The Squid's Ear Magazine


Lacy, Steve Quintet: Last Tour  (2004) (Emanem)

The Steve Lacy Quintet's final tour with vocalist Irene Aebi, trombonist George Lewis, bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and drummer John Betsch, performing live in Boston for an impressive set punctuated with words from Burroughs, Waldman, Kaufman, Creeley & Schelling.
 

Price: $16.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 2.00 units

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Steve Lacy-soprano saxophone

Irene Aebi-voice

George Lewis-trombone

, Jean-Jacques Avenel-doublebass

John Betsch-drums

Bob Kaufman (2 & 3)-words

William Burroughs (4)-words

Ann Waldman (8)-words

Andrew Schelling (8)-words


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




UPC: 5030243503926

Label: Emanem
Catalog ID: 5039
Squidco Product Code: 21388

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2015
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Recorded at the ICA in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 12th, 2004 by Martin Davidson.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"After a long tour of North America, this quintet concluded by playing two concerts in Boston - most of the first one being included here. The material is five of the Beat poems featuring Irene Aebi, plus three instrumentals, including one (Baghdad) that has not been on record before as it had only just been written. After a lot of working together, this group was really both loose and together with everybody playing magnificently. Even Lacy plays superbly, so there is no need to make any allowances for his ill health. In fact, the evening sounds like a very enjoyable occasion, making this CD one of the best of the quintet's latter recordings - an appropriate farewell to a major musician."-Emanem


Artist Biographies

"Steve Lacy (July 23, 1934 - June 4, 2004), born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone. Coming to prominence in the 1950s as a progressive dixieland musician, Lacy went on to a long and prolific career. He worked extensively in experimental jazz and to a lesser extent in free improvisation, but Lacy's music was typically melodic and tightly-structured. Lacy also became a highly distinctive composer, with compositions often built out of little more than a single questioning phrase, repeated several times.

The music of Thelonious Monk became a permanent part of Lacy's repertoire after a stint in the pianist's band, with Monk's songs appearing on virtually every Lacy album and concert program; Lacy often partnered with trombonist Roswell Rudd in exploring Monk's work. Beyond Monk, Lacy performed the work of jazz composers such as Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington and Herbie Nichols; unlike many jazz musicians he rarely played standard popular or show tunes.

Lacy began his career at sixteen playing Dixieland music with much older musicians such as Henry "Red" Allen, Pee Wee Russell, George "Pops" Foster and Zutty Singleton and then with Kansas City jazz players like Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, and Jimmy Rushing. He then became involved with the avant-garde, performing on Jazz Advance (1956), the debut album of Cecil Taylor,:55 and appearing with Taylor's groundbreaking quartet at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival; he also made a notable appearance on an early Gil Evans album. His most enduring relationship, however, was with the music of Thelonious Monk: he recorded the first album to feature only Monk compositions (Reflections, Prestige, 1958) and briefly played in Monk's band in 1960:241 and later on Monk's Big Band and Quartet in Concert album (Columbia, 1963).

Lacy's first visit to Europe came in 1965, with a visit to Copenhagen in the company of Kenny Drew; he went to Italy and formed a quartet with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and the South African musicians Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo (their visit to Buenos Aires is documented on The Forest and the Zoo, ESP, 1967). After a brief return to New York, he returned to Italy, then in 1970 moved to Paris, where he lived until the last two years of his life. He became a widely respected figure on the European jazz scene, though he remained less well known in the U.S.

The core of Lacy's activities from the 1970s to the 1990s was his sextet: his wife, singer/violinist Irene Aebi,:272 soprano/alto saxophonist Steve Potts, pianist Bobby Few, bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel, and drummer Oliver Johnson (later John Betsch). Sometimes this group was scaled up to a large ensemble (e.g. Vespers, Soul Note, 1993, which added Ricky Ford on tenor sax and Tom Varner on French horn), sometimes pared down to a quartet, trio, or even a two-saxophone duo. He played duos with pianist Eric Watson. Lacy also, beginning in the 1970s, became a specialist in solo saxophone; he ranks with Sonny Rollins, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, and Lol Coxhill in the development of this demanding form of improvisation.

Lacy was interested in all the arts: the visual arts and poetry in particular became important sources for him. Collaborating with painters and dancers in multimedia projects, he made musical settings of his favourite writers: Robert Creeley, Samuel Beckett, Tom Raworth, Taslima Nasrin, Herman Melville, Brion Gysin and other Beat writers, including settings for the Tao Te Ching and haiku poetry. As Creeley noted in the Poetry Project Newsletter, "There's no way simply to make clear how particular Steve Lacy was to poets or how much he can now teach them by fact of his own practice and example. No one was ever more generous or perceptive."

In 1992, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the "genius grant").

He also collaborated with a wide range of musicians, from traditional jazz to the avant-garde to contemporary classical music. Outside of his regular sextet, his most regular collaborator was pianist Mal Waldron,:244-245 with whom he recorded a number of duet albums (notably Sempre Amore, a collection of Ellington/Strayhorn material, Soul Note, 1987).

Lacy played his 'farewell concerts to Europe' in Belgium, in duo and solo, for a small but motivated public. This happened in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruge and Bergen. This recollection is published by Naked Music. In Ghent he played with the classical violinist Mikhail Bezverkhni, winner of Queen Elisabeth Concours. He returned to the United States in 2002, where he began teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. One of his last public performances was in front of 25,000 people at the close of a peace rally on Boston Common in March 2003, shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq.

After Lacy was diagnosed with cancer in August 2003, he continued playing and teaching until weeks before his death on June 4, 2004 at the age of 69."

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

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

Irene Aebi (born July 27, 1939 in Zurich, Switzerland) is a Swiss singer, violinist and cellist. She is noted for her work with jazz saxophonist Steve Lacy, her husband, from the 1960s to his death in 2004.

Initially a classically trained instrumentalist, she only began to sing at Lacy's request. In a review of a 1999 concert, critic Frank Rubolino describes Aebi as possessing a "brusque, forceful style of singing".

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

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

"George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A 2015 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Lewis has received a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Walker Fellowship (2011), an Alpert Award in the Arts (1999), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2015, Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Music (DMus, honoris causa) from the University of Edinburgh.

A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work in electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, and notated and improvisative forms is documented on more than 140 recordings. His work has been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Wet Ink, Ensemble Erik Satie, Eco Ensemble, and others, with commissions from American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harvestworks, Ensemble Either/Or, Orkestra Futura, Turning Point Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IRCAM, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others. Lewis has served as Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley; Paul Fromm Composer in Residence, American Academy in Rome; Resident Scholar, Center for Disciplinary Innovation, University of Chicago; and CAC Fitt Artist In Residence, Brown University.

Lewis received the 2012 SEAMUS Award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and his book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society's Music in American Culture Award. Lewis is co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016), and his opera Afterword, commissioned by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in October 2015 and has been performed in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic.

Professor Lewis came to Columbia in 2004, having previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Koninklijke Conservatorium Den Haag, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute. Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey."

-Columbia University (http://music.columbia.edu/bios/george-e-lewis)
3/13/2024

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

"John Betsch (born October 8, 1945 in Jacksonville, Florida) is an American jazz drummer. Betsch was born in Jacksonville, Florida. His mother was a church organist and pianist, and his older sister Marvyne a soprano singer. He began playing drums in the school orchestra at the age of nine. He attended Fisk University, and while still a student there, at the age of 18, he began playing professionally with pianists Bob Holmes, Ernest Vantrease, and trumpeter Louis Smith. Betsch studied at Berklee College of Music and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst under Max Roach and Archie Shepp. After playing in organ trios, he released an album as a leader, Earth Blossom, in 1975. That year he moved to New York City, where he played with Marion Brown, Paul Jeffrey, Max Roach, Jeanne Lee and Henry Threadgill.

Between 1977 and 1979 Betsch joined Abdullah Ibrahim's ensemble, and from 1980 to 1982 he was with Archie Shepp's band that featured Hilton Ruiz, piano, Santi Debriano, bass and Roger Dawson, congas and percussion. In 1983 he recorded with Roger Dawson's septet featuring Hilton Ruiz, reedman John Purcell, trumpeter Claudio Roditi, bassist Anthony Cox and multi-percussionist Milton Cardona. Following this he was a member of quartets led by Marty Cook.

Since 1985 Betsch has lived in Europe, playing with Jim Pepper and Mal Waldron as well as in a band with his wife, French pianist Claudine François. In the 1990s he played in a group with Steve Lacy, and with Özay Fecht and in a trio with Elvira Plenar and Peter Kowald. He has done other recordings with Thomas Chapin, Marilyn Crispell, Klaus König, Billy Bang, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Uli Lenz and Simon Nabatov."

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

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


Track Listing:



1. The Bath 11:43

2. Morning Joy 11:04

3. As Usual 10:33

4. Naked Lunch 9:36

5. Baghdad 12:03

6. Train Going By 5:41

7. Blinks 11:14

8. In The Pocket 6:41

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Quintet Recordings
Lacy, Steve
Unusual Vocal Forms
Staff Picks & Recommended Items
Song Based Music
Spoken Word
Top Sellers and Staff Lists for 2015
EMANEM & psi

Search for other titles on the label:
Emanem.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Lacy, Steve
Stamps [2 CDs]
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Originally released on the Hat Hut label in 1979, this 2-CD set of saxophonist Steve Lacy's quintet with Steve Potts on saxophone, Irene Aebi on cello, voice & violin, Kent Carter on bass, and Oliver Johnson on drums, are heard live in two tour-de-force concerts, first at the 1977 Jazz Festival, in Willisau, Switzerland, then in 1978 at Jazz Au Totem in Paris, France.
Lacy, Steve / Steve Potts
Tips
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Recorded in Paris in 1979, Steve Lacy (soprano sax) and Steve Potts (alto sax) perform music for the aphorisms of Georges Braque, as sung by Irene Aebi; originally issued on Hat Hut records, this reiusse remasters the original release and includes images from the score.
Lacy, Steve
Avignon and After - 2 (1972-7) Volume 2
(Emanem)
The second volume of Steve Lacy's solo soprano saxophone concerts, starting off with the three short versions of Billy Strayhorn tunes which opened his first solo concert at Avignon in 1972.
Lacy, Steve / Brion Gysin
Songs
(Hatology)



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Ayler, Albert (incl. Milford Graves, Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, Sunny Murray, &c)
More Lost Performances, Revisited
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Remastering previously unavailable and vital performances from three configurations of saxophonist Albert Ayler's bands, including their 1967 Newport Festival concert with Milford Graves, their performance at John Coltrane's 1967 Funeral at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in NYC, and an incredible 1962 concert with Cecil Taylor's group with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray in Copenhagen.
Pospieszalski, Marek Quartet (Pospieszalski / Stemeseder / Mucha / Andrzejewski)
Durer's Mother
(Clean Feed)
Following saxophonist Marek Pospieszalski Octet album on Clean Feed interpreting Polish composers of the 20th Century, he continues his work in a quartet setting with original compositions inspired by 19th & 20th Century composers, including Schubert, Britten & Lachenmann, performed with Elias Stemeseder on piano, Max Mucha on double bass and Max Andrzejewski on drums.
Bjorklund's, Alan Amygdala
History Lesson
(577 Records)
One of three albums in a series curated by saxophonist David Schnug and released by 577 Records, trumpeter Alan Bjorklund's Amygdala presents an inventive and adventurous set of compositions, from a succinct 16 seconds to more than 7 minutes on the title track, in a mix of composed and improvised approaches using modern syntax and compositional strategies to compelling effect.
Aella (Henriette / Breiner / Goldman)
Aella
(577 Records)
Euphorium_freakestra
2 Trios & 2 Babies
(Euphorium)
Two drummerless trios meet two drummers in this incredible 2006 concert at naTo, in Leipzig, one from trumpeter Matthias Mainz, cello player Matthias Lorenz and bass player Michael Haves, the other from Fabian Niermann on tenor saxophone, Konrad Gruneberg on double bass and Oliver Schwerdt on the grand piano, the drummers Christian Lillinger & Gunter Baby Sommer.
Schwerdt, Oliver / Baby Sommer / Barry Guy
One For My Baby And One More For The Bass [2 CDs]
(Euphorium)
A trio sounding much larger than its three contributors--Oliver Schwerdt on grand piano, percussion & little instruments, Baby Sommer on drums, cymbals & percussion and Barry Guy on double bass--captured in concert at naTo, in Leipzig, Germany in 2019 for a joyful and assertive album of collective free improv that merges contemporary, free and jazz idioms seamlessly.
Taylor, Cecil Quintet (feat. Harri Sjostrom / Tristan Honsinger / Teppo Hauta-aho / Paul Lovens)
Lifting The Bandstand
(Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!))
Though not well documented, free jazz legendary pianist Cecil Taylor's working band for 3 years in the late nineties was this quintet of Harri Sjostrom on soprano saxophone, Tristan Honsinger on cello, Teppo Hauta-aho on double bass, and Paul Lovens on drums, cymbals & gongs, heard in this energetic concert at Tampere Jazz Happening in Finland, 2018.
Taylor, Cecil / Tony Oxley
Being Astral And All Registers - Power Of Two
(Discus)
Taken from the personal archives of UK drummer/percussionist Tony Oxley, this extremely well recorded duo session with frequent collaborator, iconoclastic NY pianist Cecil Taylor, are heard in a live performance at the Ulrichsberg Festival, Austria in 2002 for a brilliantly frenetic and masterfully controlled, creative set of two jaw-dropping extended dialogs.
Sun Ra And His Outer Space Arkestra
A Fire Side Chat With Lucifer
(Modern Harmonic)
This reissue of the 1983 Saturn Research LP presents two aspects of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the first side with the 80's classics "Nuclear War" along with "Retrospect" and "Makeup"; the second side presenting the extended and more experimental "A Fireside Chat with Lucifer", a 20 minute well balanced, open framework that allows for both melodic soloing and extended free exchanges.
Chadbourne, Eugene / Duck Baker / Randy Hutton
The Guitar Trio In Calgary 1977
(Emanem)
A concert recording from 1977 in Calgary, CA captured during Eugene Chadbourne's time in Canada prior to his move to NYC, from the guitar trio of Duck Baker, Randy Hutton & Eugene Chadbourne, performing on acoustic guitars, using a variety of approaches to improvising in trio, duo and solo configurations, with original work, an Ornette Coleman mashup, and a piece by Charlie Haden.
Umlaut Big Band
Plays Don Redman: The King Of Bungle Bar
(Umlaut Records)
Don Redman was an American big band leader popular in the 1930's, responsible for work on animations, sound tracks, and recordings of pre-swing hot jazz arrangements of popular tunes; here the French Umlaut Big Band under the direction of Pierre-Antoine Badaroux pays homage to his music in rich orchestration showing the melodic, inventive, and complexities of Redman's music.
Giuffre, Jimmy 3 (w / Bley / Swallow)
Graz Live 1961
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
After introducing his new trio with pianist Paul Bley and double bassist Steve Swallow in two 1961 albums on Verve, clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre embarked on a tour of Europe, this recently discovered, well-recorded concert in Graf, Austria the perfect example of his unique concepts yielding intensely focused, harmonically challenging, rhythmically abstract, and exquisite chamber jazz.
Okazaki, Miles
Trickster
(Pi Recordings)
Intricate interplay in modern jazz from guitarist Miles Okazaki in a quartet with fellow New Yorkers Craig Taborn on piano, Anthony Tidd on bass, and Sean Rickman on drums--Tidd and Rickman his compatriots in Steve Coleman and Five Elements--performing Okazaki's playfully complex and innovative compositions that drive some serious grooves.
Lyons, Jimmy
Push Pull [2 CDs]
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Originally issued on the Hat Hut label as a 3-LP set, this 1978 recording of Cecil Taylor compatriot, saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, performing live at Collective for Living Cinema in New York in a unique band with Karen Borca (bassoon), Munner Bernard Fennel (cello) and Roger Blank (drums).
Nathanson, Roy & Friends (O'Farrill, Ribot, Fowlkes, Coleman, Melford, Hollier)
The Nearness of you
(Clean Feed)
Jazz Passengers leader and saxophonist Roy Nathanson in an album of duos recorded live during a series of concerts at The Stone in NY, with collaborators including Marc Ribot, Curtis Fowlkes, Anthony Coleman, Arturo O'Farrill, Myra Melford, and Lucy Hollier.
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.
Keller, Beat / Reza Khota Play Christian Wolff
11 Microexercises
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
Christian Wolff initiated his "Microexercises" series when the Miniaturist Ensemble asked for a piece with no more than 100 notes in it; he went on to create 21 more pieces, 13 of which are performed here by the South African duo of Beat Keller & Reza Khota on electric guitar.
Cage, John
Empty Words [2 CDs]
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
John Cage's "Empty Words" (1974) is drawn from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau, written in four parts: Part I omits sentences, Part II omits phrases, and Part III omits words. Part IV, which omits syllables, leaves us nothing but a virtual lullaby of letters and sounds.
Cage. Schlothauer
For Seven Players
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
Burkhard Schlothauer presents two works by John Cage written for septet, using indeterminacy in a score where each instrumental part is given twenty time brackets, allowing overlapping sounds which will be shaped depending on choices from each performer.
Wolff, Christian
Exercise 15
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
Carl Ludwig Hubsch (tuba); Ole Schmidt (bass clarinet); Chris Weinheimer (bass flute); Robert Schleisiek (piano); and Tom Lorenz (vibraphone) interpret Christian Wolff's composition based on "Union Maid", a song from the 1920's, transforming the work through temporal expansion.
Cage, John
One9 [2 CDs]
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
Edwin Alexander Buchholz performs this beautiful work by John Cage on accordion, originally written for the Japanese sho, where sounds are single tones and chords, up to six part harmonies, or as Cage wrote, "sounds brushed into existence as in oriental calligraphy".
Wolff, Christian / Wandelweiser Komponisten Ensemble
Stones
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
Antoine Beuger, Burkhard Schlothauer, Chico Mello, Jurg Frey, Kunsu Shim, Michael Pisaro-Liu, and Thomas Stiegler participate in this realization of Christian Wolff's compositions to make sounds or draw sounds out of stones, alone or with other surfaces, acoustically or amplified.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC