
3/13/2024

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"George Lowen Coxhill (19 September 1932 - 10 July 2012), generally known as Lol Coxhill, was an English free improvising saxophonist and raconteur. He played the soprano or sopranino saxophone. Coxhill was born to George Compton Coxhill and Mabel Margaret Coxhill (née Motton) at Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. He grew up in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and bought his first saxophone in 1947. After national service he became a busy semi-professional musician, touring US airbases with Denzil Bailey's Afro-Cubists and the Graham Fleming Combo. In the 1960s he played with visiting American blues, soul and jazz musicians including Rufus Thomas, Mose Allison, Otis Spann, and Champion Jack Dupree. He also developed his practice of playing unaccompanied solo saxophone, often busking in informal performance situations. Other than his solo playing, he performed mostly as a sideman or as an equal collaborator, rather than a conventional leader - there was no regular Lol Coxhill Trio or Quartet as would normally be expected of a saxophonist. Instead he had many intermittent but long-lasting collaborations with like-minded musicians.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a member of Canterbury scene bands Carol Grimes and Delivery and then Kevin Ayers and the Whole World. He became known for his solo playing and for work in duets with pianist Steve Miller and guitarist G. F. Fitzgerald. He was thought to have largely inspired Joni Mitchell's song "For Free", while busking solo on the old footbridge which formed part of the Hungerford Bridge between Waterloo and Charing Cross. Coxhill collaborated with other musicians including Mike Oldfield, Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople), Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath and its musical descendant The Dedication Orchestra, Django Bates, the Damned, Hugh Metcalfe, Derek Bailey and performance art group Welfare State.

He often worked in small collaborative groups with semi-humorous names such as the Johnny Rondo Duo or Trio (with pianist Dave Holland - not the bassist of the same name), the Melody Four (characteristically a trio, with Tony Coe and Steve Beresford), and The Recedents (with guitarist Mike Cooper and percussionist Roger Turner), known as such because the members were (in Coxhill's words) "all bald", though the name may additionally be a play on the American band the Residents. Typically these bands performed a mix of free improvisation interspersed with ballroom dance tunes and popular songs. There was humour throughout his music but he sometimes felt it necessary to tell audiences that the free playing was not intended as a joke. Coxhill was compere and occasional performer at the Bracknell Jazz Festival, and a raconteur as well as a musician; he often would introduce his music by saying the words, "what I am about to play you may not understand". It was following a performance at Bracknell that he recorded the melodramatic monologue Murder in the Air."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lol_Coxhill)
3/13/2024

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

Chris Burn, piano: "Following on from a relatively formal music education and a few years of involvement in Jazz, the beginning of the 1980s saw Burn thoroughly embracing freely improvised music. His pianism was almost exclusively devoted to inside playing. In 1985 the large group 'Ensemble' was formed and have subsequently made five CDs and given concerts in the UK, mainland Europe and Canada; along with a number of radio broadcasts. Burn often performed as soloist; both improvising but also playing Henry Cowell and John Cage.

In 1993 he made a CD of a selection of Cowell's piano pieces and made a programme for BBC R3. He has played numerous concerts and festivals in UK, Europe and Canada both as soloist, with Ensemble and with a host of improvisers from around the world. Since 2000 he has renewed his work in both composition and arranging; writing a number of pieces for solo piano and pieces for brass and percussion along with arrangements of improvisations by Derek Bailey and recordings of Alan Lamb. He continues to perform as both pianist and as trumpet player. In recent years he has performed twice at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with groups led by John Butcher and Simon Fell.

In addition he is participating of the Reverse Collection exhibition at the Tate Modern, Summer 2016."

-Chris Burn Website (https://www.chrisburnmusician.com/bio)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Brush With Gravity 14:23

2. Pufff 7:34

3. M 1:08

4. Woodcuts 12:07

5. Waiting For Lol 1:09

6. Speechless 9:00

7. Traps 12:00

8. Quintet 'Til The End Of Time 12:17

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Various Artists & Compilations
EMANEM & psi

Search for other titles on the label:
Emanem.


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